If HeroesandHeartbreakers were a traditional magazine, I’d pose the question, “What kind of Heyer father are you?”
Or what kind of Heyer father is your dad or your husband or brother—you get the drift. I thought of some likely categories:
• Father Knows Best
• Mr. Mom
• Helicopter Dad
• Hands-off Dad
• Father of Trophy Child(ren)
In answering the Heyer question, I considered the paters in three well-known Heyers, Powder and Patch (Sir Maurice Jettan), The Masqueraders (Robert, Viscount Barham), and Cotillion (Lord Legerwood).
I thought initially that the most modern father would be Freddy’s dad, Lord Legerwood, but by the time I finished, I decided that many of today’s fathers are a cross between Viscount Barham and Sir Maurice Jettan.
Powder and Patch was published by Mills and Boon in 1923. Its original title was The Transformation of Philip Jettan. Set in the Georgian period, it is full of powdered wigs and patches and poetry – and that’s just the men. Here’s a link to Jo Beverley’s marvelous review at All About Romance.
According to the back cover (Harlequin edition 2004), young Philip Jettan is too much the country bumpkin to attract Cleone Charteris, the local belle:
“With his father’s encouragement, Philip departs for the courts of Paris, determined to acquire the social graces and airs of the genteel—and convince Cleone that he is the man most suited for her hand.”
That’s a little misleading, since Sir Maurice and Cleone are hand in glove conspirators, determined to have their handsome, “unpolished cub” shined up into a proper gentleman. There’s a definite tinge of Father Knows Best (particularly since Maurice has raised Philip alone after his wife Maria died). Philip is quick to complain to his sophisticated Uncle Tom about his “outrageous sire,” like to disinherit his son for his irreproachable and unblemished reputation, but Sir Maurice wants Philip to become a man of the world.
After he is rebuffed by the fair Cleone, Philip does what his father asks and heads to Paris. Months later, Maurice must be thinking, “be careful what you wish for,” because Philip returns a changed man.
This being Heyer, most of the changes are on the surface, but both Heyer and Philip enjoy giving Sir Maurice a taste of his own medicine, such as in the letter Philip sends his father, ensconced in the countryside, when he returns to London,
“ … as you will observe by the above written address, I have returned to this most barbarous land. For how long I shall allow myself to be persuaded to remain I cannot tell you, but after the affinity of Paris and the charm of the Parisians, London is quite unsupportable.”
The Masqueraders (1928) is set in the time period just after the failed Jacobite Rebellion. I would take issue with the description on the back cover, which says,
“Temporarily abandoned by their scapegrace father, Prudence and Robin Lacey are forced to masquerade as the opposite sex to avoid capture by their political enemies.”
If scapegrace means careless, that is inaccurate since Prue and Robin’s father never stops pulling the strings to control his children’s destiny, even though they are often separated because of the exigencies of their circumstances (the fallout after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s unsuccessful attempt to become king).
Lord Barham, never shy with self-praise, says to Sir Fanshawe (Prue’s mountainous and perspicacious suitor),
“My children are very well. They have beauty and wit—a little. But in me there is a subtlety such as you don’t dream of, sir.”
In the same way that it’s satisfying when a Balogh character in the Slightly series is able to resolve a difficulty without help from Wulfric, when Lord Barham’s children extricate themselves from their double life—with just a little help from Papa—the reader is delighted.
Barham is both self-congratulatory—about his children’s achievements, for which he takes almost full credit—and interested in turning the conversation back to that most interesting topic: himself. Barham, in today’s parlance, is somewhat of a hovering helicopter father with his two trophy children.
One of the most delightful aspects of reading Georgette Heyer is being introduced to her secondary characters, like the witty and charmingly urbane Lord Legerwood, the bemused father of Cotillion’s hero Freddy.
Cotillion was published in 1953 and is set at the height of the Regency. Legerwood is a traditional father, leaving the raising of his children to his wife, very much in the aristocratic style. He watches Freddy rise to the occasion of his pretend betrothal to Kitty Charing, in the process turning from an amiable and unprepossessing duckling into a determined and savvy swan.
Don’t mistake traditional for hands off though; when Legerwood fears that Freddy needs to marry an heiress, he says to him,
“If you’ve steered your barque of Point Non-Plus, come to me for a tow, not to a chancy heiress!”
But loyal Freddy sticks to his guns, and insists that his engagement to Kitty is genuine, leaving Legerwood to tell his wife Emma that they should do nothing, “Except, perhaps, enjoy a diverting episode.”
Freddy’s imagination and powers of planning are stretched to the limit by his adventures with Kitty, and no one is more surprised and pleased than his father. When Freddy comes upon the solution of having Kitty stay with his sister Meg, his father takes notice.
Lord Legerwood, in the act of raising his claret-glass to his lips, lowered it again, and regarded his son almost with awe. “These unsuspected depths, Frederick — ! I have wronged you!”
“Oh, I don’t know that, sir!” Freddy said modestly. “I ain’t clever, like Charlie, but I ain’t such a sapskull as you think!”
“I have always known you could not be, my dear boy.”
Hopefully the pendulum of parenting will shift back to a more respectful and empowered view of fatherhood, because Legerwood allows his grown-up children the privilege of making their own mistakes and finding their own solutions, thereby gaining a great deal of wisdom.
As Lord Legerwood says to Kitty, “I like Freddy’s engagement very well, you know. It has done him a great deal of good.” Although it is tempting to delve into the mysteries of omniscient fatherhood a la Duke of Avon, I’ll close here and turn the tables and ask which fathers in the pages of Georgette Heyer seem believable today?
*P.S. The thread of my personal life that wove through my pre-blog musing was my daughter’s quest to find a summer internship in New York City...bear with me, gentle reader, this will all make sense. My dd kept saying, why aren’t you guys helping me get an internship—all the other parents are (shades of Viscount Barham) and we were thinking, Hey, almost-college-senior, time to step up (Lord Legerwood). Although I haven’t done a poll of her friends’ parents, I think the deck is stacked towards parents who pull strings...and whose self-esteem is somehow bound up with their children’s lives (Sir Maurice Jettan). As it turned out, she found an internship at a NYC publishing house on her own, but it provided an amusing real-life point-counterpoint to my thoughts about fathers in Heyer’s world.
Janet Webb, Book Lovers Resource
