Georgette Heyer Rewrites the Story

My book club recently decided to read a Georgette Heyer novel, and I was the one who ended up choosing which one and hosting the discussion. I picked Regency Buck, because it is the only one of her long list of works that combines mystery elements with the Regency period that she became so well known for evoking in period romances. I found out that it was actually a rewrite of an earlier contemporary murder mystery that she had published in 1933, Why Shoot a Butler?, so I read that one and led the discussion using notes I took on reading the mystery and then rereading the romance novel. I wrote up a very rough essay out of my notes and am not going to polish it; here it is for the benefit of my friends who were not able to be there that night who wanted to know the stuff we discussed.


Georgette Heyer: Same Story, Changed Setting

In showing how Georgette Heyer rewrote her contemporary murder mystery Why Shoot A Butler? as a Regency-period romance with mystery and suspense elements, I’m assuming we all read Regency Buck and are pretty familiar with it, so I’ll go over the plot of Why Shoot a Butler? first in some detail.

Why Shoot A Butler?

1933, south of England, within reach of the Kentish coast.

When barrister Frank Amberley is enroute to his uncle and aunt’s home, Greythorne, he stops to help a woman standing beside a stopped car on a lonely foggy road. A man in the car is shot dead, she is holding a gun, but she says she didn’t do it. Frank drives on and reports it to the police, omitting any mention of the girl, and begins to solve the case.

Dawson, the corpse in the case, was the butler at Norton Manor, home of the late Jasper Fountain. Jasper Fountain had no direct heirs, only a nephew, Basil, whose half-sister Joan is engaged to marry Anthony Corkran, an old school-fellow of Frank. Basil and Joan have taken possession of Norton Manor. Unbeknownst to us is that Jasper had made a last-minute will bequeathing the manor to his grandchildren Shirley and Mark Fountain, children of his disinherited son who died a dissolute drunk in South Africa. Dawson the butler and Collins the valet witnessed the will. When Basil Fountain takes over the manor, the two servants begin to blackmail him because of the will, which they have stolen and torn in half, each keeping a half for security. But Collins shoots Dawson because he suspects the butler of softening towards Mark and Shirley, who are “hiding” under the surname Brown, and who have taken Ivy Cottage in the vicinity to see what they can possibly do to get their inheritance. Dawson made an assignation in the lane with one of the Browns (can’t remember which), and that’s why Shirley comes upon him already shot dead in his car.

There’s a fancy-dress ball at Norton Manor to celebrate Joan’s and Anthony’s engagement. Shirley dresses up and crashes the ball, looking for Dawson’s half of the will. Collins is also looking for it. Frank (the almost-omniscient investigator) sees an 18th-century portrait of an ancestor who looks like Shirley, and he guesses she’s family. He sees her and Collins trying to look in a tallboy and each thwarting the other. While they are both trying to keep the other away, Frank opens the tallboy and finds the half of the will hidden there by Dawson-the-dead-butler.

Mark goes to the manor late one night and threatens to shoot Collins, but he’s so drunk he doesn’t really know what he’s doing or why.

Frank guesses some more. Puts a tail on Mark Brown, but the police don’t think it’s vital, and Basil has the chance to push Mark in the river when he’s reeling home from the pub, drunk as usual. Collins was tailing Mark, trying to stop his damaging the situation further, and tries to save him from drowning, to no avail. Nobody saw Basil, but of course, Frank guesses that it was him.

Frank’s uncle Sir Humphrey Matthews, local Justice etc., goes to Norton Manor with his daughter Felicity and borrows an old book from the library. Basil pays no attention to his book treasures. This book is where Collins hid his half of the will though. Collins is frantic. Sir Humphrey and Felicity stop at the Inn where Shirley is staying after her brother’s death (she doesn’t want to stay alone in Ivy Cottage), and Sir Humphrey accidentally leaves the book there. She finds Collins’ half of the will in it but thinks it was Dawson’s, and she takes it. Sir Humphrey returns for the book and she’s all gracious about it.

Then Greythorne (Frank’s aunt & uncle’s place) is burgled twice, papers and books scattered. Frank guesses that the other half will has gone missing. He still has his half, which had been Dawson’s.

Collins thinks Shirley has Dawson’s half of the will and that the Matthews family have his half. Shirley thinks Collins still has his own half and that she has Dawson’s half, but she has Collins’s half which had been hidden in that book. Frank knows he has Dawson’s half, and he thinks the other half is still in Norton Manor.

Shirley makes an appointment to meet Collins, thinking she can get the missing half from him. Basil tracks her through the woods, trying to kill her. But Frank is also tracking her, and he’s put his own valet, Peterson, into Norton Manor as a butler named Baker, and Baker is trailing Basil everywhere while looking for the will in his off hours. Frank gets Shirley safely out of the wood.

Shirley posts her half of the will to Marion, Lady Matthews, who has seen her resemblance to the older members of the Fountain family, has guessed her relationship, and has guessed that something shady has happened about the inheritance and that’s why Basil and all those Norton Manor servants have been acting so oddly. (Frank and his aunt are really annoyingly omniscient.)

Finally Cousin Felicity remembers to tell Frank that the book had been out of Uncle Humphrey’s hands for ten minutes when he left it with Shirley, and Frank realizes Shirley has half the will and is in danger from Basil twice over, once for knowing about and possessing half the will, and once for being his uncle’s true heir. Nobody had been suspecting Basil because he loves to have company over and to entertain everybody with good food, drink, and all the comforts. He’s the perfect host. Frank suspects him anyway. Because Frank Knows Everything.

Basil kidnaps Shirley, ties her up and takes her to his cottage at Littlehaven on the coast. He has a motorboat that is reputedly powerful enough to cross the Channel to France, and Frank is afraid he’s either taking Shirley there to kill her, or he’ll throw her overboard enroute. Frank and Sergeant Gubbins go tearing after them down to Littlehaven to rescue Shirley. Basil hates confrontations and can’t watch someone suffer, so he’s apologized all over the place to her as he’s weighted and chained her to a little dinghy that he tows behind his big motorboat. He cuts the dinghy loose and it swamps, and Frank reaches it and cuts Shirley free just as she begins to sink.

Basil escapes back to Norton Manor, where he’s arrested. The police egos get in the way and they ignore the sergeant telling them they need to handcuff Basil, so they let him get something from his desk. It’s a gun that he shoots himself in the head with.

Shirley Fountain, sole heiress of Norton Manor, agrees to marry Frank Amberley. He’s arrogant, but he’s extremely clever and always right. She’s bull-headed, but she’s got intelligence and courage aplenty. They’ll make a good pair.

Georgette Heyer apparently knew this book wasn’t as strong as it could have been, and she set out to rewrite it, changing the setting to the Regency Period. By putting the central focus on the heroine, the story gains considerable strength and a much-needed balance between the hero and heroine as the elements of the mystery unfold. If you recently read the Regency romance, skip this summary and go to the bullet list below.

Regency Buck

Judith Taverner, a beautiful young heiress, travels from Yorkshire to London with her younger brother, Peregrine (Perry), to join high society. In a small town where they stop for the night, they meet two important characters without learning their names or relationships to themselves until later in London. One is their gentleman cousin Bernard Taverner, whose manners impress the siblings. The other is a rude gentleman who nearly runs them down at a precarious place on one of the roads outside the town. He treats them badly and insults Judith; they are shocked later to discover that he is their unwilling guardian, Julian, fifth Earl of Worth.

Judith soon becomes a sensation in London, with no less a celebrated personage than Beau Brummel teaching her how to be very popular. She gets many offers of marriage (including one from the Duke of Clarence). Worth does not permit her to marry any one. This initially makes Judith very angry, but she comes to appreciate it later. Cousin Bernard Taverner seems always so kind and attentive, though there is little love lost between him and Worth. Meanwhile Perry, who is handsome, has very little sense and too much money to spare, is always getting into trouble. He is challenged to a duel, gets held up, and nearly gets poisoned. Worth suspects that Bernard is the villain and he sends his brother, Captain the Hon. Charles Audley to watch over Perry. Meanwhile, Bernard tries to convince Judith that it is Worth who is the villain. In the end, Worth provokes Taverner into kidnapping Judith and trying to force her to marry him, and Worth of course rescues her and all ends happily, for the two of them and for Perry too.

Elements of Regency Buck and Why Shoot a Butler that are kept the same, or close:

• First meeting of the hero and heroine: a road accident.
• Romance: the hero falls in love with the heroine at first sight. She takes an instant dislike to him which has to be overcome.
• Rich old guy who has died, and who has a dodgy relative: Jasper Fountain and his dissolute son who died in South Africa. Sir Whatsit Taverner (Judith & Perry’s late father) and his brother the Admiral, Bernard’s father.
• Seemingly nice but homicidal other relative: Basil Fountain, Bernard Taverner.
• Heroine’s younger brother: Mark “Brown” Fountain; a drunk who gets murdered by his cousin. “Perry” Taverner, gambler, bad driver, 19-yr-old kid; gets provoked to fight by Farnaby, who, hired by Perry’s cousin Bernard, is supposed to kill him in a duel, but the duel is stopped because the provocation was done at a very public cock fight and Perry’s guardian finds out; then Perry gets shot at twice on the commons on the way home from another fight, but Worth’s bodyguard shoots back, as does Perry; then Perry gets poisoned by the anonymous gift of special snuff, but Worth suspects and replaces it with a harmless copy; finally a plot is made to knock Perry out and put him aboard a ship for the West Indies where he will never arrive, but Worth has his tiger tailing Bernard and makes Perry come to his house to sign papers but drugs his wine and bundles him off aboard his own yacht for a week; meanwhile, Worth drugs the groom Bernard had persuaded Perry to hire who was to have knocked Perry out, and the groom instead is bundled to the West Indies ship. Perry is saved. It really was a mistake in the first book to kill off the younger brother. I’m glad in the rewrite he gets a happy ending! (See final bullet point here for how this is taken care of.)
• Kidnapping the heroine: Basil takes Shirley to Littlehaven where he tries to drown her. Bernard takes Judith to a little house out in the country to force her to marry him. In each case, the hero is hard on their heels and saves her.
• Saving the heroine where she says “Thanks” in a way to make the hero realize he has a chance: Shirley, chained to the sinking dinghy when Frank gets to her and cuts her free, clings to him and says “Thanks!” Judith, compelled to go with the Prince Regent into a salon of the Pavilion alone where he tries to take advantage of her, faints and comes to with Worth bending over her, and she grips his hand and says (meaningfully) “Thanks!”
• Second set of young lovers as foils to the main pair: Anthony Corkran and Joan Fountain (she’s the younger sister of the villain). Perry Taverner and Harriet Fairford (he’s the younger brother of the heroine).

I found it interesting that Georgette Heyer used so many real people who appear as characters in Regency Buck. Here is a list of the most famous (not all the princes listed here appear in the novel, but they were so interesting that I had to include them all):

• Beau Brummel. Born about 1778, he joined the 10th Hussars regiment which was attached to the Prince of Wales, and it was extremely expensive. Clothes cost £52,000 in today’s money. He was extremely careful with his money, never gambling nor racing until he was older (and no longer in his right mind because of disease). Left the regiment. Fashion expert and companion of Prince Regent; in fact, he was able to continue to be fashionable even after falling out with the Prince. Began to gamble and had to flee to France where he died of syphilis in an insane asylum.
• George, Prince Regent. First son of King George III, b 1762. The King, suffering from porphyria, went mad for a short time 1788-89, and then went mad again in 1811 and did not recover. Both times Parliament appointed George, Prince of Wales, the Prince Regent. He did not take much of an active role in government, leaving most things to his ministers and to Parliament. He was a wastrel who had enormous debts in the 1790s that his father only agreed to clear if he would marry his cousin Caroline of Brunswick. They married, produced a daughter the next year, and parted forever, hating each other. The prince had illegally married Maria Fitzherbert in the 1780s and had a son with her; he reportedly had illegitimate children with a number of mistresses. He was a glutton who was immensely fat; his corset was made for a waist of 50 in. He forced painters of his portraits to take most of his fat off. One odd thing about his appearance in this novel is that in May 1812, when he was supposed to be entertaining in the Pavilion, his Prime Minister was murdered and he had to be in London about the business of forming a new government and getting a new Prime Minister. His only legitimate child, his daughter Charlotte, died in childbirth in 1817. He became the King upon the death of George III in 1820. After Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, the race was on among his younger brothers to produce another legitimate heir to the throne.
• Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. Second son of King George III, b 1763. Career soldier, fought in a number of Napoleonic wars. Resigned as Commander-in-Chief of Army in 1809 because his mistress, Mary Ann Clarke, was supposed to be selling army commissions with his help. But she was working for someone else, it was found, and he was reappointed later. He was married to a German cousin, but they were unhappy together and lived apart. They had no children. He died before his elder brother.
• Prince William, Duke of Clarence. Third son of King George III, b 1765. Had a naval career in his youth and in 1811 was appointed Admiral of the Fleet, strictly an honorary position. Lived with Dorothea Bland “Mrs Jordan,” an actress, for 20 years, having ten children. The affair ended in 1811, reportedly because William was so in debt. He tried to marry Catherine Tylney-Long, but was unsuccessful. William then wed Princess Adelaide, a German princess who was half William’s age. Their two daughters died young, and Adelaide suffered a number of miscarriages. William became king after his brother George IV died. He had no children outlive him.
• Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. Fourth son of King George III, b 1767. Lived with mistresses until death of Princess Charlotte, and then he raced with his unmarried brothers to provide an heir to the throne. He married a German princess and produced Victoria in 1819, who would become Queen Victoria in 1837 when her uncle William died.
• Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. Eighth child and fifth son of King George III. Had a military career. Did not have public love affairs; married his cousin Frederica and they were very happy together. Ascended the throne of Hanover upon death of King William IV (Victoria could not inherit because of her gender.)
• Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex. Ninth child and sixth son of King George III, b 1773. Married Lady Augusta Murray 1793 w/out king’s consent or knowledge; annulled. They had two children. Had at least one mistress, then after Lady Augusta died, he married again. Was Queen Victoria’s favorite uncle.
• Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. Tenth child and seventh son of King George III, b 1774. Married a German princess in 1818 and produced a son and two daughters.