Georgette Heyer

by Jennifer Kloester

  Crosse thought it the ideal solution but Max Reinhardt was also interested in buying Heron Enterprises and sought a meeting. However, the idea came to nothing after it was discovered that The Bodley Head and Heron were both “closed” companies (a closed company could not buy another closed company). Disappointed, Reinhardt suggested to Georgette she accept the Booker deal. Ronald was keenly in favor of the proposal but Frere balked at the sale of her copyrights. Georgette found his attitude distressing—especially as it was so at odds with Ronald’s view. Since leaving Albany they had not seen nearly as much of the Freres who now spent several months each year in Barbados.

  It took twelve months to finalize the Booker scheme but it ended satisfactorily. In buying Heron, Booker Bros. would effectively pay Georgette what was in the company and she would finally get her money without having to pay an enormous amount of tax: “The thing I like enormously about the new scheme is that I should be handing over to Bloody Wilson 7/- in the pound, instead of 17/9!!” (Harold Wilson was then Prime Minister.) On 18 November 1968, Georgette and Richard (Ronald was ill) attended a grand lunch at Bucklersbury House for the contract signing. The Booker directors handed “three Enormous checks” to Georgette and the deal was done.30

  She, Ronald, and Richard had sold their shares in Heron Enterprises for £80,000, with a gentleman’s agreement that she could buy back the copyrights at any time. Georgette remained as managing director of Heron with Ronald and Richard as directors, each to receive a salary and regular bonuses. Hale Crosse had managed to reduce her capital gains liability from £24,000 to £100 so all she had to do was bank her check. For the first time since her father’s death Georgette felt the financial burden slip from her shoulders.

  30 In 1968 Booker Bros. became Booker McConnell. The following year, after a suggestion from Ian Fleming’s publisher Tom Maschler, Jock Campbell announced the first “Booker Prize for Fiction.” Ironically, none of the writers (Fleming, Christie, and Heyer) whose royalties had made the prize possible wrote the sort of fiction likely to be considered for the Booker.

  35

  To be, in one’s small way, a creative artist, wholly unable to create, is a malady known only to a few.

  —Georgette Heyer

  It was with a new sense of financial freedom that Georgette and Ronald went up to Gloucestershire to spend Christmas with Richard and Susie at their new country house at Murrell’s End. Before they left London Georgette invited Hale Crosse to Albany and presented him with a gold Rolex watch inscribed with his initials and the year of the Booker deal. It was a graceful gesture and he was delighted. By now, he and Georgette were on excellent terms and Crosse had discovered that “once you got past the crust (which she made sure was fairly thick) she was fine.” Although 1968 had ended on a high note with the magnificent Booker lunch and a lovely Christmas at Murrell’s End, it had not been an easy year for Georgette.

  From January to August she had been stricken with an edema which had caused dreadful swelling in her feet and ankles. An extended course of diuretics had affected her badly: “I felt sick from morning till night, and became afflicted with what I believe is called aphasia” (a condition of the brain affecting speech). Although she eventually recovered, she felt that Cousin Kate had suffered as a result. She thought it one of her worst novels. Her fans disagreed. When the book came out in September it went straight to the top of the bestseller list. But neither “Rave letters” from her readers about it nor “the fervent assurances of my son and my brothers (my most severe critics) that they thought her (a) Very good! (b) Different, but MOST interesting; and (c) Compulsive!” convinced her of the book’s worth. She did not “believe a word of their kindly encomiums, and they don’t change my opinion of Kate!”

  Given her poor health Georgette made no plans for a new book in 1969. She and Ronald went to Iceland in July and the bracing Icelandic air proved to be exactly what she needed. She was letting herself relax at last: “I am enjoying my idle year!” she told Reinhardt. Her plan to spend August at Greywalls was thwarted, however, after it was damaged by fire. She and Ronald had booked into the famous Gleneagles Hotel instead but it was not a success. They found the hotel so large (guests were given a map) and so full of loud American tourists that they left after a week.

  Georgette and Ronald spent the remainder of their holiday at the Marine Hotel in North Berwick. Even in those peaceful surrounds it was not her usual restful month, however, for issues with her American publishers meant writing long letters to Joyce Weiner to resolve them. Reinhardt also wrote, enclosing the contract for her next book and an article from the August edition of Nova magazine written by the well-known author, A.S. Byatt. Entitled “Georgette Heyer is a Better Writer Than You Think,” it was the first article to offer a serious appraisal of Georgette’s novels and to ask: “Why is she so good?” For Byatt, the answer lay

  in the precise balance she achieves between romance and reality, fantastic plot and real detail. Her good taste, her knowledge, and the literary and social conventions of the time she is writing about all contribute to a romanticised anti-romanticism: an impossibly desirable world of prettiness, silliness and ultimate good sense where men and women really talk to each other, know what is going on between them, and plan to spend the rest of their lives together developing the relationship.

  It was a perceptive assessment, for Byatt described precisely Georgette’s own view of the ideal relationship between a man and a woman—one with a deep mutual understanding and a lasting connection that was much more than purely physical or emotional—exactly what Georgette shared with Ronald.

  Toward the end of the year she began writing again and penned a note to Reinhardt to tell him the good news. She asked him to keep the new book’s title, Charity Girl, secret and to tell no one about the novel until she had it well in hand. “I hope (and even dare to believe!) that this will be a better, and certainly more lighthearted a book than Cousin Kate. The fact that that lamentable effort has earned, to date, £12,728 [over £200,000 at today’s values] in no way changes my opinion of it!” She wrote steadily until a fortnight before Christmas when she was suddenly beset with what she called “One of My Queer Turns.” For the past five or six years she had ascribed these to indigestion but after suffering four attacks in forty-eight hours had called her doctor. He diagnosed the problem as “a temporary failure of the main artery which runs up the back of one’s neck to feed the brain.” Years of smoking were taking their toll on Georgette’s cardiovascular system and any compression of the carotid artery had an unpleasant effect. She nobly went to Murrell’s End for Christmas—although if she could have convinced Ronald to go without her she would have gladly stayed in bed.

  She pressed on with her novel, however, and contrary to her expectations completed it in mid-February 1970, writing to tell Reinhardt, who sent his congratulations from Barbados where he had seen the Freres. Georgette still occasionally lunched with Frere and saw him and Pat Wallace at parties, but the literary link which had brought them together was gone. Georgette had been writing for nearly fifty years and in many ways her books were her life. As her publisher Frere had been a central figure in that life; as her friend—although he was still valued—he was much more on the periphery. After leaving Albany their paths had diverged and Georgette’s involvement in the Freres’ lives, her intimate association with Pat Wallace, and her affectionate, regular communication with them, had gradually diminished until she was more likely to speak of them than to them: “I saw the Freres last night, at L’Aperitif, where they were dining with Harry, and we were dining with Richard. They both seemed to be in excellent form.” Though they were still friends, the relationship had shifted and by the year’s end, inexplicably for everyone but Georgette, it would be over.

  With Charity Girl complete, Joyce Weiner urged Georgette to take life easy for a while. She disagreed: “Now that my hand is ‘in’ I rather think I’ll write another book, and have already begun to plan it.” Demand for her novels was en
ormous and in America her sales had improved dramatically. On receiving Charity Girl Jack Macrae of Dutton had written to say that they “loved it and feel our distinguished author is on top of her form.” She was glad she had finally taken off in America but, try as she would, she could not warm to the new generation of American publishers. She had liked Elliot Macrae at Dutton, but his son Jack was too energetic, his manners far too relaxed to please Georgette. Nor did his proposal for promoting Charity Girl find favor with her. While she did not wish to offend him by telling him what she thought of his “horrid” idea of having her meet a fan for a drink at the Ritz, she considered the notion “quite fatuous.”

  Georgette was now an established household name, her birthday listed annually in The Times. Every week brought more letters from around the world praising her books and asking for sequels and autographs and information about the suppressed novels. She answered some and discarded others. A letter from a Chicago reader infuriated her so much that she told Reinhardt: “she wrote that my books had induced her to overcome her dislike of ‘the classics,’ and that she had just succeeded in ‘wading thru Pride and Prejudice.’ Her rating of this masterpiece was that it was a Heyer book ‘with a lot of unnecessary padding.’ I don’t know what else she had to say, for at that point I tore the letter up.” Max Reinhardt thought this hilarious but Georgette was not amused. Her huge popularity also brought a steady stream of requests for interviews, guest appearances, and invitations to literary functions. She refused them all.

  In spite of the effusions, massive sales, good reviews, and the affirmation of her publishers, Georgette still found it hard to accept her success. She knew she was a bestseller but felt it had less to do with her ability or style (she never could allow herself to share the same sphere with other, more “serious,” writers) and more to do with the fact that “since I write historical romances, my books don’t date, so that the very first I wrote, over 50 years ago, is still one of my most consistent money-makers.” This was true but it did not explain why so many bestselling historical novelists had faded from view while Georgette Heyer novels had continued selling for five decades.

  Frere tried to explain it to her over lunch one day but his assertion “that there is No Other Novelist today who can rival my World-Wide sales” only caused Georgette to “cock a disbelieving eyebrow at him.” But Frere was adamant and

  said acidly that I had always had an apparently ineradicable belief in the huge sales enjoyed by authors who don’t come within touching reach of my sales, but that I would PERHAPS allow him to know rather more than I did about such matters. He added, still more acidly, when I murmured “That’ll be the day!” that there are many problems confronting publishers, but there is only one confronting the publisher of Miss Georgette Heyer’s new books: whether to publish a first edition of 40, 50, or 60 thousand copies! I still don’t entirely believe him.

  Her former publisher had, in fact, underestimated the dilemma for she was now selling in excess of sixty thousand copies in the first months of a book’s release. Joyce Weiner summed it up: “This, madam, is a PHENOMENON—indubitably.”

  In August the Rougiers returned to Scandinavia, this time touring Norway for a fortnight before going to Greywalls. While in Scotland, Georgette received a letter from the Literary Editor of The Times asking her to sit for a photograph. The portrait was needed to accompany an article about Georgette and Charity Girl which Marghanita Laski, “a great admirer of your work,” was writing. Georgette’s initial reaction was to “tell him I’m just off to the South Pole,” but Ronald intervened and persuaded her to agree. In October 1970 the article appeared (with picture) under the somewhat misleading title “The Appeal of Georgette Heyer.” The heading was not a statement but a question as to why her books (whose “appeal to simple females of all ages is readily comprehensible”) had “become something of a cult for many well-educated middle-aged women who read serious novels too?” Marghanita Laski had apparently forgotten her earlier comment that “Georgette Heyer is a genius and defies description,” and chose instead to use the column to belittle the author, her novels, and her admirers.

  The article prompted a storm of protest from her readers, many of whom wrote outraged letters to The Times—including one which explained Georgette’s appeal in a single sentence: “What Miss Heyer provides is a beautifully written novel with a neat plot, witty dialogue and good characterisation.” The correspondence to the newspaper was so heavy that a few days later the editor was forced to declare the matter closed. A great many readers wrote directly to Georgette and she told her agent that “to judge from the furious letters I’ve received from Indignant Fans, [the editor] must have been snowed under by the letters they’ve written him!” She also had a charming letter from Lucy Boston, the well-known children’s author, which pleased her “more than somewhat!” It was all immensely gratifying and although she could not help but be a little stung by the piece, she told Frere: “What a remarkably silly ‘review’ of Charity Girl it was! I thought, as I read it, that I could have torn ME to bits far better than she did. Not that it has done me the slightest harm, so it has left my withers wholly unwrung.”

  That month the BBC wrote to ask if Georgette would allow them to record her voice for future generations but she thought the suggestion laughable: “Record my voice for posterity indeed! Few things are more unlikely than that posterity will have the smallest interest in either me or my works.” She could not deny that she was in demand, however, and an offer of £5,000 for a film option on These Old Shades came to fruition in the autumn. It had taken more than a year to finalize the deal and, perusing her old contracts, Georgette was reminded of the sale of her copyrights three decades earlier:

  Doesn’t it seem fantastic thirty years later, that £750 should have been considered by the valuers on both sides to have been a pretty generous price? It led me to rout out my old account book, and I see that it was generous! In those days my gross income very rarely got into four figures. It is now in five figures—and the wry thought in my mind is that I was better off then than I am now! And it is still more fantastic to think that Heinemann’s weren’t at all keen to buy my copyrights! I heard, years later, that Frere had the devil of a job persuading the Board to do it! Well, they got a very good bargain, but I don’t begrudge it them, remembering, as I do to what straits we were reduced at the time.

  She did not comment on the fact that the terms of that thirty-year-old agreement meant she received only half of the £5,000 paid for the film rights to These Old Shades. The realization must have been an unpleasant one and it may have been a factor in her eventual estrangement from Frere.

  With her income now in the region of £50,000 a year, the old pressure to write for money was gone and it was partly the need to fulfill her fans’ and her publishers’ eager expectation of an annual Heyer novel that kept Georgette writing. Her lifelong compulsion to write was still a force but now considerably less intense. Her determination to start a new book “with plenty of time on hand” had waned as the year progressed. By year’s end she still had not put pen to paper. She suffered another spate of ill-health in December, with her left foot so swollen it would not go into a shoe and a streptococcal infection which made it difficult to breathe. She wrote to Pat Wallace with a touch of her old humor: “Yes dear: Foot-and-Mouth disease!” It was to be her last letter to her old friend: a brief chatty missive, not quite in the old manner, but still addressed to “My dear Wallace” and ending “My love to Frere, and also to yourself.” It is not known why Georgette’s relationship with Frere and Pat Wallace came to an end but her lunch with them in October 1970 at The Aperitif was to be her last.

  Twelve months later, Georgette told Max Reinhardt sadly:

  It is now more than a year since I had any direct contact with either of the Freres. Ronald meets Frere at the Garrick, and says he is always very friendly and chatty, so I must assume that in some way, unknown to me, I have offended him, and Pat. But, if the truth was told, t
he boot is on the other leg—though remembering our long friendship, and how much I owed to Frere, I did NOT slap him down, when perhaps I ought to have done so.

  The hurt went deep on both sides and neither Frere nor Pat Wallace ever understood the cause of the estrangement. Whatever the reasons behind the breach, Georgette did not know how to resolve it. She could only end by telling Reinhardt, “Oh, well! It’s all water under the bridge now, I suppose, but it has left a scar of sadness.”

  The cause of the rift never would be explained. Ronald, Frere, and Richard would eventually write to each other after Georgette’s death: Ronald to tell Frere that Georgette “would never tell me the cause” and Richard to suggest that the continuing enmity between Ronald and Frere had played on his mother’s strong sense of loyalty until finally she had chosen her husband over her friend. Frere’s letter would express all their feelings best:

  So far as we are concerned it must now be something which never will be solved and a sadness we must always live with. Of course we must try to forget it and remember instead the long years of happiness we found in our intimate friendship with her; full of light, laughter and the joy of living.

  36

  Most of my works would die with me, I fear; but one or two might continue selling for a while.

  —Georgette Heyer

  Christmas was at Murrell’s End again that year. Georgette always found the season more enjoyable when there were children present and she and Ronald took great delight in buying their three grandsons gifts and acting as “perennial Santa Clauses.” Richard was increasingly busy at the Bar and planning to take silk in another year or two, but he took a break over the festive season and enlivened the household by giving Noel a baby chinchilla. Ronald had retired from the Bar, though he continued as a Bencher for another year, presiding over cases in Cambridge and Wisbech, and he was still chairman of the General Optical Council.