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I recently visited the Speakeasy, an Internet cafe in the Belltown area of Seattle, WA. I was with a co-worker from Amazon.com and a couple of women somehow connected to Random House. I was there to meet Dave Barry, humorist extraordinaire, who was plugging his new book which somehow involves cyberspace. In the course of chatting with the women from the publisher, one of whom was accompanying Mr. Dave on his tour, conversation turned to the various recipients, deserving and otherwise, of an award for particularly poorly-written books. One Judith Michaels, apparently a husband-and-wife romance novel writing team, was unfamiliar to me, so I asked, and was told, and I mentioned that I generally only read romances by Georgette Heyer.
I would have expected an, "Ah", perhaps accompanied by some look suggesting I lived in a time warp (I do). What I got was far worse: blank incomprehension. Taking into consideration the woman's age (perhaps a year or few older than me), I noted that Heyer had invented the Regency subgenre, and that she'd stopped writing when my co-conversationalist was 10. After establishing that I did in fact have a pretty good idea how old my co-conversationalist was, the matter was dropped.
But I find that blank incomprehension a little startling -- Heyer still has reasonable staying power on the backlist. I'm not alone in being a non-romance novel reader who makes an exception for Heyer. So I thought I'd write a few paragraphs explaining what I like about Heyer's novels, and why I find them so eminently re-readable.
I've noticed many times that if I read more than three novels in a day, I feel just about exactly the way I do after I eat too much chocolate: uncomfortable, a little disconnected, and almost sick. A good bit of mind candy, however, is just that: easy to digest, sweet and just spicy enough to savor. It should adhere to a formula, but supply enough detail to and difference from the formula to not be exactly like every other one.
Part of why the Regency Romance works so well is because it supplies such a lovely framework for the standard romance formula. In the upper classes, marriage was the only career for women; in the best cases this meant a woman politician could preside over her husband's dinners; a lady scientist could have a constant partner (I haven't found a Heyer novel which matched this description, but I haven't read them all. Yet.); women were often heavily involved in the day-to-day running of large estates. England from the Restoration through Victoria's reign had a formulaic system for upper-class men and women to meet each other. The pursuits engaged in by all parties, courting or otherwise, are admirably suited to support, but not distract from the main plot (gambling, flirting, visiting, gossiping, dancing, eating, engaging in politics). Travel was a normal event for these classes, from London to resort to country houses, so an excuse for a change of scene is easy to come by. The mores of the time (especially on the early end in the Restoration, and decreasingly so through the Regency, to the double standard in the Victorian era which all too many today believe extended into the hoary past -- not so) were flexible: gambling, even for high stakes, was socially acceptable (even expected!); affairs were common; flirtation was expected.
Heyer does not, in general, cheat. One of the few respectable careers open to upper-class young men not overly endowed with cash (funds, land) was the military. During the earlier part of the Regency, this was an up-and-coming spot for a young man, and buying a position as an officer wasn't too hard to afford, what with Napoleon and all. Post-Waterloo, that all started to change. Fashions were recognizably different over the 40-50 year period during which Heyer sets her Regency novels -- and attitudes towards women having affairs and flirtations changed as well. Heyer manages to keep them somewhat straight, and, for the real addict, there are periodic references to Fox, the Hollands (interested folk might take a look at Aristocrats, a biography of the Lenox sisters, one of whom became Lady Holland), Lady Jersey, and other characters of the political and social scene, in addition to the more obvious Wellington and Princess Esterhazy. She even gets in the more than occasional reference to some of the more sinister things children were dosed with at the time (forget laudanum -- those Blue Pills contained mercury).
Heyer does not, however, bash you over the head with this stuff. If you read enough of them, you really can't help but notice that the men wear patches and wigs or powder in some but not others; that the women wear their hair down and powdered in these with long waists and brocades but up and curled in those with high waists and more lighter fabrics. Well, I can't, anyway. At the beginning of the time frame, we see the Marquis high-tailing it for pre-Revolution France, having kidnapped the wrong Challoner; by the tail end of the time period, Anthea Darracott is making a reticule (read: purse) out of cardboard, in the shape of a Grecian urn which she will then paint -- and she'll marry her cousin who inherits a mill in Yorkshire. Some of the novels make the contrasts explicit: Arabella's mother unpacks her old brocades and silks and furs to see what can be made over for Arabella's coming-out. But you can also treat the descriptions as some fabulous other world where everything is strange and expensive and vaguely romantic (except traveling by stage).
Amused as I am by the details and descriptions, I don't read these novels for those reasons. I read them for the people, in particular, their conversations. Heyer novels have many, many, many characters -- they aren't boy, girl, someone to get in the way of their getting together, other people to help them together, and some dude in a frock to say the right words for them at the end. In particular, Heyer characters have relatives. Lots of them. The Marquis in Devil's Cub has: a sinister father, the Duke of Avon; a foolish uncle; a charming mother; a flighty cousin, and any number of other French cousins, aunts, etc.. Our heroine Mary Challonner has a foolish sister and mother, and a well-respected grandfather. Venetia (Venetia) has a vaguely scandalous mother who isn't actually dead, a step-father who hangs with the Regent, two brothers (one sickly and brilliant; the other healthy and bumptious), a politically well-connected uncle and his shallow but kindly wife. Her father may be dead, but his spectre hangs over all. Even the orphaned Deborah Grantham (Faro's Daughter) has a brother (in the army and a complete git) and a kindly aunt, Lady Bellingham. Her would-be suitor, has any number of relatives. And of course her idiot brother is attempting to court one of her would-be suitors cousins. Frederica is all about the Merrivales -- in some ways the real tale is that of Jessamy and Felix and how they enchant the bored-beyond-belief Lord Alverstoke. I could go on: I could, for example, relate how Arabella came to accept an offer of marriage from Robert Beaumaris, only in small part out of need of money to get her brother out of debt. Beaumaris, as it happens, wasn't being conned, but in fact met her family on the sly and found them all very entertaining. All these happy families, happy in such varied ways, there is at least one unhappy family, the Darracotts of The Unknown Ajax, beaten into submission by a heartless eighty-year old patriarch whose whim is law until Hugo makes an appearance.
Heyer has written a short story and a novel about twins (including marrying the wrong, or would that be the right, one?). She did cross-dressing, complete with people almost falling in love with others of the wrong gender (altho that, technically, is set during the Restoration). She's done long-lost parent and long-lost heir. She's done unexpected inheritance. About the only really consistent thing about Heyer is that even when the pair marries for convenience, they fall in love by the end anyway. And that, after all, is an important part of why I read these books: I may not be certain how they get there, and I darn well want to be amused along the way, but sometimes I do like to know where I'm going before I begin.
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This file recreated from The Internet Wayback Machine in January 2002. Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created November 1, 1996 Modified: January 10, 2002