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  “The Chinese Shawl” was neither improving nor overtly moral, but rather a quiet story of struggle and luck with a little romance thrown in for good measure. It was Heyer’s only short published in The Quiver and it is surprising that her agent, L.P. Moore, should have chosen to submit the story to such a “moral” magazine. In 1923, suicide was still illegal in England, yet in “The Chinese Shawl” the heroine’s father has killed himself after losing all his money in the “smash.” This was the same financial “smash” which had so adversely affected Bride’s father in “The Little Lady” and Katharine Testram in “The Bulldog and the Beast.”

  The economic downturn of the early 1920s in Britain also affected Heyer’s father. The year after his return from France where he had served as an over-age officer, George Heyer wrote a gently humorous but illuminating short story for Punch. It was entitled “Getting Fixed” and was about a man looking unsuccessfully for work after his war service. It was not until 1923 that George Heyer returned to his job as Appeals officer at the King’s College Hospital and the financial strain on the family eased.

  In “The Chinese Shawl” the heroine, Mary, has been left alone and penniless, and must work as a typist in a steel manufactory. Before her father’s death she has enjoyed a life of wealth and ease: “a frivolous, expensive career” with “many friends, many love-stricken young men, delightful days at Lord’s, or Hurlingham, or Henley; enchanted evenings in the murky vastness of Covent Garden; bright nights spent in dancing, with haunting music in the air, the buzz of laughing voices, and the scent of hot-house flowers.”

  How much of this was also Georgette Heyer’s own experience is unknown, though she certainly attended dances and was a lifelong cricket fan who in later years attended matches at Lord’s. When the story opens, most of Mary’s friends have deserted her after the scandal of her father’s death and she has cut herself off from them and from the life she knew before. She feels great bitterness and when a great-aunt sends her an exquisite shawl Mary is cynical enough to believe that “it was rather catty and patronizing of her to send it to me when she knows I’m no longer in a position to wear such things.”

  As always in Heyer, class beliefs are inherent. Her only friend at work is Malcolm, “who was of her class and wanted to be an artist.” Her other friend is Janet, who is never fully explained but who appears to be Mary’s flatmate, speaks the same well-bred language and is sufficiently attractive to become engaged to “an adoring, many-times-repulsed young man.” It is Janet who shows Mary how to make the most of the Chinese shawl and it is this which pushes the story forward to its inevitable happy ending.

  In the Heyer family albums, there is a striking black-and-white photograph of Georgette Heyer wearing an elegant embroidered Chinese shawl. The photo was taken sometime in 1923 – possibly to mark Heyer’s twenty-first birthday – and it is likely that the shawl inspired the story. Certainly there are elements of “The Chinese Shawl” that would later appear in Heyer’s final contemporary novel, Barren Corn.

  “The Chinese Shawl” is rare, or even unique, among Heyer short stories in that it was translated into Danish. On 13 March 1924 it appeared in translation in the Danish (now defunct) magazine Tidens Kvinder under the title, “Det kinesiske Sjal.” There is some suggestion that the story may have been published in Swedish prior to its Danish translation, but to date no such translation has been found. This would be the last Heyer contemporary short story of this kind, for her final short in the genre would feature a much older, quite independent, heroine.

  CONT

  THE CHINESE SHAWL

  I.

  MARY drew it out of its tissue-paper wrappings and allowed the heavy silken masses to unfold themselves, hanging from her fingers in soft-hued radiance.

  “How lovely!” Janet gasped. “How wonderful!”

  Mary shook it out so that it trailed upon the floor.

  “Lovely? Oh, yes, and useless! If my aunt wanted to make me a present—heaven knows why she has elected to do so; it’s an unexpected event—she might have sent me something that I could use. What on earth’s the good of this?”

  “But, Mary, it’s so beautiful! It must have cost pounds and pounds.”

  “I’d rather have the money, then. This reminds me of a cartoon I once saw. The presents rich people send to their penniless relatives.”

  “I don’t know how you can talk like that! It’s so perfectly lovely!”

  Mary laid it over the back of a chair.

  “I wish you wouldn't harp on its loveliness. It’s beautiful, I know. If I were in the habit of going to the opera, and if I had the sort of frock that would suit it, I should think it a topping present. As I’m a miserable little shorthand-typist living in rooms and possessing one ancient evening dress, I don’t quite see the point of it. No doubt I’m ungrateful.”

  Janet picked up the shawl and examined the sprawling pattern with admiring eyes and caressing fingers.

  “I suppose it is rather a silly present,” she sighed. “Still—can’t you do anything with it?”

  “We might use it as a bedspread or a tablecloth,” shrugged Mary. Janet shrieked at this suggestion.

  “Mary, you Goth!”

  “Or I might sell it.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  Mary looked at the shawl. It gave a bizarre air of affluence to the shabby room. It was indeed beautiful.

  " I don't know. If I’m hard up I shall sell it at once. Now, I suppose, I must sit down and write an enthusiastic ‘thank you letter’ to Aunt Felicia. Come to think of it, it was rather catty and patronizing of her to send it to me when she knows I’m no longer in a position to wear such things.”

  Janet felt that this was an uncomfortable topic.

  “She must he awfully rich,” she remarked vaguely.

  Mary had seated herself at the table and had drawn the inkstand towards her.

  “She is; disgustingly so. She rather disgraced the family by marrying a jam-maker. Not that I blame her for that, if she liked him. She got such a surfeit of jam that it made her sour. That’s a paradox. Do laugh.”

  “I don't see that it’s particularly funny. I wonder she doesn’t do something for you if she knows how badly off you are.”

  “She does,” said Mary, beginning to write. “She sends me an embroidered shawl. As a matter of fact, she—very kindly—offered to give me a home when my father died.”

  “You don’t mean to say you refused?” cried her friend.

  “Of course I refused. I thought I’d see something of life on my own.”

  “Rich girls often think they’ll like working for their living,” said Janet, nodding. “They soon find out what it’s really like.”

  “I never had any illusions about it,” answered Mary. “This is a very difficult letter to write. Fold the shawl up, Janet, and shove it in a drawer.”

  Janet obeyed her, but sighed.

  “It does seem a shame to put it away.”

  “It would be a greater shame to leave it lying about to collect the dust,” said the more practical Mary.

  There was silence for a time while Mary chewed her pen, and Janet laid the shawl to rest in the depths of a drawer.

  “Mary,” said Janet at last, “I don’t want to be inquisitive, but why do you never see any friends? You must have had quite a lot.”

  “Um!’ Mary started to write again. “Not so many as I thought.”

  “Why not? What do you mean?” asked Janet.

  “Same old tale. Many so-called friends while there was money and position. Then comes the financial smash, the incidental disgrace, and my father’s tragic death. It’s the only grudge I have against father, that he didn’t stay to face the music with me. Anyway, one of the greatest ‘friends’ cut me dead in the street. Others—just kept out of the way. So as soon as I could I turned and ran.”

  “They couldn’t all have been so—so beastly!” said Janet.

  “I daresay they weren’t. I didn’t wait to see. One or two calle