The Captive Reader

Why did it take me so long to read The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer?  Hayley and Lisa had promised me I would love it and they were right.  I adored it.  It is one of the funniest books I have read in years and easily one of Heyer’s best novels.  I spent years shying away from it, discouraged by the promise of adventurous elements that had turned me off of some of Heyer’s other novels, but those were wasted years.  I shall just have to make up for them with frequent rereading in years to come.

Eustacie has no wish to marry her sober, practical cousin Sir Tristram Shield but, nevertheless, promises her dying grandfather that she will do so.  After his death and facing the threat of removal to Tristram’s mother’s home in Bath, Eustacie decides to run away…and runs straight into her fugitive cousin Ludovic, who fled to France when accused years before of murder and the theft of the titular talisman ring but who is now a free-trader.  It’s just the sort of glamourous crime to appeal to Eustacie.  The two adventurous young people strike it off immediately and while Eustacie is in raptures over her first real adventure, her more practical companions – Tristram and her new friend Miss Sarah Thane – help to keep Ludovic safe as they work to prove who really committed the crimes that Ludovic is accused of.

I can’t decide who I like best in this book.  Ludovic is charmingly young and energetic and the level-headed Tristram is my very favourite sort of Heyer hero (complete with an excellent sense of humour, which is just what you need when hanging around Ludovic and Eustacie) but it is the women who are really delightful.

The French-born Eustacie is miraculous.  Adorably hyperbolic and unfailingly romantic, she indulges in the most hair-raising fantasies and her sense of the dramatic is second to none.  Her conversations with Tristram and the indulgent Miss Thane are masterpieces.  Her dialogue with Tristram after they grudgingly find themselves engaged displays Heyer at the height of her powers:

‘Well, I suppose you will have to reconcile yourself to a period of quiet.’

‘Quiet?’ gasped Eustacie.  ‘More quiet?  No, and no, and no!’

He could not help laughing, but said: ‘Is it so terrible?’

‘Yes, it is!’ said Eustacie.  ‘First I have to live in Sussex, and now I am to go to Bath – to play backgammon!  And after that you will take me to Berkshire, where I expect I shall die.’

‘I hope not!’ said Shield.

‘Yes, but I think I shall,’ said Eustacie, propping her chin in her hands and gazing mournfully into the fire.  ‘After all, I have had a very unhappy life without any adventures, and it would not be wonderful if I went into a decline.  Only nothing that is interesting ever happens to me,’ she added bitterly, ‘so I dare say I shall just die in child-bed, which is a thing anyone can do.’

Sir Tristram flushed uncomfortably.  ‘Really, Eustacie!’ he protested.

Eustacie was too much absorbed in the contemplation of her dark destiny to pay any heed to him. ‘I shall present to you an heir,’ she said, ‘and then I shall die.’  The picture suddenly appealed to her; she continued in a more cheerful tone: ‘Everyone will say that I was very young to die, and they will fetch you from the gaming-hell where you –‘

‘Fetch me from where?’ interrupted Sir Tristram, momentarily led away by this flight of imagination.

‘From the gaming-hell,’ repeated Eustacie impatiently.  ‘Or perhaps the Cock-Pit.  It does not signify; it is quite unimportant.  But I think you will feel great remorse when it is told to you that I am dying, and you will spring up and fling yourself on your horse, and ride ventre à terre to come to my death-bed.  And then I shall forgive you, and –‘

‘What in heaven’s name are you talking about?’ demanded Sir Tristram.  ‘Why should you forgive me?  Why should – What is this nonsense?’

Eustacie, thus rudely awakened from her pleasant dream, sighed and abandoned it.  ‘It is just what I thought might happen,’ she explained.

Miss Sarah Thane, though older and significantly wiser than Eustacie, is equally game for adventure.  Travelling to London with her brother, she meets her new friends when an injured Ludovic takes shelter at the inn where the Thanes are staying and immediately decides to assist in any way she can.  The situation is a serious one but Sarah embraces what comedy comes her way.  The young lady has a decidedly satirical bent that only Tristram is intelligent enough to appreciate.  It is one of Heyer’s best matches.

I must also put in a word for Thane, Sarah’s elder brother, whose obtuse steadiness is just what the group needs.  As long as the cognac is safe in the inn’s cellar, he remains unruffled.

All ends well, of course.  The real murder is caught, two excellent couples are paired off, and one very happy reader is shown how wrong her preconceptions were.