Anne here, and today I'm bringing you another Georgette Heyer blog featuring some snippets from The Novels of Georgette Heyer, an upcoming book by Jennifer Kloester, Heyer's biographer. They are, of course, published with Jen's permission. (We'll let you know when the book goes on sale.)
Today we are dipping into These Old Shades, which was my first ever Georgette Heyer. You've probably heard me tell this story, so forgive me if you have and skip this paragraph. I was 11 and my friend Merryn and I, both prolific readers, were fed up with having to stick to the books in the children's library. But the rules said you had to be over 12, so . . .
It was a dare. Merryn dared me to borrow a book from the adult section. I said, "All right, I will! Which book should I get?" She said her mother liked Georgette Heyer, so I grabbed the first one I saw, which happened to be These Old Shades. It was a weird title and I had no idea what it would be like, but I didn't care. And to our amazement, the librarian didn't bat an eye!
So These Old Shades became my first Heyer, and I not only devoured it, it will always hold a special place in my heart. (Coincidentally it was Jen Kloester's first as well.) Since then, on many different Heyer sites, people often ask, "What was your first Heyer?" I think we remember our first because it ushered us into a whole new reading world, a world to which many of us became, and remain, addicted.
So, on to Heyer and These Old Shades. Georgette was very close to her beloved father, who was friend and mentor as well as father. On 15 June 1925 George Heyer had a heart attack and died in front of his 22-year-old daughter.
After that Georgette struggled to write for months. But she had a contract to fulfil, and eventually, she returned to a story she'd begun three years earlier as a kind of sequel to her first book, The Black Moth.
At the time (1923, long before her father's death and in a burst of enthusiasm for the book) she wrote this to her agent:
The sequel is naturally a much better book than the Moth itself, and is designed to catch the public’s taste. I have also tried to arrange it so that anyone who reads it need not first read the Moth. It deals with my priceless villain, and ends awfully happily. Tracy becomes quite a decent person, and marries a girl about half his age! I’ve packed it full of incident and adventure, and have made my heroine masquerade as a boy for the first few chapters. This, I find, always attracts people!
Georgette Heyer to L.P. Moore, letter, 23 January 1923.
Interesting, isn't it, how clear-headed she was — and at such a young age — about what readers would respond to. And how determined she was to "catch the public's taste."
But her father's death had devastated her, and for months she wrote nothing. She told her agent, ‘I don’t think I have the heart to write a period novel.’ As well, her mother was grieving badly, and the family was now without the income from her father's work. It soon became clear that much of the financial support of the family, which included her two younger brothers (aged 13 and 17) was going to fall on Georgette.
Enter her own personal hero. Richard Rougier, a former beau, returned from Africa, and proposed, and on the 20th July 1925, a month after her father's death, they were married.
Georgette persevered with the book, and Heinemann published These Old Shades in October 1926. (That's the first edition cover above on the left) From the very first These Old Shades sold well, and in its first ten years, These Old Shades was reprinted almost thirty times — not bad for a 25 year old author.
According to Kloester, completing These Old Shades helped Heyer find her way back to the literary world she loved. And for me, aged 11, it became a gateway to a world I've always loved.
You will notice that I have said very little about the actual story. That's because to explain it would spoil it for new readers, and I hope these posts will entice new readers to read Heyer (and old ones to reread These Old Shades.) It's not a Regency-era novel, it's set earlier than that, and the hero is dressed in velvets and lace, wears jewels and high-heeled shoes — and is gorgeously masculine.
I will however, point you to a link that will explain the meaning of the title, which puzzled me for years. It's from a poem by Austin Dobson entitled ‘Epilogue', and, in a nutshell, the poet is explaining that he's rejecting the modern world in favor of the old world.
"Whereas with these old Shades of mine,
Their ways and dress delight me;
And should I trip by word or line,
They cannot well indict me."
So here's a question for you — if you're a Heyer reader, what was the first Heyer you ever read? Was it special to you? And if you're not a Heyer reader, is there a book that opened a new world for you that you never forgot?