LETTER X.
TO AN AUTHOR WHO KEPT VERY IRREGULAR HOURS.
Julian Fane—His late hours—Regularity produced by habit—The time of the principal effort—That the chief work should be done in the best hours—Physicians prefer early to late work—The practice of Goethe and some modern authors—The morning worker ought to live in a tranquil neighborhood—Night-work—The medical objection to it—The student’s objection to day-work—Time to be kept in masses by adults, but divided into small portions by children—Rapid turning of the mind—Cuvier eminent for this faculty—The Duke of Wellington—The faculty more available with some occupations than others—The slavery of a minute obedience to the clock—Broad rules the best—Books of agenda, good in business, but not in the higher intellectual pursuits.
What you told me of your habits in the employment of your hours reminded me of Julian Fane. Mr. Lytton tells us that “after a long day of professional business, followed by a late evening of social amusement, he would return in the small hours of the night to his books, and sit, unwearied, till sunrise in the study of them. Nor did he then seem to suffer from this habit of late hours. His nightly vigils occasioned no appearance of fatigue the next day.... He rarely rose before noon, and generally rose much later.”
But however irregular a man’s distribution of his time may be in the sense of wanting the government of fixed rules, there always comes in time a certain regularity by the mere operation of habit. People who get up very late hardly ever do so in obedience to a rule; many get up early by rule, and many more are told that they ought to get up early, and believe it, and aspire to that virtue, but fail to carry it into practice. The late-risers are rebels and sinners—in this respect—to a man, and so persistently have the wise, from Solomon downwards, harped upon the moral loveliness of early rising and the degradation which follows the opposite practice, that one can hardly get up after eight without either an uncomfortable sense of guilt or an extraordinary callousness. Yet the late-risers, though obeying no rule, for the abandoned sinner recognizes none, become regular in their late rising from the gradual fixing power of habit. Even Julian Fane, though he regretted his desultory ways, “and dwelt with great earnestness on the importance of regular habits of work,” was perhaps less irregular than he himself believed. We are sure to acquire habits; what is important is not so much that the habits should be regular, as that their regularity should be of the kind most favorable in the long run to the accomplishment of our designs, and this never comes by chance, it is the result of an effort of the will in obedience to governing wisdom.
The first question which every one who has the choice of his hours must settle for himself is at what time of day he will make his principal effort; for the day of every intellectual workman ought to be marked by a kind of artistic composition; there ought to be some one labor distinctly recognized as dominant, with others in subordination, and subordination of various degrees. Now for the hours at which the principal effort ought to be made, it is not possible to fix them by the clock so as to be suitable for everybody, but a broad rule may be arrived at which is applicable to all imaginable cases. The rule is this—to do the chief work in the best hours; to give it the pick of your day; and by day I do not mean only the solar day, but the whole of the twenty-four hours. There is an important physiological reason for giving the best hours to the most important work. The better the condition of the brain and the body, and the more favorable the surrounding circumstances, the smaller will be the cost to the organization of the labor that has to be done. It is always the safest way to do the heaviest (or most important) work at the time and under the conditions which make it the least costly.
Physicians are unanimous in their preference of early to late work; and no doubt, if the question were not complicated by other considerations, we could not do better than to follow their advice in its simplicity. Goethe wrote in the morning, with his faculties refreshed by sleep and not yet excited by any stimulant. I could mention several living authors of eminence who pursue the same plan, and find it favorable alike to health and to production. The rule which they follow is never to write after lunch, leaving the rest of their time free for study and society, both of which are absolutely necessary to authors. According to this system it is presumed that the hours between breakfast and lunch are the best hours. In many cases they are so. A person in fair health, after taking a light early breakfast without any heavier stimulant than tea or coffee, finds himself in a state of freshness highly favorable to sound and agreeable thinking. His brain will be in still finer order if the breakfast has been preceded by a cold bath, with friction and a little exercise. The feeling of freshness, cleanliness, and moderate exhilaration, will last for several hours, and during those hours the intellectual work will probably be both lively and reasonable. It is difficult for a man who feels cheerful and refreshed, and whose task seems easy and light, to write anything morbid or perverse.
But for the morning to be so good as I have just described it, the workman must be quite favorably situated. He ought to live in a very tranquil neighborhood, and to be as free as possible from anxiety as to what the postman may have in reserve for him. If his study-window looks out on a noisy street, and if the day is sure, as it wears on, to bring anxious business of its own, then the increasing noise and the apprehension (even though it be almost entirely unconscious) of impending business, will be quite sufficient to interfere with the work of any man who is the least in the world nervous, and almost all intellectual laborers are nervous, more or less. Men who have the inestimable advantage of absolute tranquillity, at all times, do well to work in the morning, but those who can only get tranquillity at times independent of their own choice have a strong reason for working at those times, whether they happen to be in the morning or not.
In an excellent article on “Work” (evidently written by an experienced intellectual workman), which appeared in one of the early numbers of the Cornhill Magazine, and was remarkable alike for practical wisdom and the entire absence of traditional dogmatism, the writer speaks frankly in favor of night-work, “If you can work at all at night, one hour at that time is worth any two in the morning. The house is hushed, the brain is clear, the distracting influences of the day are at an end. You have not to disturb yourself with thoughts of what you are about to do, or what you are about to suffer. You know that there is a gulf between you and the affairs of the outside world, almost like the chasm of death; and that you need not take thought of the morrow until the morrow has come. There are few really great thoughts, such as the world will not willingly let die, that have not been conceived under the quiet stars.”