to night for literary work, but sometimes can compose verse only at
night. He always sets out with a tolerably distinct outline in his
mind--rarely on paper--of what he intends to write. But the filling in
he leaves to the suggestions of thought in the hour of composition, and
often gets on to currents which carry him into unexpected by-ways. He
seldom begins a story that he would not like to make twice as long as
his contract allows, so many incidents and combinations suggest
themselves as he goes on. He never works under the influence of
stimulants. Verse he never composes with a pen in his hand. It is seldom
that he can compose any that is in the least satisfactory to himself;
when he can, he walks in pleasant places, if the weather is favorable,
or lounges on rocks or banks, or in the woods; or he lies on a sofa in a
dimly-lighted room at night; or in bed, where he elaborates his lines,
which he retains in his memory, to be written down at the first
convenient season. He rarely puts pen to paper at night. When fairly
launched in a prose composition, he writes from two to four hours a day,
seldom five. The mere act of writing is a sad drudgery to him, and he
often has to force himself to begin. Then he usually forgets the
drudgery in the interest excited by the development of his thoughts. But
he never thinks it wise to continue writing when he cannot do so with
pleasure and ease. In his younger days he used to think he must do a
certain amount of work each day, whether he felt like it or not. But now
he is of the opinion that it might have been better for his readers and
himself if he had been governed more by his moods.
Robert Hamerling, the Austrian novelist, loved to compose in bed in the
early hours of morning. He was an expert stenographer, and, therefore,
made use of stenography when committing his thoughts to paper, thereby
saving much time, which, of course, facilitated the mental labor. For
this reason, he could also correct and improve the manuscript, as well
as make additions to the same, with the least waste of time. He did not
require refreshments at work, and wrote with remarkable facility. The
duration of the time which he spent at the writing-desk depended upon
the state of his health and the temper of his mind.
Frederick Friedrich, well known in Germany as a novelist, prefers the
evening for literary work, although he conceives the plots of his
stories in the course of the day. He asserts that the nerves are more
stimulated and that the imagination is more lively in the evening. His
novels are sent to the printer as they were written; he hardly ever
makes corrections. While at work Friedrich fills the air with cigar
smoke and drinks several glasses of Rhine-wine. He must be alone, and
the writing-table must be in the customary order; any new arrangement of
the things on the table makes the author feel uncomfortable, so much so
at times that it prevents him from writing. He is a facile writer, and
composes with great speed. He never writes unless inclined to, and is
governed by moods. Therefore, a week or two sometimes passes before he
pens a line, being in perfect health, but lacking the inclination to
perform intellectual work. He never devotes more than three hours a day
to literary labor, generally less than that, but spends almost all day
in thinking over the plots of his novels. He never begins a story until
it is elaborated in his mind, and never makes notes. When once engaged
in the composition of a novel, he keeps at it day after day until it is
finished. While writing his own he is unable to read the novels of
anybody else.
Celia Thaxter evolves her graceful verses in the daytime. She sometimes
makes a skeleton of her work first, not always; and very often forces
herself to work in spite of disinclination.
The Austrian poet, Rudolph Baumbach, is partial to daylight, and never
writes at night. He always makes an outline of his work before beginning
in good earnest. When meditating on his poems he walks up and down the
room, but gives the open air the preference. He likes much light; when
the sun does not shine his work does not progress favorably. In the
evening he lights up his room by a large number of candles. Literary
labor is pleasure to him when the weather is fine, but it is extremely
hard when clouds shut out the sunlight. The poet has no fixed rule as
regards working-hours; sometimes he exerts himself a great deal for
weeks, and then again he does not write at all for a long time.
Otto von Leixner, German historian, poet, novelist, and essayist,
composes prose, which requires logical thinking, in the daytime, but
does poetical work, which taxes principally the imagination, in the
evening. He makes a skeleton of all critical and scientific
compositions, indeed of all essays, and then writes out the "copy" for
the press, seldom making alterations. But he files away at poems from
time to time until he thinks them fit for publication. He is a smoker,
but does not smoke when at work. Whether promenading the shady walks of
a wood or perambulating the dusty streets of the city, Leixner
constantly thinks about the works he has in hand. Literary work has no
difficulties for this author; he penned one of his poems, "The Vision,"
consisting of five hundred and eighty lines, in three hours and a half
and sent it to the printer as it was originally written; and he composed
the novel "Adja," thirty-nine and one-half octavo pages in print, in
nine hours. But he often meditates over the topics which go to make up
his novels, etc., for years and years until he has considered them from
every standpoint. After composition he often locks up his manuscript in
his desk for half a year, until it is almost forgotten, when he takes it
from its place of concealment and examines it carefully to detect
possible errors. If at such an examination the work does not prove
satisfactory to him, he throws it into the stove. Being the editor of a
journal of fiction, he is often compelled to work whether he wants to or
not. From 1869 to 1870 he worked sixteen hours a day; from 1877 till
1882 about thirteen hours, even Sundays; at present he spends from ten
to eleven hours every day at the writing-table, unless kept from work by
visitors. He retains his health by taking a daily walk, rain or shine,
to which he devotes two hours. Leixner lives a very temperate life and
hardly ever imbibes stimulating drinks.
The greatest of all Southern poets, Paul Hamilton Hayne, had no
particular time for composition, writing as often in the daytime as at
night. Whether he made an outline or skeleton of his work first,
depended upon the nature of the poem. When the piece was elaborate, he
outlined it, and subsequently filled up, much as a painter would do. The
poet used to smoke a great deal in composing, but was obliged to abandon
tobacco, having had attacks of hemorrhage. He used tea instead of coffee
sometimes, but took little even of that. Wine he did not use. Hayne
composed best when walking, or riding upon horseback, and as he was
seldom without a book in hand, wrote a great deal on the fly-leaves of
any volume he chanced to be consulting. He frequently had to force
himself to work when he did not have an inclination to do so.
V.
Writing under Difficulties.
It is an exceptional mind that enables an author to write at his ease
amid interruptions and distractions, lets and hindrances, of a domestic
kind. Heloise gave this singular reason for her constant refusal to
become Abelard's wife--that no mind devoted to the meditations of
philosophy could endure the cries of children, the chatter of nurses,
and the babble and coming and going in and out of serving men and women.
Of Abelard himself, however, we are told that he had a rare power of
abstracting himself from all outward concerns; that no one knew better
how to be alone, though surrounded by others; and that, in fact, his
senses took no note of outward things. When Cumberland was composing any
work, he never shut himself up in his study, but always wrote in the
room where his family sat, and did not feel in the least disturbed by
the noise of his children at play beside him. The literary habits of
Lord Hailes, as Mr. Robert Chambers remarks, were hardly such as would
have been expected from his extreme nicety of diction: it was in no
secluded sanctum, or "den," that he composed, but by the "parlour
fireside," with wife and bairns within very present sight and sound.
Cowper describes himself at Weston (1791) as working in a study exposed
to all manner of inroads, and in no way disconcerted by the coming and
going of servants, or other incidental and inevitable impediments. A
year or two later he writes from the same spot, "amidst a chaos of
interruptions," including Hayley spouting Greek, and Mrs. Unwin talking
sometimes to them, sometimes to herself. Francis Horner relates a visit
he and a friend paid to Jeremy Bentham at Ford Abbey, one spacious room
in which, a tapestried chamber, the utilitarian philosopher had utilized
for what he called his "scribbling shop"--two or three tables being set
out, covered with white napkins, on which were placed music desks with
manuscripts; and here the visitors were allowed to be "present at the
mysteries, for he went on as if we had not been with him."
The fourth of Dr. Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses was penned in a
small pocket-book, in a strange apartment, where he was liable every
moment to interruption; for it was at the manse of Balmerino,
disappointed in not finding the minister at home, and having a couple of
hours to spare,--and in a drawing-room at the manse of Kilmany, with all
the excitement of meeting for the first time, after a year's absence,
many of his former friends and parishioners,--that he penned paragraph
after paragraph of a composition which, as his son-in-law and
biographer, Dr. Hanna, says, bears upon it so much the aspect of high
and continuous elaboration.
His friend,--and sometimes associate in pastoral work,--Edward Irving,
on the other hand, could not write a sermon if any one was in the room
with him. Chalmers appears to have been specially endowed with that
faculty of concentrated attention which is commonly regarded as one of
the surest marks of the highest intellect, and which Alison so much
admired in Wellington--as, for instance, on the day when he lay at San
Christoval, in front of the French army, hourly expecting a battle, and
wrote out, in the field, a long and minute memorial on the establishment
of a bank at Lisbon on the principles of the English ones.
We read of Ercilla, whose epic poem, the _Arancana_, has admirers out of
Spain, that he wrote it amidst the incessant toils and dangers of a
campaign against barbarians, without shelter, and with nothing to write
on but small scraps of waste paper, and often only leather; struggling
at once against enemies and surrounding circumstances.
Louis de Cormantaigne, the distinguished French engineer, composed his
treatise on fortification from notes written in the trenches and on the
breaches, even under the fire of the enemy.
Delambre was in Paris when it was taken by the allies in 1814, and is
said to have worked at his problems with perfect tranquility from eight
in the morning till midnight, in the continued hearing of the cannonade.
"Such self-possession for study under that tremendous attack, and such
absence of interest in the result of the great struggle, to say nothing
of indifference to personal danger," is what one of his biographers
confesses himself unable to understand. Small sympathy would the
philosopher have had with the temperament of such a man, say, as Thomas
Hood, who always wrote most at night, when all was quiet and the
children were asleep. "I have a room to myself," exclaims Hood,
triumphantly, in a letter describing a change of lodgings, "which will
be worth L20 a year to me,--for a little disconcerts my nerves." Mrs.
Hood brought up the children, we learn from one of them, in a sort of
Spartan style of education, on her husband's account, teaching them the
virtues of silence and low voices.
Washington Irving was of a less morbid temperament, and his genial
nature could put up with obstacles and obstructions neither few nor
small; but even in his Diary we meet with such entries as this at
Bordeaux, in 1825: "Harassed by noises in the house, till I had to go
out in despair, and write in Mr. Guestier's library." It was upon the
Essay on American Scenery that he was then engaged.
Unlike Maturin, who used to compose with a wafer pasted on his forehead,
which was the signal that if any of his family entered the sanctum they
must not speak to him, Scott allowed his children (like their mute
playmates, Camp and the greyhounds) free access to his study, never
considered their talk as any disturbance, let them come and go as
pleased their fancy, was always ready to answer their questions, and
when they, unconscious how he was engaged (writes the husband of one of
them), entreated him to lay down his pen and tell them a story, he would
take them on his knee, repeat a ballad or a legend, kiss them, and set
them down again to their marbles or ninepins, and resume his labor as if
refreshed by the interruption. There was nothing in that manly, sound,
robust constitution akin to the morbid irritability of Philip in the
poem:--
"When Philip wrote, he never seemed so well--
Was startled even if a cinder fell,
And quickly worried."
Biographers of Mistress Aphra Behn make it noteworthy of that too facile
penwoman that she could write away in company and maintain the while
her share in the talk. Madame Roland managed to get through her memoirs
with a semblance at least of unbroken serenity, though so often
interrupted in the composition of them by the cries of victims in the
adjoining cells, whom the executioners were dragging thence to the
guillotine.
Madame de Stael, "even in her most inspired compositions," according to
Madame Necker de Saussure, "had pleasure in being interrupted by those
she loved." She was not, observed Lord Lytton, of the tribe of those who
labor to be inspired; who darken the room and lock the door, and entreat
you not to disturb them. Rather, she came of the same stock as George
Sand's Olympe, who "se mit a ecrire sur un coin de la table, entre le
bouteille de biere et le sucrier, au bruit des verres et de la
conversation aussi tranquillement que si elle eut ete dans la solitude.
Cette puissance de concentration etait une de ses facultes les plus
remarquables."
That Lord Castlereagh was able to write his despatches at the common
table in the common room of a country house is not unjustly among the
admiring reminiscences of a Septuagenarian (Countess Brownlow): "Once
only we found the talking and laughter were too much for his power of
abstraction, and then he went off into his own room, saying next morning
at breakfast, 'You fairly beat me last night; I was writing what I may
call the metaphysics of politics.'"
Celebrated in the "Noctes Ambrosianae" is the Glasgow poet, Sandy Rogers,
not less for his lyrics, one at least of which is pronounced by
Christopher North to be "equal to anything of the kind in Burns," than
for the fact that his verses--some of them, too, of a serious
character--were thought out amidst the bustle and turmoil of factory
labor, the din of the clanking steam-engine, and the deafening rattle of
machinery, while the work of committing them to paper was generally
performed amidst the squalling and clamor of children around the hearth,
now in the noise of fractious contention, and anon exuberant with fun
and frolic.
Tannahill, too, composed while plying the shuttle,--humming over the
airs to which he meant to adapt new words; and, as the words occurred to
him, jotting them down at a rude desk which he had attached to his loom,
and which he could use without rising from his seat. But no more
noteworthy example of the pursuit of authorship under difficulties--the
difficulties of a narrow home--_res augusta domi_--is probably on
record, in its simple, homely way, than that of Jean Paul, as Doering
pictures him, sitting in a corner of the room in which the household
work was being carried on--he at his plain writing-desk, with few or no
books about him, but merely with a drawer or two containing excerpts and
manuscripts; the jingle and clatter that arose from the simultaneous
operations at stove and dresser no more seeming to disturb him than did
the cooing of the pigeons which fluttered to and fro in the chamber, at
their own sweet will.
Dr. Johnson delved at his dictionary in a poor lodging-house in London,
with a cat purring near, and orange peel and tea at hand.
Moliere tested the comic power of his plays by reading them to an old
servant.
Dr. William E. Channing used to perambulate the room while composing;
his printers report that he made many revisions of the proof of his
writings, so that before the words met the eyes of the public on the
printed page the sentences were finished with the most elaborate
minuteness.
Bloomfield, the poet, relates of himself that nearly one-half of his
poem, "The Farmer's Boy," was composed without writing a word of it,
while he was at work, with other shoemakers, in a garret.
Sharon Turner, author of the valuable "History of the Anglo-Saxons," who
received a pension of $1,500 from the British government for his
services to literature, wrote the third volume of "The Sacred History of
the World" upon paper that did not cost him a farthing. The copy
consisted of torn and angular fragments of letters and notes, of covers
of periodicals and shreds of curling papers, unctuous with pomatum and
bear's grease.
Mrs. Lizzie W. Champney writes absolutely without method. Her stories,
she admits, have been penned in her nursery, with her baby in her lap,
and a sturdy little boy standing on the rails of her chair and
strangling her with his loving little arms. She works whenever and
wherever she can find the opportunity; but the children are always put
first.
George Ticknor, the Bostonian, found William Hazlitt living in the very
house in which Milton dictated "Paradise Lost," and occupying the room
where the poet kept the organ on which he loved to play. It was an
enormous room, but furnished only with a table, three chairs, and an old
picture. The most interesting thing that the visitor from Boston saw,
except the occupant himself, was the white-washed walls. Hazlitt had
used them as a commonplace book, writing on them in pencil scraps of
brilliant thoughts, half-lines of poetry, and references. Hazlitt
usually wrote with the breakfast things on the table, and there they
remained until he went out, at four or five o'clock, to dinner. His pen
was more to him than a mechanical instrument; it was also the
intellectual wand by which he called up thoughts and opinions, and
clothed them in appropriate language.
It was in a bookseller's back-shop, M. Nisard tells us, on a desk to
which was fastened a great Newfoundland dog (who, by-the-bye, one day
banged through the window of an upper room, desk and all, to join his
master in the street below), that Armand Carrel, one moment absorbed in
English memoirs and papers, another moment in caressing his four-footed
friend, conceived and wrote his "History of the Counter Revolution in
England." Mr. Walker, in this as in other respects "The Original,"
adopted a mode of composition which, says he, "I apprehend to be very
different from what could be supposed, and from the usual mode. I write
in a bedroom at a hotel, sitting upon a cane chair, in the same dress I
go out in, and with no books to refer to but the New Testament,
Shakespeare, and a pocket dictionary." Now and then, when much pressed
for time, and without premeditation, and with his eye on the clock, he
wrote some of his shorter essays at the Athenaeum Club, at the same table
where other members were writing notes and letters.
VI.
Aids to Inspiration.
Washington Irving's literary work was generally performed before
noon. He said the happiest hours of his life were those passed
in the composition of his different books. He wrote most of
"The Stout Gentleman" while mounted on a stile, or seated on
a stone, in his excursions with Leslie, the painter, 'round
about Stratford-on-Avon,--the latter making sketches in the
mean time. The artist says that his companion wrote with the
greatest rapidity, often laughing to himself, and from time to
time reading the manuscript aloud.
Dr. Darwin wrote most of his works on scraps of paper with a pencil as
he travelled. But how did he travel? In a worn and battered "sulky,"
which had a skylight at the top, with an awning to be drawn over it at
pleasure; the front of the carriage being occupied by a receptacle for
writing-paper and pencils, a knife, fork, and spoon; while on one side
was a pile of books reaching from the floor nearly to the front window
of the carriage; on the other, by Mrs. Schimmel-penninck's account, a
hamper containing fruit and sweetmeats, cream and sugar,--to which the
big, burly, keen-eyed, stammering doctor paid attentions as devoted as
he ever bestowed on the pile of books.
Alexander Kisfaludy, foremost Hungarian poet of his time, wrote most of
his "Himfy" on horseback or in solitary walks; a poem, or collection of
poems, that made an unprecedented sensation in Hungary, where, by the
same token, Sandor Kisfaludy of that ilk became at once the Great
Unknown.
Cujas, the object of Chateaubriand's special admiration, used to write
lying flat on his breast, with his books spread about him.
Sir Henry Wotton is our authority for recording of Father Paul Sarpi
that, when engaged in writing, his manner was to sit fenced with a
castle of paper about his chair, and overhead; "for he was of our Lord
of St. Albans' opinion, that 'all air is predatory' and especially
hurtful when the spirits are most employed."
Rousseau tells us that he never could compose pen in hand, seated
at a table, and duly supplied with paper and ink; it was in his
promenades,--the _promenades d'un solitaire_,--amid rocks and woods,
and at night, in bed, when he was lying awake, that he wrote in his
brain; to use his own phrase, "_J'ecris dans mon cerveau_." Some of
his periods he turned and re-turned half a dozen nights in bed before
he deemed them fit to be put down on paper. On moving to the Hermitage
of Montmorency, he adopted the same plan as in Paris,--devoting, as
always, his mornings to the pen-work _de la copie_, and his afternoons
to _la promenade_, blank paper, book, and pencil in hand; for, says he,
"having never been able to write and think at my ease except in the open
air, _sule dio_, I was not tempted to change my method, and I reckoned
not a little on the forest of Montmorency becoming--for it was close to
my door--my _cabinet de travail_." In another place he affirms his sheer
incapacity for meditation by day, except in the act of walking; the
moment he stopped walking, he stopped thinking, too, for his head worked
with, and only with, his feet. "_De jour je ne puis mediter qu'en
marchant; sitot que je m'arrete je ne pense plus, et ma tete ne va
qu'avec mes pieds._" _Salvitur ambulando_, whatever intellectual problem
is solved by Jean Jacques. His strength was not to sit still. His
Reveries, by the way, were written on scraps of paper of all sorts and
sizes, on covers of old letters, and on playing cards--all covered with
a small, neat handwriting. He was as economical of material as was
"Paper-sparing Pope" himself.
In some points Chateaubriand was intellectually, or, rather,
sentimentally, related to Rousseau, but not in his way of using ink and
paper.
Chateaubriand sat at a table well supplied with methodically arranged
heaps of paper cut in sizes; and as soon as a page was blotted over in
the biggest of his big handwriting,--according to M. de Marcullus, with
almost as many drops of ink as words,--he tossed it aside, without using
pounce or blotting-paper, to blot and be blotted by its accumulating
fellows. Now and then he got up from this work, to look out of the
window, or to pace the room, as if in quest of new ideas. The chapter
finished, he collected all the scattered leaves, and revised them in due
form--more frequently adding to than curtailing their fair proportions,
and paying very special attention to the punctuation of his sentences.
Lessing's inherent nobility of intellect is said to have been typified
in his manner of study. When in the act of composition he walked up and
down till his eye was caught by the title of some book. He would open
it, his brother tells us, and, if struck by some sentence which pleased
him, he would copy it out; in so doing, a train of thought would be
suggested, and this would be immediately followed up--provided his mood
was just right.