My Romance with History will be an opportunity for readers to take another look at a youthful favourite with a mature eye.
Georgette Heyer is one of the few twentieth-century writers who can be credited with creating a whole new genre, the Regency Romance. In a career spanning fifty years, Georgette Heyer produced more than fifty books. At her death in 1974 there were fifty-one of her titles in print, legal translations of her works in ten languages, and pirated editions in several others. While many of her contemporaries’ books are now only seen in second-hand bookshops, her hugely popular historical romances have recently been reissued in an elegant paperback series by Arrow Books.
The granddaughter of a Russian émigré, Heyer was raised as her academic father’s favourite, more as a boy than a girl, a characteristic reflected in her many intelligent, strong-willed heroines. In 1925 she married a mining engineer, Ronald Rougier, whom she followed to remote locations. She later supported him on the income from her writing while he returned to university to gain a law degree. She wrote her first novel in 1921 at the age of nineteen. First conceived as a tale to amuse her ailing younger brother, The Black Moth was accepted by the first agent who saw it, bought by the first publisher who was offered the manuscript and is still in print.
Heyer began her writing career under the influence of the Baroness Orczy and her iconic hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel. His influence can be seen in many of her heroes who hide their true natures behind the guise of an affected fop. Her own fictional world spans the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, the period of the late Georges, the Napoleonic Wars and Regency England. Meticulously researched and historically accurate, her world is yet one of romance, adventure and youthful exuberance. Her language, while fresh and elegant, is also peppered with colourful period idiom and slang, and, together with her witty dialogue and ironic tone, has set the style for the entire genre.
Georgette Heyer regarded Jane Austen as a model yet her independently minded heroines have a physical freedom Austen’s women would never have dreamed of. Claiming to be no feminist herself, she yet created many capable heroines who defy the conventions of acceptable feminine behaviour. Heyer’s plots turn on the merry battle between two strong characters as they inadvertently fall in love, but she also plays with the romantic conventions. It is not always the beautiful girl who secures the hero, or the dashing rake who wins the heroine. However, like Jane Austen, Heyer always finds suitable husbands for her heroines.
But for all their enormous success, Georgette Heyer herself considered her historical romances as little more than inconsequential froth, and wrote several more serious, but less successful, works of historical fiction. She also wrote mysteries and was one that generation of English crime writers which included Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. For several years she published a mystery and a historical each year. However, although her mysteries can still be found on library shelves, it is for her historical romances that Heyer will always be remembered.
Although I loved her Regency Romances, as a girl, my favourite Georgette Heyer was These Old Shades. To me, its enigmatic hero and tom-boy heroine were the epitome of romantic. No longer a dewy eyed teenager, I picked it up for the first time after some thirty years with trepidation. However, I was much relieved to see that it has stood the test of time. I found These Old Shades to be beautifully written with interesting characters and a well constructed plot. I have a few quibbles, but considering the author’s age at the time, only 24, they are minor.
One dark night in Paris under the reign of Louis XV, the Duke of Avon is on his way home from a tryst with his mistress when a red-headed urchin runs into him, begging the Duke’s protection from a beating at the hands of his brutal brother. The Duke, known to society as Satanas for his wicked ways, finds the child intriguing and buys him, body and soul, from his brother. The Duke has an ulterior motive for taking on the child, but young Léon is totally devoted to the man he considers his saviour from that moment onwards. The Duke makes Léon his page, and takes him with him to all his disreputable haunts in Paris, in order to flaunt him under the nose of his life-long enemy, the Comte de Saint-Vire, to whom the child bears an uncanny resemblance. But unbeknown to Léon, the Duke soon discovers his secret, that Léon is actually Léonie. What begins as a plan to avenge the Duke’s own grievance against the Comte becomes a quest for justice for Léonie, and leads to the Duke’s total rehabilitation as he grows to love this captivating young girl.
The characters of Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon, and Léonie have no doubt acted as templates for many future novels by Heyer herself and her followers. High born, yet raised as a peasant and having lived in squalid circumstances as a boy for many years, Léonie has reason to be what society would call an original. She is beautiful, of course, with a fiery temper as befits her colouring. She is also brave and passionate and speaks her mind albeit with a tendency towards coarse language. At times she can be simple and naïve, while at others cynical and knowing. And, as a boy at heart, she prefers to wear breeches and loves sword-play, riding and adventure. Who wouldn’t find her captivating?
The Duke is the original mysterious and dangerous alpha male. Tall, handsome and deceptively strong, he minces about in the latest, luxuriant fashions, right down to carrying a chicken skin fan, but can crush a gold snuff-box in his hand. His hazel eyes are cold and his thin lips most often wear a sneer. He glories in his demonic reputation. He can be a dangerous enemy who is willing to wait a lifetime to exact his revenge. Yet his love for Léonie brings about a profound change in him which amazes his friends and family.
However, fascinating as he is, there is, I feel, a certain weakness in the Duke’s characterisation. We are repeatedly told how wicked he is, but from the beginning we see his consideration for Léon, his care of his family and his relations with friends that would not associate with a really wicked man. The very few exploits from his past which are given as proof of his wickedness are not out of keeping with his time, sex and class and fall rather short of total evil. The reader suspects that the Duke’s Satanic guise is but an affectation and the character would have been given more depth if this aspect were further explored.
Apart from a minor factual error that her editor should have picked up, Heyer’s depiction of the era, its fashions, architecture and mores is exquisite and given in just enough detail to bring it to life without overwhelming us. The story moves with ease between Paris, Versailles and London and is peopled by a myriad of characters. Although some of the minor characters are somewhat over-blown, they are all rendered with a deft touch. The plotting is well designed and, apart from a tendency to repeat the details of past events as the characters recount their adventures, moves at a steady pace, right up to a suspenseful climax.
In its depiction of characters with some depth, and its fine balance of drama, adventure and comedy, These Old Shades is as readable and enjoyable today as it was when it was written eighty years ago.
Jean Plaidy is one of half a dozen pseudonyms used by Eleanor Alice Hibbert, the author of over 200 historical novels. Under that name she wrote over eighty novels about historical figures, predominantly women, from British and European history. She is also well known under the name of Victoria Holt for over thirty gothic novels set mostly in nineteenth century Britain, and as Philippa Carr for a 17 volume family saga spanning 400 years. She also wrote romances, mysteries and several works of non-fiction under her other noms de plume.
At the height of her career in the 1950s and 1960s, Jean Plaidy was Britain's most popular historical novelist, taking the events gleaned from her careful research based on the works of leading contemporary historians and then transforming them into page-turning narratives.
The first novel published under the name of Jean Plaidy in 1948, was Beyond the Blue Mountains, a stirring blockbuster set in the penal colony of New South Wales (Australia). However, she soon turned to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and wrote series of novels about important historical figures such as Katherine of Aragon, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles II, Catherine de Medici, Lucrezia Borgia and Marie Antoinette. In 1965 she settled down to a long series of novels chronicling the history of the English Crown from William the Conqueror to Queen Victoria.
Although her work has been dismissed as pure escapism, her storytelling abilities, historic detail, and strong female characters brought Hibbert millions of devoted readers in some twenty languages.
As a schoolgirl I devoured Jean Plaidy’s novels. Her tales of intrigue and passion in high places were heady stuff for a girl attending a convent school. I longed to be one of Charles II’s mistresses, or live in Renaissance Italy. The books that remained with me most were her Lucrezia Borgia series.
To a sheltered Catholic teenager, the ambitions and amorality of the Borgia pope and his family were shocking and titillating. My strongest memories came from the first volume, Madonna of the Seven Hills. Even after thirty years I could still recall images of Cesare Borgia murdering his brother from sheer jealousy, of his father, Roderigo Borgia, smoothly transferring his affections from his favourite son to the son he knew had killed him, of Lucrezia Borgia, heavily pregnant from a passionate affair held within convent walls, standing before a panel of cardinals declaring herself virgo intacta in order to obtain a divorce from an inconvenient husband.
Plaidy’s version of Lucrezia Borgia was also a lesson in historiography. In portraying a woman whose name had come down in infamy as the innocent pawn of her father and brother, Plaidy taught me that history is not a set of fixed truths, but a narrative that can be turned and manipulated to the teller’s purposes.
Yet for all that, on taking up the book again in my maturity, I was sorely disappointed and wondered how I could once have read it so avidly. I can only imagine that it was not for the style, but for the content, for those glimpses of sex and passion that appealed so viscerally to an adolescent becoming aware of her own desires. But yet how innocent an age it was, for they are only glimpses, a few passionate words, a post-coital smile, coy references. How different to the blow by blow descriptions we expect today.
I struggled to read this book, spurred on by my determination to write this review, and, I must guiltily admit, to relive those old memories. The only way I could keep at it was by taking it to work with me where I would read anything as a diversion on a long and boring tram ride.
Plaidy’s style transgresses the one important precept of novel writing. She tells rather than shows. The novel is mainly summary narrative interspersed with occasional, uninspiring dialogue. We are told everything about the characters’ internal workings, yet they still remain fundamentally unconvincing. Her character development moves from point A almost as far as point B. Cesare is angry and violent in the nursery only to get more angry and violent as a man. Lucrezia’s thoughts are actually more sophisticated in the nursery than in her treacherous adult world. Roderigo’s subtlety is celebrated, yet we must believe that he can turn a blind eye to whatever does not please him.
The novel’s flaws are evident from the first few pages where we are introduced to Lucrezia’s parents and follow their separate musings on their lives. These long passages float from one subject to another, touch back on the first subject, go elsewhere and then return. Joycean perhaps, but not what the novelist was aiming for. In fact it read as a first draft in need of tidying up, and furnished the key to the underlying problem of the novel. Given the author’s output and the amount of research that must have gone into each novel, it is not surprising that they had to be written quickly, with little time for second thoughts.
However, reservations aside, although I might have outgrown her, I have Jean Plaidy to thank for firing my interest in history and for introducing me to a world beyond the convent walls.
Because of her empathetic portrayal of love between men, many of Mary Renault’s fans, including myself, suspected the author was actually a man. Mary Renault was a pseudonym, but for Eileen Mary Challans who was born in London in 1905. The daughter of a doctor, she received a degree in English from St. Hugh's College in Oxford in 1928. Wishing to broaden her life experience, she decided to attend the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where she trained as a nurse. It was there that Renault met the woman who would become her lifelong companion, fellow nurse, Julie Mullard.
After a failed attempt at a Medieval historical epic, Mary Renault turned to her own life to write books that could be called hospital romances. However, influenced by her reading of Plato, Renault’s novels explored much deeper issues than the genre would suggest and were always daring in portraying strong female characters and a wide range of sexual expression.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Mary and Julie were assigned to the Winford Emergency Hospital in Bristol and briefly worked with Dunkirk evacuees. They went on to work in the Radcliffe Infirmary's brain surgery ward until the end of the war. In 1948, after her novel North Face won the MGM prize of $US150,000, Mary and Julie emigrated to South Africa where Mary became active in the Black Sash movement and PEN International.
In South Africa, Renault wrote the last of her contemporary novels, and the first to explore a subject which was to bring her to the attention of her greatest fans, the gay community. The Charioteer (1953) was influenced by the lifestyles of her many gay young theatrical friends. It examines the choices homosexual men face between the unsettled promiscuous life born of their underground culture, and a committed, yet imperfect relationship. Thereafter, Renault turned to the ancient Greek world where she could continue to explore these themes, as well as more political issues, with much more freedom.
The Last of the Wine (1956) marked the beginning of a cycle of historical novels set in Ancient Greece, which culminated in her Alexandrian trilogy – Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games – and would forge her place in modern literature. It also brought her a new contingent of fans, classicists who found her depiction of the physical and spiritual ambience of Ancient Greece to be so accurate as to be uncanny.
I cannot remember how I discovered Mary Renault’s novels, but most likely at my local library which I haunted. Although I read them all as a teenager, many years ago, their beauty and humanity are still a strong influence. While The King Must Die and the Alexandrian books may have had a stronger impact, it is the delicacy of the relationship between the young lovers portrayed in The Last of the Wine that remains with me.
It says a lot about a novel that you feel a terrible sadness as you approach the final pages. It was a sense of loss not only of the characters but for the characters, for the novel is about loss, not only of youth and love, but of something much more profound, of honour.
The story is narrated by Alexias and tells of his growth into manhood in Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars. As a boy he meets Sokrates (Renault’s preferred spelling) whose disciple he later becomes, grows up with Plato and Xenophon and, together with his lover, Lysis, serves under Alkibiades. Through the novel we learn about the ins and outs of the wars, but, more importantly, we learn about the lives and beliefs of the Athenians. Speaking through her narrator, Renault enters deep into their world view, taking for granted, as her narrator does, their spiritual beliefs, their lore and their laws.
From the very first chapter we are thrust into a world totally foreign to our own, but portrayed entirely on its own terms. Alexias is born, small and puny, during a disastrous plague. His father, known as Myron the Beautiful, is on the verge of exposing him when he learns that his younger brother has died. Alexias’ uncle, on hearing that the boy he is in love with is ill, goes to him, and seeing that the boy is dying, takes hemlock so that they can make the journey together. Myron is distressed that he is not able to retrieve their bodies so as to bury them together. On returning home he sees that his wife has taken to the baby and does not have the heart to take it from her.
A whole world is displayed in this story – a father’s right to condemn a child to death, his relationship with a wife he considers as little more than a child, an acceptance, nay a celebration, of love between men, and in particular an older man for a younger, and the narrator’s respect for his father despite knowing that his father does not value him.
Renault was often criticised for her portrayal of women in her Greek novels, but she is only showing their actual position in Athenian society. Women are bound to the house and the household. Their honour resides in remaining invisible and nameless. Indeed, it is considered disrespectful of a woman even to talk about her. Men in their thirties marry teenage girls, girls that they think of as children, that they expect to train as their ideal housekeeper. If a woman is seen in public, she is either a slave or a courtesan.
It is no wonder that in such a world, men would look to other men for their emotional and sexual relationships. It is such an accepted and normalised part of life that Alexias pities his friend Xenophon because he seems incapable of loving a man. But these relationships are heavily circumscribed. Boys are expected to be courted by older suitors from an early age, but their honour resides in choosing a friend who is honourable and will be a fitting mentor, for this relationship is meant to prepare the boy for manhood. The beautiful, thoughtful and brave Lysis is just such an ideal suitor.
However, their sexual relationship is portrayed in coy, elliptical terms, reflecting, I assume, the narrator’s reticence on these matters, (or is it Renault’s own reticence? After all she was writing in the 1950s), that verge on the frustrating. I was also interested to note that although Alexias and Lysis become friends when Alexias is sixteen, they do not become lovers until he is eighteen. According to Alexias, this restraint is due to Sokrates’ influence, but I wonder how much it was due to Renault’s own twentieth-century sensibilities.
Yet, at the same time, I cannot remember being so frustrated when I first read this so many years ago. Perhaps to a sheltered girl, these hints were enough, for I have a clear memory of the moment they become lovers. And as a romantic teenager, I probably saw that preliminary time of passion and restraint as an expected prelude to a sexual relationship. What is it saying about me, my age and my times that, on this reading, I kept wondering what was taking them so long?
But this story is not only about sexual politics. Mary Renault was writing in a time of political turmoil and this is reflected in The Last of the Wine.
The Athens Alexias is born into is a city of high ideals – a city of beauty, honour, the search for truth and democracy. But through the course of the war, all of these ideals are slowly lost or corrupted. Respect for the law and the person are eroded. The democracy Alexias values is undermined and overturned. The victorious Spartans establish an oligarchic government which turns into a ruthless tyranny. Alexias feels this decay deeply as his own honour is bound up in his city. Disillusioned, he and Lysis leave Athens to join a rebellion against its rulers. The oligarchy is defeated, but the democracy that replaces it sadly promises to become a tyranny of the banal. The novel ends with a foreshadowing of Sokrates’ fate.
The Last of the Wine established Mary Renault as one of the greatest historical novelists of all time. Her empathy for the times and people she portrays, her poetic use of language and her vision can only be emulated by other writers, but, I fear, rarely equalled.
©Pauline Montagna 2006