London, around 1815. An impoverished lady who has turned her home into a gambling den, but is going ever further into debt. A lecherous lord making indecent proposals to a young and attractive woman. Rigid class divisions, leading to an upper class family doing all they can to stop one of their number marrying beneath him.
These are the underlying themes of the book. In the hands of many authors it could have been a depressing, hard-hitting and probably sordid account of life in Regency England. As such, being a squeamish kind of reader, I would never have read beyond the first chapter.
However Georgette Heyer has managed to write a satisfying romance amongst these unprepossessing surroundings, while not at all playing down the unpleasantness that abounded. She fleshes out her main characters and endues the minor ones with humorous or otherwise quirky traits, yet still leaves me with a sense of the unpleasant reality of the times.
Max Ravenscar, a bachelor from the wealthy upper classes, learns that his young cousin Adrian has fallen in love with the beautiful Deborah Grantham, a girl who works in her aunt's gaming house. These pseudo-respectable private homes ran gambling evenings, attended mainly by men who could afford to lose vast amounts of money in games of luck. Faro is one such gambling game, in which players bet on which card the dealer will turn up.
Although only men were able to visit such gaming houses, they were often presided over by women; in this particular case the house is owned by Lady Bellingham, who has lost all her money and is determined to survive by the profits of the games. Deborah, her niece, was raised in 'good' society, but the fact of her working on the gambling tables immediately precludes her from polite society, or from marrying into the upper classes. To society of the time, it was important that people married within their 'class', and the thought of allying the titled Adrian with someone who has had to work for her living - particularly in such 'low' employment - is considered unthinkable by his relatives.
So Max goes to meet Deborah, thinking he can probably bribe her with money to leave Adrian alone, only to find that she has far more character than he imagined. Thus ensues something of a battle of wills between two rather stubborn people, made all the more amusing by the fact (revealed early in the book) that Deborah never had any intention of marrying Adrian anyway. But she takes deep offence at Max's offering to buy her off, and lets him assume that she really is interested in his cousin.
As always with Georgette Heyer's books, there's a realistic background, with just the right amount of dialect and description to seem believable without overwhelming me with historical fact. I first read this book when I was in my twenties, and have re-read it every six or seven years as an enjoyable light read - even knowing what's coming does not spoil the book or the satire on Regency society.
One of Heyer's gifts is that of bringing all her people to life, not merely the two main protagonists. Inevitably there are some caricatures: the first one we find is in Adrian's mother, deeply distressed at the thought of her only son allying himself with someone from a gaming house, yet unable to think beyond the complexities of who is 'received' and who is not in the society in which she mixes.
Deborah's aunt, who could be a tragic figure, is equally amusing: despite owning the gaming house, she goes ever deeper into debt due to her extravagant lifestyle. She pays £400 per year (an enormous sum in those days!) for a box in the opera, despite rarely attending the opera. She cannot possibly do without it since her late husband enjoyed the opera so much. She keeps bemoaning the vast cost of green peas, yet believes them essential to the suppers she gives to her guests. However she tries to persuade her kitchen staff to re-use candles to save pennies, and is convinced that if only they would be a little more thrifty her problems would be solved!
Adrian himself is a rather naive, but charming young man. In professing his undying adoration for Deborah, he is convinced that he has fallen deeply in love. While young men of his class were expected (even encouraged) to have a series of mistresses before getting married, Adrian is very honourable, and believes his passion to be lasting and pure. He is particularly angered by the elderly Lord Ormskirk who has made less honourable proposals to Deborah, and who holds some mortgages on her aunt's house.
But it's the strong-minded, controlling Max and the stubborn, angry Deborah who make this book the enjoyable fast-paced novel that it is. Both of them are proud in their respective ways. Max is casually so - although he believes he is respectful to those of a lower social status than he is; Deborah is fiercely proud of her independence. Inevitably the sparks fly, and equally inevitably they both find themselves enjoying the challenge of someone who can stand up to them.
It wasn't until I started reading Georgette Heyer's books, in my late teens, that I discovered the fascination of history. Rather than presenting facts, figures and politics, she writes about believable people, surrounding them almost incidentally with the society and attitudes of the times. She writes with humour and irony, often letting the reader see what the characters themselves cannot. In 'Faro's Daughter' the characters end up with a multitude of misunderstandings and confusion, almost worthy of PG Wodehouse, before a single event draws them back together leading to a satisfactory conclusion.
I also like the fact that the author does not herself agree with the prejudices of the time. Initially we hear about Adrian and Deborah from Adrian's biassed mother, caught up in society's expectations. Max is more broadminded, yet he too is horrified at the proposed alliance: not because he is so rigid, but because he assumes that a girl who works in a gaming house must be a schemer who is simply after his cousin's money. Through the book we see Max continuing in his mistaken assumptions, yet increasingly puzzled as he discovers what we, the readers, knew all along: that Deborah is an intelligent and principled young lady who is working for her aunt because she cares for her, not because she likes what she is doing, or is a gambler herself.
This isn't my favourite of Georgette Heyer's books, but I still count it as an excellent read, and would recommend it to anyone - teenagers or adults - for an enjoyable light read.
You can also read a different review of 'Faro's Daughter' which I wrote after re-reading the book six years later.
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