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 THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION
TO MEDIA STUDIES AND DIGITAL
HUMANITIES

Although media studies and digital humanities are established fields, their overlaps have not
been examined in depth. This comprehensive collection fills that gap, giving readers a critical
guide to understanding the array of methodologies and projects operating at the intersections
of media, culture, and practice. Topics include: access, praxis, social justice, design, interaction,
interfaces, mediation, materiality, remediation, data, memory, making, programming, and
hacking.

Contributors: Isabel Cristina Restrepo Acevedo, Alyssa Arbuckle, Moya Bailey, Anne
Balsamo, Jon Bath, Erika M. Behrmann, Nina Belojevic, Paul Benzon, Bryan Carter,
Kimberly Christen, Alex Christie, Beth Coleman, Constance Crompton, Monica De La
Torre, Jeanette M. Dillon, Elizabeth Ellcessor, Maureen Engel, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Mary
Flanagan, Matthew Fuller, Jacob Gaboury, Jennifer Gabrys, Radhika Gajjala, Reina Gossett,
Dene Grigar, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Eric Hoyt, Kit Hughes, Patrick Jagoda, Steven E. Jones,
Alexandra Juhasz, Kat Jungnickel, Lauren F. Klein, Kim Brillante Knight, Kari Kraus,
Virginia Kuhn, Elizabeth LaPensée, Derek Long, Elizabeth Losh, Angelica Macklin, Shaun
Macpherson, Mark C. Marino, Shannon Mattern, Peter McDonald, Tara McPherson,
Shintaro Miyazaki, Aimée Morrison, Stuart Moulthrop, Anna Munster, Timothy Murray,
Angel David Nieves, Amanda Phillips, Kevin Ponto, Jessica Rajko, Howard Rambsy II,
Sonnet Retman, Roopika Risam, Tara Rodgers, Daniela K. Rosner, Anastasia Salter, Jeffrey
Schnapp, Ray Siemens, Patrik Svensson, Victoria Szabo, Tony Tran, Annette Vee, Noah
Wardrip-Fruin, Jacqueline Wernimont, Mark J. Williams, and Gregory Zinman

Jentery Sayers is Associate Professor of English and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought
at the University of Victoria, Canada.
 THE ROUTLEDGE
COMPANION TO MEDIA
STUDIES AND DIGITAL
HUMANITIES

Edited by
Jentery Sayers
 First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the

editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted

or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks

or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sayers, Jentery, editor.
Title: The Routledge companion to media studies and digital humanities /
edited by Jentery Sayers.
Description: New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017014964| ISBN 9781138844308 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315730479 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Mass media. | Digital humanities.
Classification: LCC P90 .R673 2018 | DDC 302.23—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014964

ISBN: 978-1-138-84430-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-73047-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
This book is dedicated to everyone at HASTAC.
 CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors xii

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction: Studying Media through New Media 1

JENTERY SAYERS

PART I
Access, Praxis, Justice 7

1. Theory/Practice: Lessons Learned from Feminist Film

Studies 9
TARA MCPHERSON

2. #cut/paste+bleed: Entangling Feminist Affect, Action, and

Production On and Offline 18
ALEXANDRA JUHASZ

3. Analog Girls in Digital Worlds: Dismantling Binaries for

Digital Humanists Who Research Social Media 33
MOYA BAILEY AND REINA GOSSETT

4. (Cyber)Ethnographies of Contact, Dialogue, Friction:

Connecting, Building, Placing, and Doing “Data” 44
RADHIKA GAJJALA, ERIKA M. BEHRMANN, AND
JEANETTE M. DILLON

5. Of, By, and For the Internet: New Media Studies and
Public Scholarship 56
AIMÉE MORRISON

6. Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities:

Convivencia and Archivista Praxis for a Digital Era 67
MICHELLE HABELL-PALLÁN, SONNET RETMAN, ANGELICA MACKLIN,
AND MONICA DE LA TORRE

7. Decolonizing Digital Humanities in Theory and Practice 78

ROOPIKA RISAM

vii
 CONTENTS

8. Interactive Narratives: Addressing Social and Political Trauma

through New Media 87
ISABEL CRISTINA RESTREPO ACEVEDO

9. Wear and Care: Feminisms at a Long Maker Table 97

JACQUELINE WERNIMONT AND ELIZABETH LOSH

10. A Glitch in the Tower: Academia, Disability, and

Digital Humanities 108
ELIZABETH ELLCESSOR

11. Game Studies for Great Justice 117

AMANDA PHILLIPS

12. Self-Determination in Indigenous Games 128

ELIZABETH LAPENSÉE

PART II
Design, Interface, Interaction 139

13. Making Meaning, Making Culture: How to Think about

Technology and Cultural Reproduction 141
ANNE BALSAMO

14. Contemporary and Future Spaces for Media Studies and

Digital Humanities 152
PATRIK SVENSSON

15. Finding Fault Lines: An Approach to Speculative Design 162

KARI KRAUS

16. Game Mechanics, Experience Design, and Affective Play 174

PATRICK JAGODA AND PETER MCDONALD

17. Critical Play and Responsible Design 183

MARY FLANAGAN

18. A Call to Action: Embodied Thinking and Human-Computer

Interaction Design 195
JESSICA RAJKO

19. Wearable Interfaces, Networked Bodies, and Feminist

Sleeper Agents 204
KIM BRILLANTE KNIGHT

20. Deep Mapping: Space, Place, and Narrative as Urban Interface 214
MAUREEN ENGEL

viii
 CONTENTS

21. Smart Things, Smart Subjects: How the “Internet of Things”

Enacts Pervasive Media 222
BETH COLEMAN

PART III
Mediation, Method, Materiality 231

22. Approaching Sound 233

TARA RODGERS

23. Algorhythmics: A Diffractive Approach for Understanding

Computation 243
SHINTARO MIYAZAKI

24. Software Studies Methods 250

MATTHEW FULLER

25. Physical Computing, Embodied Practice 258

NINA BELOJEVIC AND SHAUN MACPHERSON

26. Turning Practice Inside Out: Digital Humanities and the Eversion 267
STEVEN E. JONES

27. Conjunctive and Disjunctive Networks: Affects, Technics,

and Arts in the Experience of Relation 274
ANNA MUNSTER

28. From “Live” to Real Time: On Future Television Studies 283

MARK J. WILLIAMS

29. ICYMI: Catching Up to the Moving Image Online 292

GREGORY ZINMAN

30. Images on the Move: Analytics for a Mixed Methods Approach 300
VIRGINIA KUHN

31. Lost in the Clouds: A Media Theory of the Flight Recorder 310
PAUL BENZON

32. Scaffolding, Hard and Soft: Critical and Generative Infrastructures 318
SHANNON MATTERN

PART IV
Remediation, Data, Memory 327

33. Obsolescence and Innovation in the Age of the Digital 329

KATHLEEN FITZPATRICK

ix
 CONTENTS

34. Futures of the Book 336

JON BATH, ALYSSA ARBUCKLE, CONSTANCE CROMPTON,
ALEX CHRISTIE, RAY SIEMENS, AND THE INKE RESEARCH GROUP

35. Becoming a Rap Genius: African American Literary Studies and

Collaborative Annotation 345
HOWARD RAMBSY II

36. Traversals: A Method of Preservation for Born-Digital Texts 351

DENE GRIGAR AND STUART MOULTHROP

37. New Media Arts: Creativity on the Way to the Archive 362
TIMOTHY MURRAY

38. Apprehending the Past: Augmented Reality, Archives, and

Cultural Memory 372
VICTORIA SZABO

39. Experiencing Digital Africana Studies: Bringing the

Classroom to Life 384
BRYAN CARTER

40. Engagements with Race, Memory, and the Built Environment

in South Africa: A Case Study in Digital Humanities 391
ANGEL DAVID NIEVES

41. Relationships, Not Records: Digital Heritage and the Ethics of

Sharing Indigenous Knowledge Online 403
KIMBERLY CHRISTEN

42. Searching, Mining, and Interpreting Media History’s Big Data 413
ERIC HOYT, TONY TRAN, DEREK LONG, KIT HUGHES,
AND KEVIN PONTO

43. The Intimate Lives of Cultural Objects 423

JEFFREY SCHNAPP

44. Timescape and Memory: Visualizing Big Data at the

9/11 Memorial Museum 433
LAUREN F. KLEIN

PART V
Making, Programming, Hacking 443

45. Programming as Literacy 445

ANNETTE VEE

46. Expressive Processing: Interpretation and Creation 453

NOAH WARDRIP-FRUIN

x
 CONTENTS

47. Building Interactive Stories 462

ANASTASIA SALTER

48. Reading Culture through Code 472

MARK C. MARINO

49. Critical Unmaking: Toward a Queer Computation 483

JACOB GABOURY

50. Making Things to Make Sense of Things: DIY as Research

and Practice 492
KAT JUNGNICKEL

51. Environmental Sensing and “Media” as Practice in the Making 503

JENNIFER GABRYS

52. Approaching Design as Inquiry: Magic, Myth, and Metaphor

in Digital Fabrication 511
DANIELA K. ROSNER

Glossary of Acronyms and Initialisms 521

Glossary of Projects 526
Index 551

xi
 CONTRIBUTORS

Isabel Cristina Restrepo Acevedo is an Associate Professor and Director of the research
group Hipertrópico, Arts and Technology from Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. Her
research and artistic practice explore relationships between new media art and society.
Alyssa Arbuckle is Assistant Director, Research Partnerships & Development, in the
Electronics Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria (UVic), where she also works
with the INKE group. Alyssa holds an M.A. in English from UVic.
Moya Bailey studies marginalized groups’ use of digital media to promote social justice as
acts of self-affirmation and health promotion. She is interested in how race, gender, and
sexuality are represented in media and medicine. She also co-curates the #transformDH
initiative.
Anne Balsamo is the Dean of the School of Art, Technology, and Emerging Communication
at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Jon Bath is an Assistant Professor of Art and Art History and Director of the Humanities
and Fine Arts Digital Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. He is co-leader
of the Modelling and Prototyping team of Implementing New Knowledge Environments
(INKE).
Erika M. Behrmann is an activist-scholar focusing on feminist theory, postfeminism,
pedagogy, postcolonialism, and their various intersections and materializations within media
and gaming spaces. Her publications can be found in Teaching Media Quarterly (2015) and
Films for the Feminist Classroom (2016).
Nina Belojevic completed her M.A. in English at the University of Victoria. Her work com-
bines media studies and cultural studies with media art and physical computing practice.
Paul Benzon teaches in the Department of English and the Media and Film Studies
Program at Skidmore College. His work has appeared in PMLA, Narrative, electronic book
review, and Media-N, the journal of the New Media Caucus of the College Art Association.
Bryan Carter received his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Columbia and is currently
an Associate Professor in Africana Studies at the University of Arizona, specializing in
African American literature of the twentieth century with a primary focus on the Harlem
Renaissance. His research also focuses on Digital Humanities/Africana Studies.
Kimberly Christen is an Associate Professor and Director of the Digital Technology and
Culture Program, Director of Digital Projects for Native American Programs, and the
co-Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State
University.

xii
 CONTRIBUTORS

Alex Christie is an Assistant Professor in Digital Prototyping at Brock University’s Centre

for Digital Humanities. He completed his doctorate at the University of Victoria, where
he worked as a research assistant with the INKE group and the Modernist Versions Project
in the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and the Maker Lab in the Humanities.
Beth Coleman directs the City as Platform Lab at the University of Waterloo, where she
is an Associate Professor of Experimental Digital Media. Her research spans artistic and
academic practices, addressing networked media technology and new data publics. She is
the co-founder of SoundLab Cultural Alchemy, an internationally acclaimed multimedia
art and sound platform. Her book Hello Avatar is with MIT Press.
Constance Crompton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at
the University of Ottawa. She is a researcher with the INKE project and co-Director
of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada project.
Monica De La Torre is an Assistant Professor in Media and Expressive Culture at the School
of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. In her research, teaching, and media
production, she bridges Chicana feminist theory, Latina/o media studies, radio and sound
studies, and feminist media praxis.
Jeanette M. Dillon is a 25-year media veteran pursuing her doctorate in communication
at Bowling Green State University. Her research interests include health and organizational
communication, particularly within nonprofit organizations and social enterprises.
Elizabeth Ellcessor is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the Uni-
versity of Virginia. She is the author of Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics
of Participation (NYU Press 2016).
Maureen Engel is Assistant Professor and Director of Humanities Computing at the Uni-
versity of Alberta. Formally trained as a textual scholar, her work focuses on the intricate
relationships that inhere in and develop from the concepts of space, place, history, and
narrative.
Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan
State University. She is the author of Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the
Future of the Academy and The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of
Television.
Mary Flanagan is an artist, designer, and media theorist. She founded and leads the game
design research laboratory, Tiltfactor, at Dartmouth College, where she is the Sherman
Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities. She also runs the game publishing
company Resonym.
Matthew Fuller is a member of the editorial group of the journal Computational Culture.
He works at the Digital Culture Unit and Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths,
University of London.
Jacob Gaboury is Assistant Professor of Film & Media at the University of California,
Berkeley. His work engages the history and theory of digital media with a focus on digital
imaging, media archaeology, and queer theory.
Jennifer Gabrys is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Principal
Investigator on the ERC-funded project, “Citizen Sense.” Her publications include

xiii
 CONTRIBUTORS

Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics and Program Earth: Environmental Sensing
Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet.
Radhika Gajjala is Professor of Media and Communication (joint appointed faculty in
American Culture Studies) at Bowling Green State University. She has published books
on Cyberculture and the Subaltern (Lexington Press 2012) and Cyberselves: Feminist Ethnog-
raphies of South Asian Women (AltaMira 2004).
Reina Gossett is an activist, writer, and filmmaker. Along with Sasha Wortzel, Reina wrote,
directed, and produced Happy Birthday, Marsha! (a short film about legendary trans activist
Marsha P. Johnson, starring Independent Spirit Award winner Mya Taylor).
Dene Grigar is Professor and Director of The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program
at Washington State University Vancouver.
Michelle Habell-Pallán, a Professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the
University of Washington, co-directs the UW Women Who Rock Archive. Author of
Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana and Latina Popular Culture (2005), she curated American
Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music (hosted by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling
Exhibition Service) and jams with Seattle Fandango Project.
Eric Hoyt is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. He is the author of Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video, co-Director
of the Media History Digital Library, and lead developer of Lantern and Arclight.
Kit Hughes is an Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture at Colorado State
University. Her manuscript project, Television at Work, details how American business
developed television as a technology of industrial efficiency, ideological orientation, and
corporate expansion.
Patrick Jagoda is Associate Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the Uni-
versity of Chicago. He is also a co-editor of Critical Inquiry and co-founder of the Game
Changer Chicago Design Lab and the Transmedia Story Lab. He is the author of Network
Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press 2016) and co-author with Michael Maizels of The
Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer (MIT Press 2016).
Steven E. Jones is DeBartolo Professor of Liberal Arts and Digital Humanities in the
Department of English, the University of South Florida. He is author of a number of books
and articles, including Roberto Busa, S.J., and the Emergence of Humanities Computing: The
Priest and the Punched Cards (Routledge 2016).
Alexandra Juhasz is Chair of the Film Department at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She makes
and studies committed media practices that contribute to political change and individ-
ual and community growth. Her current work is on and about feminist internet culture,
including YouTube and feminist pedagogy and community. With Anne Balsamo, she was
co-facilitator of the network, FemTechNet.
Kat Jungnickel is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College,
University of London. Her research explores mobilities, digital technology cultures,
DIY/DIT practices, and making methods.
Lauren F. Klein is an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Com-
munication at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. With

xiv
 CONTRIBUTORS

Matthew K. Gold, she edits Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota
Press), a hybrid print/digital publication stream that explores debates in the field as they
emerge.
Kim Brillante Knight is an Associate Professor of Emerging Media and Communication
at The University of Texas at Dallas, where her research and teaching focus on the interplay
of power structures and identity in digital culture, with particular emphasis on the role of
gender and intersectional feminism in networked environments.
Kari Kraus is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies and the Depart-
ment of English at the University of Maryland.
Virginia Kuhn is Associate Director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and Associate
Professor in the division of Media Arts + Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at the
University of Southern California.
Elizabeth LaPensée Ph.D. expresses herself through writing, design, and art in games. She
is Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish, living near the Great Lakes. She is an Assistant Professor
of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State
University. She designed and programmed Invaders (2015), a remix of the arcade classic
Space Invaders. Her latest game, Honour Water (2016), shares Anishinaabe songs for healing
the water.
Derek Long is an Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of
Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is currently working on a book manuscript on
distribution in the early Hollywood studio system.
Elizabeth Losh is an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the College
of William and Mary. She is the author of Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Govern
ment Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT
Press 2009) and The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University (MIT Press
2014).
Angelica Macklin is a filmmaker and doctoral candidate in Gender, Women, and Sexu-
ality Studies at the University of Washington. She has been with the Women Who Rock
Collective since 2011, organizing the unConferences and Film Festivals, building the
Archive, and teaching media production. Angelica is co-Director of “Masizakhe: Building
Each Other” and “De Baixo Para Cima.”
Shaun Macpherson is a musician and media artist whose work combines sound design
and video with analog or otherwise obsolete technology. He recently received an M.A.
in English and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria.
Mark C. Marino is a writer and scholar of electronic literature living in Los Angeles. He
teaches writing at the University of Southern California, where he directs the Humanities
and Critical Code Studies Lab.
Shannon Mattern is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School. She writes
about archives, libraries, and other media spaces; media infrastructures; and mediated
sensation.
Peter McDonald is a graduate student in English at the University of Chicago and a fellow
at the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab. His work deals with the hermeneutics of play.

xv
 CONTRIBUTORS

Tara McPherson teaches in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC. She is co-editor of Vectors,
a lead P.I. on the platform Scalar, and author or editor of several books, including Feminist
in a Software Lab: Difference + Design (Harvard University Press 2018).
Shintaro Miyazaki is currently a senior researcher at the University of Applied Sciences
and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Academy of Art and Design, Institute of Experimental
Design and Media Cultures, working at the intersection of media, design, and history. He
has a Ph.D. in media theory from Humboldt University, Berlin (2012).
Aimée Morrison is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature
at the University of Waterloo, where she teaches new media studies. She has published
on internet manifestos, mommy blogs, Facebook status updates, and videogame movies
of the 1980s.
Stuart Moulthrop is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and
coordinator of the program in Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies.
Anna Munster is a writer, artist, and educator. She is the author of An Aesthesia of Networks
(2013) and Materializing New Media (2006). She is a Professor in Art and Design, University
of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Timothy Murray is Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Curator of the Rose
Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, and Director of the Cornell Council for the Arts at
Cornell University. Co-moderator of the -empyre- new media listserv, his books include
Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds (University of Minnesota Press 2008).
Angel David Nieves is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Digital Humanities at
Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. He is also co-Director of the Digital Humanities
Initiative (DHi) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2010–16).
Amanda Phillips is Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University. She writes
about race, gender, and social justice in videogames and the digital humanities. You can
find her work in Queer Game Studies, Games and Culture, Digital Creativity, and Debates in
the Digital Humanities.
Kevin Ponto is an Assistant Professor in the Design Studies Department and the Wisconsin
Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work focuses on the
experience of visualizing data, including the development of the ScripThreads visualization
application.
Jessica Rajko is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University (ASU). Her work investi-
gates the ethical and corporeal implications of wearable technology, big data, and the
quantified self. She is a founding co-Director of the ASU Human Security Collaboratory
and is an affiliated artist/researcher with the Arts, Media and Engineering Synthesis
Center.
Howard Rambsy II teaches African American literature at Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville.
Sonnet Retman is an Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of
Washington, where she co-directs the UW Women Who Rock Archive. She is the author
of numerous essays on race, gender, genre, and performance and of Real Folks: Race and
Genre in the Great Depression (Duke University Press 2011).

xvi
 CONTRIBUTORS

Roopika Risam is Assistant Professor of English at Salem State University. Her research
focuses on digital approaches to postcolonial and African diaspora studies. Risam’s work
has recently appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, South Asian Review, and Debates in
the Digital Humanities.
Tara Rodgers is a composer, historian, and critic of electronic music and sound. She is the
author of numerous essays on music, technology, and culture, and of Pink Noises: Women
on Electronic Music and Sound (Duke University Press 2010).
Daniela K. Rosner is an Assistant Professor of Human-Centered Design & Engineering at
the University of Washington, co-directing the Tactile and Tactical Design Lab (TAT
lab). Through fieldwork and design, her research examines emerging sites of creativity
around digital production—from hobbyist fixer groups to feminist hacker collectives.
Anastasia Salter is an Assistant Professor of digital media at the University of Central Florida.
She is the author of What Is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books
(University of Iowa Press 2014) and co-author of Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT
Press 2014).
Jeffrey Schnapp led the Stanford Humanities Lab between 1999 and 2009. After joining
the Harvard University faculty in 2011, he founded metaLAB, where he serves as Faculty
Director and co-Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Among
his recent books are Digital_Humanities (2012) and The Library Beyond the Book (2014).
Ray Siemens is Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of
Victoria, in English with cross appointment in Computer Science. He directs the Electronic
Textual Cultures Lab, the INKE group, and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute.
Patrik Svensson is a Professor of Humanities and Information Technology at Umeå
University, and the former Director of HUMLab (2000–14). His current work can be
loosely organized under two themes: digital humanities and conditions for knowledge
production.
Victoria Szabo is an Associate Research Professor of Visual and Media Studies at Duke
University. She is a member of the Wired! Lab for Digital Art History & Visual Culture
and works on augmented reality and virtual worlds for critical and creative expression.
Tony Tran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Boston College.
His research interests include exploring digital diasporas and the relationships between on
and offline spaces.
Annette Vee is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work on
literacy, computer programming, intellectual property, and pedagogy has been published
in journals such as Computational Culture and Literacy in Composition Studies. Her book,
Coding Literacy, was published by MIT Press in 2017.
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a Professor of Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz, where he
co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio (EIS), a technical/cultural research group.
His media projects have been presented by venues such as the Whitney Museum and
IndieCade.
Jacqueline Wernimont is an Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University. As
founding co-Director of the Human Security Collaboratory, she works on new civil rights

xvii
 CONTRIBUTORS

in digital cultures with emphases on the long histories of quantification and technologies
of commemoration.
Mark J. Williams is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College,
co-editor of the Interfaces book series at Dartmouth College Press, founding editor of
The Journal of e-Media Studies, and Director of The Media Ecology Project.
Gregory Zinman is an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Com-
munication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His work has appeared in The New
Yorker, Film History, MIRAJ, and Millennium Film Journal. He is completing a book,
Handmade: The Moving Image without Photography, and is co-editing, with John Hanhardt,
Nam June Paik: Selected Writings (forthcoming from The MIT Press).

xviii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As editor of this Companion, I acknowledge with respect the Lkwungen-speaking peoples

on whose traditional territory I live and work, and the Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEĆ
peoples, whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

Many thanks and much love to Brooken, Beckett, and Willem for all the hugs, support,
patience, and humor along the way. I am beyond fortunate that you are in my life. Thanks
as well to each of the Companion’s contributors, who engaged in dialogue with me for the
last four years and were (and remain) a positive force for change.

Danielle Morgan (research assistant with the MLab at UVic) produced the cover image for
this Companion. Nadia Timperio (research assistant with the MLab at UVic) worked with
me to prepare the Companion for publication, and Allison Murphy (research assistant with
the Department of English at UVic) indexed it with me. Students in English 508 at UVic
provided valuable feedback on several chapters, and Steven E. Jones, Willard McCarty, Stuart
Moulthrop, and Melissa Terras offered insightful responses to the Companion during the
proposal stage. Initial research for this Companion was supported by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canada Foundation for
Innovation (CFI) as well as the Departments of English and Visual Arts at UVic. Endless
thanks to Cathy Davidson, Julie Klein, Tara McPherson, and Kathy Woodward for their
advice and perspective early on, and to Nina Belejovic, Tiffany Chan, Katherine Goertz,
Shaun Macpherson, and Danielle Morgan for their support during the MLab days. Of course,
The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities would not have been possible
without the teams at Routledge and Florence Production, including Mia Moran, Erica Wetter,
Emma Sudderick, and especially Jessica Bithrey, who worked with me throughout the proof-
reading process.

xix
 INTRODUCTION
Studying Media through
New Media
Jentery Sayers

This Companion is about studying media through new media: for instance, making games to
better understand their mechanics and politics, writing code and developing interfaces
to explore their roles in reading and literacy, stewarding texts for online annotation and public
discussion, participating in social networks to locate their biases and occlusions, assembling
hardware to expose norms and change default settings, or composing audio, moving images,
databases, and augmented reality applications as forms of scholarship at once similar to and
different from academic essays. That is quite a list. And it is not exhaustive. Yet it speaks to
the Companion’s principal impulse, which is to combine media studies with digital humanities to
share with readers (especially those who are new to both fields) the various types of research
that emerge.
Even though they share interests in technologies, media studies and digital humanities do
not always converse. Perhaps this lack of dialogue is explained by divergent histories of theory
and practice, with researchers in each field drawing from distinct canons and methodologies.
In digital humanities, studies of texts from the 1800s or earlier are quite common; for numerous
reasons, these texts are readily available in electronic form and thus conducive to computational
analysis. In media studies, research tends to move from the 1800s forward and also focus on
nontextual forms, such as sound, images, video, and games. Aside from these differences in
substance and period, popular definitions of each field suggest a difference in technique, too:
whereas media studies treats media and technologies as objects of inquiry, digital humanities
integrates them into its methods. Or, if media studies is about media and technologies, then
digital humanities works with them. Allow me to elaborate on this assumption for a moment.
Many media studies practitioners avoid the reduction of research to instrumentalism, where
technologies are “neutral tools” that simply turn input into output. Against instrumentalism,
practitioners should be cognizant of not only the values and histories embedded in tech-
nologies, but also how those values and histories shape interpretation. Related concerns in
media studies include the risks of researchers colluding with the tech industry or adopting
technologies too quickly. Early or enthusiastic adoption may be a knee-jerk endorsement of
whiz-bang gadgets and alluring trends—a way to make your project appealing or relevant
to the market without necessarily addressing the research questions, social issues, concep-
tual frameworks, matters of representation, and contexts of use at hand. Meanwhile, digital

1
 JENTERY SAYERS

humanities practitioners experiment with and even build the infrastructures of new media,
reminding us that technology is not just a metaphor or an object “over there,” to be phil-
osophized at a remove. Technologies are constructed, maintained, preserved, and consumed,
and they are intricately interlaced with labor and knowledge production in and beyond the
academy. In short, digital projects demand a lot of work. Where there’s a technology, there’s
also a team, some stories, millions of files, thousands of bugs and fixes, and plenty of politics.
The result is significant attention to laboratory practices and technical competencies in digital
humanities.
Inspired by Tara McPherson’s seminal Cinema Journal essay, “Media Studies and the Digital
Humanities” (2009), this Companion demonstrates how such assumptions about media
studies and digital humanities are in reality hyperbolic, if not mythological. Many research-
ers, including contributors to this Companion, move routinely across the two fields, which
may mutually inform and enrich each other instead of fostering opposition. In fact, when
they are combined in theory as well as practice, we could say that media studies and digital
humanities work through new media as means and modes of inquiry. We can research media
without resorting to naive enthusiasm for technologies or assuming scholarly positions from
on high, somehow above or outside the very conditions we study. More specifically, we may
borrow language from scholars such as Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2005) and Karen Barad
(2007) to argue that we are entangled with the media we produce and research, not separate from
them. This position need not imply a lack of researcher awareness or a disinterest in social
change. Rather, the point is to stress how all research is mediated; it is media all the way
down. We influence and are influenced by our inquiries and materials, and—as exhibited by
each chapter in this Companion—historicizing, assessing, and revising the roles media play
in that influence renders our work more compelling and persuasive.
We might start by noting that “media” in this Companion is not synonymous with “the
media,” or with communication outlets and conglomerates. As an alternative, we may begin
with Lev Manovich’s five-part definition of new media, even if his definition privileges formal
aspects over the contexts of functions and processes:

• New media are numerical representations (composed of digital code),

• They are modular (several distinct parts constitute an object),
• They are automated (their creation and maintenance involve a combination of people
and machines),
• They are variable (versions eclipse originals and copies), and
• They are transcoded (a combination of computation and culture) (Manovich 2001:
27–48).

This last aspect, transcoding, is most central to this Companion, which foregrounds the cul-
tural dimensions of studying media through new media: how new media are about power and
control, for example. In doing so, the Companion also echoes W.J.T. Mitchell: “There are
no ‘pure’ media” (2008: 13). Even with established categories such as sound, image, video,
text, code, software, hardware, platform, interface, story, game, network, and even electricity,
light, or water, it is impossible to isolate one medium from the next. Their affordances are
fleeting and incredibly difficult to measure. And if no pure media exist, then it is also im-
possible to extract new media from the contingencies of their histories or settings, even as
they transform, rot, disappear, and reappear over time, often without provenance or reference
to the motivations for their composition. While anyone may unconsciously or wilfully ignore
these histories and settings—these values and configurations—they are active ingredients of

2
 INTRODUCTION

new media’s composition; they are the stuff of making and remaking. Once they enter our
frame of analysis, new media’s formal or technical aspects morph from the common sense of
patents, diagrams, and instruction manuals into a hairball of human and nonhuman activities
or a matrix of technology and culture.
We could therefore propose that the study of media is the study of entanglements. How and
under what assumptions is sound entwined with image? Data with design? Network with
node? Old with new? Subject with object? Aesthetics with politics? This approach to com-
bining media studies with digital humanities does not bypass specificity (as if entanglements
are antithetical to granularity and difference), and it does not endorse relativism (as if en-
tanglements either absolve us from responsibility or claim equal positioning for everyone
and everything) (Haraway 1988: 584). It instead underscores how new media are simul-
taneously abstract and particular, inhabiting seemingly contradictory positions within systems
that invite and track action. It then asks us to account for where we are and how we participate
in those systems—in the complex mesh of apparatus with process. This is no simple task,
especially when we face the litany of things media may be: both social and material, carrier
and content, form and substance, portal and edge, ephemeral and permanent, you and
other. Of course, practitioners usually select their preferred terms for research, and these
terms unavoidably shape how people draw boundaries and assume responsibility for their
demarcations.
Media. A fascinating mess. In the following pages, four palpable issues repeatedly surface
from it all. These issues are not just concerns shared by some or even all the authors; they
are also indicators of what makes the intersection of media studies with digital humanities
unique and necessary right now.

• Beyond Text: With its prevalence in English departments and studies of literature and
language, digital humanities frequently deems text its primary medium for both com-
position and analysis. Against this grain, the following chapters give us a very concrete
sense of digital humanities and media studies beyond text for inquiry. By extension, they
prompt practitioners to consider an array of media in tandem with a constellation of
modalities, including listening, seeing, scanning, touching, skimming, hearing, watching,
smelling, feeling, toggling, wearing, processing, and inhabiting. These modalities remind
us how the study of media through new media is an embodied or material activity, which
may be both situated in and distributed across space and time as well as people and
machines. Embodiment (including questions of affect and labor) and materiality (including
questions of inscription, plasticity, and erasure) are fundamental to research as an
entanglement.
• Labs and Collaboration: The laboratory, broadly defined, is a core component of many
chapters in this Companion. A majority, if not all, of the methods are experimental.
They combine disciplines, privilege trial and error, underscore action in context, or
develop custom technologies. Rarely is this work done alone, and even when the chapters
are written by individuals they draw upon and acknowledge efforts by teams and
collectives. Although they are now ubiquitous features of digital work, labs and
collaboration remain understudied in the humanities. This Companion contributes
additional research to address that gap.
• Social Justice: The content of this Companion resists formal or technical treatments
of media as if technologies are outside of time, history, culture, society, and material
conditions. Many of the chapters focus on the entanglements of technologies with justice,
oppression, and power. Rather than asking what media are, they ask what media do.

3
 JENTERY SAYERS

How do new media unfold in context? How are they made, by whom, and for whom?
According to what norms or standards, and with what influence on social relations? With
what acknowledgments and exclusions? How do they circulate, regulate, and discipline?
How are they modified or repurposed, and with what changes over time? These ques-
tions encourage a media studies and digital humanities of the present moment, when
technologies may be modes of activism and decolonization instead of instruments or
gadgets.
• Expanding Participation: Instead of reducing media studies or digital humanities to
practices such as programming—or to the technical particulars of code and platforms—
the chapters included here underscore a range of scholarly participation in new media
from across disciplines and experiences. Through their methodologies, the authors may
intervene in a given research area by prototyping media through new media, but they
may also conduct archival research, write monographs, pursue ethnographic methods, or
manage scholarly resources, for instance. One by-product of this range is a thorough
account of what “making,” “doing,” or “building” really mean in our current moment.
These forms of “active” participation need not be restricted to the creation of shiny,
tangible, and measurable things. They need not rehearse the myth of lone white male
inventors, either. Scholarship in this Companion involves (among other things) performing,
writing, thinking, speaking, listening, resisting, revising, editing, curating, maintaining,
fixing, and tinkering, the particulars of which often escape us. Through this expansive
approach to participation in new media, the chapters more accurately reflect the actualities
of research practice and move beyond the superficial hype of making and building stuff.

To give these four issues some structure, especially for readers who are new to media studies
and digital humanities, I organized this Companion into five sections, followed by a Glossary
of Acronyms and Initialisms as well as a Glossary of Projects mentioned in the chapters:
Part I. Access, Praxis, Justice: This section highlights social justice issues that permeate
the entirety of the Companion. It also demonstrates how social justice work is enacted through
new media as a form of praxis, in part by expanding the definition of “access” through an
emphasis on participation, but also by sharing various modes of activism involving new media.
This part features Tara McPherson on feminist film studies; Alexandra Juhasz on “ev-ent-
anglement”; Moya Bailey and Reina Gossett on social media; Radhika Gajjala, Erika M.
Behrmann, and Jeanette M. Dillon on cyberethnography; Aimée Morrison on public
scholarship; Michelle Habell-Pallán, Sonnet Retman, Angelica Macklin, and Monica De La
Torre on convivencia and archivista praxis; Roopika Risam on decolonization; Isabel Cristina
Restrepo Acevedo on interactive narratives; Jacqueline Wernimont and Elizabeth Losh on a
“long maker table”; Elizabeth Ellcessor on glitch and disability; Amanda Phillips on videogames
and social justice; and Elizabeth LaPensée on Indigenous game design.
Part II. Design, Interface, Interaction: Design, interfaces, and interaction are too often
considered additive, as if they are features layered over code just before release. Against such
tendencies, this section exhibits the centrality of design to critical and creative inquiry with
media. This part features Anne Balsamo on the cultural implications of design; Patrik Svensson
on the design of space; Kari Kraus on speculative design; Patrick Jagoda and Peter McDonald
on experience design and affective play; Mary Flanagan on critical play; Jessica Rajko on
embodied thinking and wearables design; Kim Brillante Knight on wearable interfaces;
Maureen Engel on deep mapping; and Beth Coleman on smart subjects in the Internet of
Things.

4
 INTRODUCTION

Part III. Mediation, Method, Materiality: Instead of treating media as containers that
transmit content, this section of the Companion attends to various forms of mediation, affect,
and materiality important to humanities research. Many of the authors also translate mediation
into a method for inquiry. Here, mediation is not something delegated to instruments or
overwritten by research techniques; it is what prompts interesting questions. This part features
Tara Rodgers on sound; Shintaro Miyazaki on algorhythmics; Matthew Fuller on software
studies; Nina Belojevic and Shaun Macpherson on physical computing; Steven E. Jones on
the eversion; Anna Munster on networks; Mark Williams on television; Gregory Zinman on
moving images; Virginia Kuhn on analytics; Paul Benzon on media archaeology; and Shannon
Mattern on infrastructures.
Part IV. Remediation, Data, Memory: In the humanities, how is media preserved?
What role does it play in memory? When does it become “data”? And how does it change
across formats over time? Moving between old and new media, the past and present, this
section of the Companion addresses these questions and more. In the process, it builds on
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s foundational text, Remediation (1998). This part features
Kathleen Fitzpatrick on obsolescence and innovation; Jon Bath, Alyssa Arbuckle, Constance
Crompton, Alex Christie, Ray Siemens, and the INKE Research Group on futures of the
book; Howard Rambsy II on collaborative annotation; Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop
on preserving born-digital texts; Timothy Murray on curating and preserving new media art;
Victoria Szabo on apprehension through augmented reality; Bryan Carter on teaching Digital
Africana Studies; Angel David Nieves on 3-D histories of South Africa; Kimberly Christen
on Indigenous systems of knowledge and archival practices; Eric Hoyt, Tony Tran, Derek
Long, Kit Hughes, and Kevin Ponto on applying scaled entity search to media history; Jeffrey
Schnapp on the art of description; and Lauren F. Klein on data visualization and memory.
Part V. Making, Programming, Hacking: Practices such as making, programming,
and hacking intertwine in many ways with writing, ethnography, and even archival work.
Underscoring the critical and creative dimensions of these practices, this section surveys
noninstrumentalist approaches to code, platforms, and machines that privilege inquiry over
proof. This part features Annette Vee on programming and literacy; Noah Wardrip-Fruin
on expressive processing; Anastasia Salter on building interactive stories; Mark C. Marino
on critical code studies; Jacob Gaboury on critical unmaking and queer computation; Kat
Jungnickel on learning from doing; Jennifer Gabrys on citizen sensing; and Daniela K. Rosner
on design as inquiry.
Ultimately, the methods and methodologies presented here do not cohere into an
exhaustive or totalizing entanglement of media studies with digital humanities. The differences
between them are telling and meaningful, and—encouraged by the HASTAC community,
including the affirmative work of Fiona Barnett and Cathy Davidson (see Davidson 2011)—
it is in the spirit of difference that I invite readers to study media through new media. How
are the boundaries drawn, and to what effects?

References
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Bolter, J.D. and R. Grusin (1998) Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Chun, W.H.K. (2005) “Introduction: Did Somebody Say New Media?” in W.H.K. Chun and T. Keenan (eds.)
New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–10.
Davidson, C. (2011) “‘Difference Is Our Operating System’—Fiona Barnett,” HASTAC, hastac.org/blogs/
cathy-davidson/2011/08/03/difference-our-operating-system-fiona-barnett.

5
 JENTERY SAYERS

Haraway, D. (1988) “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial
Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14(3), 575–99.
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
McPherson, T. (2009) “Introduction: Media Studies and the Digital Humanities,” Cinema Journal 48(2), 119–23.
Mitchell, W.J.T. (2008) “Addressing Media,” Media Tropes 1(1), 1–18.

6
 Part I

ACCESS, PRAXIS,
JUSTICE
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
Weston, however, was of no assistance. He had not noticed General
Fentiman's arrival on the eleventh. He was not acquainted with many
of the members, having only just taken over his new duties. He
thought it odd that he should not have noticed so very venerable a
gentleman, but the fact remained that he had not. He regretted it
extremely. Wimsey gathered that Weston was annoyed at having lost
a chance of reflected celebrity. He had missed his scoop, as the
reporters say.
Nor was the hall-porter any more helpful. The morning of November
11th had been a busy one. He had been in and out of his little glass
pigeonhole continually, shepherding guests into various rooms to
find the members they wanted, distributing letters and chatting to
country members who visited the Bellona seldom and liked to "have
a chat with Piper" when they did. He could not recollect seeing the
General. Wimsey began to feel that there must have been a
conspiracy to overlook the old gentleman on the last morning of his
life.
"You don't think he never was here at all, do you, Bunter?" he
suggested. "Walkin' about invisible and tryin' hard to communicate,
like the unfortunate ghost in that story of somebody or other's?"
Bunter was inclined to reject the psychic view of the case. "The
General must have been here in the body, my lord, because there
was the body."
"That's true," said Wimsey. "I'm afraid we can't explain away the
body. S'pose that means I'll have to question every member of this
beastly Club separately. But just at the moment I think we'd better go
round to the General's flat and hunt up Robert Fentiman. Weston,
get me a taxi, please."

CHAPTER VI
A Card of Re-Entry
The door of the little flat in Dover Street was opened by an elderly
man-servant, whose anxious face bore signs of his grief at his
master's death. He informed them that Major Fentiman was at home
and would be happy to receive Lord Peter Wimsey. As he spoke, a
tall, soldierly man of about forty-five came out from one of the rooms
and hailed his visitor cheerily.
"That you, Wimsey? Murbles told me to expect you. Come in.
Haven't seen you for a long time. Hear you're turning into a regular
Sherlock. Smart bit of work that was you put in over your brother's
little trouble. What's all this? Camera? Bless me, you're going to do
our little job in the professional manner, eh? Woodward, see that
Lord Peter's man has everything he wants. Have you had lunch?
Well, you'll have a spot of something, I take it, before you start
measuring up the footprints. Come along. We're a bit at sixes and
sevens here, but you won't mind."
He led the way into the small, austerely-furnished sitting-room.
"Thought I might as well camp here for a bit, while I get the old man's
belongings settled up. It's going to be a deuce of a job, though, with
all this fuss about the will. However, I'm his executor, so all this part
of it falls to me in any case. It's very decent of you to lend us a hand.
Queer old girl, Great-aunt Dormer. Meant well, you know, but made it
damned awkward for everybody. How are you getting along?"
Wimsey explained the failure of his researches at the Bellona.
"Thought I'd better get a line on it at this end," he added. "If we know
exactly what time he left here in the morning, we ought to be able to
get an idea of the time he got to the Club."
Fentiman screwed his mouth into a whistle.
"But, my dear old egg, didn't Murbles tell you the snag?"
"He told me nothing. Left me to get on with it. What is the snag?"
"Why, don't you see, the old boy never came home that night."
"Never came home?—Where was he, then?"
"Dunno. That's the puzzle. All we know is ... wait a minute, this is
Woodward's story; he'd better tell you himself. Woodward!"
"Yes, sir."
"Tell Lord Peter Wimsey the story you told me—about that
telephone-call, you know."
"Yes, sir. About nine o'clock...."
"Just a moment," said Wimsey, "I do like a story to begin at the
beginning. Let's start with the morning—the mornin' of November
10th. Was the General all right that morning? Usual health and spirits
and all that?"
"Entirely so, my lord. General Fentiman was accustomed to rise
early, my lord, being a light sleeper, as was natural at his great age.
He had his breakfast in bed at a quarter to eight—tea and buttered
toast, with an egg lightly boiled, as he did every day in the year.
Then he got up, and I helped him to dress—that would be about half-
past eight to nine, my lord. Then he took a little rest, after the
exertion of dressing, and at a quarter to ten I fetched his hat,
overcoat, muffler and stick, and saw him start off to walk to the Club.
That was his daily routine. He seemed in very good spirits—and in
his usual health. Of course, his heart was always frail, my lord, but
he seemed no different from ordinary."
"I see. And in the ordinary way he'd just sit at the Club all day and
come home—when, exactly?"
"I was accustomed to have his evening meal ready for him at half-
past seven precisely, my lord."
"Did he always turn up to time?'
"Invariably so, my lord. Everything as regular as on parade. That
was the General's way. About three o'clock in the afternoon, there
was a ring on the telephone. We had the telephone put in, my lord,
on account of the General's heart, so that we could always call up a
medical man in case of emergency."
"Very right, too," put in Robert Fentiman.
"Yes, sir. General Fentiman was good enough to say, sir, he did not
wish me to have the heavy responsibility of looking after him alone in
case of illness. He was a very kind, thoughtful gentleman." The
man's voice faltered.
"Just so," said Wimsey. "I'm sure you must be very sorry to lose him,
Woodward. Still, one couldn't expect otherwise, you know. I'm sure
you looked after him splendidly. What was it happened about three
o'clock?"
"Why, my lord, they rang up from Lady Dormer's to say as how her
ladyship was very ill, and would General Fentiman please come at
once if he wanted to see her alive. So I went down to the Club
myself. I didn't like to telephone, you see, because General
Fentiman was a little hard of hearing—though he had his faculties
wonderful well for a gentleman of his age—and he never liked the
telephone. Besides, I was afraid of the shock it might be to him,
seeing his heart was so weak—which, of course, at his age you
couldn't hardly expect otherwise—so that was why I went myself."
"That was very considerate of you."
"Thank you, my lord. Well, I see General Fentiman, and I give him
the message—careful-like, and breaking it gently as you might say. I
could see he was took aback a bit, but he just sits thinking for a few
minutes, and then he says, 'very well, Woodward, I will go. It is
certainly my duty to go.' So I wraps him up careful, and gets him a
taxi, and he says. 'You needn't come with me, Woodward. I don't
quite know how long I shall stay there. They will see that I get home
quite safely.' So I told the man where to take him and came back to
the flat. And that, my lord, was the last time I see him."
Wimsey made a sympathetic clucking sound.
"Yes, my lord. When General Fentiman didn't return at his usual
time, I thought he was maybe staying to dine at Lady Dormer's, and
took no notice of it. However, at half-past eight, I began to be afraid
of the night air for him; it was very cold that day, my lord, if you
remember. At nine o'clock, I was thinking of calling up the household
at Lady Dormer's to ask when he was to be expected home, when
the 'phone rang."
"At nine exactly?"
"About nine. It might have been a little later, but not more than a
quarter-past at latest. It was a gentleman spoke to me. He said: 'Is
that General Fentiman's flat?' I said, 'Yes, who is it, please?' And he
said, 'Is that Woodward?' giving my name, just like that. And I said
'Yes.' And he said, 'Oh, Woodward, General Fentiman wishes me to
tell you not to wait up for him, as he is spending the night with me.'
So I said, 'Excuse me, sir, who is it speaking, please?' And he said,
'Mr. Oliver.' So I asked him to repeat the name, not having heard it
before, and he said 'Oliver'—it came over very plain, 'Mr. Oliver,' he
said, 'I'm an old friend of General Fentiman's, and he is staying to-
night with me, as we have some business to talk over.' So I said,
'Does the General require anything, sir?'—thinking, you know, my
lord, as he might wish to have his sleeping-suit and his tooth-brush
or something of that, but the gentleman said no, he had got
everything necessary and I was not to trouble myself. Well, of
course, my lord, as I explained to Major Fentiman, I didn't like to take
upon myself to ask questions, being only in service, my lord; it might
seem taking a liberty. But I was very much afraid of the excitement
and staying up late being too much for the General, so I went so far
as to say I hoped General Fentiman was in good health and not
tiring of himself, and Mr. Oliver laughed and said he would take very
good care of him and send him to bed straight away. And I was just
about to make so bold as to ask him where he lived, when he rang
off. And that was all I knew till I heard next day of the General being
dead, my lord."
"There now," said Robert Fentiman. "What do you think of that?"
"Odd," said Wimsey, "and most unfortunate as it turns out. Did the
General often stay out at night, Woodward?"
"Never, my lord. I don't recollect such a thing happening once in five
or six years. In the old days, perhaps, he'd visit friends occasionally,
but not of late."
"And you'd never heard of this Mr. Oliver?"
"No, my lord."
"His voice wasn't familiar?"
"I couldn't say but what I might have heard it before, my lord, but I
find it very difficult to recognize voices on the telephone. But I
thought at the time it might be one of the gentlemen from the Club."
"Do you know anything about the man, Fentiman?"
"Oh yes—I've met him. At least, I suppose it's the same man. But I
know nothing about him. I fancy I ran across him once in some
frightful crush or other, a public dinner, or something of that kind, and
he said he knew my grandfather. And I've seen him lunching at
Gatti's and that sort of thing. But I haven't the remotest idea where
he lives or what he does."
"Army man?"
"No—something in the engineering line, I fancy."
"What's he like?"
"Oh, tall, thin, gray hair and spectacles. About sixty-five to look at.
He may be older—must be, if he's an old friend of grandfather's. I
gathered he was retired from whatever it is he did, and lived in some
suburb, but I'm hanged if I can remember which."
"Not very helpful," said Wimsey. "D'you know, occasionally I think
there's quite a lot to be said for women."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Well, I mean, all this easy, uninquisitive way men have of makin'
casual acquaintances is very fine and admirable and all that—but
look how inconvenient it is! Here you are. You admit you've met this
bloke two or three times, and all you know about him is that he is tall
and thin and retired into some unspecified suburb. A woman, with
the same opportunities, would have found out his address and
occupation, whether he was married, how many children he had,
with their names and what they did for a living, what his favorite
author was, what food he liked best, the name of his tailor, dentist
and bootmaker, when he knew your grandfather and what he thought
of him—screeds of useful stuff!"
"So she would," said Fentiman, with a grin. "That's why I've never
married."
"I quite agree," said Wimsey, "but the fact remains that as a source
of information you're simply a wash-out. Do, for goodness' sake, pull
yourself together and try to remember something a bit more definite
about the fellow. It may mean half a million to you to know what time
grandpa set off in the morning from Tooting Bec or Finchley or
wherever it was. If it was a distant suburb, it would account for his
arriving rather late at the Club—which is rather in your favor, by the
way."
"I suppose it is. I'll do my best to remember. But I'm not sure that I
ever knew."
"It's awkward," said Wimsey. "No doubt the police could find the man
for us, but it's not a police case. And I don't suppose you particularly
want to advertise."
"Well—it may come to that. But naturally, we're not keen on publicity
if we can avoid it. If only I could remember exactly what work he said
he'd been connected with."
"Yes—or the public dinner or whatever it was where you first met
him. One might get hold of a list of the guests."
"My dear Wimsey—that was two or three years ago!"
"Or maybe they know the blighter at Gatti's."
"That's an idea. I've met him there several times. Tell you what, I'll go
along there and make inquiries, and if they don't know him, I'll make
a point of lunching there pretty regularly. He's almost bound to turn
up again."
"Right. You do that. And meanwhile, do you mind if I have a look
round the flat?"
"Rather not. D'you want me? Or would you rather have Woodward?
He really knows a lot more about things."
"Thanks. I'll have Woodward. Don't mind me. I shall just be fussing
about."
"Carry on by all means. I've got one or two drawers full of papers to
go through. If I come across anything bearing on the Oliver bloke I'll
yell out to you."
"Right."
Wimsey went out, leaving him to it, and joined Woodward and
Bunter, who were conversing in the next room. A glance told Wimsey
that this was the General's bedroom.
On a table beside the narrow iron bedstead was an old-fashioned
writing-desk. Wimsey took it up, weighed it in his hands a moment
and then took it to Robert Fentiman in the other room. "Have you
opened this?" he asked.
"Yes—only old letters and things."
"You didn't come across Oliver's address, I suppose?"
"No. Of course I looked for that."
"Looked anywhere else? Any drawers? Cupboards? That sort of
thing?"
"Not so far," said Fentiman, rather shortly.
"No telephone memorandum or anything—you've tried the
telephone-book, I suppose?"
"Well, no—I can't very well ring up perfect strangers and—"
"And sing 'em the Froth-Blowers' Anthem? Good God, man,
anybody'd think you were chasing a lost umbrella, not half a million
of money. The man rang you up, so he may very well be on the
'phone himself. Better let Bunter tackle the job. He has an excellent
manner on the line; people find it a positive pleasure to be tr-r-
roubled by him."
Robert Fentiman greeted this feeble pleasantry with an indulgent
grin, and produced the telephone directory, to which Bunter
immediately applied himself. Finding two-and-a-half columns of
Olivers, he removed the receiver and started to work steadily
through them in rotation. Wimsey returned to the bedroom. It was in
apple-pie order—the bed neatly made, the wash-hand apparatus set
in order, as though the occupant might return at any moment, every
speck of dust removed—a tribute to Woodward's reverent affection,
but a depressing sight for an investigator. Wimsey sat down, and let
his eye rove slowly from the hanging wardrobe, with its polished
doors, over the orderly line of boots and shoes arranged on their
trees on a small shelf, the dressing table, the washstand, the bed
and the chest of drawers which, with the small bedside table and a
couple of chairs, comprised the furniture.
"Did the General shave himself, Woodward?"
"No, my lord; not latterly. That was my duty, my lord."
"Did he brush his own teeth, or dental plate or whatever it was?"
"Oh, yes, my lord. General Fentiman had an excellent set of teeth for
his age."
Wimsey fixed his powerful monocle into his eye, and carried the
tooth-brush over to the window. The result of the scrutiny was
unsatisfactory. He looked round again.
"Is that his walking-stick?"
"Yes, my lord."
"May I see it?"
Woodward brought it across, carrying it, after the manner of a well-
trained servant, by the middle. Lord Peter took it from him in the
same manner, suppressing a slight, excited smile. The stick was a
heavy malacca, with a thick crutch-handle of polished ivory, suitable
for sustaining the feeble steps of old age. The monocle came into
play again, and this time its owner gave a chuckle of pleasure.
"I shall want to take a photograph of this stick presently, Woodward.
Will you be very careful to see that it is not touched by anybody
beforehand?"
"Certainly, my lord."
Wimsey stood the stick carefully in its corner again, and then, as
though it had put a new train of ideas into his mind, walked across to
the shoeshelf.
"Which were the shoes General Fentiman was wearing at the time of
his death?"
"These, my lord."
"Have they been cleaned since?"
Woodward looked a trifle stricken.
"Not to say cleaned, my lord. I just wiped them over with a duster.
They were not very dirty, and somehow—I hadn't the heart—if you'll
excuse me, my lord."
"That's very fortunate."
Wimsey turned them over and examined the soles very carefully,
both with the lens and with the naked eye. With a small pair of
tweezers, taken from his pocket, he delicately removed a small
fragment of pile—apparently from a thick carpet—which was clinging
to a projecting brad, and stored it carefully away in an envelope.
Then, putting the right shoe aside, he subjected the left to a
prolonged scrutiny, especially about the inner edge of the sole.
Finally he asked for a sheet of paper, and wrapped the shoe up as
tenderly as though it had been a piece of priceless Waterford glass.
"I should like to see all the clothes General Fentiman was wearing
that day—the outer garments, I mean—hat, suit, overcoat and so
on."
The garments were produced, and Wimsey went over every inch of
them with the same care and patience, watched by Woodward with
flattering attention.
"Have they been brushed?"
"No, my lord—only shaken out." This time Woodward offered no
apology, having grasped dimly that polishing and brushing were not
acts which called for approval under these unusual circumstances.
"You see," said Wimsey, pausing for a moment to note an
infinitesimally small ruffling of the threads on the left-hand trouser-
leg, "we might be able to get some sort of a clew from the dust on
the clothes, if any—to show us where the General spent the night. If
—to take a rather unlikely example—we were to find a lot of
sawdust, for instance, we might suppose that he had been visiting a
carpenter. Or a dead leaf might suggest a garden or a common, or
something of that sort. While a cobweb might mean a wine-cellar, or
—or a potting-shed—and so on. You see?"
"Yes, my lord," (rather doubtfully).
"You don't happen to remember noticing that little tear—well, it's
hardly a tear—just a little roughness. It might have caught on a nail."
"I can't say I recollect it, my lord. But I might have overlooked it."
"Of course. It's probably of no importance. Well—lock the things up
carefully. It's just possible I might have to have the dust extracted
and analyzed. Just a moment—Has anything been removed from
these clothes? The pockets were emptied, I suppose?"
"Yes, my lord."
"There was nothing unusual in them?"
"No, my lord. Nothing but what the General always took out with him.
Just his handkerchief, keys, money and cigar-case."
"H'm. How about the money?"
"Well, my lord—I couldn't say exactly as to that. Major Fentiman has
got it all. There was two pound notes in his note-case, I remember. I
believe he had two pounds ten when he went out, and some loose
silver in the trouser pocket. He'd have paid his taxi-fare and his lunch
at the Club out of the ten-shilling note."
"That shows he didn't pay for anything unusual, then, in the way of
train or taxis backwards and forwards, or dinner, or drinks."
"No, my lord."
"But naturally, this Oliver fellow would see to all that. Did the General
have a fountain-pen?"
"No, my lord. He did very little writing, my lord. I was accustomed to
write any necessary letters to tradesmen, and so on."
"What sort of nib did he use, when he did write?"
"A J pen, my lord. You will find it in the sitting-room. But mostly I
believe he wrote his letters at the Club. He had a very small private
correspondence—it might be a letter or so to the Bank or to his man
of business, my lord."
"I see. Have you his check-book?"
"Major Fentiman has it, my lord."
"Do you remember whether the General had it with him when he last
went out?"
"No, my lord. It was kept in his writing-desk as a rule. He would write
the checks for the household here, my lord, and give them to me. Or
occasionally he might take the book down to the Club with him."
"Ah! Well, it doesn't look as though the mysterious Mr. Oliver was
one of those undesirable blokes who demand money. Right you are,
Woodward. You're perfectly certain that you removed nothing
whatever from those clothes except what was in the pockets?"
"I am quite positive of that, my lord."
"That's very odd," said Wimsey, half to himself. "I'm not sure that it
isn't the oddest thing about the case."
"Indeed, my lord? Might I ask why?"
"Why," said Wimsey, "I should have expected—" he checked himself.
Major Fentiman was looking in at the door.
"What's odd, Wimsey?"
"Oh, just a little thing struck me," said Wimsey, vaguely. "I expected
to find something among those clothes which isn't there. That's all."
"Impenetrable sleuth," said the major, laughing. "What are you
driving at?"
"Work it out for yourself, my dear Watson," said his lordship, grinning
like a dog. "You have all the data. Work it out for yourself, and let me
know the answer."
Woodward, a trifle pained by this levity, gathered up the garments
and put them away in the wardrobe.
"How's Bunter getting on with those calls?"
"No luck, at present."
"Oh!—well, he'd better come in now and do some photographs. We
can finish the telephoning at home. Bunter!—Oh, and, I say,
Woodward—d'you mind if we take your finger-prints?"
"Finger-prints, my lord?"
"Good God, you're not trying to fasten anything on Woodward?"
"Fasten what?"
"Well—I mean, I thought it was only burglars and people who had
finger-prints taken."
"Not exactly. No—I want the General's finger-prints, really, to
compare them with some others I got at the Club. There's a very fine
set on that walking-stick of his, and I want Woodward's, just to make
sure I'm not getting the two sets mixed up. I'd better take yours, too.
It's just possible you might have handled the stick without noticing."
"Oh, I get you, Steve. I don't think I've touched the thing, but it's as
well to make sure, as you say. Funny sort of business, what? Quite
the Scotland Yard touch. How d'you do it?"
"Bunter will show you."
Bunter immediately produced a small inking-pad and roller, and a
number of sheets of smooth, white paper. The fingers of the two
candidates were carefully wiped with a clean cloth, and pressed first
on the pad and then on the paper. The impressions thus obtained
were labeled and put away in envelopes, after which the handle of
the walking-stick was lightly dusted with gray powder, bringing to
light an excellent set of prints of a right-hand set of fingers,
superimposed here and there, but quite identifiable. Fentiman and
Woodward gazed fascinated at this entertaining miracle.
"Are they all right?"
"Perfectly so, sir; they are quite unlike either of the other two
specimens."
"Then presumably they're the General's. Hurry up and get a
negative."
Bunter set up the camera and focussed it.
"Unless," observed Major Fentiman, "they are Mr. Oliver's. That
would be a good joke, wouldn't it?"
"It would, indeed," said Wimsey, a little taken aback. "A very good
joke—on somebody. And for the moment, Fentiman, I'm not sure
which of us would do the laughing."

CHAPTER VII
The Curse of Scotland
What with telephone calls and the development of photographs, it
appeared obvious that Bunter was booked for a busy afternoon. His
master, therefore, considerately left him in possession of the flat in
Piccadilly, and walked abroad to divert himself in his own peculiar
way.
His first visit was to one of those offices which undertake to distribute
advertisements to the press. Here he drew up an advertisement
addressed to taxi-drivers and arranged for it to appear, at the earliest
possible date, in all the papers which men of that profession might
be expected to read. Three drivers were requested to communicate
with Mr. J. Murbles, Solicitor, of Staple Inn, who would recompense
them amply for their time and trouble. First: any driver who
remembered taking up an aged gentleman from Lady Dormer's
house in Portman Square or the near vicinity on the afternoon of
November 10th. Secondly: any driver who recollected taking up an
aged gentleman at or near Dr. Penberthy's house in Harley Street at
some time in the afternoon or evening of November 10th. And
thirdly: any driver who had deposited a similarly aged gentleman at
the door of the Bellona Club between 10 and 12.30 in the morning of
November 11th.
"Though probably," thought Wimsey, as he footed the bill for the
insertions, to run for three days unless cancelled, "Oliver had a car
and ran the old boy up himself. Still, it's just worth trying."
He had a parcel under his arm, and his next proceeding was to hail a
cab and drive to the residence of Sir James Lubbock, the well-known
analyst. Sir James was fortunately at home and delighted to see
Lord Peter. He was a square-built man, with a reddish face and
strongly-curling gray hair, and received his visitor in his laboratory,
where he was occupied in superintending a Marsh's test for arsenic.
"D'ye mind just taking a pew for a moment, while I finish this off?"
Wimsey took the pew and watched, interested, the flame from the
Bunsen burner playing steadily upon the glass tube, the dark brown
deposit slowly forming and deepening at the narrow end. From time
to time, the analyst poured down the thistle-funnel a small quantity of
a highly disagreeable-looking liquid from a stoppered phial; once his
assistant came forward to add a few more drops of what Wimsey
knew must be hydrochloric acid. Presently, the disagreeable liquid
having all been transferred to the flask, and the deposit having
deepened almost to black at its densest part, the tube was detached
and taken away, and the burner extinguished, and Sir James
Lubbock, after writing and signing a brief note, turned round and
greeted Wimsey cordially.
"Sure I am not interrupting you, Lubbock?"
"Not a scrap. We've just finished. That was the last mirror. We shall
be ready in good time for our appearance in Court. Not that there's
much doubt about it. Enough of the stuff to kill an elephant.
Considering the obliging care we take in criminal prosecutions to
inform the public at large that two or three grains of arsenic will
successfully account for an unpopular individual, however tough, it's
surprising how wasteful people are with their drugs. You can't teach
'em. An office-boy who was as incompetent as the average murderer
would be sacked with a kick in the bottom. Well, now! and what's
your little trouble?"
"A small matter," said Wimsey, unrolling his parcel and producing
General Fentiman's left boot, "it's cheek to come to you about it. But
I want very much to know what this is, and as it's strictly a private
matter, I took the liberty of bargin' round to you in a friendly way. Just
along the inside of the sole, there—on the edge."
"Blood?" suggested the analyst, grinning.
"Well, no—sorry to disappoint you. More like paint, I fancy."
Sir James looked closely at the deposit with a powerful lens.
"Yes; some sort of brown varnish. Might be off a floor or a piece of
furniture. Do you want an analysis?"
"If it's not too much trouble."
"Not at all. I think we'll get Saunders to do it; he has made rather a
specialty of this kind of thing. Saunders, would you scrape this off
carefully and see what it is? Get a slide of it, and make an analysis
of the rest, if you can. How soon is it wanted?"
"Well, I'd like it as soon as possible. I don't mean within the next five
minutes."
"Well, stay and have a spot of tea with us, and I dare say we can get
something ready for you by then. It doesn't look anything out of the
way. Knowing your tastes, I'm still surprised it isn't blood. Have you
no blood in prospect?"
"Not that I know of. I'll stay to tea with pleasure, if you're certain I'm
not being a bore."
"Never that. Besides, while you're here, you might give me your
opinion on those old medical books of mine. I don't suppose they're
particularly valuable, but they're quaint. Come along."
Wimsey passed a couple of hours agreeably with Lady Lubbock and
crumpets and a dozen or so antiquated anatomical treatises.
Presently Saunders returned with his report. The deposit was
nothing more nor less than an ordinary brown paint and varnish of a
kind well known to joiners and furniture-makers. It was a modern
preparation, with nothing unusual about it; one might find it
anywhere. It was not a floor-varnish—one would expect to meet it on
a door or partition or something of that sort. The chemical formula
followed.
"Not very helpful, I'm afraid," said Sir James.
"You never know your luck," replied Wimsey. "Would you be good
enough to label the slide and sign your name to it, and to the
analysis, and keep them both by you for reference in case they're
wanted?"
"Sure thing. How do you want 'em labeled?"
"Well—put down 'Varnish from General Fentiman's left boot,' and
'Analysis of varnish from General Fentiman's left boot,' and the date,
and I'll sign it, and you and Saunders can sign it, and then I think we
shall be all right."
"Fentiman? Was that the old boy who died suddenly the other day?"
"It was. But it's no use looking at me with that child-like air of
intelligent taking-notice, because I haven't got any gory yarn to spin.
It's only a question of where the old man spent the night, if you must
know."
"Curiouser and curiouser. Never mind, it's nothing to do with me.
Perhaps when it's all over, you'll tell me what it's about. Meanwhile
the labels shall go on. You, I take it, are ready to witness to the
identity of the boot, and I can witness to having seen the varnish on
the boot, and Saunders can witness that he removed the varnish
from the boot and analyzed it and that this is the varnish he
analyzed. All according to Cocker. Here you are. Sign here and here,
and that will be eight-and-sixpence, please."
"It might be cheap at eight-and-sixpence," said Wimsey. "It might
even turn out to be cheap at eight hundred and sixty quid—or eight
thousand and sixty."
Sir James Lubbock looked properly thrilled.
"You're only doing it to annoy, because you know it teases. Well, if
you must be sphinx-like, you must. I'll keep these things under lock
and key for you. Do you want the boot back?"
"I don't suppose the executor will worry. And a fellow looks such a
fool carrying a boot about. Put it away with the other things till called
for, there's a good man."
So the boot was put away in a cupboard, and Lord Peter was free to
carry on with his afternoon's entertainment.
His first idea was to go on up to Finsbury Park, to see the George
Fentimans. He remembered in time, however, that Sheila would not
yet be home from her work—she was employed as cashier in a
fashionable tea-shop—and further (with a forethought rare in the
well-to-do) that if he arrived too early he would have to be asked to
supper, and that there would be very little supper and that Sheila
would be worried about it and George annoyed. So he turned in to
one of his numerous Clubs, and had a Sole Colbert very well
cooked, with a bottle of Liebfraumilch; an Apple Charlotte and light
savory to follow, and black coffee and a rare old brandy to top up
with—a simple and satisfactory meal which left him in the best of
tempers.
The George Fentimans lived in two ground-floor rooms with use of
kitchen and bathroom in a semi-detached house with a blue and
yellow fanlight over the door and Madras muslin over the windows.
They were really furnished apartments, but the landlady always
referred to them as a flat, because that meant that tenants had to do
their own work and provide their own service. The house felt stuffy
as Lord Peter entered it, because somebody was frying fish in oil at
no great distance, and a slight unpleasantness was caused at the
start by the fact that he had rung only once, thus bringing up the
person in the basement, whereas a better-instructed caller would
have rung twice, to indicate that he wanted the ground floor.
Hearing explanations in the hall, George put his head out of the
dining-room and said, "Oh! hullo!"
"Hullo," said Wimsey, trying to find room for his belongings on an
overladen hat-stand, and eventually disposing of them on the handle
of a perambulator. "Thought I'd just come and look you up. Hope I'm
not in the way."
"Of course not. Jolly good of you to penetrate to this ghastly hole.
Come in. Everything's in a beastly muddle as usual, but when you're
poor you have to live like pigs. Sheila, here's Lord Peter Wimsey—
you have met, haven't you?"
"Yes, of course. How nice of you to come round. Have you had
dinner?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Coffee?"
"No, thanks, really—I've only just had some."
"Well," said George, "there's only whisky to offer you."
"Later on, perhaps, thanks, old man. Not just now. I've had a brandy.
Never mix grape and grain."
"Wise man," said George, his brow clearing, since as a matter of
fact, there was no whisky nearer than the public-house, and
acceptance would have meant six-and-six, at least, besides the
exertion of fetching it.
Sheila Fentiman drew an arm-chair forward, and herself sat down on
a low pouffe. She was a woman of thirty-five or so, and would have
been very good-looking but for an appearance of worry and ill-health
that made her look older than her age.
"It's a miserable fire," said George, gloomily, "is this all the coal there
is?"
"I'm sorry," said Sheila, "she didn't fill it up properly this morning."
"Well, why can't you see that she does? It's always happening. If the
scuttle isn't absolutely empty she seems to think she needn't bother
about filling it up."
"I'll get some."
"No, it's all right. I'll go. But you ought to tell her about it."
"I will—I'm always telling her."
"The woman's no more sense than a hen. No—don't you go, Sheila
—I won't have you carrying coal."
"Nonsense," said his wife, rather acidly. "What a hypocrite you are,
George. It's only because there's somebody here that you're so
chivalrous all at once."
"Here, let me," said Wimsey, desperately, "I like fetching coal.
Always loved coal as a kid. Anything grubby or noisy. Where is it?
Lead me to it!"
Mrs. Fentiman released the scuttle, for which George and Wimsey
politely struggled. In the end they all went out together to the
inconvenient bin in the back-yard, Wimsey quarrying the coal,
George receiving it in the scuttle and the lady lighting them with a
long candle, insecurely fixed in an enamel candle-stick several sizes
too large.
"And tell Mrs. Crickett," said George, irritably sticking to his
grievance, "that she must fill that scuttle up properly every day."
"I'll try. But she hates being spoken to. I'm always afraid she'll give
warning."
"Well, there are other charwomen, I suppose?"
"Mrs. Crickett is very honest."
"I know; but that's not everything. You could easily find one if you
took the trouble."
"Well, I'll see about it. But why don't you speak to Mrs. Crickett? I'm
generally out before she gets here."
"Oh, yes, I know. You needn't keep on rubbing it in about your having
to go out to work. You don't suppose I enjoy it, do you? Wimsey can
tell you how I feel about it."
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