The Transformation of Philip Jettan
Mills & Boon, 1923
Setting: Sussex, London, Paris
Time: In the early 1750s, in the reign of George II
So now we’re getting into the kind of territory I have always envisioned when the name Georgette Heyer would come up in conversation over the years. Frock coats and stiff gowns and courtliness and decadence. Times past presented as fairy tales instead of in their stark, terrible reality, with fanciful love stories set against backdrops of elegance and refinement rarely if ever mentioning the plight of most common people—not to mention slavery and cruelty and absolute male dominance in every arena. (Hmm. Correlation?)
Powder and Patch is the story of Philip Jettan, and since the original, and now alternate, title of the book is The Transformation of Philip Jettan, clearly there must be something wrong with this young gentleman from the kickoff. What is wrong with him, you ask? Is he violent? Criminal? Cruel? No. He just prefers working the land in the country than going to balls and writing poetry and dressing up in the (very uncomfortable-sounding) fashions of the day. He doesn’t want to lie to women with practiced flirting and he doesn’t want to gamble and drink and laze about. He just wants to settle down on his family’s land, take care of their dependent farmers and marry the girl next door. (I know, he’s a real jerk.)
When that girl next door – Cleone Charteris is her name, and she is beautiful and spoiled – refuses to marry him because she wants to be courted by a real man who wears wigs and makeup, Philip flees to Paris to get a makeover, with his father’s blessing, because Maurice has always wanted Philip to wear makeup, too.
Philip, of course, learns the lessons they wished for him far too well, and when he returns to England he punishes both Cleone and Maurice for not loving him just as he was. It’s great! Masterful, even. Naturally, forgiveness comes, and he even confesses that he likes being a fashion plate, but Philip will surely always feel the sting of his loved ones wanting him to change so that he might be worthy of their love in return. Which is not something I think is enough addressed in the book. (Though Rachel’s Reading Heyer: Powder and Patch discusses it at hilarious length, just FYI.)
Did I enjoy Powder and Patch? Yes, of course. There are moments of sheer joyful exuberance, especially Philip’s stay in Paris and his success in Parisian society. I laughed out loud more than once, and I felt both furious with and sorry for Cleone, which is the mark of a surprisingly nuanced character in a romance novel, especially one in which the heroine is not even close to being the main character. (It goes Philip, Maurice, Philip’s Uncle Tom, Philip’s friend Jules, Philip’s valet Francois, Cleone’s Aunt Sally, THEN Cleone, in order of importance to the story.) The book is witty and engaging and a lot of fun.
But it is also light as confectionery. Which is totally fine – Heyer famously referred to her work as “good escapist literature,” and I have to agree – and as an avid reader of contemporary romance who has even written more than one thesis on the subject, because I love it, obviously I have nothing against light as confectionery or escapism.
However, I am new to Heyer, and after the occasionally harrowing nature of her contemporaries, the swashbuckling exhilaration of The Black Moth and the history-heavy lessons of The Great Roxhythe, I was not ready to shift gears so abruptly. Yes, I have also read her mystery novels, and they are very much par for their locked-room-country-manor course, for the most part, but as I have traditionally been so hard to convince that historical romance is worth my while, there were times when reading Powder and Patch when I would wonder why I was doing so.
And then I would chuckle at a wry comment or be swept away in a long paragraph on one of Philip’s outfits, and I would be okay. Because Heyer is justly revered as having been the best at what she did. And what she did was produce very detailed books about a time in which she did not live, but which she makes come alive.
Next up is Simon the Coldheart, another of the novels Heyer disliked and withheld from republication in her lifetime. I’ve had pretty good luck with those so far. Can’t wait to get started.
FAVORITE NEW WORD: “Truckling” – behaving obsequiously. An excellent word!
HISTORY LEARNED: Louis XV had a famous mistress known as La Pompadour. But according to Wikipedia’s list of French royal mistresses (check it out, it is eye-opening), she was only one of six official holders of that title, and there were a further known fourteen unofficial ones across the forty-two years of his reign. He was a very busy king.
BUY HEYER FOR BEGINNERS HERE!
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.
