Tolkien, letter to his son Christopher, 31 May 1944:
I could not stand Gaudy Night. I followed P. Wimsey from his attractive beginnings so far, by which time I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatrix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me, unless by his Harriet. The honeymoon one (Busman’s H.?) was worse. I was sick.
The strange thing to me is that Tolkien, having by the time of reading Sayers’s Gaudy Night developed this unparalleled hatred and disgust not just for the book but also for its characters and author, then decided to read the next book in the series. This seems strangely self-punitive, does it not?
(I also find myself wondering when the sickness set in: the Tolkien says that he followed the adventures of Lord Peter “so far” as Gaudy Night, which is the tenth novel devoted to him. Should we assume that Lord Peter remained “attractive” to Tolkien through the first nine novels? He’s rather vague on this point, but the “by which time” suggests that the loss of attractiveness and increase in loathsomeness was a gradual thing.)
