WRITING IN ROOMS
I remember that I was somewhat surprised when E. V. Lucas expressed
surprise that I was writing in my room at the hotel where we both
happened to be at the same time for several days last summer. He
declared with an expression of sharp distaste that he could not write in
hotel rooms. But said he had no difficulty in writing on trains. That
rather got me, because I can't write at all on trains. And possibly
because I was a bit peeved at the easy way in which he spoke of doing
that exceedingly difficult thing, writing on trains, I asserted in reply
that anybody ought to be able to write in _any kind_ of a room. But I do
know, what every writer knows, that the particular room one may be in
can make a good deal of difference in the way one is able to write.
Of course, it does appear to be true that there are writers of a kind
that can write anywhere in any circumstances, apparently with equal
facility and their customary standard of merit, whatever that may be. I
suppose war correspondents must be like that, and reporters for daily
newspapers. We know that a good many war books were announced as having
been written in dugouts, trenches, pill-boxes, tanks, submarines,
hospitals, airplanes and so on. In the matter of some of them I should
not undertake to dispute that they had even been written in asylums.
I have known, and known well, men of that type of mind which seemed to
be so completely under control that at will it could be turned on or
off, so to say, like the stream from a water faucet. My friend Joyce
Kilmer had such a head. It has been told how some of his most moving
poems--for one instance "The White Ships and the Red"--were the result
of hurried newspaper assignments: how he could leave a poem in the
middle of its composition, go out and lunch heartily for two hours,
return and finish the writing of it; how early in his career he would
walk up and down a room of his home in suburban New Jersey at two in the
morning and dictate (without a pause) to his wife while carrying a
shrilly crying child in his arms; how one of the best of his "Sunday
stories" was dictated directly after having been taken to a hospital
with three ribs fractured by being hit by his commutation train--and how
much more. A young man with a brain in perfect practical working
condition. But even he was not free from the mysterious tricks of
creative writing. For we know that after a daily round sustained for a
number of years of high productivity, when he went into the war, which
inspired countless others to _begin_ writing, he suddenly ceased to
write, practically altogether.
Poets and trains being up, brings to my mind my friend the Reverend
Edward F. Garesché, S. J., a source of amusement to many of his friends
because of his method of composition. He travels continually. Frequently
he will excuse himself from a group with whom he is talking, go to his
own seat, request the porter to bring him a card table, get out his
travelling typewriter, rattle off several poems, return to his party and
resume conversation at about where he had left off. Some of his poems
are very good; some (I'm sorry to have to say) are--not so good.
And so round we come again to the matter of writing in rooms. We know
how Booth Tarkington writes: in what he calls a "work spree," in a room
upstairs at home, a pile of freshly sharpened pencils ready to his
hand--and that, doubtless, he wouldn't be able to write anything in an
office if he were to be hanged for not doing it. (Probably never goes to
an office.) Meredith Nicholson, on the other hand, declares that the
only way it is possible for him to write is to go regularly at nine
o'clock every morning to an office he has downtown; where he tells
anyone who may ask over the telephone that he'll be there until five in
the afternoon.
There are persons who like to have others around them, moving about,
while they write. And people there are who find it necessary to lock
themselves up, and can have no one else in the room. Though in some
cases such persons would not mind the bang of a bass-drum just the other
side of the door. I know a man who had an office in lower Manhattan
where for a considerable period just outside his open window a steam
riveter was at work. Terrific it was, the way the noise of this machine
smashed the air into tiny particles like a shower of broken glass.
Callers who found this man contentedly writing would hold their ears and
look at him with their hair on end from amazement. A man of highly
nervous organism, too; one who would be very upset if his typewriter had
a pale ribbon, or be spoiled for the day if he couldn't find the right
pen--worn over just to his liking at the point. But, after the first day
or so, Mr. Soaping (name of the gentleman I'm telling you about) I know
didn't hear the riveter at all.
Then those exist, Royal Cortissoz is one, who, dictating all they do,
can have in the room while they work only their secretary. Frequently is
it the case, too, that none but the amanuensis to whom they have been
long accustomed will do. A stranger throws 'em completely off. A
novelist I know, the writer of a very good style, who becomes very much
fussed up, and is practically destroyed, when he suspects a secretary of
giving critical attention to the manner of his prose. An embarrassing
thing about most stenographers, I have found, is that they are greatly
grieved if you say "'em" for "them," or anything like that. Or else they
won't let you do such things at all, and edit everything pleasant back
into perfectly good copy-book English. Some of them won't even let you
split an infinitive.
Who was it, Voltaire, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, somebody, who could
write only when elaborately got up in his satins and ruffles? It is what
not long ago was called a bromidium to say that humorists are sad
people. I'd probably be thought humorous if I should call myself any
particular flier as a humorist, but this I know: wherever in my writing
I may have approached being amusing that generally was written when I
was considerably depressed. Forenoon is the best time for some to write;
late at night for others. "Ben Hur," I seem to recall, was penned
beneath a noble tree. At any rate, we frequently see pictures of
novelists, particularly in England, at work in their gardens. The most
familiar photographs, etchings, medallions and so on of Mark Twain and
of Robert Louis Stevenson at work are those of them writing in bed. Now
I can't (as some so take their breakfast) eat in bed; and I'm quite sure
I should never be able comfortably to write anything there. I do not
tell you how it is with me because I regard it as of deep interest to
you to hear how it is with me, but merely to aid me in assembling a
collection of facts concerning the freakishness of writing, and to
suggest to you how very different it may be with _you_.
And I couldn't write under a tree. One writer, perhaps, writes more
easily in the winter than in the summer, or it is the other way round.
The mind of one, it may be, is stimulated by the companionship of an
open fire, and that of another (for aught I know) by the companionship
of an ice-box. Personally, I think that it is well in writing for the
weather to be cool enough to have the windows down; and that night is
the best time, for the reason that your mind (or, at least, my mind) is
more gathered together within the circle of light at your desk.
Frequently, however (as you know), after sitting for hours with your
mind plumb stalled, it is not until shortly before your bed time that
that eccentric engine, your brain, gets buzzed up. Then, probably, you
can't call the thing off if you want to. I will tell you a story:
A man there is, of some renown as a writer, who started a new book early
last spring. For some considerable time he had been much discouraged
about his writing. Hadn't been able to make it go. Could only lift
heavily and painfully one stilted sentence after another. Used to take
up now and then one or another of his early books and look into it.
Marvelled how it was that he ever could have written such clever stuff.
Like Swift when late in life he re-read "Gulliver," so did this man
exclaim: "What a genius I had at that time!" He felt that the fire had
gone out; his inner life seemed to have completely died; he was a hollow
shell; could now neither receive nor impart anything worth half a
jews-harp. When, one day, he heard rosy, young Hugh Walpole say of
himself that of course what he had written was merely a beginning to
what he felt he might do, this man looked at rosy, young Hugh Walpole
with a deeply gloomy and very jealous eye.
But, lo! as I say, this man started this new book. It began as a series
of articles for which he was to be paid--that was _why_ it was begun at
all. Now see! With him it was as Professor George Edward Woodberry says
of Poe in his admirable "Life"--for a time his genius had "slept." With
the start of the new book he awoke. It began to run right out of the
ends of his fingers. Took (that book) hold of him completely. He
couldn't leave it. Go to bed, have to get up and go at it again. Try to
go out for a round of exercise. After a block or so from his quarters,
walk slower and slower. Miserable. Tortured. Turn back. Immediately
happy again. Soon be back at work. Anybody who entangled him with an
invitation anywhere enraged him beyond measure.
New book finished. Everything fine. Got another commission. Easy enough
job. Set to at it. Empty vessel again! In despair. He'd make all sorts
of excuses to himself to leave his place early in the morning to
postpone beginning work. He'd go anywhere, with anybody, to keep as long
as possible from facing that task again. Couldn't give any sensible
explanation of his prolonged delay to the publishers. Kept putting them
off again and again, with one cripple-legged excuse after another, in
the hope that he'd come round. Matter became a disgrace.
Still queerer cases than that I know. Fellow who shared an apartment
with me one time. When according to the accepted law of nature his mind
should have been in a very bad way, then always was he at his best.
After leading a regular, wholesome life for a period his mind would
become dull, stale and unprofitable. When, following a very different
sort of period, he should in all reason have awakened with a splitting
head, a swollen eye and a shaking hand, he would get up at about dawn
one morning in rattling fine spirits, his mind as clear as a bell, and
with an impassioned desire to work. Could, then, write like a streak.
But doesn't William James touch upon such a matter as this somewhere?
And Stevenson, how wrong he got the thing! What is it he tells us as to
the years of apprenticeship to writing:
It is only after years of such gymnastic that one can sit down at
last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of
phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself
knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's
ability) able to do it.
Only last night it was I was talking to Jesse Lynch Williams. He said
nothing of "legions of words swarming to his call," nary a mention of
"dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice."
Instead, he asked if I found that writing came easier as time went on.
No, he said, it seemed to him that writing became harder and harder the
longer one wrote. That he had torn up everything he had done for a long
while.
Always the paradox! Again, there are men who write with astonishing
ease, or at least with astonishing rapidity, and write well. Not so long
ago I began a novel in collaboration with a writer known and admired
from coast to coast, a frequent contributor to _The Bookman_, and one of
the best. We were to do this thing turn and turn about, a chapter by me,
then a chapter by him, and so on. For something like ten days I toiled
over chapter one. I labored and I groaned. When it was finished I was
spent. I handed him the manuscript; he stuffed it into his overcoat
pocket and went whistling away. Returned within a few days and handed me
a wad of copy covering, I think, three chapters. Again I toiled in the
sweat of my brow. Gave him another chapter. When, after a couple of
weeks or something like that, he returned and I had read what he had
done I discovered that he had got people married that I hadn't known
were yet born. The collaboration busted up.
My excellent friend does not like me to tell this story, because he
thinks it represents me as the conscientious artist and him as the
shallow scribbler. Well, that was not so; his chapters were far better
than mine. Nevertheless, his name I shall not give; I'll merely say
that it has very much the sound of a name borne by one of the
Elizabethan dramatists.
Then there is that sort of human head-piece which can only write when it
absolutely has to. I allude to the magical instrument of coercion known
as a "copy date." I know people, dozens of them, who having a month and
a half ahead of them in which to do an article can't possibly get
started on it until it is almost too late for them to get it in on time
to go to press--when a mad frenzy seizes them, their indolence vanishes
like mist before the rising sun, their minds open like a flower, and all
is well.
And the "galley slaves," those poor devils who for years have lived
under the whip of copy day every day. How they dream of the "real"
things they might do, given time. If (they think) the Lord would only
subsidize them! Now and then the Devil takes one of them and does this
very thing. The happy man gets some sort of a sinecure. All he has to do
is to go write. And (in all probability) that's all there is to that
story. He is like those things Riley tells about who "swaller
theirselves." He gets nothing written.
What do you write with? And why do you write with whatever it is you
write with instead of with something else? Why did Mr. Howells (in all
the writing of his which I have seen) use a script-letter typewriter
instead of a Roman-letter machine? Why does Mr. Le Gallienne do so much
of his copy (if not all of it) by hand? Why is it that Mr. Huneker could
never either dictate or learn to run a typewriter? How is it possible
for those Englishmen--Swinnerton and Bennett, for instance--to put forth
in a few months whole novels in the monkish hand of an illuminated
missal? (I have seen the original manuscript of "The Old Wives' Tale,"
every page like a copper-plate engraving, and hardly a correction
throughout.) And why is that it seems to me most natural to write some
things with a pen, others with a pencil, most things on a typewriter,
and yet again mix the use of all three implements in one composition? I
cannot tell you.
Some authors, if they are going to write about a slum, have to go and
live in a slum while they are writing about a slum. Other authors, if
they are going to write about life in an Ohio town, go to Italy to write
about life in an Ohio town. In his excellent book "On the Trail of
Stevenson" Clayton Hamilton says:
Throughout his lifelong wanderings, Stevenson rarely or never
attempted to describe a place so long as he was in it. For his
selection of descriptive detail he relied always on the
subconscious artistry of memory. He trusted his own mind to forget
the non-essential; and he seized upon whatever he remembered as, by
that token, the most essential features of a scene--the features,
therefore, that cried out to be selected as the focal points of the
picture to be suggested to the mind's eye of his readers.
The author of the thirteen volumes known as "The Chronicles of
Barsetshire," a detailed picture of the English clergy of his time, had
never associated with bishops, deans, and arch-deacons; he built them up
(to use his own expression) out of his "moral consciousness."
But round to rooms again. Often has it been told how Anthony Trollope
worked. How he accomplished so much--thirty-odd novels besides as many
tales--by a method he recommended to all who wish to pursue successfully
the literary career. In the drawing room of the Athenæum Club, in a
railway carriage, or on the ocean, wherever he might be he seated
himself for three hours as a limit, with his watch before him; and
regularly as it marked the quarter hour he turned off two hundred and
fifty words, undisturbed by any distraction about him. We know that the
unlettered man of genius, John Bunyan, wrote his immortal allegory "The
Pilgrim's Progress" in Bedford jail. And there is being advertised now a
book recently written in an American prison. And much writing has been
done in garrets. Then here's our old friend George Moore. Again and
again he has told of exactly the places it was necessary for him to live
in while he wrote certain books. I open at random "Ave"; and I find
this:
I descended the hillside towards the loveliest prospect that ever
greeted mortal eyes.... And I walked thinking if there were one
among my friends who would restore Mount Venus sufficiently for the
summer months, long enough for me to write my book.
Now, to be quite frank with you, I didn't intend to write this paper at
all. You may remember that when I set out I was merely in disagreement
with Mr. Lucas concerning the matter of writing in a hotel room. One
thing (as it will) led to another; and the upshot has been all this
pother. However, there are, I hope, no bones broken--and that's saying a
good deal for any kind of a discussion in these unsettled times.
What I am coming to is (the fashionable thing to come to nowadays) the
psychic. A fellow I know was much puzzled. He recently got back to 16
Gramercy Park from a trip around the world. I saw him there having some
toast and a pot of tea. He told me these interesting circumstances. He
would be at a superbly appointed hotel in some city. Beautiful suite of
rooms. Commodious bath-room with lovely bay-window. Everything to make
for perfect mental and physical well-being. Impotent to write there.
Later runs into some terrible dump of a lodging house. Horrible din of
low noises all about. One dirty window looks out on scene of squalor. So
cold at night has to put chair on bed and sit there to be nearer gas
jet. Gets on wonderfully with writing. Strikes another place, handsomest
of all; writes pretty well. Comes to most fearful place yet; can't write
at all.
Couldn't make head nor tail of the matter, this fellow. Discussed the
thing with many people. Finally found young woman who gave convincing
explanation. It's like this: Undoubtedly you are, in any room, affected
by something of the spirit which lingers there of former occupants.
Maybe they were persons, whatever their station in life, sympathetic to
your spirit--maybe not.