The Corinthian (by Georgette Heyer)

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I love re-reading Georgette Heyer’s novels. Even though I’ve read them - the historical romance ones, anyway - at least four or five times each, I’ve always forgotten most of the details by the time I re-read six or seven years later. That was the case with ‘The Cornithian’, which I’ve just finished reading for what is, I think, the sixth time. The last time I read it was in July 2016.

I was a bit surprised, at first, how little I recalled in the first few chapters. We meet Sir Richard Wyndham, his sister Louisa and her husband and mother. Sir Richard is a Corinthian - fastidious in dress, an excellent horseman, and quite athletic. He’s also rather bored, as his life is mostly quite predictable. His family want him to get married to produce an heir, and he sees the justice of their comments. 

So he decides he had better marry a young woman he knows, who (his family tell him) considers that they are almost betrothed. He doesn’t dislike her, but finds her rather cold and distant. And when they meet, she says theirs will be a marriage of convenience, made primarily because he is very wealthy, and her family are deeply in debt.

Rather depressed, Sir Richard goes to his club, gambles and drinks, and then starts to walk home in the early hours of the morning. And something startling happens, jolting him out of his inward thinking, and nudging him into an adventure of the kind he never dreamed of. He becomes physically uncomfortable, talks to people of the kind he had never before communicated with, and learns to laugh… 

As I read, I did have odd moments where I recalled a scene, or knew what was coming. But they were surprisingly rare. I enjoyed the story thoroughly - much of it is unlikely, but Heyer’s characters are so good and her situations so believable that I had no problem suspending reality and going along with the story. It’s a good contrast between a young man who has always observed all the conventions and a young woman who cares nothing for convention or tradition, and does exactly what she thinks best… until events overtake her and she believes she’s unworthy of someone else’s devotion.

There’s an unpleasant scene which isn’t described in too much detail, thankfully. There’s a nice mixture of the upper and middle classes with the working (and, in some cases, thieving) classes. Heyer’s research is impeccable as always, and even her minor characters shine, albeit in a somewhat caricatured way. There’s gentle humour - not laugh-aloud humour, but enough to make me smile, or appreciate the turn of phrase, and there’s a good story with a lot of different subplots.

First published in 1940, this novel has been in print almost continually for over eighty years. Definitely recommended, if you like this genre of historical romance.

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