Georgette Heyer

by Jennifer Kloester

  In Georgette’s world and in the world of her future novels, vulgarity was the unforgivable sin, for it reflected poor breeding or an ill-formed mind.

  The Red Deer was an overtly simple tale about a family of Exmoor deer that emphasized Victorian ideas about a natural social hierarchy. In the novel the red deer are the nobility and all of the other animals take their place beneath them within a rigid class structure. The story takes for granted the importance of manners and birth, noblesse oblige, the “natural” treatment of one class by another, and what makes a “gentleman.” The red deer’s mother tells her son:

  “We are never unkind to the Trout,” she said, “for they belong to the peat-stream, but you must never become familiar with them. Fallow deer, I believe, treat them as equals,” and here she looked very proud, “but we do not. You must never be rude to them, for that would be unworthy of a Red Deer, but you must never make great friends with them.”

  Georgette’s childhood was replete with stories in which the consistent moral and message was that class will cling to class and breeding will always tell. These were themes that she would use repeatedly throughout her writing life. The ideas and attitudes in the novels she read reflected those of a highly structured, class-oriented society, proud of its Empire and sure of its place at the center of the civilized world. For Georgette, growing up in a family with its own social aspirations, they were not attitudes that needed to be questioned—at least not before the end of the First World War.

  2

  I inherited my literary bent from my father.

  —Georgette Heyer

  By the time Georgette turned three in 1905, George had grown dissatisfied with his job as a teacher at King’s College School and was casting about for something different. Two years earlier he had enjoyed considerable success raising funds for the school’s new playing fields. His enthusiasm and organizational abilities eventually brought him to the notice of the Board of King’s College Hospital. The hospital was raising funds to relocate from its cramped quarters at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London to a new “green-field” site at Denmark Hill, several miles south of the Thames. The Board needed at least £200,000 for the new buildings and in November 1905 they appointed George as Appeals Secretary on a much-improved salary of £300 per year.

  A better salary meant a bigger house and in March 1906, two months after George began his new job, the family left 103 Woodside and moved into a spacious new home in another quiet street east of Wimbledon High Street (1 Courthope Road, Wimbledon). It was a good-sized house, double-fronted, and fully detached. This was to be Georgette’s home for the next five years and the longest she would live anywhere during her childhood. She stayed with her Grannie Watkins at Fairfield during the move but was excited to come home and explore the new house. She was talking all the time now, having mastered a considerable vocabulary by eighteen months and a fluency by two-and-a-half which prompted her mother to write that “Babs”

  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 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.

  At three-and-a-half Georgette could count up to one hundred and knew “all her letters & can make a few.” Sylvia deliberately refrained from teaching her, however, believing that “she is so very quick and alert. I think her brain is best left alone for the present.”

  While Georgette’s birth may have suggested new possibilities for her parents in terms of their respective passions for music and literature, in those early years they chose to foster rather than force her natural interests. Although Sylvia hoped that her daughter would be musical, her feeling that Georgette’s brain was “best left alone” suggests that she wanted her to have an unencumbered childhood, free from pressure and expectation. This did not preclude Sylvia from watching for any signs that might indicate a gift for music.

  By the time Georgette was four her mother felt compelled to acknowledge that her daughter had not inherited this particular talent: “Tooley is quite a big girl now. She is 4½ & tall for her age…Such a sweet nature & so affectionate. She is not musical—she likes to sing ‘Pop goes the weasel,’ but the tune is somewhat lacking.” Ten years later she would tell a young school friend of Georgette’s that her daughter “had the most perfect throat and vocal chords for a singer and would have had a lovely contralto voice but she could hardly distinguish one note from another.” It must have been disappointing for such a musical mother to realize that her little girl had no inclination for music other than the enjoyment of listening.

  If Sylvia was disappointed by her daughter’s lack of musicality, George was delighted to discover that she loved to read. He was a great reader himself and as Georgette grew older he encouraged her to emulate him, giving her books to look at and showing her novels and history books which she might read in time. She read Dickens at a young age and by ten was familiar enough with David Copperfield to have absorbed the book’s characters and expressions into the family vernacular. As well as recommending books for her to read, her father gave her the run of his library and the freedom to follow her fancy and develop her own literary tastes. It was unusual for a Victorian father to allow his daughter to read at will, for society held strong views about the dangers of exposing young women to what was deemed “unsuitable” reading matter. George had no such qualms about Georgette, however, and he went on encouraging her to read and to stimulate her imagination. He never forbade her reading a particular book, although he occasionally “advised her against it,” and if he sometimes steered her in certain literary directions, that was natural for a man who had benefited from a classical education and was passionate about poetry.

  George had continued to write poems after leaving Cambridge and was enjoying some success with a number of his verses printed in The Pall Mall Gazette and The Saturday Westminster Review. His poems were sometimes romantic but more often witty. He had become well known at Cambridge for his poetic humor after he was published in the new university magazine, Granta. The editor Rudolph Lehmann (who later joined the editorial board of Punch) appreciated George’s wit and charm of manner and at one poetry reading expressed his “frank enjoyment when B.I.N.K., a new man, began with a Pantoum.” B.I.N.K. was George’s (inexplicable) nickname at Cambridge and he often used it as his nom de plume.

  The pantoum (a challenging form of poetry) which Lehmann enjoyed was “In the Lent Term”—a lighthearted account of George trying to study Greek while a friend tempts him from his books to a tennis match at nearby Leys. It exemplified George’s love of writing about the everyday in an effort to capture real moments in his life or mark his enjoyment of ordinary things. He was fascinated by character, personality, and the comic eccentricities of his fellow human and had an ear for the vernacular which he was adept at converting into witty dialogue. As a regular contributor to Granta, George was among those to be honored in a tradition that saw regular writers immortalized in biographical verse based on a song from Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta Patience:

  A waggish and gay young man,

  A plenty-to-say young man,

  Tell you tales by the score,

  Give you nicknames galore,

  I’ll show you the way young man.

  But it was not only poetry which excited George’s imagination and inspired him to write. His student life had been enriched by the works of many of the great writers, and he was alert to the ways in which the best of them revealed the complexities and subtleties of human nature through satire, drama, romance, and brilliant comedy. Although he recognized that he would never reach such heights himself, as a teacher he sought to convey something of the richness and enduring nature of great literature to his students. While at Weymouth College he had instigated an annual tradition of producing the plays of Aristophanes (all of them per
formed entirely in Greek) and had joined the boys on stage in a leading role. In 1894, George’s production of The Frogs was positively reviewed in The Times and the headmaster acknowledged his “histrionic talent” and “genius” for bringing out the best in the boys. At King’s College School George produced a number of Molière’s plays and became famous for his performance as old Géronte in Les Fourberies de Scapin. Years later one of his students, G.S. Szlumper, recalled:

  The most popular master was Heyer. He was young and good humored and joined in the games and many of the pranks of the boys, but nevertheless worked a good deal of French into the heads of some of us younger boys.

  From boyhood, Georgette’s father honed his skills writing poetry and short stories, skills which he then sought to impart to his students. He was a compelling teacher, but it required a truly gifted student to fully absorb and then make use of the kinds of literary lessons he had to offer. Ironically, it was not in the classroom but in his own home that George would eventually find that pupil.

  From an early age Georgette was the eager recipient of her father’s literary heritage and she benefited enormously from his enthusiasm for good literature, his passion for the past, his creative spirit, and his love of writing. As well as encouraging her to read widely, George also insisted that she master the intricacies of written English and gain a clear understanding of grammar, syntax, and punctuation. He instilled in her a love of the English language and an understanding of its construction, form, and usage that would eventually enable her to develop her own stylish prose. They were kindred spirits, these two, and in time George would come to recognize in his daughter the gift of the natural storyteller and a talent for writing which would far exceed his own.

  He was a delightful father, with an irrepressible, Peter Pan side to his character which Georgette found immensely attractive. She had grown especially close to him by the time her baby brother was born on 20 August 1907. Coming into the world just four days after her fifth birthday, George Boris Heyer was a source of great interest to his sister, for she was very fond of dolls and quickly discovered that a baby could be just as entertaining. Like Georgette before him Boris was a lively baby, although he did not have her swiftness of mind or her passion for learning. She was not especially perturbed by Boris’s arrival or resentful of his demands on her mother. Sylvia’s confinement meant more time with Daddy. Father and daughter spent many blissful hours together in the weeks after Boris was born and Sylvia proudly recorded that George “worships the ground she treads on.”

  It is not known when Georgette wrote her first story or poem but she often saw her father writing and may have followed his example early. In 1909, when she was nearing seven and Boris was almost two, their father wrote a poem about his son and achieved a long-held ambition when it became the first of several of his poems to be published in Punch. “To Secundus” reveals George’s ability to bring a scene to life and infuse it with humor—another talent which he would encourage in his daughter. She also springs briefly into view in the ballad.

  To Secundus

  (Aged 20 months)

  You have capable fingers, Secundus my son,

  And a firm yet a delicate touch.

  Though you turn out the visiting-cards one by one

  And strew them around you,—isn’t it fun! —

  They are none of them, bent very much.

  And you know it’s untidy this game that you play,

  For you look up and smile,—and then what can I say?

  You’ve adventurous tastes and a will of your own,

  And I count it the worst of your sins

  That you instantly make for the dangerous zone

  Of the fender and coal-box, if suffered alone

  To toddle about on your pins;

  And your rink-like performance I cannot admire

  When you fetch up and balance in front of the fire.

  There’s a music that lurks in each word that you say

  Be it “tick-tick,” or “gee-gee,” or “done!”

  And the sound of your laughter no words can convey,—

  It is really the sparkle alive in the spray

  Of a waterfall lit by the sun.

  In your breath there is magic that “Sesame!” cries,

  For you blow on my watch—press—and open it flies.

  ’Tis your quick sense of fun that I like in you best

  And the fact that you never disdain

  To evince your delight at my sorriest jest

  Which, though often repeated, is welcomed with zest

  And demanded again and again.

  You’ve a joke of your own with the bell-push, but this

  Is a joke that the housemaid has taken amiss.

  You’re so fond of a game that there’s trouble unless

  We allow you to join the partie

  In whatever’s afoot; and it’s little you guess

  That your vigorous notions of how to play chess

  Have at times inconvenienced me.

  And your sister has also been know to refer

  To your manner with dolls as distressing to her.

  You’re a mischievous chap, and I freely admit

  That I like you for being a Turk;

  But there’s one thing about you disturbs me,—to wit,

  Your absurd fascination,—for here do I sit

  When I ought to be up and at work.

  You are surely a wizard, Secundus, my lad,

  And have bound with a spell your susceptible Dad.

  The years following Boris’s birth were busy ones for George. As well as his role as Appeals Secretary at King’s College Hospital, in 1908 he had also been appointed Secretary to the Dean of the Medical School. He continued directing the hospital’s fund-raising activities and when, in July 1909, King Edward VII laid the foundation stone for the new hospital George was among those seated on the official platform with the Royal family. He was a key organizer of the grand fund-raising carnival held at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham that year and, in 1909 and 1910, George also organized gala charity matinees at the Lyceum Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in central London. These were very successful and, for a time, put George squarely in one of his favorite milieus—the theater. He came to know a number of London’s leading actors, playwrights, and impresarios, as well as several members of the aristocracy, and it was as a result of these connections that, in 1910, he resigned from King’s College Hospital to take up the position of Organizing Secretary of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee.

  George was a Shakespeare aficionado and Georgette was raised on the works of the Bard. Her father was enthusiastic about the Committee’s plan for a theater dedicated to producing the works of Shakespeare and keen to play his part in raising the necessary £500,000 in time for the Shakespeare tercentenary in 1916. The Earl of Lyttleton was committee chairman and his supporters included many of the theatrical, literary, political, and aristocratic luminaries of the day. George probably attended the Shakespeare masque held in July 1910 in the park at Knole, the Sackville-West’s great house in Kent. Ellen Terry, Mrs. Winston Churchill, Elizabeth Asquith, and Vita Sackville-West all performed at the fund-raiser. George’s sister Alice later wrote of him in her memoirs that “he had charming manners and made many friends among these people and was received at Buckingham Palace.”

  By December 1913 George was reported in The Times as saying that the Committee had finally settled on a site in central London with frontages on Gower, Keppel, and Malet streets at a cost of £150,000. The balance of the money needed was to be raised by way of an appeal to “the lovers of Shakespeare,” but the First World War threw the Committee’s activities into disarray. It was to be nearly one hundred years before Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was eventually built on the south bank of the Thames.

  Before his resignation, George had gained a solid reputation in a number of social circles through his work for King’s College Hospital and in 1909 he was invite
d to join the Wimbledon Literary and Scientific Society (WLSS). Founded in 1891 the WLSS was a private society for residents of Wimbledon with an interest in or knowledge of things scientific and literary. Admittance to the Society was considered a great honor, for membership was by invitation only and prior to the First World War members were drawn mainly from Wimbledon’s elite—its “top-of-the-hill” ranks. Members met on a regular basis to hear formal lectures, present papers, and engage in organized debates or informal discussions, many of which were held in Wimbledon’s grandest homes.

  Georgette sometimes accompanied her father to the WLSS to watch him take part in recitations, readings, and literary reenactments, or in the Society’s famous Conversaziones. In 1911 George presented a paper to the Society on the poems of François Villon and two years later he and Georgette won great acclaim for their dramatic portrayal of the moment in Shakespeare’s tragedy King John where Hubert is about to put out the eyes of little Prince Arthur. Georgette was convincing as the young prince and the scene, inspired by Yeames’s famous painting, was considered very moving. Several Wimbledon families took part in the “Tableaux from the Poets” and George was not the only literary father to act alongside his daughter that evening. Mr. Alfred Percival Graves also led his wife and daughters in the tableau of Ruth and Naomi (there is no record indicating whether his fifteen-year-old son, the budding author Robert Graves, had a hand in the production).

  Despite its staid exterior, Wimbledon had much to offer a creative, imaginative child like Georgette, and her formative years there were to be a major influence on her later writing. Like others of her generation she was a witness to the final years of the equestrian age. There was very little motorized traffic in the suburb before the war and horses were still an essential part of daily life, so as a child Georgette encountered horses and became familiar with carriages in their many forms. Her family does not appear to have owned their own carriage, but there were several livery stables in Wimbledon with horses and carriages for hire. George was a rider and he ensured that Georgette learned the rudiments of the art in childhood.