The apparently endless tax demands were unavoidable in “an epoch when not the largest fortune was permitted to yield its owner more than five thousand pounds yearly.” Five thousand pounds was a lot of money, however, and even with the heavy burden of the surtax, Georgette could still see how substantially her Regency novels had increased her net income. Characteristically, she expressed her feelings about the tax system in a novel. When Duplicate Death was published it included several cutting remarks about the Inland Revenue.
In April Georgette finally took the plunge and, “not without difficulty” after nearly thirty years’ association, gave her agent six months’ notice. She had become increasingly dissatisfied with Moore’s handling of her books and, after dealing directly with an American publisher, had decided she could dispense with his services. Moore’s response to the news was to write a long “sorrowing” reply to her letter which did not move her at all.
Although Georgette could take a long time to alter an opinion or decide on change, once her decision was made it was usually irrevocable. This aspect of her personality also meant that over the course of her life, her estimation of people she had once genuinely liked and admired could gradually alter until her judgment of them was almost the opposite of her original view. It was not always a conscious response but it sometimes meant that her later attitude to a particular person or her account of an event (as with Penhallow) was not an accurate reflection of her original feelings or experience. Mostly, Georgette was fiercely strong-minded and courageous, but she did not cope well with emotional adversity and when confronted with it tended either to return a vociferous response or disengage completely—sometimes to the point of glossing over or even reimagining past realities. There was rarely any middle-ground.
Frere’s response to Moore’s sacking was to suggest that Heinemann act as Georgette’s agent. She queried the idea—not on account of the potential conflict of interest, but because she worried that such an arrangement
might bring upon you some unforeseen horrors. I don’t mean you personally, but some unfortunate stooge…How long would it be before you told me to go to hell if I started ringing you up to demand Why you hadn’t sold my second Australian Rights (serial) and What you were doing about my Promising Swedish Market? And what about my rare excursions into the Shinies, with odd short stories; and selling the first serial rights in the new book to the S.B.? [Dorothy Sutherland] I can’t cope with that sort of Sordid Stuff myself.
These were genuine concerns. Georgette advised Frere to think the matter over and not rush into a decision. But even before her contract with Moore had expired she had accepted Frere’s offer and turned to Louisa Callender for support.
Louisa Callender had originally been secretary to William Heinemann himself and no one knew more about the firm. She was a formidable personality and extremely competent, with a no-nonsense, commonsense approach to the business and a vast knowledge of the company’s contracts and rights. She had been made a director of Heinemann during the War and from 1943 had occasionally corresponded with Georgette. Theirs was a cordial relationship: by 1946 Georgette’s letters had shifted from “Dear Miss Callender” to “Dear Louisa.” Now that Louisa Callender was to manage her foreign rights Georgette’s letters became longer and friendlier as she increasingly looked to the Heinemann director for attention and advice. Louisa Callender did her best to respond in kind but she did not always find it easy to deal with Georgette’s particular vernacular. Not everyone was comfortable with the author’s manner, and her habit of writing as she spoke and confiding personal details could sometimes be disconcerting to a professional like Louisa Callender. She liked Georgette and her own letters mostly included sufficient personal commentary to be friendly, but she always signed herself “L. Callender.”
In October, a week after her contract with Christy & Moore expired, Georgette wrote the first of many letters to Louisa Callender as her new agent: “I’ve had no word from C.&M., thank God! I don’t mind if Smith rings me up, but I funk poor old L.P. When you’ve known a man of his age since you were nineteen, & he still looks on you as a struggling young author, the situation is apt to be difficult. Having enjoyed the disadvantages of an Upbringing, I cannot be rude to old men!” Her relationship with Moore ended neither justly nor compassionately. The years of affectionate letter-writing, of involving him in her personal life, telling him her troubles and turning to him for advice, effectively forgotten. A few days later Georgette sounded the death-knell of their long association in another letter to Louisa Callender:
I don’t know what the effect was on you of L.P.M.’s letter, but it has made me feel basin-sick. My father entrusted my work to his care? Christ! What a vision this conjures up of the dowdy schoolgirl and the careful parent! My father at one time had some dealings with old Christy, and through him was casually acquainted with Moore. I certainly got him to make a third at a luncheon-meeting with Moore. And I can well believe that, the agreement having been sorted, he told Moore, in his genial way, to Do his best with my stuff. As for the implication that my work was more or less in my father’s hands, and that he and Moore just sorted things between them “for the poor child,” it makes me seethe with fury! Enough to make my father haunt Moore, too! Rest assured, I was not encouraged to be weak-minded, nor had my father any real parental instinct! I adored him, but he was far more like a brother than a father…Incidentally, if [Moore] regarded me, for thirty years, as a sacred bequest, I hope he feels he fulfilled his obligations. I don’t. I think I’ve been keeping the wolf from his door.
While Georgette might have prospered even more with a different agent, Moore had, in fact, done a good job in protecting her interests. How good would only become clear the following year when Georgette signed the first of her contracts to be drawn up by Heinemann. Having an agent meant having an independent negotiator whose responsibility it was to secure for his client the most favorable contract, sell the rights to her novels in as many forms as possible, pay her royalties, and protect her copyrights. Moore had fulfilled each of these roles to the best of his ability. As her career had progressed, with each new novel he had sought a bigger advance and better royalties. As early as 1929 with Beauvallet, he had brokered terms which gave Georgette twenty-five percent on all hardbacks sold above ten thousand copies. By 1946 and The Foundling, he had secured a royalty of twenty percent on the first 7,500 copies and twenty-five percent on all other copies unless “the high costs resulting from war conditions prevail.” These were excellent terms.
When Georgette signed her first new book contract with Heinemann in June 1952—having dispensed with her agent—her royalties were significantly reduced. The new agreement gave her only a fifteen percent royalty on the first fifteen thousand copies and then twenty percent on all copies thereafter. All mention of twenty-five percent had been expunged and, even taking into account Moore’s ten percent commission which she no longer had to pay, the Heinemann contract left her nearly £300 worse off. Astonishingly, Georgette made no objection to the new terms. Even Ronald did not appear to notice the change—although he was quick to pick up an incorrect date.
It took some time to wind up her association with Christy & Moore and all Georgette’s dealings were now with the younger partner in the firm, John Smith. They had corresponded through July and August over the sales of options on The Grand Sophy (to be produced as a stage play), and The Corinthian (to be adapted as a BBC radio play). Despite her distress over The Reluctant Widow film Georgette was still happy to sell a cinema or a stage right to her novels in the hope that someone might eventually produce a version she liked. She remained skeptical, however, and The Grand Sophy script proved to be another disappointment. John Smith was pleasant to deal with and, although Georgette’s hackles went up at times, they generally worked through the issues. There were wrongs and rights on both sides in her relationship with Christy & Moore and a year later she seemed more able to recognize the fact and could write to Smith to say: “I hope that you
& L.P. are both well. Give him my love, please.”
23 Simon the Coldheart was eventually reprinted in 1978 after Georgette’s death in 1974. Richard Rougier approved its republication after being “persuaded to read the book once more.” He subsequently decided that, “in this instance at all events, her judgment had been too harsh.” The Great Roxhythe remains out of print to this day.
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I don’t think this new book is going to cause me much bother. I started to write Chapter I without any of the usual false starts & erasures, & that augurs well.
—Georgette Heyer
Georgette’s thirty-eighth novel came out in October 1951. The Quiet Gentleman would be the last of her books for which Christy & Moore would receive commission. By now fans had come to expect the almost annual “Heyer” novel and it had a first printing of fifty thousand. Georgette described the book to Pat Wallace as “the latest example of a Tried Recipe.” One fan disagreed and wrote to ask “where is the lighthearted gaiety and nonsense of The Talisman Ring, Friday’s Child, and The Corinthian?” and was their author feeling “older, sadder and depressed?” Greatly amused, Georgette wrote ruefully to Louisa Callender: “Echo answers, Where?…but I shouldn’t have thought it depressing, would you?” Several other fans wrote to question her use of “son-in-law” instead of “stepson,” a point on which Georgette refused to budge: “although to alter in-law to step might lay me open to the criticisms of SOME, an emendation would draw upon me the far more important strictures of OTHERS—who would accuse me (rightly) of having introduced modern terminology into a Regency book.”24
She was a stickler for accuracy and resented anyone telling her she was wrong when she knew herself to be right. She was further irritated by a review in the Daily Telegraph in which John Betjeman claimed that “my picture of Regency England is no more like the real thing than he is like Queen Anne.” She retorted: “He best knows whether he is like Queen Anne, but what the hell does he know about the Regency?” But Betjeman was partly right, for Georgette’s Regency world is a selective reconstruction which drew as much on her own Edwardian ideals and prejudices as it did on the history of the period.
Despite her prodigious historical knowledge, in retreating into the early nineteenth century she could not avoid bringing with her a twentieth-century sensibility. Her values may have had their roots in her Edwardian childhood, but Georgette had lived through two world wars, witnessed the emancipation of women, and (unwillingly) participated in the rise of the Welfare State. These things inevitably affected her and her writing and in many ways her period novels were a welcome escape—for both their author and her readers—from some of the realities of modern living.
There were many aspects of twentieth-century life which Georgette did not enjoy. As the postwar years passed she became increasingly intolerant of what some people called “progress,” deprecating changes in education, the incursion of television and radio into people’s lives (although she enjoyed sporting broadcasts), and in particular the economic changes which she felt so adversely affected her life. It was these things that would sometimes prompt her to denounce the modern world and declare, “Oh Christ, why did I have to be born into this filthy age!”
By mid-November The Quiet Gentleman was already outselling The Grand Sophy, and Frere returned from a trip to the Antipodes to report that “booksellers had begged him for more Heyer.” Her strong sales prompted the firm to pursue the rights to her earlier detective novels and reissue them in a special Heinemann Uniform edition. Longmans were willing to relinquish their rights, but at Hodder & Stoughton Ralph Hodder-Williams was not immediately inclined to cooperate. Percy had retired in 1947. The firm had not republished her detective novels for some years but they assured Louisa Callender (who had rung to enquire incognito) that they intended to reprint Envious Casca in the new year. Georgette was unimpressed by their assurances; they had originally promised to republish Casca three years earlier.
Heinemann did eventually secure the rights to the detective novels but it took time and cost Louisa Callender a great deal of effort. Aware that Georgette’s affairs would not get any less complicated (or the author any less demanding), and knowing that she was due to retire in a few years, Louisa Callender proposed a meeting with Joyce Weiner, an American literary agent with several years’ experience. Reluctant at first, Georgette agreed to lunch at The Ivy to discuss the proposition. To Louisa Callender’s relief she approved of Joyce Wiener, who would henceforth manage her foreign and short story rights while Heinemann continued to look after her British rights.
The new year brought Richard home on embarkation leave and a “week of ceaseless parties” left his mother exhausted. Soon afterwards he was posted to Munster from where he made her “rage with descriptions of rump steaks, 9 [pence], and gin at 4 [pence] a time!” Georgette enjoyed a glass of gin (she also still smoked heavily). In February she confessed: “I keep going on gin and Dexedrine.” Commonly prescribed for cold and flu symptoms Dexedrine was, in fact, a powerful amphetamine which had the effect of keeping a person awake and the potential to increase energy, brain activity, memory, and confidence. Georgette had discovered that a dose in the evening enabled her to write all night and still feel inspired in the morning. A number of her novels were written under its influence, including her latest Regency.
Originally entitled Quadrille, it would prove to be one of her funniest books, with an unexpected hero (initially named Felix) and one of her best endings. This was the book inspired by Ferdy Fakenham, the foolish young man in Friday’s Child, which she had originally planned to write four years earlier but had produced Arabella instead. Although Ferdy remained the inspiration for the new novel, Georgette felt compelled to admit that “when I got down to brass tacks I found he was just a little too foolish, and so changed him into Freddy Standen.”
Despite a few early challenges, which included her mother fainting in the middle of the Cromwell Road and taking to her bed, the “leaving without notice of my Daily Obliger,” having to “wrestle with housework,” and getting her heroine to London only to “wonder what happens now,” by early March she had written almost half the book. Woman’s Journal were keen to serialize and Georgette suggested to Louisa Callender:
If the S.B. rings you up, bleating about my new book, you will say:
It is Terrific.
It has reached the halfway mark. (After all, it will probably have done so by the time you get this). It is a classic Heyer. (This means that it is a lot of froth about nothing, but you don’t have to tell her that. Really, Louisa, how CAN you be so silly?)
It is EXACTLY what the Fans like.
By now the title had changed from Quadrille to Chicken Hazard and finally to Cotillion. Georgette was pleased with the novel, which had proved to be a “riot of absurdity,” and was satisfied that she had not let a severe attack of sinusitis:
Stop me being quite humorous in COTILLION, so probably I am one of these people like Keats and Bizet, who flourish under adversity, after all. Or maybe it’s just due to Dexedrine, with which (and gin, of course) I keep myself going. If ever there was a flimsier story than COTILLION, I have yet to see it, but that, dear Louisa, is the secret of My Art. On no account must the story be About anything in particular, or hold water for half a minute.
Almost before she had finished Cotillion, Frere informed Georgette that he had “scheduled a detective novel by Me for this autumn.” Although she had laughed at the suggestion Georgette was not averse to the idea. She had recently read several of John Dickson Carr’s detective novels to see why he was so popular and told Frere: “I didn’t think any fictitious detective could set my teeth on edge quite as badly as Miss Ngaio Marsh’s creature, but I find I was mistaken.” She did acknowledge Carr’s ingenuity with a locked room (for which he was famous) but her dislike of his stories ultimately ensured that her next detective novel was “a plain case of shooting…no locked rooms, or mysterious weapons, or any other trimmings.” The new thriller would be
her last.
Boris announced his engagement in April and Georgette set about writing a couple of short stories in order to pay for his wedding reception. Her most recent effort, “A Husband for Fanny,” had been published in the Illustrated London News and she now dashed off “Bath Miss” and “Pink Domino” for Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Journal. If she could think of a plot she also planned to write “Cold Dawn.” The stories earned her upwards of £200 each and were easy money for a few hours work. She could have had the £3,000 advance for Cotillion just for the asking but told Frere she wanted him to hold on to it until the autumn: “I’m all right at the moment, but I expect I may be feeling the draught a bit by October!”
Georgette was now firmly established as one of Heinemann’s star authors and she and Ronald were among the guests at the grand opening (by Somerset Maugham) of the new Windmill Press at Kingswood in June. She enjoyed the party and had her photo taken with Frere and Pat Wallace for Tatler. Although she looked her elegant best in a tailored suit, hat, gloves, and pearls not everyone recognized her. Arnold Gyde of Heinemann remembered having
a ghastly time recognizing those who thought I knew them very well…“Who’s that fine looking woman?” asked Noel Baker. So I introduced him. I was exhausted. I confused him with Black of The Daily Mail and said:
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