Georgette Heyer

by Jennifer Kloester

  Toward the end of July Ronald learned that his application for active service had been turned down. “The secretary to the Royal Navy (may his bones bend!) has intimated to me that my slightly deficient eyesight is a complete bar to the acquisition of my services,” he told Moore. “Now we shall lose the war! Still very many thanks for your potent efforts on my behalf.” Georgette was relieved not to be losing another of her menfolk to the fighting but Ronald was bitterly disappointed. Striving to make the best of things he joined the Home Guard instead.

  As the Battle of Britain continued Georgette took to fire-watching and tried to get on with Christmas Party for Hodder. It was a struggle, for she was again feeling tired and depressed. Frere had asked her to write another romance but she worried that she was producing too many books and told him that she would prefer to read manuscripts for Heinemann. She desperately needed an interest outside her writing: “The trouble about this bloody war is that there’s nothing to do but work, if you live 5 miles from anywhere as I do. You can’t go out much, even if you feel inclined, & hens don’t take up all one’s time!” Frere took her at her word and arranged for her to be employed as an occasional manuscripts reader for the firm—paying two guineas for each report. He quickly discovered that Georgette was a discerning reader with an eye for a salable book.

  She found plenty to distract her when the Blitz began on 7 September. Since July, the Luftwaffe had targeted RAF airfields, radar stations, and other strategic defense sites, but now they began a concentrated attack on London. For fifty-seven consecutive days and nights German planes bombed the capital, killing thousands, destroying homes and buildings, and setting parts of the city ablaze. But it was not only London that came under fire, for Hitler was intent on destroying public morale. For the next nine months, towns, cities, docks, and industrial sites across Britain were bombed and many rural areas—including Sussex—were hit. A week after the Blitz began Georgette confessed that the German assault made it difficult to work: “Too many stray bombs falling within a mile of us, & although I shouldn’t worry for myself, I have to be on the qui viva [alert] at night, because of Richard, peacefully sleeping in his bed. We are situated on a positive rat-run here. They come over every night. That doesn’t matter: it’s when they come back that they unload their bombs, & shake us to our foundations.”

  Bombs fell on Horsham and Colgate in September. Three men were killed when a bomb exploded outside St. Savior’s, where Richard had been christened. In October, Ronald’s office in Middle Temple Lane was hit by an aerial torpedo. His chambers had long since lost all the glass from their windows but this latest bomb did considerable damage. On 29 December London’s main publishing area around Paternoster Road was destroyed by enemy action: over a million books were burned and entire company archives lost. Several major publishers, including Longmans and Hutchinson’s, took direct hits. When the Blitz finally ended six months later in May 1941, over forty-three thousand civilians were dead, a million homes had been destroyed, and more than twenty million books burned in the conflagration.

  Georgette was more fortunate than many authors, for the Heinemann press at Kingswood remained remarkably unscathed, with only a single bomb causing minor damage to the buildings. The press came into its own during the War, for the huge public demand for books meant the firm’s sales were limited only by paper rationing. Production was still difficult, however, and The Corinthian’s release was put back a week while they worked to produce enough copies. The delay did not prevent the book from being reviewed, however, and in late October 1940 Georgette declared Frank Swinnerton’s review in the Observer “balm to my hurt soul (I have sustained a great deal of well-meaning family praise, extolling this frippery piece of work at the expense of my more serious books, & I don’t relish it).” Swinnerton declared himself “one of Miss Georgette Heyer’s admirers” and his lighthearted account of The Corinthian concluded: “The result, highly unconvincing, is happiness for all, including the reader.”

  By the end of the month, Georgette and Ronald had renewed their resolve to move out of Blackthorns and divest themselves of a house and garden which neither of them had the time or inclination to keep up. A move to London was no longer practical while the nightly bombing-runs continued, but Georgette thought that a flat in Brighton might meet their needs. Ronald could easily commute by train to London and Richard was going to boarding-school in the new year; Georgette and Ronald had decided to send him away for both educational and safety reasons. The Elms was a boys’ preparatory school deep in the Worcestershire countryside and an unlikely target for German bombers. Established in 1614 it was a small school with fewer than seventy boys but with a reputation for academic excellence. Although it would be a wrench to see Richard go, Georgette wanted him to have the best possible English public school education and with this in mind she handled the approaching separation with her usual calm stoicism.

  Richard was now nearly nine and unfazed by the war which, like many children his age, he saw as an opportunity for adventure. Much to his mother’s dismay he and a band of evacuated boys roamed the countryside looking for bits of “defeated German planes” and coercing members of his father’s Home Guard patrol into giving them souvenirs “in defiance of all regulations.” Richard had thought Georgette very mean for “refusing to let him rush to the scene of an exploded Heinkel” and had thoroughly depressed his mother by informing her that he wanted to be a commercial traveler when he grew up. But he had a literary mind, and liked writing stories, poems, and plays. Georgette was also encouraged by his having already read several of her books “not in the expectation of enjoyment, but because he says he feels a fool not to have read any.” She was proud of her son and had great hopes of him. In his turn Richard loved his parents, although there was always to be a degree of emotional reticence among the three of them. They were not a family who talked about feelings very much and Richard’s thoughts about being sent away to school were not a topic for discussion. His upbringing was of the type that not only compelled him to accept his parents’ decision but also made it impossible to tell them how he felt about it.

  Georgette began the enormous task of packing up the house. Although she always destroyed her manuscripts and rarely kept correspondence of any kind, over the years she and Ronald had acquired a great many things which could not be got rid of so easily. By the time she had finished packing she had fifteen large trunks and cases to go into storage that were full of “Awful Things, like the embroidery one bought in Skoptya & doesn’t quite know what to do with, & the Arab Knife spouse acquired by low barter at Dar-es-Salaam.” There were a few pangs at parting but it was mostly a relief to be leaving Blackthorns and to throw off some of her domestic cares. The War was not going well and although Georgette believed that the Allies would eventually prevail she felt that there were “too many people suffering from easy optimism & thinking we’re going to win this war by faith.” Her view was that it was going to be “a bloody business” and that the outlook for Europe was bleak. It did not help that Boris, home after Dunkirk, would soon be returning to active duty or that Frank (now “Gunner F.D. Heyer”) was due to begin Officer Cadet Training by Christmas and would eventually go to Europe to fight.

  They left Blackthorns in December (taking Johnny the bull-terrier with them) and spent a week at Heathfield House, a boarding house in Horsham, before moving to Brighton. By Christmas they were settled in a service flat in Steyning Mansions at King’s Cliff with views of the beach (now closed and mined) and the famous Brighton pier (partly demolished to prevent use as a German landing-stage). It was not salubrious accommodation but with rents from thirty-one shillings a week it was cheap and Georgette did not have to cook. She saw Richard off to school in January and, relieved of several cares, was finally able to make rapid progress on the book for Hodder. No longer called Christmas Party she thought of calling it Death Before Dinner—although she didn’t really “think it matter[ed] two hoots what Georgette Heyer calls her new book.”


  By February the title was Imperial End and after reading through the first twenty thousand words she thought it “not at all too bad,” although she doubted whether she had “ever created a ruder, more objectionable lot of characters!” Eventually she decided that Imperial End was too obvious, briefly called it Without Enchantment (from Ecclesiastes), before instructing Moore: “Hold everything! Get hold of Uncle Percy, & tell him ‘Envious Casca.’ Isn’t that a Wow? It doesn’t matter that only one person stabbed Nathaniel, do you think? And the quotation is so well known that it needs no explanation.” The title was from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and it was typical of Georgette to assume a readership familiar enough with Shakespeare’s plays to recognize it. In fact, her books were read by a broad cross-section of society, including men and women of different ages, classes, and backgrounds, from the tobacconist’s assistant to the Attorney General, Lord Somervell, who would later become a Lord Justice of Appeal and a Law Lord. When he died in 1960 he bequeathed his entire collection of Georgette Heyer novels to the Inner Temple Library.

  Georgette finished Envious Casca in April, almost a year later than originally planned. Even before she had written the last chapter she told Frere that he could have a “Nice Romance for Heinemann’s to publish this autumn.” The bombing had temporarily forced Frere out of Albany so Georgette only saw him occasionally. She had taken a particular interest in Mr. Bevin since Frere had joined the Minister and now decided that Bevin was the “only gentleman who gives signs of constructive post-war thought.” She also liked Churchill, although she balked at the thought of him as “Peace Minister.” Given her conservative upbringing and lifelong Tory beliefs, her support for the Labor element in the coalition government was remarkable. Even Georgette recognized the change: “Am growing pinker & pinker, & shall end up bright Red. One thing you may take as certain: I am not a Conservative any longer.”

  Frere spent several days with them over Easter and recounted to Georgette his years with Heinemann and his plans for the company’s future after the War. She enjoyed these sorts of confidences and Frere was adept at telling the kinds of tales she liked. “These days of close companionship quite confirmed my belief that F.’s a very nice creature,” she told Moore. “I felt that if a bomb dropped on your head (which God forfend!) I could go straight to Frere, & say, What do I do now? & that he would see to it that I wasn’t eaten by sharks.” This was comforting for, after nearly twenty years, Georgette’s relationship with her agent was beginning to wane.

  The first intimation of a breach came after Moore’s office was damaged in the Blitz and he decided to move his business out of London to his home at Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire. While she understood the need for a new office, Georgette could not see why Moore should remove himself to the outer suburbs. She wanted her agent in the city, at the center of things, where she could call on him and be taken out to lunch. “Nothing you can say will ever reconcile me to your removal to Gerrards Cross,” she scolded.

  Carola Lenanton [Oman] & I were only talking about it the other day—The point is that often & often one thinks one will look in and talk over some small point with you. Not the sort of thing important enough to justify your coming up from Gerrards Cross. So one writes—or jettisons it altogether. Of course, it may be better for you not to have authors drifting in on frivolous business every day of the week, but I do think you’re bound to get a little out of touch with us.

  She still depended on Moore and had asked him to be one of the trustees of her will, but the advent of Frere into her life had prompted a slow shift in her perception of her agent. Moore was getting older and he had never known precisely how to handle her. He was practical and kind and conscientious, but he was not charismatic and, like Charles Evans, he did not understand her humor as Frere did. In the early part of her career none of these things had mattered. Now, however, she had a publisher and friend who was clever, witty, and actively interested in her. When compared with Frere, Moore simply could not compete.

  20

  Oh, blast! Written too much, & feel queer.

  —Georgette Heyer

  It would be some years before Georgette became completely disillusioned with her agent, however, and—along with Ronald and Frere—he was still an important sounding board. Early in May she told Moore of her plans for her new Heinemann romance:

  Do you recall a short I once wrote, & you or Norah sold to Woman’s Journal for a pittance? Well, it was a poor short, but it has the makings of a novel, & it is going to grow into a lovely romantic bit of froth for Heinemann. Title will remain the same—Pharaoh’s Daughter. Not Moses’ girl-friend, but a lady addicted to gaming.

  Her eagerness to start the new book was tempered by her difficulties in finding someone locally who could type up Envious Casca. The war situation made it too precarious to send the manuscript to London and on finding that “no one in Brighton has ever heard of typing a novel in under a month” Georgette decided to type it herself. She thought it “a great bore, & such a waste of time, when I might be working on Pharaoh’s Daughter” but to her surprise she managed to type the entire manuscript in just over a week, revising as she went. Her success in typing Envious Casca marked a new beginning. Henceforth Georgette would type her own manuscripts and in later years any new typewriter would be fitted with special keys to suit her particular needs.

  She dealt quickly with the Envious Casca proofs when they eventually arrived, only stopping when she found that someone had put a query against the word “bloody.” Infuriated by what she saw as interference in her work, she told Moore: “I require no one to censor my language, thank you. The word stands. I shall make a point of introducing it several times in my next book.” Georgette was about to begin her thirtieth novel: the notion that anyone should know better than she about her writing or that anyone other than Ronald, Moore, or Frere would have the temerity to suggest corrections or alterations beyond ordinary typographic errors made her blood boil. Having dealt with Hodder to her satisfaction, Georgette returned to Pharaoh’s Daughter and “the most entrancing books…all about gamesters” borrowed from the London Library.

  After two months she still had not put pen to paper. Instead she confessed that “While I was meditating on Pharaoh’s Daughter, a wholly unwanted saga about a preposterous family called Pendean, who live at Cressy Hall, crept into my mind, & grew, & grew, & grew.” She became obsessed with the story and told L.P. “I don’t know yet all the details, but Ambrose Pendean was murdered, poisoned, & he was a roaring, Rabelaisian old man, a real patriarch, with roaring Rabelaisian sons, & two who are Lilies of the Field, & a brother who has soft white hands, & collects jade, and a widowed sister with a wig, & foul language, trailing dirty skirts through the vast spaces of Cressy Hall.” Another two pages of detailed description led her to conclude that:

  The thing is called Family Affair, & possibly set in Cornwall… It will be long, obviously, & more of a problem in psychology than in cold detection. Next time Uncle P. gets restive, tell him that this thing burst on me, willy-nilly. I even dreamed about the Pendeans last night! I shall have to keep a note-book for them, as fresh imbroglios keep cropping up, & mustn’t be forgotten…Tell Uncle P. that this will be a combination of murder-story & family saga. It might sweep the board. The family is preposterous enough.

  As pressing as she felt the new book to be, Georgette forced herself to put it aside and get on with Pharaoh’s Daughter. She had promised Frere an August delivery, but by June still had not written a word. She was in a state of flux: distracted by the Cornish saga smoldering in her brain, impatiently waiting for the overdue advance for Envious Casca, and irritated by a recent radio script of The Talisman Ring. Georgette could be a stern critic of other people’s writing as well as her own and her wide reading often resulted in pithy critiques of recent publications. After hearing E.M. Forster on the BBC give his “pick of the books of 1941,” she told Moore:

  You never listened to such tripe, & if you could have heard his
“pick”! there are just three books which rise above the rest head & shoulders—The Silver Darlings, by Neil Gunn, for beauty of prose, & sheer gift of story-telling; Parents & Children, by Compton-Burnett, for brilliance of wit & satire; & the Story of J.M.B. by Mackail, for originality of treatment, & complete mastery of his subject. Mr. Forster mentioned none of them. He also talked some rubbish about the day of the professional writer being over. God knows what he thought he meant. He was very pleased with himself. He said “It is so” & “It is not so”—not admitting possibility of mistake in judgment. The words, “I think” or “in my judgment” were conspicuous by their absence. He was Mr. Forster, & he KNEW.

  Georgette was often intolerant of writers (whom she still referred to as “Inkies”)—and disliked those who prated on about “My Public and My Art.” She found laughable the kinds of conceits that led Francis Brett Young to read his manuscripts aloud to Charles Evans or that prompted Margaret Kennedy to tell her that the “film-people, when dealing with Escape Me Never, ‘left out some very beautiful bits.’” It was this sort of pretension that led Georgette to declare that “all Inkies ought to be incarcerated.” The War had made her more impatient than ever of self-important behavior. She saw it as the writer’s duty to get on with producing books that would keep the populace occupied and entertained, not go about seeking acclamation.