to a great deal of speculation. A few years ago, it will be remembered,
we were puzzling our brains to discover the name of the author of "The
Breadwinners." Among other stinging charges against him, to induce him
to break the silence, was the fling that it was a base and craven thing
to publish a book anonymously. "My motive in withholding my name is
simple enough," said the unknown author to his furious critics. "I am
engaged in business in which my standing would be seriously compromised
were it known that I had written a novel. I am sure that my practical
efficiency is not lessened by this act, but I am equally sure that I
could never recover from the injury it would occasion me if known among
my own colleagues. For that positive reason, and for the negative one
that I do not care for publicity, I resolved to keep the knowledge of my
little venture in authorship restricted to as small a circle as
possible. Only two persons besides myself know who wrote 'The
Breadwinners.'"
A far more serious dispute followed the publication of the "Vestiges of
Creation," forty years ago. The theologians of Scotland were wild with
rage at the audacity of the author, who would have been torn to pieces
almost had he been discovered. In scientific circles Robert Chambers was
credited with the authorship; and Henri Greville seems to have had no
doubt upon the matter. In "Leaves from the Diary of Henri Greville"
there is an entry under the date December 28, 1847, as follows: "I have
been reading a novel called 'Jane Eyre,' which is just now making a
great sensation, and which absorbed and interested me more than any
novel I can recollect having read. The author is unknown. Mrs.
Butler,--Miss Fannie Kemble,--who is greatly struck by the talent of the
book, fancies it is written by Chambers, who is the author of the
'Vestiges of Creation,' because she thinks that whoever wrote it must,
from its language, be a Scotchman, and from its sentiments be a
Unitarian; and Chambers, besides answering to all these peculiarities,
has an intimate friend who believes in supernatural agencies, such as
are described in the last volume of the book." Thackeray also had the
credit of the work.
Nobody knew Charlotte Bronte; but she was unable to keep her secret very
long. The late R. H. Horne was present at that first dinner party given
by George Smith, the publisher, when Currer Bell, then in the first
flush of her fame, made her earliest appearance in a London dining-room.
She was anxious to preserve the anonymity of her literary character, and
was introduced by her true name. Horne, however, who sat next to her,
was so fortunate as to discover her identity. Just previously he had
sent to the new author, under cover of her publisher, a copy of his
"Orion." In an unguarded moment, Charlotte Bronte turned to him and
said:--
"I was so much obliged to you, Mr. Horne, for sending me your--" But she
checked herself with an inward start, having thus betrayed her Currer
Bell secret, by identifying herself with the author of "Jane Eyre."
"Ah, Miss Bronte," whispered the innocent cause of the misfortune, "you
would never do for treasons and stratagems!"
The late John Blackwood corresponded with George Eliot for some time
before he knew that she was a woman. He called her "Dear George," he
says, and often used expressions which a man commonly uses only to a
man. After he found out who "Dear George" was, he was naturally a little
anxious to recall some of the expressions he had used. Charles Dickens,
however, detected what escaped the observation of most people. Writing
to a correspondent in January, 1858, he said: "Will you, by such
roundabout ways and methods as may present themselves, convey this note
of thanks to the author of 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' whose two first
stories I can never say enough of, I think them so truly admirable. But,
if those two volumes, or a part of them, were not written by a woman,
then shall I begin to believe that I am a woman myself."
XI.
System in Novel Writing.
Anthony Trollope was the most systematic of all the English novelists.
Sitting down at his desk, he would take out his watch and time himself.
His system is well known, but a singular explanation of his fertility
may be quoted: "When I have commenced a new book," he says, "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 labor, so that the deficiency might be
supplied. According to the circumstances of the time, whether any 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 forty. It has been
placed as low as twenty and has risen to one hundred and twelve. And as
a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain two
hundred and fifty words, and as words, if not watched, will have a
tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went."
Under the title of "A Walk in a Wood," Anthony Trollope thus describes
his method of plot-making and the difficulty the novelist experiences in
making the "tricksy Ariel" of the imagination do his bidding: "I have to
confess that my incidents are fabricated to fit my story as it goes on,
and not my story to fit my incidents. I wrote a novel once in which a
lady forged a will, but I had not myself decided that she had forged it
till the chapter before that in which she confesses her guilt. In
another a lady is made to steal her own diamonds, a grand _tour de
force_, as I thought; but the brilliant idea struck me only when I was
writing the page in which the theft is described. I once heard an
unknown critic abuse my workmanship because a certain lady had been made
to appear too frequently in my pages. I went home and killed her
immediately. I say this to show that the process of thinking to which I
am alluding has not generally been applied to any great effort of
construction. It has expended itself on the minute ramifications of
tale-telling: how this young lady should be made to behave herself with
that young gentleman; how this mother or that father would be affected
by the ill conduct or the good of a son or a daughter; how these words
or those other would be most appropriate or true to nature if used on
some special occasion. Such plottings as these with a fabricator of
fiction are infinite in number, but not one of them can be done fitly
without thinking. My little effort will miss its wished-for result
unless I be true to nature; and to be true to nature I must think what
nature would produce. Where shall I go to find my thoughts with the
greatest ease and most perfect freedom?
"I have found that I can best command my thoughts on foot, and can do so
with the most perfect mastery when wandering through a wood. To be alone
is, of course, essential. Companionship requires conversation, for
which, indeed, the spot is most fit; but conversation is not now the
object in view. I have found it best even to reject the society of a
dog, who, if he be a dog of manners, will make some attempt at talking;
and though he should be silent, the sight of him provokes words and
caresses and sport. It is best to be away from cottages, away from
children, away as far as may be from chance wanderers. So much easier is
it to speak than to think, that any slightest temptation suffices to
carry away the idler from the harder to the lighter work. An old woman
with a bundle of sticks becomes an agreeable companion, or a little girl
picking wild fruit. Even when quite alone, when all the surroundings
seem to be fitted for thought, the thinker will still find a difficulty
in thinking. It is not that the mind is inactive, but that it will run
exactly whither it is not bidden to go. With subtle ingenuity, it will
find for itself little easy tasks, instead of setting itself down on
that which it is its duty to do at once. With me, I own, it is so weak
as to fly back to things already done, which require no more thinking,
which are, perhaps, unworthy of a place even in the memory, and to revel
in the ease of contemplating that which has been accomplished, rather
than to struggle for further performance. My eyes, which should become
moist with the troubles of the embryo heroine, shed tears as they call
to mind the early sorrow of Mr. ----, who was married and made happy
many years ago. Then, when it comes to this, a great effort becomes
necessary, or that day will for me have no results. It is so easy to
lose an hour in maundering over the past, and to waste the good things
which have been provided in remembering instead of creating!
"But a word about the nature of the wood! It is not always easy to find
a wood, and sometimes when you have got it, it is but a muddy, plashy,
rough-hewn congregation of ill-grown trees,--a thicket rather than a
wood,--in which even contemplation is difficult, and thinking is out of
the question. He who has devoted himself to wandering in woods will
know at the first glance whether the place will suit his purpose. A
crowded undergrowth of hazel, thorn, birch, and elder, with merely a
track through it, will by no means serve the occasion. The trees around
you should be big and noble. There should be grass at your feet. There
should be space for the felled or fallen princes of the forest. A
roadway with the sign of wheels that have passed long since will be an
advantage, so long as the branches above your head shall meet or seem to
meet each other. I will not say that the ground should not be level,
lest by creating difficulties I shall seem to show that the fitting spot
may be too difficult to be found; but, no doubt, it will be an
assistance in the work to be done if occasionally you can look down on
the tops of the trees as you descend, and again look up to them as with
increasing height they rise high above your head. And it should be a
wood--perhaps a forest--rather than a skirting of timber. You should
feel that, if not lost, you are losable. To have trees around you is not
enough, unless you have many. You must have a feeling as of Adam in the
garden. There must be a confirmed assurance in your mind that you have
got out of the conventional into the natural, which will not establish
itself unless there be a consciousness of distance between you and the
next ploughed field. If possible, you should not know the east from the
west; or, if so, only by the setting of the sun. You should recognize
the direction in which you must return simply by the fall of water.
"But where shall the wood be found? Such woodlands there are still in
England, though, alas! they are becoming rarer every year. Profit from
the timber merchant or dealer in fire-wood is looked to; or else, as is
more probable, drives are cut broad and straight, like spokes of a wheel
radiating to a nave or centre, good only for the purposes of the slayer
of multitudinous pheasants. I will not say that a wood prepared, not as
the home, but the slaughter-ground, of game, is altogether inefficient
for our purpose. I have used such, even when the sound of the guns has
been near enough to warn me to turn my steps to the right or to the
left. The scents are pleasant even in winter; the trees are there, and
sometimes even yet the delightful feeling may be encountered that the
track on which you are walking leads to some far-off, vague destination,
in reaching which there may be much of delight, because it will be
new;--something also of peril, because it will be distant. But the wood,
if possible, should seem to be purposeless. It should have no evident
consciousness of being there, either for game or fagots. The felled
trunk on which you sit should seem to have been selected for some
accidental purpose of house-building, as if a neighbor had searched for
what was wanting and had found it. No idea should be engendered that it
was let out at so much an acre to a contractor, who would cut the trees
in order and sell them in the next market. The mind should conceive that
this wood never had been planted by hands, but had come there from the
direct beneficence of the Creator--as the first woods did come, before
man had been taught to recreate them systematically, and as some still
remain to us, so much more lovely in their wildness than when reduced to
rows and quincunxes, and made to accommodate themselves to laws of
economy and order.
"They will not come at once, those thoughts which are so anxiously
expected; and in the process of coming they are apt to be troublesome,
full of tricks, and almost traitorous. They must be imprisoned or bound
with thongs when they come, as was Proteus when Ulysses caught him
amidst his sea-calves,--as was done with some of the fairies of old, who
would, indeed, do their beneficent work, but only under compulsion. It
may be that your spirit should on an occasion be as obedient as Ariel;
but that will not be often. He will run backward,--as it were
downhill,--because it is so easy, instead of upward and onward. He will
turn to the right and to the left, making a show of doing fine work,
only not the work that is demanded of him that day. He will skip hither
and thither with pleasant, bright gambols, but will not put his shoulder
to the wheel, his neck to the collar, his hand to the plough. Has my
reader ever driven a pig to market? The pig will travel on freely, but
will always take the wrong turning; and then, when stopped for the tenth
time, will head backward and try to run between your legs So it is with
the tricksy Ariel,--that Ariel which every man owns, though so many of
us fail to use him for much purpose; which but few of us have subjected
to such discipline as Prospero had used before he had brought his
servant to do his bidding at the slightest word.
"But at last I feel that I have him, perhaps by the tail, as the
Irishman drives his pig. When I have got him I have to be careful that
he shall not escape me till that job of work be done. Gradually, as I
walk or stop, as I seat myself on a bank or lean against a tree, perhaps
as I hurry on waving my stick above my head, till, with my quick motion,
the sweatdrops come out upon my brow, the scene forms itself for me. I
see, or fancy that I see, what will be fitting, what will be true, how
far virtue may be made to go without walking upon stilts, what
wickedness may do without breaking the link which binds it to humanity,
how low ignorance may grovel, how high knowledge may soar, what the
writer may teach without repelling by severity, how he may amuse without
descending to buffoonery; and then the limits of pathos are searched and
words are weighed which shall suit, but do no more than suit, the
greatness or the smallness of the occasion. We, who are slight, may not
attempt lofty things, or make ridiculous with our little fables the
doings of the gods. But for that which we do there are appropriate terms
and boundaries which may be reached, but not surpassed. All this has to
be thought of and decided upon in reference to those little plottings of
which I have spoken, each of which has to be made the receptacle of
pathos or of humor, of honor or of truth, as far as the thinker may be
able to furnish them. He has to see, above all things, that in his
attempts he shall not sin against nature; that in striving to touch the
feelings he shall not excite ridicule; that in seeking for humor he does
not miss his point; that in quest of honor and truth he does not become
bombastic and straitlaced. A clergyman in his pulpit may advocate an
altitude of virtue fitted to a millennium here or to a heaven hereafter;
nay, from the nature of his profession, he must do so. The poet, too,
may soar as high as he will, and if words suffice to him, he need never
fear to fail because his ideas are too lofty. But he who tells tales in
prose can hardly hope to be effective as a teacher, unless he binds
himself by the circumstances of the world which he finds around him.
Honor and truth there should be, and pathos and humor, but he should so
constrain them that they shall not seem to mount into nature beyond the
ordinary habitations of men and women.
"Such rules as to construction have probably been long known to him. It
is not for them he is seeking as he is roaming listlessly or walking
rapidly through the trees. They have come to him from much observation,
from the writings of others, from that which we call study, in which
imagination has but little immediate concern. It is the fitting of the
rules to the characters which he has created, the filling in with living
touches and true colors those daubs and blotches on his canvas which
have been easily scribbled with a rough hand, that the true work
consists. It is here that he requires that his fancy should be
undisturbed, that the trees should overshadow him, that the birds should
comfort him, that the green and yellow mosses should be in unison with
him, that the very air should be good to him. The rules are there
fixed,--fixed as far as his judgment can fix them,--and are no longer a
difficulty to him. The first coarse outlines of his story he has found
to be a matter almost indifferent to him. It is with these little
plottings that he has to contend. It is for them that he must catch his
Ariel and bind him fast, but yet so bind him that not a thread shall
touch the easy action of his wings. Every little scene must be arranged
so that--if it may be possible--the proper words may be spoken and the
fitting effect produced.
"Alas! with all these struggles, when the wood has been found, when all
external things are propitious, when the very heavens have lent their
aid, it is so often that it is impossible! It is not only that your
Ariel is untrained, but that the special Ariel which you may chance to
own is no better than a rustic hobgoblin or a pease-blossom, or mustard
seed at the best. You cannot get the pace of the racehorse from a
farmyard colt, train him as you will. How often is one prompted to fling
one's self down in despair, and, weeping between the branches, to
declare that it is not that the thoughts will wander, it is not that the
mind is treacherous! That which it can do, it will do; but the pace
required from it should be fitted only for the farmyard. Nevertheless,
before all be given up, let a walk in the wood be tried."
Much has been said about the quality of Mr. Trollope's work. There seems
a consensus of opinion that it degenerated. "Mr. Trollope," says Mr.
Freeman, "had certainly gone far to write himself out. His later work is
far from being so good as his earlier. But, after all, his worst work is
better than a great many other people's best; and considering the way in
which it was done, it is wonderful that it was done at all. I, myself,
know what fixed hours of work are, and their value; but I could not
undertake to write about William Rufus or Appius Claudius up to a
certain moment on the clock, and to stop at that moment. I suppose it
was from his habits of official business that Mr. Trollope learned to do
it, and every man undoubtedly knows best how to do his own work. Still,
it is strange that works of imagination did not suffer by such a way of
doing."
James Payn said that Trollope injured his reputation by publishing his
methods of writing. Likewise, the _Daily News_, in referring to Alphonse
Daudet's history of his own novels, doubted whether he acted wisely. As
the editor said, "An effect of almost too elaborate art, a feeling that
we are looking at a mosaic painfully made up of little pieces picked out
of real life and fitted together, has often been present to the
consciousness of M. Daudet's readers. That feeling is justified by his
description of his creative efforts."
M. Daudet's earlier works were light and humorous, like "Tartarin," or
they were idyllic and full of Provencal scenery, the nature and the
nightingales of M. Daudet's birthplace, the south. One night at the
theatre, when watching the splendid failure of an idyllic Provencal sort
of play, M. Daudet made up his mind that he must give the public sterner
stuff, and describe the familiar Parisian scenery of streets and quais.
This wise determination was the origin of his novels, "Jack," "Fromont
jeune et Risler aine," and the rest. Up to that time, M. Daudet, M.
Zola, M. Flaubert, and the brothers Goncourt had all been more or less
unpopular authors. It is not long since they had a little club of the
unsuccessful, and M. Daudet was the first of the company who began to
blossom out into numerous editions.
M. Daudet's secret as a novelist, as far as the secret is communicable,
seems to be his wonderfully close study of actual life and his
unscrupulousness in reproducing its details almost without disguise. He
frankly confesses that not only the characters in his political novels,
but those in his other works, are drawn straight from living persons.
The scenery is all sketched from nature, M. Daudet describing the vast
factories with which he was familiar when, at the age of sixteen, he
began to earn his own living, or the interiors to which he was admitted
by virtue of his position under a great man of the late imperial
administration. Places about which he did not know much, and which
needed to be introduced into his tales, M. Daudet visited with his
note-book.
M. Daudet's mode of work is, first, to see his plot and main incidents
clearly, to arrive at a full understanding of his characters, then to
map out his chapters, and then, he says, his fingers tingle to be at
work. He writes rapidly, handing each wet slip of paper to Madame Daudet
for criticism and approval. There is no such sound criticism, he says,
as that of this helpful collaborator, who withal is "so little a woman
of letters."
When a number of chapters are finished M. Daudet finds it well to begin
publishing his novel in a journal. Thus he is obliged to finish within a
certain date; he cannot go back to make alterations; he cannot afford
time to write a page a dozen times over, as a conscientious artist often
wishes to do.
XII.
Traits of Musical Composers.
A long chapter of instances might be penned on the habits of work of
musical composers; such as Gluck's habit of betaking himself with his
harpsichord on a fine day into some grassy field, where the ideas came
to him as fast again as within doors.
Handel, on the contrary, claims to have been inspired for his grandest
compositions by the murmurous din of mighty London,--far from mighty as
the London of George the Second may seem to those with whom the
nineteenth century is waning.
Sarti composed best in the sombre shadows of a dimly-lighted room.
The Monsieur Le Maitre commemorated in Rousseau's autobiography typified
a numerous section in his constant recourse, _en travaillant dans son
cabinet_, to a bottle, which was replenished as often as emptied, and
that was too often by a great deal. His servant, in preparing the room
for him, would no more have thought of omitting _son pot et son verre_
than his ruled paper, ink, pens, and violoncello; and one serving did
for these,--not so for the drink.
The learned artist Haydn could not work except in court-dress, and used
to declare that, if, when he sat down to his instrument, he had
forgotten to put on a certain ring, he could not summon a single idea.
How he managed to summon ideas before Frederick II. had given him the
said ring we are not informed.