Georgette Heyer

by Jennifer Kloester

  The years following the First World War were a time of considerable change and upheaval, particularly for Georgette’s generation. Many young people had lost friends and loved ones in the carnage, or experienced firsthand the horrors of the battlefield, and now wanted nothing more than to put the War behind them. For those who could afford it, the 1920s were a time to dance, drink, and play; to throw off what they saw as the restrictions and restraints of the Victorian age. This was the era of the “Bright Young Things” and the “modern” girl who smoked, learned to type, took up secretarial or other work, and moved out of the family home before she was married. For many, independence was key and “free thought” its symbol, which found expression in raised skirts, bobbed hair, the Bohemian movement, and in new ways of speaking and writing through the medium of books, films, and the theater. Many earnest young men and women saw peace as a chance to build the world anew—to cast off old conventions like class and tradition and create a better society.

  Although her contemporary novels show that she thought deeply about many of the ideas current during those postwar years, Georgette was not among those wishing to change the world. She was more inclined to mourn the passing of old traditions and to look back instead of forward to find that which would comfort her. The only known description of Georgette during the 1920s comes from an article in the New Zealand Sun newspaper written by a literary acquaintance of hers, the author Jane Mander, who worked at Christy & Moore:

  Smilingly, she called herself a sheltered daughter, and said she was glad of it. She has never been to a university and considers herself a Victorian. She hates Bohemians and studio parties, loves home life and country sports. She calls herself a reactionary and loathes the Freudians, and speaks slightingly of certain famous modern realists. She detests the average modern novel, and loves the old ones, particularly Jane Austin [sic] and Thackeray.

  Although Georgette disdained many of what she perceived to be the quirks and poses of the postwar generation, she liked being part of a social group and enjoyed going out with friends to the theater, the opera, and dances. At seventeen, she attended the Blue Ball at the Royal Albert Hall; a grand affair also attended by the famous stage actresses Fay Compton and Gladys Cooper. They made such an impression on Georgette that years later she wrote to a friend:

  How Fay Compton was attracting all eyes—until Gladys Cooper turned up, when no one had any eyes for anyone else. She couldn’t hold a candle to Fay Compton as far as classic beauty of nature was concerned—but her Eyes! They would have knocked anyone for six, not only because they were so large, & so lustrous, but because of the beauty of their expression!

  Georgette also had lovely eyes. At eighteen she was considered striking—even beautiful. Tall at five foot ten, she was slender and elegant, with a “cloud of hair” and a dusting of freckles on porcelain skin. She enjoyed clothes and always dressed well, keeping up with the latest fashions in frocks, hats, and accessories and often wearing a long string of amber beads with matching earrings. Adulthood suited her, and friendship came more easily than it had at school. She had grown into her intellect and people understood and appreciated her humor much more readily, although she was not always tactful. Polite conversation, small-talk, and trivia were never her style. She was far too down-to-earth and forthright to refrain from expressing her opinion among friends, who soon learned to expect the sharp wit and frank remarks.

  Georgette would never seek the limelight or be a poseur—although she did fall prey to the fashionable pastime of smoking. In those days smoking was considered smart and elegant and she developed a taste for cork-tipped Virginia cigarettes, smoking up to two packs a day for the rest of her life. Georgette attracted attention. According to the Hodge biography, at parties “young men abandoned everyone else and clustered around her ‘like flies round a honey-pot.’” But Georgette was in no hurry to fall seriously in love. She enjoyed male company but was happy to have a man’s friendship without the burden of romantic entanglement. From an early age she found that she often preferred men to women, liking their way of speaking, forthright manners, and emotional restraint, in contrast to women who so often wanted to share their deepest feelings after only a few hours’ acquaintance.

  Georgette did have female friends, however, and not only Joanna and Carola. In the 1920s she had at least one other close girlfriend with whom she went out socially and who may have been the source of invitations to the sorts of weekend house parties, hunt balls, and supper dances which she would write about in her contemporary novels. Dorothea Arbuthnot was the great-niece of the Duchess of Atholl and of Georgiana, Countess of Dudley. She had grown up in a stately home in Sussex with her two sisters and a retinue of servants. Known to her intimates as “Doreen,” this is what Georgette also called her when they got to know each other after the War. It is not clear when or where the two girls met, but by 1924 Georgette and Doreen were close friends and remained so until at least 1930.

  Although Georgette was not presented at Court—being neither rich enough nor sufficiently well-born for that—she had certain qualifications for joining in at the fringe of upper-class society: she was unusual and articulate, intelligent and well-educated, with a father who was a graduate of Cambridge and an MBE, and a mother who was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. Georgette was not upper-class and would never be part of the elite inner circle, but she knew what was expected and how to behave and was well able to interact appropriately whenever she found herself on its periphery.

  Georgette’s entrée into the exciting social world of postwar London had not stopped her from writing and her experiences at events like the Blue Ball clearly fed her already active imagination. In late 1920 her literary efforts suddenly bore fruit. The previous February she had made up a serial story for Boris, who had been ill. The family had gone to Hastings for his convalescence and it was there that Georgette first devised the exciting adventures of Jack Carstares, the earl turned highwayman, “to relieve my own boredom and my brother’s.” Her father had heard some of the story, recognized the spark of the natural storyteller, and “insisted that [she] do some serious work on it with a view to publication.” Georgette finished the story, wrote it out in her best handwriting, and sent the manuscript to Constable, the well-known publisher. She was only seventeen.

  Soon afterwards Constable offered to buy The Black Moth. The contract was for both British and American publication with a £100 advance against sales. It was an extraordinary achievement for such a young writer and a thrilling experience to have her work accepted “first crack out of the bag.” But Georgette did not immediately sign the contract. Instead she wrote to the Society of Authors. Established in 1884, the Society existed specifically to protect the rights of authors and assist them with advice regarding agents, publishers, and contracts. On 28 March 1921 Georgette sent her contract to the Society and requested they give it their attention—“especially Clause 17.” Three days later she received a comprehensive reply.

  It is impossible to know the precise contents of the original contract for The Black Moth because Constable’s archives were bombed during the Second World War. Georgette’s correspondence with the Society of Authors makes some of its details clear, however, and her prompt and decisive reply is impressive not only for its clearheaded grasp of her correspondent’s detailed advice, but also for her insight into her publisher’s position:

  Thank you very much for the advice on my contract. On most points I agree with you, but Clause 3—concerning the American sales, I am leaving as it stands. Houghton Mifflin are collaborating with Constable’s, and publishing my book in America. The profits of net sale are to be divided equally between Constable’s and myself. As Constable’s run a certain amount of risk in bringing out an entirely new author, I think this is generous.

  When her correspondent told her frankly that “I object very strongly to Clause 17, and should advise you to delete such clause,” Georgette calmly wrote back “As to Clause 17—concerning my futur
e three books, I intend to ask that in the event of my second book reaching 10,000 sale, when I shall receive 20% on it, my third book shall start at that percentage.”

  From the beginning she knew that there were more books to come, though she may not have known what they were to be about. She eventually thought better of asking for the higher starting royalty for the third (hypothetical) book in her contract with Constable as she had come “to the conclusion that it was too much to ask, and I didn’t ask it!” By the end of the correspondence, Georgette signed the contract for The Black Moth and joined the Society of Authors. She was still only eighteen.

  Selling The Black Moth was the first of two pivotal events that took place after Georgette’s eighteenth birthday. The second occurred in December 1920, when her father took the family to the Bushey Hall Hotel in Hertfordshire for a week’s holiday. A vast neo-Jacobean pile set in verdant parkland, the Hall had been built as a private residence in 1865 and later converted into a hotel. It was popular with affluent middle-class families and the Heyers spent Christmas there. At the hotel’s Christmas dance Georgette met George Ronald Rougier. Known as Ron or Ronnie, he was a serious-looking student of twenty in his second year of study at the Royal School of Mines and a member of the famous Harlequins rugby team. Georgette knew little about either mining or rugby, but Ronald was tall, handsome, and intelligent, with the kind of dry sense of humor she liked, and she was amenable to learning about sport and minerals. They danced together that evening and he discovered that, despite her eighteen years, this tall, stylish, rather shy young woman had a formidable intellect with a sharp wit and direct way of speaking which aroused his interest.

  Like the Heyers, the Rougiers were part of the comfortable middle class with aspirations to rise up the social ladder. Ronald’s father was of French Huguenot descent and his mother was Scottish. The Rougiers had emigrated to England in 1686 and in 1794 they founded a horn-and-tortoiseshell manufactory in York. Ronald’s father, Charles Joseph Rougier, was one of the fourth generation to work in the family business. In 1890 he had moved to the Russian seaport of Odessa where he worked as a ship broker and ran an import-export business. It was in Odessa that he met Ronald’s mother, Jean Crookston, whose brother John was a naval architect with the British Black Sea Fleet. Ronald’s parents were married at the British Consulate in Odessa in November 1892. Ronald was born in Odessa in 1900, four years after his brother Charles Leslie Rougier (known as Leslie). The family lived near the harbor in a house in Torgovaya Street and remained in Odessa long enough for Ronald to acquire Russian and an enduring love of caviar.

  As a boy Ronald developed an interest in ships and the sea. He would often visit Odessa’s busy port to watch the many foreign vessels set sail. He and Leslie had an English governess, Hannah Atkins, but by 1908 it was decided that the boys needed an English education if they were to be properly prepared for their chosen careers in the Army and the Navy. The Rougiers returned to England, where Leslie became a boarder at Marlborough College in Wiltshire and Ronald attended Northaw Place, a preparatory school at Potter’s Bar, about ten miles north of London. His parents moved into a house in Stevenage in Hertfordshire, not far from the famous Letchworth golf course. Ronald often rode his bicycle there on weekends and it was on the greens and fairways of Letchworth that he formed a lifelong passion for the game of golf.

  Ronald was a clever student who won prizes for Latin and mathematics at Northaw Place. Early in 1913 he passed the entrance examination for the Royal Naval College at Osborne and in May began his officer training there as a member of the “Exmouth Term.” Ronald would spend the next two years at Osborne before progressing to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth for another two years of training. He did well at both Osborne and Dartmouth, but the War changed everything. When hostilities broke out in August 1914, the entire College was mobilized and many of the Dartmouth cadets were sent straight to the Fleet. Although they still had another term at Osborne, Ronald and his classmates, including Prince Louis of Battenberg (later Lord Louis Mountbatten), were moved immediately to Dartmouth to complete their naval training as quickly as possible.

  Every cadet knew that he would be sent to sea as soon as he was needed, regardless of whether he had finished his training, and that he would need to be passed fit before going into active service. Toward the end of his second term at Dartmouth it was discovered that Ronald suffered from defective eyesight and his naval career was brought to an abrupt end. It was a devastating blow after nearly three years of training. Deeply disappointed, Ronald began his education afresh at Marlborough, where he eventually became a prefect and captain of the rugby team.

  In December 1918 he left Marlborough and the following year began studying at the Royal School of Mines in London. For the next four years Ronald studied mining, geology, and metallurgy at the school’s headquarters at the Imperial College in South Kensington. He had wanted to study law but his parents felt that reading for the Bar was too expensive. There had been a sharp downturn in the Rougiers’ Yorkshire business in recent years (largely brought about by the dramatic shift in women’s hairstyles after the Great War) which may have underpinned the decision, but years later Georgette wrote bitterly of Ronald’s mother that she “was a mean old covenanting Scot who wouldn’t finance his Bar career though she could have.”

  Ronald was a sociable young man and an engaging talker who only recently had ended a brief relationship with Marjorie Tanner, known as “Tam” (she later fell in love with Ronald’s brother Leslie and married him). Although Georgette was quite different from the lively and energetic Tam, Ronald found much to hold his interest. That Christmas week at Bushey Park they were often together, for Ronald had also taken an instant liking to Georgette’s father. He found George’s ability to bring any subject to life, his enthusiasm for history and literature, his habit of quoting from the classics, of talking about ideas and offering information without condescension, enormously endearing. Although Ronald loved his parents they were not interested in the kinds of things that stimulated him and he found great satisfaction in his friendship with Georgette’s father.

  Ronald soon became a regular visitor to the Heyer house. In the years after the War, the shortage of men meant that a young woman was expected to bring her own partner to a dance and Ronald became Georgette’s reliable escort, riding his motorbike to her house in order to squire her to parties, plays, and dances. Georgette, in her turn, regularly watched him play rugby, taking the trouble to learn the rudiments of the game and braving the cold and damp to stand on the sidelines to cheer him on. He was a key member of the Royal School of Mines students’ team and had debuted with the Harlequins in November 1919. In the world of English rugby, the only thing better than representing the Harlequins was representing England and Ronald was selected for the English team in 1923. He missed playing for his country only because of illness. He was a clever, courageous player who regularly represented the Harlequins alongside Adrian Stoop, a legendary Harlequin with whom Ronald and Georgette remained in touch for many years.

  Ronald excelled at golf as well as rugby. He also played tennis—a game of which Georgette’s father was fond and an obvious pastime for anyone living in Wimbledon. George and Ronald sometimes played tennis together while Georgette and Sylvia watched, and then the four of them would play bridge. Georgette enjoyed card games, especially bridge and solitaire. In later years she would play endless games of solitaire or engage in a complex jigsaw while working out the plots of her novels. She possessed an orderly mind and liked solving puzzles or engaging in anything that required skill and precision. She also had style and flair and it was this combination that was to prove such an asset to her writing.

  In 1920 the postwar bubble burst. Both the Heyers and their friends the Pullein-Thompsons lost heavily on the stock market. It was always said in the Pullein-Thompson family that Georgette passed on her £100 advance for The Black Moth to her father in order to relieve the financial strain. George had resigned from the
War Office earlier in the year after suffering a serious illness (possibly pneumonia). This was the second year of the devastating influenza pandemic which killed twenty-seven million people worldwide and left many war-weary families, whose loved ones had survived the carnage of the Front, unexpectedly bereft. Fortunately, George recovered from his illness and was officially demobilized in May, with permission to retain the rank of Captain.

  For him, those first few months as a civilian were a challenging time. Like so many returned soldiers, George soon discovered that his years of service to his country did not necessarily count for much in the postwar world. Instead of the “land fit for heroes,” promised by the government, unemployment was rife. More than a million men were out of work by 1920. George’s own employment position in the months after leaving the War Office is unclear. Some of the difficulties he encountered in finding work are revealed in a humorous essay he wrote for Punch entitled “Getting Fixed”—a satirical story about a well-educated man looking for a job after being demobilized.

  The Heyers moved to Weybridge that year and it was there that Georgette must have dealt with the page proofs for The Black Moth. Her first novel tells the story of Jack Carstares, Earl of Wyncham, who has turned his back on his lands and title after being falsely accused of cheating at cards. Jack sacrifices his own honor to protect his brother Richard who, fearful of losing his heart’s desire—the lovely Lady Lavinia—allows his brother to take the blame for his deception. The “Black Moth” of the book’s title is Lavinia’s brother, Tracy Belmanoir, the Duke of Andover, also known to his intimates as “Devil.” Jack and Belmanoir cross paths after they each fall in love with the beautiful Diana Beauleigh. The Black Moth came out in September 1921, with Georgette’s photograph in a medallion on the back cover. The novel earned her her first reviews in both England and America, including a short one in The Times Literary Supplement which concluded: “Jack’s easy-going smiling quixotry is almost excessive; but he makes a fascinating hero of romance; and it is a well-filled story which keeps the reader pleased.”