These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer Book Club pt2

Oh god when Harry dies

Tdh as jessamy in Frederica or the boy with debts in Frederica

Would have to be a real teenager for Leonie I think, somebody not famous yet. Sean Pertwee is my favourite for any older pokerfaced hardcase duke roles going. Also for the next Dr Who but I digress.
Oh wouldn't it be lovely if the Beeb were a whole series of GH TVmovies? Proper Sunday drama slot. Tyger Drew Honey's maturing nicely for GH casting...

I do prefer the later regency novels. An not sure Jude law is quite saturnine enough. Trying to think who would be .

The elderly admirer is Sir Bonamy Ripple, in False Colours.

Oh yes IShall. I missed all the double entendres about "mounting" in one or two of the books. "I wish I had the mounting of you" is portrayed as meaning "I wish I could give you a decent horse to ride" but clearly (reading with adult eyes now) could mean something quite different .

I just thought the people who met them in Paris assumed Léon was Avon's slave in all ways, another feather in Avon's cap of outrageousness. It's just really funny to read when you think of it that way: "He's not as innocent as you may think" "Seeing you with that child at your feet fills me with disgust" etc. Combined with Avon's mid-sentence comedic pauses ("I give you that chain as - er - hire") it just came over as even more arch and witty than perhaps was intended. And I think a pretty serving boy in an inn could certainly make some tips without giving everything away. I think it just me being smutty.

Didn't get any of the references to courtesans etc when I first read it either so dd will be fine.

That book is annoying me now with the elderly admirer - will rack my brains to think of it.

I was thinking about the rent boy stuff in the shower this morning (only place I get time to myself to think these days ) - presumably the punters would have realised she wasn't a he, therefore defeating the object? Or would Leonie have been giving blowjobs, and not actual sex?

There's another confirmed bachelor in a book which I can't remember offhand - hugely wealthy, worshipped at the feet of someone for years, and finally was talked into proposing to her, so that she could "make him comfortable". He wore a corset and was grossly overweight. I think most books have at least one minor character who is gay. She goes with the times though in not having any female gay characters, although there are a couple of mentions of so and so and her "particular friend" who are quite eccentric and out of the fashionable world.

(Dh has just read this over my shoulder and is that the books I'm "letting" DD2 read are full of depravities - "She's only 14, she doesn't need to know about that sort of stuff yet!". Bless him, he has no idea the sort of talk in school playgrounds . Plus, interestingly, all of that went completely over my head when I first read GH at about 12 - all the rape, mounting a mistress, soul of a courtesan, stuff. Anyone else who read GH as a young teenager find the same?

But was the 3rd party, Hugh Davenport who had realised that Leon was in fact a girl?

I've started reading 'Devils Cub' again. it's so interesting to see how they've followed on.

I think there are gay characters in GH Regency books, but usually they are described as "confirmed bachelors" or similar. It's never explicit but then it wouldn't have been, I guess.

I always read it as being that Leon looks too angelic and pure to be taken into dens of vice. Obviously if he looked a bit raddled it would be ok .

So I've been sniggering throughout the first half at all the rentboy assumptions all the characters seem to be making about Léon. Or are they? What do we know about GH? Do we think she was well aware of the plight of poor young pretty boys?

Mary is 20 in Devil's Cub. Barbara is 25 in An Infamous Army.

I had always assumed that Avon in the '45 rebellion, and there IS a mismatch with the dates which make it impossible for Vidal and Mary to be the ages they are supposed to be in An Infamous Army. But we will just have to forgive her for this, apparently GH loved the characters so much she just couldn't resist bringing them back for a final adventure! Also gave her a chance to create a feisty heroine who is obviously a descendant of Leonie and Vidal.

Mid 18th Century moral codes were indeed very different to those of the Regency period. After the French and American revolutions in the 1780s, free-thinkers, political dissent and liberal social attitudes fell out of favour in the UK and became associated with anarchy, violence and the breakdown of law and order. The Prince Regent and his brothers were not popular with the general public - their mistresses, illegitimate children, debts, divorces and all-round scandalous behaviour resulted a backlash which lasted throughout the reign of Quen Victoria. GH spells this out quite clearly in several of her Regency novels featuring plain-speaking Dowagers (Arabella, False Colours, the Foundling) who bemoan the "mealy-mouthed" younger generation, and whose language and opinions shock their grandchildren.

Maybe GH was confused, but if it refers to the 1715 rebellion, then the timescale would work. Certainly she refers to Elector George, ie George I. And Avon being half French could easily have been a catholic. There was none of the hoohar of finding a protestant priest that there was in Devils Cub, they were happy for the cure to marry them.