October 21, 1888.
Let me try to recollect for my own amusement how it was that my last book grew up and took shape. How well I remember the day and the hour when the first thought came to me! Some one was dining here, and told a story about a friend of his, and an unhappy misunderstanding between him and a girl whom he loved, or thought he loved. A figure, two figures, a scene, a conversation, came into my head, absolutely and perfectly life-like. I lay awake half the night, I remember, over it. How did those people come to be in exactly that situation? how would it develop? At first it was just the scene by itself, nothing more; a room which filled itself with furniture. There were doors—where did they lead to? There were windows—where did they look out? The house was full, too, of other people, whose quiet movements I heard. One person entered the room, and then another; and so the story opened out. I saw the wrong word spoken, I saw the mist of doubt and distress that filled the girl's mind; I felt that I would have given anything to intervene, to explain; but instead of speaking out, the girl confided in the wrong person, who had an old grudge against the man, so old that it had become instinctive and irrational. So the thing evolved itself. Then at one time the story got entangled and confused. I could go no further. The characters were by this time upon the scene, but they could not speak. I then saw that I had made a mistake somewhere. The scaffolding was all taken down, spar by spar, and still the defect was not revealed. I must go, I saw, backwards; and so I felt my way, like a man groping in the dark, into what had gone before, and suddenly came out into the light. It was a mistake far back in the conception. I righted it, and the story began to evolve itself again; this time with a delicate certainty, that made me feel I was on the track at last. An impressive scene was sacrificed—it was there that my idea had gone wrong! As to the writing of it, I cannot say it was an effort. It wrote itself. I was not creating; I was describing and selecting. There was one scene in particular, a scene which has been praised by all the reviewers. How did I invent it? I do not know. I had no idea what the characters were to say when I began to write it, but one remark grew inevitably and surely out of the one before. I was never at a loss; I never stuck fast; indeed the one temptation which I firmly and constantly resisted was the temptation to write morning, noon, and night. Sometimes I had a horrible fear that I might not live to set down what was so clear in my mind; but there is a certain freshness which comes of self-restraint. Day after day, as I strolled, and read, and talked, I used to hug myself at the thought of the beloved evening hours that were coming, when I should fling myself upon the book with a passionate zest, and feel it grow under my hand. And then it was done! I remember writing the last words, and the conviction came upon me that it was the end. There was more to be told; the story stretched on into the distance; but it was as though the frame of the picture had suddenly fallen upon the canvas, and I knew that just so much and no more was to be seen. And then, as though to show me plainly that the work was over, the next day came an event which drew my mind off the book. I had had a period of unclouded health and leisure, everything had combined to help me, and then this event, of which I need not speak, came and closed the book at the right moment.
What wonder if one grows fatalistic about writing; that one feels that one can only say what is given one to say! And now, dry and arid as my mind is, I would give all I have for a renewal of that beautiful glow, which I cannot recover. It is misery—I can conceive no greater—to be bound hand and foot in this helpless silence.