The Old Gentleman (The Masqueraders, by Georgette Heyer)

   When the black page announced my Lord Barham next morning, both Mr and Miss Merriot were with my lady in the morning room. My lord was ushered in, very point-de-vice, with laced gloves, and a muff of miniver, and a long beribboned cane. The muff and the cane were given into the page's charge; the door closed behind this diminutive person, and my lord spread wide his arms. 'My children!' he exclaimed. 'Behold me returned to you.'
    His children maintained an admirable composure. 'Like Jonah cast up out of the whale's belly,' said Robin.
    My lord was not in the least put out of countenance by this coolness. 'My son!' He swooped upon Robin. 'Perfect! To the last detail! My Prudence!'
    Prudence submitted to a fervent embrace. 'Well, sir, how do you do?' she said, smiling. 'We perceive you are returned to us, but we do not understand the manner of it.'
    He struck an attitude. 'But do you not know? I am Tremaine. Tremaine of Barham!'
    'Lud!' said Robin. 'You don't say so, sir!'
    He was hurt. 'Ah, you do not believe in me! You doubt me, in effect!'
    'Well, sir' - Prudence sat on the arm of Robin's chair, and gently swung one booted leg to and fro - 'We've seen you as Mr Colney; we've seen you as Mr Daughtry; we've even seen you as the Prince Vanilov. You cannot altogether blame us.'
    My lord abandoned his attitude and took snuff. 'I shall show you," he promised. 'Do not doubt that this time I shall surpass myself.'
    'We don't doubt that, sir.'
    My lady said on a gurgling laugh, 'But what will you be at, mon cher? What madness?'
    'I am Tremaine of Barham,' reiterated his lordship with dignity. 'Almost I had forgot it, but I come now into my own. You must have known' - he addressed the room at large - 'you who have watched me, that there was more to me than a mere wandering gamester!'
    'Faith, we thought it was just deviltry, sir,' Prudence chuckled.
    'You do not appreciate me,' said my lord sadly, and sat him down by the table. 'You lack soul, my children. Yes, you lack soul.'

The children who lack soul are, like himself, fugitives from the losing side of the Jacobite rebellion. They are in disguise, Prudence as "Peter Merriot" and Robin as his sister Kate, staying with Lady Lowestoft, who knows the whole story and their many years ranging across Europe in their tempestuous father's wake. Now he has appeared in London, claiming to be the lost Viscount Barham.

I know this isn't a favorite with some Heyer readers, who find the Old Gentleman as irritating as his children sometimes do. I think he is one of her most entertaining characters, and I love watching him stir up trouble. The reactions of his more conventional children - even in their cross-dressing disguises - always make me laugh. Prudence is also a favorite character, one of Heyer's calm, sensible women, with the saving grace of humor. She actually deals better with their wayward father than her brother does, as she navigates through male society. At least growing up with a "wandering gamester" has taught her to play cards, and to best cardsharps out to fleece the young man she appears to be. And she gains the support and friendship of another lovely character, "the mountain" Sir Anthony Fanshawe, whose keen grey eyes watch not just the outrageous Lord Barham, but also the Merriots, Peter in particular.

Published in 1928, this is one of Heyer's earlier books. The language is ornate, rather self-consciously "period," but it still fizzes with humor. And it's quite an exciting story, between the disguises and the lost heir - not to mention a runaway bride, and a compromising document that may undo them all.

A hero named Waldo

The Nonesuch, Georgette Heyer

This has never been one of my top Heyer favorites, and not just because the hero's name is Waldo.  But the other night at Half Price Books, when I found a first edition, with the original Barbosa dust-jacket, for only $7.50, there was no question of leaving it on the shelves.  As I was gloating over it at home later, I started leafing through it, as you do, reading bits here and there, and of course I ended up turning to the first chapter to start it properly.  It has been at least ten years since I last read this.  As often happens with Heyer's books now, I found that I enjoyed it more than I remembered.

The story opens as the Nonesuch of the title, Sir Waldo Hawkridge, has just inherited a ramshackle estate in Yorkshire from a cousin.  Already wealthy in his own right, he doesn't need the estate or its rents, but he plans to turn the house into an orphanage and school.  The neighborhood around Broom Hall is electrified to learn that this rich, handsome sportsman and leader of fashion is coming into their midst, particularly since he is a bachelor.  They are just as happy to welcome his young cousin Julian, Lord Lindeth, equally handsome and eligible.  There is something here of Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley arriving at Netherfield, except that unlike Darcy Sir Waldo is sociable and civil to everyone.  (I think he might even be richer than Darcy.)  Lindeth quickly falls under the spell of Tiffany Wield, a beautiful but spoiled girl of seventeen.  She is the orphaned niece of Mrs Underhill, a kindly woman with wealth but no pretense to gentility.  Sir Waldo, on the other hand, is drawn to Miss Wield's governess-companion, Ancilla Trent, a young woman of birth and breeding, who determined to earn her own living after her father's death left the family in straitened circumstances.  However good her family, by becoming a governess she has lost her place in society.  When Sir Waldo begins to single her out, the neighbors, even those without marriageable daughters, are not pleased.

Ancilla is one of Heyer's strong, competent female characters, like Sarah Thane in The Talisman Ring, not a chit just out of the schoolroom but a woman who has seen something of the world.  She needs all her strength and her wits to keep her charge in line.  Tiffany is one of the most annoying characters in all the Heyer canon, and she regularly tops the poll of "Which Heyer character is most in need of a good smack?"  She has to be the center of attention, particularly the men's, and she has to have her way in everything, or she throws fits (and the occasional clock).  She can't be controlled, she can only be manipulated or bribed, and I do find her tiresome.

My other objection to this book has been that the romantic plot involves a Big Misunderstanding, where the heroine hears something about the hero, which she misinterprets.  What she thinks she has discovered makes him seem such a bad person that she has no choice but to reject him.  We the readers know that it isn't true.  Honestly, I have always had a hard time accepting that she could even believe it herself.  And of course she doesn't ask him about it, she just stews in her misery and makes him unhappy in turn.  This plot element loomed large in my memory of the story, but reading it this time I was surprised to find how late it came in the book, and how quickly it was resolved.  I still think it's silly and unnecessary, not to mention a bit unworthy of Georgette Heyer, but it's a minor quibble now.

It's interesting to me how my opinions of Heyer's books change over time.  Not for my top favorites - those stay pretty much the same (The Quiet Gentleman, Cotillion, The Talisman Ring, and The Unknown Ajax).  But in re-reading what I think of as the second-rank books, like this one, I find myself enjoying and appreciating them more.  I'm glad I found this on the shelves, and not just because it's such a lovely old book.

Six weeks on the lam in 1651

Royal Escape, Georgette Heyer

When I first discovered Georgette Heyer's books, in the early 1980s, they were hard to find, at least in my corner of the United States.  The library had a few of her Regency novels, which I read and re-read, but I had no luck finding copies for myself.  Despite the lists of "Other books by Georgette Heyer" that I occasionally saw, I really had no idea of the scope of her work.  It was only when I joined an on-line Heyer discussion group in the late 1990s that I learned she had also written four contemporary novels (later suppressed) and twelve modern mysteries, let alone historical fiction, set much earlier than the stories with which I was already familiar.

Luckily this was at a time when her books were becoming more available, both through reprints and on-line book-sellers. It also helped that I was living in a city with lots of bookstores.  Since I enjoy mysteries from the Golden Age of the 1930s, I started collecting those.  But I was more hesitant about Heyer's historical fiction.  In reading about Heyer herself, starting with Jane Aiken Hodge's The Private World of Georgette Heyer, I learned that she was a tireless and careful researcher, who turned first to primary sources, amassing countless volumes of notes for both her Regencies and other historical works.  She wanted to be taken seriously as an author, and her ambition was to write straight-forward historical fiction.  But while I still had some of her Regency novels to track down, let alone the mysteries, I wasn't anxious to read her books about William the Conqueror, or Simon the Coldheart in the reign of Henry IV.  When Beauvallet came up for discussion on the Heyer list, I took the plunge with that one, and I enjoyed it more than I expected.  It's a swashbuckling story of an Elizabethan privateer, who captures not just treasure from a Spanish galleon but a lady's heart as well.  It can't compare with Dorothy Dunnett or Patrick O'Brian (my gold standards for historical fiction), but it's a quick fun read.

I've had a copy of Royal Escape on the TBR shelves for several years now.  I don't remember why I bought it - maybe for a discussion on the Almacks list.  I have to admit, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.  It is the story of King Charles II's escape after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester in September of 1651.  Rather than retreating to Scotland, the starting point of his campaign, he hoped to make his way to France.  For the next six weeks, he moved in secret across southwestern England, evading Cromwell's soldiers, guided and hidden by Royalists from all ranks of society.  Heyer carefully researched contemporary accounts of the King's adventures, most famously his hiding in an oak tree, but also disguising himself as a servant traveling with family parties.  She writes with sympathy of her Charles, a young man, a king with no throne, finding his way among dangerous factions.  Despite his harsh features, he has great charm and charisma, and an easy way about him, which draw people to help him almost in spite of themselves.  Still a bit immature, he will run risks that horrify the elders around him, particularly his loyal Lord Wilmot, a fussy courtier wilting under the harsh conditions of life as a fugitive, and the responsibility he feels for his sovereign's safety.

This is a very enjoyable adventure story, complete with priest's holes and disguises and messages sent in code.  Charles has more than one narrow escape in his wanderings, particularly after news spreads of a £1000 bounty on his head.  And it has some familiar Heyeresque elements, including a snippy valet who would be completely at home in any of her Regencies.  But I have to say, I struggled with the first couple of chapters.  The story opens with a bang, in the middle of the battle.  Heyer must have assumed that her readers would be familiar with Worcester and those who fought it.  She introduces ten or fifteen of the King's supporters, in what becomes a confusing crowd of names.  Then she takes all of them fleeing from Worcester, and I got equally lost among the villages and roads.  I finally resorted to an atlas to figure out where exactly they were heading.  A map showing Charles' route and the various places (including the manor houses) where he found shelter would have been a great help in this book.  Heyer also seems to have assumed that her readers would know the context of the battle, how Charles came to be in England and what brought him to Worcester.  There is some discussion of this with various people he meets in his travels, especially the problems he had in Scotland before the campaign started, but they don't explain enough.  This is tricky to handle in historical fiction, to give the necessary background without overwhelming the story, and Heyer doesn't manage it well here.  My other quibble is the dialogue, which to my mind reads a bit awkwardly.  That's another tricky thing in historical fiction, and Heyer does it well in her Regencies (though sometimes relying too much on slang).  Here the language seems self-consciously "historical," with convoluted grammar and people constantly saying "oddsblood" and "oddsfish."

As much as I enjoyed this book, it did not inspire me to immediately read The Conqueror or My Lord John.  But it did though leave me wanting to know more about Charles II, both before and after Worcester.  Can anyone recommend a good biography of the Merry Monarch?

Death in the stocks

Death in the Stocks, Georgette Heyer

I gave up on a book Sunday when it hit too many of my personal "ick" factors - in this case, child murder, incest, and fratricide.  I felt like I needed something to cleanse my reading palate afterwards, and Georgette Heyer was a perfect antidote.  I've been meaning to read this book for a while, it's my favorite of her mysteries.

The story opens late one night in the small village of Ashleigh Green.  When PC Dickenson returns from a bicycle patrol, he discovers a dead man sitting in the old stocks on the village green, stabbed in the back.  The victim is Arnold Vereker, a rich industrialist from London who recently bought a cottage in the area.  The police call there the next morning, where they find a young woman who says she is his half-sister  Antonia (she insists on the half part).  She has a bull terrier with her (always a sign of the Heyer heroine at least in the mysteries), and blood on her skirt.  Antonia tells them that she came down to "have it out" with Arnold over a letter that he wrote her, but she refuses to discuss the letter or to answer further questions without a solicitor present, so the police have no choice but to take her to the station and wait.

Her solicitor Giles Carrington, "a tall loose-limbed man in the mid-thirties," with "a pleasant lazy voice," arrives later and convinces her to cooperate with the officers, who now include Superintendent Hannasyde from Scotland Yard (a familiar character from Heyer's other mysteries).  Giles is able to fill the police in on Arnold Vereker, another client of his and his cousin as well.  Tony and her brother Kenneth are the children of a second marriage, but treated as his cousins too.  There was another brother from the first marriage, Roger, shipped off in disgrace many years ago, who is presumed to have died somewhere in South America, leaving Tony and Kenneth the heirs to their brother's estate.  For Tony, that means a comfortable sum.  Kenneth on the other hand inherits the Shan Hills Mine Company and its holdings, a legacy of £250,000.

It is Tony who brings the news of their half-brother's murder back to Kenneth, in the studio flat that they share in London with Murgatroyd, once their mother's maid and now their cook-general (more like their keeper). Kenneth is a painter who is convinced that his work will someday be worth more than all his brother's wealth, but he is very happy to inherit that wealth.  From the moment Tony arrives, she and Kenneth begin to spin theories about the murder, trying to work out how it was done, building up and demolishing cases against themselves and any possible suspect they can identify.  Kenneth has no alibi for the night of the murder - he claims he was walking about the city on his own for most of the night - and he happily argues for the position as chief suspect, since he had the best motive.  His fiancée Violet, though she is a devoted reader of detective novels, is not amused by their game.  Neither is Tony's fiancé Rudolph (the subject of Arnold's letter), and the police are taken aback by their frivolous attitude toward the murder and their casually repeated statements about how much they disliked their brother.

Kenneth and Tony come across as complete brats in this book - though Tony shows signs of reform in the end.  I don't think I'd want to spend too much time in their company, but they are geat fun to read about, with their outrageous theories and their unconventional talk.  There are hints very early on that both have chosen the wrong partner, though I'm not sure that Kenneth at least deserves any better.

Heyer's detective stories are generally darker than her historical novels, many of which include some type of mystery in the story, like my favorites The Quiet Gentleman and The Talisman Ring.  I do think that her mysteries are a bit uneven in quality.  I've read complaints about the plots being improbable, or too simple, but since I never manage to work out who-done-it, that has never bothered me.  The best, like this one, have the crackling dialogue that she wrote so well, and the laugh-out-loud moments, which always draw me back to her books again.

Black sheep in Bath

Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer

After tracking a psychopathic killer through the streets of Lafferton in A Question of Identity, I wanted to read something calm and soothing.  Georgette Heyer has been on my mind lately after reading various reviews, like Katrina's of Detection Unlimited and Claire's of the recent Heyer biography by Jennifer Kloester.  The Heyer listserv I belong to just finished discussing one of my favorite books, The Talisman Ring, and is now looking at her wonderful minor characters, like Sir Hugh Thane.  I've also realized that I need to get any re-reading done this month, before the TBR Double Dog Dare kicks off on January 1st.

Black Sheep is a story set in Bath.  As it opens, Miss Abigail Wendover is returning home after several weeks spent caring for an older sister during her confinement and the illnesses of her other children.  Still unmarried at 28, she shares a home with her eldest sister, Selina, and their 17-year-old niece Fanny, who has lived with them since she was orphaned in infancy.  The only child of their eldest brother, Fanny is heiress to a considerable estate.  Abby returns to find that in her absence, and under Selina's laxer surveillance, Fanny has met and fallen head over heels in love with a recent arrival in Bath, a young man named Stacy Calverleigh.  Though of good family, he is known to be a gambler, and an unlucky one, whose family estate is mortgaged to the hilt.  It is a matter of common gossip that he is hanging out for a rich wife, having already attempted like George Wickham to elope with one heiress.  But Abby finds it impossible to break the spell that he seems to have cast not only over Fanny, but also over Selina, whose romantic heart yearns to see young love triumph.

Then a second Mr Calverleigh arrives in Bath, Stacy's uncle Miles, who was packed off to India twenty years ago after one too many scandals capped a disreputable career, one that saw him first expelled from Eton and then sent down from Oxford.  He has returned now having made his fortune in trade.  Careless in dress, casual in manner, he has none of his nephew's good looks or easy charm.  Yet Abby finds herself drawn to him, to his ready understanding and even more to his cynical sense of humor (for Heyer's couples, a shared sense of humor is the most important element in a successful relationship).  She hopes to enlist him in protecting her niece from his nephew, which becomes her excuse for spending so much time in his company.  Though Fanny, caught up in her own love affair, is oblivious to her aunt's, Selina watches their growing intimacy with the gravest apprehensions.  No well-brought-up young woman, and certainly not a Wendover, could possibly marry such a black sheep.

In the perennial discussions of which Heyer books are the best introductions for new readers, I would include this one.  The Bath setting evokes Jane Austen, as the Wendovers from their house in Sydney Place visit the Pump Room, shop on the South Parade, and attend concerts in the New Assembly Rooms.  It is not overloaded with Regency slang, as some of Heyer's books are, though I sometimes find the details on fashion equally confusing (Circassian or Cottage sleeves for a morning dress?).  Unusually for Heyer, the narrative shifts between the different characters' points of views, which gives the reader insight and information not shared with the other characters.  And this is one of Heyer's more romantic stories, centered around the two couples, Abby and Miles, Stacy and Fanny.  Often in her books, the hero and heroine fall in love over the course of shared adventures, but we get only hints of it before a declaration in the last pages, as in The Talisman Ring or The Quiet Gentleman.  I've actually read complaints about the lack of romance in Heyer's books!  Here the focus is on the developing relationships, particularly between Abby and Miles.  I much prefer the books where the hero and heroine genuinely like as well as love each other, in contrast to the books where they brangle and brawl their way to a happy ending, like Bath Tangle or Faro's Daughter.  Published in 1966, Black Sheep has some similarities to Lady of Quality, Heyer's last novel, from 1972, but the two are not carbon copies, and I enjoy each for its own story.

A life of Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer, Jennifer Kloester

As I've mentioned before, I've been a fan of Georgette Heyer's books for many years, though for much of that time her books were hard to find in the United States. Even before the internet and its world-wide book inventories, I managed to collect quite a few, which I read and re-read. But as much as I enjoyed the books, with their wit and humor, their snappy dialogue, their romance and mysteries and conflicts, not to mention their whirlwind denouements, I never thought that much about the author. I simply accepted her genius and looked for the next book.

It was only when I joined an on-line discussion group (now the Almacks listserv) that I began to learn about Georgette Heyer herself. One of the first things I discovered was how little information there was, in large part because Heyer (who died in 1974) had maintained an amazing level of privacy throughout her writing career, even as her works sold hundreds of thousands of copies. There was then only one book written about Heyer, Jane Aiken Hodge's The Private World of Georgette Heyer, which was out of print and hard to find. I was lucky enough to acquire a copy through the listserv, and I enjoyed Hodge's combination of biography and bibliography. Hodge presented a basic biography of Heyer, putting each of her books in the context of what was going on her life at the time (and giving a brief synopsis of the book as well). Her book is worth owning for the period illustrations alone, with some gorgeous color plates.

Jennifer Kloester, a fellow member of Almacks and the author of Georgette Heyer's Regency World (which I reviewed back in September), takes a similar approach in her recent biography. One of the real strengths of her book is the wide access she had not just to Heyer's papers but also to those of family and friends, as well as Heyer's agents and publishers. From this she has built a much more comprehensive narrative of Heyer's life, starting with her birth in 1902 and her formative years growing up in the Edwardian Age and then during the Great War. Kloester weaves together Heyer's private life and her writing career, which took off with the publication of her first novel, The Black Moth, in 1921.

Though her profits from her books increased steadily over the years, Heyer was always concerned about money, in part because she and her husband Ronald Rougier had little idea how to budget or to spend within their means, but also because they were supporting Heyer's widowed mother and two brothers. Kloester explores their complicated finances, which put pressure on Heyer always to write the next book, and also to write what she knew would sell. I find it sad that Heyer so often disparaged the "light, bright and sparkling" novels that made her a best-seller and a beloved author, the ones that readers continue to fall in love all these years later. She wanted to write great historical novels that would establish her as a great writer and respected historical authority. At least the letters that Kloester quotes frequently show Heyer's delight in the plots, settings and characters she was creating as she wrote.

I have two quibbles with this book. The first is grammatical: there are a distressing number of dangling modifiers and run-on sentences. This seems particularly unfortunate in a book about a master stylist like Georgette Heyer. Second, while Kloester quotes copiously, on almost every page, from archival sources, she does not always cite those sources, nor does she always identify to whom Heyer was writing. And while there is a list of "Heyer-related archives," there is no bibliography of primary or secondary works consulted, though some are cited by full title and publisher in the five pages of end notes. I think the book would also have benefited from a few more dates, as it is not always clear when the things that Kloester is writing about took place.

Those quibbles aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I learned a lot from it. Kloester brings Heyer to life, and she skillfully weaves in discussion of the books without overwhelming the larger story, or giving away too much about the plots. I especially enjoyed the account of a luncheon party Heyer attended at Buckingham Palace (I think in 1966). When the Master of the Household called to invite her, he told her, "We're all madly keen on your books here!", and she later learned that the Queen had bought twelve copies of Frederica in Harrods book department.

Last night I took A Civil Contract off the shelf to check some detail, and I immediately found myself back in Adam and Jenny's world. While I appreciate knowing more about their creator, even the fact that she considered Americans uncultured and overly gregarious, I am not conscious of their author while I'm reading one of her books. That is her genius, and her legacy, to have created such a world of wonderful characters, with their complex lives, who live on long after the Regency and Georgette Heyer herself.

A missing ring and a banished heir

The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer

Just the other day the Georgette Heyer listserv that I belong to was discussing which is the best book for a new Heyer reader to start with.  This topic comes up frequently, in part I think because people want to share the joy that they find in her books, and they want the book they choose to make a good impression (and possibly a convert).  Among my own favorites, I recommend The Unknown Ajax, Venetia, and The Talisman Ring as perfect places to start, and the discussion reminded me that it's been too long since I've re-read them myself.

The Talisman Ring is one of Heyer's early works, published in 1937, and it is set in the Georgian period rather than the Regency.  It opens in the winter of 1793, as Sir Tristram Shield arrives at the home of his great-uncle Sylvester, Lord Lavenham, who is dying.   Sylvester has a granddaughter, Eustacie, an orphan whom he brought back from France just before the Revolution.  He also has a grandson, Ludovic, who fled the country amid accusations that he murdered a local man in a dispute over an heirloom, the ring of the title, which he pledged in gaming.  Sylvester wants to see Eustacie married before he dies, and he has chosen Tristram to be her husband.  He ruthlessly rejects another cousin, Basil Lavenham, the next heir after the absent Ludovic, because he is a beau "who wears a green coat and yellow pantaloons, and a damned absurd sugar-loaf on his head!"

Tristram and Eustacie both accept the match, only to realize quickly that they are not well-suited for each other.  A romantic young girl, who dreams of adventure, not marriage to an older country gentleman, Eustacie develops an interest in her outlaw cousin Ludovic.  When she decides to run away to London to be a governess, rather than marry Tristram, she falls in with a gang of free-traders, and almost more adventure than she could have hoped for.  A handsome young smuggler takes her with him as they try to evade the Excisemen.  He is shot, and they end up at a nearby inn, The Red Lion.  Staying there are Sarah Thane and her brother Sir Hugh.  Sarah is quickly drawn into their adventure, appointing herself Eustacie's chaperone and helping to fend off Excisemen and Bow Street Runners, not to mention the Beau, pursuing Eustacie and curious about the identity of her smuggler.  When Sir Tristram arrives in search of his lost fiancée, much against his will he finds himself embroiled as well, protecting the young smuggler and searching for the lost talisman ring, the discovery of which could prove Ludovic's innocence.

He also finds himself drawn to Sarah, one of Heyer's most delightful heroines.  Not a young chit but a woman of twenty-eight, she has kept house for Sir Hugh when not jaunting around Europe with him.  She has wit and charm and a lovely sense of humor, and while Eustacie thinks her as romantic as herself, we know that Sarah also has a foundation of solid commonsense, which stands her in good stead in coping with the adventures she finds herself in.  Her brother Hugh is one of Heyer's great minor characters, a large man who reminds me of The Unknown Ajax's Hugo, though he is far more indolent.  A Justice of the Peace, he has strong views on smuggling, as strong as his taste for the brandy and other untaxed liquors in the Red Lion's cellars.  He ambles through the story, never quite sure what is going on but adding greatly to the fun of one of Heyer's best books.

Georgette Heyer's Regency World

Georgette Heyer's Regency World, Jennifer Kloester

Jennifer Kloester is a member of the Georgette Heyer listserv that I help manage, and we are eagerly awaiting the publication of her biography of Heyer later this year.  In researching it, she discovered new collections of Heyer's correspondence, and she was also given unparalleled access to the family's papers, including Heyer's famous research notebooks.  Georgette Heyer's Regency World, based on her doctoral dissertation, was originally published in Britain in 2005.  I was surprised and pleased to find a copy recently on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.  After reading Lady of Quality with the listserv, I was in the mood for more Heyer, but rather than re-reading one of the novels, I sat down with this book.

As the author explains in her introduction,

"The aim of [this book] is to expand on Heyer's history and to provide for the modern reader an explanation of the people, places and events that made her Regency world so unforgettable . . . Everything in this book is inspired by a reference in at least one of Heyer's twenty-six Regency novels . . ."

The material is presented thematically, in chapters such as "At Home in Town and Country," "A Man's World," and "Eat, Drink and Be Merry."  There are frequent examples drawn from Heyer's books, and I found myself thinking of similar examples in Jane Austen's books.  The citations often reminded me of favorite parts of the different novels, or made me curious about the context of the citation.  So I kept setting the book down to pull one of the novels off the shelf, just to check something, but then of course I ended up drawn into the story again and reading much further than I intended. That slowed down my reading of Dr. Kloester's book, but it enriched my reading both of it and Heyer's books.

Also in the introduction, Dr. Kloester writes,

"For many years these books have beguiled my leisure hours, affording me enormous pleasure, but also giving me a great deal of useful information about the English Regency period.  I hadn't known just how much accurate and factual information there was in the novels until I came to research and write this book, and, although I had always been under the impression that Heyer was meticulous in her communication of the period, I hadn't appreciated the scope of her research, nor the degree to which she immersed herself in the Regency era."

Heyer was not of course writing history.  Her Regency world is her own.  As others have pointed out, for example, it is a world where religion plays a very small part.  But in creating her fictional world, Heyer still managed to ground it in reality.  Thanks to Dr. Kloester, I have an even deeper appreciation of Heyer's research and of her books, and I realize that I have learned more than I knew from her books.  This book will be an invaluable resource as I continue to enjoy her wonderful Regency world.

Georgette Heyer's last book

Lady of Quality, Georgette Heyer

The Georgette Heyer listserv I belong to is coming to the end of a multi-year chronological read-through of her published works, and for September we're reading Lady of Quality, the last novel that she published  (next month's My Lord John was published after her death).  This year I also read A Civil Contract and False Colours with the list.  As I mentioned before, it has been an enlightening project, to read the books in order of publication, and to see each book in its context. 

I haven't read each month's book with the list (and I won't be reading My Lord John).  While Lady of Quality is one of my favorite Heyers, it has been several years since I last re-read it, and it seems right to read the last Regency novel with the list.  I also got a nudge to re-read it from something Audrey posted about it over on books as food.

Lady of Quality is often compared to Black Sheep.  Both are set in Bath, with heroines who have set up their own households, though neither is completely independent.  In Black Sheep, Abby Wendover lives with her sister Selina, and in Lady of Quality Annis Wynchwood is saddled with Heyer's most infuriating character, her distant cousin and companion Maria Farlow.  Both heroines' lives are complicated first by a girl for whom they are responsible, and then by a black sheep gentleman who upsets both their families and their well-ordered lives.

Despite the similarities, these are not carbon copies.  One of Heyer's gifts as a writer was to use similar settings and characters to create very different stories, as with The Foundling, Sprig Muslin, and Charity Girl.  Lady of Quality has a slower pace than Black Sheep, with less focus on the escapades of Annis's young protegée Lucilla Carelton.  The worst than happens to her is a walk, properly chaperoned, with a notorious fortune-hunter.  Though Lucilla comes to no harm, her uncle and guardian Oliver Carleton picks a quarrel with Annis over it, one of the many scenes between the two. Like Faro's Daughter and Bath Tangle, this is a book full of arguments.  Generally I don't enjoy what I call the "angry" books, but here both are quick to apologize, and the attraction between them shines through their quarrels.  It is also full of scenes, generally involving Maria Farlow, who in the end may have to give up her comfortable life in Bath, but who wins the completely undeserved reward of her own sitting room at Twynham Park instead.

If this is one of Heyer's less action-driven books, it is more romantic, with its focus mainly on their courtship.  Though Heyer's books are often marketed as romances, some readers complain that there isn't all that much romance in them.  In many cases, the hero's declaration comes only in the last pages, to relieve the heroine's (and the reader's) suspense, as with my own favorite Heyer novel, The Quiet Gentleman.  But in the meantime, there is wit and character and plot and setting, all of which keep us reading these wonderful books.

False colours

False Colours, Georgette Heyer

Another re-read with the Heyer listserv (along with a smidge of guilt over re-reading rather than reducing the TBR pile).  False Colours has been a favorite of mine for many years.  Reading it in the chronological order of composition, though, did give me a new view of it.  I had never thought of this as a "late" book, but it was published in 1963, and there would be only six more to come.

It seems to me that in her early works, such as A Convenient Marriage, Heyer sometimes let the excitement of her research overwhelm the story.  There is such a wealth of information in these books that a chapter can suddenly feel almost like a data dump, that Heyer was determined to fit what she had discovered or learned into the story, even if she had to shoe-horn it in.  With False Colours, I had the same feeling about Regency slang.  The dialogue is packed with it, and every character speaks in the idiom, even the elderly Lady Stavely.  At first I found that distracting, almost requiring a translation, and I kept wondering if a well-born lady would really say that.

Once I was caught up in the story, though, the slang bothered me less.  This book has two very appealing central characters in Kit and Cressy, and a wealth of other people who may be somewhat stock characters in Heyer's work, but who still bring the story to vivid life.  Chief among these are Kit's charmingly wifty mama, and Cressy's formidable grandmother, but I'd give pride of place to Sir Bonamy Ripple - who would take it anyway.  And there is also Kit's twin Evelyn, whose absence marks the book almost as much as Conway's does in Venetia.

This wouldn't be my desert-island Heyer, but it is always a fun read and I'm glad to have it on my shelves.

Rediscovering books

A Civil Contract, Georgette Heyer

I originally read A Civil Contract with the Georgette Heyer listserv back in 1998.  It was my first time reading it, and it was through the list that I had found it and so many other Heyer books.  I've been reading Heyer's books for almost 30 years now, but before I got my first computer and internet connection back in 1996, my sister was the only other Heyer fan I knew.  Back then, her books could be hard to find, especially in a small Washington State town with only two bookstores.  In trying out my new computer, one of the first terms I put into an internet search engine was "Georgette Heyer."  That led me to the Heyer listserv (now on YahooGroups) and also opened up resources for finding Heyer's books.

Back in 1998, I didn't like A Civil Contract.  I remember finding it depressing, and I deliberately chose to give it away, thinking "I'll never want to read that one again."  And when it came up again for discussion on the list over the years, I didn't even follow the postings.  But this time was different.  We're coming to the end of a multi-year read of all Heyer's books, in the order of publication (which has brought some surprises, seeing where books fall in that order.  I knew ACC was a later book, but not that it was from 1962).  This read-through has changed my opinion of some books for the better, including The Foundling and Sprig Muslin.

The enthusiastic discussion this time made me think I needed to give ACC another try. After all, I've given Regency Buck at least three tries (and detested it each time, so that one has gone).  I had to order a new copy of ACC,because with all the new Sourcebook editions in bookstores, I couldn't find this one locally.  I'm glad I did.  This is one of Heyer's more unusual books, and as a portrait of a marriage it could be called "Austenesque," though the humor and the characters are much broader than in Austen's novels (maybe in the Juvenalia).  I remembered Mr Chawleigh, but I had forgotten the Dowager Countess, who is not as vulgar as Jenny's papa but in fact behaves just as badly.  If I had any sympathy for Julia at first reading, I certainly had none now, but Lydia is a delight, in contrast to other young sisters-in-law (Lettie in April Lady) who just add complications.  Yet despite the humor, it's a serious book - more along the lines of her suppressed moderns in some ways.  Yet it's set firmly in the Regency: as the book opens Adam has returned reluctantly from the Peninsula Campaign and the Battle of Waterloo plays a central role.  This is also, like The Foundling, one of Heyer's reverse books, with the male character impoverished and seeking his fortune through marriage.

Thirteen years later, I appreciate this book much more, and this copy will stay on my shelves.

The Heyer list on Yahoo Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/almacks/