“THE CHINESE SHAWL”

INTRODUCTION

Somewhat surprisingly, Heyer’s seventh short story, “The Chinese Shawl” was first published in The Quiver, in October 1923. Founded in 1861 as a religious magazine, for its first forty years The Quiver originally concentrated on articles of “a highly moral and improving nature” and was “overwhelmingly pious.” In 1909, however, a new editor was appointed. Herbert Dakin Williams reinvigorated the magazine, eschewing “goody-goodism” and “mere sentimentalism” while remaining committed to retaining the high moral ground. Through the War years, The Quiver published E.F. Benson’s novel, Michael (1915-16) and H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook (1918-19). In the post-War period it published Jerome K. Jerome’s Anthony Strong’nth’arm (1922-23) and Warwick Deeping’s series The Green Caravan (1926). By this time the magazine had “shifted its base from a religious to a woman’s magazine, albeit with strong moral overtones.” It was a crusading magazine, with an “Army of Helpers” who diligently raised funds for good works.

“The Chinese Shawl” was neither improving nor overtly moral, but rather a quiet story of struggle and luck with a little romance thrown in for good measure. It was Heyer’s only short published in The Quiver and it is surprising that her agent, L.P. Moore, should have chosen to submit the story to such a “moral” magazine. In 1923, suicide was still illegal in England, yet in “The Chinese Shawl” the heroine’s father has killed himself after losing all his money in the “smash.” This was the same financial “smash” which had so adversely affected Bride’s father in “The Little Lady” and Katharine Testram in “The Bulldog and the Beast.”

The economic downturn of the early 1920s in Britain also affected Heyer’s father. The year after his return from France where he had served as an over-age officer, George Heyer wrote a gently humorous but illuminating short story for Punch. It was entitled “Getting Fixed” and was about a man looking unsuccessfully for work after his war service. It was not until 1923 that George Heyer returned to his job as Appeals officer at the King’s College Hospital and the financial strain on the family eased.

In “The Chinese Shawl” the heroine, Mary, has been left alone and penniless, and must work as a typist in a steel manufactory. Before her father’s death she has enjoyed a life of wealth and ease: “a frivolous, expensive career” with “many friends, many love-stricken young men, delightful days at Lord’s, or Hurlingham, or Henley; enchanted evenings in the murky vastness of Covent Garden; bright nights spent in dancing, with haunting music in the air, the buzz of laughing voices, and the scent of hot-house flowers.”

How much of this was also Georgette Heyer’s own experience is unknown, though she certainly attended dances and was a lifelong cricket fan who in later years attended matches at Lord’s. When the story opens, most of Mary’s friends have deserted her after the scandal of her father’s death and she has cut herself off from them and from the life she knew before. She feels great bitterness and when a great-aunt sends her an exquisite shawl Mary is cynical enough to believe that “it was rather catty and patronizing of her to send it to me when she knows I’m no longer in a position to wear such things.”