Reading Georgette Heyer: The Black Moth
I began The Black Moth with very little information beyond its biographical context. Heyer first invented the story to amuse her younger brother Boris during an illness; her father, overhearing its telling, encouraged her to write it properly for publication. She was nineteen when the first editor she approached accepted it, launching a prolific career she pursued with startling confidence — no plans for further education or a day job. That confidence paid off: when her father died a few years later, Georgette's writing supported her brothers through school and kept her mother's household running. A very important book for understanding Heyer as a writer, then, but not one with a titanic literary reputation of its own.
After a brief and mysterious prologue featuring an insolent duke writing a letter about a failed romantic affair, Heyer plunges the reader straight into the hurly-burly of a country coaching inn in the early 1750s. Here can be found one Sir Anthony Ferndale, a foppish baronet which is in fact, we are quickly told, a persona sometimes adopted by a disgraced peer, Lord John Carstares (known to his friends as Jack). He tumbled down from the heights of high society six years before after being exposed as a cheat at cards. He has since turned himself into a proficient highwayman, albeit one in the Robin Hood vein. He forwards the better part of his ill-gotten gains to the deserving poor. A year before the book opens, he had the bad luck to hold up a carriage containing his estranged younger brother Richard, which Jack thought was very funny but his sibling found both mortifying and confusing.
Within just a few pages, Jack emerges as a man of honour who also retains a sense of humour about his altered state in life. It is clear from the start that he, rather than the mysterious aristocrat in the prologue, will stand in the role of romantic hero for this book. During a visit from the Carstares family solicitor we learn that Jack's estranged father has now died and he has thus inherited the title of Earl of Wyncham and associated estates. He, though, prefers his disreputable life on the road to returning to high society and dealing with the social consequences of the cheating incident (this betrayal of honour while gambling seems to be of seismic significance to everyone in this book). He would quite like Richard to step into his shoes. Richard, meanwhile, has married Lavinia Belmanoir, who is a high society beauty and crucially sister of the Duke of Andover, our friend from the prologue.
It might seem like I've given away half the plot of the book here, but I promise that all of this happens in just the first dozen pages. Heyer, even in her first novel, showed great skill at conveying plot and character information quickly and without overwhelming the reader. Already, I felt connected to the characters and the scenario that she was presenting. Jack especially. He may have silly opinions about silk breeches, but he is a fundamentally decent person who has sacrificed his own comfort and prestige in order to give his brother the life he desired.
From here, the story jogs along briskly. Jack, despite his repudiation of title and wealth, is set on a course back to his rightful station in life. The universe (and Georgette) does not want him to be a highwayman forever. His true identity is almost discovered again when he holds up a carriage containing a justice of the peace and he is only saved by the fact that said justice is his own erstwhile best friend, Miles O'Hara. Jack wriggles out of that awkwardness, but his outlaw career is once again severely endangered when he fights a roadside duel with none other than the insolent duke of the prologue, whom Jack catches in the act of abducting a very attractive young woman from her aunt's carriage.
So far, so much derring-do. Exactly what I had expected for my first historical Heyer: aristocrats with elaborate wardrobes and complicated honour codes, much dashing about the countryside in carriages and on horseback, and a splendid sprinkling of era-specific slang (more on that below). While the wit exhibited by Jack and the cleverly-sketched minor characters — such as Molly O'Hara and Jim the valet — do show promise, there is little here to elevate it beyond the typical early twentieth century historical adventure novel. Yet there is one major element of this book that to me absolutely prohibits its dismissal as juvenile or derivative. And that is the Black Moth himself.
His Grace the Duke of Andover, or "Devil" to his friends, is an extraordinary character. He hovers menacingly on the edge of the Robin Hood, swashbuckling story I have just described, seemingly without a motive other than to make everyone else uncomfortable. His sister Lavinia's marriage to Jack's unfortunate brother Richard is rather tempestuous. Together with another brother, Andrew, the three Belmanoir siblings seem to exist to be extravagant, without deriving any particular pleasure from their profligate habits. They are perpetually quarrelsome and world-weary, the Duke by far the worst of them. Nobody ever seems to know where he is or what he is up to, either. He scorns predictability and the usual rhythms of society. He flits about the country restlessly, unable to settle to life in either the country or the town. He is always arguing with his family and looming menacingly at debutantes. Heyer gives him the moniker of "Black Moth" because he dresses only in black as a contrast with the apricot and puce and gold worn by every other character. In a novel where men's elaborate costumes receive as much description as women's, this refusal to take part in the general sartorial gaiety marks him as fundamentally apart.
The Duke comes across as almost a nihilist, taking pleasure in nothing and immune to the structures of honour that otherwise rule his social set. He seems incapable of love, either romantically or platonically. He is a fascinating character for a sheltered young woman to have written, a shadow-man who lurks on the periphery of the bright, gay world that she has otherwise created here. He is definitely not good, but he's not purely evil, either. Eventually the romance plot pushes him into the position of Jack's antagonist, but even then there is nothing truly villainous about him. The climax of the book involves another abduction of a young woman, committed by the Duke, yet you feel that his heart is hardly in it and he would probably have got bored before he did anything irreversibly awful. As such, he is allowed to fade away from this incident largely unscathed.
His punishment is of a more karmic kind. He eventually loses his heart, for real, to Jack's bride Diana. The book closes as it opens, with an epistolary epilogue in which the Black Moth acknowledges, but does not really resolve, the tragedy of his unrequited love for another man's wife. I finished it with the feeling that he was the true protagonist, not the swashbuckling aristocratic highwayman who gets the girl, even though we spend much less time with Tracy Belmanoir, Duke of Andover. Heyer could have written a conventional love story interspersed with action sequences. Instead we get this sly portrait of a restless, cynical, grim man who finally realises he has the capacity for love only when it is too late to do anything about it. It isn't romantic, but it is very interesting and even rather sad. I would read this book again, I think, but only to try and fill in the gaps of what "Devil" is up to while the rest of the lavishly-dressed adventurers are cavorting around. Heyer left me wanting to know what the Black Moth was doing while I wasn't in his company. For a romance novel written by a teenager as entertainment for her sick brother, that's a genuine literary achievement.
Three Other Thoughts
- On the morning of a threatened flight from the marital home, neither wife nor husband can drink their morning cup of chocolate in bed, they are so upset. This little gastronomic aside is somehow both childish and endearing.
- In fact, everyone in this book — with the exception of the Black Moth himself — is quite childish most of the time. Is it because Heyer was herself so young, or is she showing how facile the life of the idle rich is/was?
- Jack has a very sensitive aesthetic sense. He cares very deeply about cravats and waistcoats. It's shown that he can sort embroidery silks into precise shades and tones better than any of the female characters. I like this as a trait for a male character.
My Favourite Phrases
From my reading of Heyer's crime fiction, I already know that she is quite handy with a turn of phrase and the period slang that she dug out (or simply invented?) for this book was marvellous. Here is a selection.
- A woman is deplored as a "spendthrift jade".
- Someone declares in a vexing situation that "tis a plaguey nuisance".
- To express sympathy, a character says "my poor lamp!" (I think this means "poor thing").
- When she is crying and crossed in love, Diana says "Oh, are all men such big stupids?".
- Quite regularly, men are described as making someone "a marvellous leg". I think this is a bow or reverence? I love this phrase and yearn for reasons to use it in everyday conversation.
Thanks for reading. I'm making my way through Georgette Heyer's historical novels — you can find all entries here.
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Filed under: Reading Georgette Heyer, Blog, Book Review
