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Venetia – One of Georgette Heyer’s finest novels

It may not be quite like Me, but I’m pretty sure the fans will like it.

Georgette Heyer to AS Frere, letter, 7 March 1958

Georgette Heyer’s Venetia (1958) is Heyer’s most complex, literary, and also physically sensuous and emotional work

Anne Lancashire, “Venetia: Georgette Heyer’s Pastoral Romance, JPRS, 22 December 2020

The 1958 Heinemann first edition of Venetia with jacket design by Arthur Barbosa.A sparkling tale

Venetia would be Georgette Heyer’s 17th Regency novel and also one of her finest books. It is a remarkable reflection of her enduring talent that more than forty years after writing her first novel, her forty-sixth book should be so fresh and new. Venetia is a sparkling tale of newfound love, idyllic romance, and friendship. It is also a novel about selfishness, a book about honesty and, as Anne Lancashire, explains in her excellent article, “Venetia: Georgette Heyer’s Pastoral Romance”, it is a story that draws on the long tradition of the pastoral – the centuries-old literary genre that “celebrates, with stylistic artifice, rural life as an idyllic escape from the burdens and anxieties of everyday existence in a non-rural environment”. As Lancaster points out, Venetia belongs to the sub-genre of pastoral romance, with its beautiful heroine, whose life, lived for so long in her pleasant rural fastness, is interrupted by the arrival of the hero from the outside world. Heyer’s hero is the much-beloved, Lord Damerel, a rake with a past who enters into the rormantic rural idyll of Undershaw and wins Venetia’s love, only to retreat when he decides he cannot give her the life he believes she deserves.

An Italian edition of Venetia

“The typical pastoral romance, as seen, with variations, in Shakespeare’s plays and most clearly in Book VI of The Faerie Queene, thus has an active hero from a courtly (i.e., socially-developed) environment who retreats, distracted or wounded in body or in spirit, into an idyllic countryside – an Arcadia – where the sun always shines, the shepherds and shepherdesses or their narrative equivalents live and love without undue labour or anxiety, and every day is holiday-like. For a while the hero remains, enjoying the pastoral environment. Inevitably part of his experience involves a romance with a beautiful shepherdess or equivalent, who prefers him to less-accomplished rural swain(s). Eventually a disruptive force from the outside world (e.g., bandits in The Faerie Queene, the hero’s father in The Winter’s Tale, news of death in Love’s Labor’s Lost) breaks into the idyllic pastoral world, and the hero realizes that no permanent retreat from the complications of life is possible or desirable. He returns, renewed and strengthened by his pastoral experience, to responsible action in the active social world from which he came, either leaving behind him the beautiful shepherdess or, as in Book 6 of The Faerie Queene and The Winter’s Tale, taking her with him and discovering later that she is in fact no shepherdess but a member of his own social class, who was abandoned or hidden in the pastoral world as an infant, and so has now been appropriately brought back by him to the non-pastoral world to which they both belong.”

Anne Lancashire, “Venetia: Georgette Heyer’s Pastoral Romance”, in Journal of Popular Romance Studies, 22 December 2020

Lord Damerel would prove to be one of Heyer’s most beloved heroes.Damerel

There is so much to love about Venetia, but one of the novel’s greatest attractions is Jasper, Lord Damerel. Described by Heyer as “dark, his countenace lean and rather swarthy, marked with lines of dissipation” he also carries himself with “a faint suggestion of swashbuckling arrogance”. Venetia has never yet met him but years earlier she has dubbed him “the Wicked Baron” due to his reputation for rakehell living. As a young man Damerel fell in love and ran off with a married woman and was subsequently cast off by his family. Since then his reputation has not improved. Months before the story begins, Damerel has confirmed society’s view of him and scandalised the neighbourhood by bringing a party of “rackety-bucks” and three females well known to be “lightskirts”to his home at The Priory for a week spent indulging in “vulgar rompings” and “orgies”. Venetia first meets Damerel while she is out picking blackberries on his property which runs alongside her home at Undershaw. He mistakes her for a village maid and ruthlessly kisses her. Venetia is furious and responds to his earlier quotations about her beauty with one of her own. Quoting Othello she calls Damerel “a pestilent, complete knave”. He immediately recognises the quotation and his mistake in thinking her lower down the social scale than himself. Realising that she is well-bred and literate as well as beautiful, he is instantly intrigued. Among the many things that attract Damerel to Venetia it is her honesty or “plain-speaking” that sets her apart from other women. Heyer brilliantly depicts the moment when Damerel first becomes aware that Venetia is unlike other females. After her brother Aubrey has fallen from his horse and been rescued by Damerel, the wicked Baron writes to her in “a spirit of unholy amusement” that he believes will bring her to the Priory in a state of perturbation and even resentment. He looks forward to soothing her “ruffled plumage” and is not only taken aback but utterly smitten when she arrives instead in a “glow of warm gratitude”. This interlude marks the beginning of their real relationship – the moment when Damerel discovers that Venetia is a being outside his experience and one with whom he must begin his friendship on fresh terms.

The 1958 original blurb of Venetia.Honesty

The scene in which Damerel and Venetia meet sets the tone for the rest of the book. This is a novel full of classical allusions and Georgette’s hero and heroine regularly use quotations in their converstions with each other. There are so many layers in Venetia (one could write a book about the cleverness of the novel!) and the use of quotations is but one marker of them. Not only are the lines from Shakespeare, Pope’s or Campion’s poetry or references to the Greek plays of Sophocles and Euripides apposite when used as dialogue between Venetia and Damerel, but the use of these words also show that this is a meeting of like minds. Damerel and Venetia are perfect for each other: they speak the same language, they have a similar sense of humour, they are each honest in their speech and (and Damerel for the most part) in their emotions. Venetia as a novel has much to say about honesty. Venetia is no dissembler and to speak honestly and without an ulterior motive is her natural state. This theme plays out through the course of the book and makes Venetia one of Georgette’s most endearing heroines. Venetia herself has what we would call today “High EQ” – in that is she is very emotionally intelligent. From the opening scene, where she teases her brother, Aubrey, we learn from Heyer’s subtle prose how well Venetia understands the men in her life and how she sees and accepts their innate selfishness. Having been, like the sleeping beauty she is likened to towards the end of the novel, held at Undershaw for most of her life, she has come to accept her loneliness and thwartes ambition as her lot in life. Venetia’s situation forces her to consider deeply whether she should accept her very dull, pompous and irritating – though “worthy” – suitor, Edward Yardley’s proposal of marriage. It is not what she wants, but what she fears must be, else she becomes no more than an aunt to her brother Conway’s children.

‘Marriage to Edward would be safe and comfortable. He would be a kind husband, and he would certainly shield her from inclement winds. But Venetia had been born with a zest for life unknown to him, and a high courage that enabled her to look hazards in the face and not shrink from encountering them. Because she did not repine over her enforced seclusion Edward believed her to be content, as he himself was content, to pass all her days under the shadow of the Celveden Hills. So far from being content she had never imagined that this could be her ultimate destiny. She wanted to see what the rest of the world was like: marriage only interested her as the sole means of escape for a gently-born maiden.’

Georgette Heyer, Venetia, Pan, 1979, p.27.

Venetia’s honesty is total. In both her inner life and in her external world she recognises and speaks truth. It is this that most endears her to Damerel and this that enables her, when the chance finally comes, to seize life with both hands. By the end of the novel, it is Venetia’s innate honesty that inverts the traditional ending to the pastoral romance and gives her the happiness she deserves and for which she has fought so hard.

The ghastly Mrs Scorrier

Venetia is a book driven by character rather than plot and Georgette brought to life her dramatis personae with extraordinary dexterity. Even her stock characters: old nurse, the pompous young man, the naïve young wife and her dreadful, vulgar mother are rendered anew in Venetia. The ghastly Mrs Scorrier, in particular, reflects Heyer’s skill in depicting characters that are true to life and who are so real that they evoke a visceral reaction in the reader. Coming en scene at the midpoint of the novel, Mrs Scorrier is one of Georgette’s Austen-inspired characters – a descendant of Mrs Norris – and a woman we love to loathe. Her officiousness, her dictatorial nature and her habit of putting people offside are all superbly rendered and it is Damerel who reveals his perspicacity and most succinctly sums her up:

‘One of the advantages of having led a sequestered life,’ said Damerel, smiling, ‘is that you’ve not until now encountered the sort of woman who can’t refrain from quarrelling with all who cross her path. She is forever suffering slights, and is so unfortunate as to make friends only with such ill-natured persons as soon or late treat her abominably! No quarrel is ever of her seeking; she is the most amiable of created beings, and the most long-suffering. It is her confiding disposition which renders her prey to the malevolent, who, from no cause whatsoever, invariably impose upon her, or offer her such intolerable insult that she is obliged to cut the connexion.’

Georgette Heyer, Venetia, Pan, 1979, p.183.

“A promising idea for a new book”

“I think I have a fairly promising idea for the next book. A short one, I fancy, and not a lot of plot, but I like my heroine, and I think the hero should please the fans. I hope to get it exactly mapped out over the week-end, and if I can succeed in this I’ll let you know broadly what this story is about, and what I am calling it. I’d like to call it Venetia, since that is the heroine’s name, but believe it would be unwise, as leading the more erudite to expect a book about Venetia Stanley.”

Georgette Heyer, letter to AS Frere, 11 January 1958

Venetia Stanley Montagu was a “collateral descendant” of Venetia Stanley’sVenetia Stanley (later Digby) who inspired Georgette Heyer to write Venetia. Painted by Peter Oliver in the 1600sThe two Venetias – one from the seventeenth century and her distant descendant from the twentieth century.Two Venetias

The Venetia Stanley to whom Georgette was referring was a woman only fifteen years her senior. Born in 1887, Beatrice Venetia Stanley Montagu was a British aristocrat and famous socialite. She was notable for her correspondence, between 1910 and 1915, with the British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. Asquith adored women and in just three years he wrote over 500 letters to Venetia. They became very close, though whether the relationship was ever sexual is unclear. Asquith was Prime Minister for eight of Georgette’s most formative years (1908-1916) and Venetia Stanley was a well-known figure during her teen years and young adulthood. Venetia Stanley was also a collateral descendant of the Venetia who inspired Heyer’s superb 1958 novel of the same name.

The original Venetia Stanley was born in 1600 and became one of Stuart society’s most acclaimed beauties. In the spring of 1625 she secretly married Kenelm Digby and in October bore him a son, also Kenelm. Her husband did not acknowledge the marriage until 1627 but the couple went on to have two more sons, before Venetia’s untimely death in 1633. Georgette knew of the earlier Venetia from the poems written at the time of Venetia’s death in 1633. Ben Johnson, Aurelian Townsend, Thomas May, William Habington, and Owen Feltham all commemorated Venetia Digby’s untimely demise in verse. Georgette, like her father, George Heyer, – indeed, because of him – was an avid reader of the Renaissance poets and she was familiar with Venetia’s story. Today Heyer’s copy of Aubrey’s Brief Lives still sits among the remnant of her library and she may also have acquired a copy of Oliver Lawson Dick’s, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, published in 1949. This acclaimed book was also (coincidentally) republished in 1958, the same year that Georgette’sVenetia appeared. Lawson had compiled a complete set of John Aubrey’s often impudent, intimate pen sketches from Aubrey’s original 17th-century manuscripts. Among the collection’s many short biographies, is one describing Venetia Stanley:

“Venetia Stanley was the daughter of Sir Edward Stanley. She was a most beautifull desireable Creature, and being maturo vivo was left by her father to live with a tenant and servants at Enston Abbey in Oxfordshire: but as private as that place was, it seems her Beautie could not lye hid. The young Eagles had espied her, and she was sanguin and tractable, and of much Suavity (which to abuse was great pittie).

John Aubrey, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, edited by Oliver Lawson Dick, Secker & Warburg, London, 1958.

Sir Kenelm Digby by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (Wikimedia Commons)Venetia Digby by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (Wikimedia Commons)Inspiration

‘You may think this frivolous of me, but have you ever read what Aubrey said of Venetia? “A beautiful, desirable creature” Also, “about the eyelids great sweetness.” Well, you see what I mean? But Johnson has one or two nice phrases, & I think I may find something in Aurelian Townsend, & Habington, both of whom wrote poems to her. My hero, I should add, is rather given to quotation.’

Georgette Heyer to AS Frere, letter, 7 March 1958

Aubrey’s portrait of this first Venetia is short – only two pages – but it was more than enough to inspire Georgette with its marvellous description of the original Venetia. Her own heroine would also be beautiful and like her namesake would be left by her father to live all-too privately in the family estate of Undershaw in the Yorkshire countryside. Heyer named her heroine’s brother “Aubrey” in tribute to the seventeenth-century biographer, and she would name Venetia’s mother, “Aurelia” in tribute to one of the poets who wrote so feelingly about Ventia Digby. Having told her publisher, A.S. Frere that ‘I never do my most sparkling stuff when labouring under adversity’, Georgette proceeded to produce in Venetia one of her finest novels. It is in many ways a quiet book, with a great deal of subtle humour and layer upon layer of deeper meaning. At one point, Georgette described the novel as ‘not quite like Me’ when in fact it was simply one of several novels that marked the apogee of her writing career. She told Frere that it it was not ‘an adventurous novel’ nor one with ‘any movement in it worth mentioning’, but in her own, typically understated way, she recognised its merits and hoped that others would too:

‘I wonder very much what you’ll think of it. I’m damned if I know what I think. I haven’t quite read it through, but what I have read seemed to me not at all bad. There’s even some rather good stuff in it! Ronald seems to like it, & is kind enough to say that he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing that it’s rather different from my usual froth.’

Georgette Heyet to AS Frere, 9 May 1958

Once again she waited in vain for her publisher to read her work and respond.

The 2005 Arrow edition of VenetiaAurelian Townshend – VenetiaAn Elegie Made by Mr. Aurelian Townshend in Remembrance of the Ladie Venetia Digby, by Aurelian TownshendWhat Travellers of matchlesse Venice say,Is true of thee, admir'd Venetia;Hee that ner'e saw thee, wants beliefe to reachHalfe those perfections, thy first sight would teach.Imagination can noe shape createAiry enough thy forme to imitate;Nor bedds of Roses, Damask, red, and white,Render like thee a sweetnes to the sight.Thou wer't eye-Musike, and no single part,But beauties concert; Not one onely dart,But loves whole quiver; no provinciall face,But universall; Best in every place.Thow wert not borne, as other women be,To need the help of heightning Poesie,But to make Poets. Hee, that could presentThee like thy glasse, were superexcellent.Witnesse that Pen which, prompted by thy partsOf minde and bodie, caught as many heartesWith every line, as thou with every looke;Which wee conceive was both his baite and hooke.His Stile before, though it were perfect steele,Strong, smooth, and sharp, and so could make us feeleHis love or anger, Witneses agree,Could not attract, till it was toucht by thee.Magneticke then, Hee was for heighth of styleSuppos'd in heaven; And so he was, the whileHe sate and drewe thy beauties by the life,Visible Angell, both as maide and wife.In which estate thou did'st so little stay,Thy noone and morning made but halfe a day;Or halfe a yeare, or halfe of such an ageAs thy complexion sweetly did presage,An houre before those cheerfull beames were sett,Made all men loosers, to paye Natures debt;And him the greatest, that had most to doe,Thy friend, companion, and copartner too,Whose head since hanging on his pensive brestMakes him looke just like one had bin possestOf the whole world, and now hath lost it all.Doctors to Cordialls, freinds to counsel fall.He that all med'cines can exactly make,And freely give them, wanting power to take,Sitts and such Doses howerly doth dispense,A man unlearn'd may rise a Doctor thence.I that delight most in unusuall waies,Seeke to asswage his sorrowe with thy praise,Which if at first it swell him up with greife,At last may drawe, and minister releife;Or at the least, attempting it, expresseFor an old debt a freindly thanckfulnesse.I am no Herald! So ye can expectFrom me no Crests or Scutcheons, that reflectWith brave Memorialls on her great Allyes;Out of my reach that tree would quickly rise.I onely stryve to doe her Fame som Right,And walke her Mourner, in this Black and Whight.Ben Johnson – VenetiaXXVI. MelancholyFrom ‘Elegy on the Lady Venetia Digby’By Ben Jonson (1572–1637) ’TWERE time that I died too, now she is dead, Who was my Muse, and life of all I said; The spirit that I wrote with, and conceived All that was good or great, in me she weaved…. Thou hast no more blows, Fate, to drive at one: What ’s left a poet, when his Muse is gone?… Indeed, she is not dead! but laid to sleep In earth, till the last trump awake the sheep And goats together, whither they must come To hear their Judge, and His eternal doom…. And she doth know, out of the shade of death, What ’tis to enjoy an everlasting breath! To have her captived spirit freed from flesh, And on her innocence, a garment fresh And white, as that, put on: and in her hand With boughs of palm, a crownèd victrice stand!… She was in one a many parts of life; A tender mother, a discreeter wife, A solemn mistress, and so good a friend, So charitable, to religious end In all her petite actions, so devote, As her whole life was now become one note Of piety, and private holiness. She spent more time in tears herself to dress For her devotions, and those sad essays Of sorrow, than all pomp of gaudy days; And came forth ever cheered, with the rod Of divine comfort, when she had talked with God.

The Eternal Appeal of Georgette Heyer

The new 2021 Centenary edition of The Black MothA young Georgette Heyer “in the news”One hundred years after its first publication The Black Moth is still selling.One hundred years later

One hundred years after writing her first novel, Georgette Heyer’s beloved novels are still in print and finding a new generation of avid readers. It is a remarkable achievement for a writer who has been dead for nearly 50 years but there are good reasons for her enduring popularity and for the enormous popularity of the Regency genre she created. Put simply, Georgette Heyer was a superlatively good writer and the period in which she chose to set her most successful novels remains one of the most romantic periods in literature.

The English Regency

Strictly speaking, the English Regency only lasted nine years. From 1811 to 1820, when George III had been declared mad, his son George (later George IV) ruled as Prince Regent in his father’s stead. Georgette Heye wrote 26 novels set specifically within that period. Modern Regencies, however, are usually set anywhere within the period of 1780 to 1830 – the years of Prince Florizel’s influence. My favourite Heyer novels are the Regencies and Georgians. I recently re-read Devil’s Cub and tried to read it slowly, to savour each word and absorb the nuances of character, conversation and comedy, but one of the compelling aspects of Georgette Heyer’s books is their power to draw you into the story, embroil you in the characters’ adventures, conflicts, triumphs and tragedies; to bring you to laughter or to hit you between the eyes in sentence or two in which she brilliantly sets a scene or delineates a personality.

George, Prince Regent, by Thomas Lawrence, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsThe first lines of Devil’s Cub

‘There was only one occupant of the coach, a gentleman who sprawled very much at his ease, with his legs stretched out before him, and his hands dug deep in the capacious pockets of his greatcoat. While the coach rattled over the cobbled streets of the town, the light from an occasional lantern or flambeau momentarily lit the interior of the vehicle and made a diamond pin or a pair of very large shoe-buckles flash, but since the gentleman lounging in the coach wore his gold-edged hat titled low over his eyes, his face remained in shadow.’

Two sentences, that’s all, but we are already intrigued. This must be our hero and already we know that he is wealthy, tall, completely at ease, in a private coach and it is at least a hundred years ago. Part of Heyer’s genius was her ability to convey a great deal of information with brilliant economy. She could deliver a personality in a sentence, a relationship in two and a whole world in a paragraph. Often and often you’ll come across a scene or piece of dialogue where every word carries its weight in gold. It’s one of the things I love about Georgette and one of the reasons she endures.

Dominic, Marquis of Vidal, is the adored hero of Devil’s CubWhy Georgette Heyer endures

But there are other reasons and after years of research and writing about her I’ve managed to identify what I think are the five main reasons why Georgette Heyer and other Regency writers continue to sell in large numbers around the world:

She wrote great stories

She wrote great stories. Page-turners that draw you into a world that feels real. The stories stay with you long after you’ve closed the book and frequently demand re-reading. There is always romance and it is often coupled with adventure or mystery or intrigue. Georgette worked hard at her plots and she was the perfect mix of ‘plotter’ and ‘pantster’: a writer who would first create her characters in her mind, then devise a context for them and, once those elements were clear in her head, would start writing. Once devised her characters became so real to her that she heard their voices in her head, dreamt about them and struggled to recognize them if she ever had alter their name. Brought to life in her mind, her characters would take up the reins of their story and drive her until she had written it. Heyer often said that her novels ‘practically wrote themselves’ and she had an extraordinary ability for writing quickly and easily – sometimes penning a complete (final draft) book in a couple of months. She was a compulsive writer and liked nothing better than to be completely immersed in a story: ‘suddenly an Idea will burst upon me – after which I shall forget that I’m a Sister and a Housewife, and shall plunge deep into the early XIXth Century, and be lost to Society until I have written THE END!’ Each of her novels has something that sets it apart from the rest and they are all of a consistently high standard. We have only to think of The Talisman Ring, The Grand Sophy, Sylvester, Friday’s Child, Black Sheep, or Frederica among many others to be convinced of Miss Heyer’s remarkable story-telling ability.

Georgette Heyer’s beloved Regency novels have inspired many modern writers.Brilliant at romance

The Romance. It gets us every time and is one reason why the genre enjoys such vast success. After all, is there anything more romantic than a devilishly handsome man in hessian boots, pantaloons, a tight-fitting coat and a snowy cravat? Unless it’s a man in top-boots, breeches, a well-cut coat and a carelessly knotted cravat! And then there are the women – those strong-minded, feisty individuals who hold out for love and yet are frequently surprised by the man who sweeps them off their feet and turns out to be, not the hard-hearted rake or the world-weary cynic the world has thought them, but a man of passion and heart and honour. These men and women and their families, friends and servants populate a world of manners and fashion: they ride horses and drive carriages, live in grand ducal piles, on country estates, in bachelors’ chambers in Albany or Mount Street or in more modest accommodation in Bloomsbury or Hans Town. They attend court presentations, evenings at Almacks, prize-fights, military parades, balls, parties, the theatre and the opera. And they are often prey to drinking, gambling, debauchery and seduction. It’s a moneyed world, where scandal abounds and the polite world will tolerate even the worst excesses so long as the perpetrator is noble enough or rich enough to escape censure. It’s a world of romance and excess, of political and social change, of military campaigns and growing industrialization. For the author and the reader it is a world of endless possibilities.

A Regency proposalShe wrote great heroes

We love Heyer’s heroes and it is almost impossible to choose an absolute favourite. She was brilliant at creating characters who live on long after the last word is read and I have had women of all ages (even in their nineties) practically swoon at the mention of Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, or his son, Dominic, Marquis of Vidal. But GH didn’t only write the handsome, world-weary hero she also wrote the pragmatic, outspoken, supposedly unromantic hero like Sir Tristram Shield in The Talisman Ring, or Max Ravenscar in Faro’s Daughter, Charles Rivenhall in The Grand Sophy, or Miles Calverleigh in Black Sheep; she created tall, dependable heroes: Hugo Darracott in The Unknown Ajax, the Marquis of Alverstoke in Frederica and Sir Richard Wyndham in The Corinthian; she wrote about gentle heroes: Gilly, Duke of Sale, in the Foundling, Adam, Viscount Lynton in A Civil Contract, Gervase Frant in The Quiet Gentleman and Sir Gareth Ludlow in Sprig Muslin; and there are saturnine heroes such as Sylvester, immensely wealthy heroes like Mr Beaumaris in Arabella and dangerous rakes like Jasper Damerel in Venetia. Georgette even wrote the unlikely hero – Freddy Standen of Cotillion remains a firm personal favourite. She had her own rules and her heroes are all well-born – though not always of the nobility. They vary a lot in shape, size, looks, manners and wealth, and though they may dress impeccably or with casual disdain for their appearance, each of them in some way satisfies our romantic longings. I have tried to work out how she does this – how does any successful Regency writer do it? Here are a few excerpts to evoke that satisfying frisson in the reader and which may help explain what makes a successful hero.

Two Strings to her Bow by John Pettie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

‘His Grace of Avon swirled about, gripping his assailant’s wrists and bearing them downwards with a merciless strength belied by his foppish appearance. His victim gave a whimper of pain and sank quivering to his knees.’ ‘

He began to laugh again, and walked forward. “Shoot then,” he invited, “and we shall know. For I’m coming several steps nearer, my lady.”‘ ‘

I will not allow you to dictate to me, now or ever, Miss Morville! I mean a robin!’ said the Earl firmly, lifting her hand to his lips.’

‘Charles!’ uttered Sophy, shocked. ‘You cannot love me!’ Mr Rivenhall pulled the door to behind him, and in a very rough fashion jerked her into his arms and kissed her. ‘I don’t: I dislike you excessively!’ he said savagely.’ ‘

He stretched out his hand, and when she laid her own in it, held it very tightly.

‘You shall have a splendid orgy, my dear delight, and you will enjoy it very much indeed!’ ‘

Here, take this dashed bonnet off! How the deuce am I to kiss you with a lot of curst feathers in my face?’ ‘

When I asked you at Brancaster I held you in affection and esteem, but I believed I could never be in love again. I was wrong. Will you marry me, my dear and last love?’ ‘

The Darracotts were a tall race, but the man who stood on the threshold dwarfed them all. He stood six foot four in his stockinged feet, and he was built on noble lines, with great shoulders, a deep barrel of a chest, and powerful thighs.’

Georgette Heyer, selected novels

She wrote great heroines

The heroines are every bit as important to the success of the Regency romance and Heyer’s novels abound in memorable women who must navigate the pitfalls of Regency society in order to find true love. I love Heyer’s heroines in all their different forms, from Mary Challoner in Devil’s Cub: ‘Yes? But then, you chose puce.’ To Judith Taverner in Regency Buck: ‘But I must warn you, sir, it is not the fashion to be seen talking to me.’ to ‘ Hester Theale in Sprig Muslin, ‘Gareth!’ said Hester, in an awed voice. ‘You must own that Amanda is wonderful! I should never have thought of saying I was your natural sister!’, to feisty and impulsive Arabella: ‘I,’ said Arabella, a most dangerous glitter in her eye, ‘ am Miss Tallant!’ and orphaned Kitty Charing: ‘Freddy, you are quite sure you don’t want to marry me, aren’t you? Then, Freddy, will you be so very  obliging as to be betrothed to me?’, Sophy Stanton-Lacy: ‘I am going to do what I have been wanting to do ever since I was told I must not, on any account!’ replied Sophy. ‘It is with me a kind of Bluebeard’s chamber,’ and Frederica who cannot stop herself from pointing out to the hero that ‘it was Restorative Pork Jelly!’ before finally discovering: ‘Only – is it being – not very comfortable – and cross – and not quite happy when you aren’t there?’ ‘That, my darling,’ said his lordship, taking her ruthlessly into his arms, ‘is exactly what it is!’

Wonderful heroines – A Summer Shower by Charles Edward Perugini, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsShe wrote great comedy

Which leads us to the final, eternally appealing element of GH’s novels: Comedy. She sometimes described her comedy as being ‘a mix of Sheridan and Austen’ and she is undoubtedly a master of ironic humour. Heyer had a rapier wit and a shrewd and incisive eye for human foibles and frailties. Her personal letters are full of pithy remarks and she is often cutting. She is kinder in her novels, but she loves to puncture a sentimental moment or turn it on its head and it is her ability to make us laugh that is another reason why we return to her books again and again. There is humour throughout the novels but it is her secondary characters that are frequently the vehicle for some of her best comic writing: think of Charis and Endymion in Frederica or Jonathan Chawleigh in A Civil Contract, Claude in The Unknown Ajax, Ferdy and the delicious running gag over his struggles with Nemesis (whom he had known at Eton!). The Talisman Ring abounds in LOL moments: compliments of Sarah Thane and her brother Sir Hugh as well as the hapless Bow Street Runners, the all-too-casual Ludovic Lavenham and the adoring Eustacie. There are far too many humorous moments to recite here so I will mention only two. The first is a character who appears only once in The Foundling– and then all-too briefly – but he is so perfectly depicted that we feel we know him intimately:

‘Sir Timothy looked at him in melancholy wonder. “I suppose I must have liked you once,” he said plaintively. “I like so very few people nowadays; in fact, the number of persons whom I cordially dislike increases almost hourly.”‘

And the second is an exchange between Lady Denville and the wonderfully corpulent Sir Bonamy Ripple in False Colours:

‘He then surged out of the room, just as Lady Denville, looking like a water-nymph, in a dressing-gown composed of layer upon layer of diaphanous material dyed in every shade of green, emerged from her own bedchamber.

He shrank instinctively, but she positively recoiled, gasping: ‘Great Heavens–! Bonamy!’ Overcoming his discomposure, he said, putting a bold face on it: ‘Not wearing my corsets! I know you don’t like ’em: you told me so!’

Recovering from her initial shock, she floated up to him, laying a fragile hand on his arm, and saying: ‘Dearest friend, you must be mistaken! How could I have said such a thing?’

‘No, I’m not,’ asserted Sir Bonamy, fixedly regarding her. ‘you begged me to give up strait-lacing!’

‘I must have been mad!’ said her ladyship.

‘And,’ continued Sir Bonamy, hope in his eyes, ‘you said I creaked!’ ‘

Now, that,’ conceded her ladyship, ‘I do recall! But don’t give it another thought, my dear! I have grown perfectly accustomed to it! Never abandon your Cumberland corset, I beg of you!’

‘You know what, my pretty?’ said Sir Bonamy, care wiped from his brow. ‘You’ve taken a weight off my mind! Damme, if I am the happiest man alive! Bless you, my lovely one!’

A music scene by Vittorio Reggianini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons – reminiscent of Cotillion A wonderful legacy

Georgette Heyer left us a wonderful legacy of humour, romance and compelling story with unforgettable heroes and heroines. Today we reap the benefit of her canon of Regency and Georgian novels in the work of bestselling Regency authors such as Stephanie Laurens, Eloisa James, Julia Quinn, Anne Gracie, Lisa Kleypas, Mary Balogh, Grace Burrowes, Christina Brook,  and many others. Long may the genre that is the Regency Historical Romance live!

Happy Birthday Georgette Heyer! A pictorial celebration

This Monday, 16 August 2021, marks Georgette Heyer’s 119th birthday. A remarkable writer whose beloved novels have long outlived their author, she would have been pleased to know that she was remembered and celebrated with so much affection from readers around the world!

A bouquet of Georgette’s favourite yellow roses to celebrate her birthday.Born in Wimbledon

Georgette was born in Wimbledon, a few miles south-west of London, in the bedroom of her parents’ house at 103 Woodside. The house is still there and in June 2015 the famous actor and author, Stephen Fry, unveiled a prestigious English Heritage Blue Plaque commemorating Georgette Heyer’s birthplace. She was an adored baby – the first of three children and the only girl born to her parents, Sylvia and George Heyer. Named for her father and grandfather (also George Heyer), her mother recorded that their daughter’s name was to be pronounced à la française – thus “Georgette” with a soft g. She was an adored baby whose parents read to her, sung to her, played music, recited poetry and took her on regular visits to her grandparents. Georgette’s acute intelligence was evident at an early age and was fostered by both her parents. When Georgette was just eighteen months old her mother wrote in her baby book that

“She certainly is a darling and so intelligent. She dances & plays the piano & sings & pretends to be an old woman. She is very great on kissing, especially anything in the male line. She says a good many words but does not talk yet.”

Sylvia Heyer, in Georgette Heyer’s Baby Record, 18 March 1904.

Ethel Elaine Barr’s baby book for the KingR.I. Woodouse’s baby book first published ca. 1894, the year Edward VIII was bornBaby books first appeared in England in the 1880sA Baby Book

Baby books first appeared in England in the 1880s and became popular a few years later on the birth of Edward (later Edward VIII, who would abdicate in 1936)to the Duke and Duchess of York in 1894. When R.I. Whitehouse published the second edition of his Baby Record he made sure to include the words “As used by THE ROYAL MOTHER of the future KING OF ENGLAND” on the title page. It was in a copy of this book that Sylvia Heyer recorded the birth of her daughter, Georgette, and in which, over the next five years, she occasionally made entries about her adored baby girl. Reading it, there is no doubt that Georgette Heyer was a very bright and personable child with a vivid imagination. Her mother even noticed her toddler’s keen eye for discerning character and personality. Georgette and her father developed a very close bond early on and there are several hints and suggestions of the creative mind that was forming in those early years. The original Baby Record earned a witty review in the Illustrated London News that so pleased Woodhouse he included it as a second Preface:

“In many books, the farther one goes the worse one fares; but this is not the case with ‘Baby’s Record,’ the plot thickens, the incidents multiply as we go on. ‘Early Incidents—First Crawl,’ the art of locomotion in a nutshell … ‘First Walk’: this is even still more full of rapture. “’The dear, lumpish baby, humming like the May-bee, meets us with his bright stare, stumbling through the grass.’ He does totter and lurch a bit—he has not got his land-legs on yet—but how delightfully he does it in his mother’s eyes! ‘First Word’: good heavens! he says ‘Dada,’ and (forgetting Balaam’s ass) she [the mother] imagines that he has established his superiority over the brute creation. Let us hope that ‘big, big D’ will never pass his lips in another form and with less obvious effort. ‘First hair-cutting,’ also a great event: every hair will be religiously preserved and put into a locket—a thing that never happens to me, alas! though there is not, as in his case, ‘plenty more where that comes from.’ The entrancing chapter ends with ‘First Visit to the Sea’ and ‘First Ride,’ presumably on a donkey.”

Sir Walter Besant, The Illustrated London News, 13 July 1889.

Georgette Heyer on a donkey at Worthing with her parents, George and Sylvia Heyer, circa summer 1907“This book is for my daughter”

“This book is for my daughter Georgette if she cares to have it – I think it may be very interesting and perhaps useful to her when she is grown up & has children of her own – In any case it is of great interest to her father and mother and calls up many amusing, happy recollections which otherwise might be forgotten.”

Sylvia Heyer, written inside Georgette Heyer’s Baby Record, no date.

“Georgette has been growing apace”

“A dreadful long time has elapsed since I wrote in this book. Georgette has been growing apace. She has five teeth now & a sixth will soon be through. She crawls a great deal & walks holding on to chairs etc. Her favourite position is at the window. She stands up & watches the things passing – looks most sweet. She does not talk yet. She is very keen on her Dad…”

Sylvia Heyer, Georgette Heyer’s Baby Record, 1 October 1903

Georgette age 18 months. Her mother wrote that she “walks holding onto chairs etc.”A proud father

George Heyer was a proud father. He and Georgette took to each other from the first. An eager parent who found his small daughter fascinating, he spent hours with her. Sylvia recorded how, even before Georgette could talk, she loved to see father and baby “chatting” away to each other. George was passionate about books and reading and had a wonderful ear for rhyme and rhythm. He was a minor poet who could recite entire chapters of Dickens by heart and he endowed his daughter with a literary legacy that would eventually inspire her own literary efforts. When Georgette was six months old, George Heyer put some of his feelings about his baby daughter on paper. He wrote her a special poem and to mark the occasion he made it into a little book with parchment pages and a red ribbon tied into a bow at the spine. The verses were written in emerald green ink with the first letter of each verse in red pencil. The vibrant colours reflected George’s delight in his daughter and the poem’s whimsical lines offer a joyous picture of Georgette as a bright, active infant with the sort of energy that made her parents bless her sleep time.

George Heyer’s poem celebrating his daughter’s six-month birthday“She is going to be clever”

“Babs is now two and a half & over & has quite grown out of a Baby. She is such a dear mite. Her hair curls so prettily & she chatters away to any extent. She knows heaps of nursery rhymes, has known them for some time now. She is going to be clever I think, she so soon picks up anything that one reads to her. Also her imagination is very much alive & plays a great part in all her games. Her eyes are grey-blue and her nose is still a dear wee snub. She still sucks her beloved thumb and hugs her “eidy” when she is tired. Her Dad is so proud of her & so is her Mum.”

Sylvia Heyer, Georgette Heyer’s Birth Record, 20 April 1905.

“Her brain is best left alone”

Georgette’s mother was an intelligent and accomplished woman who loved her small daughter deeply. A graduate of the the Royal Academy of Music and a medal-winning cellist and pianist she also had a lovely singing voice . She introduced Georgette to music from birth and loved to see her baby move to the piano or respond to the music box. Though she always loved music and listened to the classical artists and opera singers, Georgette herself was not talented musically. She did, however, develop an acute ear for syntax, inflection, rhythm and melodic prose and these things would become intrinsic to her later writing. In her earliest years, however, her parents – recognising their daughter’s acute intelligence – were content to let Georgette grow and develop without being pushed.

“We moved a year ago on March 12th. Tooley stayed with her Grannie at Fairfield during the move. She can count up to 100 and knows all her letters & can make a few. But I don’t teach her as she so very quick & alert I think her brain is best left alone for the present.

Sylvia Heyer, Georgette Heyer’s Baby Record, 10 March 1907.

Happy birthday Georgette!TO GEORGETTE - AGED 6 MONTHS - FEBRUARY 16 1903I'll sing a song of you, Georgette, I'll sing a song of you; You've silky brownish sorts of locks, And cheeks of fairest hue; You wear such pretty light blue frocks, And joy to kick off both your socks,– I'll sing a song of you.   Your eyes are like the sky, Georgette, Your eyes are like the sky, When on a sunny April day Two clouds are passing by;– Between them shines a liquid ray Of blue,– and just that blue are they, Your eyes are like the sky.   You've such a clever hand, Georgette, You've such a clever hand; The little fingers softly strum On airy pianos,– and The very knowing little thumb Can go directly to the gum,– You've such a clever hand.   When you are very tired, Georgette, When you are very tired, That chubby little fist it knows Exactly what's required; And busily to work it goes To rub away your little nose, When you are very tired.   And when you are asleep, Georgette, Oh, when you are asleep, Above the 'broidered coverlet The little fingers peep; I'd like to venture near, and set A kiss upon their tips, Georgette, Because you are asleep.

Sylvester Part 2 – An interview with audiobook narrator, Matt Addis

The delightful new Penguin audiobook of Sylvester read by Matt AddisIncreasingly popular

For millions of Heyer readers modern audio books have added a new dimension to “reading” her novels. Audio books have become increasingly popular as people find they can listen to their favourite authors and discover new ones while exercising, cooking, gardening (my favourite) – indeed, anything that lets them listen. For me, a Georgette Heyer audio book makes cleaning the house or filing or any other tedious task something to look forward to! This year, Penguin have begun releasing brand new recordings of Heyer’s Regency, Georgian and detective novels and it has been a real treat to hear these fresh versions of her books read by a range of male and female narrators. So far I’ve throughly enjoyed Devil’s Cub, Bath Tangle, Black Sheep, The Convenient Marriage and Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle. Sylvester is a perennial favourite Georgette Heyer novel and one of her cleverest so it was a real treat to listen to this new version. The narrator – well-known actor Matt Addis – did a great job with the reading, bringing the individual characters to life and and adding another dimension to Georgette’s sparkling and often very funny dialogue. It was such a treat experiencing Sylvester in this way – and a wonderful reminder of what a terrific film or television series it would make – that one listen was definitely not enough!

Renowned actor Matt Addis loved narrating Georgette Heyer’s brilliant novel, SylvesterCharacters brought to life

One of the many reasons that Georgette Heyer novels still sell a hundred years after she published her first book is the way in which she brings her characters to life. Sylvester is no exception. Georgette’s dramatis personae (which you can see from her own hand here) is a rich one. From the lowliest kitchen maid like Alice with only a bit part to the charming and utterly endearing Dowager Duchess – poetess and wise counsellor) to the self-important and comical Sir Nugent Fortherby who practically steals every scene he is in, Heyer knows just how to make each character spring from the page as lifelike and visceral as if they were real. For me, audio books only add to that experience! Hearing Sylvester talking to his mother about his outrageous marriage plans is such a delight and the opening chapters set the scene for the marvellous story that is to come. Matt Addis as narrator gives each character their own distinctive voice and the drama or comedy of each scene or chapter is enhanced by his interpetation. The last part of the novel where Phoebe and Tom are compelled to stay on board the Betsy-Ann and travel to France with Sir Nugent Fotherby are delicious! Sir Nugent is one of Georgette’s comic triumphs and Matt Addis makes him all that he should be. The final scenes where Phoebe and Sylvester, with the help of the Dowager Duchess, eventually resolve their differences gain an added depth from hearing their conversation. This, I find, is one of the advantages of audiobooks – hearing the characters speak can often add to the enjoyment of a beloved novel. Matt Addis’s version of Sylvester was such a delight that I was curious to know if he were a longtime Heyer reader. Consequently, I reached out to Matt to find out and he kindly and enthusiastically responded to my short Q&A. I hope you enjoy this brief exchange with new Georgette Heyer fan, Matt Addis.

The 1957 Heinemann first edition of Sylvester with its elegant jacket illustration by Barbosa.“Delighted to talk about Sylvester “

MATT: I’m delighted to talk about Sylvester

JK: Had you ever read a Georgette Heyer novel before recording Sylvester?

MATT: I’m ashamed to say Sylvester was my first Heyer, but I’ve since read 3 more. A friend of mine is a huge fan of her books, so I was very much aware of them.

JK: If not, did you have any preconceived ideas about the book?

MATT: I had previously narrated two Regency Romances, that I knew were written by an author who’s a great admirer of Heyer, and who writes with a similar style – meticulously researched, witty & sophisticated, which I greatly enjoyed reading – The Devil You Know and Bless Thine Inheritance by the wonderful Sophia Holloway. I don’t think I was expecting Sylvester to be quite as entertaining as I found it to be, or for the characters to be as fully realised as they are. 

JK: Were you surprised when you read Sylvester? What did you think of the book?

MATT: It’s always a delight to find that you enjoy reading a title you’ve been booked for, and to find yourself wanting to know what happens next. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that I immediately felt an affinity with both Sylvester and Phoebe.

JK: You did a wonderful job creating the different characters through their voices. Was that difficult to do? Is it hard for a man to do female voices?

MATT: Thank you! I try to remain true to the author’s intentions for a character, allowing the book’s descriptions of them, what they say and what other characters say about them to shape the choices I make in giving them a voice. Heyer draws her characters in wonderful detail, and invites her reader to create rather clear pictures in their head. It was great fun to be subtle and complex with some of them, and enjoyably bolder with others. I was particularly drawn to Edmund, who I based on my own beloved nephew Arthur. It isn’t easy for a male narrator to play females, and vice versa, but hopefully if we play the truth of that character’s thoughts and desires, the magic of theatre fills in the gaps for us.

This 1818 engraving of a Regency dandy with his valet could be the comical Sir Nugent Fortherby in Sylvester.

JK: How long does it take to record a novel like Sylvester?

MATT: We recorded Sylvester over 3 days last November. I usually allow around the same time to read and prepare the book before recording, making notes about characters and researching any words or phrases I’m unfamiliar with. I was lucky that Sophia was very generous with her time in both helping me with historical detail that I was unsure about, and giving me some very sage and informed advice on my choices for the characters. After that my brilliant editor took four days to polish and shape the recording, subtly removing intrusive noises and breaths, and adjusting the pace of gaps and pauses to finesse my performance. Then our superb Proofreader listens meticulously to the book, and makes notes on any small deviations from the text, or elements that distract from the story. We return to the studio to fix any of those the editor can’t do on her own, and after that the recording goes to the Mastering Engineer to be balanced and level… levelled. 

JK: What’s the biggest challenge in recording an audio book?

MATT: For me, it’s remaining absolutely true to the book – interpreting the story the author’s told in such a way that they might hear it and recognise every phrase. Hopefully we give audio life to text in a way that lifts it from the page – that transports the listener into the story.

JK: What do you most enjoy about the process? What did you most enjoy about Sylvester?

MATT: I love being a time-traveller – of exploring the world of a story, of researching words and details I didn’t previously know, of interpreting what a character wants and how they might go about getting it. Sylvester was an absolute delight to explore and inhabit – from the joy of Mr Shap disparaging Alice’s brother’s intellect to the pain of Edmund wailing for his Button.

JK: You made me laugh aloud many times while listening to your rendition of the book. Did Heyer make you laugh?

MATT: Excellent! There was certainly a lot of chortling as I read the book for the first time, less so when performing it, as I always think comedy lies in the absolute truth of a moment – playing a character’s intentions as honestly as I can. It’s great fun to also be the arch narrator though.

The illustrated advertisement for the 1959 radio broadcast of Sylvester.

JK: Have you recorded any other Heyer novels? Is there a chance you could record Cotillion or Venetia, Frederica, The Unknown Ajax or A Civil Contract? (I do hope so!)

MATT: I’m currently recording Heyer’s Hannasyde & Hemingway detective novels, which I’m greatly enjoying – they’re extremely witty too, with moments of glorious romance, and some wonderfully contrived crimes. I’d love to be given another of the Romances – I can only ask that if anyone enjoys Sylvester they leave a review on their audio-bookshop’s site detailing exactly what they liked about it – that’s where my next project always comes from.

Matt Addis is narrating all of Georgette Heyer’s detective novels.Thank you, Matt Addis

Recent news from Penguin reveals that Matt is currently recording all of Georgette Heyer’s detective novels and will also be narrating Beauvallet. There is no doubt that Matt will make a marvellous Sir Nicholas Beauvallet! I am very much looking forward to the murder mysteries and to hours of listening pleasure as I work my way through the new Penguin audiobooks and listen again to old favourites. Let’s hope that the success of the audio books helps bring Georgette Heyer to the screen!

Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle – Part 1

“I am now about to perpetrate another piece of nonsense, so that for the first time in my life I shall have something up my sleeve. I rather want to call it Snowbound, but as I’m still uncertain about the plot this isn’t yet decided. As a preliminary, I’ve dug up a lot more Regency slang, some of it very good indeed, and the best quite unprintable.”

Georgette Heyer to Roland Gant, editor at Heinemann, letter, 15 May 1956

The 1957 Heinemann first edition of Sylvester.“Snowbound”

Georgette Heyer’s forty-fifth novel was begun late in December 1955. Originally intended as a short story called “Snowbound”, Georgette began writing it in response to a request from the editor of Everybody’s. This popular magazine was keen to emulate the success of Woman’s Journal which always sold out whenever they published naything by Georgette Heyer. Georgette had written about 8,000 words of “Snowbound” when she “had a change of heart at 11.45 last night, [and] decided it wouldn’t do”. She put the manuscript aside and instead began writing a new short story entitled “The Necklace”. This, like “Snowbound”, was destined never to reach Everybody’s nor to remain as a short story. By May 1956, Georgette had turned “The Necklace” into a new Regency novel, which she called April Lady. That novel came out in January 1957, by which time she had finally started writing the novel inspired by “Snowbound”. The new title was Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle and by mid-March she had written just over 60,000 words. Unusually for Georgette, this time the writing had been what she considered slow going due mainly to several bouts of ill-health. As she explained to her publisher and friend, A.S. Frere:

“I have been ill for the past month, & have only just resumed work on Sylvester – & slowly, at that. For the past ten days, I have typed, laboriously, about half a page a day. However, there were signs yesterday of lubrication, & I even felt a stir of interest – which is heartening. I don’t like to give you any hard date, because it has now happened twice that when I thought myself restored to health I have suffered a relapse – or developed a fresh ill. I suppose it would be unreasonable to suppose that after 28 days of what Jane Austen would call “a putrid sore throat” I should, at my age, recover in a flash. Foolish persons keep on urging me to go away for a Nice Rest, & a Change of Air; but only Ronald took No for an answer, understanding that to go away, leaving a book on the rocks, would fret me into  my grave. There are times when I quite like that man. I aim now at May – or the end of April.”

Georgette Heyer to A.S. Frere, letter, 16 March 1957.

One of the 1970 Pan editions of Sylvester.The second 1970 Pan edition with an elegant cover depicting Tom and Phoebe on the dock at Dover.Pride and prejudice…

The Austen reference seems particularly apposite as, reading Georgette Heyer’s delightful comic Regency, Sylvester, it is clear that she was inspired in part by Jane Austen’s iconic novel, Pride and Prejudice. In both books, misunderstanding begins with the hero’s pride in his lineage, his estates and his connections – all of which cause him to put a value on his own worth far above that of the heroine’s. She, in her turn, is prejudiced against him because of what she perceives to be his arrogance. In spite of himself, the hero becomes intrigued by the heroine and is piqued when she rejects him. There are many Austenesque moments in Sylvester and, as always, Heyer took care never to copy her adored Miss Austen but put her language and phraseology to good use. Whe Mrs Orde, the Squire’s wife, “paid off every arrear of a debt of rancour” to Lady Marlow, the Austen reader is reminded of Caroline Bingley who “paid off every arrear of civility” to Elizabeth Bennet. In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennet foretells her daughters’ unlikely marriages to wealthy men; in Sylvester his mother foretells his unlikely match to Phoebe, the daughter of her dearest friend when, in response to Sylvester’s idea that “mothers always made marriage plans for their sons!”, the Dowager Duchess tells him that the “only marriage I ever planned for you was with a three-day infant, when you were eight years old!” Towards the end of the book, Sylvester makes Phoebe a proposal of marriage that is almost as bad as Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth. And at the very end, when Phoebe’s satirical suggestion that she should write a second novel and dedicate it to Sylvester prompts him to suggest that she could include a “pompous epistle”, the reader is reminded of Austen’s reluctant dedication to the Prince Regent in Emma – a decidedly pompous inclusion written for her by her publisher. In writing Sylvester Georgette created a story utterly unlike Austen’s in terms of plot and characters, but the Austen influence is unmistakeable and the novel is richer for it.

Page 1 of Georgette’s typewritten Dramatis Personae for Sylvester – note the error in spelling Thomas Orde – Thomas Oeda. It is not known who wrote “Musterky” instead of “Austerby” the correct name for Phoebe’s home but it is not Georgette’s handwriting.Sylvester

Sylvester’s starting premise is a simple one: at the age of 27, Sylvester Rayne, Duke of Salford, has decided he must marry. As a man “endowed with rank, wealth, and elegance” he believes that he has the pick of the debutantes and that no woman would ever think to refuse an offer from him. Sylvester has even “more or less” made out a list of the qualities he considers “indispensable” in his future bride. He relates this list to his intelligent, poetess mother, who is not only startled to find her adored son so coldly pragmatic in matters of the heart, but also shocked to discover that he cannot imagine any female to whom he might make an offer rebuffing him. She finds no comfort in her sister’s pronouncement that “He knows his worth too well!” Heyer’s depiction of Sylvester is masterful and her hero’s encounters with first his mother and then with his godmother, who also happens to be the heroine’s grandmother lay the foundation for all that is to come. Here is a man so sure of himself, so well set-up in life and yet so utterly unaware of his arrogance and self-consequence that it requires a woman utterly unlike any he has yet encountered to open his eyes. One of the joys of the novel is manifested in the various ways in which Sylvester is forced – mainly by Phoebe Marlow’s candour and propensity for getting into scrapes – to confront his pride and his prejudices and become a better man.

Page 2 of Georgette’s Dramatis Personae for Sylvester.Phoebe

It is not only Sylvester who must confront his prejudices, but also the heroine, Phoebe Marlow. Phoebe, too, is blind to the depth of her own prejudice. Bullied by an unloving and dictatorial stepmother, during her first London Season the year before the story begins, Phoebe’s fear of rebuke rendered her colourless and unmemorable. Unfortunately, Sylvester was among those who passed her over and, inspired by his arrogance and his flying, saturnine eyebrows, she has cast him as the villain in her first novel. A keen observer of human nature , with a talent for mimicry, Phoebe’s novel The Lost Heir is a roman à clef. As with Lady Caroline Lamb’s actual novel, Glenarvon, Phoebe has written about real people and events – all of which she has thinly disguised in her fictional story. Sylvester, of course, knows nothing of Phoebe’s novel and nor does anyone else in London. In keeping with the tradition of the time her book published anonymously – by “A Lady” – but when it is an instant bestseller, all of society become agog to know the author’s identity. From here, Georgette leads her readers into a merry tangle of confession, retribution, remorse and restitution.

The first paperback edition of Caroline Lamb’s scandalous roman à clef Glenarvon.Glenarvon and The Lost Heir

In 1816, Glenarvon created a sensation for its portrayal of many of society’s most notable people. Caro Lamb cast her former lover, Lord Byron, as the villainous Lord Glenarvon, and also included the Patronesses of Almack’s Club as characters in her novel. The lady Patronesses’ outrage at being thus portrayed ensured that Lady Caroline was banned from Almack’s for a time because they were so offended by the book. Of course, in Sylvester, Phoebe’s roman à clef is a novel within a novel, though it, too, portrays real people – including the Patronesses – behind a fictional facade. As always with Georgette Heyer, there are layers within layers and there are many enjoyable parallels between Phoebe’s The Lost Heir and Glenarvon. Both are wildly melodramatic and improbable tales that not only won for their authors fame and fortune but also caused them great trouble and distress. Phoebe’s singular sin in writing The Lost Heir, however, is to have portrayed only one character as being without virtue and that is her villain, Count Ugolino, who, with his flying eyebrows, is instantly recognisable as Sylvester! It is Phoebe’s prejudice against the man she believes Sylvester to be that impels her to run away from home rather than receive an offer of marriage from him. And it is in unexpectedly catching up with her that Sylvester and Phoebe, with Phoebe’s lifelong friend, Tom Orde, become snowbound at a rustic inn. This was the basis for the original short story. The entertaining scenes at The Blue Boar allow both hero and heroine to begin the process of overcoming both their pride and their prejudices. Ironically, by the time Phoebe’s novel is published, much of her prejudice against Sylvester has dissipated and they have become friends. Thus she frets over the novel and longs to tell him what she has done but is frightened of the likely consequences. The remainder of Sylvester includes one of Georgette’s most brilliant imbroglio endings replete with high drama and perfectly-executed comedic scenes.

The 2004 Arrow edition of Sylvester.P.S. Georgette, the young writer:

In addition to the clever plot, compelling characters and ironic comedy, Sylvester has the added benefit of offering readers some delightful parallels with Georgette Heyer’s own writing life. When she describes Phoebe Marlow’s early promise as a writer it is not hard to see Heyer’s own story in the description:

“From the little girl who scribbled fairy stories for the rapt delectation of Susan and Mary [Boris and Frank], Phoebe had developed into a real authoress, and one, moreover, who had written a stirring romance [The Black Moth] worthy of being published.”

Georgette Heyer, Sylvester, Pan, 1970, p.48.

“It had come white-hot from her ready pen, and Miss Battery [Georgette’s father] had been quick to see that it was far in advance of her earlier attempts at novel-writing [Georgette wrote stories from an early age]. Its plot was as extravagant as anything that came from the Minerva Press; the behaviour of its characters was for the most part wildly improbable [The Black Moth]; the scene was laid in an unidentifiable country; and the entire story was rich in absurdity. But Phoebe’s [Georgette’s] pen had always been persuasive, and so enthralling did she contrive to make the adventures of her heroine that it was not until he had reached the end of the book that even so stern a critic as young Mr Orde bethought him of the various incidents which he [like most readers]saw, in retrospect, to be impossible.”

Georgette Heyer, Sylvester, Pan, 1970, p.48

“Miss Battery [Georgette’s father], a more discerning critic, recognised not only the popular nature of the tale, but also the flowering in it of a latent talent. Phoebe [Georgette]had discovered in herself a gift for humorous portraiture…Miss Battery knew that it was these swift, unerring sketches that raised The Lost Heir [The Black Moth et al] above the commonplace. She[George Heyer] would not allow Phoebe to expunge one of them, or a line of their wickedly diverting dialogues, but persuaded her instead to write it all out in fairest copperplate [exactly as Georgette had to prior to submitting The Black Moth to Constable].”

Georgette Heyer, Sylvester, Pan, 1970, p.49.

High comedyGeorgette Heyer’s take on Sylvester.

“She handles a plot and character with the nonchalant skill of the Four-Horse Club tooling match-bays around the park.”

Cover quote, Pan, 1970.

The full picture – Barbosa’s superb cover of Sylvester.

April Lady – familiar, but different

Georgette Heyer, whose Sprig Muslin was one of the most delightful bits of flimflammery this side of P.G. Wodehouse in his early days, has done it again… In a melange of daffiness of this sort plotting doesn’t really matter. It’s the sheer fun of reading on a high entertainment level that’s the thing. For such an experience April Lady is tops. It’s sure-fire guaranteed to afford even the sourest of pusses a refreshing evening of kittenish enjoyment

Henry Cavendish, “It’s Daffy, Dandy, and Downright Delicious”, Sunday Chicago Tribune, 1 September 1957.

1957 Heinemann first edition showing the detail on the spine. Another superb cover by Barbosa. “a fit of Brilliance”

Early in December 1955 Georgette Heyer began writing a short story. She had been asked by the editor of the English magazine, Everybody’s, for a Regency short and had spent ten days working on a story she called “Snowbound”. She had written 8,000 words of this before deciding, just before midnight on 12 December, that it “wouldn’t do”. She then “instantly succumbed to a fit of Brilliance, during which I evolved THE NECKLACE.” Though she told her friend Miss Wallace – in her now-habitual, self-deprecating way – that she didn’t think much of the story, she was pleased that it at least matched the synopsis given to her by the magazine’s editor. In the end, she was not overly impressed with the editor, however, which may have been one reason why the story was never was published in Everybody’s. Another, more compelling, reason is that very soon after beginning it, Georgette had developed “The Necklace” well beyond the short story into a full-blown novel. As she herself admitted:

“It incorporates every last one of the characters which are my stock-in-trade, and ends with the sort of absurd scene which (I hope) raises my novels slightly above the Utterly Bloody Standard.”

Georgette Heyer to Patricia Wallace, letter, 13 December 1955

The 2004 Arrow edition of April LadyHer fifteenth Regency

The new novel was to be her forty-fourth book and her fifteenth Regency, so it is not surprising that Heyer had by now assembled a cast of characters – her “stock-in-trade” – several of whom were by now familiar to her many readers. Among these are the foolish young man; the perceptive, sharp-tongued dowager (Downton Abbey, anyone?); the romantic, innocent ingénue; the bored, wealthy man about town; the wordy, worthy suitor; and the manipulative, hypochondriac parent. Like any good writer of more than a handful of novels, Georgette Heyer knew what her readers wanted and she gave it to them. Like any great writer of more than a handful of novels, Georgette Heyer also made sure that she brought something new and different to each and every book she wrote. This in itself was no mean feat and it is a mark of her literary brilliance that even in the books about which she was not greatly enthused, she still managed to achieve this. While A.S. Byatt, in her lengthy tribute to Georgette Heyer, published in the UK Sunday Times to mark the publication of My Lord John in 1975, asserted that April Lady’s plot was “A rehash of the earlier Convenient Marriage” this is not entirely true. There are certainly some things common to both novels – a younger heroine married to an older hero; the heroine’s awareness of her husband’s mistress which prevents her from professing her real feelings to him; the ensuing misunderstanding between husband and wife; and the foolish, scapegrace brother and his inept friend, both of whom try to help the heroine manage her convoluted affairs without her husband’s knowledge. However, the details supporting these similarities are rather different in the two books. There are also several other important points of difference that ultimately give April Lady its own unique flavour and tone.

The 1970 Pan edition of April Lady featuring Dysart as highwaymanThe 1979 Pan edition of April Lady with a random sedan chair.A delightful cast

One of these differences is the delightful cast of characters particular to April Lady. While the reader cannot help liking Giles, Earl of Cardross, and his misunderstood young wife, Nell, the real standouts in the book are Nell’s superbly-drawn scapegrace brother, Dysart, her impeccable cousin, Mr Felix Hethersett, her mischievous and headstrong young sister-in-law, Letty and Letty’ssuperbly-drawn friend, Miss Selina Thorne, whose penchant for romantic novels leads her thoroughly astray in aiding and abetting Letty in her outrageous plan to marry the love of her life, the serious-minded, Mr Jeremy Allandale. The sharp contrasts between Letty and Jeremy and between Dysart and Felix are a brilliant device for revealing character and personality. These secondary characters are also a source of constant humour throughout the novel. At first glance, Dysart may seem to be nothing more than a reckless, improvident young man, set on gaming away his blunt, drinking to excess, and enacting outrageous pranks with his foolish friend, Cornelius Fancot, but – though these dissipations reflect part of his character – he is also deeply loyal, determined, protective of his sister and honourable. Felix Hethersett, on the other hand, though a society darling, “precise to a pin, blessed with propriety of taste, an impeccable lineage, and a comfortable fortune” seems at first to be Dysart’s exact opposite. Yet, despite his many excellent qualities, it is Felix who jumps to all the wrong conclusions about his cousin Nell and he who almost causes her more harm than good in trying to help her out of her difficulties. In the end, it is wild Dysart and not proper Felix who best aids Nell in resolving all of the misunderstandings between herself and her husband.

A wonderfully humorous scene

Letty is another of Heyer’s high-spirited characters and she is everything Nell is not: impulsive, determined, spoilt and, at times, selfish. Letty is also determined to marry her beloved Jeremy, despite Cardross’s refusal to give his permission. In this endeavour she enlists the help of her friend, Selina, and in a wonderfully humorous scene, Heyer again demonstrates her understanding of the workings of the adolescent mind. It is a brilliant on-point description of the fantasies that have allowed Selina to assist Letty in eloping with her beloved Jeremy:

Selina “had several times rehearsed the elevating utterances she would make, if called upon to account for her actions; and in these scenes every effort made by Letty’s persecutors to drag from her the secret of her whereabouts failed. Sometimes she remained mute while the storm raged over her devoted head; but in general she was extremely eloquent, expressing herself with such moving sincerity that even such worldly persons as her father and Lord Cardross were often brought to see how false and mercenary were their ideas, and emerged from the encounter with changed hearts, and the highest opinion of her fearlessness, nobility, and good sense.

But in these scenes the other members of the cast spoke the lines laid down for them; in real life they said things so very different as to throw everything quite out of joint.”

Georgette Heyer, April Lady, Pan, 1970, p.200.

2005 Reader’s Choice Harlequin Edition of April Lady.A love unmatched

Jeremy, of course, knows nothing of Letty’s plans to elope with him and his character is such that, though he is shocked by her behaviour, he recognises her youth, her distress at the prospect of being parted from him, and her irrepressible romantic nature. He is the polar opposite of his betrothed, being stolid, sensible and full of hard common sense. And yet, for all this, he loves Letty to a degree almost unmatched in all of Heyerdom:

“Sir,” said Mr Allandale, very pale, but steadily meeting Cardross’s eyes, “I do not attempt to condone her faults, though I can perceive excuses for them, but I love her, and must always do so, whatever she is, or whatever she does.”

Letty looked up, her tears arrested, awe in her face. “Jeremy!” she said. “Oh, Jeremy!”

Georgette Heyer, April Lady, Pan, 1970, p.236

Georgette Heyer may have referred to her characters as “stock-in’trade” but they are so much more than that. Each of them plays a vital role in April Lady and Heyer’s skill in depicting characters who leap off the page is very much to the fore throughout the novel.

Horry & Nell

In The Convenient Marriage it is the young heroine, Horatia – Horry – who sets things in motion by offering herself to the Earl of Rule in her older sister’s stead. This is no lovematch but a marriage of convenience; love will come later. In April Lady the young heroine, Helen – Nell – is already married to Giles, the Earl of Cardross, and has been in love with him from their first meeting. Unbeknowns to Nell, Giles is also in love with her but, thanks in part to her mother’s well-meant advice that she must never look for romance in marriage, Nell does not know how her husband really feels. Where Horry sets about living life to the full and enjoying all of the freedoms available to a married female, Nell is far more biddable and willing to comply with her husband’s requests. Both Horry’s and Nell’s behaviour and, in particular, their unwillingness to let their respective husbands know their true feelings (Horry’s love gradually evolvings whereas Nell loves Cardross from the first), springs in large part from their awareness that their husband has a mistress. While this unwelcome information prompts Horry to pretend she does not care and to behave ever more outrageously, the revelation shocks Nell deeply and its immediate consequence is to cause her to hide her true feelings from her husband:

“She was thankful to have been made aware of the truth before she could render herself ridiculous by showing her heart to the world, or have become a tiresome bore to my lord by hanging on him in a doting way which one short season had taught her was considered by the modish not at all the thing.”

Georgette Heyer, April Lady, Pan, 1970, p.9.

Georgette would not have approved of this more buxom version of April Lady.“the Rift in the Married Lute”

Unfortunately, Nell’s attempts to protect her heart from hurt merely widen the gap between her and Cardross until he begins to doubt that she has ever loved him. Instead, he begins to believe what the gossips have long said – that she married him for his money. April Lady offers readers a much deeper look at marital relations than does The Convenient Marriage and in many ways Nell is much more realistic as a young bride than Horry. Cardross, too, is less omniscient than Rule and he is a more truly emotional character: Cardross feels deeply; he is hurt by his wife’s apparent coolness; by her dutiful demeanour, her sumissiveness and her endless good manners. He yearns for the “loving, vital creature he was so sure lived behind the nervous child”. The opening scene, where Cardross confronts Nell about her unpaid bills and warns her not to continue to overspend – she has secretly lent her brother three hundred pounds despite promising Cardross she would never do so – may seem a slight pretext for a misunderstanding that lasts for the duration of the novel, but such is Heyer’s skill that the plot and the characters convince us from begiining to end. Georgette, in a reference to Tennyson’s poem, “Idylls of the King” described Nell and Cardross’s situation as the “Rift in the Married Lute”. A few weeks after April Lady was published in January 1957, her publisher wrote to tell her of the novel’s large sales. Georgette wrote a characteristic reply:

“Oh yes, I can explain April Lady’s success! Almost the Top of the Popular appeal Stakes (amongst females) is the Rift in the Married Lute – provided it All Comes Right in the End, & was never serious in the first place.”

Georgette Heyer to A.S. Frere, letter, 16 February 1957.

Nell meets her cousin Mr Felix Hethersett outside his house in Ryder Street.

“This is, as usual, graceful and exciting with all problems solved so satisfactorily that the novel is the best kind of “escape” story–fine for adults and adolescents.The world knows, by this time, that any one seeking problems of the day and dissertations on the economy and social and cynical-sentimental affairs in the most serious way is not to be led by Georgette Heyer.” [To which I say, “Thank goodness!]

Katherine Tappert Willis, Library Journal, July 1957.

Sprig Muslin – the evolution of a heroine

“As a plotter she has no superior.“

J.H. Durston

The 1956 Heinemann first edition of Sprig Muslin.One of her finest heroines

I love Georgette Heyer’s 1956 novel, Sprig Muslin, for many reasons, but the main reason is that the novel features one of her finest heroines. At first sight, there is nothing in either her persona or her circumstances to suggest that Lady Hester Theale might be the heroine of the story. Described early on as “a cipher”, Hester appears to be an unassuming female: shy, quiet, and very much at the mercy of her awful family. Apparently with nothing in particular to recommend her, Hester has been passed over by life and circumstances and so, when the hero, the charming and amiable Sir Gareth Ludlow, that “matrimonial prize of the first rank”, decides to offer her marriage, his sister, Trixie, is aghast:

“Gareth, are you hoaxing me? Tell me it’s a take-in! Yes, of course it is! you would never offer for Hester Theale!” … “She must be nine-and-twenty if she’s a day! – a woman who has been on the shelf these nine years, and more, and never took, or had countenance, or the least degree of modishness – You must be out of your senses!”

Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin, Pan, 1972, p.8.

The front cover of the 1956 Putnam US editionA rarely-seen photo of Gergette Heyer on the back cover of the Putnam edition.A gradual evolution

“I collect, that a word from a man in my position might bear weight with you.” “

Oh, dear! I am sure it ought to,” said Hester, in a conscience-stricken tone.

Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin, Pan, 1972, p.20.

But Trixie does not see all there is to see and neither – at first – does the reader. For, despite her “myopic gaze” and vague manner, Hester has a deep, hidden persona. She is intelligent and kind, a victim of her time, her gender, and her circumstances. All too well aware of her Duty to her family and conscious that she has failed to find an eligible husband, Hester has sacrificed herself on the altar of filial responsibility. She runs her father’s house, endures his insults, tolerates the dull, stupid people with whom she must live, and makes the best of her boring, unadventurous life. Among Georgette Heyer’s many brilliantly-depicted heroines, Hester is one of those whose deep, inner life we as readers are privileged to see. One of the joys of Sprig Muslin is the gradual evolution of Hester from passive female, with little to hope for and much to endure, into a woman whose intelligence, wit and wisdom all become clear when she is pitched into unexpected adventure.

“He eyed her with uncertainty, feeling that in some strange way she was eluding him. She had always been and obedient, even a meek, daughter, but he had several times suffered from the uncomfortable suspicion that behind the cloud of gentle compliance there existed a woman who was quite unknown to him.”

The Earl of Brancaster to his daughter, Hester, in Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin, Pan, 1972, p.17.

The 1972 Pan edition with a delightfully accurate cover.A spirited young lady

“No, for I am a soldier’s daughter, and I shouldn’t be in the least troblesome, if only I could marry Neil, and follow the drum with him, and not have to be presented, and go to horrid balls at Almack’s, and be married to an odious man with a large fortune and a title.”

Amanda to Sir Gareth, Georgette Heyer, in Sprig Muslin, Pan, 1972, p. 29.

At first glance, Sprig Muslin seems to be a road-trip novel. Sir Gareth Ludlow, on his way to Brancaster Park to propose to his old friend, Lady Hester Theale, unexpectedly encounters a spirited young lady at a wayside inn. Amanda has run away from home in order to compel her grandfather to allow her to marry her military sweetheart before Neil is once again posted overseas. Amanda is not yet seventeen, but it soon becomes clear that she knows her own mind and is determined to see her plan through without interference. Sir Gareth, however, instantly recognises the obvious dangers attached to Amanda’s plan to become either a governess or a chambermaid at any inn that will employ her. Faced with her stubborn refusal to tell him her real name or anything about herself that would allow him to restore her to her grandfather, Gareth insists on taking Amanda along with him to Brancaster Park. Given that his sole reason for visiting Hester is to ask her to marry him, this is a disastrous move. Amanda, is not only a romantic heroine in the best traditional sense, she is also enchantingly pretty, young and spirited – all of the things that (at first glance) Lady Hester is not. Sir Gareth’s arrival at Hester’s home with Amanda in tow, not surprisingly, causes every member of the household some degree of consternation.

“Well, what I say is that to set poor Hetty beside that bird of paradise is to ruin any chance she might have had!”

Lady Widmore to her father-in-law, the Earl of Brancaster, Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin, Pan, 1972, p.63.

An offer of marriage

Sir Gareth’s intentions in offering marriage to Hester are entirely honourable and, to his mind, entirely sensible. His older brother has been killed at Salamanca and Gareth has since accepted that it is his responsibility to marry and have children to carry on the family name. He is not looking for love as, since the death of his fiancée, Clarissa Lincombe, seven years earlier, he has never again felt that kind of passion for another woman. Hester Theale seems an excellent choice for many reasons: he has known her for years, they are good friends, he values and esteems her, she is one of those rare people who doesn’t shy away from mentioning Clarissa and he recognises that Hester is not, as he says, “valued as you should be; neither your comfort nor your sensibility is a matter of concern to any member of your family”. Gareth knows that he can offer Hester a better life with a home of her own, independence, respect and affection. He believes they could be happy together. It is a good plan – or it would be  – but for one problem. Unbeknown to Gareth, his proposal brings Hester only pain. Not merely because she must refuse him, but because it is the very thing for which she has longed but which she has always known to be impossible. The reality is that Lady Hester Theale is in love with Sir Gareth Ludlow and would sooner die than ever let him know her true feelings. She is convinced that he can never love her and it is because she loves him that she must refuse his offer of marriage. As if to corroborate her decision, when Gareth rescues Amanda and brings the pretty, spirited young lady to Brancaster Park and tells Hester that Amanda reminds him of Clarissa, Hester is convinced that he and Amanda will fall in love and this becomes another irrefutable reason for her to turn him down.

“I haven’t come to you, dreaming of Clarissa!” “

I know – oh, I know!” she said, in a shaking voice. “But you don’t care for me.” “

You are mistaken: I have a very great regard for you.”

“Ah, yes! And I for you,” she said, with a pitiful attempt at a smile. “I think – I hope – that you will meet someone one day whom you will be able to love with all your heart. I beg of you, say no more!”

Sir Gareth and Lady Hester in Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin, Pan, 1972, p.72-73.

The 2004 Arrow edition of Sprig Muslin.

“Georgette Heyer is playing games with her fans again, offering runaway Amanda’s romantic story, gently mocked, as counterpoint to Sir Gareth’s gradual falling in love with Hester.”

Jane Aiken Hodge, The Private World of Georgette Heyer,The Bodley Head, 1984, p.117.

Lady Hester to the rescue

“I never meant to shoot him, I swear!”

“Oh, no, I am sure you could not have meant to!”

The middle of the novel deals with Amanda’s attempts to escape Sir Gareth but her tales of abduction and persecution come to a sudden end when her would-be rescuer, young Hildebrand Ross, acidentally shoots Gareth and almost kills him. Fortunately Amanda is quick-witted enough to save him, but consequent events compel her to entreat Hildebrand to seek out Lady Hester and bring her to the small inn where Sir Gareth is laid up. The ensuing chapters relate Hester’s gradual emergence into the woman so long suppressed. Here, Heyer is writing at the top of her game and the scene where Hildebrand arrives at Brancaster Park and must explain all to Hester is superbly executed. At no point in the novel does Heyer falter in her rendering of Lady Hester, who, while retaining all of her characteristic mannerisms and uncertainties, gradually finds the inner strength to act in support of the man she loves. Hester’s evolution is a master-class in character development and the last quarter of the novel is one of the most satisfying in the Heyer canon. One of Hester’s most endearing traits is her innate honesty and this leads to some very funny and memorable moments. And it is not only the reader to whom the real Hester is gradually revealed, but also to Sir Gareth. She attends him at his sickbed and little by little he becomes aware of the woman he has long thought of as a friend who, as he himself says, “Do you know, Hester, in all these years I have held you in esteem and regard, yet I never knew you until we were pitchforked into this fantastic imbroglio? Certainly Amanda is wonderful! I must be eternally grateful to her!”

“The concluding scenes show her writing at the top of her form, combining high comedy with strong feeling, and leave one with the kind of satisfaction one gets only from the best, from a Shakespeare comedy or a Mozart opera.”

Jane Aiken Hodge, The Private World of Georgette Heyer, The Bodley Head, 1984, p.117.

One of the Georgette Heyer omnibuses

“Her virtues as a story teller are many. As a plotter she has no superior. She has a masterful hand with two character types that will remain irresistible as long as people read: the fascinating rake who is as much villain as hero and the magnificent girl who is always ready to cope with men on their own terms. Miss Heyer is wise enough to stick to Regency England (what novelist could exaggerate the careers of Beau Brummell or Lord Byron?), and she is tasteful enough to puncture with a single flash of wit every situation that builds up to intolerable sentimentality. There is no reason to suspect the scholarship in her picture of her chosen period, and, indeed, it is altogether possible that she conveys the spirit of those times more ably than many a serious historian.”

J.H. Durston, House & Garden, (USA), October 1956, p.3.

Bath Tangle – “it all ends Happily”

“I had a run through Bath Tangle, and found it (like Old Mr Bronte) much better than likely”

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 13 September 1954.

The 1955 Heinemann first edition of Bath Tangle with its elegant (and accurate) cover by Barbosa.“a rough idea of the thing”

Georgette Heyer’s 41st novel, The Toll-Gate appeared on the bookstands in July 1954. Never one to rest on her laurels, she had already begun to evolve ideas for her next novel. Aware of the benefits of serialisation in Woman’s Journal in the months prior to her next book’s publication, on 4 July 1954, Georgette wrote to Louisa Callender at Heinemann to tell her about her plans for her new Regency novel. It was still in its early stages and the first chapters were, she confessed, “in a mess, and must be altered”. Georgette was always her own harshest critic and, reading the rest of her letter to Louisa, it is hard to believe that this negative assessment of her early chapters was accurate. In her usual inimitable style, she actually had the story well in hand and what she would call “a rough idea of the thing” would, in fact, be a remarkably accurate synopsis of the novel to come. As she told Louisa, in relation to letting the editor of Woman’s Journal, Dorothy Sutherland (the S.B.), know what she had in mind and in order to help the magazine’s illustrator, Georgette wrote:

I can, however, give her a rough idea of the thing – which I may well call Bath Tangle. It is all about the Lady Serena Carlow, only child of the Earl of Spenborough, deceased immediately before the book starts; and Ivo, Marquis of Rockingham, to whom she was once betrothed, with whom she quarrels on the smallest provocation, and who (to her wrath) is left Trustee to her fortune. He is very Heyer-hero. Opening chapter – in case the S.B. wants to set the artist to work at once – is at the Family Seat, Serena and her very young stepmother, Emily, discovered awaiting return of Funeral Party, for the reading of the Will. Serena, about 25, queenly, beautiful, and red-headed; Emily, a diaphanous and appealing blonde. (They have to be like that, so that each can look terrific in mourning. Emily, being a matron, would wear a cap, with black ribbons. Serena not.) Rockingham, tall, very dark and saturnine, very well-dressed, about 38-40. Also present, at the Reading, the said Marquis, the lawyer, the new Earl – a dim cousin – and Emily’s father, harassed. Probably others, but they’re still subject to change, and aren’t wanted in a picture. Serena, NOT having been informed of Rockingham’s trusteeship, is indignant – which would make a good picture. “You? My father cannot have been in the possession of his senses!” Well! – After a few months (glossed over) at the Dower House, Emily and Serena remove to Bath. Here, Serena meets the love of her youth, Major Hector Kirkby, a handsome, serious, and romantic type. They soon become engaged – before, in fact, the Major has realized that the gentle Emily is far more his type. Upon learning these tidings, Rockingham (an impulsive creature, one feels! He has an ill-governed temper, of course) announces his engagement to Miss Anne Laleham, a pretty nit-wit, whose slightly parvenu mother has been angling for him for months. But Rockingham has a tiresome and passionate ward, a young cousin (Gerard Monksleigh) who is – or fancies he is – madly in love with Anne. And Anne has a colossally wealthy, and wonderfully vulgar maternal grandmother, who lives in Bath – Mrs Prawle – who is going to play a large part. Also there is Mr Elphin, about whom I as yet know little, but who (I think) is going to nip Anne off under the noses of both her pretendants, with granny’s connivance. Mr Elphin, I fancy, is in Trade, but I haven’t met him yet. Yes, I know it stinks, but it won’t by the time I’ve done with it! My heroine has a lively sense of humour, and I can see some nice scenes blowing up. And – you’d never guess! – it all Ends Happily, with Serena marrying the disagreeable Ivo, and Emily the kind and considerate Hector, and Anne and Mr Elphin. At least— so I think at present!

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 4 July 1954.

The 1968 Pan edition of Bath TangleThe 1971 Pan edition of Bath TangleHeyer loved these accurate and elegant covers for her novels.Depth of character

Georgette’s enlightening account of her new novel proved to be remarkably accurate, although she did make some changes, mostly involving her characters’ names. Emily became Fanny; Anne became Emily (aka Emma), Mrs Prawle became Mrs Floore; Mr Elphin became Mr Goring, and most importantly of all, The Marquis of Rockingham became the Marquis of Rotherham. What does not appear in Heyer’s Bath Tangle synopsis is the depth of character which she achieved in the final book. There are elements of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew here, with a strong-minded heroine in the ironically named Serena, and a determined and devious Marquis in Ivo Barrasford. Each is highly intelligent, supremely confident and, to some extent, emotionally constrained. Each also has a temper and, like Katherina and Petruchio in the Shrew, Serena and Ivo (I love that their names also end in “a” and “o”) strike sparks off each other at almost every encounter. A few years earlier they had been engaged to be married until Serena “discovered him to be unendurable”. She creates a minor scandal by crying off from the marriage, but Serena and Ivo still manage to remain friends. Though they are quarrelsome and neither shies away from an argument, the two have much in common: they inhabit the same social world, share many interests – including politics and affairs of state – and they have a similar sense of humour. In short they are made for each other.

The 1967 edition naming Georgette Heyer as the “Queen of the Regency Romance” – a title she would likely not have enjoyed.A clever tangle

That Ivo and Serena belong together is not clear at the outset, however, and Heyer creates a clever tangle in the novel of both people and emotions before their destiny becomes obvious – especially to Serena. Bath Tangle is a book replete with emotion and Heyer herself recognised it as a love-story rather than an adventure story. Her own concept of real love was not the romantical, idealised, fairy-tale variety, such as Fanny, Serena’s youthful mama-in-law, and Hector, Serena’s former lover and now fiance, aspire to, rather Heyer believed that real love was based on friendship, honesty and mutual interest. This is what Georgette had with Ronald and, while she may have felt passion and experienced romantic love in her youth, she had long since concluded that that kind of worshipful love, blind adoration and idealistic romance were not the best basis for a long-lasting, meaningful relationship. There is a strong core of realism in Bath Tangle and Heyer does not shrink from depicting two very human people in Serena and Ivo. Indeed it is this that makes the novel well worth a close read.

A wonderful new audio is available read by the talented Poppy Gilbert.No saint, Ivo

Ivo, the Marquis of Rotherham, is no saint and yet, although Serena has long since decided that she and Ivo will not suit, her father believed they belonged together. Consequently, Lord Spenborough made his will so that, at his death, Ivo should be named Trustee of Serena’s immense fortune with the power to withholdthat fortune should she marry against his wishes. Heyer’s handling of this cliched scenario is masterful and a close reading (or a keen listen to the new audiobook read by the excellent Poppy Gilbert) reveals two very human characters. Not all readers enjoy the flaring tempers in Bath Tangle, but Ivo and Serena are both realistic and they prove to be the perfect foils for the other, less assertive, characters in the novel with whom their lives become entangled. Georgette was well into writing Bath Tangle when she realised that she had misnamed her hero. Names mattered enormously to her because her characters formed the foundation of every book. She would spend hours playing patience or doing a complicated jigsaw (without a picture for guidance or even a straight border) while she worked out exactly who would populate her story. Because her characters lived for her, their names became an intrinsic part of their identity. Thus, to have to alter a character’s name midway through her story, was deeply disconcerting.

I’ve called my Heyer-Hero the Marquis of Rockingham, quite forgetting that very dim Prime Minister, who died in 1782 (I think) and was the second and last M. of R. It won’t do to use that title, and it cost me hours of thought and research to find another. Which probably sounds peculiar to you, even frivolous, but – you see – I don’t choose names lightly, and once named I can’t see a character under any other name! I tried to keep it as close as possible, but nothing in the style of Rockington, or Rockinghurst, “did” at all, and I’ve at last changed the gentleman’s title to Rotherham. I suppose I shall get used to it in time. He looks like a stranger to me at the moment.

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 30 July 1954.

St Ivo of Kermatin is St. Ivo is the patron saint of lawyers, judges, orphans and widows.

Heyer did not need to alter the Marquis’s Christian name, however, and it is likely her sense of humour that prompted her to name her hero Ivo. St Ivo of Kermartin was the patron saint of lawyers, judges, orphans and widows. One suspects that Georgette’s husband, Ronald, as her first reader, would have chuckled over the subtle reference, perhaps meant as a tribute to him and his achievements as a lawyer. The novel also contains a widow in Fanny and an orphan in Serena which makes the connection to St Ivo even more apposite! By the end of July 1954 Georgette had made substantial progress with the book and decided that “I rather think the fans are going to like it, though it isn’t adventurous”.

Georgette in Lady Serena Carlow?

For the knowing reader there are decided authobiographical elements in Bath Tangle. Like Serena, Georgette had also lost her father much too early. Though it was almost thirty years since George Heyer had died so suddenly, Georgette had never forgotten the father who had meant so much to her. Just as Lord Spenborough was friend and companion to his daughter, so too was George Heyer to Georgette. Years later she recalled that he had been “more like a brother than a father” and his death, so shockingly sudden on 16 June 1925, had delivered to Georgette a terrible blow from which she never fully recovered.

“The fact was that the dawdling life in Bath suited Serena no better than life at the Dower House. Mingled with the ache in her heart for the loss of one who had been more a companion than a father, was a restlessness, a yearning for she scarcely knew what, which found its relief in gallops over the surrounding countryside.”

Georgette Heyer, Bath Tangle, Pan, 1974, p.70.

Her father had returned home after playing tennis with her then-fiancé, Ronald, and had dropped dead in front of his beloved daughter. Two years later, when she finally began writing again, Georgette described a daughter’s suffering in her most autobiographical novel, Helen. Helen’s father has died suddenly and she is struck by “a grief so huge, so devastating” that it leaves her unable to speak about her loss. This was Heyer’s own reaction and one she depicts with real pathos in Bath Tangle. Never one to wear her heart on her sleeve, in her own life Georgette kept her deepest and most painful hurts to herself. Sylvia Gamble, who had been her secretary during the writing of An Infamous Army, later noted that neither she nor Georgette ever got over their respective father’s deaths. Georgette had talked a great deal about her father to Sylvia – something she was not inclined to do with many people – and it was clear that her father had meant the world to her and that his death had left a void in her life. The parallels between Georgette and Lady Serena Carlow in Bath Tangle are obvious and it is here, more than in any other of her historical novels, that Heyer’s own reaction to death and loss is so intimately articulated.

“I have not learned yet not to miss Papa. Don’t let us speak of that! You know how it is with me! I don’t care to talk of what so much affects me, and making a parade of grief is of all things the most repugnant to me.”

Georgette Heyer, Bath Tangle, Pan, 1974, p.82.

The 2004 Arrow edition of Bath Tangle.Comic brilliance

Though there is suffering in the novel there is also sparkling humour and comic brilliance and this especially well reflected in the character of Mrs Floore. Described by Jane Aiken Hodge as one of Heyer’s “best vulgarians” she steals the spotlight whenever she appears. Heyer loved writing these sorts of characters but she also shows, via Serena’s friendship with Mrs Floore and Rotherham’s keen interest in the lady, the true nature of class. Despite her aristocratic standing, Serena does not disdain Mrs Floore’s friendship but, liking the older woman and admiring her honesty and strength, appreciates her at her true value. There is a clear contrast in the novel between the supposed vulgarity of Mrs Floore (because of her “trade” background) and the real vulgarity of her far more aristocratic daughter, Lady Laleham. Like Austen, Heyer recognised the difference. Mrs Floore is a worthwhile person: honourable, honest, kind and caring, without airs or snobbery; Lady Laleham is the opposite – a snobbish social-climber who, for Georgette, epitomises the worst kind of vulgarity. Bath Tangle is a clever novel, which Heyer finished in just eight weeks! She was a true literary savant, with a genius for creating living, breathing characters and compelling plots, and Bath Tangle is a delightful read (or listen).

“In the newest of her Regency harlequinades, Bath Tangle, the indefatigable Georgette Heyer rings a variation on the familiar triangle. Instead of three lovelorn characters she uses three mixed-up couples who can’t get themselves sorted out till the last suspenseful pages”

A.F.W. “Funat the Spa” in Saturday Review, 3 September 1955, p.32.

A tribute to Georgette Heyer who died on 4 July 1974

[We] remember instead the long years of happiness we found in our intimate friendship with her; full of light, laughter and the joy of living.

A.S. Frere to Richard Rougier, letter, July 1974

47 Years ago…

This Sunday, 4 July 2021, marks 47 years since Georgette Heyer died. At the time of her death, she was selling over a million books a year in paperback and was known and loved around the world. Today, she is still selling and a new generation of readers is discovering her clever, witty romances and comedies of manners

The last ten years of Georgette’s life were not easy. She was often ill and in 1959 had undergone surgery for a benign tumour in her breast. In 1964 she had a far more serious operation to remove a large kidney stone. In the 1960s this sort of was very serious and Georgette spent a month in hospital, followed by weeks in a convalescence home. The operation left her weak and exhausted, with a fifteen-inch long incision in her torso. Over the next few years, despite suffering from a range of health issues, she continued writing. Between 1965, when she published the hugely successful Frederica, and her death in 1974 she managed to write four more novels, including the very funny Black Sheep, the Gothic Cousin Kate, the charming (if slightly tired), Charity Girl, and the poignant (if you read it closely) Lady of Quality. She was still smoking sixty cigarettes a day and there seems to have been no suspicion among her family and friends or her doctors that she had cancer.

By May 1974, however, Georgette was in so much pain that she could no longer write. After days of agony, her doctor finally had her admitted to Guy’s Hospital. Over the next few weeks Georgette underwent a barrage of tests and at last lung cancer was diagnosed. She longed to go home, but it was impossible. All that could be done was to alleviate her pain. Every afternoon and evening Ronald sat by her bed waiting for the moments when his beloved Georgette would emerge from the fog of pain-relieving drugs and know that he was there. He was by her side when on the 4th of July 1974, Georgette Heyer died.

Georgette Heyer in the garden of Dromoland Castle , County Clare, Ireland in 1965.“Not by inches”

A few months before her untimely death, Georgette had written to her friend and former agent, Joyce Weiner, that

‘I never wanted to live (as too many of my forebears have) to a very unripe old age, & my hope now is that I may go quickly, & NOT by inches.’ A moment later she looked from her window and added ‘The sun has now pierced through the lowering cloud, & I instantly feel a bit better.’

Georgette Heyer to Joyce Weiner, letter, 1974

In their own words

Though she was a very private person, Georgette Heyer was loved by those who knew her. In 1982, Heyer’s first biographer, Jane Aiken Hodge, interviewed as many people as she could find who had known Georgette. Among her research folders are Jane’s notes from those interviews. While a few of these people are well known, there a some who are not. What follows is an account, much of it in their own words, of the woman known to the world as “Georgette Heyer”, but to those who knew and loved her, as Georgette or “George”.

Georgette Heyer in 1925 the year she published her first novel with Heinemann. In 1937 A.S. Frere of Heinemann would become her close friend and mentor.“A very private person” – A.S. Frere

Georgette was a very private person. Her first book with Heinemann was Simon the Coldheart in 1925. She was very discouraged in the 1920s and wanted to give up. She was sensitive and cared very much about her writing and felt she was making no progress. These Old Shades was her first success. It earned her a wide and faithful following of fans who waited for a book a year. She was a woman of strong prejudices and a compulsive writer; she had to be writing something, even if it was only letters. She wrote long, personal letters to Frere. She was massively intelligent and handsome rather than beautiful. Tall, upright, and hated exercise. She had [what Frere described as] masculine tastes and loved cricket, about which she knew a lot. Georgette understood women very well, but didn’t always like them. She had a few close female friends such as Frere’s wife, Pat Wallace, with whom Georgette was very close, and yet she was [according to Frere] “an intensely feminine writer”. Georgette had an acute sense of humour and was witty both in conversation and in her letters. She talked about the Heyer hero, whom the fans would love, describing them as Mark I and Mark II. She would have liked to have been a serious historian and admired and envied her friend Carola Oman. She would have liked to have had Carola’s qualifications. Frere compared her to P G Wodehouse, who was written off by the intelligentsia, but has now been re-evaluated. Frere felt that the same thing would happen to Heyer. Georgette was a perfectionist and, above all, “a gentleman”. She was ruthless to anyone whom she felt fell short of the gentleman’s code and thought manners enormously important. She was the antithesis of a snob; she put in the aristocrats for her fans which is partly why she [overtly] despised her work. All writers long to be appreciated. It’s the most lonely job. She was amusing, with a direct way of talking and a strong sense of humour. She was a powerful woman at the centre of a group of males and a strict old-fashioned High Tory like Dr Johnson. She was never difficult to deal with. Totally cooperative, so you had to be careful not to ask too much of her. Somerset Maugham was also like this. She said that writing the book was her affair and publishing it was his. She always said that the characters took over her books which Frere recognised as the sign of a real writer. She could be combative but not quarrelsome and she hated scenes.

A.S. Frere in conversation with Jane Aiken Hodge, 1982

Edgar Wallace who wrote King Kong among many other titles, was the father of Patricia Wallace, Georgette Heyer’s great friend.Pat Wallace, Georgette Heyer & Frere at the Heinemann garden party in 1952Georgette Heyer had a small circle of close and valued friends.“A wonderful woman and friend” – Pat Wallace

Georgette was a wonderful woman and friend. She and Pat often lunched together and laughed all the time. She spoke with style, with elegantly turned phrases, in a good clear voice. She had exquisite, faultless manners and her style of living was old-fashioned with Victorian taste. She dressed well – always impeccable – and her Achilles’ heel was hats. She always wore them. Her hat, shoes, and gloves were always perfect and very expensive. She also liked showy jewellery and got away with it. She didn’t talk about her books which Pat Wallace loved. Pat always said that “as with Jane Austen, if you read Georgette Heyer too quickly, you miss the humour. You must read every word.” She did love having fans, despite the grumbles. Georgette was the easiest possible person to deal with. A real gentleman but one mustn’t ask too much of her because she would try to do it. She had no feet of clay but was a perfectly poised person, en rapport with life. A remarkable human being whom it was a privilege to know.

Patricia Wallace, the daughter of Edgar Wallace, who wrote King Kong, was married to A.S. Frere and was Georgette’s great friend, in conversation with Jane Aiken Hodge, 1982

All those who knew her agreed that Georgette was an elegant woman. Here she is with Ronald at their son’s wedding in 1962.“Elegant, formidable, imperious but immensely kind” – John Smith

“She was elegant, formidable, imperious but immensely kind to a shy young man. She was basically shy under a formidable exterior. She needed a more positive personality than L.P. Moore as her agent. Georgette was imperious but couldn’t have been nicer. She gave him a warm welcome. She was a friendly gossip (slightly name dropping) about her Albany neighbours such as Terrence Rattigan and Noel Coward. She was charming, handsome, in command, yet want encouragement as an author – though they all do, e.g. Catherine Cookson. Georgette grew tired of being treated as an 18th-century romantic novelist – as a Jane Austen pastiche – and wanted to be treated as a serious novelist. If only someone had said she was a superb stylist – the best kind of writer of that kind of book there is. She wanted the best of both worlds: to sell like popular and be treated with respect. Georgette Heyer was insecure, warm-hearted and delightful but the mask took over in later life. One couldn’t help but feel warm to her. John Smith remembered her with immense kindness.”

John Smith who joined the literary agency, Christy & Moore, not long before Georgette left C&M and visited Georgette at Albany, in conversation with Jane Aiken Hodge, 1982

Georgette at Blackthorns in the 1930s. Sylvia Gamble stayed at Blackthorns while typing An Infamous Army for Georgette.“A beautiful brain” – Sylvia Gamble

As a young woman in 1936 Sylvia Gamble worked as a secretary to Georgette Heyer. Heyer had recently completed her Waterloo novel, An Infamous Army, which she had written in “meticulous longhand” and now needed someone to type the manuscript for her publisher. Sylvia stayed at Blackthorns, Heyer’s house in Toat Hill, Sussex, for several weeks. Each day  Georgette would read her manuscript aloud, complete with punctuation, to Sylvia’s fast shorthand; Sylvia would then type up the large number of copies needed. In 1982, Sylvia related her memories of Georgette to Jane Aiken Hodge:

“Georgette Heyer had a beautiful brain; an ordered intellectual apparatus. She loved meticulous research and was a compulsive writer. She had an immense amount of knowledge at her fingertips and she her writing poured out. She had “immense fluency” and “she could make characters live.” She was an enormously stimulating companion with a sharp wit, but not a sharp tongue. Once, when dictating to Sylvia she described the girl in An Infamous Army as “dreaming of bridals” and Sylvia took this as “bridles”. Georgette hooted with laughter. Sylvia found Georgette to be a marvellous companion. They made friends and there was nothing “upstage” about Georgette, even though Sylvia was years younger. Georgette did not feel herself too important to make and keep friends and they remained friends for many years and Sylvia and her husband visited Georgette at Albany and Georgette and Ronald visited them . Sylvia found Ronald a “lovely man”, nice and understanding and obviously devoted to Georgette. He was “good with her”, “marvellous” “let he be her full self” and did not put pressure on her. Like Sylvia, Georgette had adored her father and spoke about him often to the younger girl. When Sylvia’s father died in 1944, Georgette wrote her a “splendid letter” in which she confessed that “a girl never gets over her father’s death”. Sylvia saw Ronald after Georgette’s death and described him as “a shattered man”. He had adored his wife.

Sylvia Heyman nee Gamble in conversation with Jane Aiken Hodge, 1982

Max Reinhardt, CEO of The Bodley Head, who thought the world of Georgette. His firm published her last seven books including the posthumous, My Lord John.“I loved her very much” – Max Reinhardt

Georgette gave good parties but she enjoyed her own more than other people’s. She was shy, but a good hostess. She was a nice woman who had to have a personal relationship with her publisher. She led a totally disciplined life. She didn’t despise anyone but disliked gushing fans. She never gave autographs and made a point of being Mrs Rougier and never Georgette Heyer. Georgette Heyer was one of the few authors – along with Graham Greene – for whom Max felt a personal responsibility. She was a very positive person. She didn’t care about honours, certainly didn’t canvas for them. She liked to give small delicious dinner parties for friends with caviar from Fortnum’s. When looking for a new place to live she had to have room to have her desk and her books around her. She pressed herself to deadlines. Would apologise: “I promised you the book on Monday and I’m afraid it won’t be until Tuesday.” She was an absolute darling; a marvellous professional. She hated publicity though; she wouldn’t expose herself. “I loved her very much. So did my wife. She was American, but Georgette loved her.” Georgette was old-fashioned and hated to be in debt. It was neat not to owe money and she had a neat mind. She never turned in a book until it was perfect.

Max Reinhardt, CEO of The Bodley Head, Georgette’s last publisher, in conversation with Jane Aiken Hodge, 1982.

Georgette Heyer created the Regency world that has become the template for hundreds of authors. She set the gold standard of excellence in Regency fiction. Georgette Heyer’s Literary Legacy Endures

In her fifty-year career Georgette Heyer wrote fifty-five novels and never had a failure. With the exception of the five books she repressed, all of her titles are still in print. She wrote across several different genres and historical periods but it is with the English Regency that her name has become synonymous. Today she is recognised as the creator of the Regency genre of historical fiction and her books are held up as the template for the hundreds of authors who have been inspired by and imitated her novels ever since. IAlthough the Regency world she created was faithful in its historical detail it was also a carefully constructed world which reflected the Victorian and Edwardian values, ideas and social mores with which she had been raised. Georgette felt at home in the Regency because it was an era which reached forward into her childhood and writing about it enabled her to escape to a time which felt safe, comfortable and familiar. In the twenty-first century it is her version of the Regency which has set the standard for research, writing and the re-creation of the period against which all other such novels are judged. It is her Regency world that has inspired the likes of Bridgerton and which is reflected in the thousands of Regency novels read and loved by an audience wanting more. Since her death no one has matched her and Georgette Heyer’s literary legacy endures.

The Toll-Gate – A ripping yarn! Part 2

I’ve got to go on with the Toll-Gate. I like this book…

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 20 October 1953

Mystery solved! Thank you all

In last week’s blog, I asked my wonderful readers for help in deciphering a word – circled below – in Georgette Heyer’s letter outlining her new book, The Toll-Gate. Many readers kindly responded and several clever detectives sent me the answer to this long-held mystery! My heartfelt thanks to all who took the time to figure it out! I am very grateful to Kay Saunders, Anne Gracie, Sue Foster, Joanne Crawley and several other kind readers who suggested that it was a person’s name or that the name was “Ambrose”. It is indeed Ambrose, and it turns that Georgette Heyer had originally intended him to be one of her hero’s many cousins. Reading the published novel, it seems that Ambrose turned into Arthur or, if she had originally intended him to be the villain, he became Lucius Staple – the villain who would never be seen again! It is so good to finally see the word for what it is! I am truly grateful.

The mystery word is no longer a mystery!Begun in October finished in December

Georgette Heyer began writing The Toll-Gate in October 1953 with a fair idea of what the book was to be about. It would centre around her “big, handsome” hero, Captain John Staple, recently home from the Napoleonic Wars. The book opens with John unhappily present at a large family gathering to celebrate his cousin, the Sixth Earl of Saltash’s, recent betrothal to the “colourless” Lady Charlotte Calne. Surrounded by a set of mostly tedious relatives, John is bored and after a day and a night with his extended family decides to escape. He makes his apologies to his mother, and sets off alone on horseback to visit a friend in Leicestershire some sixty miles away. And with that, the set up of Georgette’s first chapter, goes no further! The rest of the novel is set in Derbyshire and the reader never again sees any of the first chapter’s characters! Of course, this was not Georgette’s original vision – she had meant to bring at least one of John’s nefarious relatives back into the story. His cousin, Lucius Staple, was to have been – beneath his veneer of smiling amiability – an out-and-out villain determined to win for himself the Earldom that, unbeknowns to John, had become his, thanks to the accidental death of the Sixth Earl, his cousin Bevis. This plot-line did not develop, however, and the author’s plan to alter the first chapter accordingly, also never came to fruition.

William Heinemann, publisher. Louisa Callender was originally his secretary but she eventually became a Director of the publishing firm.The formidable Louisa Callender

It was to Miss Louisa Callender of Heinemann that Georgette wrote her long letter outlining the details of her new book (see here) to be called The Toll-Gate. Rather like Georgette herself, Miss Callender was efficient, extremely competent and a formidable personality. Originally secretary to William Heinemann himself, by 1953 she had been with the publishing firm for several decades (Heinemann had died in 1920) and had slowly made her way up the corporate ladder until eventually, during the Second World War, she was made a director. No one knew more about the firm or the business than Miss Callender. She and Georgette Heyer first began corresponding in 1943 and, within a few years, Georgette had moved from writing to “Dear Miss Callender” to writing to “Dear Louisa” and frequently including in her letters some of the personal, everyday details of her life. It is not entirely clear if Miss Callender enjoyed Georgette’s forthright, sometimes stream-of-consciousness style of writing, but by now Georgette Heyer was one of Heinemann’s star authors and supporting her was a priority for the staff. If there is sometimes a sense in her letters that the perceptive Miss Callender did not always enjoy Miss Heyer’s very direct way of writing, this is perhaps not surprising given that they were each very strong-minded. Louisa was always cordial, however, and the letters between the two offer today’s readers a priceless insight into Georgette’s writing life, her ideas, anxieties and achievements, and for this we must be thankful.

What follows is the rest of the story of The Toll-Gate, told through Georgette Heyer’s letters to her friend and associate at Heinemann, the redoubtable Miss Louisa Callender.

The 1971 Pan edition of The Toll-Gate with a cover of which Georgette would have approved.“A fast worker”

Over the next few weeks, as Georgette wrote The Toll-Gate, she wrote often to Louisa Callender about the book and her hope that Miss Sutherland, the editor of Woman’s Journal, would take it as a serial prior to the book’s publication. It was common in this era for authors to have their novels serialised in magazines as a way of hooking and growing their audience. Georgette initially expected £2000 for the serial rights but this would prove to be a misunderstanding. Georgette’s relationship with that other formidable female, Miss Sutherland, (whom she always referred to as the S.B. – the “Sutherland Bitch”) was, for once, softened by the editor’s response to Georgette’s request for a shift in publication dates. I hope you enjoy the story of writingThe Toll-Gate from Georgette Heyer’s own letters.

A cold in my eustachian tubes, with accompanying facial neuralgia, has slightly impeded THE TOLL-GATE’S progress, but I appear today to be somewhat amended. I think this affliction must have been sympathetic: I left Captain Staple riding over the moors in pouring rain!

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 19 October 1953

Now, listen, Louisa! – I may be a fast worker, but I am not a sausage machine. I should think it extremely unlikely that I shall have anything for you to give the S.B. by next Thursday. In fact – which is what you really mean – by next Tuesday evening, when I should have to go through what I shall have written, and pack it up for posting on Wednesday. I’m not going to commit myself, and I hold out no hope. I might get a sudden rush of ink to the head, and knock off thousands of words, but I might not. Certainly not, if I were working to a time-limit like that. Quite paralysing! It is well known, amongst my entourage, that the surest way of making me put my typewriter into cold storage is to ask me How much I’ve written today, or Have I been writing today. I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a snag looming.

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 21 October 1953

The Worthy Toll-Gate in Somerset is rather more beautiful than the one Captain Staple manned in Derbyshire.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons: Julie Anne Workman.“The moon was wrong”

Sorry, I must have misunderstood you! I had it fixed in my head that you’d told me the S.B. had said she’d pay £2000 for the next period romance she accepted. Of course, if this is still a moot point I quite see that it would be nice for you to have something to bargain with. The trouble is I’m not at all sure that twenty or thirty thousand words of a book where the adventure piles up bit by bit is a very good bargaining handle. I’ll see what I can do for you, but I still can’t promise you anything. For one thing, I’m dissatisfied with the opening chapter (I think the moon was wrong when I began to write this book: I had trouble with it, and usually I don’t), and I must rewrite it. I’d rather do this when I’ve finished the whole, but if I get a bright idea I’ll see what can be done. For another thing, I loathe showing bits of my books. I have a way of opening rather quietly, which might well lead people who are given only two or three chapters to read to fear that it was going to be on the dull side. When the S.B. sees it as a whole, she’ll also see what can be cut for serial purposes, and she can’t possibly see that until she knows exactly What Happens Next

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 23 October 1953

Here it is: but will you tell the S.B. that I must have it back again, because I might want to alter things – quite small points, but it does happen. Such as realizing that I’ve made something happen on the wrong day, or set one house too far from another (both of which mistakes I’ve already had to rectify!) I don’t know what you or the S.B. will think of the synopsis – and I’d better say now that it might not work out quite like that. In fact, I’ve already changed my mind about Henry’s end: Chirk shall do him in.

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 16 November 1953

The 2005 Arrow edition of The Toll-Gate. Though I love the gentleman’s top-boots I have to wonder who this is meant to be It cannot be John Staple or the dreadful Henry or the bed-ridden Sir Peter. Perhaps it is meant ot be Sir Peter in his younger, more athletic years?From Miss Sutherland

“We are all enjoying the new Heyer very much indeed and I personally am looking forward immensely to the next and final instalment! It is an unusual experience for me to find myself in the position of a ‘serial’ reader and what a maddening time they have wanting to know what happens next! The synopsis alarmed me a little from the serial point of view, for a character is brought in only once right at the opening before he appears in the final chapters in the important role of would-be murderer. Would Miss Heyer consider introducing him again at least once or twice more in the middle part of the book? Of course this may be her intention already as a synopsis is often misleading.”

Dorothy Sutherland (Editor of Woman’s Journal), cited by Louisa Callender in a letter to Georgette Heyer, 4 December 1953

A replica of a toll-gate ticket – this one for the road leading to the village of Crafthole in Cornwall, England. Doubts and a long, long, letter!

It was not until December, when she had finished writing The Toll-Gate that Georgette began to have concerns about the publishing schedule for the book. Money had long been a major preoccupation for her because for years her advances and her royalties had been a major source of the family’s income. Throughout the 1930s, she had regularly earned two advances in a year plus royalties, but from 1944 she was mostly writing just one book a year and receiving the usual twice-yearly royalty payments. What follows is a long (long) letter explaining her doubts about the plans for serialising The Toll-Gate. I think it is worth quoting it in full because it reveals so much about Georgette’s money worries, her plans for her writing and her expectations for her book:

I have been thinking rather seriously about our conversation on the telephone yesterday, and I am afraid you are not going to approve at all of what I am now going to say to you. I only wish I could have had it all worked out before your meeting today, when I think you told me this matter was to be settled.

Baldly, I can’t agree to the autumn-publication of TOLL-GATE. I know from past experience that to miss a season is suicidal, and I am looking to the future rather than to the immediate gain of extra cash from serialization. Not that I think the loss of this is a foregone conclusion by any means. I do think (with respect!) that it would be a mistake to hand the S.B. an autumn-publication date. Why hand her any date at all? Ask her when she means to run the thing – and then say, Oh, no, that won’t do! It is nonsense for her to say that after all she didn’t get the typescript until December – if she does say this. She has known ever since October, when I started to write the thing, and told you to warn her of it, that it was coming to her before the end of the year, and I know very well she mentally accepted it then. She turned the thriller down, and she won’t turn down a romance, unless it stinks to high heaven, which we already know it doesn’t – in her nostrils. She is not proposing to bring it out in her monthly paper, but in a weekly one, which considerably reduces the time factor. I don’t really like coming out in her nasty weekly paper, but I’ve acquiesced –- and one acquiescence per book is enough! Lord, yes! I’ve even offered to make a considerable cut to oblige her. I’m in danger of pampering the woman.

I am quite sure, myself, that I should stand fast on Frere’s original suggestion to me, that the book should be published in the summer – late June, I think, was the date he threw out in conversation with me. If the S.B. should say she can’t possibly do the serialization to fit in with this date, then I am very sorry, but must decline her offer altogether. From what I know of her, I think she’ll alter her plans. If she doesn’t, it’s a great pity, but whatever she pays me for the book wouldn’t compensate for the draught I should feel later on – indeed, now! – for I’m not going to demand a £3000 advance from Heinemann now for a book which won’t appear for a year. From both our points of view this would be insane.

I am aware that on the face of it I must sound equally insane to be prepared to turn down a sum between £1500 and £2000, but let me explain to you what’s in my mind!

If I consent to the autumn-date, I shall miss a season, for my thrillers are not my main source of income, and never will be. I don’t expect to see anything much in the way of royalties on the latest: I know that the one before just, and only just, earned more than the advance paid me on it, and I see no reason why this one should do much better. When I think of my earning-books, I am thinking of my period novels, and a glance at my accounts will furnish you with the reason. It is now almost a year since COTILLION came out; TOLL-GATE really ought to be published in the early spring, so that it can run a nice time before the accounts are made up at the end of June, thus ensuring me a large sum in the autumn. This can’t be, of course, but that’s no reason for thrusting that large sum farther away still. I know some at least of the sums the Inland Revenue is going to demand from me in the New Year, and I also know that the Sur-tax and the Company’s P.A.Y.E. will have to be paid before August. Setting aside the big end-of-the-year bills, which will have to be settled. If I grab at some sum in the region of £1500, what do I use for money until I call in the TOLL-GATE advance? The royalties I received last month were very large, but the spring ones won’t come near the same figure, since it was due in great part to COTILLION’S first earnings, and to the initial sales of the three thrillers you reissued. And there will be no possible way in which I could remedy the damage caused by my own lack of foresight. I should hamstring myself. I could without much trouble, turn out another period romance for publication in the spring, but you can see that that wouldn’t do at all. If Frere threw that out in May, he could hardly throw out TOLL-GATE five months later, and I certainly don’t want TOLL-GATE postponed until the spring after next. If I could write another thriller in a hurry (which I don’t really think is on the cards, for I turn faint at the thought) it would be equally foolish to put that out hard on the heels of DETECTION UNLIMITED. So there is nothing I can do to fill the gap, and the gap has got to be filled if I am not to find myself in dire straits in 1954 and 1955. You see, I fell into this trap once before in my career, and I know that the effects, not immediately visible, are cumulative and far-reaching. It is snatching at two birds in a bush instead of holding tight to the one in your hand. Even if you were to say to me, Detective fiction is different: do another for the spring! It wouldn’t solve the difficulty. Initially these books earn exactly half what my “real” books earn; after the first royalties, nothing approaching half. I regard them as a pleasant addition to my income, that’s all. And I find them damned hard to write.

My object in having written TOLL-GATE was to get ahead of myself (so to speak) so that I could with a quiet mind return to my big mediaeval book for the best part of next year. To do that I must make sure of royalties rolling in steadily. I had visualized the possibility of my having to break off for a couple of months to write a thriller for next autumn, just to tide me over, and to keep up the correct sequence. You must realize that there will be no question of serializing the mediaeval book. It will be immensely long, and (I imagine) quite unsuitable, I don’t expect to sell it in huge quantities in this country, though there is a distinct possibility that I might do so in the States. Purdy badgers me about it in every letter he writes to me, and I know that the Yanks have just discovered the Middle ages – but I’m not banking on any American sale, not having been born yesterday, but 51 years ago.

I don’t know if I’ve made my position clear to you: I hope so! It really boils down to this: I should find life a great deal easier if I could cash in £1500 on TOLL-GATE, over and above the advance; but that £1500 is not so vital to me as a book-publication in the first half of next year, and the £3000 you will pay me on receipt of the manuscript. Now, don’t, I beg of you, suggest that you should do this anyway, because for one thing it’s idiotic, and for another it doesn’t solve the main problem! I know already that the spring royalties won’t reach anything like the figure triumphantly achieved this year; I realize that the autumn ones won’t be anything outstanding wither (unless we reject the S.B. and publish in March, giving the book time to go its right length before June 30); and I’m damned if I’m going to see to it that this lag extends into 1955! That will finally put paid to my mediaeval book – and ask Frere if he wants that!

If the S.B. likes to go straight ahead, and serialize in time for a June publication, I should be perfectly content to accept £1500 – it’s money for old rope, after all! I did no extra work to earn it. If she doesn’t – well, I’m sorry, I shall perhaps find things a bit awkward in the immediate future, but I shall know that they’ll be fine by the time I receive the royalties you pay me in the autumn.

In case you should notice that I have left out of my calculations the American side of this, let me tell you that the royalties I get from Putnam’s are negligible, and don’t enter into any prognostication I may make, and that although Joyce has screwed Purdy up to a £1000 advance on the next book, this sum – which will take her months to wring from them – won’t compensate me for the time lag.

I’m sorry, and particularly so that I couldn’t collect my thoughts enough at the time to work this all out while I was talking to you yesterday. I was startled by the suggestion of an October publication, as you know, but I was in the middle of a chapter of TOLL-GATE, and was consequently unable to marshall my thoughts properly. I worked it all out in the small hours, in bed!

I am hell to do business with, aren’t I? I quite see it!

I shall try to have a word with Frere about all of this, but I don’t think anything he could say would make me change my mind. Do you remember telling me that the S.B. confided to you that she could not afford NOT to publish me serially? I suspect that if you make it plain to her that although I don’t in the least blame her for being unable to fall in with my plans I can’t fall in with hers and so must regretfully ask for the return of half a typescript, and she will do some hard thinking.

In  any event my mind is made up, which simplifies things – or so I have always found. Of two evils, choose the lesser, is my motto!

But I do apologize for not having leapt to all this as soon as you told me what your ideas were.

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 9 December 1053

The US Putnam 1954 first edition of The Toll-GateMiss Sutherland agrees

Miss Sutherland has agreed to July publication for the book. As I told you over the telephone, she offers £1500 for this book and definitely, £2000 for the next Regency book. I take it, therefore, that all is now well if we set our book publication for July.

Louisa Callender to Georgette Heyer, letter, 11 December 1953

Georgette is grateful

Many thanks for the typescript, and for your letter. That’s much better. A Regency romance published in July leaves the way open, at need, for a thriller in late autumn or the New Year. If I find myself obliged to embark on one, I’ll try to make it thrilling enough to serialize. Will you please tell the S.B. that I am most grateful to her for meeting me halfway, and have done what I can, by way of a quid pro quo, top meet her wishes with regard to the story itself? I have eliminated the succession, and the wicked cousin, and have reduced the book to more reasonable proportions. I think it is just under 100,000, and no doubt she will be able to cut quite a bit more, here and there. I don’t mind. Further tell her that while I think this must be, with all my cuts and crossings-out, the most revolting typescript she has ever received, I imagine she would rather have it now, as it stands, than later, beautifully retyped. It is quite clear, however uninviting.

Thank you for fighting this battle so successfully! Do you ever wish you had taken up cooking, or charring, or, in fact, anything other than dealing with Authors?

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 12 December 1953.

Georgette Heyer cared deeply about her writing.And now for the blurb…

Here is what our publicity people propose for the spring list. Do you approve?

Louisa Callender to Georgette Heyer, letter, 15 October 1953

I can’t say I’m mad cats about it, but I suppose it’ll do – now I’ve tinkered with it a little. “Handsome, tall Captain John Staple” made me feel unwell, besides being a false picture. I’ve altered it to “Big, handsome…” which also makes me feel unwell, but which at least conveys more of an impression of a man who probably weighed about fifteen stone, stripped! I’ve also knocked out “for the first time for many years.” Whoever wrote this got a bit muddled. No new coinage had been minted for some years, but we can’t talk of sovereigns and half-sovereigns being minted for the first time for many years, because they had never before been minted at all – as any number of Know-alls would be only too ready to point out to us.

Georgette Heyer to Louisa Callender, letter, 19 October 1953

The original Heinemann blurb for The Toll-Gate with corrections as per Georgette’s instructions.“Comic genius”

Once again Georgette Heyer has directed her comic genius along the fictional highway of 19th century England, but this time with a new twist. In The Toll-Gate, a fun, speckled piece with a more prosaic title than the action warrants, Mrs. [sic] Heyer abandons the courtly glitter of aristocratic London salons. Instead, she cleaves with refreshing persistence to the commoner levels of live flowing along one of the rural turnpikes of Regency England’

Henry Cavendish, “19th Century Upper-Crust Fun” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 19 September 1954.

The rather lovely spine of Arthur Barbosa’s 1954 first edition jacket for The Toll-Gate