To produce a book or a picture is a stupendous effort. It claims all the power of thought and of concentration that is in us. It demands enthusiasm, determination, the conquest of idleness and self. We may not produce a great book or a great picture, but it is our supremest effort at that time, and when done, we feel like a squeezed lemon.
“Writers are so dull,” is a frequent remark. So they may well be—at times. So are artists, or musicians, or any creative workers. Their life’s blood is given to their work.
Another saddening result of giving one’s self wholly (as a worker should) to a task until success crowns one’s efforts is that it often arouses the envy of onlookers, and mostly of those who would not take the least trouble to compete.
Yes: it is fairly certain that the more one achieves in any walk of life, the more jealousy one encounters. A pretty woman is called hideous by some; a woman with charm—that indefinable attraction we all love—is dubbed a minx. Brilliant wit calls forth much condemnation. Success of work and brain is belittled by the envious. So while nothing succeeds like success, no one makes more enemies than the one who wins.
Every little victory brings a new enemy. When one hears the “catty” things people say, one can but wonder what catty things are said about one’s self. People say malicious things, suggest improprieties without foundation, assert motives that have never been born. In fact, Society is often cruel and hard. It eats and drinks too much, gets overwrought and tired, and says nasty things it does not mean.
The life of many an ordinary Society man or woman is despicable. They are the people who are “too busy” to do anything useful, whose lives are no good to anyone, and therefore boring to themselves.
Better work and be busy with something tangible, than idle life away in social dissipation. Yet how good and kind and generous most people are, and how hard many of them work for the good of others!
The vicissitudes of writers are many. I once suffered the loss in the post of an entire chapter of a manuscript. That missing link never turned up, and as I stupidly had kept no copy, while the rough notes thereof were of the roughest order, it was considerably difficult to rewrite the passages; indeed, impossible to remember the exact details of what the missing fragment formerly contained. Oh, the exasperation of it!—it was a thankless, dreary task.
How on earth Carlyle ever wrote his French Revolution over again is a marvel which fills me with admiration, whenever anything brings back the memory of all that labour which the second edition of that silly little chapter of an ordinary book cost me.