Georgette Heyer

I had to wrack my brain for the line from the ditty that prompted the title of Georgette Heyer’s Friday’s Child. I finally got it: Friday’s child is loving and giving.

This phrase absolutely describes poor little Hero Wantage, a 17 year-old of good birth left destitute by her father and at the mercy of an aunt and her three daughters. Needless to say she is treated as a poor relation, and with little more respect than a servant. (Cinderella trope here.)

But then along comes the young Viscount Sheridan, Sherry to his friends, who has known her since they were both children together on adjoining estates.

His offer of marriage to his long-term sweetheart Isabella has just been rejected. Sherry needs to marry because he’s short of money and can’t get access to his considerable fortune until he either comes of age or takes a wife. In a fit of pique, to which he is often prone, he vows to marry the first woman he sees.

Hero is sitting on a wall as he rides by and he stops to greet her. After a conversation where he learns that her aunt is forcing her to either become a governess or marry a curate, he shares his own problems, telling her what he has threatened to do.

And so the story of Hero and Sherry begins.

Hero is a naive innocent in the world of the fashionable ton, and as such manages to commit many misdemeanours, all unwittingly, and much to the chagrin of her young husband.

Hero has her ears boxed a few times by the hapless Sherry, but despite everything she is always loving and giving. I’m not sure what boxing someone’s ears actually means, but in this case it seems to be a sharp slap to the side of the face. Poor Hero! She has been in love with Sherry since she was six. Sherry on the other hand still thinks of his bride as the adoring child who followed him everywhere in his early years, and who he once bullied unmercifully. How Sherry comes to terms with his marriage and learns to love Hero is a story that develops through many hilarious mis-adventures.

Despite it’s rather peculiar premise Friday’s Child is in my opinion one of the funniest books in the Georgette Heyer collection. The dialogue is delicious, the characters quite lovable, if totally misguided, and the plot quite complex. Here are duels, deceits, abductions and intrigues galore.

I highly recommend this one. Another reviewer said of Georgette Heyer  ‘I’ve read her books ragged.’ I don’t know if it’s possible to read an e-book ragged, but if so I will certainly do it.