Writing at speed, and with the aid of "a most powerful Dope", Georgette Heyer completed the 23 chapters of
Bath Tangle in just eight weeks. She sent a résumé of the story to ''
Woman's Journal in advance for their illustrator to work on when it was serialised, although she had to rewrite earlier chapters and change some of the names. In particular she realised that the name she had given her hero, the Marquis of Rockingham, had belonged to a short-lived Prime Minister who had died of influenza in 1782, and she had to change it to Rotherham in mid-career. A. S. Byatt was later to describe the novel as "a tired book" in an otherwise appreciative article in Nova''. Situations and characters were beginning to repeat themselves in Heyer's work and a few years later she condensed the plot into the short story "A Clandestine Affair" (1960). The year in which the novel opens is established by the contents of the parcel of new books with which Serena is hoping to beguile her time after moving to the dower house, all of which were published in 1815.
Guy Mannering she swallows "almost at one gulp", but
Jane Porter's The Pastor's Fireside, strikes her as flat. There is as well a satirical
Life of Napoleon, written in
Hudibrastic verse and ascribed to
Dr Syntax,
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Progress of Rent by
Thomas Robert Malthus, and
William Hubbard's
A general history of New England, none of which are to her taste. More literary discussion occurs after Serena and Fanny move to Bath in the next year. There Fanny reports that she had stood next to the novelist
Madame d'Arblay while buying ribbon but did not dare to mention her admiration for the author's
Evelina (1778). A writer, she felt, would prefer discussion of her more recent work, but Fanny had found
The Wanderer (1814) "so tedious I gave it up after the first volume". Other subjects of conversation were developments in the capital. Of particular interest were the marriage plans of the heir to the throne,
Princess Charlotte, who also had broken off her engagement – to the
Prince of Orange – and finally in 1816 was allowed to marry
Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. One of her supporters at this time was
Lord Brougham, whose parliamentary speeches and activities were reported in the press and discussed by the characters in
Bath Tangle. In particular, his attack on the
Prince Regent in March 1816 is mentioned in the novel. Heyer's background reading while researching for her novels was collected in a variety of notebooks containing details of the social conventions of the times to which there are frequent allusions. The period of observing mourning after the death of a family member affects both Serena and Fanny, who are obliged to wear only black for the first months after the death and a less subdued colour thereafter. They also have to avoid dances, parties and other social events during this time, which becomes a problem when Serena wishes to marry Rotherham. It is for this reason that their wedding must be a private ceremony, followed by a Continental honeymoon which would cause no scandal. Another restriction on women's behaviour was the requirement for
chaperonage to preserve the reputation of an unmarried female. The convention was that a married woman counted as an adequate chaperone, and therefore the widowed Fanny acts in that capacity for Serena, despite the disparity in their ages. It is in consideration of Serena's reputation, too, that the very proper Ned Goring is alarmed when Serena proposes to join him unaccompanied by her groom in pursuing Monksleigh and Emily. Personal dynamics are of particular concern in Heyer's more modern view. For her, the quality of a person is demonstrated by their behaviour rather than the social class to which they belong. Jennifer Kloester points out that "There is a clear contrast in the novel between the supposed vulgarity of Mrs Floore (because of her "trade" background) and the real vulgarity of her far more aristocratic daughter, Lady Laleham." Lady Laleham makes her upwardly mobile social aspirations too obvious and is despised as a "toad eater" (a sycophant) on that account. Mrs Floore's openness about her own background, while giving due recognition to the place of others in the social scale, is what distinguishes her behaviour from her daughter's. But among Georgette Heyer's particular targets for satire are self-regarding young men, especially those with poetical aspirations – such as Augustus Fawnhope in
The Grand Sophy. Her victim in
Bath Tangle is Gerard Monksleigh who, among the grievances he holds against his guardian, is the Marquess of Rotherham's failure to provide the money to publish his youthful verses. "Only consider
Lord Byron," he expostulates later to Emily, "he must have made a fortune, and if he could do so, why should not I?" Byron had indeed published
Hours of Idleness (1807) following his nineteenth birthday, although it was not this that made the reputation he afterwards enjoyed. Included in that volume is the poem "To a lady who presented the author with the velvet band which bound her tresses", in the kind of flirtation with Gerard that young Emily, "if she remembered the vows she had exchanged with him, supposed that he had meant them no more seriously than she had." Her dandiacal suitor is besides the object of a medley of insults, deriving from Heyer's notebooks of contemporary slang and directed against him at various times by Goring, Serena, Mrs Floore and Rotherham: "young fribble", "counter-cockscomb", "twiddle-poop", "ill-conditioned puppy without gratitude, without propriety, without a thought in your heart for anything but what may happen to suit your pleasure", "Bartholemew baby", "bag of wind", "addle-brained cawker", "slow-top" and "cod's head". ==References==