Methods of Authors

by Hugo Erichsen

We learn from Mr. Forster that "method in everything was Dickens' peculiarity, and between breakfast and luncheon, with rare exceptions, was his time of work. But his daily walks were less of rule than of enjoyment and necessity. In the midst of his writing they were indispensable, and especially, as it has been shown, at night." When he had work on hand he walked all over the town furiously, and in all weathers, to the injury of his health; and his walks, be it observed, were frequently what Balzac's always were—at night; so that, in the matter of hours, he must be taken as having conformed in some important respects to Balzac's hygiene. Now, Goethe was also an essentially out-of-doors man by nature—not one to let his pen do his imagining for him. He was no slave of the ink-bottle, as some are, who cannot think without the feather of a goose in their hands, by way of a sometimes appropriate talisman. There is a well-known passage in one of the Roman elegies to the effect that inspiration is to be sought more directly than within the four walls of a study, and that the rhythm of the hexameter is not best drummed with the fingers on a wooden table; and if it is true, as the author tells, that "youth is drunkenness without wine," it seems to follow, according to his experience, that those two or three bottles of wine are not altogether needless as an aid to inspiration when youth is gone by.

Schiller could never leave off talking about his poetical projects, and thus he discussed with Goethe all his best pieces, scene after scene. On the other hand, it was contrary to Goethe's nature, as he told Eckermann, to talk over his poetic plans with anybody—even with Schiller. He carried everything about with him in silence, and usually nothing of what he was doing was known to any one until the whole was completed.

Sir Walter Scott was one of the most industrious of writers. He rose early, and accomplished a good day's literary work before half the world was out of bed. Even when he was busiest, he seldom worked as late as noon. His romances were composed with amazing rapidity; and it is an astonishing fact, that in less than two weeks after his bankruptcy Scott wrote an entire volume of "Woodstock." His literary labors yielded him $50,000 a year. Two thousand copies of "The Lady of the Lake" were sold within a few months.

Many of the more energetic descriptions in "Marmion," and particularly that of the battle of Flodden, were struck off, according to Mr. Skene's account, while Scott was out with his cavalry, in the autumn of 1807. In the intervals of drilling, we are told, Scott used to delight "in walking his powerful black steed up and down by himself upon the Portobello sands, within the beating of the surge; and now and then you would see him plunge in his spurs, and go off as if at the charge, with the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often came and placed himself beside me, to repeat the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise."

In after years, Mr. Cadell, then a guest at Abbotsford, observing how his host was harassed by lion-hunters, and what a number of hours he spent daily in the company of his work-people, expressed his wonder that Scott should ever be able to work at all while in the country. "Oh," said Sir Walter, "I lie simmering over things for an hour or so before I get up; and there's the time I'm dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping, half-waking projet de chapitre, and when I get the paper before me, it commonly runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a doze in the plantations, and while Tom [Purdie] marks out a dyke or a drain as I have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain rigs in some other world."

By far the greater portion of "The Bride of Lammermoor," the whole of "The Legend of Montrose," and almost the whole of "Ivanhoe" were dictated under the terrible stimulus of physical pain, which wrung groans from the author between the words. The very two novels wherein the creative power of the arch-master of romance shows itself most strongly were composed in the midst of literal birth-throes. Laidlaw would often beseech Sir Walter affectionately to stop dictating, when his audible suffering filled every pause. It was then he made that grimmest of all bad puns: "Nay, Willie," addressing Laidlaw, who wrote for him and implored him to rest, "only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry, as well as all the wool, to ourselves; but as to giving over work, that can be done only when I am in woollen." John Ballantyne, his other faithful amanuensis, after the first day, took care to have always a dozen of pens made before he seated himself opposite the sofa on which Scott lay, the sufferer usually continuing his sentence in the same breath, though he often turned himself on his pillow with a groan of anguish. "But when a dialogue of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter: he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and, as it were, acting the parts."

In this last particular we are reminded of the celebrated Russian author, Gogol, whose practice it is said to have been in composing a dialogue to recite all the different speeches in character before committing them to paper, to assure himself of their being in complete consonance with what the character and situation required.

So far from affording any argument to the contrary, the history of the years during which Sir Walter's hand was losing its cunning seems to illustrate the penalty of trying to reconcile two irreconcilable things—the exercise of the imagination to its fullest extent, and the observance of conditions that are too healthy to nourish a fever. Apropos of his review of Ritson's "Caledonian Annals," he himself says: "No one that has not labored as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on all-fours, and being grave and dull." There spoke the man who habitually, and without artificial help, drew upon his imagination at the hours when instinct has told others they should be employing, not their fancy, but their reason. The privilege of being healthily dull before breakfast must have been an intense relief to one who compelled himself to do unhealthy or abnormal work without the congenial help of abnormal conditions. Herder, in like manner, is accused by De Quincey, in direct terms, of having broken down prematurely because he "led a life of most exemplary temperance. Surely, if he had been a drunkard or an opium-eater, he might have contrived to weather the point of sixty years." This is putting things pretty strongly; but it is said of a man of great imaginative power by a man of great imaginative power, and may, therefore, be taken as the opinion of an expert, all the more honest because he is prejudiced. A need must be strongly felt to be expressed with such daring contempt for popular axioms.

The true working-life of Scott, who helped nature by no artificial means, lasted for no more than twelve years, from the publication of "Waverley" until the year in which his genius was put into harness; so that, of the two men, Scott and Balzac, who both began a literary life at nearly the same age, and were both remarkable for splendid constitutions, the man who lived abnormally surpassed the man who lived healthily by fully eight years of good work, and kept his imagination in full vigor to the end.

It is amusing to read Sir Walter's candid avowal, when beginning the third volume of "Woodstock," that he "had not the slightest idea how the story was to be wound up to a catastrophe." He declares he never could lay down a plan—or that, if he had laid one down, he never could stick to it. "I tried only to make that which I was writing diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate. This habnab at a venture is a perilous style, I grant, but I cannot help it."