Georgette Heyer Fans discussion
Group Reads
>
The Nonesuch Oct 2019 Group Read Spoiler Thread
Or having seen what the male gender has to offer and being disappointed, until finding, after all that time, a worthy match in Waldo, finally having hope, and then, perhaps so readily falling for the Big Misunderstanding because it was such a shock to find her gem among the marbles, she did doubt the realness of reality.
Critterbee❇ wrote: "Or having seen what the male gender has to offer and being disappointed, until finding, after all that time, a worthy match in Waldo, finally having hope, and then, perhaps so readily falling for t..."that's a good point, Critterbee, she must have felt like he was too good to be true and sort of braced to be disappointed.
I agree, Critterbee, the higher the stakes in love, the more likely we are to fear the worst and go running off with silly think-ups. I find the inconsistencies in Ancilla’s character more troubling than the Big Misunderstanding, but am not overly troubled by either.
Sorry, I was going a bit Cartland with my run-on sentence...
Critterbee❇ wrote: "Sorry, I was going a bit Cartland with my run-on sentence..."You didn't use enough ellipses to be doing a Cartland!
Barb in Maryland wrote: "Critterbee❇ wrote: "Sorry, I was going a bit Cartland with my run-on sentence..."You didn't use enough ellipses to be doing a Cartland!"
!! haha! :D
London is insanely expensive! And yes, foreign oligarchs (and presumably home-grown ones too!) are buying up property, then keeping it empty, simply for it to 'grow' in value as prices rise inexorably. They snap up new builds, and block 'locals' (Londoners) from even renting them, let alone buying them.It's the free market at its worst.
The thing is, though, that there is a lot of talk about 'social cleansing' when trying to argue that a lot of 'poorer' folk actually 'need' to be in London, but from a business point of view not many do. Yes, there are the 'key workers' and 'service industries' (which, basically are there, as the name says, to 'serve' those richer than them....eg, work in the supermarkets, be the nurses, etc etc!!!!!!), but other than that, to be brutal about it, if you are living on benefits (for whatever reason, eg, single mother)) there really isn't any point in living in London, and if I were a single mum its' the last place I'd want to bring up a child.
As I say, the real root cause is overpopulation, and until countries have a robust and sustainable 'population plan' it's not going to get sorted.
Re Mid-west winters....in a utopia (with not many people!!!!), I think everyone would end up having a summer residence and a winter one ...and the winter one wouldn't be the Midwest I suspect! (In fact, the one big problem for the USA, to my mind, is that there are very few places, if any, where you can have a pleasant climate for the majority of the year?) (There isn't in Europe, either, but I think you can have a pleasant climate here for more of the year than you can in the USA. In England, our 'horrible' months are Jan and Feb, plus possibly March. The rest of the time it is not too bad. There isn't really an 'ideal' geographical location though, is there, with a perfect year-round climate?
Urban regeneration is a tricky business - where it's worked in the UK, eg, Glasgow, Liverpool docks, it's usually because large amounts of government money (whether local or central government) has been injected.The sad thing is, though, that if you move the educated/professional/middle classes in, then the 'lower orders' move off somewhere else.
It's the old conundrum of whether slums make people or people make slums....difficult!
Mod
Yes, me too. I really like this book because I just like Waldo. He's kind, and thoughtful in small ways - to Charlotte about her fear of horses and to Humphrey Colebatch about his studies as well as to old Calver's neglected servants. He's been a bit of a lad in his youth, but he's grown out of all that and it doesn't even look as though he has mistresses any more. And once he realises what Ancilla's problem is, he sorts it out immediately, rather than stringing her along for his own amusement the way certain other gentlemen (view spoiler) do.
I find the ending a bit ... I don't know, 'tatty'. Tiffany has got just what she wanted, and has behaved extremely badly to get, in spite of our being told earlier on that the Burfords wouldn't be in London in July anyway. And there has been no development at all in her character: I would have liked to have seen her set on the path towards being a better person.
I'm also unsure about what's happening between Waldo and Laurie - when Laurie shouts that Waldo is a 'great gun', is he just talking about how sternly he's spoken to Tiffany, or are we to suppose that Waldo's remark about "If you expect to succeed as a horse-coper ..." means that Waldo has withdrawn his refusal to lend him the money? I really couldn't make it out. If he has, why has he?
What do you think future interactions between Ancilla, Waldo and Tiffany would be like? I assume they would greet each other, but perhaps not invite each other to visit or for house parties.
You don't think that Tiffany would start gossip about Ancilla, do you?
Mod
I guessed very early on that GH's own eyes were grey - and was tickled pink when I finally read the biography and found I was right! It's always the sensible, mature heroine that has the grey eyes.
You're right, Beth, that a pleasant climate year-round does contribute to the high real estate prices in certain parts of the U.S.--notably the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. But the real distortion of the market here comes in (and I suspect this is true of London as well) when foreign investors looking to move money out of their country into the USA--either for money-laundering purposes or simply because it's hard to take money out of some countries--buy real estate and just sit on it, not occupying it or renting it out. It's estimated that upwards of one-third of the apartments in the city of San Francisco are tied up in this way!
Jenny, what does 'bit of a lad' mean? I though lad meant young male, or male child, so I know I am missing something here, haha.
Critterbee, I suspect you're right that Tiffany would try to damage Ancilla's position in society by referring to her as her former governess. She would chafe at the idea of Ancilla holding a more prestigious position than her own. Unless she gets her Viscount, of course! Then all would be sunshine and butterflies!But in fact I doubt they will end up moving in the same circles in London, because the Burfords, though wealthy, are Cits.
Critterbee❇ wrote: "Jenny, what does 'bit of a lad' mean? I though lad meant young male, or male child, so I know I am missing something here, haha."Here in Ireland 'a bit of a lad' means a chancer or someone up for anything. Harmless stuff but not quite on the straight and narrow.
Ooh, more vocab! Chancer = bit of a lad = frat boy = bounder (maybe that is a more severe term?) = peep-of-day boy
Frisky, hey-go-mad, up for riot and rumpus . . .
...always ready for a bit of fun and gig...
Fun thread! I just barely finished; it was my second read. Interestingly, Tiffany bothered me much less than she did the first time around. I mean, I still think she’s horribly behaved, but it was fun to see Waldo and Ancilla manage her tantrums and excesses. The Big Misunderstanding is still an eye-roller: so very unlikely, both the way it came about and that Ancilla wouldn’t be willing to be more forthcoming about her issues with him. But at least it didn’t drag on too long. And I admire Waldo for not giving up or going away mad. He was determined to get to the bottom of it.I have a soft spot for GH’s heroes who have a dry sense of humor. This exchange made me laugh:
“Sir Waldo, circumstance compelled me to accept a seat in your carriage. When I consented to go with you to Leeds, I trusted that chivalry—a sense of propriety—would prohibit you from entering again upon this subject.”
“Did you?” he said sympathetically. “Only to find your trust misplaced! Well, that is a good deal too bad, and one must naturally shrink from shattering illusions. At the same time—where did you pick up such a ridiculous notion?”
I do like Waldo.
A bit of a lad I would say is the same here in England, as well as Ireland. Up for a laugh, bit of a chancer with the ladies, etc etc.Not a bounder, though - that's more caddish, as in, whereas 'a bit of a lad' is fundamentally harmless (if sometimes somewhat annoying!), a cad or bounder is a bit of a 'bad hat'.
By the way, I think a 'peep o day' boy has different connotations in Ireland! Isn't it a political thing there, as in something to do with Protestants and Catholics during the 19thC?? Not sure, but I have a suspicion? I must look it up!
I don't think Ancilla would care if Tiffany 'outed' her as her former governess. And I doubt any of society's leaders would care either, given she is Lady Hawkridge now.It would be interesting to see if Tiffany, even if she does marry into the aristocracy, would manage to subdue her temper and her bad behaviour sufficiently, or she would soon be cut by the likes of the Lady Patronesses etc. I think while men would make allowances for her beauty, middle aged powerful society doyennes would most certainly NOT!
Abigail, I agree - it's happening chronically in London, and even in places like Manchester when new blocks of flats are built - they are snapped up by foreigners (and to be fair, possibly non-foreigners!) looking for a 'safe' place to bank their money.In a way I can understand why - I'm a firm believer in Mark Twain's 'Buy land, they're not making any more of it!' - but of course in a housing crisis it should be prevented. It would be easy to ban foreign ownership, or limit it, but the government is spineless (!!!!) and of course wants foreign money coming in to the UK (as, I daresay, the USA does as well).
The 'good' thing about foreigners owning 'stuff' abroad is that it can easily be repossessed if necessary! Yes, that might be upsetting to the owners, but who cares about a bunch of foreign oligarchs and their mostly ill-gotten gains???!!!!!
There's always a danger from the law of unintended consequences - I read recently that San Francisco has now introduced rent controls, to stop rents soaring, ie, to make them more affordable, with the unintended consequence that landlords are simply not letting them any longer at all! The same happens here in the UK as the tax rules have changed so that the interest charges on the mortgages that landowners may take out to fund their buy-to-let property purchases, can't be deducted against tax (ie, it can't count as a business expense, to reduce the taxable profit from the rental).
It's a way of trying to get landlords to sell up, and then, hopefully, it will increase the supply of property on the open market, which 'should' help to keep property prices lower. BUT, since private individuals can't afford to buy ANY property, even if a 'bit' lower in price, that doesn't really help the housing problem, which is caused by undersupply of housing (in areas that people want/need to live for their jobs).
Similarly, in the UK, it is now harder than ever for poor folk on housing benefit (ie, their incomes are so low they get help from tax revenues to pay for their accommodation), to get any where to rent (the supply of government owned rentals...ie, 'council houses' is now very low, as most have been sold to their owners in the last generation, and no more have been built) (great for those who bought them, but not for the current generation of 'poor folk')
This is because the government optimistically, but mistakenly, changed the payment system from the local government (council) paying landlords their rent directly, to handing the money to the 'poor folk' to pay their landlord. Of course, that is to ignore the reason 'poor folk' often ARE 'poor folk' because their backgrounds are such that things like handling money responsibly is woefully lacking. So there are endless sad tales of single mothers facing eviction for non-payment of rent to private landlords, as they have received their rental money (ie, housing benefit) from the council, but instead of paying their rent for it, have gone and splurged it on clothes or whatever......
It's all very sad and depressing.
Oh, and that is before we even get on to the VERY political issue that whenever new folk arrive in the UK, they are housed by the government on a basis of need. So a 'foreigner' arriving with eight children gets housing benefit and council housing before someone who has been on the waiting list for years already, who doesn't have so many children!It's a political minefield, and causes endless inflammation of tensions.
Jenny, thank you for confirming Hey had gray eyes, that my guess as we well.Critterbee, Tiffany might well say something spiteful about Ancilla but it will only make her look bad.
I didn't recall the Burfords were cits!? wonder how that will affect Tiffany's ambitions to marry well.
sorry, can't edit the typos on my phone :-(
My daughter has grey eyes. First time I ever saw it.
So did my grandmother. She would have made a great Heyer heroine, in the outspoken mode of Deb Grantham.
When I was reading Heyer’s Snowdrift collection I noticed so many grey-eyed characters that I started highlighting them in my Kindle. I wound up with eight different grey-eyed characters, and also one gray-eyed one, just for a change of pace. Sherwood Smith commented in my thread that grey eyes were Heyer’s cue for noble birth.It’s fun to Google gray eyes and look at the different shades and types. According to the World Atlas, though, less than 1% of the world’s population has gray eyes. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/w...
That link was really interesting Tadiana. My mother had green eyes and I have hazel eyes. Quite a mixture there.Grey eyes-noble blood!! My daughter must be a cuckoo in the nest:)
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "...less than 1% of the world’s population has gray eyes"And every single one of them is in a Heyer book!
Critterbee❇ wrote: "And every single one of them is in a Heyer book!"Lol!! 😂
Except when they're in a Tolkien book. He's another author who favors grey eyes. :)
My younger niece has dark gray/hazel eyes. They change color. My best friend has gray eyes! I'll have to tell her she's of noble birth LOL!
Although I can understand how, globally, so few people have grey eyes, because of course the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of humans have brown, I would think the percentage of grey eyes is higher in Caucasians.It's genetically recessive, so if a grey/blue eyed person marries a brown eyed person (even another Caucasian), if the brown eyed person had brown eyed parents, there is no chance their subsequent children could have blue/grey eyes. But, their grandchildren (if the children marry either blue/grey eyed partners, or brown-eyed partner one of whose parents was blue/grey eyed), have, I think I have the stats right, a one in four chance of being blue/grey eyed.
Similarly, if two blue/grey eyed people marry, their children can only be blue/grey eyed.
I suspect that if global intermarriage continues apace, that within a few hundred years, at most, there won't be any blue/grey eyed folk at all. Or, at least, even rarer than now.
So, I guess, overall, blue/grey eyes are indeed 'precious because rare'!!!! (like blonde and red hair!)
I wonder what the genetics of green eyes are - (or hazel?) - I've no idea! It tends to be associated with red heads, and, again, I would assume, recessive genetically.
Margaret wrote: "Except when they're in a Tolkien book. He's another author who favors grey eyes. :)"oh, interesting, I never noticed that!
Just finished my reread, still four stars for me, great fun! Loved the ending- can’t help wondering, though, If someone had just taken a firmer tack with Tiffany years sooner, might she be a much happier person?! Of course, then there wouldn't be a book, I guess...
Abigail wrote: "I agree, Critterbee, the higher the stakes in love, the more likely we are to fear the worst and go running off with silly think-ups. I find the inconsistencies in Ancilla’s character more troublin..."Regarding Ancilla’s inconsistencies: Upon this reading I find it “interesting” to say the least, that Ancilla’s is fastidious enough to NOT marry for safety and security without love in favor of the precarious life as a governess, yet having as an “ideal” the handsome, dashing, wealthy Waldo, an “ideal” that is a man who has limitless possibilities for a wife or extra marital companionship. It’s like having as an ideal, the handsomest, most popular boy, who has an expensive sports car, in high-school, whom every girl wants.
What does this say about Ancilla in general and what does it say about a 26 yo, allegedly sophisticated woman in particular?
Is anyone else appalled the Mrs Underhill wants her son to marry Tiffany with her awful personality and awful character?
Beth-In-UK wrote: I wonder if there are any novels where a Corinthian character is not 'valued' in some way? .."There is one Corinthian character whom I can name who is a creep and a blackguard (don’t read this spoiler if you haven’t read Cotillion)! (view spoiler)
Abigail wrote: "...I'll stand up for Waldo. He is thoughtful and observant of others' feelings. He tones down his style so as not to stand out like a London swell when's he comes into a rural community. He's kind to the servants and tactful in providing for their old age in a way that spares their feelings. He's always helping smooth out social situations and manages to appear pleased in inferior company. There are few people of any breeding in the community, but nobody complains that he acts superior and looks down his nose at them, because he doesn't. He's kind to kids. He is a gentleman, through and through."Waldo is a very nice, kind, and gracious to the people of the community, attending their “rustic” entertainments with a smile. We learn that philanthropy was a tradition in his family and though he’s sought-after in tonnish circles, neither popularity nor wealth have spoiled his temperament.
However, there’s something I’ve noticed on this reading that he’s done (though necessary to the story, I’ll admit!): Waldo insisted on calling attention to Ancilla repeatedly at social events. Governesses were supposed to stay in the background and if Mrs Underhill had been top-lofty, things could have gone badly between Mrs Underhill and Ancilla jeopardizing her employment and favorable opinion of her employer. At one point, cattier people in the neighborhood are gossiping about Waldo’s attention to the governess!
Contrast Waldo’s behavior with Sylvester’s toward Phoebe in Sylvester. Up until Phoebe and Sylvester’s (view spoiler)
I have Thoughts on inconsistencies in the text and on Waldo/Ancilla (Waldancilla?) but I don't have time right now. Will try to get them sorted and posted tonight ~
Re Waldo's attentions to Ancilla - I get the feeling that part of his behaviour is due not just to his developing feelings for her as his future wife etc, but that he chafes on her behalf that she is employed by a woman who, he tells Ancilla frankly (and a bit shockingly to modern sensibilities!) is more suited to be her housekeeper.I get the feeling he is trying to 'equalise' things between Ancilla and the local society, and remind all the 'catty ladies' that actually Ancilla is 'better born' than most of them, and certainly than her employer.
Interestingly, it's a snobbery that Ancilla doesn't share - she doesn't seem to be in the least 'class conscious' in that respect. Good for her!
Andrea - but to my mind, the very fact that Ancilla turned down 'safe but dull' suitors, and is now falling for Waldo, is testament to her 'high standards'. She wouldn't settle for less than a Nonesuch!
Margaret wrote: "Except when they're in a Tolkien book. He's another author who favors grey eyes. :)"I never thought about that before, either, but you know, you're correct!
Georgette Heyer Fans
Books mentioned in this topic
The Foundling (other topics)The Plain Princess (other topics)
Gone with the Wind (other topics)
Vanity Fair (other topics)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (other topics)
More...
Very good point, Abigail- I agree, not being a green girl just out, plus her position of dependency, has got to make it seem more desperate.