Heyer and Heyer

A cult has grown up around Georgette Heyer's regency romances. Its members are secret addicts who, when pressed, will admit shamefacedly that, yes, they do read Heyer. It takes some courage: A regency romance--and Heyer holds undisputed title of queen of the genre--has neither the suspense of a good spy story or the nose-to-the-ground clue-tracking of a murder mystery, and has no social significance whatsoever. Heyer deals exclusively with the frivolous world of England's Upper Ten Thousand at the turn of the nineteenth century, and any similarity between the world of social conventions and affected mannerisms she describes and the one we live in is purely coincidental.

The uninitiated usually find conversations between Heyer addicts incomprehensible, since one of the marks of Heyer cultism is an intimate knowledge of the rituals of the peerage. Heyer's work is peppered with references to laudelets, phaetons, barques of frailty, diamonds of the first water, and vouchers to Almack's. A careful reader is also likely to be familiar with the origin of Lady Sally Jersey's nickname, the Prince Regent's confused marital status, and Lord Petersham's penchant for mixing snuff. Heyer's research into the lifestyle of the peerage may not have produced great sociological tracts, but she certainly knew what the requisite costume for a nuncheon party was, and why Beau Brummel was good ton and Letty Lade was not.

Still, the desire for proficiency in Regency slang can only carry one so far. It does not explain why I have read every one of Heyer's romances at least once, and most of them several times more. An explanation might lie in the apolitical, reality-free spell her books cast. By the time you have turned the first few pages of a typical Heyer, you are barely sensible of the existence of the lower classes, except in terms of the hero's feudal obligations to his old retainers. Even the most determined revolutionary has to abandon class analysis or feminist wrath in this world of the peerage, where such things are patently absurd. All you can do is give in to gooey-eyed sentimentality, and wonder with, say Judith Taverner if she has offended the patronesses of Almack's beyond recall.

In Heyer's twenty-odd books there is basically only one plot. The hero and the heroine, thrown together by chance at the outset, almost invaribly take an instant dislike to one another. Heyer's protagonists are all well-born and haughty, and nearly all are extremely strong-willed. Presented as fairly intelligent and mature, they would never do anything so bland and conventional as to fall in love at first sight--it usually takes 150 pages.

Surrounding the hero and heroine, however, is a world full of characters more willing than they to bow to the rigid dictates of regency fashion. Elderly female relatives are constantly shocked at the heroine's outspokenness, and make liberal use of handkerchiefs, tears, and smelling salts. Vapid young men simper about in absurd clothes, worrying only about the make of their Hessians and the height of their collars. Brainless beauties fall desperately in love with ineligible fortune hunters and threaten to elope across the border to Scotland in the face of their family's disapproval. These other, less competent characters make Heyer's novels witty, as well as sentimental--they are constantly embroiling themselves in absurd engagements to avoid the disgrace of having been found alone with a member of the other sex, discovering they can't cover their gambling debts until the end of the quarter, or running away from too-strict guardians and endangering their reputations. The hero and heroine are left to clean up the mess created by their weaker friends and relatives, and in the process they gain a mutual respect that could never have come out of mere love-at-first-sight.

And so the reader, sighing romantically, is left with enchanting scenes like this one from the end of The Grand Sophy, one of Heyer's best:

"Charles, this is crazy! Did you come in your curricle? What if it should begin to rain again? I shall be drenched!"

"Then you will be well-served!" retorted her unchivalrous cousin.

"Charles!" uttered Sophy, shocked. "You cannot love me!"

Mr. Rivenhall pulled the door to behind them, and in a very rough fashion jerked her into his arms, and kissed her. "I don't. I dislike you excessively!" he said savagely.

Entranced by these lover-like words, Miss Stanton-Lacey returned his embrace with fervor, and meekly allowed herself to be led off to the stables.

Of course, Sophy had just manipulated everyone else in the novel (for their own benefit) into matches she had dreamed up, and had set Mr. Rivenhall's life completely on end, but you can see why those of us who read Heyer prefer to keep it a secret.

Nevertheless, when Heyer died last year, BBC announced it on the international evening news. You can find her books in backwoods stores throughout the Empire, and they are beginning to infiltrate bookstores here, too. Her romances follow the best tradition of the comedy of manners, with not too much substance, and plenty of wit. Like Jane Austen, she has enough of an eye for the slightly ridiculous to keep you laughing, but she never requires the mental gymnastics of serious literature. No one is ever murdered, no one hurt--you simply ramble along in a world of idiosyncrasies and foibles, where the only danger is the loss of good ton, and where the worst that happens is that someone is sent off to manage the Jamica estates. The characters move between London balls, their gaming clubs, and country manors, never fearing that their lives will ever change, never questioning their position at the top of the social structure. Nothing serious could possibly go wrong. And at the end the heroine and hero are in each other's arms, their families are all restored to normalcy, and you have nineteen more Heyer books still to read.