As I mentioned in
an earlier entry, Georgette must have been writing TOS while she was
dating Ronald. After their marriage, while Ronald was prospecting in
the Caucasus where
it would have been impossible to take a woman, she stayed behind in the
flat at Earl's Court. She probably had her hands full helping her
mother deal with her widowhood. Mrs. Heyer did not take up her music
again, but lived for the rest of her life in hotels. And although TOS
was published in 1926 there was no book published in 1927 which
suggests that she was doing little or no writing during the first year
of her marriage.
Ronald
returned to England in the Summer of 1926 but by Autumn was journeying
again, this time to Africa. Georgette joined him in Tanganyika
in the Spring of 1927 where she lived in a compound in the bush,
surrounded, according to Hodge, by "lions and leopards and
rhinoceroses." Aside from one other man, a rough Cornish miner, the
Rougiers were the only white people for one hundred fifty miles.
While
Ronald was on safari prospecting for tin, Georgette was left alone for
long periods of time with only their native servants who had never seen a
white woman before. She did once go on one of these safaris with him
but never went on another one, although she never complained about the
rough 20-mile-a-day traveling or the one bottle of water allowance.
THE MASQUERADERS
was written while she was in Tanganyika in these primitive conditions.
She got one fact wrong in this book -- the date of the founding of
White's Club. She was only off by one year, though. The book was
published in 1928 by which time Ronald was prospecting in Macedonia,
where Georgette again joined him. More on her Macedonia experiences in a
later entry....
Next Entry: HELEN
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