Georgette Heyer novels

(More photographs of finished stuff to come later; I had a meeting last night and I find for some reason I can't upload to Flickr from work.)

I'm doing something I think I've never done before; reading two novels in markedly different genres by the same author at the same time.

I've become quite fond of the Georgette Heyer mystery novels, so over break I started one of her "historicals," called The Spanish Bride.

I wasn't sure how I'd go for it - many "historicals" are actually "historical romance," and I'm really not fond of romance novels.

But when I first opened it up, and saw the author's note, I thought: this is going to be good. Heyer did EXTENSIVE research. She didn't just pick some intriguing historical period and write what she thought it might have been like (I've read a few historicals like that; one of them I chucked across the room eight pages in). The Spanish Bride is set during the "Peninsular Campaign" (i.e., Spain and Portugal) of the Napoleonic Wars, and is told from the perspective of (mainly) the "Light Bobs" (one of the brigades? (I am SO not up on military terminology) in Wellington's forces.a) In particular, she focuses on Brigade-Major Harry Smith - a good man, an honest man. The title of the novel (this is not giving too much away, as it happens in the first 50 pages or so) comes from the fact that after the sack of Badajos, a young married Spanish woman comes to Smith, begging safe-passage to try to find her husband (fighting with the Spanish forces - presumably, allied with the British), and also find some way of keeping her younger sister safe.

(One of the other things that made me realize this book wasn't just going to be a romance-novel with some history thrown in to make it "interesting" or "atmospheric": the first 30 pages or so describe the British assault on the town of Badajos, which is occupied by the French (and apparently Spaniards loyal to the French). If a person didn't believe "war is Hell" before, after reading this section, they will - both in the horrible slaughter of British troops during their attack (men having to advance over the dying bodies of their compatriots) but also the sack of the town afterward. (Supposedly there is some time-immemorial rule-of-war that if a town does not surrender once its defenses are breached, it is considered "fair game" for looting, rapine, and rape. Even cloistered nuns were not exempt.) As I said, Heyer worked from diaries of men who were involved in the war, so I am fairly sure what she reported is accurate. (The Napoleonic style of war - which was sort of still in force even in WWI - seems particularly brutal. But then again...as I said once before, if there comes a WWIII, the likely result is civilians being wiped out wholesale by nuclear bombs, so I doubt there's any kind of "less brutal" form of war.)

Anyway, back to Juana, the sister - who is 14 and convent-educated. She immediately falls for Smith (who is 25, so there is not THAT great a difference in their ages) and he for her, it occurs to him that marrying her is one way she could be kept safe (his men respect him FAR too much to mess with his wife). It seems the best solution (I presume in those days it was not unheard of for girls to marry at 14; most of the objections voiced to the marriage were that they would distract Smith from his duties, or that Juana would be too uncomfortable or unhappy in a military camp. But they were bound and determined to do it, got married. And Juana turns out to be quite a "brick" in the C.S. Lewis sense - she doesn't complain, she has great spirit, she learns to ride well (in fact, it's a point of pride to her that she learn to ride) after only having been on a donkey (let alone a horse) twice in her life before. The men in Smith's regiment like and respect her, and she is kind to them - doing their mending for them without them even asking, offering hospitality (feeding them) if they come to Smith's tent to meet with him at odd hours.

(And the "romance quotient" - the reason I tend to put down romance novels or modern historicals fairly quickly - is minimal. I mean, what I don't like about the so-called "strong romance" novels is that, um, the sexytimes scenes embarrass me. Yeah, I don't like to read those. (Weird, I know...legions of seventh-grade girls would pass books around with those very passages highlighted). But perhaps because Heyer wrote in a different era, the most I've encountered so far is that on their wedding night, Smith takes Juana into his arms, kisses her on the mouth, and then turns down the lamp...and the curtain is discreetly drawn on the scene. So there are no throbbing members or heaving bosoms to discomfit me - at least not thus far, and I don't expect there will be.)

It's a remarkably good "read." There are books, I've found, that are Edifying and there are books that are Good Reads. And there's not often a huge amount of overlap (Though I suppose a book can be edifying without one's realizing it; I'm learning a little about the Napoleonic Wars that I didn't know before).

I'm also reading a Heyer mystery (because I find, with books with a lot of heavy stuff in them - and I find the descriptions of battles and marches and sacks to be rather heavy - I have to take them in small doses and intersperse them with something lighter). After reading several of these (four or five), I'm realizing there are certain recurring themes.

One thing I really love about the mysteries is that there are at least several characters in them who are faintly absurd; there is at least a slight whiff of Wodehouse about many of the people with whom she populates her universes. And I like that. The characters that are absurd are generally absurd in benign ways. Granted, there are a few unpleasant characters (but generally the worst one is the one who gets bumped off in the first 70 pages), but the funny ones make up for that.

Also, each of her novels, in amongst the silly people, the self-centered people, the Earnest Young Things who are Communists despite the fact that they're in the upper-middle to upper classes and would probably be among the first up against the brick wall if the Communists REALLY came to power, there is the One Sane Man. (Or, as is quite frequent in her novels, the One Sane Woman - very often a woman in her late 20s, who has not married yet and therefore is viewed with some pity by the more self-absorbed women.)

I once said, after reading a few Evelyn Waugh short-stories and watching Bright Young Things (a movie based on one of Waugh's novels), that if I were part of the minor aristocracy/upper-middle class in 1930s Britain, I'd probably respectfully leave, and, I don't know, join whatever remnants of the Arts and Crafts movement still existed, or become a farm laborer, or go into missions. Because Waugh's portrayal of that group makes them SO boring and SO awful that I can't imagine wanting to be a part of it. (Perhaps that's why Communism was apparently fashionable among that set in the 1930s.)

The novel I'm currently reading is "No Wind of Blame" (Heyer's mysteries, annoyingly, often have titles that are terribly cryptic in relation to the stories). Among the amusing-and-ludicrous characters is Aunt Erymntrude - she married well (her first husband, now deceased, was extremely wealthy). For that, Ermyntrude has a bit of an inferiority complex - she "used to be on the stage" (as they said, back in the days when being an actress was seen as a shocking thing), she's "common," and does not have refined tastes. And yet, for all that, she's a likeable woman, and is kind to her second husband's "ward" (the One Sane Woman I referred to above - this one's name is Mary Cliffe) even though Mary has no real connection to her, and could probably, by rights, be told she needed to leave the household and support herself.

The other wonderfully absurd character (and probably my favorite in the book) in that family is Vicky Fanshawe, Ermyntrude's daughter by her first marriage. Vicky is Artistic and Sensitive. And she has different "costumes" - when we first see her, she is got up as the Sports-Girl. But later, she dresses as a femme fatale, and she alludes to (at least some of) her other personae: River Girl, Early Victorian....I find Vicky amusing and interesting because of the idea of having different personae for different days or situations odd but intriguing. I mean, I dress many different ways in a given week - in my good wool dress and pumps for church, perhaps a corduroy skirt and blouse for lecture, jeans and an old sweatshirt and field boots for a field lab...but despite the clothing changes, I am fundamentally the same person and react the same way in all situations. (Well, okay: I might use different words to react if I were stung by a bee while alone out in the field vs. being stung by a bee that somehow blundered into church, but you get the idea). And it's implied that Vicky would react differently to the same situation depending on who she was "trying to be" that given day. (It sounds a bit mad when you write it out, but I was imagining it would be kind of fun at times to try on different personalities. And dear knows that I have a hard time separating my work-life from the rest of my life, to the point where if things are going badly at work, they seem to go badly everywhere else).

The third possibly amusing character (he could turn out to be sinister, I'm not sure yet), is a man who calls himself Alexei Varasashvili, and claims to be a Russian Prince. (Well, Georgian, actually, as he's quick to point out). However, I have my suspicions of him and would not be at all surprised to find out he was really Alexander Vickery* from Cornwall or somewhere, who had learned a convincing accent and "foreign seeming" manners. Of COURSE he charms all the bored upper-middle-class women (well, other than Mary Cliffe, who is suspicious of him) because he's "exotic."

I suppose were I really for-real existing in that social stratum at that place and that time, I'd find it stifling (For one thing: being considered an "old maid" at 25, and the main expectation of a woman's life to make a good marriage match). But Heyer has a way of making it amusing and entertaining.

(*I had to look up "common surnames starting with V" in Britain, because I couldn't come up with one, and found a website where you can search location and frequency-of-occurrence of surnames in Britain. Here's my surname, interesting to see where it's most widespread:my surname. (Though actually, supposedly "my people" are from Ireland - though probably they were in Britain first, and their earlier ancestors came from France, or so I'm told)