Methods of Authors Part 7

"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 mult.i.tudinous 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 f.a.gots. 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 G.o.ds. But for that which we do there are appropriate terms and boundaries which may be reached, but not surpa.s.sed. 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 alt.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstances 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 coa.r.s.e 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.sy 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.

Charles Dibdin's method of composition, or, rather, the absence of it, is ill.u.s.trated in the story of his lamenting his lack of a new subject while under the hair-dresser's hand in a cloud of powder, at his rooms in the Strand, preparing for his night's "entertainment." The friend who was with him suggested various topics, but all of a sudden the jar of a ladder sounded against the lamp-iron, and Dibdin exclaimed, "The lamp-lighter, a good notion," and at once began humming and fingering on his knee. As soon as his head was dressed he stepped to the piano, finished off both music and words, and that very night sang "Jolly d.i.c.k, the Lamplighter," at the theatre, nor could he, we are a.s.sured on critical authority, well have made a greater hit if the song had been the deliberate work of two authors--one of the words, another of the air--and had taken weeks to finish it, and been elaborated in studious leisure instead of the distraction of dressing-room din.

XIII.

The Hygiene of Writing.

Edward Everett Hale gives the following description of his mode of life, which at the same time is full of advice to authors in general:--

"The business of health for a literary man seems to me to depend largely upon sleep. He should have enough sleep, and should sleep well. He should avoid whatever injures sleep.

"This means that the brain should not be excited or even worked hard for six hours before bedtime. Young men can disregard this rule, and do; but as one grows older he finds it wiser to throw his work upon morning hours. If he can spend the afternoon, or even the evening, in the open air, his chances of sleep are better. The evening occupation, according to me, should be light and pleasant, as music, a novel, reading aloud, conversation, the theatre, or watching the stars from the piazza. Of course, different men make and need different rules. I take nine hours for sleep in every twenty-four, and do not object to ten.

"I accepted very early in life Bulwer's estimate that three hours a day is as large an average of desk work as a man of letters should try for.

I have, in old newspaper days, written for twelve consecutive hours; but this is only a _tour de force_, and in the long run you waste strength if you do not hold every day quite closely to the average.

"As men live, with the telegraph and the telephone interrupting when they choose, and this fool and that coming in when they choose to say, 'I do not want to interrupt you; I will only take a moment,' the great difficulty is to hold your three hours without a break. If a man has broken my mirror, I do not thank him for leaving the pieces next each other; he has spoiled it, and he may carry them ten miles apart if he chooses. So, if a fool comes in and breaks my time in two, he may stay if he wants to; he is none the less a fool. What I want for work is unbroken time. This is best secured early in the morning.

"I dislike early rising as much as any man, nor do I believe there is any moral merit in it, as the children's books pretend; but to secure an unbroken hour, or even less, I like to be at my desk before breakfast.

As long before as possible I have a cup of coffee and a soda biscuit brought me there, and in the thirty to sixty minutes which follow before breakfast, I like to start the work of the day. If you rise at a quarter past six, there will be comparatively few map pedlers, or book agents, or secretaries of charities, or jailbirds, who will call before eight.

The hour from 6.30 to 7.30 is that of which you are most sure. Even the mother-in-law or the mother of your wife's sister's husband does not come then to say that she should like some light work with a large salary as matron in an inst.i.tution where there is nothing to do.

"I believe in breakfast very thoroughly, and in having a good breakfast.

I have lived in Paris a month at a time and detest the French practice of subst.i.tuting for breakfast a cup of coffee, with or without an egg.

Breakfast is a meal at which much time may be spent with great advantage. People are not apt to come to it too regularly, and you may profit by the intermission to read your newspaper and lecture on its contents. There's no harm in spending an hour at the table.

"After breakfast do not go to work for an hour. Walk out in the garden, lie on your back on a sofa and read, in general, 'loaf' for that hour, and bid the servant keep out everybody who rings the bell, and work steadily till your day's stint is done. If you have had half an hour before breakfast, you can make two hours and a half now.

"It is just so much help if you have a good amanuensis; none, if you have a poor one. The amanuensis should have enough else to do, but be at liberty to attend to you when you need. Write as long as you feel like writing; the moment you do not feel like it, give him the pen and walk up and down the room dictating. There are those who say that they can tell the difference between dictated work and work written by the author. I do not believe them. I will give a share in the Combination Protoxide Silver Mine of Grey's Gulch to anybody who will divide this article correctly between the parts which I dictated and those which are written with my own red right hand.

"Stick to your stint till it is done. If Philistines come in, as they will in a finite world, deduct the time which they have stolen from you and go on so much longer with your work till you have done what you set out to do.

"When you have finished the stint, stop. Do not be tempted to go on because you are in good spirits for work. There is no use in making ready to be tired to-morrow. You may go out of doors now, you may read, you may in whatever way get light and life for the next day. Indeed, if you will remember that the first necessity for literary work is that you have something ready to say before you begin, you will remember something which most authors have thoroughly forgotten or never knew.

"This business of writing is the most exhausting known to men. You should, therefore, steadily feed the machine with fuel. I find it a good habit to have standing on the stove a cup of warm milk, just tinged in color with coffee. In the days of my buoyant youth I said, 'of the color of the cheek of a brunette in Seville.' I had then never seen a brunette in Seville; but I have since, and I can testify that the description was good. Beef tea answers as well; a bowl of chowder quite as well as either. Indeed, good clam chowder is probably the form of nourishment which most quickly and easily comes to the restoration or refreshment of the brain of man.

"If this bowl of coffee, or chowder, or soup is counted as one meal, the working man who wishes to keep in order will have five meals a day, besides the morning cup of coffee, or of coffee colored with milk, which he has before breakfast. Breakfast is one; this extended lunch is another; dinner is the third, say at half-past two; tea is the fourth, at six or seven; and, what is too apt to be forgotten, a sufficient supper before bedtime is the fifth. This last may be as light as you please, but let it be sufficient,--a few oysters, a slice of hot toast, clam chowder again, or a bowl of soup. Never go to bed in any danger of being hungry. People are kept awake by hunger quite as much as by a bad conscience.

"Remembering that sleep is the essential force with which the whole scheme starts, decline tea or coffee within the last six hours before going to bed. If the women kind insist, you may have your milk and water at the tea-table, colored with tea; but the less the better.

"Avoid all mathematics or intricate study of any sort in the last six hours. This is the stuff dreams are made of, and hot heads, and the nuisances of waking hours.

"Keep your conscience clear. Remember that because the work of life is infinite you cannot do the whole of it in any limited period of time, and that, therefore, you may just as well leave off in one place as another.

"No work of any kind should be done in the hour after dinner. After any substantial meal, observe, you need all your vital force for the beginning of digestion. For my part, I always go to sleep after dinner and sleep for exactly an hour, if people will only stay away; and I am much more fond of the people who keep away from me at that time than I am of the people who visit me."

XIV.