These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer Book Club pt2

[PrematurelyAirconditioned]

Surely you must have read it by now?

To start us off, I think the thing that struck me most reading it back to back with Black Moth was how exactly she'd transposed the characters from BM. Andover's conventional best friend, his frivolous brother and sister, his boring brother-in-law, the woman he abducted, and her husband (complete with watered-down highwayman past) are all there, just as before, and it makes the melodramatic plot of These Old Shades infinitely more fun.

That's very true.

Also there is a more liberal and worldly wise air to it than other later books (except maybe Venetia where heroine is not bothered by various scandals) that arise.

I love all the romances but the tone of understanding , love and tolerance here (heroine brought up in an inn which seems to be barely better than a brothrl)is a bit different to say regency buck where heroine is in disgrace for racing alone to Brighton. Can't see Leonie putting up with being treated like Judith.

I can't decide If that reflects changing time or styles.

Also this was a much more polished book than black moth which had some fairly sketchy characters in (can't even remember heroines name off top of my head).

Oh dear, I might be in disgrace here as I've not read These Old Shades (read it very recently though!) and am getting stuck in to Cotillion instead...

[rebel emoticon]

I do like These Old Shades - and I think Leonie is great - but, if I'm picking holes, I slightly wish Leonie had more of a chance to consider the option of other men before she fell for Avon - her adulation of him seems mainly because he's less horrible than her previous "guardians" which doesn't seem like the ideal basis to choose a husband.

Mind you, I guess Leonie's behaviour probably wouldn't be accepted in anyone other than a Duchess so probably best that she married Avon after all.

Just dutifully picked it up from the library this afternoon! Back soon.

I think Leonie does have a decent attempt at a Paris season doesn't she? She certainly flirts with the charming and handsome Prince amongst many others and she spends loads of time with Rupert. She gets far more chance to check out the field than some GH heroines.

It does show Heyer's snobbery up something chronic though, with all this Princess and the Pea "blood will out" crap.

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.

Well it's not impossible for a couple who marry in 1780 to give birth to their first child in 1787 who would then be 28 at Waterloo. Barbara might be 25? I can't remember whether her age is specified - but I grant you the fact that the youngest Vidal is 18 in Infamous Army (per Wikipedia) means that Mary must have been getting on a bit when she had him. I can't remember how old she is in Devil's Cub, I'll have to keep an eye out for it when I read it next.
The chronology at www.georgette-Heyer.com/chron.html agrees with your dates though - I think she just wanted to bring the Avons back one last time at Waterloo and was prepared to stretch things a bit to make it happen.

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.

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

Oh well in that case there's no problem with the dates at all - Mary would be 30 when she had Barbara and 37 when she had her youngest son.

You're right, it just doesn't work. It's been a while since I read IA.

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?

I thought she dodged the rent boy assumptions reasonably well actually. And Avon has a string of character witnesses to prove his heterosexuality, no matter how high his heels and how fetching his chicken-skin fan. GH has a couple of gay characters in her modern detective novels, but I can't think of any in her Regency stuff.

What I did think was a bit weird was all the "Oh Noes, you cannot take that mere child into a brothel/gambling house - it's so unsuitable!" from 3rd parties who think that Leon is a 19 year old boy. 19, you notice, not twelve.

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 .

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 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?

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 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.

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 .

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