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Contents (80)
  1. CONTENTS
  2. ACTING ON IMPULSE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. INTRODUCTION
  5. “A PROPOSAL TO CICELY”
  6. INTRODUCTION
  7. A PROPOSAL TO CICELY
  8. THE END
  9. READING “A PROPOSAL TO CICELY”
  10. “THE LITTLE LADY”
  11. INTRODUCTION
  12. THE LITTLE LADY
  13. I.
  14. II.
  15. III.
  16. THE END
  17. READING “THE LITTLE LADY”
  18. “LINCKES’ GREAT CASE”
  19. INTRODUCTION
  20. LINCKES’ GREAT CASE
  21. I.
  22. II.
  23. III.
  24. IV.
  25. V.
  26. VI.
  27. VII.
  28. THE END
  29. READING “LINCKES’ GREAT CASE”
  30. “THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST”
  31. INTRODUCTION
  32. THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST
  33. THE END
  34. READING “THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST”
  35. “ACTING ON IMPULSE”
  36. INTRODUCTION
  37. ACTING ON IMPULSE
  38. I.
  39. II.
  40. III.
  41. IV.
  42. THE END
  43. READING “ACTING ON IMPULSE”
  44. “WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?”
  45. INTRODUCTION
  46. WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?
  47. THE END
  48. READING “WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?”
  49. “THE CHINESE SHAWL”
  50. INTRODUCTION
  51. CONT
  52. THE CHINESE SHAWL
  53. I.
  54. II.
  55. III.
  56. IV.
  57. V.
  58. VI.
  59. VII.
  60. VIII.
  61. THE END
  62. READING “THE CHINESE SHAWL”
  63. “THE OLD MAID”
  64. INTRODUCTION
  65. THE OLD MAID
  66. THE END
  67. READING “THE OLD MAID”
  68. “LOVE”
  69. INTRODUCTION
  70. LOVE
  71. I.
  72. II.
  73. III.
  74. THE END
  75. READING “LOVE”
  76. THE SEARCH FOR “ON SUCH A NIGHT”
  77. GEORGETTE HEYER’S BIBLIOGRAPHY
  78. FURTHER READING
  79. COMING SOON!
  80. OCTOBER 29, 2019

It was quite heartening to learn that that of the four 2GB radio recordings still in existence, however, all were radio dramas, and I found the listings for them on Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digital collection, in radio magazine Wireless Weekly, which began publication in 1922 and – astonishingly – only came to an end in 2001, then under the title Electronics Australia. I dove into the Wireless Weekly edition for the day of the “On Such a Night” broadcast, and discovered yet more information I didn’t have before: the story was read over the airwaves by one Dorothea Vautier. To wit:

11.45: Dorothea Vautier—On Such a Night, by Georgette Heyer (Story)

Oooh! Now we had a name!

But who the hell was Dorothea Vautier?

It turned out that she was something of a radio glamour girl of 1930s Sydney radio. She became host of the Australian Women’s Weekly radio sessions in 1935, first on 2UW and then 2GB, and was hailed by Wireless Weekly as “one of Sydney’s most attractive broadcasters” in 1938. Now, given that the Australian Women’s Weekly had a positive addiction to serializing Georgette Heyer’s novels, as well as publishing several of her short stories over the years, and that Dorothea Vautier read the story, one might have thought that the “Australian magazine” mentioned in Jen’s biography, and to which the story was initially sold was, in fact, the Women’s Weekly all along. Maybe they just forgot to publish it, and only aired it on the radio? Because I had personally checked every edition of the magazine from the entirety of 1935 – 1940, as had Jen, as had others, and it simply wasn’t there.

So where was this story published? And if it wasn’t in the Women’s Weekly, why was their radio-based poster girl the one to read it on air?

Next, it was time to look into Dorothea Vautier. Was there the slightest chance she was still alive? And, total long shot time, would it be possible that she, or her heirs, could have archives of her radio career that included the story, or even that she might perhaps remember what the story – that she read aloud, once, eighty-two years ago – was about?

I could only ask, right? But first, I had to find her.

Was she the Dorothea Vautier who produced a slim volume of stories and poems, circa. 1931, entitled The Story of Teddy Koala, with illustrations by Noel Burnet of Koala Park? Sadly, no dedication page or identifying information is present in that book, but it seemed likely.

I thought I was on her track, when I found a listing on familytreecircles.com, tantalizingly detailing the marriage of one Dorothea May Vautier. But when I dug further, that Miss Vautier married a Charles Roger Darvall in Victoria in 1931, and further reading in the Wireless Weekly archive led to the news that our Dorothea Vautier was married to one Bill Power, and moreover that in 1939 she had moved to the US to try her hand at radio announcing over there.