_DOCTOR THORNE_--_THE BERTRAMS_--_THE
WEST INDIES AND THE SPANISH MAIN_.
As I journeyed across France to Marseilles, and made thence a
terribly rough voyage to Alexandria, I wrote my allotted number of
pages every day. On this occasion more than once I left my paper on
the cabin table, rushing away to be sick in the privacy of my state
room. It was February, and the weather was miserable; but still I did
my work. _Labor omnia vincit improbus_. I do not say that to all men
has been given physical strength sufficient for such exertion as
this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable most men to
work at almost any season. I had previously to this arranged a system
of task-work for myself, which I would strongly recommend to those
who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not made absolutely
obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should never be allowed
to become spasmodic. There was no day on which it was my positive
duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports
for the Post Office. I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had
made up my mind to undertake this second profession, I found it to be
expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws. When I have
commenced a new book, I have always prepared a diary, divided into
weeks, and carried it on for the period which I have allowed myself
for the completion of the work. In this I have entered, day by day,
the number of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have
slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness
has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased
labour, so that the deficiency might be supplied. According to the
circumstances of the time,--whether my other business might be then
heavy or light, or whether the book which I was writing was or was
not wanted with speed,--I have allotted myself so many pages a week.
The average number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as
20, and has risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page
has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched,
will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as
I went. In the bargains I have made with publishers I have,--not, of
course, with their knowledge, but in my own mind,--undertaken always
to supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out
of hand short of the number by a single word. I may also say that the
excess has been very small. I have prided myself on completing my
work exactly within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided myself
especially in completing it within the proposed time,--and I have
always done so. There has ever been the record before me, and a week
passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my
eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.
I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a
man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius,
but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to
these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not be
disobeyed. It has the force of the water-drop that hollows the stone.
A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a
spasmodic Hercules. It is the tortoise which always catches the hare.
The hare has no chance. He loses more time in glorifying himself
for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise to make half his
journey.
I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and
painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They have
ever been as boys struggling to learn their lesson as they entered
the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they have
failed to write their best because they have seldom written at
ease. I have done double their work,--though burdened with another
profession,--and have done it almost without an effort. I have not
once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of
being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to "copy." The
needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost always been in
the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates and ruled
spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand upon
my industry, has done all that for me.
There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a
taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination
should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves him. When I have
heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my
scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to
wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for the divine moment of
melting. If the man whose business it is to write has eaten too many
good things, or has drunk too much, or smoked too many cigars,--as
men who write sometimes will do,--then his condition may be
unfavourable for work; but so will be the condition of a shoemaker
who has been similarly imprudent. I have sometimes thought that the
inspiration wanted has been the remedy which time will give to the
evil results of such imprudence.--_Mens sana in corpore sano_. The
author wants that as does every other workman,--that and a habit of
industry. I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a
book was a piece of cobbler's wax on my chair. I certainly believe in
the cobbler's wax much more than the inspiration.
It will be said, perhaps, that a man whose work has risen to no
higher pitch than mine has attained, has no right to speak of the
strains and impulses to which real genius is exposed. I am ready to
admit the great variations in brain power which are exhibited by the
products of different men, and am not disposed to rank my own very
high; but my own experience tells me that a man can always do the
work for which his brain is fitted if he will give himself the habit
of regarding his work as a normal condition of his life. I therefore
venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship as the
business of their lives, even when they propose that that authorship
be of the highest class known, to avoid enthusiastic rushes with
their pens, and to seat themselves at their desks day by day as
though they were lawyers' clerks;--and so let them sit until the
allotted task shall be accomplished.
While I was in Egypt, I finished _Doctor Thorne_, and on the
following day began _The Bertrams_. I was moved now by a
determination to excel, if not in quality, at any rate in quantity.
An ignoble ambition for an author, my readers will no doubt say. But
not, I think, altogether ignoble, if an author can bring himself to
look at his work as does any other workman. This had become my task,
this was the furrow in which my plough was set, this was the thing
the doing of which had fallen into my hands, and I was minded to
work at it with a will. It is not on my conscience that I have ever
scamped my work. My novels, whether good or bad, have been as good as
I could make them. Had I taken three months of idleness between each
they would have been no better. Feeling convinced of that, I finished
_Doctor Thorne_ on one day, and began _The Bertrams_ on the next.
I had then been nearly two months in Egypt, and had at last succeeded
in settling the terms of a postal treaty. Nearly twenty years have
passed since that time, and other years may yet run on before these
pages are printed. I trust I may commit no official sin by describing
here the nature of the difficulty which met me. I found, on my
arrival, that I was to communicate with an officer of the Pasha, who
was then called Nubar Bey. I presume him to have been the gentleman
who has lately dealt with our Government as to the Suez Canal shares,
and who is now well known to the political world as Nubar Pasha. I
found him a most courteous gentleman, an Armenian. I never went to
his office, nor do I know that he had an office. Every other day he
would come to me at my hotel, and bring with him servants, and pipes,
and coffee. I enjoyed his coming greatly; but there was one point on
which we could not agree. As to money and other details, it seemed
as though he could hardly accede fast enough to the wishes of the
Postmaster-General; but on one point he was firmly opposed to me.
I was desirous that the mails should be carried through Egypt in
twenty-four hours, and he thought that forty-eight hours should be
allowed. I was obstinate, and he was obstinate; and for a long time
we could come to no agreement. At last his oriental tranquillity
seemed to desert him, and he took upon himself to assure me, with
almost more than British energy, that, if I insisted on the quick
transit, a terrible responsibility would rest on my head. I made this
mistake, he said,--that I supposed that a rate of travelling which
would be easy and secure in England could be attained with safety
in Egypt. "The Pasha, his master, would," he said, "no doubt accede
to any terms demanded by the British Post Office, so great was his
reverence for everything British. In that case he, Nubar, would at
once resign his position, and retire into obscurity. He would be
ruined; but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly
follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head." I smoked my
pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee, with oriental quiescence
but British firmness. Every now and again, through three or four
visits, I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit
could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way,--and
astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no longer
any question of bloodshed or of resignation of office, and he assured
me, with energetic complaisance, that it should be his care to see
that the time was punctually kept. It was punctually kept, and, I
believe, is so still. I must confess, however, that my persistency
was not the result of any courage specially personal to myself.
While the matter was being debated, it had been whispered to me that
the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company had conceived that
forty-eight hours would suit the purposes of their traffic better
than twenty-four, and that, as they were the great paymasters on the
railway, the Minister of the Egyptian State, who managed the railway,
might probably wish to accommodate them. I often wondered who
originated that frightful picture of blood and desolation. That it
came from an English heart and an English hand I was always sure.
From Egypt I visited the Holy Land, and on my way inspected the Post
Offices at Malta and Gibraltar. I could fill a volume with true tales
of my adventures. The _Tales of All Countries_ have, most of them,
some foundation in such occurrences. There is one called _John Bull
on the Guadalquivir_, the chief incident in which occurred to me and
a friend of mine on our way up that river to Seville. We both of
us handled the gold ornaments of a man whom we believed to be a
bullfighter, but who turned out to be a duke,--and a duke, too,
who could speak English! How gracious he was to us, and yet how
thoroughly he covered us with ridicule!
On my return home I received £400 from Messrs. Chapman & Hall
for _Doctor Thorne_, and agreed to sell them _The Bertrams_ for
the same sum. This latter novel was written under very vagrant
circumstances,--at Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Glasgow, then at
sea, and at last finished in Jamaica. Of my journey to the West
Indies I will say a few words presently, but I may as well speak of
these two novels here. _Doctor Thorne_ has, I believe, been the most
popular book that I have written,--if I may take the sale as a proof
of comparative popularity. _The Bertrams_ has had quite an opposite
fortune. I do not know that I have ever heard it well spoken of even
by my friends, and I cannot remember that there is any character in
it that has dwelt in the minds of novel-readers. I myself think that
they are of about equal merit, but that neither of them is good.
They fall away very much from _The Three Clerks_, both in pathos
and humour. There is no personage in either of them comparable to
Chaffanbrass the lawyer. The plot of _Doctor Thorne_ is good, and
I am led therefore to suppose that a good plot,--which, to my own
feeling, is the most insignificant part of a tale,--is that which
will most raise it or most condemn it in the public judgment. The
plots of _Tom Jones_ and of _Ivanhoe_ are almost perfect, and they
are probably the most popular novels of the schools of the last and
of this century; but to me the delicacy of Amelia, and the rugged
strength of Burley and Meg Merrilies, say more for the power of those
great novelists than the gift of construction shown in the two works
I have named. A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened
by humour and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of
attention, the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not
of individuals known to the world or to the author, but of created
personages impregnated with traits of character which are known. To
my thinking, the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you
have the vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which
the agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There
must, however, be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort.
That of _The Bertrams_ was more than ordinarily bad; and as the book
was relieved by no special character, it failed. Its failure never
surprised me; but I have been surprised by the success of _Doctor
Thorne_.
At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the
failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale,
and the notices elicited from the critics, and the feeling which
had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers, all
made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel,
I could certainly sell it. And if I could publish three in two
years,--confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible
author of whom the publisher in Paternoster Row had complained to
me,--I might add £600 a-year to my official income. I was still
living in Ireland, and could keep a good house over my head, insure
my life, educate my two boys, and hunt perhaps twice a-week, on £1400
a-year. If more should come, it would be well;--but £600 a-year I was
prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming, but was
very pleasant when it came.
On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the
Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had
to do there, but I know that I walked all over the city with the
letter-carriers, going up to the top flats of the houses, as the
men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their
labours had I not trudged every step with them. It was midsummer,
and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble, and then
I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home
afterwards and write a love-scene. But the love-scenes written in
Glasgow, all belonging to _The Bertrams_, are not good.
Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West
Indies, and cleanse the Augean stables of our Post Office system
there. Up to that time, and at that time, our Colonial Post Offices
generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British
Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be
postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands
have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated for
residence, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous for
want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the stables
had become Augean. I was also instructed to carry out in some of the
islands a plan for giving up this postal authority to the island
Governor, and in others to propose some such plan. I was then to go
on to Cuba, to make a postal treaty with the Spanish authorities, and
to Panama for the same purpose with the Government of New Grenada.
All this work I performed to my satisfaction, and I hope to that of
my masters in St. Martin's le Grand.
But the trip is at the present moment of importance to my subject, as
having enabled me to write that which, on the whole, I regard as the
best book that has come from my pen. It is short, and, I think I may
venture to say, amusing, useful, and true. As soon as I had learned
from the secretary at the General Post Office that this journey
would be required, I proposed the book to Messrs. Chapman & Hall,
demanding £250 for a single volume. The contract was made without
any difficulty, and when I returned home the work was complete in my
desk. I began it on board the ship in which I left Kingston, Jamaica,
for Cuba,--and from week to week I carried it on as I went. From Cuba
I made my way to St. Thomas, and through the island down to Demerara,
then back to St. Thomas,--which is the starting-point for all places
in that part of the globe,--to Santa Martha, Carthagena, Aspinwall,
over the Isthmus to Panama, up the Pacific to a little harbour on the
coast of Costa Rica, thence across Central America, through Costa
Rica, and down the Nicaragua river to the Mosquito coast, and after
that home by Bermuda and New York. Should any one want further
details of the voyage, are they not written in my book? The fact
memorable to me now is that I never made a single note while
writing or preparing it. Preparation, indeed, there was none. The
descriptions and opinions came hot on to the paper from their causes.
I will not say that this is the best way of writing a book intended
to give accurate information. But it is the best way of producing
to the eye of the reader, and to his ear, that which the eye of the
writer has seen and his ear heard. There are two kinds of confidence
which a reader may have in his author,--which two kinds the reader
who wishes to use his reading well should carefully discriminate.
There is a confidence in facts and a confidence in vision. The one
man tells you accurately what has been. The other suggests to you
what may, or perhaps what must have been, or what ought to have been.
The former requires simple faith. The latter calls upon you to judge
for yourself, and form your own conclusions. The former does not
intend to be prescient, nor the latter accurate. Research is the
weapon used by the former; observation by the latter. Either may be
false,--wilfully false; as also may either be steadfastly true. As
to that, the reader must judge for himself. But the man who writes
_currente calamo_, who works with a rapidity which will not admit of
accuracy, may be as true, and in one sense as trustworthy, as he who
bases every word upon a rock of facts. I have written very much as I
have travelled about; and though I have been very inaccurate, I have
always written the exact truth as I saw it;--and I have, I think,
drawn my pictures correctly.
The view I took of the relative position in the West Indies of black
men and white men was the view of the _Times_ newspaper at that
period; and there appeared three articles in that journal, one
closely after another, which made the fortune of the book. Had it
been very bad, I suppose its fortune could not have been made for it
even by the _Times_ newspaper. I afterwards became acquainted with
the writer of those articles, the contributor himself informing me
that he had written them. I told him that he had done me a greater
service than can often be done by one man to another, but that I was
under no obligation to him. I do not think that he saw the matter
quite in the same light.
I am aware that by that criticism I was much raised in my position as
an author. Whether such lifting up by such means is good or bad for
literature is a question which I hope to discuss in a future chapter.
But the result was immediate to me, for I at once went to Chapman &
Hall and successfully demanded £600 for my next novel.