In addition to reading writing by Georgette Heyer, I’ve also been reading writing about Heyer, specifically Jennifer Kloester’s 2011 biography of the iconic author. There’s a lot to glean from her life, some surprising (early in her marriage she lived in a grass-hut compound in Tanzania) and some not surprising (she was deeply influenced by her father’s love of words). One aspect which has particularly caught my attention, however, is the way in which her writing schedule was affected by her finances.
When she and her husband, Ronald Rougier, decided they wanted a family, it essentially meant giving up his career. He was a mining engineer, which meant that lucrative jobs for him were abroad. They were not, however, going to raise children in Tanzania or Macedonia. They returned home to England, where Ronald made minimal financial contribution to their family until he eventually became a lawyer. As Georgette’s father died young, she acted as financial support for her mother and two younger brothers, as well as for herself, husband, and eventually their son Richard. Can you spell stressful?
When Georgette and Ronald returned to England, he ran a sporting goods store in a small town, but it was not a profitable venture. Kloester quotes a letter Georgette wrote to her agent at the time (1931ish):
I MUST HAVE MONEY. Like that. All in capitals.
She became pregnant, as she and Ronald had wanted. No matter how much you want a child, however, they require a definite financial investment. For Georgette, as a working mother raised in the upper middle class, that included salary for a nurse and, later, governesses. Georgette assessed the profitability of the genres she’d written in and stopped writing contemporary romances to focus instead on crime and historical fiction. Although she was writing two successful books a year, financial pressures continued and by 1935 she had a full-on breakdown. She could barely get out of bed. Kloester writes,
It was three years since Richard’s birth and in that time Georgette had moved house twice, written six books, endured periods without domestic support, suffered several episodes of severe financial strain, and committed herself to writing seven new novels. In some ways a breakdown does not seem surprising.
This was, incidentally, around the same time she had finished her first book set in the Regency: she was reviewing proofs for Regency Buck during the recovery from her breakdown. Later that year, she took out a bank loan of £400 to help pay for house renovations which eventually exceeded £800–on a house she and her husband did not own. She continued writing as much as she could, including frequent letters to her agents hoping for magazine serializations and film rights as well as higher advances on future books. Kloester quotes her on her writing schedule:
Since her nervous breakdown, Georgette had found that she “daren’t sit up all night writing anymore, 5.30 a.m. is now my limit, and that means early bed the next night.” A few hours sleep were usually enough to restore her energy, however and she was always up in time to see Ronald and Richard in the morning. From 1928, this gruelling regimen enabled Georgette to write an average of two books a year for more than a decade.
It wasn’t enough to offset the family’s finances, however, and the next year she ended up getting a loan from her mother-in-law for £700. That’s a debt of £1100 at a time when her projected earnings for six months were £1200. At this point, her husband gave up on the sporting goods store to become a barrister, which meant he provided no income for the next several years. By 1939, Georgette was describing a financial situation that had not improved:
The bank is getting very restive, as the overdraft is over £1000. I’ve explained to them about not being to finish my book, & thus pay in £750, but meanwhile I must reduce the thing to reasonable proportions, & have said that I’ll do so. I want £500. £300 to bring the overdraft within limits of my securities–at least my mother’s [in-law] securities; £170 to pay second installment of Income Tax, overdue; & £119 to pay an outstanding account…It seems to me that if we are to anticipate royalties I must cover that, or find myself in a worse mess next year. If you could sell the Bride as a serial for £300-350, & get me £300 for the pseudonym work, I should have done it–but how chancy! I honestly don’t know which way to turn, & it’s fast getting me down. My head begins to swim, always a bad sign. It would be awful if I went in for another of my nervous breakdowns. I try not to let myself think too much, but it’s difficult when letters come from the bank, demanding instant attention.
I’m only halfway through the biography and World War II is about to start, which I don’t imagine will help in any way whatsoever. I don’t know yet how Heyer’s finances will resolve, but I think her financial story will not be unfamiliar to all too many writers. When I read the bit about the loan on house renovation, it reminded me of articles about Jasinda Wilder, back in the early days of indie publishing coinciding with house market crash.
Jasinda said they were probably about 30 days away from losing their house. At that point, they had no idea what they were going to do.
“You can’t really show up at somebody’s house, even our parents, with a family of seven, like, ‘Can we sleep on your couch?'” she said.
“It was very scary,” Jack added.
In desperation, the Wilders went down to the basement of their house in a Detroit suburb and started writing.
That’s in a news article from 2013 and it’s nice to know that the story has turned out well for the Wilders. More recently, as the US government shutdown dragged on and federal employees were missing paychecks, I read through this thread on Romancelandia Twitter, in which several romance authors talk about small financial mistakes which torpedoed their finances.
I had a $2 mistake balloon into several hundreds of dollars which in turn metastasized and set me back a full year.
— Courtney!!! Milan 🦖 (@courtneymilan) January 17, 2019
I think Courtney Milan’s story is from her college years, but it’s still an experience right in line with Heyer’s: a manageable debt quickly becoming an unmanageable one. And a harsh reminder that financial security remains elusive for many–even best-selling authors.
