Charity Girl

 

“Charity Girl” by Georgette Heyer 

Reviewed by Gerti

I have always respected Georgette Heyer, and read many of her books when I was younger. I also love the Regency period in England, as it was the setting of Jane Austen’s novels, in which I have a particular interest. Even with both of those factors coming into play, I have to say that I hated “Charity Girl,” and I’ll tell you why.

It wasn’t the setting, as I mentioned, because I love Regency England. It wasn’t the plot, which was a fairly typical setup of a girl under the influence of cruel and conniving relatives, who meets up with a hero under pressure by his relatives to marry. Finally, romance blooms where the hero least expects to find it. I liked the storyline, although I must admit I saw the “twist” coming a mile away. I even liked the characters, including protagonist Viscount Desford, called Des by his friends (and Ashley by his mother), who is intelligent, kind to his mother, and even tolerant to his cranky old dad. He’s so nice, he picks up a poor runaway on the side of the road and takes her to London, even though it imperils his reputation, and hers.

The girl in question is the “Charity Girl”, Ms. Charity Steane, who is running away from her cruel aunt’s house to find her grandfather, although he’s a renowned skinflint, and had earlier rejected her because her father married the wrong woman. Charity, who likes to call herself Cherry (internal cringe here), is of course a beautiful young woman with a passive, pleasing personality along the lines of Jane Austen’s Fanny Price. She looks younger than she is, due to the lack of food and age-appropriate clothing she received at her aunt’s house, where the aunt is more concerned about getting her own daughter’s married than about the needs of this little Cinderella.

Desford takes Charity to her grandfather’s house in London out of the goodness of his heart, but finds the house shut-up. No one there knows where the girl’s grandfather has gone, so Des makes it his mission to find out. However, he still needs to provide for the girl, as she can’t keep riding along with him, so he takes her to the home of his old gal pal, Henrietta Silverdale. Although their families had hoped they would marry, the pair have instead become best friends, and Hetta and Des work out a plot where Charity takes care of Hetta’s mother, who is a hypochondriac. This works well, as Charity just wants someone to appreciate her.

Desford has to travel all over England to solve the problem of what should happen to Charity, and of course has to deal with several bad characters along the way. Finally, one of Hetta’s old beaus takes a shine to Charity, and the problem is solved. Except I still haven’t told you what I disliked about this book, and what made it so painful to read.

It was the language! While Heyer is an unchallenged master of Regency slang, I think every page had about 10 instances of archaic language, and it made this book the verbal equivalent of the Tour de France. Every day’s read was a physical test of endurance, to see how many instances of “Turkish treatment,” “mifty, “skitterbrains” and “jackanapes” I could stand before I put the book down again to recover my sanity. It is so bad, I almost started making a list of all the wacky phrases she used, but I was too far in by that point to want to start reading it again. So, dear reader, only pick up this book if you want to feel as though you’ve been dropped into a foreign country where you don’t know the language. It will make you suffer!