Aubrey's Brief Lives: Venetia Digby/Heyer, Venetia

[truepenny]

[Spoilers for Heyer's Venetia very likely in the comments. Also Lady of Quality. Read at your own risk.]

There is a trade paperback edition of John Aubrey's Brief Lives, for those of you who might be interested.

Aubrey, John. Aubrey's Brief Lives. Ed. Oliver Lawson Dick. 1949. Foreword Edmund Wilson. 1957. Boston: Nonpareil-David R. Godine, Publisher, 1999. ISBN 1-56792-063-2

If you have suddenly been seized with covetousness or curiosity, you can order it online here.

And one of the entries in it is Venetia Digby, the same "admir'd Venetia" for whom the heroine of Georgette Heyer's Venetia is apparently named. She was, Aubrey tells us, "a most beautifull desireable Creature" (Aubrey 100)--and I had forgotten that Damerel properly attributes that quote when he uses it:

      "I beg your pardon!"
      He raised his head, still choking with laughter, and said, "Oh, no, no! Sweet Mind, then speak yourself ...!"
      She wrinkled her brow, and then directed a look of enquiry at him.
      "What, lurched, O well-read Miss Lanyon?" he said provocatively. "It was written by Ben Jonson, of another Venetia. I turned it up last night, after you had left me."
      "No, is it indeed so?" she exclaimed, surprised and pleased. "I had never heard it before! In fact, I didn't know there had been any poems written to a Venetia. What was she like?"
      "Like yourself, if John Aubrey is to be believed: a beautiful desirable creature!"
(Heyer 87-88)

But there's quite a lot Damerel doesn't tell Venetia about her namesake. For the passage that describes her as "a most beautifull desireable Creature" goes on to recount: "being maturo vivo was left by her father to live with a tenant and servant at Enston Abbey in Oxfordshire: but as private as that palce was, it seemes her Beautie coulde not lye hid. The young Eagles had espied her, and she was sanguine and tractable, and of much Suavity (which to abuse was great pittie)" (Aubrey 100). And lest you be imagining the Disneyfied version, Aubrey further tells us: "The Earle of Dorset aforesayd was her greatest Gallant, who was extremely enamoured of her, and had one, if not more children by her. He setled on her an Annuity of 500 pounds per annum" (Aubrey 100). She ended respectably, though, marrying Sir Kenelm Digby and apparently being faithful to him: "Once a yeare the Earle of Dorset invited her and Sir Kenelme to dinner, where the Earle would behold her with much passion, and only kisse her hand" (Aubrey 101). She died suddenly at the age of 33.

So what is this lady doing as the patron saint of one of Heyer's virtuous heroines? That we are meant to have Venetia Digby in mind I think is clear, both from Damerel's quotations and from the fact that Venetia's younger and much adored brother is named Aubrey. Moreover, Venetia's scandalous mother makes the presence of the Scarlet Woman quite felt. You could argue, in fact, if you were in a litcritty sort of mood, that Venetia's discovery of the truth about Aurelia stands in for the discovery she does not make of the truth about her namesake. Damerel knows about both Aurelia and Venetia Digby, and tells Venetia Lanyon about neither, and certainly the question of appropriate knowledge is thematic throughout (there's a running joke about how utterly unrespectable the heroes and heroines of classical Greek literature are)--both Conway and Aubrey knew about Aurelia long before Venetia did, Conway because his father thought it fit that he know, and Aubrey because Conway thought it fit that he know. One of my favorite bits of characterization is that Conway doesn't tell Venetia because he agrees she oughtn't to know; Aubrey doesn't tell her because he doesn't care. In fact, everyone in the book knows--except Venetia, from whom it is carefully and obsessively kept, until the unpredictable Aurelia walks blithely through all these elaborate precautions.

Venetia, considering that nothing scandalous actually happens and our heroine's virtue remains immaculate, is a remarkably straightforward comment about the hypocrisy of the respectable. Edward (her respectable suitor--and he gets tagged that way repeatedly) is a ghastly person; the efforts of all and sundry to "protect" Venetia do more harm than good. Venetia heartily disliked her quite respectable father, and tells the utterly disreputable Sir Lambert, "And I wish very much that you had been my father, sir.... I should have loved you much more than ever I loved my own, for you are a great deal kinder!" (Heyer 283). And of course the centerpiece of this quiet subversion is Damerel. Damerel the rake who turns out to be a Classics geek (he specifically compares his younger self to Aubrey), Damerel who is wicked because it's better than being bored. Damerel whose relationship with Venetia is founded on a shared sense of the ridiculous. Heyer flirts throughout with the love-of-a-good-woman trope, but never quite commits to it, instead changing the terms to suit herself:

      "You and Damerel!" she [Aurelia] said after a long silence. "Do you imagine he would be faithful to you?"
      "I don't know," said Venetia. "I think he will always love me. You see, we are such dear friends."
(Heyer 277)

It's also quite clear that Damerel is well along the road to saving himself. He doesn't need Venetia to show him the way to righteousness; he needs her to keep him company. I think Venetia Digby's presence in Venetia is a intertextual marker of the same thing the book itself is arguing for: tolerance, perspective, the ability to take the long view. Venetia Digby was scandalous in her day, just as Aurelia is--just as Oedipus and Medea are. But scandals die; what matters is what's left: Sir Lambert bending over backwards to keep Aurelia happy, Damerel laughing with Venetia. Heyer arrays a sense of the ridiculous against respectability and propriety, and we are left with no doubts about where her sympathies lie.
---
WORKS CITED
Aubrey, John. Aubrey's Brief Lives. Ed. Oliver Lawson Dick. 1949. Foreword Edmund Wilson. 1957. Boston: Nonpareil-David R. Godine, Publisher, 1999.

Heyer, Georgette. Venetia. 1958. New York: Jove Publications, 1981.

Comments

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

Wasn't the 'real' Venetia accidentally poisoned by her husband?

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, I reread Heyer's Venetia about three nights ago--it's one of my faviurites. The career you outline is, more or less, that of her mother. Only the ex-husband is not so sanguine.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Um. Maybe?

There were rumors when she died (Dick calls them "absurd reports") that Digby had killed her by insisting she drink Viper-wine (whatever THAT is) to preserve her beauty. Aubrey says Sir Kenelm claimed Viper-wine was the cause of her death, and adds that some people thought he poisoned her on purpose. Of course, he also says that when her head was opened, "there was found but little braine" (Aubrey 101).

I don't know if there are any more reputable sources than Aubrey on the cause of her death.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, and Aurelia was actually committing adultery left, right, and center.

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

I'm now trying to remember where I read this ... ah, Graham Parry's The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English LIterature, 1603-1700", wherein he says 'She died in 1633, possibly as a result of Digby's experiments with homeopathic medicine, for he had prescribed her viper wine to drink as a cordial.' Apparently, he was somewhat upset by her death: 'he poured out letters of affectionate reminiscence to his friends, creating for her an unprecedented epistolary monument.' I suspect Parry is drawing on Aubrey, to some extent, but presumably the letters also suggest he feared he had poisoned her.

And, a recipe for viper wine:

VIPER WINE IS MADE THUS
Take of the best fat vipers, cut off their heads, take off their skins, and unbowel them. Then put them into the best canary sack, four or six according to their bigness into a gallon. Let them stand two or three months. Then draw off you wine as you drink it.
Some put them alive into the wine, and there suffocate them, and afterwards take them out, and cut off their heads, take off their skins, and unbowel them, and then put them into the same wine again, and do as before.
This wine has the same virtues as the foregoing quintessence [This quintessence is of extraordinary virtue for the purifying of the blood, flesh, and skin and, consequently, of all diseases therein. It cures also the falling sickness, and strengthens the brain, sight, and hearing, and preserves from grey hairs, renews youth, preserves women from abortion, cures the gout, consumption, causes sweat, and is very good in and against pestilential infections.]. It also provokes to venery, cures the leprosy and such like corruptions of the blood.


Truly, all information is available on the internet.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

But was faithful to her second husband.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Aieeee.

If she drank that, it's no wonder she died.

Poems in memoriam were written by Ben Jonson, Thomas May, Joseph Ruther, Owen Feltham, William Habington, Lord George Digby, and Aurelian Townsend. Jonson also wrote "An Epigram to My Muse, the Lady Digby, on Her Husband, Sir Kenelm Digby," which is as blatant a piece of self-interested flattery as you could hope to find.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The line, Venetia, speaking of Medea:

"I'm sure she was quite an amiable creature, if you came to know her,"

is I think central to this. Because all the rogues are amiable, when you come to know them, Damerel, Aurelia, Sir Lambert, and all the respectable people are terribly tedious, not just Edward but the respectable Uncle and Aunt as well.

And while you're absolutely right that nothing shocking happens onstage, it's constantly flirted past you, right down to the walking on rosepetals and presiding at orgies Venetia wants for herself. (Does she know what an orgy is? Did Heyer? In Heyer's universe sex isn't even implicit, it often doesn't seem to exist in quite a worrying way, and these references in Venetia are about the closest she ever comes that I can think of.)

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

Well, indeed ...

which is as blatant a piece of self-interested flattery as you could hope to find.

Good old Jonson. I read 'To Penshurst' recently, and could not help but think that fascinating as it was for all sorts of reasons, there was a certain degree of ...yes, self-interest, definitely.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. ALL the respectable people are dull--Edward is just also ghastly. And the worst thing about Mrs. Scorrier is her respectability and the relentless way she imposes it on everyone around her. Like Damerel, I think, we sympathize with Oswald Denny's desperate desire to be Byron's Corsair, even while we are contemptuous of him.

But Venetia CAN'T ruin herself, no matter what she does. Going to see Aurelia, getting an invitation to live with her, walking up Bond Street on Sir Lambert's arm, traveling to Yorkshire by herself, visiting a rake unescorted (and a drunken rake at that), even marrying the rake ... nothing she does is bad enough to destroy her character. Heyer (in the persons of Edward and Uncle Hendred and Damerel and Marston) won't let it be. And I think this goes along with what you're saying about the absence of sex.

Actually, she does come closer (even aside from Jenny's pregnancy in A Civil Contract, from which we can infer that sex takes place). In Lady of Quality, Oliver visits Annis in her bedroom, unescorted, and says of Maria's hysterical reaction, "... and had the damned impudence to say that nothing would prevail upon her to leave the room while I remained in it! I can only assume she thought Annis was in danger of being raped!" (LoQ 277). Annis is also the only Heyer heroine I can think of who actually feels something one can, reading a bit between the lines, describe as sexual desire:

Not the most daring of her previous suitors had ventured even to slide an arm round her waist, for although she enjoyed light-hearted flirtation, she never gave her flirts any cause to think she would welcome more intimate approaches. She had supposed that she must have a cold, celibate disposition, for she had always found the mere thought of being kissed, and (as she phrased it) mauled by any gentleman of her acquaintance shudderingly distasteful.... When Mr Carleton had caught Miss Wychwood into his arms, and had so ruthlessly kissed her, she had not found it at all distasteful; and when he did it again it seemed the most natural thing in the world to return his embrace. He felt the responsive quiver that ran through her, and his arms tightened round her.
(LoQ 268-9)
I can't think of a single other instance where we get a "responsive quiver." Lady of Quality has a lot of flaws (was it her last book? I see from the copyright page that it was published only 2 years before she died), but Oliver Carleton remains one of my favorite Heyer heroes regardless, precisely because he seems to be the most honest (both verbally and physically) and because he forces Annis to be honest, too.

---
WORKS CITED
Heyer, Georgette. Lady of Quality. 1972. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It could not be said of him that Ben Jonson did not always have an eye out for the main chance.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And the amazing ability to get people to forgive him for it afterwards.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

Tragically, my Heyer books are in storage at the moment, so I'm going to have to go by memory here. But in The Convenient Marriage, even apart from the semi-rape attempt of Horatia by Lethbridge, has a scene towards the end where Rule kisses Horatia passionately, and she responds -- rather as if she has never felt anything of the kind before.

This suggests to me that the two of them had not had sex previously (or if they had, had really dreadful sex without an ounce of attraction on their wedding night), but that Heyer was exploring the possiblity of the development of sexual attraction.

[sovay]

Congratulations: you have selected for analysis apparently the one Georgette Heyer my mother does not own. Fortunately, I'm now more than interested enough to check out the local libraries. What can I say? Rakes and Classics geeks and a sense of the ridiculous: I'm hooked.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

And she does this in Friday's Child too, where the couple have been married all book and yet the kiss at the end is the awakening of whateverness. And it's close to that in April Lady too. So they've been having married sex, in all three books, without feeling any passion, until they kiss on the last page -- yet there's no description of the sex, no implication of it even. Now Jane Austen implied sex, passionate, passionless, it's there, it's offstage but you know it's there, and sexual attraction is there. (Even in chilly Mansfield Park you can imagine poor Maria in bed with her awful husband much more than you can any of Heyer's characters.)

I find this very peculiar indeed.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Lady of Quality for ages, and I can't remember it at all except that it had stock characters and nothing very exciting, but I shall re-read it immediately, because that's obviously the thing to do.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

You know, I always got the impression in Friday's Child that they weren't having sex, and instead were just enjoying a convenient roommate style set up where Sherry could enjoy his money and freedom, but not actually be married. Since Hero lacked any role models or female confidants that could tell her that this sort of marriage lacked something, and in any case only wanted what Sherry wanted, she went along with it.

In April's Lady, though, I got the impression that they were sleeping together but that it wasn't going well. But I'll admit that this is highly arguable.

The disconnection between sex and love in these books is pretty remarkable, though, and certainly A Civil Contract suggests that Heyer knew you could certainly have sex without love.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

It's not one of Heyer's better books. It reads very much as if Heyer was supposed to write it and was wearily typing it out to make her publishers and fans happy. If I'm not mistaken, it was one of the last books she wrote.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I don't want to lead you astray and claim it's an unrecognized gem or anything. It's very much Heyer-by-rote, and Annis is drearily inclined towards speechifying. But it also has Oliver and, honestly, some really charming bits of characterization--and, oddly, I think it's the only one of her books that makes any effort at considering motherhood. Personally, I'm with Annis, who doesn't like children and doesn't want them, but I appreciate the fact that this book is trying to present other points of view. In general, actually, it seems to go to great lengths to consider every side of each problem raised. And, of course, with the defects of its virtues, hence the speechifying.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It is my very favorite Heyer. It just is.

[sovay]

I've only read Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle; I remember liking it. I think Patricia Wrede's Mairelon the Magician had just come out and I needed an actual Regency romance to compare it to.

[larryhammer]

Sylvester would be my other favorite Heyer. If you liked that, you'd probably like Venetia.

---L.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, patronage was, after all, the name of the game for poets who weren't lucky enough to be born Philip Sidney. Ben was just particularly ... blatant about it.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

This suggests to me that the two of them had not had sex previously

Sorry to jump in from nowhere here, but this duscussion caught my eye because in that one, particularly, it always seemed very clear to be that they hadn't - largely because Horatia was so clearly very young for her age and, not just innocent, but ignorant of the implications of marriage (from the outset she thought of it as a marriage of convenience). And Rule was always very careful about - as his name might imply - playing by the rules where she was concerned, so I understood that final scene to mean that he'd stayed well away from her until her emotions caught up with her social circumstances.

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

One of the things that struck me about reading 'To Penshurst' was that Jonson appeared to be obsessed with the provision of food for all. I learned, last night, reading McClung on the English Country House in Renaissance Poetry, that there was indeed a reason for that, that it was pretty much the one I thought it was, and that Lord Salisbury is presumably still twitching in the afterlife for not treating Jonson well!

[mariness.livejournal.com]

And I always felt the same way about Friday's Child, although in that case I thought it was less about Sherry choosing to play by the rules and treat his wife with care, and more that he thought of her as a friend, or a kid sister, or a roommate.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

OK, now I have re-read it, and it is indeed decidedly minor.

I didn't like Oliver, whose main charm seems to be being rude. I spotted the answering quiver, but it struck me as just like all Heyer's climactic kisses even so. (Though it's not as bad as Sylvester, where I can't believe those two would get through a fortnight's camping holiday together, never mind a marriage.)

And I think there's consideration of children in The Grand Sophy and Frederica, though thinking about this makes me notice how frequently people in Heyer become terribly ill, and how inevitably they survive, despite the medicine of the period, and because of the excellent nursing of the central characters.

Fond as I am of Heyer, it really does take some doing to make me continually contrast her to the earthy realism of Jane Austen!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If so, why wasn't it clearer?

Or was I supposed to be a 1920s reader (Marriage of Convenience is early, isn't it?) and just assume they didn't, despite being married, unless it said they did?

In Friday's Child they shared a bed.

There's also the assumption in some other Heyer couples, I think, that the passion that makes them bicker with each other transmutes in some way to some other unstated passion. The passion all certainly seems to be in an odd place.

(No, really, but asexual romance novels?)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In April Lady, I think it's strongly implied that they have had sex during the marriage but pre-book, but they don't during the events -- him visiting her dressing room is an unusual event. And she wonders why she's not pregnant!

It's an odd contrast to Trollope, a High Victorian of a hundred years before, writing circuitously but quite explicitly about the reason Glencora isn't getting pregnant in her marriage of convenience in Can You Forgive Her? being her lack of orgasms. (I think Trollope quite honestly believed women physiologically needed orgasms to get pregnant.)

[usedtobeljs]

Reading this fascinating post and thread of comments from friendsfriends --

In April Lady I thought the point was they were having terrible sex because of a fundamental misunderstanding about sex within their marriage. Although she was in passionate love with Cardross, Nell believed, and acted upon, what her mother told her about dynastic marriage (that her husband only wanted her to lie back and think of England), in no small part because Nell had heard he had a mistress; he, meanwhile, wanting a companionate marriage and a good sex life, believed she was cold and uncaring.

However, Heyer certainly didn't go into great *detail* about it, you're quite right. :-)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

People don't die in Heyer novels. Even if they lose an arm at Waterloo.

I think what I like about Oliver is probably more the reader's 50% than it is anything actually there. I like the character he'd be if she'd fleshed him out properly. Or the character he is when I flesh him out properly in my head.

And I agree that child-rearing takes central stage in Frederica and definitely top-billing in The Grand Sophy--and has at least walk-on parts in Venetia and Sylvester and probably several other books--but those are all children as faits accomplis. They are children that the main characters are presented with--Here, you must cope. Whereas what I was trying to get at about Lady of Quality is the way that Amabel--unlike Aurelia in Venetia or Ianthe in Sylvester--actually wants to be a mother, and seems from what little evidence we get to be (unlike Lady Whatserface in The Grand Sophy)a fairly good mother. Which is not normal for Heyer novels.

Léonie is a charming mother, as is the mother in False Colours, but I'm not sure we can call them good mothers. The Dowager Countess in The Quiet Gentleman is a ghastly creature, as are Mrs. Scorrier and Lady Silverdale in Friday's Child and Mrs. Challoner in Devil's Cub. Oh and poor Richard's mother in The Corinthian, not to menion Adam's appalling parent in A Civil Contract. The mothers in The Unknown Ajax are respectively ineffectual and cold. Sylvester's mother, whom I quite like, is crippled and therefore only intermittently a force of motherhood (as she herself recognizes); Phoebe's mother is dead and her stepmother is a monster. The mothers in Sprig Muslin seem to all be dead. Mostly, it seems to me, we are shown/told that our heroines will be wonderful mothers, but we don't actually see mothering except insofar as it is damaging or gets the protagonists into trouble or otherwise causes conflict. It seems to me to be unusual in Heyer's oeuvre to see LITERAL mothers in a positive light.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

If so, why wasn't it clearer?

I think it was quite clear - at least, I seem to remember (can't check, sorry, as the only copy of the book I have access to is half a city away) a line, spoken by Horatia, to the effect that 'he won't interfere with my life and I won't interfere with his'. I took to be the clearest possible statement that character could make to the effect that the marriage was intended, by her at least, to be the ultimate in marriages of convenience.

(No, really, but asexual romance novels?)

~smiles~ Why not? There are plenty of asexual romances, after all...