Schemes and Waistcoats, Oh My....
One would have to have been living in a rock or in the middle of a more distant corn field than the one I escaped to have missed the divine Ms. Rhimes' Bridgerton phenomena. In the heart of the pandemic, it was one of the few pinpoint beacons of light, pageantry and life-affirming joy out there, all the more noteworthy because the series created an alternate history where people of color were allowed to escape into the fantasy and frippery of regency romance.
While many insightful critiques have been penned about Shonda Rhimes' adaptation of Bridgerton, this blog post isn't that sort of blog post. At the time I first watched Bridgerton, I was in deep need of escape from the realities of lockdown. The fact that all the heterosexual canoodling left me mainly cold was besides the point, really. The point was that it felt good to watch people fully embrace life and desire. Sometimes that's all you need.
Sometimes.
But as Shonda demonstrated so well, seeing yourself represented, even in escapism, can be a potent and liberating experience. As a non-binary, masculine-of-center person, there have only been a small handful of historical romances that have ever fit the bill for me, and all of them were written by Sarah Waters. And then I picked up A Gentleman's Gentleman by TJ Alexander, and my entire romance reading world got turned over on its head in the best possible way.
You see, like many queer people, I grew up not seeing people like me represented in romance literature hardly ever, and even then mostly it was your standard issue queer coded villain or tragic figure doomed to die young, beautiful and abandoned by everyone they loved.
In other words, more historically accurate depictions of queer life in the olden times can be a bit... challenging to read. Best reserve those books for better mental health days or at least days when the federal government isn't actively trying to bring the bad old days back.
A Gentleman's Gentleman by TJ Alexander is that rara avis, a historical romance featuring the experience of trans gay men in the Regency era that is neither pure escapism nor a gigantic doomfest. It's a delicate balancing act and mostly very successful due to the author taking a delicate Woodhouseian tone to their narration.
Our protagonist, Lord Christopher Eden, is a member of the rural landed gentry who finds himself in the unpleasant predicament of needing to marry before his twenty-fifth birthday or forever forfeit his title and estate. This task is rendered doubly difficult because a) he's gayer than a barrel of drunken monkeys and b) he's a "man of unusual make." So reluctantly he reaches out to the family lawyers to procure for him a butler suitable to the task of speed wooing during the London season.
The butler in question? Well, imagine Jeeves run through the filter of the Black Butler: tall, hawklike, and very set on butlering in the most precise and elegant way. James Harding is everything Lord Christopher Eden envies in a man and worse, he's very, very proper in his tastes whereas Eden is an explosion of pastels worthy of Captain Stede Bonnet himself.
So of course, we have this lovely, slow-burn thirsty-as-hell tension between the two men as they gradually move from irritating one another, to respect, to a love complicated by identity and social standing.
It's difficult to say too much about the plot without spoilers, so let's just say the course of true love ne'er did run smooth, and as Lord Eden's 25th birthday draws closer, he finds himself confronted with his basic unwillingness to conform to Regency society just to maintain his position at the possible expense of a heterosexual woman's future happiness. He also finds James's perfectionism and joy in masculinity, his authenticity and kindness completely irresistible.
Dear reader, when I say this story is a slow burn, I mean it. TJ Alexander makes you wait until almost the last moment for the payoff, but I promise you the fireworks display is well worth the wait.
I'm not easily drawn in by romance, but A Gentleman's Gentleman had me, body and soul. As a person who was grieving the place of Good Omens, I can also say that this novel fits the bill quite nicely, and I look forward to future rereads.
Score: 5 Martinis / 3 tabasco peppers.
