The account of his method of composition is told in one of his letters: “In the Christmas of 1837 my first work, ‘The History of Ferdinand and Isabella,’ was given to the world. I obtained the services of a reader who knew no language but his own, (English). I taught him to pronounce Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, more to my ear than to that of a Spaniard, and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana’s noble (Spanish) history. I cannot even now call to mind without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement, and when we had toiled our way through seven quartos, I found I could understand the book when read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English. My reader’s office required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him in his labor. I now felt that the great difficulty could be overcome, and I obtained the services of a reader whose acquaintance with modern and ancient tongues supplied, as far as it could be supplied, the deficiency of eyesight on my part. But though in this way I could examine various authorities, it was not easy to arrange in my mind the results of my reading drawn from different and often contradictory accounts. To do this I dictated copious notes as I went along, and when I had read enough for a chapter (from thirty to forty, and sometimes fifty pages in length), I had a mass of memoranda in my own language, which would easily bring before me in one view, the fruit of my researches. These notes were carefully read to me, and while my recent studies were fresh in my recollection, I ran over the whole of any intended chapter in my mind. This process I repeated at least half a dozen times, so that when I finally put my pen to paper it ran off pretty glibly for it was an effort of memory rather than composition.
Writing presented me a difficulty even greater than reading. Thierry, the famous blind historian of the Norman conquest, advised me to cultivate dictation; but I usually preferred a substitute that I found in a writing-case made for the blind which I procured in London, forty years since. It consists of a frame of the size of a sheet of paper, traversed by brass wires, as many as lines are wanted on the page, and with a sheet of carbonated paper, such as is used for getting duplicates, pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory or agate stylus the writer traces his characters between the wires on the carbonated sheet, making indelible marks, which he cannot see, on the white page below. This treadmill operation has its defects; and I have repeatedly supposed I had accomplished a good page, and was proceeding in all the glow of composition to go ahead, when I found I had forgotten to insert a sheet of writing-paper below, that my labor had all been thrown away, and that the leaf looked as blank as myself. Notwithstanding these and other whimsical distresses of the kind, I have found my writing-case my best friend in my lonely hours, and with it have written nearly all that I have sent into the world the last forty years.”
Prescott’s writings were successful from the first. Translations of the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella” appeared within a few years in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian, and it is surely no wonder that the author took up with a good heart the preparation of a “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and then a “History of the Conquest of Peru,” both of which were received with the same appreciation that had rewarded his first published work.
He had spent some time abroad before his marriage, partly in the hope of benefitting his eyesight. In 1850 he again visited England and spent some time on the continent. He wrote a number of miscellaneous articles for magazines and reviews, and published in 1855, two, and in 1858 the third volume of his uncompleted “History of the Reign of Philip II., King of Spain.” This, had he lived to complete it, would doubtless have been his greatest work. It was received with such favor that six months after the publication of the first two volumes, eight thousand copies had been sold and the sales of his other works had been so stimulated as to bring the total up to thirty thousand volumes during that time, which yielded the author the substantial royalty of seventeen thousand dollars.
A slight stroke of paralysis had already enfeebled him, and a second terminated his life on the 28th of January, 1859. His wife, one daughter, and two sons survived him.
Few men have combined so many engaging qualities. His blindness had made no change in his appearance, and he was thought to be one of the handsomest men of his time. His cheerfulness of disposition was so great that at the time of his most intense suffering he addressed those who cared for him with such brightness and consideration that one might have thought their positions reversed. The personal friends who were won by his grace of manner and by the sterling worth of his character have nearly all passed away, but the hope that he early expressed, “to produce something which posterity would not willingly let die,” was most abundantly realized.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.
(FROM HISTORY OF CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 1843.)
