The Convenient Marriage
Heinemann, 1934
Setting: London
Time: 1776
My friend Rachel tells me that this is the first Heyer she ever read, when she was eleven, and it got her immediately hooked. All I can say is, Rachel must not only have been a super precocious kid but also have been weirdly okay with disturbing romances, because this story of a teenager marrying man in his thirties to save her not-much-older sister from a similar fate, and then loving her new life as the plaything of a nobleman who might as well be her father, is not at all the kind of thing I would have liked at eleven.
I don’t think I like it too much, now.
Yes, I can appreciate the depth of historical detail, Heyer’s Georgianisms and her wit is very clear, especially in Rule’s often supercilious conversation and in Horry’s adorable frankness. Some of the side characters are laugh out loud hilarious, especially Horry’s brother Viscount Pelham, who is an improvident gamester and spendthrift but really loves his sister, and Pelham’s well-intentioned friend Sir Roland, who is equal parts helpful and oblivious. Some of their exchanges left me breathless with laughter, as they attempt to wrest Horry from one scandal or another, and if this book had centered on the two of them as a buddy duo bumbling their way around London’s drawing rooms and gentleman’s clubs, a kind of 1770s Bertie Wooster and Gussie Finknottle, then I’d have loved it unreservedly.
But the main focus of the book is the eponymous marriage of convenience between Miss Horatia Winwood, seventeen years old and “barely escaped from the schoolroom,” and the thirty-five year old Marcus Drelincourt, Earl of Rule, who has decided to wed because his sister thinks it’s time. There has long been an understanding between the Drelincourts and the Winwoods, it seems, to unite their ancient and noble families in matrimony, and so the current Earl solicits the hand of Elizabeth Winwood, lovely, suitable and serene. But Lizzie has already given her heart to another, a mere younger son and lieutenant in the Army, so her innocent and naïve, but also brave and practical (and above all, adorable) youngest sister Horatia offers herself to the Earl instead.
You can tell from the outset that Rule is taken with the unconventional Horry. She, fair-minded and incurably honest, points out that she is not a beauty, like her sister, plus she is short and has a stammer. He says he likes it, and they strike a bargain. An alliance, a fortune settled upon her (which will save their family from financial ruin), and they will not interfere in each other’s lives. Quite whether Horry has any idea what she is agreeing to here – that her husband will go ahead and keep at least one mistresses at will after their marriage – is questionable, and that is the problem I have with this whole scenario. Horry is so, so young, not just in years but in experience and maturity.
The other massive age gap so far in Heyer, Avon and Léonie in These Old Shades, bothered me far less than this one, because it developed naturally and organically as the story progressed and then they got married. And Léonie was nineteen and, in many ways, worldly wise beyond her years.
Horry is… not.
At all.
So it seemed kind of predatory for Rule to agree to make the switch from the eldest sister to the youngest, despite his initial, token protest. On the other hand, Elizabeth is only twenty, and while the three year gulf may seem vast to people of that age, by the time you reach Rule’s age, one young person is pretty similar to another, aren’t they? Except that, in modern times, Horry would get married but not yet be able to vote.
I didn’t hate Rule, and I knew this was going to be about an arranged marriage – it told me so in the title – and of course this whole story is a product of its time. But I don’t like to dwell too much upon that time, or that reality that so many young women still face, and so this one not only left me cold, but also really made me upset.
I guess what this book reminds me is that women didn’t really have much of a say in their futures, in some parts of the world they still don’t, and that these often teenaged girls end up controlled by older men who view them as little more than inconveniences – or conveniences, depending on the case.
It was also pretty devastating that Rule, obviously in keeping with the mores of the time, but nonetheless upsetting for that, kept his mistress on the go even after his marriage to a teenage girl. Not that I think our main couple are sleeping together, necessarily – it’s never made explicit, but it does seem like he is waiting for her to grow up a little, for which I suppose we must commend him.
Or we must, if only hadn’t wed a child bride in the first place.
FAVORITE NEW WORD: The entertaining highwayman Mr. Hawkins came through here with some impressive slang, all-but indecipherable to both this reader and his audience in the book, but “Nubbing Cheat” in place of “gallows” may be the best of him. It is a phrase that comes from two obsolete cant expressions: “nub” meaning neck and “cheat” meaning thing. So, the gallows were a “necking thing.” Makes sense.
HISTORY LEARNED: A lot of notables of the time are mentioned here, but my attention was particularly caught by one Mr. Almack, and his wife, who preside over a public ballroom. Now, even I have heard of the powerful Patronesses of Almack’s during the Regency, and since this book was set so much earlier I was surprised to see Almack’s mentioned at all. At first I wondered if Heyer hadn’t made an anachronistic blunder here, but I should have known better: the first Almack’s was a gaming room attached to a coffee house, established in 1762.
Also, Charles Fox again!
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Maura Tan was born in Zanzibar, grew up in Morocco and lives in Singapore, where she is currently studying for her third degree in Contemporary Literature.
