Georgette Heyer

by Jennifer Kloester

  6

  I can’t possibly puff off my own work.

  —Georgette Heyer

  In April 1923 Georgette’s third novel appeared in the bookshops, although probably only her closest friends and family knew of it. For some unknown reason, she chose to publish the book under a pseudonym and with a publisher other than Hutchinson. The novel was The Transformation of Philip Jettan by “Stella Martin,” published by Mills & Boon. In the 1920s the name Mills & Boon was not yet synonymous with a specific genre of romance fiction. They were still a large general publisher with a broad list which included travel guides, cookery books, novels, biographies, plays, sporting guides, and histories. Philip Jettan was just one of a hundred new Mills & Boon novels that year and “Stella Martin” appeared alongside popular authors including Jack London, Gaston Leroux, and Louise Gerard. Mills & Boon never actually published a novel by “Georgette Heyer” and may not even have known that “Stella Martin” was really the up-and-coming author of The Black Moth and The Great Roxhythe.

  Georgette’s decision to conceal her identity is puzzling. There are several theories as to why she might have chosen to publish this sole book under another name. The Transformation of Philip Jettan is by far her shortest novel. Written in just three weeks, she may have felt that such a hastily constructed book was best published without her name on its cover. She was already writing a contemporary novel for Hutchinson when struck by the inspiration which resulted in Philip Jettan and may not have wished them to know that she was publishing a book with a rival company.

  Georgette was trying her hand at different genres in those early years of her career and she may not have wanted to be identified solely with the swashbuckling romance. It is possible that her father suggested she write Philip Jettan under a pen-name. George had often written under a nom de plume, signing himself “B.I.N.K.” in the Cambridge magazines Granta and The Pheon, and anonymously publishing his poems in Punch, The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Saturday Westminster Review. He was also writing detective stories under a pseudonym and may even have been published by Mills & Boon himself.

  Her father was a valued reader and adviser and a vital part of Georgette’s writing life. He had a high regard for historical fiction, a topic in which he took a particular interest. In 1923 he gave a lecture to the Wimbledon Literary and Scientific Society on “History in Fiction” in which he declared that “the best historical novels rank with history, and serve as a valuable stimulus to the young.” George believed that the general reader gained “much of their knowledge of the 18th century and early Victorian times from the work of the novelists.” In light of this it is not surprising that his daughter wrote historical fiction—although George’s own literary ambitions lay elsewhere. He hoped to make his mark in the world of academic publishing with a translation of François Villon’s poems. By using a pseudonym for his detective stories he could use his own name for more scholarly writing. As the writer of the more serious Roxhythe, it is possible that Georgette also wished to conceal her identity as the author of the more frivolous, lightweight Philip Jettan. She eventually inscribed her father’s copy of Philip Jettan: “I beg your acceptance, Darling, of this elegant trifle,” signing it “Dordette” (her family’s pet-name for her).

  The Transformation of Philip Jettan was the only one of Georgette’s books to be published by Mills & Boon. With the manuscript complete she returned to the contemporary novel to be published by Hutchinson in the autumn. The two books of hers published that year could hardly have been more different: Philip Jettan is a lighthearted romantic romp set in the eighteenth century and Instead of the Thorn is a sedate story of modern life. Philip Jettan is still in print (as Powder and Patch) while Instead of the Thorn was firmly suppressed by its author some fifteen years after its original publication. Her first attempt at a full-length romance set in her own era, she worked hard on it and made frequent visits to Joanna Cannan’s home in nearby Marryat Road to talk about “the fortunes of Elizabeth Arden”—the novel’s naive and troubled heroine. The title, Instead of the Thorn, comes from the Book of Isaiah (“instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree”) and refers to the journey of self-discovery which Elizabeth must undergo in order to develop into her true self. The novel explores some of the sorts of issues and ideas with which Georgette was grappling in those early years of her young adulthood. The long dedication to Joanna Cannan reveals that they talked a great deal about married life, men, sex, and relationships. It was an unusual book for a single girl of twenty to write, with its central theme of a troubled marriage and a heroine who must work out the dynamics of the male-female relationship before she can live honestly and well.

  Georgette’s picture of Elizabeth Arden, who has been raised by her foolish, egocentric father and narrow-minded maiden aunt, also shows her struggling with ideas about a woman’s place in the world and the effects of keeping women too much in ignorance—especially about sex. Elizabeth suffers as a result of her aunt’s Victorian views and surfeit of sensibility which have been imposed on her since childhood. Her restricted emotional growth and the ingrained belief that she must speak and act according to other people’s expectations lead Elizabeth to suppress her own thoughts and personality until she becomes enmeshed in a web of self-deceit. Early in the book she meets and marries Stephen Ramsay, a successful author, whose fame and upper-class credentials make him a “suitable” husband, even though Elizabeth does not truly love him. Their relationship is tested when she enters the marriage knowing nothing of sex only to find that she is utterly unprepared for it. Horrified and confused by the physical and emotional demands which marriage brings, at first she tries to meet her husband’s and her family’s expectations but gradually discovers that this requires an even greater deception.

  Eventually the marriage fails and Elizabeth must face the world alone for a time while she learns to think and act as herself. She gradually does and is greatly helped by a pragmatic farmer’s wife who offers her “stray scraps of her life’s philosophy”:

  “There’s a deal of give and take in marriage, and girls don’t realize it. The man takes and the woman gives. Leastways, I’ve always found it so…It comes more natural to us, you see, and a man’s a great weak creature when all’s said and done, without much more understanding than a baby. You’re to humor a man. Lord, that’s what we’re here for! It’s a poor woman who’s got no man to manage…You see, dearie, a man’s selfish. He can’t help it; he don’t have to bear what we bear. At the best he’s stupid when it comes to understanding how we women feel. We don’t really like him any the less for that.”

  “Are men selfish?” Elizabeth asked. “All of them?”

  “More or less, mostly more. Because they don’t understand. So the woman’s got to be unselfish. Stands to reason she must be, or how would she fit in? A man doesn’t fit, ever. He doesn’t know how to.”

  “It seems rather hard—and unfair.”

  “My dear, don’t you get to thinking this is a fair world for women, because it isn’t. I’m not saying that if we could start all over again we wouldn’t have things different, but seeing as how they are as they are, we’ve made the best of ’em, and we’ve learned to fit in as quickly as possible. You’ve got to put up with a lot, the Lord knows! but it’s worth it in the long run.”

  Georgette’s own experience of entering adulthood in a postwar world and her struggle to come to grips with the period’s often conflicting views about men and women and their roles, found expression in each of the four contemporary novels she would eventually write. Between them, Instead of the Thorn (1923), Helen (1928), Pastel (1929), and Barren Corn (1930) offer a fascinating insight into her view of middle- and upper-class life in 1920s England. They are thoughtful books and well-written but without the pace or tight plotting of her other novels—although on one level Barren Corn is a gripping psychological study which has much to say about the worth of the individual and the power of class.

  A theme common to all four conte
mporary novels is that of a young woman emerging from the world she has always known—usually her home and family—into a new world of handsome, debonair men and daring, modern women, all of whom appear to live life to the full. Georgette’s heroines are intrigued by the devil-may-care attitude of many of the books’ young “moderns” and are drawn into their world as much by curiosity as a desire to belong to it themselves. Each of her contemporary heroines is a naive, untried young woman who, on finding herself either married or in a relationship with a man, discovers that she has deceived herself and him about her real feelings and expectations. Georgette carefully constructed her protagonists’ journeys of discovery and self-revelation and, in the first and last novels in particular, she shows considerable insight into the slow and often tortuous process involved in learning to know oneself.

  Taken together, the value of the four contemporary novels lies mainly in what they reveal about Georgette’s perception of her world in the 1920s and her depiction of postwar English life, with all of its contradictions and complexities. Her characters converse in the language of the day and through them she expresses many of the ideas and beliefs that were current at the time. In some ways it is as though Georgette is trying to work out her ideas on paper, to discover what she really thinks about women, class, relationships, and even sex. Some of the most interesting conversations between her characters are about the role of women in the “new” society and whether or not females are as capable or even as intelligent as men. It is surprising to find so many of her characters—both male and female—express less than flattering opinions about women, and tempting to try and discern Georgette’s own point of view in these discussions. In the end, her personal views remain tantalizingly elusive, but the novels show that she was thinking a great deal about such things.

  Georgette celebrated her twenty-first birthday on 16 August 1923. Three weeks later she went into hospital for surgery (probably to do with her teeth, which were to trouble her throughout her life). From there she wrote to her agent. Georgette had received the proofs for Instead of the Thorn and consequently was “full of energy.” Two weeks later she wrote again to say that the operation had been successful, though her face was still swollen on one side. She had talked to her “charming surgeon about being photographed” and he had laughingly suggested she have a profile done. Although in later life Georgette grew increasingly resistant to having her photograph taken, in her twenties and thirties she sat for a new photographic portrait every few years.

  The session which she had mentioned to her surgeon was an important one, for she had been accorded the honor of being photographed by E.O. Hoppé, then the most famous photographer in the world and a household name. By 1923 he had already photographed King George V and most of the crowned heads of Europe, as well as many of the great literary and theatrical luminaries of the day, including Thomas Hardy, Rebecca West, Rudyard Kipling, John Galsworthy, A.A. Milne, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, Sir Edward Elgar, Anna Pavlova, Diaghilev, and the entire Russian ballet, among others. When Hoppé photographed Georgette, she had published only three books under her own name but she must have been perceived as a rising talent to be photographed by the man Cecil Beaton dubbed “the Master.”

  In the autumn of 1923 Georgette attended Hoppé’s studio in South Kensington. He always took time with his subjects and made a point of discussing with them their backgrounds and interests in order that he might capture the subject’s true nature in his photographs. Hoppé’s portraits of Georgette are unlike any others. Looking at them it is easy to see why, in those early years, Hoppé’s photographs of women were, as Ainslie Ellis has said, “considered too frank.” Georgette is utterly herself in the photos, without a hint of makeup, glamour, or artifice. There is no pose: she simply sits, gazing forward or reading a book, a little shy, but completely composed and looking absurdly youthful despite her twenty-one years. There is a powerful impression that Hoppé captured her exactly as she was—in many ways a child still, but with a formidable intelligence and a reserve and an uncertainty that is balanced by the strength of her chin and the quiet poise of her frank, unshuttered face.

  The five portraits—two of them in a fashionable hat and fur coat—appear to have disappointed their sitter for, despite the honor of being taken by Hoppé, Georgette seems not to have found the photos flattering and may well have found them far too revealing. Georgette’s descendants never saw the photographs and within a year she had taken herself off to a photographer in the Strand for a new portrait. The new shots were much more glamorous pictures of her made-up, with her hair stylishly coiffed and wearing a modish evening gown and Chinese silk shawl. All trace of the child has vanished and the overall effect of these pictures is of a beautiful, striking woman.

  Toward the end of the year, however, Georgette was not thinking about photographs or publicity but about Ronald’s imminent departure for Africa. He had graduated from the Royal School of Mines in July and was keen to pursue his new career as a mining engineer. There were plenty of opportunities for eager young professionals in Africa during the 1920s and Ronald had secured a position with the Niger Company in northern Nigeria. It would take him away for at least a year. Georgette had grown used to his regular and reliable presence; he was a stimulating companion who engaged with her intellectually and she was not keen to see him go. But jobs for mining engineers were scarce in London, and Nigeria promised adventure to a young man who had once dreamed of a naval career and seeing the world from the deck of a ship. It was a wrench to say goodbye, for he was a good friend and they had “enjoyed many feuds” in those early years of their relationship. Georgette would feel his absence very much.

  On 20 October 1923 Ronald played his last game for the Harlequins and left the side having played forty-seven games in the First XV with an impressive eighteen tries or fifty-four points. (A try used to be worth three points. At the beginning of the 1971–72 season it changed to four points and then for the 1992–93 season it became five points.) Eleven days later Ronald sailed from Liverpool on the S.S. Adda bound for the west coast of Africa and the Nigerian capital of Lagos.

  7

  I imagine the book will sell, because it is a Luv story.

  —Georgette Heyer

  With Ronald gone, Georgette returned to her newest literary venture, a medieval novel with a heroic protagonist named Simon Beauvallet. Simon the Coldheart was to be her first attempt at the medieval period and her second attempt at a less swashbuckling historical romance—although the novel had neither the seriousness nor the more considered historical approach which she had applied to The Great Roxhythe.

  Georgette had been reading Carola Oman’s first novel in manuscript and was impressed by her friend’s vivid portrait of the young Mary, Queen of Scots. Carola’s recent marriage to Gerald Lenanton had not stopped her writing and she had finally achieved her goal of publication when Fisher Unwin accepted The Road Royal for their “First Novel Library.” The novel told of Queen Mary’s childhood in France, her dramatic reign and eventual downfall. It marked the beginning of a writing career which would see Carola go on to make her name as an eminent biographer as well as a historical novelist. Joanna Cannan had also continued writing after her marriage. Her first novel had been published by Fisher Unwin the year before Carola’s. The Misty Valley appeared in January 1923 to good reviews and Joanna was already working on a second book, Wild Berry Wine.

  The three friends met whenever possible to read each other’s work-in-progress and talk about their writing. In her lengthy dedication in Instead of the Thorn Georgette acknowledged her debt to Joanna for her advice, for reading the book “all in cold type,” her “sympathy in moments of depression,” and for offering “criticism that was careful, and shrewd, and very kind.” She and Joanna were close in those early years of their friendship. When Joanna and Cappy’s first child was born on 3 April 1924, Joanna asked Georgette to be godmother. The baby was named Josephine and, not surprisingly given her literary heritage, she
also became an author. Like her sisters, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson, Josephine wrote a series of much-loved pony books for children.

  Georgette spent most of 1924 writing her medieval romance. It was set in England and Normandy during the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V with a scene at the Battle of Shrewsbury and a dramatic dénouement. This novel required more research than The Black Moth or Philip Jettan but less than for Roxhythe, for she had a general idea of the period through her reading of books and plays such as Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V. Georgette did not have the detail at her fingertips, however, and it was important not to undermine the story with obvious factual errors. Lacking formal training in history and research, she had begun to develop her own methods of rummaging in the past for material. For Simon she read mostly for ephemeral detail, making notes on language and vocabulary, customs, castles, costume, battlecraft, weaponry, and etiquette.

  Georgette never sought to understand the medieval period as a historian would and she never really came to grips with medieval life which, in its cultural complexities and worldview, was so different from her own. Her minimalist approach to religion would prove a major weakness in those of her books set in the medieval period (and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). These were eras in which the power of the Church was all pervasive and religious belief an integral part of daily life. Yet in those novels Georgette offered only a perfunctory acknowledgment of the role of religion in her characters’ lives—usually by way of a religious oath or a walk-on part for a cleric. Years later she acknowledged that “between us and the Middle Ages there is a gulf that no historian has ever bridged, probably because it is bedeviled by enormous superstition engendered by a lack of scientific knowledge.” She was not altogether wrong, but what Georgette interpreted as medieval superstition was a profound, sustaining belief in God and the Church.