talkingpiffle: (Spoilers for Have His Carcase)“What next? Oh, the three hundred pounds in gold. That
talkingpiffle: (Spoilers for Have His Carcase)“What next? Oh, the three hundred pounds in gold. That’s a funny little incident, and very nearly upset the conspiracy altogether.“I can’t believe that that was any part of the plot as originally worked out. Morecambe couldn’t have foreseen the opportunity of collecting that gold. I think that must have been Paul Alexis’s own contribution to the romance. He had probably read in books about gold–about its passing current everywhere, and all that–and thought it would somehow be a fine thing to set out to conquer a throne with a bellyful of gold. It was ridiculous, of course–an absurd little sum, bulky and awkward to carry about–but it was Gold. Gold has its glitter, you know. As somebody says, ‘the glitter is the gold.’ That sounds like relativity physics, but it’s psychological fact. If you were a romantic young prince, Glassier, or thought you were, would you rather pay your bills with a few dirty bits of paper, or with this?”He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of gold sovereigns. They rolled ringing over the table as he threw them down, and Glassier and Umpelty flung out eager hands to catch them as they spun away in the lamplight. They picked them up and weighed them in their palms; they held them between their fingers, passing inquisitive fingers along the milled edges and over the smooth relief of the gleaming George and Dragon.“Yes,” said Wimsey, “they feel pleasant, don’t they? There are ten of them there, and they’re worth no more than paper pounds, and to me they’re actually worth nothing, because, being a tom-fool, I can’t bring myself to spend them. But they’re gold. I wouldn’t mind possessing £300 worth of them, though they might weigh five pounds avoirdupois and be an infernal nuisance.”[1] The acute reader will discern that at the date of this story, Great Britain had not yet gone off the Gold Standard.–Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase, Chapter XXXI. “The Evidence of the Haberdasher’s Assistant” (headed “Monday, July 6”), 1932.The gold sovereign was first minted in 1489 with the monarch’s image on the obverse, and gained the first incarnation of St. George killing the dragon on the reverse in 1816. Britain left the gold standard, during which one sovereign was equal to one pound, with the value of the pound fixed in relation to the value of gold, on September 19, 1931. This places the action of the story during 1931 (which fits with July 6 as a Monday, though Sayers, like Arthur Conan Doyle, was not always so meticulous in the matter of dates). (x, x)The “somebody” Lord Peter quotes is G. K. Chesterton, from his book Manalive (1912): “All is gold that glitters, / For the glitter is the gold.” (x)The weight of a sovereign coin is 7.99 grams, so Paul Alexis’s £300 would have weighed 5.28 pounds.Image: Obverse and reverse of gold sovereign minted in 1922. (x) -- source link