The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

published 1959

 

One of my favourites of Georgette Heyer’s Regency books is The Unknown Ajax, which has a strong crime plot as well as romance, an awful patriarch, and the arrival of a new heir. (Heyer’s best crime book, Envious Casca, in my view combines elements of Unknown Ajax and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas to great effect – my post on HPC having one of my favourite blogtitles

Xmas Murder - en route to the house-party of death)

This excellent story has a lost heir coming to a miserable country house on the Sussex/Kent border - it is rooted in a clear time, 1817, and place, near Rye. The horrible patriarch has been hoping to disinherit him but has failed, two other heirs have died in an accident (this is taken very lightly considering they are close relations of the main family) so he is being brought in to be trained up. He is the result of a terrible misalliance when the son of the house married a ‘weaver’s daughter’ in Yorkshire, and was then cut off by his family.

So Hugo turns up, seen as an outsider and usurper to a family ready to dislike and despise him. They all expect him to talk rough, to have no manners and generally show how low-class he is.

So to the surprise of no reader, he is not like that at all, but sees their assumptions and plays along with their expectations.

Naturally there is a young woman, Anthea, and it has been decided by her grandfather that she must marry her cousin the new heir.

She asks her mother ‘with careful restraint: ‘Does it ever occur to you, Mama, that my grandfather is a lunatic?’

‘Frequently!’ Mrs Darracott assured her…’That is – oh dear, what am I saying? Of course not.’

‘He’s a mediaeval bedlamite.’

So Anthea decides she must be very cold to the potential husband, even though she is secretly charmed by him. This is all done predictably but well: the family slowly learns he is not as he appears, and Hugo and Anthea have wonderful conversations as they get to know each other: a delight.

But in addition to all this there is a very strong plot about Anthea’s brother Richmond, the wild young man of the family who is being held at home by his over-protective mother and grandfather, and hasn’t had a proper education.

Hugo, the outsider, can see that he is headed for trouble: he suspects Richmond has taken up with the local smugglers. When he cautiously suggests this, he is told it is impossible. The family has no problem with smugglers, and drink brandy on which no tax has been paid, but would draw a distinction between that and helping them. But Richmond is young and over-protected: does he understand the difference?

***The smugglers got me thinking ot this plot element in other favourite books, so I am reserving some disussion for another post this week...

The action involves the Dower House as well as the big house (mmm, I do love a Dower House, always a sign of trouble, may have to collect instances of them, too) culminating in an absolutely fantastic scenario where the newcomer has to organize a family tableau - almost a pageant - to get the young man out of trouble. It is intensely visual and would make a wonderful screen drama. It also contains one of my favourite lines in all of Heyer, where the hideous old man says ‘WILL you make way for your betters, oaf?” to a Sergeant. I’d quite like to have seen him carted off to jail, but had to make do with adding this phrase to my own idiom. (In case not clear – I always have resisted the idea that anyone is better than anyone else. Unlike Georgette Heyer I believe. I use the phrase with irony)

The characters are all well-drawn and filled out  - I particularly liked the Lady Aurelia, ‘a Roman-nosed matron in a turban’, 

who at one point saves the day when she addresses her grown-up dandy son in these frankly unbelievable words:

‘You have no need to trouble yourself about anything, for Mama is here, and will make you better directly.’

And Claud is shown as being easily laughed at and foolishly vain – but he also sees and speaks truths that other people apparently can’t.

More on the ethics and economics of smuggling, and of the events in the book, in that future post...

The burnt orange walking dress (second picture)  was very popular when I used it in a Jane Austen post last year, so why not bring it out again – it is from a few years earlier than the setting of the book, but people then and now hung onto nice clothes….

A walking dress, or carriage costume - NYPL Digital Collections

Walking dress ; Drawing room dress - NYPL Digital Collections

Walking dresses - NYPL Digital Collections

Evening full dresses - NYPL Digital Collections

[The Glengarry habit, September 1817.] - NYPL Digital Collections

Lady in a turban, Paris museums