Victorien Sardou, the dramatist, writes his play twice; first on little scraps of paper, then on foolscap. The first draft, when it is finished, is a maze of alterations and delineations.
Mezerai, the famous historian, used to study and write by candle-light, even at noonday in summer, and, as if there had been no sun in the world, always waited upon his company to the door with a candle in his hand.
"The method of Buckle, the historian," so says his biographer, "was chiefly remarkable for careful, systematic industry, and punctilious accuracy. His memory appeared to be almost faultless, yet he took as much precaution against failure as if he dared not trust it. He invariably read with "paper and pencil in his hand, making copious references for future consideration. How laboriously this system was acted upon can be appreciated only by those who have seen his note-books, in which the passages so marked during his reading were either copied or referred to under proper heads. Volume after volume was thus filled, everything being written with the same precise neatness that characterizes his manuscript for the press, and indexed with care, so that immediate reference might be made to any topic. But, carefully as these extracts and references were made, there was not a quotation in one of the copious notes that accompanied his work that was not verified by collation with the original from which it was taken."
Joaquin Miller says that he has always been so poor, or, rather, has had so many depending on his work, that he has "never been able to indulge the luxury of habits," and that he has worked in a sort of "catch-as-catch-can" way. Having been mostly on the wing since he began writing, he has done his work in all kinds of ways, and hours, and houses. However, now, since he has a little home, his life has become regulated. He rises at daylight, so as to save candles, and never works at night. After he has made and imbibed his coffee, he digs or pulls weeds, and cultivates his flowers, or works in some way about the greens, for an hour or so, and at length, when he feels compelled to literary work, and can no longer keep from it, he writes whatever he feels that he must set down; and then he writes only as long as he feels impelled. Holding, as he does, that all modern authors think too little and write too much, he never writes as long as he can keep from it. He looks forward with hope and pleasure to the day when he shall be able to stop writing entirely. As for stimulants, he never takes them. Yet he often smokes a cigar about the greens before beginning work. But he would be ill if he attempted to drink while writing. As for making an outline of his work, he generally jots down a lot of sketches or pictures, one each day; then he puts these together, and the play, poem, or novel is finished. He works for from three to five hours every day, then goes out till dinner time. He once lived in a rude log cabin, built on an eminence overlooking the city of Washington, D. C. There his latch-string was always out. He now lives near Oakland, Calif., not in one cabin, but in three, each as rude as that of any settler in the Sierras.
George Manville Fenn, during a period of some eighteen years, has tried a good many plans, with the result of settling down for the last twelve or fourteen years to one alone. He prefers the daytime decidedly for mental work, because the brain is fresh and vigorous from the rest of the past few hours, and because the work produced is lighter and better and can be sustained longer; and the writer is not exhausted when he leaves his table. Brilliant work has often been done at night; but when Fenn has made the trial he has found the results of a month's day-work better, and there has been more in quantity. He invariably makes an outline or skeleton of his work, and often with his story first in a dramatic form, which, he thinks, adds much to the vigor and effect of a tale. He is in the habit of using tobacco, but has never looked upon it as a stimulus, regarding it rather as a soothing aid to reflection. He dines early, so as to have the evenings free. The afternoon is spent in work, a visit to town, or a chat with friends; he takes tea early,—at six,—and afterward often writes for two or three hours. For years Mr. Fenn has been trying to solve this problem: Why can one write easily and fairly well one day, and have the next be almost a blank? After long study and much musing, he has come to the determination that he knows nothing whatever about it, and that the only thing to do is to lead as quiet and temperate a life as one can. Of course, the stimulated and excited brain will produce a few weird and powerful bits of work; but, judging from what Mr. Fenn has seen, the loaded mind soon breaks down.
VII.
Goethe, Dickens, Schiller, and Scott.
Goethe was a believer in the pleasant doctrine that the highest and freest work can be done under the healthiest conditions of fresh air, early hours, daylight, and temperance—which does not mean abstinence. He and Balzac are at precisely opposite pales in their method of working. Here is the account of Goethe's days at Weimar, according to G. H. Lewes: He rose at seven. Till eleven he worked without interruption. A cup of chocolate was then brought, and he worked on again till one. At two he dined. His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry, he ate much more than most men. He sat a long while over his wine, chatting gayly; for he never dined alone. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles. There was no dessert—Balzac's principal meal—nor coffee. Then he went to the theatre, where a glass of punch was brought to him at six, or else he received friends at home. By ten o'clock he was in bed, where he slept soundly. Like Thorwaldsen, he had a talent for sleeping.
No man of business or dictionary maker could make a more healthy arrangement of his hours. The five or six hours of regular morning work, which left the rest of the day open for society and recreation, the early habits, the full allowance of sleep, and the rational use of food are in glaring contrast to Balzac's short and broken slumbers, his night work, and his bodily starvation. Goethe differed from almost every other great poet in not doing his greatest work at a white heat; and not only so, but he differed also in constantly balancing his reasoning against his creative faculties. Those long mornings of early work were not always spent in the fever of creation. He was a physiologist, a botanist, a critic; and the longer he lived, the more of a savant he became, if not less of a poet. His imagination was most fertile before he settled down into these regular ways, but not before he settled down into a full appreciation of wine. Balzac would write the draft of a whole novel at a sitting, and then develop it on the margins of proofs, revises, and re-revises. Goethe acted as if while art is long, life were long also. Till the contrary is proved, we must consistently hold that Goethe was the philosopher before dinner-time, and the poet in the theatre, or during those long after-dinner hours over his two or three bottles of wine. That these later hours were often spent socially proves nothing, one way or the other. Some men need such active influences as their form of mental stimulus. Alfieri found, or made, his ideas while listening to music or galloping on horseback. Instances are common in every-day life of men who cannot think to good purpose when shut up in a room with a pen, and who find their best inspiration in wandering about the streets and hearing what they want in the rattle of cabs and the seething of life around them, like the scholar of Padua, whose conditions of work are given by Montaigne as a curiosity: "I lately found one of the most learned men in France studying in the corner of a room, cut off by a screen, surrounded by a lot of riotous servants. He told me—and Seneca says much the same himself—that he worked all the better for this uproar, as, if overpowered by noise, he was obliged to withdraw all the more closely into himself for contemplation, while the storm of voices drove his thoughts inward. When at Padua he had lodged so long over the clattering of the traffic and the tumult of the streets, that he had been trained not only to be indifferent to noise, but even to require it for the prosecution of his studies."
Goethe abominated smoking, though he was a German. Bayard Taylor says that he tolerated the use of the pipe by Schiller and his sovereign, Carl August, but otherwise he was very severe in denouncing it. Goethe himself somewhere says that "with tobacco, garlic, bed-bugs, and hypocrites he should wage perpetual war."