I've read this book a lot - it's always been one of my favourites and DC1 is named for Lynton - but this particular re-read has been enlightening. It's the first time I've read it since I've realised I'm a feminist (aren't we all?) and also I've been reading it with a newborn which makes the last quarter or so more poignant and immediate.
Civil Contract is a novel of change, of shattered dreams, and readjusted expectations. From the first chapter, where Adam has to give up his consuming identity as Captain Deveril in favour of Viscount Lynton (note that Heyer almost always calls him Adam, unlike her other noble heroes who get all their titles and styles in equal turn) everyone is dealing with disappointment and mostly stoically accepting less than their dreams. Jenny gets the man she wants, but less than completely; Julia gets the marriage of her dreams, but not the man; Adam fulfils his destiny but only by renouncing his more exciting and glamorous hopes; Chawleigh sees his daughter established but without the coveted "of".
In the end it is perhaps only Brough and Lydia whose dreams come true, but they are dreams they didn't know they had at the outset - the years apart while Adam was in the Army saw Lydia become a woman, and Brough is sideswiped by her.
Lydia is great value in the novel. It is mostly serious and slightly tragic; she offers the light relief. "I like you the best of all my family [...] Not that that's saying much." Her schemes to restore the family's fortunes may be naïve but Adam recognises from her acceptance of their circumstances that he must make sacrifices, if only to keep her off the stage!
It is often through Lydia's eyes that we are shown the early tension in the Lyntons' marriage. If Heyer had to tell us they were at odds, it would jar. Through Lydia she can instead show us, which is always more interesting. She is young, and gauche and sheltered, and learns a lot about the real world during the year we see. "Sacrifice Lydia could appreciate; a smiling sacrifice was much harder to recognise, and very hard indeed to understand."
We also see Mr Chawleigh translated through Lydia. The fatherly/avuncular role he assumes with her is probably what he would have liked to have with Jenny, but she is too sensible and accepting.
Jenny has always loved Adam ("I married him because there was nothing else I could do for him") but although she loves him she has never expected that to be reciprocated. And she never embarrasses or burdens him by expressing her adoration. He is her beloved, but she can only offer him practicalities: money, the food he likes, the right servants, a tidy house. "You'll tell me what you wish me to do - or if I do something you don't like - won't you?" And to Lydia she declares: "I only want to tell you that he'll be comfortable: I'll see to that. You don't think that signifies, but it does. Men like to be comfortable. Well, he will be! That's all!" She declares she will turn a blind eye to any affairs he might have (though notably he turns Julia down on that point) without expecting similar generosity, and acknowledges her expected role as mother of his sons children. "The trend of her mind was practical; she entered into married life in a business-like way, and almost immediately presented the appearance of a wife of several years' standing." She is never his bride, always his wife, with the lack of sentimentality that implies. It isn't until quite far on that they are familiar with each other, and much later of ever that their exchanges are remotely intimate.
At their first formal meeting she surprises him (pleasantly) by not raving over Byron. She listens to what he says, though, and tries to learn more - his adventures in the Peninsula, his farming. They are the only central couple we ever see where her wealth is greater than his, and it's a painful sticking point, not to mention the fact that his fortunes are largely restored by the end.
Jenny, in fact, upsets me on this reading. I hadn't noticed before quite how accepting and submissive she is. It makes her perfect for former soldier Adam, but I feel sad for her. The mask drops during her pregnancy and a few epic tantrums, but it's also made clear that neither she nor Adam will tolerate such outbursts in future. And it only takes one word from him to halt her - it's slightly thrilling but again it's sad that she buries herself so much. She had no expectation of happiness before her marriage - she was raised to please others.
Adam suppresses himself too, of course. In the early months of their marriage he is still crippled by pride and resentment and retreats behind a wall he builds against the vulgarity of wealth that he feels she represents. "When Adam was angry he retired behind a barrier which was as impenetrable as it was intangible." Between Julia and Jenny the refrain is "Easy to despise what you've always had" but for him it's the opposite. He defends what he has always had at nearly all costs, and it is a great wrench for him to be able to treat money with less than disdain. He resents being better treated once the change in his circumstances is known; he makes a point of telling Wimmering and Drummond when he is acting against Mr Chawleigh's advice. He dreads any improvement to Fontley, as does Charlotte, because of the vulgar renovations in Grosvenor Street.
We looked at wealth and class in Ajax - there the particulars were masked; here nobody is in any doubt as to anyone else's status. Everyone understands why Adam and Jenny have married, and consider it a fair bargain on both sides. There's a nice bit where the Patronesses are discussing Jenny's invitation to Almack's, which neither she nor Adam realistically expects. In the end she is admitted for her nobility of character (and practicality, when Julia swoons), not blood, and to annoy the Dowager. The gulf between the nobility and the "Cits" is felt and acknowledged by all parties, although handled more graciously by some than others. Adam's insistence on receiving his father-in-law despite his own preferences and their difference in rank is part of what we are to admire in him. But also Mr Chawleigh mentions that his wife was socially beneath him - and in the end it is Jenny's yeomanry roots that make her a practical housewife and chatelaine, skipping over the merchant class which provides the wherewithal.
It's Aunt Nassington who provides the class education - neater for her to present Jenny and go head-to-head with Mr Chawleigh over matters of form such as dress and adornment. Given that he has previously taken advice from the grotesque Mrs Quarley-Bix...! "Jenny, warned by Lady Nassington, offered her guests no extraordinary entertainment, or any excuse for the ill-disposed to stigmatise her party as pretentious. She relied for success on the excellence of the refreshments for, as she sagely observed to Lydia, guests who had been uncommonly well fed rarely complained of having endured an insipid evening."
There are a few explicit parallels drawn with Harry Smith, to whom Adam is supposed to be known. Those of us who have read Spanish Bride will recognise the story of the brave and lucky injured young officer recuperating in London but left scarred both physically and emotionally, leaving him older than his years. And as I mentioned above, we see the same intractability and intolerance to opposition and impertinence - their obedience to duty and authority must be mirrored by those with whom they have dealings, but they are incapable of recognising their own faults and flaws.
And it's during Adam's recovery that he fell for Julia. Lady Lynton encouraged them, being ignorant of the financial bar, and Oversley apologises for letting them develop impossible dreams: "there's noone I'd liefer have for a son-in-law than you, if the dibs had been in tune, but I knew they weren't, and I ought to have hinted you away." Oversley doesn't believe they are in love with each other, but rather with the idea of each other (the hero, the sibyl) and although Adam will always be in love with the idea of Julia he is over his infatuation with the person herself once he is busy with what he finds more important than love - his duty.
"One could never have everything one wanted in this world, and he, after all, had been granted a great deal: Fontley, and a wife who desired only to make him happy. His heart would never leap at the sight of Jenny; there was no magic in their dealings; but she was kind, and comfortable, and he had grown to be fond of her - so fond, he realised, that if by the wave of a wand he could cause her to disappear he would not wave it. Enchantment had vanished from the world; his life was not romantic, but practical, and Jenny had become a part of it."
Julia on the other hand does not grow up during the book. She cannot see past her dreams of the little white cottage and her dashing soldier; "I can't live if I'm not loved"; only Rockhill who is undeceived is able to manage her. Indeed it may be his experience as the father of teenage girls that gives him that ability. I think Julia will be unbearable and very like Lady Lynton as she ages - maybe that's why Adam's mother likes her so much. One has to wonder if she accepts Rockhill at least partly to sting Adam.
Charlotte and Lambert I think are little more than a plot device to allow for certain logistical necessities, as Heyer has to kill off two intervening siblings between Adam and Lydia as it is to keep their difference in age plausible. But I do enjoy "Lambert says".
I find the novel more timeless than many of the others. That's my sentimentality over baby Giles though, possibly. But the domesticity of Jenny's feeding him, gazing at him, etc, isn't fixed in time as the reported battles are. I'm living that now. So although I feel sorry for Jenny, I love her and I am her, and Civil Contract will always be one of my favourites.
The book ends happily, peacefully and timelessly:
"He gave a shout of laughter, and the pain in her heart was eased. After all, life was not made up of moments of exaltation, but of quite ordinary, everyday things. The vision of the shining, inaccessible peaks vanished; Jenny remembered two pieces of domestic news, and told Adam about them. They were not very romantic, but they were really much more important than grand passions or blighted loves: Giles Jonathan had cut his first tooth; and Adam's best cow had given birth to a fine heifer calf."
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A Civil Contract - Georgette Heyer book club 27
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DeckTheHallsWithBoughsOfHorry · 27/12/2013 15:39
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