That spring Georgette signed a new contract with Heinemann for her next three historical novels. In recognition of both her selling power and her improved relations with her publisher the terms were better than in previous agreements with a significantly increased advance of £750 for each book. Frere-Reeves had taken over management of the author and her novels and he responded to Georgette’s writing in a way that made her feel valued by the company. At a time when the world around her was becoming increasingly uncertain and insecure, this meant a great deal.
16
Let me tell you (for my biography) that neither by training nor by temperament am I suited to Domesticity.
—Georgette Heyer
Across Britain there was talk of war and concerns were felt in many quarters about Hitler’s intentions in Europe. Since the mid-1930s, Britain’s response to Germany’s increased militarization had been appeasement: a policy of acceptance in the interests of peace—of conciliation rather than confrontation. Georgette herself had recognized the anti-war mood in England when, nearly a year earlier, she had suggested possible dust-jacket designs for An Infamous Army and told Moore that “It may be felt that a battle scene would not be popular in these pacifist times.” She was a regular reader of The Times and the Morning Post, and liked to keep abreast of politics. A lifelong conservative and decided Tory voter, she was also one of many in Britain who approved of the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s, policies—believing that a plan for peace was better than a declaration of war.
The idea that war was impending pervaded British life throughout the late 1930s and each of Georgette’s historical novels written between 1936 and 1939 was about war. After An Infamous Army was published she decided to write the story of Charles II’s escape from Cromwell’s England following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Once again, she read avidly and set about visiting every house and inn at which Charles had rested or hidden during his perilous flight to France. Sylvia Gamble returned to Blackthorns at Georgette’s request and accompanied her on several of these expeditions which she later described as “immense fun.” In April Georgette ended a hasty letter to Moore: “No time for more. On the road to White-Ladies, & the dawn at hand.” It was to White-Ladies Priory that Charles II had fled after the Battle of Worcester.
Once she had her material in hand, Georgette began writing with her usual verve and speed. The early part of the book came together quickly. In May, at her request, her agent forwarded the first eight chapters to Dorothy Sutherland in the hope of a serial sale. The editor had already turned down A Blunt Instrument on moral grounds (an explanation here would spoil the plot), but Georgette refused to be discouraged. That summer she insisted that each new batch of Royal Escape’s chapters be sent to Dorothy Sutherland for consideration. But the editor did not think the book a promising serial (the Australian Women’s Weekly disagreed; they successfully serialized the novel the following year). Georgette finished Royal Escape in four months and dedicated it to Norah Perriam, who had recently left Christy & Moore due to ill-health and would not return. With Norah gone, Georgette returned to her old habit of writing regular letters to Moore. She told him that she hoped Royal Escape “will not be a long, dull book!” But his concern was the timing of its publication.
By September 1938, Hitler had intensified his demands for the Sudetenland and Britain was desperately and rapidly rearming. Chamberlain flew twice to Germany to negotiate peace but Hitler would not alter his demands. War seemed inevitable. Air-raid trenches had been dug, gas masks issued, and Heinemann’s London headquarters evacuated when Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement on 30 September. He flew home to proudly brandish the Accord and declare “Peace in our time.” Georgette expressed the feelings of many when she told Moore: “What a relief! If only we haven’t ceded too much!” Like others she was unhappy about the British government’s conciliatory response to Germany’s territorial aggression and far from convinced that war had been avoided. For the moment, however, it was a welcome reprieve, although she could not help regretting the ill-timed release of her “poor, unfortunate book”: Royal Escape had appeared on the bookstands four days before the Munich Agreement was signed.
Although subscriptions were up on those for An Infamous Army, Georgette was not optimistic about Royal Escape’s success in a time of war. Not even Arnold Gyde’s enthusiasm for the novel (this time he assured her he had read it) nor his promises of publicity encouraged her. “What’s the use of publicity now?” she asked Moore. “This ghastly European situation will kill my book as surely as anything could.” But the novel’s success or failure was a minor concern in the circumstances and Georgette was “too much occupied with this ghastly situation and necessary precautions” to think about her work—although she assured her agent that she would carry on writing if war began and requested a meeting with Hodder to discuss the sort of book they would be wanting if the peace did not hold.
Hodder & Stoughton were delighted with sales of Georgette’s thrillers, but what Percy Hodder-Williams (“Uncle Percy”) really wanted was her historical novels. While this had been a possibility during her tussle with Charles Evans, the advent of Frere-Reeves into Georgette’s writing life marked the beginning of a change in her relationship with Hodder. She had found in Frere-Reeves a mentor, whose kindness and “unsolicited sympathy” over Royal Escape had been a soothing balm after her previous experiences with Heinemann. A month before that novel’s publication she had given Frere-Reeves lunch in London—one of her earliest meetings with him—and afterwards had told Moore that “I find him quite a Man & a Brother, & he seems to understand me when I speak, which C.S. [Evans] never did.”
It was after that lunch with Frere that Georgette first expressed concerns about Hodder’s handling of her detective novels: she felt they were taking too long to bring out her books in the cheaper threeshillings-and-six-pence edition and “deprecate[d] very sharply their keeping my thrillers hanging on at 7/6 long after they have virtually ceased to sell.” The criticism was a very different take on the firm which, only a few months earlier, Georgette had held up to Charles Evans as an example of the ideal publisher whose management of her books was infinitely superior to his own. Frere-Reeves was a clever advocate for Heinemann. Once he became aware of her, like Percy Hodder-Williams, he quickly recognized Georgette’s value to the firm and could not regard her continuing relationship with a rival publisher with complaisance. He also realized that to have Georgette Heyer writing exclusively for Heinemann would not only be a feather in his publishing cap but also a point scored against his rival, Charles Evans.
A keen chess and bridge player, Frere-Reeves was a born strategist who, once he had an agenda, liked devising ways and means of achieving his ambition. In this he was not unlike Georgette herself and as their relationship developed the two of them found that they had a good deal in common. He was well-read, cultured, and keen on golf and cricket—both Rougier passions—and he had a charm which she found very appealing. Frere-Reeves was also a Cambridge graduate, a past editor of Granta, and had served in the Great War. In those things at least he must have reminded Georgette of her father. His exclusive address in Albany in Piccadilly, his distant connection to John Hookham Frere (a British diplomat during the Napoleonic Wars), his sense of humor (described by one of his editors as “bitchy”), and his understanding of the various pressures besetting Georgette, all combined to make Frere-Reeves a very desirable new friend. At the end of that first lunch together he had set the seal on Georgette’s approval by gallantly escorting her to Miss Lennox-Carr’s “Registry Office for governesses” and telling her of his own two children. It was the beginning of a friendship which would endure for more than thirty years.
Georgette was trying to ignore the “depressing political situation” and get on with her new detective novel when the new governess arrived (Miss Butler had left suddenly to care for her aging parents). Richard had grown used to Miss Butler’s lively ways and the change was an adjustment. Now six, he
was an energetic little boy with a vivid imagination and the sort of sense of humor which came from living mostly amongst adults. Although his parents spent time with him when they could, there was always a nanny or a governess to take care of him while Ronald was studying for the Bar and Georgette was writing.
Richard grew up in an era when the British middle- and upperclasses believed that good manners included physical and emotional restraint. In many families it was usual for fathers and sons to shake hands and for hugs and kisses between parents and children to be low-key, controlled, and kept to a minimum. Georgette herself appeared not to believe in public displays of physical affection. The Rougiers were not a tactile family and neither Georgette nor Ronald the sort of parents to engage with their son in rough-and-tumble games or other childish activities. As Richard grew older they encouraged him in the sorts of pastimes that they enjoyed: Ronald taught him to fish and play golf and gave him clubs to practice with on the lawn; Georgette read to him and praised his attempts to write stories of his own, and they both taught him to play bridge and other card games.
It was not an unhappy childhood, but Richard was often lonely. He spent much of his time outdoors, playing in the garden with the dogs (whom he adored) or exploring the woodland near the house. Ronald sometimes collected him from a kindly neighbor on his way home from work. Mrs. Towse lived at the end of the drive and remembered Richard telling her that he was “lonely, as Mummy is busy writing”—a complaint echoed by Georgette’s mother who sometimes caught the bus from Horsham to visit her daughter at Blackthorns. Driven by persistent financial pressures and her own compulsion to write, Georgette did not always confine her writing to night-time hours. Richard was proud of his mother though and from a very young age remembered her talking to him about her novels. He once asked Mrs. Towse: “Do you read her books?” When she explained she had just finished These Old Shades, he told her: “Mummy says, ‘I could have written it much better.’”
Early in 1939 Royal Escape appeared in America. Despite feeling “dreadfully depressed” about the book and doubtful that it would appeal to American readers, Georgette was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic reviews in The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Saturday Review. British sales also exceeded her expectations. Frere, as she now called him (in July, he would drop the Reeves and change his name by deed-poll), showed her “some nice-looking figures”: in just three months Royal Escape had sold nearly 8,500 copies in Britain—1,500 more than An Infamous Army and 3,000 more than Regency Buck—and the figure did not include the Christmas sales.
They lunched together again and Georgette found that she “like[d] Frere more the more I know him.” It helped that he knew exactly how to encourage her:
He was awfully tactful about the Princess Charlotte, & did not ask me if I was writing her! He assumed (correctly) that I was working on a book for Uncle Percy, & merely inquired, in a voice of resignation, whether I wanted to miss a season. I assured him not, so he said as long as I didn’t hand him the book on 1st Sept. for autumn publication, all would be well. We had a talk about advertizing & he told me how he has advertized Royal Escape, which seemed to me a good way. He also told me it was easy to sell me to booksellers, & why. So I purred gently.
As much as Percy Hodder-Williams wanted her historical novels, Frere wanted Georgette’s detective fiction. While he was resigned to her continuing with Hodder if that was her preference, his first priority was the Heinemann list. Frere made a point of telling Georgette about Heinemann’s policy of “bringing out a cheap edition of the last book at about the same time as they publish the new one.” The following day she again questioned Moore about Hodder’s policy of delaying the release of her novels in the cheap edition: “I feel most strongly that to keep a book lingering on at 7/6 long after its sale is exhausted is wretched business…People wait for my books to come down to a cheap price, & I know that they are continually asked for. But if one delays too long, I think one runs the risk of the public’s forgetting that particular book.” As Heinemann’s star gradually rose in Georgette’s eyes, so Hodder’s began to fall.
17
I’ve made every conceivable kind of muddle over my income.
—Georgette Heyer
By early spring Georgette had written well over half of No Wind of Blame. Although she thought the new thriller very good fun she doubted “whether it will please Uncle Percy.” She was aware that Percy Hodder-Williams’s religious views were likely to be a stumbling-block and she ruefully told Moore that in this latest book she had created
One of the grandest comedy-situations I’ve handled yet. But I won’t pretend that it’s quite nice, because it isn’t. I never write smut, nor have I a liking for prurient minds—preferring the broader, Elizabethan style! I can only tell you that some of the sallies have made Ronald shout with laughter—but they have also made him wonder “what-Uncle-Percy-will-say.” One good thing is that Uncle Percy can’t say much, because if he turns it down Frere would snap it up.
The novel was another of her Hannasyde and Hemingway mysteries, though with Hannasyde now in a minor role allowing the newly promoted Inspector Hemingway to take over the case. The plot featured a “highly technical” murder devised by Ronald which Georgette described as “so obscure that although several vital clues are presented to the reader right at the start, I think it will be an exceptional reader who (a) recognizes them as clues, & (b) grasps their significance.”
Explaining Ronald’s ingenious murder method was not so easy and the book reflects some of the drawbacks of their collaboration. Most of her detective novels were the sum of ideas from two quite different minds and her vision did not always mesh successfully with his. This was especially true in No Wind of Blame, about which Georgette later confessed: “I DID know, broadly speaking, how the murder was committed, but I didn’t clutter up my mind with the incomprehensible details. Ronald swears that he came home one evening when I was at work on the final, explanatory chapter and that I said to him: ‘If you’re not busy, could you tell me just how this murder was committed?’”
While Georgette did not regard her thrillers as “her real work” (and sometimes described them as potboilers), according to Richard his mother enjoyed writing them in the same way she enjoyed “tackling a crossword puzzle—as an intellectual diversion before the harder tasks of life have to be faced.” Some of her reviewers disapproved of the humor in No Wind of Blame (not being in keeping with the genre) but the novel still sold well. At a time of growing political tension many readers welcomed the entertainment value of Georgette’s books.
By February she was desperate to get the novel finished and receive the £300 she hoped Dorothy Sutherland would pay for the serial rights. Georgette was facing a growing financial crisis of the sort she had described a year earlier in A Blunt Instrument: “‘There’s nothing more uncomfortable than not having any money, and being dunned by tradesmen. Receiving To Account Rendered by every post, with a veiled threat attached, and totting up the ghastly totals—.’” She had herself been holding off her creditors (including her mother-in-law) and “shelving bills until I’ve cashed in!” and was desperate for the Hodder royalties and the Woman’s Journal payment. It was a blow when the Hodder check was less than expected and Dorothy Sutherland turned down the detective novel.
Worse still was a letter from Moore warning her of possible problems at Heinemann. She instantly replied:
The news you convey about the bad season is most disquieting. Are you trying to prepare my mind for a drop in Heinemann’s royalties? If that happens, I’m done, & I quite honestly can’t see any way out of the mess. To have sold the serial rights well in the new book would, I think, have saved the situation for the moment, but I see little chance of that now. I’m by no means sure that there ever was a chance. As the thing stands, the advance on the new book, the American royalties, & the Heinemann check will leave me about £150 overdrawn at the bank—with debts of about £300 to pay. It just doesn’t add up, does
it?
With Ronald and her extended family still dependent on her, the financial problems which had haunted Georgette ever since the move to Blackthorns now threatened to overwhelm her. She had written nine novels in five years but was still beset by mounting bills and seemingly endless debt. It was intolerable. With a royalty income many authors would have envied, Georgette knew her financial situation should have been different:
It must seem odd to you that I am in this mess. The fact is, I borrowed from the bank to furnish this house, & have never been able to get straight since, on account of the heavy expenses that have crashed on our heads, over Ronald’s bar training, & other such things. This is between ourselves of course. My overheads are pretty heavy, as well, but if I gave up this house, which I may be forced to do, & moved into a villa somewhere, & did with one maid & no governess, I question whether I should ever be able to keep up my literary output. As you know, I find it a bit of a struggle as things are now. It’s this blasted monetary worry. If I were a great artist, I should flourish under adversity, but alas, I’m not, & when I’m going round & round in my vicious circle, wondering how to acquire the next penny, my mind refuses to work on paper.
Paradoxically, her only means of alleviating the financial burden that prevented her from writing was to write. Georgette struggled to come to grips with her dilemma:
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