Random Jottings

A Heyer week

After a brief mad moment when the sun shone and I thought the summer had begun to arrive this quickly passed and I am currently sitting here in my living room with a jumper on and a hot water bottle at my back as it is bitter cold.  Getting so fed up with this weather.

After my last From my Shelves which was a Civil Contract I decided to give it a re-read and, once again, could not put it down and it confirmed my thoughts that it is her best book. I know that some do not like it because it is not as light and funny as some of her others and there is no Alpha Male hero, but I tend to think of it as Heyer's Mansfield Park, a book which is not lovable at first but which I find grows on one.

I then had a bit of a binge and read Bath Tangle, Cotillion, Frederica, A Quiet Gentleman and this morning started Venetia which I have not read for a long time.   I have also reaquainted myself with the Kloester biography of Georgette which made interesting reading. I had not read it for a while and I remember there was a very ill natured and cutting review of it in the Guardian (well it would be, I cannot any journalist working for that paper admitting they read Heyer) which roused the anger of a horde of Heyer fans, me included.

Heyer is just a damn good writer.  The flow of the narrative, the dialogue, the wit is simply amazing.  In Frederica, and now in Venetia, she is at her very best when her heroines are thinking and their thoughts, doubts and fears are placed before us.   The admirable tightness and cleanlliness of the writing is simply wonderful.  I have said before that I love clean writing, no fuss, no frills but perfectly placed and no hyperbole or extravagences.   P D James does precisely the same (incidentally I am re-reading her Dalgliesh books as well just for this).

As I have already mentioned Georgette is very very funny. In one of her letters to her publisher she says "I should be shot for writing such nonsense". Au contraire.

One of her funniest books is Cotillion. Kitty Charing, an orphan being brought up by a miserly guardian is told that she has to choose a husband from her assorted "cousins" or she will be left no money when her guardian dies.   They all arrive at the house in the country, save one, Jack, a fascinating Out and Outer for whom Kitty nurtures a secret passion.

She decides to run away but bumps into Freddy Standan another cousin who had been tricked by Jack into making this journey.   Kitty manages to persuade Freddy to offer for her and pretend to be engaged to her in order or her to have some time in London. 

There then follows a completely delightful farrago of misunderstandings, adventures and sheer fun ending up with the entire cast of characters in a vicarage in the country and involving a run away marriage.

Those of you who have read Cotillion will understand what I am saying. Those of you who have not, please do so.   If you do not fall in love with Freddy I shall be most surprised.

And the good thing is now I have embarked on this re-read I have many more to go. I might tackle Sylvester next...

From my Shelves - A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

I first discovered Georgette Heyer when I was about 12 and stuck indoors with German measles and unable to go to school. My sister, who was a librarian, brought home a pile of books she had picked at radom for me to look at and in this heap was The Talisman Ring by GH.  Oh I loved it. Dashing Ludovic, romantic Eustacie and the more mature love story with Sir Tristram running alongside the antics of the younger couple. Witty, amusing and exciting it still remains near the top of my lis of favourite Heyers. It was a battered Fontana paperback and I loved the cover.

But the one that, in the end, tops them all is A Civil Contract.

I first read this when I was about 15 and was slightly disappointed (not now that I am older and less romantic.....).  No dashing alpha males in this one with a lively spirited dashing heroine to match.  Adam Deveril is home from the Peninsular Wars following the unexpected death of his father and finds that the family are on the verge of ruin and he may be forced to sell his beloved family home, Fontley.  When on leave earlier in the year recovering from a wound sustained in battle, he had met Julia Oversely, the Season's beauty, and they fell in love.  Lurking in the background was Julia's old school friend, Jenny Chawleigh, totally unnoticed but who we learn later had also fallen in love with Adam.

It is Julia's father, who honours Adam's withdrawal from his courtship of his daughter, who comes up with the idea of the Civil Contract.  He knows Jenny's father, Jonathan Chawleigh, a hugely wealthy man in the city who is eager to ally his daughter with a member of the ton and is willing to pay handsomely for it.  Initially revolted and repulsed by the scheme, Adam realises he has no choice in order to save Fontley and provide for his family and so they marry.

I did wonder when recently re-reading this title if Georgette Heyer had  read Sense and Sensibility and had Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in mind when it came to the portrayal of Julia and Jenny.  Julia is definitely all sensibility, fainting when she meets Adam at a party shortly after his marriage and nearly causing a scandal, she is spoiled and selfish, though totally unaware of this and, as with Marianne, she ends up marrying an older man, the Marquis of Rockhill (a Colonel Brandon figure) who surrounds her with luxury and whose two step daughters adore their new mama and dote on her. It is slowly borne in on Adam that perhaps he has been mistaken in Julia's character:

"She was telling his mother how nervous she had been when Rockhill had taken her to meet his children, making a droll story out of it.  Such an ordeal it had been! but they positively killed her with kindness, she was becoming odiously spoiled......  Listening to this Adam remembered the words she had once spoken to him 'I must be loved, I can't live if I am not loved'.  The thought flashed through his mind that she was basking in adulation..."

She is also beautifully summed up by another character, Brough, Adam's close friend: "I daresay she'll cut an excellent dash but she ain't my notion of a comfortable wife.  Never any saying where you'll find her. Might leave her up in the attics and come home to find her in the cellar"

Jenny is the Elinor Dashwood character - quiet, loyal, accepting of her position as the satellite in Julia's starry wake, and then the chance of being married to the man she has secretly loved falls into her lap.  She knows his family dislike the match, deem her an unworthy wife for Adam, she knows he does not love her but she makes her position clear to Adam's sister, Lydia: "You love him don't you? This isn't what you wished.  I only want to tell you that he'll be comfortable. I'll see to that. You don't think it signifies but it does. Men like to be comfortable. Well he will be - that's all"......Lydia embraced Adam 'I don't hate her, I don't"

I am enormously fond of Jenny Chawleigh as I was fond of Elinor Dashwood and find Julia Oversely as irritating as I did Marianne Dashwood when she was having the vapours and causing her family no end of trouble and pain and of course in the end, Adam comes to realise her worth and truly loves her. "He did love her, differently but perhaps more enduringly and he had grown to depend on her.  She thought they would have many years of quiet content; never reaching the heights, but living together in deepening friendship and comfort".

I love the simple, almost home like, ending to this book and the relationship between Adam and Jenny and her journey into the heart of his family, but there is one character in A Civil Contract who is a pure delight, a figure who would fit beautifully into Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and that is Jenny's father Jonathan Chawleigh:

"Mr Chawleigh was a middle aged man, whose powerful frame was clad in an old fashioned suit of snuff coloured broadcloth...he favored a mode that had been for many years worn by respectable tradesmen and country squires...his coat was full skirted, and he wore knee breaches with stockings and square toed shoes embellished with steel buckles.....his waistcoat relieved the general drabness of his raiment with broad, alternating stripes of grass green and gold.  The most hen hearted members of the dandy set would have died at the stake rather than have work such a garment, but it was certainly magnificent.  So was the diamond pin stuck into Mr Chawleigh's neck cloth and the emerald ring on his finger"

A larger than life, warm hearted, no nonsense figure, Mr Chawleigh is my favourite character in all Heyer.  He practically takes over this story and is, indeed, at the centre of it all.  The plot line, simple as it is, needs the embellishment of his humour, sometimes overbearing ways, his generosity of heart and his love for his only child Jenny.  Without him this book would be a worthy read, but would lack sparkle and zest.  He is a magnificent character and I, a Dickens fan of many years, would go so far as to say he is worthy to stand alongside Mr Pickwick for sheer fun and joi de vivre.

I do love this book.  Just saying that in case you have not realised that yet.   First published in 1961 with Georgette Heyer at the top of her form.  Her later books had, to use one of her Regency phrases, 'a sad falling off' and were rather careless in plot lines with an over use of cant and slang, but this is good writing and shows that the author is not just a silly romantic novelist, which is how she was viewed by her fellow authors and the public her entire life.  (I always get annoyed to find Georgette Heyer shelved next to the Mills and Boon in my local library)  She was upset at this, but became resigned to it, gently mocking her own work.  She does herself a disservice.  Here is a quote from another one of her books:

"The nuptials of her youngest born had proved to be too much for Lady Winwood's delicate constitution....she withdrew with her two remaining daughters to the fastness of Winwood and there built up her shattered nervous system on a diet of eggs and cream and paregoric draughts, and the contemplation of the Marriage Settlement"

The Divine Jane herself could not have put it any better.

Time for a re-read I think.   Post shingles it will be just right....

Random Round up

Lots of books to read and several to bring to your attention. My TBR pile is gradually spreading and I really need to sort it out.

Two books from the British Library. No I do NOT work for them nor do they pay me a retainer but hardly surprising if anybody thinks so as I am always going on about their wonderful Crime Classics which I simply adore. Interesting, intriguing and always with wonderful covers.

Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs. I discovered this author earlier in the year and am working my way through his books. They are rather old fashioned, oddly enough the later titles rather than the earlier, and can be variable as he wrote a huge amount but I really like them. Miss Tither is the local busybody, not liked and always interfering in everyone's affairs, in other words, a prime candidate for murder. A village setting and a marvelously named vicar, Reverend Ethelred Claplady, and this one is nearing the top of my pile

I have started the second Bellairs, The Dead Shall be Raised & The Murder of a Quack, two separate stories. In the first a skeleton unearthed on the moor above Hatterworth where an earlier murder had taken place, both unsolved so the murderer is still out there.

The Murder of a Quack - local doctor, a tad dubious, is found hanging in his consulting rooms but though it looks like a suicide, as in all good mysteries, it is not. Blackmail and fraud and trickery abound.    Two good reads.

My final entry for the British Library is Crimson Snow, winter mysteries edited by Martin Edwards who has an unerring eye for winkling unknown tales out of the vaults at Euston Road. A great collection - I have read four of these but am rationing myself. Well known names such as Edgar Wallace and Margery Allingham are represented alongside lesser know authors, Fergus Hume (a ghost story this one - or is it?) and Ianthe Jerrold and S C Roberts, hardly household names but none the less fun to read.

Snowdrift by Georgette Heyer. A collection of short stores, NOT new, but cunningly reissued by her publishers under this title with the bonus of three recently discovered stories never before published. Clever publishers know full well that Heyer fans, of which I am one, will rush out to duplicate the majority of this book for the sake of those three and I duly bought it. My paperback of Pistols for two, the earlier titles, is battered and falling apart anyway so was quite glad to give it the heave-ho and have this new book on my shelves.   I adore Heyer and most of these stories are embryonic sketches many of which were used and expanded in her full length novels.  Lots of dashing, masterful heroes and glamorous young maidens in distress. No need to expand further. If you love Georgette then order this now. I spent an afternoon re-reading and loved it.

Two books from Oxford university Press who always have interesting books and always beautifully produced. Heartthrobs by Carol Dyhouse is a history of Women and Desire. Oo-er missus. Carol is a social and cultural historian and she draws upon literature, cinema and popular romance to show how the changing position of women has shaped their dreams about men. On flicking through I came across pictures of Elvis Presley, Adam Ant, Liberace (!) and, er, David Cassidy....

Wonderful illustrations of Barbara Cartland covers as well and this is going to be an interesting as well as an enjoyable read.

Note: this book will be published February 2017

Secondly, Charles Dickens, an Introduction - Jenny Hartley. I have bending shelves full of books by and about Dickens and I might wonder if I need any more but this is a concise book - does what it says on the tin - introduces the reader to Dickens but I am enjoying it because sometimes when you read huge fat biographies of authors by different writers, you can get a bit bogged down and need somebody to hone it down to the essentials. This is precisely what this books does.

And, finally, Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck. This is an author I came across when she was published by Persephone and now this is a title published by Furrowed Middlebrow (wonderful title) and is very Barbara Pym'ish and a bit Angela Thirkell'ish as well. If you like these two authors then you will like this. I am not madly keen on either of the aforementioned, Thirkell gets very repetitive and there are one or two of here characters who drive me demented, and I find Pym a little fey for my liking, but this is a charming book.

Camilla Lacey is a vicar's wife in a mid-sized town outside of Manchester and this diary life is set in the early days of World War II.  It is impossible to read this without thinking of EM Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady, which is referred to in the narrative, and there are similarities in the content and the noting down of everyday cares and worries and absurdities.   I enjoyed it but not as much as I thought I would, I have to be honest. But a delightful book and a great stocking filler.

OK that is it for now.

My blogging has been pretty sporadic of late for which I apologise - one of my resolutions for 2017 is to post more. Though I have a sneaky feeling that was one of my resolutions for 2016 as well...

'sigh'

Georgette Heyer - Jennifer Kloesters

I am not quite sure what Georgette Heyer has done to bring down such sarcasm and dismissive reviews by the literati.  She suffered from their disparaging remarks during her life and now that this new biography has been published, they are at it again. It makes me very cross indeed and those who have accused GH of being a snob and upper class are merely showing their own version of the same faults.

This new biography by Jennifer Kloesters is obviously going to be a must have for all fans of Heyer, but cannot imagine that anybody else will have it on their wish list and it is clear from some of the reviews that this book has been given to critics who have no interest in the subject matter and are happy to diss it.

Well, I am not about to because I simply adore GH and have done since I was 13 years old. I was confined at home with German Measles, feeling perfectly well but not allowed to go to school as I was highly infectious.  My sister, a future librarian, was working in the local library and promised to nip home at lunch time with some reading matter.  In the books she brought home was one title The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer.  It was one of those hideous Pan editions of the sixties with the heroines in full make up and false eyelashes, but that didn't put me off and I sat down and read it and simply loved it. My sister was ordered to bring me home as many more Heyers as she could find and that was that.  I was off and running.  I recently re-read The Talisman Ring and loved it just as much as ever.  A lovely feisty heroine, a dashing, wrongly accused hero turned smuggler, Ludovic - what's not to like? But Heyer is clever and balances out the obvious love story with that of an older couple, Sir Tristram and Sarah Thane who are far the more interesting, and funnier, of the two.

GH had a middle class upbringing typical of her time and yes, to modern eyes, she probably can appear snobbish and anti-Semitic, but we have to remember that these attitudes were widespread and she was not alone in her views.  Dame Agatha Christie and D L Sayers were also guilty of derogatory remarks about Jews and, while agreeing that this is pretty reprehensible, when reading early works the reader has to remember when they were written and not be too censorious.   You cannot edit in hindsight. So while I understand one critic's dislike of this, no point in bringing it up now.

Georgette's father died  in his early fifties of a heart attack, no warning, no signs of ill health and, as they were very close and he actively encouraged her writing and supported her, this was a huge blow. It left her bereft and also, in the long run, the financial support of her family.   GH was an Edwardian and was brought up in the usual ladylike way of waiting at home until she was married.  She was not expected to have a career, but like earlier women novelists who worked themselves to nervous exhaustion and ill health (think Fanny Trollope, Mrs Oliphant, Frances Hodgson-Burnett, Edith Wharton) she was allowed to write until she, too, had a breakdown.

She signed over the Australian rights in her books to her mother (GH was very popular in the Antipodes) which allowed her to live a relatively comfortable life in the various residential hotels she chose to live in, looked after her two brothers and when her husband Ronald Rougier decided after failing at commercial ventures, that he really wanted to read law, she supported him through all his years of studying until his qualification.  He became a most respected judge so obviously it was a calling that suited him, but it was Georgette's writing that made all this possible.

Alongside the Regency novels GH also write a series of detective stories and flirted with other genres in her early writing days until she finally settled into the period of history that was to become her own.  Her research was formidable and her sense of fun and humour shines through so many of these wonderful stories.  I am currently re-reading Friday's Child, one of her biggest successes on publication, and it still makes me laugh out loud:

"'What the devil is all this about a dashed Greek?' demanded Sherry. .......I'm not acquainted with any Greeks and what's more, I don't want to be!'

'It ain't a thing you're acquainted with dear boy.....comes up behind a fellow when he ain't expecting it'

'Yes but what is it?'

Mr Tarleton said with a quiver of amusement in his voice 'I fancy he means Nemesis'

'That's it' said Ferdy looking at him with respect.' Nemesis!' you know him too?"

Wonderful.

It seems from some reviewers that Gerogette wrote her novels "with the help of gin, fags and Dexedrine. Under the influence of the latter, she could write for up to 24 hours at a time".   Dreadful is it not?   In our obsession about smoke free zones nowadays, please remember that at this time smoking was fashionable.  GH liked a gin and tonic, but from the tone of this review you would think she was drowned in the stuff.  She also did not understand what Dexedrine was and was given it by her doctor.  She found if she took it late at night it helped her to stay awake and write at night for hours at a time.  Pretty sure she had no idea that it was a highly addictive stimulant.

According to one review, this is a biography about a not very interesting woman.  What we learn from Jennifer Kloesters book is that GH was an intensely, shy, private person. She did not give interviews, she hated having her photograph taken and was only comfortable within her own small circle of friends.  She and her husband had a long and happy marriage though there is a suggestion her that it was more cerebral than physical. They were boon companions who enjoyed each other's company and, therefore, did not feel the need to shine in society and make a splash. They were happy with their lives and just got on with it.  Obviously it would be better if they had raging rows, got drunk and abused each other, were unfaithful, got divorced etc etc as this would make much better biographical matter.   They simply enjoyed being with each other.  This is not going to make for a sparkling life from the biographers point of view, but those of us who love her merely have to re-read any of her books to find the true Georgette, her crime novels which she enjoyed plotting immensely (incidentally Ronald had great input in these discussing clues and situations with each other) and, of course, the sheer joi di vivre and delight of all those wonderful wonderful Regency novels, all of are still in print and there to divert and delight future generations. 

Georgette Heyer was a brilliant writer and I am just sorry that she always been belittled by literary snobs and bunged into the Romance section of public libraries and treated in such a derogatory way.

"The nuptials of her youngest born had proved to be too much for Lady Winwood's delicate constitution....she withdrew with her two remaining daughters to the fastness of Winwood and there built up her shattered nervous system on a diet of eggs and cream and paregoric draughts, and the contemplation of the Marriage Settlement"

I included this quote in an earlier post on Georgette Heyer and said that the Divine Jane could not have done any better. I stand by that and to you snooty reviewers out there who are determined to put the knife in, go away, read one of her books and have a re-think.

I will accept your apologies in due course.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As well as this excellent biography, Jennifer Kloesters has also written Georgette Heyer's Regency World, a wonderful compendium of fashion, carriages, food, drink etc and a must have for all Heyer lovers.

I have written about the Divine Georgette many times on Random and here below are links to my posts. I would love for you to read them and let me have your opinion on this simply wonderful writer.

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/05/georgette-heyer.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2009/01/a-fantasy-world.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/03/an_infamous_arm.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2009/02/the-great-roxhythe.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2009/10/georgette-heyer-week.html

The Convenient Marriage - audio book

I am not normally a lover of audio books, no matter how well they are read, somehow the voices never match up to my ideas of how the characters sound, but on Sunday and Monday, I felt so depressed and fed up and found I was in a weepy state, so I slobbed around all day and decided to make no effort to do ANYTHING at all, and that included reading a book.

So out came this gem - Georgette Heyer's The Convenient Marriage read by, wait for it, wait for it, Richard Armitage.  Yes the unnutterablysexygorgeoussmouldering Richard Armitage for whom I nurture a  deep passion.   He has such a gorgeous, husky speaking voice (looks ok too) and I had heard that he had done a few of these for Naxos so decided to give it a whirl.

The Convenient Marriage is one of Heyer's wittiest and most delightful novels. Set before her Regency period so that the heroes wear plum velvet coats with embroidered waistcoats and cascading frills down their front, shoes with buckles etc. Heroines have plumes in their hair and patches and it is all great fun. Tells the story of Horatia WInwood aged 17 who, on hearing that the Earl of Rule has offered for her elder sister which will save the family fortunes, decides to rescue Elizabeth from this fate (as she loves another) and goes and proposes to the Earl herself.

On paper this is a singularly ill matched couple, but this is a Heyer after all and they fall in love with one another but don't discover this till the final page when we have read through kidnapping, seduction, gambling etc etc and it rattles along at a great pace.  I have read all of Heyer's books so often that I more or less know them off by heart and could recognise which bits had been left out in this abridged edition. However, it has been done very well and I can see that the loss of some of the dialogue and characterisation makes little difference to an audio book, though enhancing the reading experience.

So I sat and listened to the unnutterablysexygorgeoussmouldering Richard Armitage reading and what did I think?   Well, he was excellent.  Accents spot on, the drunken irresponsible Pelham, his brother in law and his friend Pomeroy, the effeminate and spiteful Drelincourt, cousin to Rule, Lord Lethbridge who harbours a long held grudge against Rule and decides to seduce his wife - all great.  My only problem was with his voice for Horatia.  OK, difficult for a man to do a woman's voice I know (and some audio books I have heard when a woman attempts to be gruff and masculine can be embarrassing), and for me this was the weakest spot of the reading.

BUT this is far outweighed by the rest.  Just sit back for a moment, close your eyes, and imagine Richard Armitage reading this with a sensual throb in his voice which has lowered by about two octaves:

"When I married you Horry, there was another woman in my life. She is not there now my darling, and in my heart she never had a place"

"Oh Marcus put me there" Horatia said on a sob

"You are there" he answered and caught her up in his arms and kissed her, not gently at all, but ruthlessly, crushing all the breath out of her body

All together now -  Swooooooooooooooooooooooooon...............