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'écris 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 méditer qu'en marchant; sitôt que je m'arrête je ne pense plus, et ma tête ne va qu'avec mes pieds." Salvitur ambulando, whatever intellectual problem is solved by Jean Jacques. His strength was not to sit still. His Réveries, 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.