In 1923
Georgette Heyer published her first contemporary novel, INSTEAD OF THE
THORN; her fourth novel to be published. This post-WWI novel tells the
story of Elizabeth Arden*, a sheltered 19-year-old who finds herself
completely unprepared for the people and situations she finds when she
ventures out into the world on her own.
Elizabeth
meets and imagines herself in love with Stephen, a successful novelist
much older than herself. They marry, and young, innocent Elizabeth, who
had been reared by her father and a spinster aunt, is horrified by her
first sexual experience with her older husband. The father and aunt had
balked at explaining the facts of life to Elizabeth in any way, and,
unable to deal with the realities of married life, she runs away from
her husband. She comes to learn a lot about herself and marriage in
general, and eventually returns and really falls in love with her
husband this time. Stephen is depicted as a very good, loving man, who
shows a lot of forbearance for his young wife.
This has been
called a courageous book to have been written by an unmarried girl of
the 1920s, and it is. The journey Elizabeth takes from being appalled
by sexual relations to beginning to have real insight into herself and
the world around her is well written, and the book sold well when it was
published, although not as well as the historical novels.
INSTEAD OF THE THORN is one of only four contemporary novels that were not crime novels, and it is felt to be the most feeling
of the four (Heyer later suppressed all four of them). It is hard to
find an older copy of this book without paying a fortune for it, but
Buccaneer Books reprinted it in the 90s, along with the other three set
in post-WWI, and this newer issue can be found and purchased at a decent
price. The image below is of a 1923 issue. My own copy is one of the
Buccaneer editions.
I
do recommend reading this book if you have access to it, and if you are
building a Heyer library, be sure to include the four post-WWI novels.
They are the only novels that can be said to have offered any kind of
insight into Heyer's everyday life.
*It
is interesting that the heroine's name is Elizabeth Arden, but there
has never been any indication that this was not simply a name pulled out
of a hat. The real-life Elizabeth Arden, of beauty spa fame, opened up
her first salon in Paris in 1922, and I suppose it is possible that
Heyer could have seen the name and that it appealed to her, but again,
there is no evidence of that.
The following information is taken from THE PRIVATE WORLD OF GEORGETTE HEYER by Jane Aiken Hodge.
Georgette was named after her father, George, who was also named after his father.
The senior George Heyer came from Kharkov, Russia in the middle of the
nineteenth century to settle in England where he married an English
girl named Alice Waters. He was a fur merchant. There is little known
about him or about why he immigrated to England, although it is posited
that he may have been a fugitive from the Russian pogroms
of that time. Georgette's brother, Frank, remembered him as being
bearded, having a strong accent, and being a practical joker.
Their
son George was born in Islington in 1869, enlarging their family of
three girls, Alice, Ilma, and Inez. George attended King's College
School in London, read classics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and
wrote regularly for Cambridge's Granta. In the 1890s he became a
teacher at Weymouth College, and later was invited to teach French at
King's College School in 1897 when it moved to Wimbledon.
In
1901 he married Sylvia Watkins at the Church of St. Peter in Eltham.
She was 25 at the time and the daughter of a Thames tugboat owner. She
had been an outstanding student of cello and piano at the Royal College
of Music. Georgette was born a year after her parents were married,
George Boris four years after that, and Frank Dmitri five years later.
George
was well thought of at King's College School where he also discovered a
gift for fund raising. In 1903 he gave up teaching and held various
other positions including organizing Queen Alexandra's Charity Matinees
and acting as Secretary of the Memorial Theatre at Stratford. He also
wrote occasionally for Punch.
Boris
and Frank both attended Lancing College, with Boris going straight from
there to a junior job with Bovril. Frank went on to Cambridge and
became a schoolmaster, teaching for twenty-one years at Downside.
Little
is known about Heyer's life as a young girl. It is not known where she
was educated. She herself said that she was educated at "various day
schools", and that she never attended college. At the beginning of the
1914-1918 war she was for a time in Paris where her father was working
when the war broke out. Hodge reports that Heyer recalled hearing the
German gun, Big Bertha, before they returned to Wimbledon.
At
that time she was enrolled for a while at The Study, one of Wimbledon's
two main girls' schools, and, according to Hodge, the more socially
conscious of the two; but no records of her time there are in existence
today.
George
Heyer was very active during the war. Even though he was over-age he
obtained a captaincy in the Army Service Corps. He was a requisitioning
officer in France, and was awarded the O.B.E. after the war. At that
time he went to work for the War Office as a staff captain, but left,
after suffering a severe illness, to become Appeal Secretary at King's
College Hospital.
More on their personal lives to follow.
Next Entry: Daring For Its Time
