![]() ![]() But you mustn’t let the affected foppishness of the Duke of Avon fool you. Set in Paris in 1756, powdered wigs, face paint, and patches were the norm and there was nothing at all out of the ordinary about a hero wearing high-heeled shoes and wafting himself with a chicken-skin fan. ![]() These Old Shades is, in fact, one of Heyer’s Georgian novels. A three-cornered hat, point-edged, was set upon his powdered wig, and in his hand he carried a long beribboned cane. ![]() It was therefore a bit of a surprise to me when I first picked up These Old Shades and discovered, within the opening paragraph, that instead of striding down Bond Street garbed in pantaloons, an elegantly folded cravat, and Hessians polished to a mirror-shine, our hero, Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, was "mincing" down a side street in Paris, wearing:Ī long purple cloak, rose-lined, hung from his shoulders and was allowed to fall carelessly back from his dress, revealing a full-skirted coat of purple satin, heavily laced with gold a waistcoat of flowered silk faultless small clothes and a lavish sprinkling of jewels on his cravat and breast. Books where gentlemen drive curricles drawn by match-bays and ladies wear sprigged muslin gowns. Books like The Grand Sophy, Regency Buck, and Frederica. When one hears the name Georgette Heyer, one generally thinks of her Regency Novels. ![]() "Epilogue to Eighteenth-Century Vignettes" ![]()
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