It is interesting to note just how often Heyer used the name “Helen” in her fiction: Hélène de Courvonne in Simon the Coldheart (1925), Helen Marchant in Helen (1928), Helen North in A Blunt Instrument (1938), Helen “Nell” Stornoway in The Toll-Gate (1954), Helen “Nell” Merion, Lady Cardross, in April Lady (1957) and Helen Morland in “Hazard” (1936) (reprinted in Pistols for Two, 1960, and Snowdrift, 2016).

It is also worth noting that Heyer’s friend Dorothea “Doreen” Arbuthnot’s middle names were “Helen Mary.” The two must have been very close, for Heyer dedicated Simon the Coldheart (1925 US edition) and Barren Corn (1930) to “Doreen.” Of course, Doreen was not a name she could use in her historical fiction, so it is possible that her repeated use of “Helen,” and even of “Mary” (Mary in “The Chinese Shawl” and Mary Challoner in Devil’s Cub, to name but two), was a subtle tribute to her friend.

The Helen of “The Old Maid,” however, resonates strongly with what we know, not of her friend, but of Georgette Heyer herself, for there are several parallels between the budding author and the fictional heroine. Helen is a famous author; Heyer’s fame was growing. Helen is frank and yet shy, as was Heyer, and both women have “humorous grey eyes.” But it is perhaps Helen’s description of herself that seems so in tune with what we know of Heyer:

She had had her success; men called her “great”; she was the biggest satirist of her day; she had hosts of friends, but she was lonely, for none of the men who admired her genius considered her as a woman. She was a “good fellow”, she was witty, and unusual, and an invigorating companion, but she was too downright to be attractive, too competent and independent.

This is similar to what Heyer’s first biographer, Jane Aiken Hodge, wrote of her in 1984:

Georgette was a self-confessed blue-stocking, that dangerous phenomenon, a female author… She had been shunned at Miss Head’s School because of her sharp tongue, and probably still used unusual words, talked in sentences, and maybe even indulged in an occasional Latin tag… the fact that she was beautiful may well have been counterbalanced by the equally unconcealable fact that she was witty. Friends from every stage of her life remember her dry tongue, her elegant speech, the laughter they shared.

Like Helen, Heyer was frank and competent and independent; like Helen, she was not demonstrative. As an adult, she did not believe in overt displays of emotion or of speaking openly about her deeper feelings – her writing was her outlet for emotion. As an adolescent attending school she had struggled to make friends of her own age because she was mature beyond her years and related more easily to the teachers than the students. As a wife and mother she was kind and generous and proud of her husband and son, but she was not effusive in her affection. Heyer did not readily hug or kiss people beyond what was strictly necessary; she was reserved and shy with all but those inside her close inner circle. The Helen of this story is the same.