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take Regency Buck one day. I’ve been going through it to see where it can be improved, &—modesty, as you know, is my long-suit—I am inclined to think it is a classic! I don’t really know how I came to write anything so good. I do remember putting in a lot of work on it—And how I loved writing it! The characters in it say “Very true” & “Depend upon it” & Their spirits get “quite worn-down,” & it is “long before the evils of it ceased to be felt.” And as for the Earl of Worth—! Talk of “Heyer-heroes”! He tops the lot for Magnificence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, & General Objectionableness.
She never did rewrite Regency Buck. But it was the first novel about which she was prepared to claim: “It is the best I’ve done, you know. Actual writing, & technique, I mean.”
Georgette rarely talked about her abilities, but Regency Buck was one of a handful of her books which prompted her to acknowledge her gift for telling a compelling story, creating unforgettable characters and writing convincing dialogue:
Kindly note Purple Patch (Clarence’s proposal). Carola Lenanton [Oman] paid me the biggest compliment I’ve ever had by asking me whether I’d found it in some unknown memoir, & “lifted” it for my book. She said (though I shouldn’t repeat it) that “not one word was false, or out of place.” I knew it was a High Light, but so few people know enough history to recognize it as such!
Although Moore had not been able to sell Regency Buck to the Americans, he did manage to sell it as a serial story to Woman’s Journal. Serials and short stories were the lifeblood of magazine publishing in Britain between the wars. Readers often bought magazines because their favorite author’s name was on the cover. For writers, serialization of a novel prior to publication was an effective way of boosting book sales and a lucrative source of additional income. Woman’s Journal was the most influential of several magazines published by the Amalgamated Press (AP) in London. To have a book serialized in it was a feather in any author’s cap. The magazine’s editor was the formidable Dorothy Sutherland, who would prove to be a thorn in Georgette’s side for the next thirty years.
Dorothy Sutherland was only a year younger than Georgette, but equally determined to make her mark in publishing. She had joined Amalgamated Press in the early 1920s, where her talents were soon recognized with appointments to the editorship of a number of AP magazines. In 1926, when she was just twenty-three, she had become editor of Woman’s Journal, a new magazine with a staff which for a time included the aspiring novelist Pamela Frankau and Edgar Wallace’s elder daughter, Patricia—then two ambitious teenagers in their first jobs. Over the next forty years Dorothy Sutherland became one of the most powerful editors in magazine publishing in Britain and a legend in the industry. Tall, slim, dark-haired, and domineering, she was a stickler for detail, famous for her sharp tongue and her immaculate dress sense. A strong, decisive woman, who operated a divide to rule policy, Dorothy Sutherland did not suffer fools gladly and was said to “work all the hours God made” while keeping her private life strictly private.
While the editor and the author had many things in common (a clear case of like repelling like) there were two aspects of the editor’s life of which—if Georgette knew of them—she would not have approved: Dorothy Sutherland was illegitimate and a lesbian. Although the nature of her birth had been largely obscured by her mother’s marriage (when Dorothy was five) to the journalist and editor, David Sutherland, her sexual preference was well known at Fleetway House, where her talents as an editor were always the prime consideration. Under Dorothy Sutherland’s direction Woman’s Journal quickly became the firm’s most prestigious, popular, and successful monthly publication. By 1935, the list of authors published in the magazine read like a Who’s Who of English literature. It included such well-known names as John Galsworthy, Edna Ferber, A.A. Milne, G.B. Stern, Rebecca West, H.G. Wells, Hugh Walpole, Daphne du Maurier, Evelyn Waugh, Agatha Christie, Vera Brittain, and E.M. Delafield. In June Georgette Heyer joined the list.
She and Dorothy Sutherland appear to have struck sparks from the first. The editor had initially incurred Georgette’s disapproval the year before when she had serialized Footsteps in the Dark and Why Shoot a Butler? in another AP magazine, Woman’s Pictorial. Dorothy Sutherland had changed the title of Why Shoot a Butler? to Woman in Danger, without notifying either the author or her agent. Georgette was infuriated, but not nearly so annoyed as when she discovered the insertion into her story of words she had never written. “Do you know they had the bloody cheek to make a character of mine use the vulgarism ‘la-di-da’?” she told Norah Perriam. “I am still furious.”
The following year she was even more incensed by the discovery that Dorothy Sutherland had renamed Regency Buck, Gay Adventure, with a caption that read: “Gay Adventure—in the Dare-Devil Days when Men were Men and Women Seductively Coy!” above an illustration that made her strong-minded heroine look exactly like the sort of insipid female she despised. Georgette found this sort of take on her work maddening, for she worked hard to lift her plots, characters, and dialogue out of the rut of stereotypical and formulaic fiction. The impression of Regency Buck created by the magazine made it almost impossible to convince those who had not read her novels that she could be anything other than a writer of “frippery romances.”
She wrote to her agent to express her outrage: “That Sutherland woman had the neck to write to me again, that she quite agreed an agent should settle the business details, but other points, such as discussing alternative titles we ought to deal directly over! I am so furious I can’t bring myself to reply. She chose that filthy title, Gay Adventure (it makes me sick to write it) without one word to me!” Nothing incensed Georgette more than interference in her work and Dorothy Sutherland’s meddling was something she would not easily forgive. The two women did not actually meet for twenty years but Georgette always referred to the editor as “that Sutherland Bitch” or “the S.B.”
Despite her abrasive relationship with its editor, Woman’s Journal would eventually become an important cornerstone in Georgette’s career. In 1935 Dorothy Sutherland bought Regency Buck and the following year she published three of Georgette’s short stories. It was ten years since Georgette had written one but she had decided to revisit the genre after staying with her old friend Carola Oman (now Mrs. Gerald Lenanton) earlier in the year. Both Carola and Joanna Cannan had enjoyed a good deal of success in writing short stories for magazines such as Good Housekeeping, The Illustrated London News and Britannia and Eve.
The magazines paid well and were an effective way of gaining exposure and enlarging their audience. Earlier in the year (before her breakdown), Georgette had stayed with Carola at Bride Hall, the Lenantons’ beautiful manor house in Hertfordshire, for a week, and enjoyed a much needed respite from domestic cares. She had recently lost her cook and had yet to find a replacement. Since the War it had become much harder to find and keep good, reliable servants and any upset in Georgette’s domestic arrangements inevitably affected her writing—as she told Norah Perriam after returning home: “How I loathe domesticity.”
Her return to short stories resulted in “On Such a Night,” which her agent sold to an Australian magazine (so far the story remains undiscovered, with no indication of what it was about or the period in which it was set). Georgette told Moore she would be happy to do lots more if he thought he could sell them. A second story planned as “Incident on the Bath Road” was delayed by her nervous breakdown, however, and she did not write it until after she had recovered. Her poor health persisted into June. The pressure of dealing with the unsatisfactory proofs of Regency Buck had taken their toll and Georgette found that “neither pen nor paper inspire me with anything but complete mental paralysis.” A request from Heinemann for a photograph and biography also met with a negative response: “I am having no more done. I’m past the age for that sort of thing. As regards the biographical details, I don’t care about this either. My life isn’t of interest—my books (I hope) are. I’m sick to death of chatty bits
about authors, & LOATHE this form of advertisement.”
Although she had not been averse to publicity in the early years of her career, after her return to England in 1930 Georgette had developed a decided dislike for sharing personal information with the press and the public. She was not convinced of the need for personal publicity to sell books and would cite the case of Ethel M. Dell, a renowned recluse, whose refusal to grant interviews had no apparent effect on her enormous sales. Georgette begrudgingly sent Heinemann a nineteen-word biography. To her annoyance, a few months later she received a similar request from Doubleday, who wanted author details for the publicity for Merely Murder. This time she was even more explicit:
I will give no biographical details, for this country, Australia, or the States, or, in fact, any other place under the sun. The main dates & landmarks in my life anyone can know: I don’t mind, but I will not submit to any sickening sentimental rubbish on the lines of “From her earliest years Miss Heyer has always, etc, etc.” Nor will I have the details of my private life broadcast, or used for the sorts of publicity I detest. I was born in August 1902, & my literary bent was inherited from my father, whose translation of Villon appeared in 1925. I was educated at numerous high-class seminaries; I did not go to College, nor did I pass Matriculation or any other kind of examination. I attended History lectures given by the late Professor Forbes, who was (I believe) the history-professor of Westminster College. I wrote my first novel when I was seventeen, & published it at the age of nineteen, in 1921. In 1925, aged 23, I married G.R. Rougier, & in 1926 accompanied him to East Africa, where I remained until 1928. At the end of 1928 I went to Yougo-Slavia [sic] where I lived for just over a year. I rather think we returned to England in 1930. My son was born in 1932. I live in Sussex, extremely quietly, have a rooted objection to personal publicity, & own two dogs & a cat. And you can embroider that as you please, but I’ll be damned if I’ll supply material for the sorts of nauseating soul-throbs dear to the American public.
On the last day of June, to Georgette’s great relief, she, Ronald, Richard, his new nurse, and Ronald’s white bull-terrier, Jonathan Velhurst Viking, better known as “Johnny,” left for a fortnight’s holiday at the Victoria Hotel, Bamburgh in Northumberland. They spent two glorious weeks walking, paddling, shrimping, and exploring Bamburgh Castle. Determined “not to do one stroke of work during July” Georgette had left her writing at home. Free of responsibility, she found herself growing stronger by the day.
She and Ronald spent the third week touring the Scottish Highlands with the bull-terrier, while Richard stayed behind in Bamburgh with his nurse. It was Georgette’s first trip to Scotland and she told Norah Perriam that she had “every intention of ‘going-all-Jacobite’ so the Spouse & I will probably get a divorce before we’re through.” In the end they had a glorious week traveling from St. Andrews (where Ronald indulged in “an orgy of golf ”) to Inverness and down the Great Glen to Fort William and Skye. They saw Loch Ness and visited Lochaber where Georgette “mourned over the dead past” and Glenfinnan where “Charles Edward raised the Standard.” It was to be the first of many happy holidays in Scotland. By the end of the trip she was completely recovered and ready to start a new book for Hodder.
7 She was actually thirty-two for another three months.
13
With all due respect to Miss Sutherland, & without wishing to appear unduly conceited, I do not think she can teach me much about the technique of a murder story.
—Georgette Heyer
A month after their return from Scotland Georgette had made a rough start on the new detective novel. A request for a title and an outline sent her to a favorite source for inspiration: “Here I laid down my pen & wandered over to the bookshelves, & took down the Concordance to Shakespeare. I am now in a position to offer H. & S. two titles. My own fancy is ‘Behold, Here’s Poison.’ Pericles. An alternative, but not so good, I think, is from Romeo & Juliet, V3. ‘Timeless End.’” She added a short synopsis and suggested that Hodder “concentrate on my humor—that’s what I’m getting a name for, & I can assure you there’s going to be plenty of it.”
She set Behold, Here’s Poison in a fictional version of Wimbledon and wrote most of the book while living in temporary quarters at Broadbridge Heath. The family had moved out of Blackthorns after deciding to renovate. Georgette found it impossible to write amidst the continual noise of builders, painters, plasterers, carpet-layers, and the sorts of interruptions from the housemaid (“‘A-Gentleman-from-Vi-Spring-to-see-you-ma’am’”) guaranteed to prevent lucid prose. She did manage to write the promised short stories before moving, however, and her agent had no trouble selling “Incident on the Bath Road” and “Runaway Match” to Woman’s Journal. Georgette had instructed Norah Perriam that under no circumstances should they be offered to “the cheap ‘popular’ magazines such as The Red & The Happy.” It was more than ten years since she had been published in those short-lived periodicals and Georgette knew how far she had come in a decade.
The disruption affected her writing, however, and nearly nine months after signing the Hodder contract for Behold, Here’s Poison she was still laboring over the novel. It was unusual for Georgette to struggle with a manuscript but illness, domestic upheavals, and a problem with her chosen murder method had all combined to delay its completion. Renewed money troubles only made things worse. In October she had taken out an overdraft of £400 to help pay for the house renovations and now she urged Moore to sell a film right to offset the cost. Georgette had always wanted her novels to be made into films but so far the various proposals from film companies had come to nothing and she knew she could not depend on a film sale to solve her immediate financial problems.
The sale of another short story, however, encouraged her to think that these might be a way out of her pecuniary difficulties. “If I do one a month could you sell them?” she asked Norah Perriam. The stories were quick work for ready money, but the need to complete the book for Hodder and write a new one for Heinemann was also pressing and in the end Georgette could not maintain the pace. As she explained to her agent:
I’m glad Amalgamated Press like the new story, but don’t divert my attention! How can I send you more when you keep on yelping at me to get on with this Sanguinary Novel? If I thought I could sell 6 short stories off the reel & cash in On the Nail I’d chuck the book & write the stories, because this furnishing racket is Awful, & I shall soon be at my wit’s end for ready cash. Things mount up in the most ghastly fashion, & my damned Bank would only give me an overdraft for £400 instead of £500, which puts me in the soup. Why the blazes not one of those stinking film companies can see what a Super-film Regency Buck would make beats me. I despair of films—I expect Fate is going to be ironic, & I shall sell them when it doesn’t really matter much.
A few weeks before Christmas Georgette finally had a breakthrough with Behold, Here’s Poison. She had been feeling “thoroughly depressed and unhopeful about the book until a Funny Bit flashed into my head, & looks even funnier when set down in black & white.” Her sense of humor had come to her rescue and by Christmas Eve she had done a “Solid Wog of Good Matter.” Once she hit her stride Georgette usually got the words down quickly. She never had an editor and by the mid-1930s neither her agent nor her publisher read her manuscripts all the way through, or even at all, prior to publication. The draft she sent to her publisher was the book they published—usually without reference to a third party or professional reader (only in the last years of her life). Once the proofs had been dealt with and the book was on its way to the printer Georgette would destroy the original manuscript and start thinking of her next novel.
Blackthorns seems to have been conducive to writing. Over the next five years there Georgette would produce twelve books. Life in Sussex meant a large, comfortable home, at least two servants, a garden, fresh air, and dogs. Georgette had always had dogs and they were to be a feature of life in the country. Her pet Sealyham, Roddy, who had been with them in
Africa, had died not long after Richard’s birth and Ronald had acquired their purebred white bull-terrier instead. Johnny was an intelligent animal who ruled the roost at Blackthorns. Although he disliked other dogs, he liked people and adored Richard. As a toddler Richard would sometimes take his nap with Johnny beside him and Georgette once found her son fast asleep “firmly clasping the large & grim-looking bull-terrier in his arms. How unhygienic, but such a nice picture!”
The family was back in Blackthorns in time for Christmas. Ronald’s brother Leslie, his wife Tam, and their two young sons, Michael and Jeremy, were to spend Christmas week with them. Georgette was fond of Leslie (now a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Lancashire Fusiliers) and Tam, though they did not have a lot in common, but she was not a fan of the festive season. Visitors for Christmas, new financial worries (“which doesn’t mean Poorhouse, but cost of Drawing-Room Carpet, which is in some ways worse”), and the need to finish Behold, Here’s Poison only made the holiday a “time of Unparalleled Stress.” The one bright spot was her acquisition of an Irish wolfhound puppy named Misty Dawn. Johnny the bull-terrier and Puck the Siamese cat deigned to accept the newcomer and Georgette told her family jokingly that she thought she “would look well with a stately wolf-hound at my feet.” The new dog would also be a playmate for Richard. He was nearly four and his mother had already discerned a literary bent:
My son is proving that there’s a Lot in Heredity. He now tells us Stories, and I can assure you they abound in the professional touch. It is not enough for him to say: “The cow said…” He styles it thus: “Oh!” said the cow. We also have Thrilling Bits, such as: “Suddenly…he heard a Voice! And what do you think it said?” ME: “What?”—“It said Fee-fi-fo-fum!” ME: “Good Heavens, how awful!”—“Yes. And what-do-you-think-happened to him then?”—“I don’t know: what?”—“He was all SHWIVELLED UP!”