“You do not admire our friend? Pray, do not judge him by his exterior. He may possess a beautiful mind.” – The Black Moth, Chapter II
As might be expected of a book written in one’s teens, Georgette Heyer’s first novel, The Black Moth, is a swashbuckling tale of adventure. And yet The Black Moth is much more than that. Yes, it has a highwayman, swordfights, a lost earl, a wicked duke, and a damsel in distress, but there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Aged just seventeen when she made up her lively tale of romance and adventure, Georgette originally devised it as a serial story for her brother Boris, five years her junior and recovering from an illness. As she explained years later, the family had removed to Hastings on the English south coast for his convalescence and she and twelve-year-old Boris were bored, so she set about entertaining him. One can imagine Boris and perhaps even his younger brother, Frank (then aged seven), held in thrall as, chapter by chapter, Georgette told them the story of Jack Carstares, the disgraced Earl of Wyncham turned highwayman, and his enemy, “Devil” Belmanoir, Duke of Andover. The boys must have been enthusiastic for she went on writing until the story was finished. Her father, hearing some it, urged her to write it out “in her best copperplate” and submit it for publication. It was good advice, for just after her eighteenth birthday, Georgette Heyer received her first publishing contract and in September 1921, at the age of nineteen, her first novel hit the bookstands.
One hundred years later, it is still selling.
2021 will mark the centenary of The Black Moth, a tribute to Heyer’s remarkable skill even at the tender age of seventeen. So what is it about this adolescent novel that keeps people reading? For starters it’s a book that comes to life from the very first sentence:
Clad in his customary black and silver, with raven hair unpowdered and elaborately dressed, diamonds on his fingers and in his cravat, Hugh Tracy Clare Belmanoir, Duke of Andover, sat at the escritoire in the library of his town house, writing.
So begins The Black Moth, the first paragraph and page introducing us to the villain of the piece: a man both attractive and sinister, Belmanoir is sneering, powerful and sardonic, and the reader is intrigued. The letter he writes and its postscript reveal both the Duke’s arrogance and his disreputable past, but there is also friendship and affection for his friend, Frank Fortescue, evident in these lines. Heyer created a compelling character in a single page, and this was to become one of the hallmarks of her novels.
From the Prologue featuring ‘Devil” Belmanoir, Heyer dives straight into the main story – that of Jack Carstares, Earl of Wyncham, highwayman and sometime aristocrat in the guise of the very debonair Sir Anthony Ferndale. Jack is a classic hero, genial, handsome and, in what was to become true Heyer style, a fastidious and tasteful dresser. He is also good with horses, handy with his sword and fists, and definitely a man of honour. It is this last upon which the plot of the novel depends, for Jack has given up his earldom and spent the past six years abroad, cruelly separated from his family and friends, and with his reputation in tatters because he has confessed to… shock! horror!… cheating at cards. To the modern reader this may seem a ludicrous reason to give up one’s life, but in Heyer’s world and in the world of eighteenth-century England, gambling debts were considered “debts of honour”; to be deemed a cheat was akin to being a traitor. Of course, our Jack is no cheat but a loyal loving brother. as we discover in the very first chapter. The second chapter reveals him to be kind, generous and fond of a joke. The dialogue flows, Heyer’s love of debonair, finely-dressed men with decided taste is established and the stage is set.
It is worth remembering that The Black Moth was written as a serial. Of course, we cannot know how much of the story Heyer wrote in advance of each day’s telling or whether one of more chapters comprised an episode but the chapter headings do suggest that she told her brothers one chapter at a time and it took her eight chapters to introduce her audience to all the main players in her melodrama. Within each episode, however, there is vibrant dialogue, excellent characterisation and several intriguing sub-plots. Though the story is young in many ways and typical of its time and genre, Heyer’s skill – even in her teen years – is undeniable, and there is a depth of emotion in Jack, Lady Lavinia, Richard and even in his Grace of Andover, that is surprising. The section in Chapter VIII, “The Biter Bit”, where she reveals some of Jack’s innermost thoughts, touching on “all the old misery and impotent resentment”, is surprisingly moving. Heyer’s characters are flesh-and-blood and for all its fun and frivolity, there are moments of real pathos in The Black Moth.
While it has been suggested, given her tender years, that Georgette’s father may have had a hand in the writing of The Black Moth, there is no evidence of this. Certainly, her father, George Heyer, read her manuscripts, just as she read his, but his writing style – as seen in his poems and short prose pieces – are rather different from his daughter’s. He certainly checked his daughter’s syntax, grammar, French phraseology and very likely helped in the creation of some of the poems in her novels (most notably in The Transformation of Philip Jettan, aka Powder and Patch), but the style and prose of all of the books that she wrote after her father’s sudden death in 1925 show clearly that from the very first Georgette Heyer’s novels were very much her own.
The Black Moth is not without its flaws, there are stereotypes here and unlikely coincidences and high romance, but as a first novel and as a portent of things to come, it is a worthy beginning and well-deserving of its centenary in print.
— Jennifer Kloester
