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METHODS OF AUTHORS
ERICHSEN
WP Co
COPYRIGHT, 1894,
BY WILLIAM H. HILLS.
_All Rights Reserved._
_To
R. E. FRANCILLON,
who is admired and loved by novel-readers on
both sides of the Atlantic,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED,
by his permission, with sincere regard, by
the Author._
PREFACE.
When I began to gather the material for this volume I was quite doubtful
as to whether the public would be interested in a work of this kind or
not. As my labor progressed, however, it became evident that not only
the body of the people, but authors themselves, were deeply interested
in the subject, and would welcome a book treating of it. Not only M.
Jules Claretie, the celebrated Parisian literarian, but the late Dr.
Meissner and many others assured me of this fact.
Nor is this very surprising. Who, after reading a brilliant novel, or
some excellent treatise, would not like to know how it was written?
So far as I know, this volume is a novelty, and Ben Akiba is outwitted
for once. Books about authors have been published by the thousands, but
to my knowledge, up to date, none have been issued describing their
methods of work.
In the preparation of this book I have been greatly aided by the works
of Rev. Francis Jacox, an anonymous article in _All the Year Round_, and
R. E. Francillon's essay on "The Physiology of Authorship," which
appeared first in the _Gentleman's Magazine_.
I was also assisted in my labor by numerous newspaper clippings and many
letters from writers, whose names appear in this volume, and to all of
whom I return my sincere thanks.
H. E.
DETROIT, Mich.
CONTENTS.
I. Eccentricities in Composition.
II. Care in Literary Production.
III. Speed in Writing.
IV. Influence upon Writers of Time and Place.
V. Writing under Difficulties.
VI. Aids to Inspiration--Favorite Habits of Work.
VII. Goethe, Dickens, Schiller, and Scott.
VIII. Burning Midnight Oil.
IX. Literary Partnership.
X. Anonymity in Authorship.
XI. System in Novel Writing.
XII. Traits of Musical Composers.
XIII. The Hygiene of Writing.
XIV. A Humorist's Regimen.
METHODS OF AUTHORS.
I.
Eccentricities in Composition.
The public--that is, the reading world made up of those who love the
products of authorship--always takes an interest in the methods of work
adopted by literary men, and is fond of gaining information about
authorship in the act, and of getting a glimpse of its favorite, the
author, at work in that "sanctum sanctorum"--the study. The modes in
which men write are so various that it would take at least a dozen
volumes to relate them, were they all known, for:--
"Some wits are only in the mind
When beaux and belles are 'round them prating;
Some, when they dress for dinner, find
Their muse and valet both in waiting;
And manage, at the self-same time,
To adjust a neckcloth and a rhyme.
"Some bards there are who cannot scribble
Without a glove to tear or nibble;
Or a small twig to whisk about--
As if the hidden founts of fancy,
Like wells of old, were thus found out
By mystic tricks of rhabdomancy.
"Such was the little feathery wand,
That, held forever in the hand
Of her who won and wore the crown
Of female genius in this age,
Seemed the conductor that drew down
Those words of lightning to her page."
This refers to Madame de Stael, who, when writing, wielded a "little
feathery wand," made of paper, shaped like a fan or feather, in the
manner and to the effect above described.
Well may the vivacious penman of "Rhymes on the Road" exclaim:--
"What various attitudes, and ways,
And tricks we authors have in writing!
While some write sitting, some, like Bayes,
Usually stand while they're inditing.
Poets there are who wear the floor out,
Measuring a line at every stride;
While some, like Henry Stephens, pour out
Rhymes by the dozen while they ride.
Herodotus wrote most in bed;
And Richerand, a French physician,
Declares the clockwork of the head
Goes best in that reclined position.
If you consult Montaigne and Pliny on
The subject, 'tis their joint opinion
That thought its richest harvest yields
Abroad, among the woods and fields."
M. de Valois alleges that Plato produced, like Herodotus, "his glorious
visions all in bed"; while
"'Twas in his carriage the sublime
Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme."
But little is known of the habits of the earliest writers. The great
Plato, whose thoughts seemed to come so easy, we are told, toiled over
his manuscripts, working with slow and tiresome elaboration. The opening
sentence of "The Republic" on the author's tablets was found to be
written in thirteen different versions. When death called him from his
labor the great philosopher was busy at his desk, "combing, and curling,
and weaving, and unweaving his writings after a variety of fashions."
Virgil was wont to pour forth a quantity of verses in the morning, which
he decreased to a very small number by incessant correction and
elimination. He subjected the products of his composition to a process
of continual polishing and filing, much after the manner, as he said
himself, of a bear licking her cubs into shape. Cicero's chief pleasure
was literary work. He declared that he would willingly forego all the
wealth and glory of the world to spend his time in meditation or study.
The diversity in the methods adopted by authors is as great as the
difference in their choice of subjects. A story is often cited in
illustration of the different characteristics of three great
nationalities which equally illustrates the different paths which may be
followed in any intellectual undertaking.
An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a German, competing for a prize offered
for the best essay on the natural history of the camel, adopted each his
own method of research upon the subject. The German, providing himself
with a stock of tobacco, sought the quiet solitude of his study in order
to evolve from the depths of his philosophic consciousness the primitive
notion of a camel. The Frenchman repaired to the nearest library, and
overhauled its contents in order to collect all that other men had
written upon the subject. The Englishman packed his carpet-bag and set
sail for the East, that he might study the habits of the animal in its
original haunts.
The combination of these three methods is the perfection of study; but
the Frenchman's method is not unknown even among Americans. Nor does it
deserve the condemnation it usually receives. The man who peruses a
hundred books on a subject for the purpose of writing one bestows a real
benefit upon society, in case he does his work well. But some excellent
work has been composed without the necessity either of research or
original investigation. Anthony Trollope described his famous
archdeacon without ever having met a live archdeacon. He never lived in
any cathedral city except London; Archdeacon Grantly was the child of
"moral consciousness" alone; Trollope had no knowledge, except
indirectly, about bishops and deans. In fact, "The Warden" was not
intended originally to be a novel of clerical life, but a novel which
should work out a dramatic situation--that of a trustworthy, amiable man
who was the holder, by no fault of his own, of an endowment which was in
itself an abuse, and on whose devoted head should fall the thunders of
those who assailed the abuse.
Bryan Waller Proctor, the poet (who, I believe, is better known under
the name of "Barry Cornwall"), had never viewed the ocean when he
committed to paper that beautiful poem, "The Sea." Many of his finest
lyrics and songs were composed mentally while he was riding daily to
London in an omnibus. Schiller had never been in Switzerland, and had
only heard and read about the country, when he wrote his "William Tell."
Harrison Ainsworth, the Lancashire novelist, when he composed "Rookwood"
and "Jack Sheppard," depended entirely on his ability to read up and on
his facility of assimilation, for during his lifetime he never came in
personal contact with thieves at all. It is said that when he wrote the
really admirable ride of Turpin to York he only went at a great pace
over the paper, with a road-map and description of the country in front
of him. It was only when he heard all the world say how faithfully the
region was pictured, and how truly he had observed distances and
localities, that he actually drove over the ground for the first time,
and declared that it was more like his account than he could have
imagined.
Erasmus composed on horseback, as he pricked across the country, and
committed his thoughts to paper as soon as he reached his next inn. In
this way he composed his "Encomium Moriae," or "Praise of Folly," in a
journey from Italy to the land of the man to whose name that title bore
punning and complimentary reference, his sterling friend and ally, Sir
Thomas More.
Aubrey relates how Hobbes composed his "Leviathan": "He walked much and
mused as he walked; and he had in the head of his cane a pen and
inkhorn, and he carried always a note-book in his pocket, and 'as soon
as the thought darted,' he presently entered it into his book, or
otherwise might have lost it. He had drawn the design of the book into
chapters, etc., and he knew whereabouts it would come in." Hartley
Coleridge somewhere expresses his entire conviction that it was Pope's
general practice to set down in a book every line, half-line, or lucky
phrase that occurred to him, and either to find or make a place for
them when and where he could. Richard Savage noted down a whole tragedy
on scraps of paper at the counters of shops, into which he entered and
asked for pen and ink as if to make a memorandum.
"A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the
thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are generally the most
valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return." This was
the advice of Lord Bacon, whose example has been followed by many
eminent men. Miss Martineau has recorded that Barry Cornwall's favorite
method of composition was practised when alone in a crowd. He, like
Savage, also had a habit of running into a shop to write down his
verses. Tom Moore's custom was to compose as he walked. He had a table
in his garden, on which he wrote down his thoughts. When the weather was
bad, he paced up and down his small study. It is extremely desirable
that thoughts should be written as they rise in the mind, because, if
they are not recorded at the time, they may never return. "I attach so
much importance to the ideas which come during the night, or in the
morning," says Gaston Plante, the electrical engineer, "that I have
always, at the head of my bed, paper and pencil suspended by a string,
by the help of which I write every morning the ideas I have been able
to conceive, particularly upon subjects of scientific research. I write
these notes in obscurity, and decipher and develop them in the morning,
pen in hand." The philosopher Emerson took similar pains to catch a
fleeting thought, for, whenever he had a happy idea, he wrote it down,
and when Mrs. Emerson, startled in the night by some unusual sound,
cried, "What is the matter? Are you ill?" the philosopher softly
replied, "No, my dear; only an idea."
George Bancroft, the historian, had a similar habit. His bedroom served
also as a library. The room was spacious, and its walls were lined,
above and below, with volumes. A single bed stood in the middle of the
apartment, and beside the bed were paper, pencil, two wax candles, and
matches; so that, like Mr. Pecksniff, Mr. Bancroft might not forget any
idea that came into his mind in a wakeful moment of the night.
As curious a mode of composition as perhaps any on record, if the story
be credible, is that affirmed of Fuller--that he used to write the first
words of every line near the margin down to the foot of the paper, and
that then, beginning again, he filled up the blanks exactly, without
spaces, interlineations, or contractions, and that he would so connect
the ends and beginnings that the sense would appear as complete as if it
had been written in a continued series after the ordinary manner.
Several distinguished American writers have the habit of jotting a
sentence, or a line or two here and there, upon a long page, and then
filling up the outline thus made with persistent revision.
With some great writers, it has been customary to do a vast amount of
antecedent work before beginning their books. It is related of George
Eliot that she read one thousand books before she wrote "Daniel
Deronda." For two or three years before she composed a work, she read up
her subject in scores and scores of volumes. She was one of the masters,
so called, of all learning, talking with scholars and men of science on
terms of equality. George Eliot was a hard worker, and, like many gifted
writers, she was often tempted to burn at night the lines she had
written during the day. Carlyle was similarly tempted, and it is to be
regretted that the great growler, in many instances, did not carry out
the design. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great."
Alison perused two thousand books before he completed his celebrated
history. It is said of another that he read twenty thousand volumes and
wrote only two books. "For the statistics of the negro population of
South America alone," says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than 150
volumes." David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book
through the press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves.
The process has increased my respect for authors a thousandfold. I think
I would rather cross the African continent again than to undertake to
write another book."
Thackeray confessed that the title for his novel, "Vanity Fair," came to
him in the middle of the night, and that he jumped out of bed and ran
three times around the room, shouting the words. Thackeray had no
literary system. He wrote only when he felt like it. Sometimes he was
unable to write two lines in succession. Then, again, he could sit down
and write so rapidly that he would keep three sheets in the wind all the
time. While he was editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_ he never succeeded
in getting copy enough ahead for more than five issues. In this
negligence he fell far behind the magazine editors of the present time.
They always have bundles of copy on hand.
II.
Care in Literary Production.
Indolence, that is to say, chronic fatigue, appears to be the natural
habit of imaginative brains. It is a commonplace to note that men of
fertile fancy, as a class, have been notorious for their horror of
formulating their ideas even by the toil of thought, much more by
passing them through the crucible of the ink-bottle. In many cases they
have needed the very active stimulant of hunger. The _cacoethes
scribendi_ is a disease common, not to imaginative, but to imitative,
minds. Probably no hewer of wood or drawer of water undergoes a tithe of
the toil of those whose work is reputed play, but is, in fact, a battle,
every moment, between the flesh and the spirit. Campbell, who at the age
of sixty-one could drudge at an unimaginative work for fourteen hours a
day like a galley-slave, "and yet," as he says in one of his letters,
"be as cheerful as a child," speaks in a much less happy tone of the
work which alone was congenial to him: "The truth is, I am not writing
poetry, but projecting it, and that keeps me more idle and abstracted
than you can conceive. I pass hours thinking about what I am to compose.
The actual time employed in composition is but a fraction of the time
lost in setting about it." "At Glasgow," we read of him even when a
young man, "he seldom exercised his gift except when roused into action
either by the prospect of gaining a prize or by some striking incident."
Campbell, if not a great man, was a typical worker.
A playwright, who had written five hundred lines in three days, taunted
Euripides because he had spent as much time upon five lines. "Yes,"
replied the poet, "but your five hundred lines in three days will be
forgotten, while my five will live forever."
It is said of one of Longfellow's poems that it was written in four
weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down.
Longfellow was a very careful writer. He wrote and rewrote, and laid his
work by and later revised it. He often consulted his friends about his
productions before they were given to the world. Thus he sent his work
out as perfect as great care and a brilliant intellect could make it.
The poet's pleasant surroundings must have acted as a stimulus upon his
mind. His library was a long room in the northeastern corner of the
lower floor in the so-called Craigie House, once the residence of
General Washington. It was walled with handsome bookcases, rich in
choice works. The poet's usual seat here was at a little high table by
the north window, looking upon the garden. Some of his work was done
while he was standing at this table, which reached then to his breast.
Emerson wrote with great care, and would not only revise his manuscript
carefully, but frequently rewrite the article upon the proof-sheets.
John Owen was twenty years on his "Commentary on the Epistle of the
Hebrews."
The celebrated French critic, Sainte-Beuve, was accustomed to devote six
days to the preparation of a single one of his weekly articles. A large
portion of his time was passed in the retirement of his chamber, to
which, on such occasions, no one--with the exception of his favorite
servant--was allowed to enter under any circumstances whatever. Here he
wrote those critical papers which carried captive the heart of France,
and filled with wonder cultivated minds everywhere.
The historian Gibbon, in speaking of the manner in which he wrote his
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," said: "Many experiments were
made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull tone and a
rhetorical declamation. Three times did I compose the first chapter, and
twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their
effect." Gibbon spent twenty years on his immortal book Lamb toiled
most laboriously over his essays. These papers, which long ago took
their place in the English classical language and which are replete with
the most delicate fancies, were composed with the most exacting nicety,
yet their author is regarded the world over as possessed of genius of a
high order.
La Rochefoucauld was occupied for the space of fifteen years in
preparing for publication his little work called "Maximes," rewriting
many of them more than thirty times.
Honore de Balzac had just completed his teens when he arrived in Paris,
and till 1830, some nine years, he lived, not in a garret, but in the
apartment over that, called a _grenier_; his daily expenses amounted to
about half a franc--three sous for bread, three for milk, and the rest
for firewood and candles. He passed his days in the public library of
the Arsenal, devouring books. In the evening he transcribed his notes,
and during the nights he took his walks abroad, and so gained an insight
into the depths of human depravity.
After his first novel, in 1830, he commenced earning money. Balzac, who
had the disease of creative genius in its most outrageous form,
"preached to us," says Theophile Gautier, "the strangest hygiene ever
propounded among laymen. If we desired to hand our names down to
posterity as authors, it was indispensable that we should immure
ourselves absolutely for two or three years; that we should drink
nothing but water, and eat only soaked beans, like Protogenes; that we
should go to bed at sunset and rise at midnight, to work hard till
morning; that we should spend the whole day in revising, amending,
extending, pruning, perfecting, and polishing our night's work, in
correcting proofs or taking notes, or in other necessary study." If the
author happened to be in love, he was to see the lady of his heart only
for one half-hour a year, but he might write to her, for the
cold-blooded reason that letter-writing improves the style. Not only did
Balzac preach this austere doctrine, but he practised it as nearly as he
could without ceasing altogether to be a man and a Frenchman. Leon
Gozlan's account of the daily life of the author of the "Comedie
Humaine" has often been quoted. On the average he worked eighteen hours
a day. He began his day with dinner at six in the afternoon, at which,
while he fed his friends generously, he himself ate little besides fruit
and drank nothing but water. At seven o'clock he wished his friends
good-night, and went to bed. At midnight he rose and worked--till
dinner-time next day: and so the world went round. George Sand calls
him, "Drunk on water, intemperate in work, and sober in all other
passions." Jules Janin asks, "Where has M. de Balzac gained his
knowledge of woman--he, the anchorite?" As it was, love and death came
to him hand-in-hand. He married a wealthy Polish lady in 1848. They
travelled over the battlefields of Europe, to collect notes for a work,
and then settled down in a luxurious mansion in the Champs Elysees.
Nothing was wanting in that palatial residence, for every fancy of
Balzac had been gratified. Three months after the house-warming Balzac
was dead.
Balzac, after he had made a plan of a novel, and had, after the most
laborious research, gathered together the materials which he was to
embody in it, locked himself in his private apartment, shut out all the
light of day, and then, by the aid of his study lamp, he toiled day and
night. His servants, knowing so well his peculiar habits, brought him
food and drink. Finally, with his task completed, as he thought, he came
forth from his retirement looking more dead than alive. But invariably
his task was not altogether satisfactory to him, after all, for again he
would seek the seclusion of his chamber to rearrange and make more
perfect that which he had before supposed wholly complete. Then, too,
when his work was in the hands of the printer, he was as apt as not to
alter, in one way and another, the manuscript, until both printer and
publisher were on the verge of despair. He corrected up to as many as
twelve proofs, and many of his "corrections" consisted in rewriting
whole pages. What "copy" he must have produced during the twenty years
in which he brought out ninety-seven volumes! Like Voltaire, Balzac had
a passion for coffee, more to keep him awake than as a stimulant. That
beverage shortened his life, which ended by hypertrophy of the heart.
When he sat down to his desk, his servant, who regarded a man that
abstained even from tobacco as scarcely human, used to place coffee
within reach, and upon this he worked till his full brain would drive
his starved and almost sleepless body into such forgetfulness that he
often found himself at daybreak bareheaded, in dressing gown and
slippers, in the Place du Carrousel, not knowing how he came there,
miles away from home. Now, coffee acts upon some temperaments as
laudanum acts upon others, and many of the manners and customs of Balzac
were those of a confirmed opium-eater. He had the same strange
illusions, the same extravagant ideas, the same incapacity for
distinguishing with regard to outward things, between the possible and
the impossible, the false and the true. His midnight wanderings, his
facility in projecting himself into personalities utterly unlike his
own, belong to the experiences of the "English Opium-eater."
Kinglake's beautiful "Eothen" was rewritten half a dozen times before it
was given to a publisher.
Tennyson's song, "Come Into the Garden, Maud," was rewritten some fifty
times before it gave complete satisfaction to the author.
Coming to the gifted Addison, whose diction is full of such grace and
simplicity, so much so as to create envy, yet admiration, in the mind of
every writer who has flourished since his day, we find that the great
author wrote with the most painful deliberation. It is narrated that the
press was stopped again and again, after a whole edition of the
_Spectator_ had been thrown off, in order that its author might make a
slight change in a sentence.
Tom Moore, with all his wonderful brilliancy, considered it doing very
well if he wrote fifty lines of his "Lalla Rookh" in a week.
Hawthorne was slow in composing. Sometimes he wrote only what amounted
to half a dozen pages a week, often only a few lines in the same space
of time, and, alas! he frequently went to his chamber and took up his
pen, only to find himself wholly unable to perform any literary work.
The author of "Pleasures of Hope" was slow of thought, and consequently
his mode of composition was toilsome in the highest degree. He wrote
with extreme caution, weighing and shaping the effect of each
particular line before he permitted it to stand.
Bret Harte, whose creations read as if they had come from his brain
without a flaw or hindrance, showing brilliancy of thought with the
grace of the artist, is still another writer who passes days and weeks
on a short story or poem before he is ready to deliver it into the hands
of the printer. So it was with Bryant. Though in reality the sum total
of his poetry might be included in a small volume, so few are his
lyrics, we cannot fail to be impressed with the truth of the statement
when we are told that even these few gems of verse cost our late
Wordsworth hard toil to bring into being, and endow with the splendor of
immortality.
Bernardine de St. Pierre copied his sweet and beautiful "Paul and
Virginia" nine times to make it more perfect.
Beranger _composait toutes ses chansons dans sa tete_. "Once made, I
committed them to writing in order to forget them," he said. He tells of
having dreamt for ten years of a song about the taxes that weigh down
the rural population. In vain he tapped his brain-pan,--nothing came of
it. But one night he awoke with the air and the refrain _tout trouves_:
"Jacques, leve-toi;
Voici venir l'huissier du roi";
and in a day or two the song was a made thing.
The laborious pains bestowed by Alfieri on the process of composition
may seem at first sight hard to reconcile with his impulsive character.
If he approved his first sketch of a piece,--after laying it by for some
time, not approaching it again until his mind was free of the
subject,--he submitted it to what he called "development," _i. e._,
writing out in prose the indicated scenes, with all the force at his
command, but without stopping to analyze a thought or correct an
expression. "He then proceeded to versify at his leisure the prose he
had written, selecting with care the ideas he thought best, and
rejecting those which he deemed" unworthy of a place. Nor did he ever
yet regard this work as finished, but "incessantly polished it verse by
verse and made continual alterations," as might seem to him expedient.
Hartley Coleridge so far resembled Alfieri that it was his custom to put
aside what he had written for some months, till the heat and excitement
of composition had effervesced, and then he thought it was in a fair
condition to criticise. But he seldom altered. "Strike the nail on the
anvil," was his advice; he never "kneaded or pounded" his thoughts,
which have been described as always coming out _cap-a-pie_, like a troop
in quick march. He used to brandish his pen in the act of composition,
now and then beating time with his foot, and breaking out into a shout
at any felicitous idea.
III.
Speed in Writing.
Dr. Johnson was a very rapid writer. A modern critic says of him: "He
had but to dip his pen in ink, and there flowed out a current of thought
and language wide and voluminous as the Ganges in flood." Some of the
best papers in the _Rambler_ were written "_currente calamo_." Johnson
struck off his _Ramblers_ and _Idlers_ at a heat when the summons of the
press forbade his indolence to put off his work another moment: he did
not give himself even a minute to read over his papers before they went
to the printers. Often he sent a portion of the copy of an essay, and
wrote the remainder while the earlier part was printing. His "Life of
Savage" was dashed off at one sitting. Sir Joshua Reynolds was so
fascinated with this eloquent and touching narrative, that he could not
lay it down until he had finished it. Johnson would not have written
"Rasselas" except for the necessity of paying the costs of his mother's
funeral. He was an extremely indolent man, and yet he was a laborious
worker where the imagination was not concerned. After spending the
evening at the literary club in the society of Burke, Goldsmith, and
other friends, he returned home between midnight and sunrise, went to
bed, and was seldom seen before noon. Bennet Langton was so delighted
with the _Rambler_, that he went to London to be introduced to Johnson.
He called upon him about twelve o'clock, but the great doctor was not
yet visible. After waiting some time, the author of the _Rambler_ made
his appearance. The visitor expected to see a neatly dressed
philosopher, but, instead, a huge, uncouth figure rolled into the room
in a soiled morning-gown, with an ill-arranged wig, and stockings
falling over his shoes.
The elder Dumas, in order to get any work done at all, had to forbid
himself, by an effort of will, to leave his desk before a certain number
of pages were written. Victor Hugo is said to have locked up his clothes
while writing "Notre-Dame," so that he might not escape from it till the
last word was written. In such cases the so-called "pleasures of
imagination" look singularly like the pains of stone-breaking. The
hardest part of the lot of genius, we suspect, has been not the
emotional troubles popularly--and with absurd exaggeration--ascribed to
it, but a disgust for labor during the activity of the fancy, and the
necessity for labor when it is most disgusting.
Victor Hugo composed with wonderful rapidity. He wrote his "Cromwell" in
three months, and his "Notre Dame de Paris" in four months and a half.
But even these have been his longest periods of labor, and as he grew
older he wrote faster. "Marion Delorme" was finished in twenty-four
days, "Hernani" in twenty-six, and "Le Roi s'amuse" in twenty. Although
the poet wrote very quickly, he often corrected laboriously. He rarely
rewrote. Mme. Drouet, who was his literary secretary for thirty years,
copied all his manuscripts. Otherwise the printers would have found him
one of the most difficult authors to put into type. Mme. Drouet saved
them much worry, and himself or his publishers much expense in the way
of composition. She also assisted in the correction of the proofs. He
generally had several works in the stocks at the same time. Hugo
considered a change of subject a recreation. He would go from poetry to
fiction, from fiction to history, according to his mood. As a rule, he
rose at six o'clock in the morning, took a cold bath, then took a raw
egg and a cup of black coffee, and went to work. He never sat down to
write, but stood at a high desk, and refreshed himself by an occasional
turn across the room, and a sip of _eau sucree_. He breakfasted at
eleven. One of his recreations was riding on the top of an omnibus, a
habit he contracted during a short visit to London, when he was advised
that "the knife-board" was a good place from which to see the street
life of the English metropolis. The "knife-board," indeed, was his
favorite point of observation, whence he gathered inspiration from the
passing crowds below. Many of his famous characters have been caught in
his mind's eye while taking a three-sou drive from the Arc de Triomphe
to the Bastile.
It is on record that Bulwer wrote his romance of "Harold" in less than a
month, resting not at all by day, and scarcely at night. In a private
letter Lord Lytton says: "The novel of 'Harold' was written in rather
less than four weeks. I can personally attest this fact, as I was with
my father when he wrote it--on a visit to his friend, the late Mr.
Tennyson D'Eyncourt. D'Eyncourt was a great collector of Norman and
Anglo-Saxon chronicles, with which his library was well stored. The
notes of research for 'Harold' fill several thick commonplace books....
While my father was writing 'Harold' I do not think he put down his pen
except for meals and half an hour's run before dinner 'round the
terrace. He was at work the greater part of every night, and again early
in the morning."
It is an interesting fact in regard to Lord Tennyson's drama on the same
subject--with a dedication to the late Lord Lytton, in reconciliation of
an old literary feud with his father--that the first sketch of "Harold"
took the form of a drama, entitled "William the Norman." It was
probably not written for publication, as the writer's way of composing
many of his prose romances was to sketch them out first as dramas.
The "Lady of Lyons" was written in ten days. It was by no means uncommon
with Bulwer to have two books in hand at once, and live alternate
periods with the beings of his creation, as if he were passing in
society from one company to another. Thus "Lucretia" and "The Caxtons,"
"Kenelm Chillingly" and "The Parisians," were written simultaneously.
But despite his literary facility, Bulwer rewrote some of his briefer
productions as many as eight or nine times before their publication.
Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his
book as many as fifty times.
Byron wrote the "Bride of Abydos" in a single night, and the quill pen
with which he performed this marvellous feat is still preserved in the
British Museum.
Dryden wrote "Alexander's Feast" in two days.
"The Merry Wives of Windsor" was composed in a fortnight.
Beckford finished "Vathek" in two days and nights.
Henry Ward Beecher's publishers have favored the world with an account
of his habits in composition. "He wrote," they tell us, "with
inconceivable rapidity, in a large, sprawling hand, lines wide apart,
and words so thinly scattered about that some of the pages remind one of
the famous description of a page of Napoleon's manuscript--a scratch, a
blot, and a splutter." This is, indeed, remarkable, but is far exceeded
by the performance in that line of a famous Chinese novelist, who wrote
with such fearful speed, that, throwing the finished sheets over his
head, they soon accumulated to a pile large enough to darken his
windows, and threaten him with suffocation.
Horace, in one of his satires, makes fun of a contemporary poet, whose
chief claim to distinction was that he could compose two hundred verses
standing on one leg. Horace did not think much of the verses, and, we
suspect with good reason.
There are all conceivable habits of composition, and they range from the
slow elaboration of John Foster to the race-horse speed of our doughty
Southern countryman, Henry A. Wise, whose prodigious gubernatorial
compositions are still remembered by a suffering world. Once, sitting by
James Parton, he observed, tersely, "The best writing distils from the
pen drop by drop." Sheridan once said to a friend who had a fatal
facility with his pen, "Your easy writing makes terribly hard reading."
I would not, for the world, have the young men of the country believe
that in writing speed is all. One should not be ambitious to write or do
anything else any faster than he can do it well. It was Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow who once gave this excellent advice to a young author:
"Always write your best; remember, your best."
Wilkie Collins' book, "Heart and Science," so mercilessly excited him
that he says he continued writing week after week without a day's
interval or rest. "Rest was impossible. I made a desperate effort;
rushed to the sea; went sailing and fishing, and was writing my book all
the time 'in my head,' as the children say. The one wise course to take
was to go back to my desk and empty my head, and then rest. My nerves
are too much shaken for travelling. An armchair and a cigar, and a
hundred and fiftieth reading of the glorious Walter Scott,--King,
Emperor, and President of Novelists,--there is the regimen that is doing
me good. All the other novel-writers I can read while I am at work
myself. If I only look at the 'Antiquary' or 'Old Mortality,' I am
crushed by the sense of my own littleness, and there is no work possible
for me on that day."
Wilkie Collins made the skeleton of a novel and then proceeded to put
the flesh on it. He was the greatest plotter that ever lived. He created
no truly great characters, but his stories are full of thrilling
pitfalls, into which the reader lunges.
Hugo Rosenthal-Bonin, the editor of _Ueber Land und Meer_ (one of the
most prominent of the illustrated journals of Germany), and the author
of many successful novels, writes for two hours immediately after
breakfast and dinner, and within this time regularly composes five
columns of reading matter, never rewriting a single line. While writing,
he has a piece of looking-glass lying beside him, the glittering of
which (so he says) stimulates and refreshes him; he also smokes cigars
during working hours, otherwise seldom. He works with ease and rapidity,
just as if he were speaking. Therefore, a novel of ten columns is
finished within two days, and a romance of one hundred columns is
completed in less than a month. He has never written more than one long
novel a year, his literary productiveness being limited by his duties as
editor.
Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson ("H. H.") composed with great rapidity, writing
on large sheets of yellow post-office paper, eschewing pen and ink, and
insisting that a lead pencil alone could keep pace with the swiftness of
her thoughts.
Emil Ritterhaus, the poet who "dwells by the castled Rhine," turns out
lyrical poems without any difficulty, and with wonderful rapidity. That
poem of his which was read at the consecration of the cathedral at
Cologne was composed in a few minutes, in the presence of his friend,
Ferdinand Hiller, not a line being changed afterward. When he is in the
proper mood, many a speech of his turns involuntarily into an
improvisation. Verses he pens in person, but he dictates all other
literary work. When at work, a good Havana cigar, a glass of first-class
wine, or a cup of strong coffee are agreeable to him. When dictating, he
is in the habit of lying on a sofa or walking slowly up and down the
room. The poet makes it a rule not to write unless disposed to.
Gray found fault with Mason for fancying he should succeed best by
writing hastily in the first fervors of his imaginations, and,
therefore, never waiting for epithets if they did not occur at the time
readily, but leaving spaces for them, and putting them in afterward.
This enervated his poetry, said Gray, and he says the same thing of the
same method by whomsoever adopted, for nothing is done so well as at the
first concoction. One of Shelley's biographers came upon the poet in a
pine forest, writing verses on a guitar, and, picking up a fragment, saw
a "frightful scrawl," all smear, and smudge, and disorder--such a
dashed-off daub as conceited artists are apt to mistake for genius.
Shelley said: "When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils,
and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the
morning, when cooled down, out of that rude sketch, as you justly call
it, I shall attempt a drawing."
IV.
Influence upon Writers of Time and Place.
Nathaniel Hawthorne made innumerable notes of every fleeting, quaint
fancy, strange anecdote, or eccentric person. These notes he afterward
worked into his stories. Julian Hawthorne, his son, states in the
_Century Magazine_: "The new husband and wife, Adam and Eve, as they
liked to call themselves, were almost as poor in money as their
prototypes, and in spite of their orchard and their vegetable garden, a
good deal less able to get on without occasional remittances.
Accordingly, the future author of the 'Scarlet Letter' was compelled to
alternate his hoeing and digging, his rambles over the hills and his
paddling on the river, with periods of application to pen and paper in
his study, where he would sit with locked doors, clad in a long and
ancient flowered dressing-gown, upon the lining of the left-hand skirt
of which he was in the habit of wiping his pen. His wife noticed this
habit, and said nothing about it; but one day, on bringing his pen to
the accustomed spot, Hawthorne found stitched on there a pretty
pen-wiper, in the shape of a butterfly with red and black wings, and
this butterfly was ever after renewed from time to time, as necessity
required. What was written in that little sunny-hued study, readers
know, but nobody, not even the author's wife, ever saw him in the act of
writing. He had to be alone."
Burns usually composed while walking in the open air, influenced,
perhaps, Dr. Currie suggests, by habits formed in early life. Until he
was completely master of a tune, he never could write words for it; so
his way was to consider the poetic sentiment corresponding to his idea
of the musical expression; then choose his theme; begin one stanza; when
that was composed,--which was generally the most difficult part of the
task,--to walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in
nature around him, such as harmonized with the cogitations of his fancy,
humming occasionally the air, with the verses already framed. When he
felt his "muse beginning to jade," he retired to the solitary fireside
of his study, and there committed his thoughts to paper; swinging at
intervals on the hind leg of his elbow-chair, "by way," he says, "of
calling forth my own critical strictures as my pen goes on." Sometimes,
and more than once too often, he composed, to use his own expression,
"by the leeside of a bowl of punch, which had overset every mortal in
company, except the hautbois and the muse."
Whether in town or country, Landor reflected and composed habitually
while walking, and, therefore, preferred at all times to walk alone. So
did Buckle. Wordsworth was accustomed to compose his verse in his
solitary walks, carry it in his memory, and get wife or daughter to
write it down on his return. He used to compose aloud while walking in
the fields and woods. Sometimes he would use a slate pencil and the
smooth side of a rock to jot down his lines. His excursions and peculiar
habits gave rise to some anxious beliefs among the ignorant peasantry.
Even his sanity was questioned. The peasantry of Rydal thought him "not
quite hissel," because he always walked alone, and was met at odd times
in odd places. Some poets have been in the habit of humming or repeating
their verses aloud as they composed them. Southey, for instance, boomed
his verses so as to be mistaken by Wilson, who was a keen sportsman, for
a bittern booming. If this is true, Southey's voice must not have been
very harmonious, for the bittern's cry is Shakespeare's "night-raven's
dismal voice."
Douglas Jerrold worked at a desk without a speck upon it, using an
ink-stand in a marble shell clear of all litter, his little dog at his
feet. If a comedy was in progress, he would now and then walk rapidly up
and down the room, talking wildly to himself. "If it be _Punch_ copy,
you shall hear him laugh presently as he hits upon a droll bit." And
then, abruptly, the pen would be put down, and the author would pass
out into the garden, and pluck a hawthorn leaf, and go, nibbling it and
thinking, down the side walks; then "in again, and vehemently to work,"
unrolling the thought that had come to him along little blue slips of
paper, in letters smaller than the type in which they were presently to
be set.
Dr. Channing had the same habit of taking a turn in the garden, during
which he was a study for the calm concentration of his look, and the
deliberateness of his step: "Calmer, brighter, in a few moments he is
seated again at his table, and his rapidly flying pen shows how full is
the current of his thoughts."
Jane Taylor, who commenced authorship as a very little girl indeed, and
who used at that early stage to compose tales and dramas while whipping
a top,--committing them to paper at the close of that exercise,--was in
the habit, her brother Isaac tells us, of rambling for half an hour
after breakfast, "to seek that pitch of excitement without which she
never took up the pen."
Of Dickens we are told that "some quaint little bronze figures on his
desk were as much needed for the easy flow of his writing as blue ink or
quill pens."
Emanuel Kant, the philosopher, lived the life of a student; in fact, his
life may be taken as the type of that of a scholar. Kant, like Balzac,
gave a daily dinner-party; but when his guests were gone he took a walk
in the country instead of seeking broken slumbers in a state of hunger.
He came home at twilight, and read from candle-light till bedtime at
ten. He arose punctually at five, and, over one cup of tea and part of a
pipe, laid out his plan of work for the day. At seven he lectured, and
wrote till dinner-time at about one. The regularity of his life was
automatic. He regulated his diet with the care of a physician. During
the blind-man's holiday between his walk and candle-light he sat down to
think in twilight fashion; and while thus engaged, he always placed
himself so that his eyes might fall on a certain old tower. This old
tower became so necessary to his thoughts that, when some poplar trees
grew up and hid it from his sight, he found himself unable to think at
all, until, at his earnest request, the trees were cropped and the tower
was brought into sight again.
Kant's old tower recalls Buffon's incapability of thinking to good
purpose except in full dress, and with his hair in such elaborate order
that, by way of external stimulus to his brain, he had a hairdresser to
interrupt his work twice, or, when very busy, thrice a day. To Aubrey we
owe this account of Prynne's method of study: "He wore a long quilt cap,
which came two or three inches at least over his eyes, and served him
as an umbrella to defend his eyes from the light. About every three
hours his man was to bring him a roll and a pot of ale, to refocillate
his wasted spirits; so he studied and drank and munched some bread; and
this maintained him till night, and then he made a good supper."
Refocillation is a favorite resource--whatever the word may be--with
authors not a few. Addison, with his bottle of wine at each end of the
long gallery at Holland House,--and Schiller, with his flask of old
Rhenish and his coffee laced with old Cognac, at three in the
morning,--occur to the memory at once. Shelley attempted to ruin his
digestion by way of exciting the brain by continually munching bread
while composing.
The venerable Leopold von Ranke, one of the most eminent historians of
the age, composed in the night as well as in the daytime, and even when
more than ninety years of age sometimes worked till midnight. He had two
secretaries. He was a late riser, as most night-workers are. After
getting up late, he worked with his first amanuensis from ten in the
morning until three in the afternoon. Thereupon, if the weather was
fine, he took a walk in the public promenades, always accompanied by a
servant. He dined at five P. M., and then dictated to his second
secretary from six in the evening until, occasionally, one or two
o'clock in the morning. He neither took stimulants nor smoked. He never
worked when disinclined; in fact, the disinclination to write was
foreign to his nature. He always felt like writing.