Georgette Heyer Read online

  Copyright © 2013, 2011 by Jennifer Kloester

  Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Jillian Rahn

  Cover photo: Georgette, circa 1924, photographer unknown

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Originally published in Great Britain in 2011 by William Heinemann, Random House, London

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kloester, Jennifer.

  Georgette Heyer / by Jennifer Kloester.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Heyer, Georgette, 1902-1974. 2. Novelists, English—20th century—Biography. 3. English literature—Women authors—Biography. I. Title.

  PR6015.E795Z834 2013

  823’.912—dc23

  [B]

  2012037014

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For

  Richard George Rougier

  (1932–2007)

  friend, raconteur, and gentleman

  and for

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  (1917–2009)

  who led the way

  CONTENTS

  Illustrations

  Author’s Note

  Part I

  The Young Edwardian 1902–1919

  Part II

  “First Crack Out of the Bag” 1920–1930

  Part III

  A New Life: The Sussex Years 1930–1942

  Part IV

  Albany: The Golden Years 1942–1966

  Part V

  Lady of Quality 1966–1974

  Afterword

  References to Published Sources

  Georgette Heyer’s Novels (UK First Editions)

  Georgette Heyer’s Novels (USA First Editions)

  Georgette Heyer’s (Known) Short Stories

  Heyer-Related Archives

  Permissions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Front Cover - Georgette, circa 1924, photographer unknown

  1. Sylvia and Georgette, circa 1903

  2. Georgette aged 18 months, circa 1904

  3. Georgette and Boris, circa 1910

  4. Georgette with Boris and Frank, circa 1914

  5. Sylvia Watkins and George Heyer, circa 1900

  6. George Heyer, n.d.

  7. Sylvia Watkins on her wedding day, 1901

  8. Captain George Heyer, circa 1915

  9. Georgette’s grandfather George Heyer, n.d.

  10. Georgette’s grandmother Alice Heyer née Waters, n.d.

  11. Georgette’s grandfather William Watkins, n.d.

  12. Georgette’s grandmother Annette Watkins née Roome, n.d.

  13. Cecily Watkins, Annette Watkins, Josephine Watkins, circa 1914

  14. Fairfield, the Watkins family home, n.d.

  15. Georgette and her grandmother Annette Watkins, circa 1913

  16. Georgette, aged 17, Boris, and Frank, circa 1919

  17. Georgette Heyer, circa 1920. This is possibly the photo which appeared in a medallion on the back cover of the first edition of The Black Moth (cover not seen)

  18. Georgette’s first novel The Black Moth 1921

  19. The Great Roxhythe 1922, the first Hutchinson edition

  20. Georgette aged 21 by E.O. Hoppé, 1923

  21. The Transformation of Philip Jettan 1923, Georgette’s only pseudonymous novel

  22. Instead of the Thorn 1924, the first contemporary novel

  23. Ronald’s father, Charles Joseph Rougier, n.d.

  24. Ronald’s mother, Jane (Jean) Henderson Gray Crookston, n.d.

  25. Ronald Rougier aged 4, 1904

  26. Ronald Rougier, Royal Naval College cadet, circa 1913

  27. Ronald Rougier aged 22, 1922

  28. Carola and Dulce Oman, 1914

  29. Joanna Cannan, circa 1914

  30. Georgette Heyer, circa 1922

  31. Georgette and Ronald’s wedding, 1925

  32. George Heyer a few hours before his death, 1925

  33. Georgette in Tanganyika “at the end of a seven mile walk,” 1927

  34. Georgette outside “the Manor House,” Kyerwa, Tanganyika, 1927

  35. Georgette and Ronald in Kyerwa, circa 1927

  36. Helen 1928, Georgette’s most autobiographical novel

  37. The Masqueraders 1928

  38. Georgette and Ronald in Paris, circa 1930

  39. Blackthorns, Toat Hill near Horsham, circa 1974

  40. Georgette and Misty Dawn, circa 1939

  41. Georgette and Richard at Church Cove, the Lizard, Cornwall, 1937

  42. Richard and Jonathan Velhurst Viking, aka “Johnny,” circa 1940

  43. Pastel 1929, dedicated to her mother

  44. Barren Corn 1930, Georgette’s last contemporary novel

  45. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Leslie Rougier, circa 1935

  46. Sylvia Heyer, n.d.

  47. Jean Rougier, n.d.

  48. “Pater” Charles Joseph Rougier, n.d.

  49. Georgette by Howard Coster, 1939

  50. Dmitri and Dorothy Tornow’s wedding, August 1944

  51. Ronald, Georgette, Boris, and Richard dressed for a wedding, circa 1940

  52. Richard, the gillie, and Georgette in Scotland, circa 1952

  53. A.S. Frere, 1953

  54. Patricia Wallace, circa 1938

  55. C.S. Evans, n.d.

  56. Percy Hodder-Williams, n.d.

  57. Georgette’s favorite photo of herself, circa 1940

  58. Boris Heyer, n.d.

  59. Frank Heyer, n.d.

  60. Aunt Ciss and Aunt Jo (Watkins), n.d.

  61. Richard at Cambridge, circa 1954

  62. Susie and Dominic, her eldest son, circa 1961

  63. George Ronald Rougier QC, circa 1959

  64. Richard George Rougier QC, circa 1972

  65. Georgette and Ronald, circa 1959

  66. Georgette, oil painting by Anna Murphy, circa 1959

  67. Max Reinhardt and A.S. Frere, circa 1971

  68. Georgette at Greywalls, circa 1955

  69. Ronald Rougier, circa 1970

  70. Georgette’s remaining notebooks

  71. A page from Georgette’s Regency notebooks

  72. A page from Georgette’s Regency notebooks

  73. A page from Georgette’s Regency notebooks

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I first read Georgette Heyer’s novels while living in the jungle in Papua New Guinea and reread them while living in the desert in Bahrain. A fascination with her historical fiction led me on a ten-year research journey which culminated in this biography. Much of this story of Georgette Heyer’s life and writing is drawn from new and untapped archives of her letters. In recent years my discovery of over a thousand pages of her personal writing, dating from when Georgette was eighteen, has made a new biography possible. Access to these letters, so generously given by their owners, has made it a reality. Georgette Heyer’s son, Sir Richard Rougier, gave me the necessary copyright permission to quote from his mother’s private and public writing. He also gave me unlimited access
to her notebooks and private papers and repeatedly told me “you have carte blanche” with the material. Sir Richard’s faith and belief in me opened many doors. Georgette Heyer’s first biographer, Jane Aiken Hodge, gave me her entire research archive as well as the gift of her friendship, wisdom, and advice. Jean and Harry Frere generously gave me sole and exclusive access to all of Georgette Heyer’s letters in the Frere Family Archive. Joan Reinhardt kindly allowed me to copy the entire Max Reinhardt Archive and bring it home. The staff of the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma gave me unstinting support and made available a complete copy of their remarkable collection of “Georgette (Heyer) Rougier letters.” Jean Rose at the Random House Archive helped me to find invaluable letters, photographs, and documents and provided access to Georgette Heyer’s letters in the Heinemann Archive. Ro Marriott, Roy Pfautch, and Lady Townsend shared their Georgette Heyer letters. Other letters came from Duke University; King’s College Library, Cambridge; Reading University; and The Society of Authors Archive at the British Library. Georgette’s daughter-in-law, Susanna, Lady Rougier, was especially generous in sharing memories and photographs (and a pair of Georgette’s York tan gloves). Jeremy and Judith Rougier, Hale Crosse, Sally Tornow, and Diane and Antony Price all shared documents, photographs and memories. Judy, Lady Rougier, has been unfailingly kind and her generous support has made possible my continued access to the Heyer Family Archive. With so many new letters to tell her story, wherever feasible in the biography I have let Georgette Heyer speak for herself as she wrote with a passion and a force that rewriting or paraphrasing would only dilute. For convenience, throughout the book I have referred to her by her Christian name—a familiarity for which I hope she will forgive me.

  Jennifer Kloester, 2009

  When my biographer collects my letters for publication, he’ll have a job expurgating them, won’t he?

  —Georgette Heyer

  Part I

  THE YOUNG EDWARDIAN

  1902–1919

  1

  I am to be found in my work.

  —Georgette Heyer

  Georgette Heyer was born an Edwardian. The Victorian Age had ended with the death of Queen Victoria and on 9 August 1902 the new king, Edward VII, was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Georgette was among those born in the first year of his reign. She was also one of the last generation to witness an era which had begun more than one hundred years earlier. Her childhood was alive with traditions that stretched back to the days of the English Regency, many of which remained recognizable, if not unchanged, into the first decade of the twentieth century.

  Georgette grew up in a sheltered world in which people were assumed to know their place and many believed that the worth of a man could be told from the cut of his coat. As the eldest child of a mildly affluent middle-class family with aspirations to move up the social ladder, she understood and accepted as natural such things as servants, horses and carriages, good manners, correct speech, the right clothing, and a certain level of education and cultural literacy. All of these things had been as much an integral part of life for the moneyed classes in the Regency and Victorian eras as they were in the Edwardian, and they were to have a lasting influence on Georgette.

  She was born in the bedroom of the family home at 103 Woodside in Wimbledon. Her parents, George and Sylvia Heyer, had been married only a year and, according to the baby book which Sylvia kept, they were delighted with the safe arrival of their baby daughter, who came into the world at 9:30 a.m. on 16 August 1902, weighing a healthy eight pounds five ounces. It was a Saturday and George was enjoying the long summer vacation from his job as French master at King’s College School. Georgette was delivered by John Hayward, Wimbledon’s most eminent doctor and a family friend, whose presence at the birth reassured Sylvia. At twenty-six she was conscious of being a little older than many first-time mothers. As the youngest of eight siblings and with three unmarried sisters, she knew little about babies and George did not know much more. He was thirty-three but delighted to be a father for the first time.

  They named the baby Georgette after her father and grandfather, with the name to be “pronounced à la française.” It was an unusual name and, as well as being a feminized version of George, was also the name of a new kind of French silk which would (appropriately, given the enduring nature of her future novels) become known for its “crispness, body, and outstanding durability.” The name would also prove prophetic in other ways, for Georgette developed a love of clothes and fabrics which would eventually find an outlet in her writing.

  She was a happy baby, with a good appetite who took an active interest in the world around her. Her first weeks were spent largely in the care of the month-nurse, for it was customary for a new mother to remain in bed for at least two weeks while the nurse fed, bathed, and cared for the newborn. Georgette was eight weeks old when the month-nurse finally handed her entirely into her mother’s care. Sylvia reveled in her daughter’s rosy cheeks and silky brown hair that clustered in such pretty curls at the back of her head.

  Sylvia recorded many details of Georgette’s early months in her baby book, noting that “Georgette did not take to the perambulator at once when nurse left. She missed the motion of being carried I suppose.” Her baby liked to be with people and woke without fail at the arrival of any meal, crying lustily until she was taken from her cot and brought to join her parents at the table. By four months she had begun to make “sweet little sounds by way of talking” and loved to visit the clock on the dining room mantelpiece, where she would make excited noises at its stentorian ticking and musical chimes.

  Music was part of daily life in the Heyer household, for George came from a musical family and Sylvia was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. She was an accomplished pianist with a lovely singing voice. In the first year of their marriage she and George often spent pleasant evenings at home with piano and book. Sylvia would play and sing, and George would read aloud or recite from his favorite novel or anthology of poems or entertain his appreciative wife with a humorous composition of his own. Georgette loved to hear her mother sing and would turn her head at the sound of her voice when she was only a dozen weeks old. She was delighted by the piano and by the family music box, which she thought “a grand source of entertainment.” Pleased to find her baby so captivated by music, Sylvia would often set the music box playing while she gave Georgette her bottle.

  Unlike many fathers of his time George took a great interest in his daughter and Sylvia would often put her into their bed with him in the mornings while she was getting up. She loved to watch Georgette and her father “hold a regular flirtation together” and to listen to her husband talking nonsense to their baby. George was a fine linguist, with a great love of language and poetry in particular, and it afforded him enormous pleasure to watch and listen to this tiny child who made such fascinating noises and looked up at him with her beautiful blue eyes. He thought her entrancing.

  He and Sylvia gave Georgette funny little pet names like “Lillie Solomon,” “Tooley,” “Solly Tolly,” and “Iddy Todgemim dim Bimby.” In February 1903 George wrote a poem for his daughter which he made into a little book tied up with a red ribbon. Entitled To Georgette Aged Six Months, it began:

  I’ll sing a song of you,

  Georgette,

  I’ll sing a song of you;

  You’ve silky brownish sorts of locks,

  And cheeks of fairest hue;

  You wear such pretty light blue frocks,

  And joy to kick off both your socks,—

  I’ll sing a song of you.

  And ended:

  And when you are asleep,

  Georgette,

  Oh, when you are asleep,

  Above the ’broidered coverlet

  The little fingers peep;

  I’d like to venture near, and set

  A kiss upon their tips, Georgette,

  Because you are asleep.

  Her father read aloud to Georgette from ba
byhood, telling her tales from Shakespeare and the Bible, reciting poetry and nursery rhymes, and delighting her with made-up stories of long ago. Almost from birth, rhyme, rhythm, and meter were an integral part of her life: whether it was her mother’s piano-playing and singing, or her father’s recitations and storytelling, Georgette’s ears were attuned to excellence in music and literature from her infancy.

  She was an intelligent baby, fascinated by people and sounds and quick to learn. By fourteen months Sylvia noted that she was crawling everywhere and had begun to walk holding on to the furniture. Her favorite pastime was to stand at the window watching people and things passing by and to look out for her father on whom, Sylvia recorded, “she was very keen.” Their relationship was to prove pivotal in her life. Her father was a handsome, charismatic man who possessed the knack of bringing the past to life—something which, in time, he would impart to his daughter. Georgette adored him.

  George had come to Wimbledon in 1897, at the urgent request of the new headmaster of King’s College School. After relocating to Wimbledon from its traditional home in London’s Strand, King’s had lost several teachers and been desperately in need of a new French master. George was an old boy and a Classics graduate of Cambridge who spoke fluent, idiomatic French and had spent the previous five years teaching at Weymouth College in Dorset. He was a natural and gifted teacher, with a tremendous sense of humor and an energy and enthusiasm that enlivened the classroom and made him a great favorite with his students.

  When Georgette was eighteen months old, her mother wrote that “She dances & plays the piano & sings & pretends to be an old woman,” and observed that, in some ways, she was “more like a child of 3 or 4.” Georgette and her mother were close in those early years, though this would change in time. Sylvia loved to spend hours with her baby, observing each tiny development and noting with pride every new word or skill accomplished. She described her daughter as “a darling and so intelligent” and proudly recorded that Dr. Hayward considered her “by far the prettiest baby in Wimbledon.” When Georgette was given her first vaccination, Sylvia felt the pain as much as she did and found herself “almost hating Dr. Hayward” for inflicting it.