Georgette Heyer Page 18

  Georgette hated doing this sort of abridgement and ended by giving the editor permission to insert whatever “drip” she considered necessary to achieve a greater “stress on the love interest.” She still did not really trust Dorothy Sutherland to handle her work appropriately—especially after the editor had altered her short story title “Pharaoh’s Daughter” (after the card game Pharaoh or Faro) to “Lady, Your Pardon.” Georgette thought this “lousy.” Her only comfort was that she did not have to read Woman’s Journal and that the money for the serial rights for They Found Him Dead would go a long way toward clearing her overdraft: “By my own Herculean efforts I’ve paid off £800 overdraft—& now to be faced with a new one is too dispiriting for words! Ora pro nobis!” [Pray for us!]

  But her prayers went unanswered for in December King Edward VIII abdicated to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson. The change in the Succession meant a change in Woman’s Journal editorial policy. Dorothy Sutherland felt that a murder mystery was not wanted in an edition about the abdication and the royal family and consequently had decided not to serialize They Found Him Dead. Georgette received the news in mid-January and immediately wrote to Norah Perriam:

  I think Miss Sutherland might well be jolted. She really is not treating me at all fairly. When you consider that I rushed the book on so that she might receive it early in December, & further made alterations in the story at her request, & handed them in three days before Christmas, her dilatoriness is not only inconsiderate but extremely rude into the bargain. I do not wish to hear from her that the altered succession is to blame…Saving your presence, she is treating me to a startling example of the folly of Woman at the Helm. A bigger example of incompetence than this going into a flat spin would be hard to come by.

  The cancellation of the planned serial left Georgette with a gaping hole in her finances. It was too late to sell the serial elsewhere, for Hodder were publishing in May.

  Incensed by Dorothy Sutherland’s dilatory rejection she instructed her agent that, in future, “If Miss Sutherland refuses the M.S., or postpones its publication in serial form to the prejudice of H. & S’s publication of it in book form no further MSS of mine are to be offered to her.” Georgette had begun a new book which, though “not precisely a sequel,” followed on from Regency Buck (successfully serialized in Woman’s Journal eighteen months earlier). She was sure Dorothy Sutherland would want the new manuscript for her magazine—though she would get it only if she “pulls herself together and sends you a check,” Georgette told Norah Perriam. “If she finds it incredible that I should be prepared to sever relations with her you can, if you choose, tell her that her handling of my work has from start to finish been an annoyance to me; her criticisms always seem to me illiterate, & her alterations even more so. Accompany these compliments by any rude gesture that suggests itself to you.” But no check was forthcoming; Dorothy Sutherland apparently wanted neither They Found Him Dead nor the new book and it was to be ten years before Georgette again had her work published in Woman’s Journal.

  8 It is not entirely clear how much of her manuscripts Georgette actually typed and how much she wrote in longhand. In the late 1930s it appears that, regardless of how she wrote them, she paid a typist to type the final draft.

  9 One of Heinemann’s stars, Francis Brett Young was “not an easy author. More than once, when he felt his books had not been given enough publicity or some minor thing went wrong, he threatened to find another publisher, but his large and regular sales ensured that he was treated as a VIP, being allowed the use of the private flat at the top of Great Russell Street.” He also expected Evans to closely read his manuscripts and to discuss in detail his plans for his next novel.

  14

  Like Brummell, I am very good at Depressing Pretension.

  —Georgette Heyer

  By March 1937 Georgette’s concerns about money, serials, playwrights, Woman’s Journal, and her publishers’ inadequacies had vanished before the “welter” of material she had gathered for her new novel about the Battle of Waterloo. She was even more enthusiastic about the book than she had been about Regency Buck:

  My whole attention is centered upon Waterloo, so that nothing else has much reality. I even had a dream wherein I argued absurdly with Ronald about who was in command of the 1st Brigade of Guards. I was right too! I have now “gutted” 26 works dealing with the campaign, the soldiers, the officers, etc, & could draw you, with tolerable accuracy, a detailed plan of the battle, placing the brigades with exactitude, & a great many of the regiments. The house’s littered with huge sheets of 3-ply, to which are pinned maps, plans, & god knows what. Poor dear Ronald has Waterloo for breakfast, lunch, tea & dinner.

  She could already “see heavenly bits” and, although “There’s not a speck of adventure (in the style of the Talisman Ring),” she was convinced that she could carry the story off with “only the triangle of one girl and 2 men, & the crashing climax of Waterloo.” The girl was to be Lady Barbara Childe, a direct descendant of characters in These Old Shades and Devil’s Cub. Although Georgette acknowledged that the novel was “not precisely a sequel” and later admitted “that Dominic couldn’t have had grand-children of mature age in 1815,” she felt that the characters’ popularity was such that her readers would forgive a little poetic license. (Georgette’s son later explained that his mother never intended it as a true sequel to Devil’s Cub. Rather, that she gave Mary and Dominic Alastair parts in the novel “as a sort of friendly wave to previous readers.”)

  It was April before Georgette lifted her head from her Waterloo research but when she did it was to fire another shot across Heinemann’s bow. She had been stirred to anger about the firm again by a local bookseller friend (“A woman of brains and education, she worked for many years at the F. O. [Foreign Office], so is to be respected”) who had raised concerns about the absence of Heyer cheap edition titles from Heinemann’s spring list. Her criticisms reminded Georgette that Charles Evans had not replied to her last letter and she suggested to Moore that he “have a shot at forcing a quarrel with Heinemann.”

  Evans’s silence was unusual, for he had a close working relationship with most of the firm’s well-known authors. As John St. John observed in his history of Heinemann, Evans was seen as a man who “understood and liked authors and in turn they liked him.” Except for Georgette. For some unknown reason she and Evans did not get on. While he was not the kind of cultured, charming, handsome man she liked, he inspired great affection in most of those who knew him and was famous for his ability to recognize talent and spot the potential bestseller. It was Evans who had signed John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Margaret Kennedy, J.B. Priestley, and Francis Brett Young to Heinemann and he may even have signed Georgette in 1925. Evans was admired by many in the publishing industry and he had a special gift for recognizing “potentially successful ‘broadbrow’ fiction”—exactly the sort of book at which Georgette was proving so proficient. It is possible her books were not to his taste and there may have been an element of social snobbery on both sides.

  Whatever the cause, by June Georgette had heard nothing from Evans or anyone else at Heinemann, and she wrote again to Norah Perriam:

  I am so dissatisfied with the firm that at the back of my mind there lurks a half-formed resolve to write my Waterloo book, & then to put it by. Any rubbish will do for Heinemann. Unless I get some sort of satisfaction out of Evans I’ll see him dead before he handles my new book. If, as I begin to suspect, he has no longer any interest in my work, would he perhaps like to tear up the existing contract? I know what your arguments are against forcing Heinemann to pull their weight, but I don’t think I entirely agree with you. If there were but one more book due to them I should hesitate to hot them up. But I’m tied up for two more, & frankly I see little sense in sitting by while they do their best to see that my works are still-born. If they want to keep my name on their list they will presumably put their backs into the job of selling me. Provided they do this I’m prepared to stay w
ith them. But I can see no harm in either you or L.P. telling Evans what my feelings are in the matter. I hope that in “Colonel Audley” I am going to turn out something a great deal better than anything I have yet achieved. But if Evans is looking for “another of Miss Heyer’s entrancing romances” it won’t do for him. Either he does what he can to put it over big, or he doesn’t get it.

  Feeling she had dealt satisfactorily with her publisher she returned to her writing.

  After four months of intense research, Georgette had filled several notebooks with detailed information about the Hundred Days—from Napoleon’s escape from Elba to his final clash with the British, Belgian, and Prussian armies at Waterloo. She made careful notes about every aspect of the campaign: from weaponry and uniforms to topography and troops. She created a detailed chronology, wrote biographies of the major historical figures, and made notes on all of the contemporary accounts of the battle she could find. She also drew several large, detailed maps of the Battle showing the movements of the French, British, and Prussian regiments throughout the day (these maps still exist and have been preserved along with Georgette’s remaining notebooks and private papers by the Heyer Estate).

  The Duke of Wellington was a major focus and she read all his letters and dispatches, making copious notes and lists of his sayings and speeches. Her study of Wellington eventually caused her to change her original opinion of the man: “I came to curse & stayed to praise. I set out disliking the Man Wellington very cordially, but by God, you have to hand it to him after all! He is going to loom very large indeed, as is proper.” She made a point of using his words wherever she could throughout the novel, drawing repeatedly on the twelve volumes of his dispatches and telling her readers in an Author’s Note that, although it meant Wellington’s words were at times chronologically inexact, she had felt impelled to use them because they were far superior to anything she could have written.

  Initially “scared to death of Wellington,” she had “finally brought him on with a trembling pen. But no sooner was his hook-nose well into the book than he seized the pen from my hand and practically wrote himself.” She eventually suggested to her agent that:

  If Heinemann want to make a “point” in their blurb they might hint gently that I’ve done Wellington a fair treat. I think I have. This is not as conceited as it sounds…I do feel that wherever I may have failed it is not with the Duke. He simply slipped out of my pen on to the paper. I felt all the time he was right. He dam’ well ought to be—I couldn’t tell you how many books I’ve read dealing with him!

  Georgette had written almost half the book when she finally received a detailed letter from Charles Evans addressing her concerns. But his response only irritated her more and in a seven-page reply she told her agent exactly what she wanted communicated to Heinemann:

  I have read Evans’s letter three times, & each time I read it, it annoys me more. I want certain things quite definitely brought to his intelligence. The first point I wish to make is that during the many years of my having been with the firm I have not troubled them with vain complaints. To the best of my recollection I have never before complained that they were not doing their best for me. When The Conqueror only sold moderately well, & caused no comment at all I blamed myself, not Heinemann. I think I was right: it wasn’t a seller. But I then wrote Devil’s Cub, & in so doing hit on a manner that suited me, & which the public seemed to like. Since that date I’ve turned out 3 swiftly moving &, I think, amusing romances. My sales have increased as one would expect them to. If they had not I wonder how long Heinemann’s [sic] would have kept me on their list? My point is that my publishers, seeing that I’d found my right style, sat back (so far as I have been permitted to see) and said: “Isn’t that nice? I wonder whether the next will increase too?” They didn’t see in me a “rising market,” & thrust me on for all they were worth. They continued to push the books out just as they always had, selling them quite adequately & never brilliantly.

  I used to blame myself but having had experience of H. & S.’s methods I’ve now changed my mind. No one will make me believe that I really write terribly good thrillers, but H. & S. are making the public think so, & have shown me clearly what can be done in the way of increase of sales. If Evans should say, Ah yes, but modern books are easier to sell, he might be told that H. & S. would pay heavily to get my period stuff.

  Regency Buck, though Mr. Evans may not know it, was a darned good book. It was accurate down to the smallest detail, & had popular appeal as well. The firm handled it damnably, & allowed Murray’s book, Regency, a lot of which was cribbed from mine, to get well ahead…

  When I review my dealings with the firm during the past five years at least, I realize that every year I have sent them a book, into which I quite honestly put the best of which I was capable. I have never received from any member of the firm the slightest hint either of appreciation or of disappointment. I have no reason to suppose that my books are even read. If I am late with delivery no inquiry is made. No one bothers me for a synopsis for the purposes of advance advertizing. Such an apparent apathy has the firm in its grip that I wonder sometimes whether any one would notice if I missed a season. I don’t know whether the firm likes my humorous stuff, or my more ambitious essays. They have never told me. I sent them Talisman Ring, which I knew wasn’t quite up to standard. They didn’t tell me so. Was it tact, ignorance, or apathy?

  Since I have been with H. & S. I have noticed certain outstanding differences between them and Heinemanns. Long before I have set pen to paper H. & S. want a synopsis of my new book. Annoying? Yes, maddening, but at the same time I realize that they’re putting their back into the job. When I deliver the MS to H. & S. they take the trouble to write a pleasant little note about it. It may mean nothing, but it is a pleasant change from the Trappist silence brooding over Great Russell Street.

  Without wishing to dig up old bones, I should rather like Mr. C.S. Evans to cast his mind back to the publication of Devil’s Cub. If he has forgotten I have not that no one in his firm realized that that book was the sequel to the Shades which I’d so often been asked for. You told them so, but not until we’d kicked up a row did they make the slightest capital out of it. Ever since that date I’ve had a mistrustful feeling about the firm. Nothing that has been done by the firm since has allayed that feeling.

  Evans wants to have a talk with you, I see. Well, please let it be snappy! What I want is to terminate the contract. I can’t do it, but I should be delighted if he would. I don’t want him to handle my Waterloo book. Perhaps it won’t be very good—I don’t know, but I’m sure it won’t get any help from Evans, who will publish it in the same old style, & think how nicely he’s handled it if it sells a couple of thousand more than The Talisman Ring did. That sort of increase might be satisfactory were I today writing my third or fourth book instead of my twenty-third.

  In conclusion I object strongly to the tone of Evans’s letter & I hope you do too. His lawsuits are no concern of yours, & I fail to see why they should be offered as an excuse for inattention to business. An air of injured dignity pervades the letter. It is not for him to feel injured. That is my prerogative. My last book was dropped from their lists very early in its career; Norah wrote several letters to Evans which were all of them ignored; my name did not occur in the Spring Booklet; The Marriage (or is it The Buck?) was not brought down to 3/6 on publication of the new book as has been the rule with all my others—& then Evans has the infernal cheek to write that he doesn’t understand what I have to complain about. Well, lack of courtesy will do to begin with, & this I am unable to ascribe to anything but lack of interest.

  For your private ear, I am increasingly uneasy about the firm. Have you seen their new list? It is shocking. My bookseller friend is ordering only one Heinemann novel this season—and I may say she keeps a goodish stock in her shop. All the old authors seem to be gradually drifting otherwhere. I know Margaret Kennedy left because she was fed-up with them. I shall be the next.


  My standpoint is that if Evans puts his back into the Waterloo book—à la H. & S.—& I am satisfied that he really did do his best for it I shall have no reason to leave the firm, whether the book sells well or ill. I think it should be put to him quite clearly that as far as I’m concerned the Waterloo book is the crux of the matter. I may have to give Heinemann one more—but if they make me feel that another firm would have sold more of Waterloo I can assure them that I shall put no extraordinary pains into the final book for them.

  Four days later she had made rapid progress with her Waterloo novel and wrote a chatty letter to her agent with several entertaining extracts from the manuscript. She told Moore about Wellington, explained that her hero had fallen in love with Lady Barbara (“a pity, but can’t be helped”), and ended by suggesting to her agent that he tell Evans “What a Noble Work the book is.” This apparent turnaround in her attitude to Evans—albeit temporary—was typical of Georgette. The truth was that she hated confrontation.

  It was one thing to voice her anger and indignation in a letter to Moore and to ask him to “have a shot at forcing a quarrel” with the firm, and quite another to actually engage in the argument herself. However strongly worded, Georgette’s letters were nearly always one step removed from their intended target. She expected her agent to absorb the full force of her displeasure, distill her comments, and ultimately take responsibility for their communication. She repeatedly left it to Moore to decide how much and what part of her grievances should be conveyed to her publishers and, whether he liked it or not (and there were times when she clearly made him very uncomfortable), she expected him to be a buffer between her and those she chose to criticize. It was not a courageous stance, but it was generally as close to direct confrontation as she was prepared to get with anyone outside her small, safe circle of friends and relatives. Georgette’s ability to express her feelings on paper gave her an outlet, and she sometimes lashed out with her pen in a way that she never would have done in person.