Georgette also knew many of the local tradesmen’s horses. The butcher boy’s two-wheeled cart, the baker’s van, the fishmonger’s gig, and the milkman’s chariot were all horse-drawn and several times a week the huge, flat, coal carts and open dust-carts made their regular rounds of Wimbledon’s streets. She liked to watch the enormous draught-horses with their jangling horse-brasses going down the road. One of the most exciting carriages was the local fire engine, which was drawn by two white horses. Sometimes she would see the horses go galloping down the road pulling the bright red fire engine with its boiler puffing and the firemen furiously clinging on at the back. But the real equestrian highlight came in the summer months when the Box-Hill stagecoach made its run with regular stops at the Dog and Fox Inn in Wimbledon High Street.
Little had changed since the high coaching days of the Regency and Georgette loved to see the stagecoach coming down the street, its four horses glistening with sweat and its scarlet-coated guard holding on at the rear as the coach turned in at the inn yard. The Dog and Fox was where the stagecoach made its first change after leaving London. It was always exciting to watch the ostlers run out as soon as the coach pulled up in the yard and to see how quickly they could unharness the horses and replace them with four fresh ones. Georgette’s childhood was filled with the sights, smells, and sounds of horses and carriages: she had heard the blare of the guard’s coaching horn resonate across the inn-yard as the stage swept out into the street and the horses’ hooves clattering on the cobblestones; she understood the urgency of the change and could picture the sudden flurry of activity as the passengers hurried to take their seats in the coach. Years later, when she came to write of such things in her novels, Georgette did not merely imagine these scenes from information culled from history books, she remembered them; one of the reasons she could make such scenes live in her books was because she was writing from life.
Although horses were an important part of the daily routine in Wimbledon, walking was the way most people moved about the town and, like most middle-class Edwardian children, Georgette and Boris had one, or even two, regular daily walks. Accompanied by their mother, Georgette often helped to push Boris in his pram to the shops along the High Street or the Ridgway, or north to Rushmere Pond and the Common. Walks on the Common were sometimes rewarded with a sight of the balloon races that were held regularly in the summer on Saturdays. Looking up, Georgette and Boris might see half-a-dozen huge balloons floating by and would wave to the balloonists traveling overhead in their great basket gondolas. The memory of those balloons and their occupants would appear years later as a scene in her novel Frederica.
Away from the Common, a walk through Wimbledon sometimes meant an encounter with Algernon Swinburne, the famous poet who lived at Putney with his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton. Swinburne was a familiar sight in Wimbledon where he took his daily walk to the shops and Georgette remembered him once stopping to pat Boris on the head.
A trip to the shops could be a treat, especially if it included a visit to Frost’s, the toy shop at 5 High Street. Frost’s had a special counter on which was laid out a tantalizing array of little tin toys, none of which cost more than a farthing. Georgette chose her dolls at Frost’s or, if they were of the more expensive porcelain variety, she might be taken to Mannings, the grand toy shop farther down the hill in the Broadway. Two regular sights on the High Street were the Punch and Judy man, who would set up his portable theater across the road from Frost’s, and the organ-grinder, who had several spots along the High Street and the Ridgway where he would stop and churn out popular tunes to entertain the passersby. In the winter months the muffin-man would also make his rounds and sometimes they would buy muffins from the large wooden tray balanced on top of his head.
Georgette spent a happy, untroubled childhood in Wimbledon. She was a healthy, active child, slim of build but strong and very pretty, with long curling brown hair tinted with gold, clear gray eyes and her father’s “strongly marked very individual eyebrows.” She was given ample time to play and read and to absorb the world around her in her own way and at her own pace. School does not appear to have played much of a role in her life before the age of thirteen and it may be that Sylvia’s belief that Georgette’s brain was “best left alone” continued to guide her parents’ approach to her education. George and Sylvia made sure that she had a sound knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as a broad general knowledge and an understanding of languages, French in particular.
Years later, when Georgette wrote her most autobiographical novel Helen, she gave the fictional father, Jim Marchant, strong views about education for women which may well have echoed her own father’s approach: “I don’t want Helen educated for a profession and made to pass Matriculation. I want her mind to expand. I want her to be accomplished in the sense that she has a wide knowledge of art and history, and literature, and the things that matter.” In the novel Helen’s mother has died giving birth and she is raised by her devoted father. Although the child does not have any formal education before she is ten, she is untroubled by this for “Himself had taught Helen to read and write, while in long talks with her he had instilled into her a not inconsiderable knowledge of history and literature.” Like Georgette, Helen is happiest in her father’s company and has little need for a busy social life or lots of friends.
Georgette was not without friends as a girl but she was a shy child who was happy in her own company and quite content to be left alone with her books and to spend time reading, thinking, and making up stories. Although she sometimes played with other Wimbledon children, she seems to have retained very few of these relationships into adulthood. John Davy Hayward, the son of the family doctor, was an exception. He was two years younger than Georgette, with a sharp intellect and a similar interest in books and writing. John had a quick temper but his conversation was stimulating and Georgette did not seem to mind his tendency to be difficult and acerbic. As she grew older, her own style with those she knew well was to be frank, sometimes to the point of tactlessness, and in John she found someone with whom she could be herself. The two developed a close friendship and the habit of easy intimacy without the complications of romance.
Although he developed a rare form of muscular dystrophy in early adolescence, John eventually went to Cambridge where he became a lifelong friend and confidant of T.S. Eliot’s. He and Eliot later ran a minor salon from John’s flat in Bina Gardens in London and shared rooms for several years before Eliot’s marriage. After university John went on to become a successful anthologist and bibliophile and he and Georgette wrote to each other intermittently for many years.
In 1911, when Georgette was nearly nine, her family moved again. Their new home was at 27 Chartfield Road in Putney. It was here that Georgette’s brother, Frank Dmitri Heyer, was born on 18 January 1912. By the following August, when she turned ten, Georgette was very much the big sister to both Boris and Frank. She told them stories, pushed Frank in his pram, and helped Boris learn his letters. She loved both boys but was closest to Boris in both age and temperament. The two shared a similar sense of humor and the same direct way of talking. The Heyers did not stay in Putney for much more than two years, for in 1913 the family returned to Wimbledon to live briefly at 119 Ridgway, before leaving England for a new life in France.
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The modern child isn’t brought up on the proper literature.
—Georgette Heyer
Early in 1914, George accepted a job as the manager of the Paris branch of Cox’s Bank and that spring Georgette and her family moved into a maisonette on the Avenue Marceau. It was an ideal location in the heart of the city, just off the Champs-Elysées, with a view of the Arc de Triomphe and the Étoile. Georgette delighted in her new surroundings with their wide, open boulevards, busy cafés, and endless variety of things to see and do. It was a marvelous time to be in Paris, for it was then at its zenith as the cultural center of the world and an irresistible lure to many of the world’s gre
atest artists, thinkers, writers, and musicians. They brought the city to life with conversation and performance, art, music, and books and the Heyers reveled in the opportunity to go about the city and absorb some of its cultural riches.
For a literary Francophile like George, the chance to immerse himself in French society, culture, and language was especially satisfying. While for Sylvia Paris represented an opportunity to rediscover her music, with its rich offering of concerts, ballets, private salons, and the great Paris Opéra. Only the year before the Heyers’ arrival, Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring had caused one of the greatest sensations in the history of music, and the city was alive with the sounds of Ravel, Debussy, and Saint-Saëns—whose compositions Sylvia remembered playing at the Royal Academy. George’s position with the bank, his charm of manner and his fluent French brought a number of invitations and Georgette sometimes went with her parents to a salon or the theater. There were also galleries, museums, parks, and monuments to see and, already an astute observer, she took note of many things which she would later use in her novel Helen.
In the book Georgette would recall something of those heady Paris months. Part of the story recounts sixteen-year-old Helen’s first visit to Paris with her father, Jim Marchant, and her governess, Jane Pilbury. Helen revels in her new home and is fascinated by the city.
Never were more inveterate sight-seers than Jane and Helen. For over a fortnight they explored Paris…They walked round and round the streets which formed an outer circle about the Étoile, trying to decide which view of the Arc was most pleasing. Helen thought she liked the one from the Avenue Marceau, where you saw the Arc three-quarter full, and least the view from the Avenue Wagram…They spent hours in the Rue de la Paix gazing at almost incredible frocks and jewels, and marveled at the size of Napoleon in the Place Vendôme. They crossed the river to the Invalides and the Faubourg Saint Germain, and they went north to the Montmartre…and gasped to see the white wonder which, when finished, was to be the Sacré Coeur…They talked in exclamation marks, Helen said, and could not find enough words to express what they felt.
Helen attends morning school where she studies history, literature, and languages, but “the afternoons were free for amusement when they would journey down the Seine on little steamboats, or drive out to Fontainebleau. There were concerts too, and theatres, exhibitions, and picture galleries, or most enthralling of all, the opera.” Many of Helen’s fictional experiences in Paris echo her creator’s—although Georgette was to give her heroine a more peaceful departure from the city than she herself would experience.
Conflict came unexpectedly when, on Saturday 1 August 1914, Germany declared war and began its advance toward the French frontier. Three days later, Germany invaded Belgium and on 4 August Britain declared war. Georgette and her family remained in the French capital throughout August and into September and she celebrated her twelfth birthday in Paris. Her parents read the papers and sought information from friends and colleagues while they decided what to do. Like many people in those early weeks of the War, they were not convinced the conflict would last, but as the Germans moved south and west through Belgium, reports of the brutality of their advance made those living in Paris increasingly nervous. The Battle of the Marne began on 6 September, with the enemy just thirty miles from the capital, and Georgette always remembered hearing the rumble of the German guns as the Allies fought off the attack. The battle ended six days later with an Allied victory but it was all too close for comfort. Soon afterwards George decided it was time to take his family home.
The Heyers returned to London and tried to settle into normal life. There was an air of uncertainty in England as the war intensified on the Continent. George found that he was unwilling to commit himself to a permanent job until the situation in France was clear. Harold Pullein-Thompson, a young friend of his who had also taught at King’s College School, returned from the Front in October after receiving bullet and shrapnel wounds in his arm and shoulder. He was not optimistic about the chances of the conflict being short-lived.
Surrounded by friends and family with loved ones at the Front, Georgette’s father (though overage) began to think about enlisting. It was not a straightforward decision, as he was his family’s sole provider and the effect on them was a serious consideration. Georgette was approaching adolescence and, despite an acute intellect, was intensely shy. If her father went to war she would not only lose her dearest companion, she would have to go to school.
Georgette’s shyness may have been one reason why her parents were content to educate her at home. George was a gifted teacher more than capable of educating his own children, but the War changed everything. Given his propensity to talk to Georgette on all manner of subjects, her father probably discussed with her the possibility of his enlisting. It cannot have been an easy conversation but, even at twelve, she understood what was expected of someone of her class and upbringing and the need for a “stiff upper-lip” response. Years later in Helen she wrote about a father going off to the War and his explanation to his teenage daughter:
We thought the War would soon be over. It won’t. It’s growing. Personal feeling, inclination, everything, must go to the wall before this enormous upheaval. You see that?…I’ve got to go, Helen. It boils down to that. Not because the Country calls, or any other poster cry like that, not because I’m indispensable to the Army, not even because of a patriotic desire to hold England inviolate, as the newspapers would say. It’s because of the spirit of adventure that is in every man, and the feeling that one can’t be out of it.
Georgette may not have fully understood the War or her father’s need to play his part in it, but she loved him and knew that going to France was important to him and that she should cope in his absence. Although she was a sensitive child, she had courage and a strong streak of stoicism that enabled her to internalize her feelings and keep many of the stronger emotions at bay. To those who did not know her well she could sometimes appear unfeeling, and it did not always help that her quick wit and sharp tongue were often used to hide her most private hurts. The heroine in Helen similarly suffers after her father and many of her friends leave for the Front: “She was not cold or hard. Something within her was aching for all these men who were going to Flanders, but she could not show it. ‘I’ve got to keep my end up, same as you.’”
Georgette kept her end up and when, on 13 September 1915, George applied for “appointment to a temporary commission in the regular army for the period of the war” she remained stoical. The following day her father was assigned to the British Expeditionary Forces, Central Requisition Office in Rouen. A week later George was commissioned as a lieutenant and on 21 September he embarked for France.
Her father’s departure meant Georgette would have to go to school for the first time at the age of thirteen. The institution chosen for her entrance into formal education was the Oakhill Academy at 9 Ridgway Place in Wimbledon. A handsome Victorian terrace house, it was known locally as “Miss Head’s School” and was a popular choice for the daughters of Wimbledon’s professional class. In almost every way school was a new experience for Georgette and not altogether a happy one, although her teachers were kind and the principal, Miss Head, took a personal interest in each of the girls. For Georgette, used to the freedom of her father’s library, to reading where interest or fancy took her, and to impromptu discussions about poetry, plays, history, and language, the formality of school was an adjustment. At Miss Head’s she was expected to study set subjects for a specific time, her days regulated by bells and a curriculum. She found the change difficult and, according to an unnamed school friend,1 for some time her only friends at Oakhill were the teachers, all of whom admired her intelligence and ability and in whose company she was most at ease.
The fact that she got along with adults did not help to endear her to her classmates, but there were also other, more difficult differences to overcome. Georgette’s knowledge of history and literature, her experiences in France
, and her upbringing in general gave her fellow pupils (as the friend later recalled) the sense that “she had already seen a great deal of the world and a very much wider world than we in our secure little lives in Wimbledon had ever seen.” Georgette was precocious and unusual. This student remembered her “as an enigma even then; full of intelligence, a very dry caustic wit, and a tremendous sense of humor.”
While she may have inherited her father’s love of a joke, George’s genius for making friends eluded her. Lacking his gregarious temperament and irrepressible personality, Georgette frequently found the path to friendship tortuous. Her forthright manner and what her classmate described as “her sharp, all too accurate, caustic tongue,” masked her shyness and made her difficult to know. Georgette’s deep reserve meant friendship came slowly—although when it did come it was of the enduring kind with a strong element of loyalty. Eventually, she did find a friend at Oakhill and, appropriately, the two girls “came together over a book.” Their discovery that they had both read and liked The Red Deer marked the beginning of a friendship that lasted throughout the War.
Like so many families caught up in the Great War, the Heyers found the changes difficult. Boris was only eight and Frank three when their father left for France. They all felt his absence and for Sylvia and Georgette it was especially hard. Sylvia joined the Red Cross as a volunteer nurse but Georgette was too young to join a formal organization—although she probably knitted socks and balaclavas for the troops. Her father was never far from her thoughts. Although his job kept him mainly at Army Headquarters and therefore some distance from the battlefront, both mother and daughter were keenly aware of the possibility that he might never return to them.
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