Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > Powder and Patch

Powder and Patch is ... wait for it ... about guys wearing makeup, not women. This is Georgette Heyer's second-published novel, originally published under the title The Transformation of Philip Jettan in 1923.

Philip, a straightforward, plainly dressed country gentleman, gets totally shot down by Cleone, the girl he loves, for not being sophisticated enough. So he gets in a huff and hares off to Paris to learn how to be a charmer in the Georgian period ... which means white wig, makeup (face powdered, rouge, strategically placed beauty patches on the face), fancy clothes and high heels, and also learning to sweet-talk the ladies.



Ooh la la! It's a Cinderfella type of story, and Philip - once he's finally convinced to go along with the fashions of the time - throws himself into it wholeheartedly. Within six months, he's fluent in French, suave with the ladies, expert with the sword, and the darling of Parisian high society. It's all highly unrealistic but good fun.

But Philip is still nurturing the hope in his heart that Cleone will love him for who he really is. When he meets up with her again in London, he decides to give her his best French dandy mannerisms. Hah! Served her right! Unfortunately it all backfires, and the two of them spend most of the rest of the book at cross purposes, trying to make each other jealous, saying hurtful things they don't really mean, and other types of nonsense like that.

I did like Philip as a main character (except when he got a little too carried away with the high fashion routine) but Cleone was one of those silly heroines who acts like an idiot too often for me. Other than her being lovely, there's really not much to recommend her. She's not memorable in any good way.

Now this novel was written almost 100 years ago, BUT. It still was a jaw dropper for me when Cleone's Aunt Sarah spent about 3 pages lecturing Philip on how to handle Cleone and win her love. A sampling of her good (NOT) advice:

♥ "You walked off when you should have mastered her. I'll wager my best necklet she was waiting for you to assert yourself. And now she's probably miserable."

♥ "You should know by now that no woman means what she says when it's to a man."

♥ "Women don't reason. That's a man's part. Why, do you suppose that if Cleone thought as you think, and had a brain like a man's you'd be in love with her? Of course you'd not. You'd not be able to feel your superiority over her."

♥ "Take that girl and shake her. Tell her you'll not be flouted. Tell her she's a little fool, and kiss her. And if she protests, go on kissing her."

No. Just no. Even for a hundred years ago, this advice is appalling, especially when it's coming from, and written by, another woman.

Also, Aunt Sarah has a little black page who speaks with, apparently, a southern drawl, and whose name, it pains me to say, is Sambo. Luckily he only shows up in two extremely brief scenes.

Finally, it's very helpful if you speak French, because there's a lot of it in this book, including a whole poem written by Philip to a French lady's little pearl earring, and Heyer rarely bothers to translate it for the reader.

There were some cute moments in this story, and it's kind of a fun, frothy, silly romp of a romance, but you have to make major allowances for old-time societal norms and values.

A soft 3 stars for me, maybe 2.75.

Bonus content: When this book was originally published, it had a final chapter that Heyer and her publisher decided to drop when they republished it several years later under Heyer's own name. I'm firmly in the camp that the story is better without this last chapter (unusual for me; I typically like epilogues), but it's worth reading to see how Heyer's view of the later lives of Cleone and Philip seems to have changed as she got a little older. (view spoiler)[ In one version they presumably settle down at Philip's country estate; in the other they go to Paris and re-enter high society there, with Philip letting loose his inner fashion hound again, spending 4 hours personally getting Cleone ready for her first Parisian ball. (hide spoiler)] You decide which ending you prefer! Here's the lost chapter, from an old copy of the first edition of this book found in the British Library by a diligent Heyer fan and copied by her for our benefit: http://www.shelaghlewins.com/other_st...

Group read with the Georgette Heyer group.