Literary Byways

Preface

In the following pages no attempt has been made to add to the many critical works authors bring under the notice of the public. My aim in this collection of leisure-hour studies is to afford entertaining reading on some topics which do not generally attract the reader’s attention.

It is necessary for me to state that three of the chapters were originally contributed to the columns of the Chambers’s Journal, and by courtesy of the Editor are reproduced in this volume.

William Andrews.

The Hull Press,

July 5th, 1898.

Authors at Work

The interest of the public in those who write for its entertainment naturally extends itself to their habits of life. All such habits, let it be said at once, depend on individual peculiarities. One will write only in the morning, another only at night, a third will be able to force himself into effort only at intervals, and a fourth will, after the manner of Anthony Trollope, be almost altogether independent of times and places. The nearest approach to a rule was that which was formulated by a great writer of the last generation, who said that morning should be employed in the production of what De Quincey called “the literature of knowledge,” and the evening in impassioned work, “the literature of power.”

But habits, however unreasonable they may be, are ordinarily very powerful with authors. One of the most renowned writers always attired himself in evening dress before sitting down to his desk. The influence of his attire, he said, gave dignity and restraint to his style. Another author, of at least equal celebrity, could only write in dressing gown and slippers. In order that he might make any progress, it was absolutely essential that he should be unconscious of his clothes. Most authors demand quiet and silence as the conditions of useful work. Carlyle padded his room, in order that he might not be annoyed by the clatter of his neighbours. On the other hand, Jean Paul Richter, whose influence is visible throughout nearly the whole of Carlyle’s writings, would work serenely in the kitchen with his mother attending to her domestic duties, and the children playing around him. In an article contributed by Carlyle to the Edinburgh Review on Richter, we get some interesting facts about this truly great man. The following is reproduced from Döring. “Richter’s studying or sitting apartment, offered about this time (1793),¹ a true and beautiful emblem of his simple and noble way of thought, which comprehended at once the high and the low. Whilst his mother, who then lived with him, busily pursued her household work, occupying herself about stove and dresser, Jean Paul was sitting in a corner of the same room, at a simple writing-desk, with few or no books about him, but merely with one or two drawers containing excerpts and manuscripts. The jingle of the household operations seemed not at all to disturb him, any more than did the cooing of the pigeons, which fluttered to and fro in the chamber – a place, indeed, of considerable size.” Carlyle, commenting on the preceding passage, says – “Our venerable Hooker, we remember, also enjoyed ‘the jingle of household operations,’ and the more questionable jingle of shrewd tongues to boot, while he wrote; but the good thrifty mother, and the cooing pigeons, were wanting. Richter came afterwards to live in fine mansions, and had the great and learned for associates, but the gentle feelings of those days abode with him: through life he was the same substantial, determinate, yet meek and tolerating man. It is seldom that so much rugged energy can be so blandly attempered, that so much vehemence and so much softness will go together.”

Dr. Johnson’s “Dictionary” is one of the most familiar books in the English language, and the particulars of the way in which it was compiled are of considerable interest. He agreed with a number of leading London booksellers to prepare the work for £1,775, and spent seven years over the task. When he undertook it, he expected to finish it in three years. His friend, Dr. Adams, called upon him one day, and found him busy with his book, and, says Boswell, a dialogue as follows ensued. “Adams: ‘This is a great work, sir. How are you to get all the etymologies?’ Johnson: ‘Why, here is a shelf with Junius and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.’ Adams: ‘But, sir, how can you do this in three years?’ Johnson: ‘Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years.’ Adams: ‘But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to complete their dictionary.’ Johnson: ‘Sir, thus it is – this is the proportion. Let me see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.’” This pleasantry is not reproduced to show Johnson’s vanity, but to give a glimpse of some of the books he used, and his own ideas as to the period he expected to spend over the undertaking.

Johnson fitted up an upper room like a counting house, in which were employed six copyists; and in spite of his asserted aversion from Scotchmen, he engaged no less than five of them on his book, so that his objection to the sons of Caledonia cannot have been very deeply rooted.

Many of his words were drawn from previously published dictionaries, and others he supplied himself. He spent much time in reading the best informed authors, and marked their books with a pencil when he found suitable material for his work. He would not under any consideration quote the productions of an author whose writings were calculated to hurt sound religion and morality. The marked sentences were copied on slips of paper, which were afterwards posted into an interleaved copy of an old dictionary opposite the words to which they related.

At the commencement of the work he made a rather serious mistake by writing on both sides of his paper. He had to pay twenty pounds to have it transcribed to one side of the paper only.

It has been truthfully observed that Dr. Johnson’s “Illustrations of the meanings and uses of words” is the most valuable part of the work, and shows an extraordinary knowledge of literature. Some of the definitions were characteristic of the man. Take for example the following, to be found in the first edition: – “Excise. A hateful tax levied upon commodities, adjudged, not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom the excise is paid. – Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections. – Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but which in Scotland supports the people.” Sir Walter Scott related the happy retort by Lord Elibank, who said, when he heard the definition – “Yes; and where else will you see such horses, and such men.” – Patron. Commonly, a wretch, who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery. – Pension. In England, it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

Mr. Andrew Miller, bookseller, of the Strand, took the chief management of the publication, and appears to have been much disappointed at the slow progress the compiler made. He frequently pressed Johnson for more “copy,” and towards the latter part of the work became most anxious, for Johnson had drawn all his money in drafts long before he had completed the “Dictionary.”

According to Boswell, “When the messenger who carried the last sheet to Miller returned, Johnson asked him, ‘Well, what did he say?’ ‘Sir,’ answered the messenger, ‘he said, “Thank God I have done with him.”’ ‘I am glad,’ replied Johnson, ‘that he thanks God for anything.’”

The Dictionary was published in 1755 in two volumes at £4 4s. 0d., and soon went through several editions. The expenses of producing the work left Johnson a small margin of profit. It firmly established his fame.

Having referred at some length to Johnson’s “Dictionary,” let us pay some little attention to another important work of reference, the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The first edition was issued in weekly numbers commenced in 1771, and was completed in 1773. It consisted of three small quarto volumes. The first editor was William Smellie, a studious man who made his start in life as a compositor, and left the printing office for an hour or two daily to attend the classes of the Edinburgh University. At nineteen he was employed as proof-reader, conductor and compiler of the Scots’ Magazine at a salary of sixteen shillings a week. He devised and wrote the chief articles in the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The agreement of the work is a curiosity of literature, and reads as follows:

“Mr. Andrew Bell to Mr. William Smellie.

“Sir, – As we are engaged in publishing a ‘Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences,’ and as you have informed us that there are fifteen capital sciences, which you will undertake for, and write up the sub-divisions and detached parts of them, conforming to your plan, and likewise to prepare the whole work for the press, etc., etc. We hereby agree to allow you £200 for your trouble.”

A second edition was called for in 1776, and the proprietors offered Smellie a share in the undertaking if he would edit it; but having other pressing work on hand, he declined the proposal, and Joseph Tytler, a man of varied attainments, was engaged. He was born in 1747, and was the son of a minister of a rural parish in Scotland. After receiving a liberal education, he was placed with a surgeon at Forfar. He subsequently made a couple of voyages as a doctor in a whaling-ship to Greenland. Next he proceeded to Edinburgh with the money he had earned, with a view of completing his medical education at the University. He had no sooner got nicely settled in the Northern capital, than he married a girl in humble circumstances, a step which did not help to advance his worldly interests. He made many attempts to succeed, but always failed. Keen poverty kept his nose to the grindstone. His faculty in projecting works was much larger than his energy in carrying them out. Before he had reached the age of thirty, he commenced his labours as the editor of the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The remuneration he received was very small; and while the work was in progress, he lodged, with his wife and family, with a poor washerwoman at the village of Duddingston, and for his writing-desk turned her wash-tub upside down.

The poor fellow never attempted to hide his poverty. It is said by a gentleman who once waited upon him, that he found him making a repast on a cold potato, which he continued eating with as much composure as if he were dining in the most sumptuous style.

The Encyclopædia was a great success, and sold to the extent of ten thousand copies; the owners of the copyright cleared £42,000. Moreover two of the owners, one a printer and the other an engraver, were paid for their respective work; yet in spite of this handsome profit, the result of Tytler’s ability, they permitted him to live with his wife and children in penury.

He could write almost on any topic, and at any time. As a proof of this, his biographer tells a good anecdote. “A gentleman in Edinburgh,” he states, “once told him he wanted as much matter as would form a junction between a certain history and its continuance to a later period. He found Tytler lodged in one of those elevated apartments called garrets, and was informed by the old woman with whom he resided that he had gone to bed rather the worse for liquor. Determined, however, not to depart without fulfilling his errand, he was shown into Mr. Tytler’s apartment by the light of a lamp, where he found him in the situation described by the landlady. The gentleman having acquainted him with the nature of the business which brought him at so late an hour, Mr. Tytler called for pen and ink, and in a short time produced about a page and a half of letterpress, which answered the end as completely as if it had been the result of the most mature deliberation, previous notice, and a mind undisturbed by any liquid capable of deranging its ideas.”

Tytler was a poet of some skill, and wrote a number of popular songs, three of which find a place in “The Celebrated Songs of Scotland.” He enjoyed the friendship of Robert Burns. In 1792 he published a prospectus of a paper to be named the Political Gazetteer; when it came under the notice of Burns he wrote to him as follows: – “Go on, sir; lay bare with undaunted heart and steady hand that horrid mass of corruption called politics and state-craft.” At the time he penned this he was an officer in the Excise, and for this and similar expressions he was rebuked by the Board of Excise. Burns described Tytler as an “obscene, tippling, but extraordinary body; a mortal who, though he drudges about Edinburgh with leaky shoes, a skylighted hat, yet that same drunken mortal is author and compiler of three-fourths of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ which he composed at half-a-guinea a week.”

We must, before dismissing Tytler, give another anecdote, although it does not relate to literature. We read that “he constructed a huge bag, and filled it full of gas, and invited the inhabitants of Edinburgh to witness his flight through the regions of space.” Mr. Tytler, it appears, slowly rose in his bag as high as a garden wall, when something went wrong with the machinery, and he was deposited head foremost “softly on an adjoining dunghill.” The “gaping crowd nearly killed themselves with laughter.” He was afterwards known as “Balloon Tytler.” He wrote a seditious placard, and had to flee to save his neck. He found a home in America, and for some time edited a paper at Salem. After a life of toil and trouble, he died in the year 1803.

Much has been said about the habits and earnings of Sir Walter Scott, and it is only necessary for us to observe that he wrote in his neatly-arranged library, where at any moment he could refer to his books. He was a most methodical man, and never had to waste time hunting up lost papers and books. He usually commenced writing between five and six, and worked until ten in the morning, and during this period it was his practice to fast. When pressed with work, he would often take breakfast at nine, and lounge about until eleven, and then write with a will until two o’clock. During the closing years of Sir Walter Scott’s life he employed William Laidlaw as his amanuensis. Laidlaw was a poet and prose writer of some merit, possessed of superior shrewdness, and highly esteemed by Sir Walter and his family. He was for many years steward at Abbotsford.

Another famous son of the North was Professor Wilson, perhaps more widely known as “Christopher North,” of Blackwood’s Magazine. He entered in a large ledger skeletons of intended articles; when he felt in the humour for working, he turned to his skeletons, selected one, and quickly clothed it with flesh and nerve. Wilson in a short time could produce a considerable quantity of original matter. Mr. J. S. Roberts, the editor of the volume of “Scottish Ballads” in the Chandos Classics series, was a boy at Blackwood’s when Wilson was the chief contributor to “Maga.” It was one of Roberts’ duties to go to Christopher North for his “copy.” He was wont to sit and amuse himself whilst the great, lion-headed man wrote or furnished an article on all manner of scraps of waste paper. One day there was a high wind, and Roberts was indiscreet enough to put Professor Wilson’s article in his hat. The result was hugely disastrous. The head-gear was blown off, and Wilson’s article was distributed in small portions over all the streets of Edinburgh. It was a frightful thing to have to go to the author and explain the catastrophe. John Wilson would swear, as the boy knew; and for a while he swore most stormily, but eventually calmed his choler, and wrote the article over again.

Professor Wilson was the author of a severe critique on the earlier poems of Alfred Tennyson, and in reply to it the poet wrote the following lines: —

“To Christopher North

 
“You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
 
 
“When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.
 

After penning the foregoing, the Laureate does not appear to have troubled himself further respecting Professor Wilson.

Let us now look at the method of a famous French author. Like many able writers, Balzac thought out every detail of a story before he commenced writing it. The places he proposed describing were visited, and the special features carefully noted. His note-books were filled with particulars of all classes of characters, for reproduction in his novels. No sooner had he made up his mind to write on a certain subject, and collected materials for his work, than he retired from the haunts of men, and declined to see even his closest friends. Letters might come, but they were not opened; he was dead to the outer world. His blinds were drawn, the sunlight shut out, and candles lighted. His ordinary costume was changed for a loose white monkish gown. The round of his daily toil was as follows: – At two in the morning he commenced writing, and continued it until six; a bath was then indulged in; at eight he took coffee, and rested until the clock marked the hour of nine. He resumed writing until noon, when an hour was occupied over breakfast. He again laboured with his pen from one to six, when his work closed for the day. He dined and conferred with his publisher, and at eight o’clock he retired to rest. This daily round often occupied two months, in which period he furnished the first rough draft of his work. The matter was usually re-written, and even when in type he would frequently alter three or four proofs. We are not surprised to learn “that he was the terror of the printers; few could decipher his ‘copy,’ and it is said that those few made a stipulation with their employer to work on it for one hour at a time.”

He was a most painstaking writer, but was never satisfied with his productions. “I took,” he said, “sixteen hours out of twenty-four over the elaboration of my unfortunate style, and I am never satisfied with it when done.”

Carlyle’s productions gave the printers much trouble, on account of the many alterations he made, and his cramped penmanship. His changes were not confined to his manuscripts; he revised his proofs to such an extent that it was frequently found easier to reset the matter than to alter it. Miss Martineau told a good story anent this subject. “One day,” she said, “while in my study, I heard a prodigious sound of laughter on the stairs, and in came Carlyle, laughing aloud. He had been laughing in that manner all the way from the printing office in Charing Cross. As soon as he could, he told me what it was about. He had been to the office to urge the printer, and the man said: ‘Why, sir, you really are so very hard upon us with your corrections; they take so much time, you see.’ After some remonstrance, Carlyle observed that he had been accustomed to do this sort of thing; that he had got works printed in Scotland, and – ‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ interrupted the printer, ‘we are aware of that. We have a man here from Edinburgh, and when he took up a bit of your copy he dropped it as if it had burnt his fingers, and cried out, ‘Lord have mercy! Have you got that man to print for? Lord knows when we shall get done all his corrections.’”

Mrs. Gore was the author of many fashionable novels and other works, which won much favourable notice in her day. She did not confine all her attention to story-writing; she contributed very largely to the leading magazines, and wrote successfully for the stage. The list of her works is a long one, yet, in spite of all her tireless toil with the pen, she entered very freely into the pleasures of society. Mr. Planché visited her in Paris in 1837, and in course of a conversation she explained how she managed to find time to write so much. Said Mrs. Gore: “I receive, as you know, a few friends at dinner at five o’clock nearly every evening. They leave me at ten or eleven, when I retire to my own room, and write till seven or eight in the morning. I then go to bed till noon, when I breakfast, after which I drive out, shop, pay visits, and return at four, dress for dinner, and as soon as my friends have departed, go to work again all night as before.” Mrs. Gore died in 1861, at the age of sixty-two years. Her first book was issued in 1823, and it was followed by no less than seventy separate works. She lived for many years on the Continent, and supported her family with her pen.

Mrs. Trollope did not commence her career as an author until she had “reached the sober season of married and middle life,” yet she managed to produce no less than one hundred and fifteen volumes of fiction. In an autobiographical work, entitled “What I Remember,” by her son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, we get some touching pictures of this wonderful woman writing her books. He speaks of her passing an extended period by the bedside of her invalid son. From about nine in the morning until eight in the evening, with “a cheerful countenance and a bleeding heart,” she entertained and nursed her patient. He generally slept about eight, when she went to her desk and wrote her fiction to amuse light-hearted readers. She worked from two to three in the morning. This was all done with the aid of green tea and sometimes laudanum. Mrs. Trollope died at the age of eighty-three years, so that it cannot be said that hard work killed her, although she did an immense quantity.

We believe that hard work seldom kills anyone. Some say that it does, and point to the fate of Southey, one of the most industrious of English men of letters, to support their assertion. The mention of his name brings to the mind scenes of sunshine and shadow. He was a lover of books, and his charming house in Lake-land contained a fine library. Here he read and worked, and life passed happily. Nothing could tempt him to leave it, not even the editorship of The Times. When bereft of reason, Southey would linger lovingly amongst the companions of happier days, his beloved books. He would play with them as a child plays with a toy. It is generally believed that hard literary labour killed him. When Dr. Charles Mackay visited Wordsworth he named the matter to him, and was told that there was no truth in it. Said Wordsworth of Southey: “He was a calm and methodical worker, and calm, steady work never kills. It is only worry and hurry that kill. Southey wrote a great deal; but he wrote easily and pleasantly to himself. Besides, only those who have tried know what an immense deal of literary work can be got through comfortably by a man who will work regularly for only four or even three hours a day. Take the case of Sir Walter Scott, for instance. What an immensity of work he got through; and yet he was always idle at one o’clock in the afternoon, and ready for any amusement, or for such change of labour as the garden or the field afforded. Southey was like him in that respect, and, though he worked hard, he always contrived to enjoy abundance of leisure. Scott died of pecuniary trouble, not of work. Southey died of grief for the loss of his wife.”

Lord Byron puzzled his friends by continual production whilst appearing to occupy himself with everything else but writing.

Hans Christian Andersen had to be alone when he composed his fairy tales. He was never able to dictate a contribution for the press. All his matter for the printer was in his own handwriting. This circumstance he named to Thiers, by whom he was informed that he dictated to an amanuensis the whole of his “History of the Consulate and the Empire.”

Miss Edgeworth wrote her stories in the common sitting-room, surrounded by her family. Some authors are able to concentrate their attention on a task and remain unconscious of anything going on around them. Says a recent writer on this topic: “Dr. Somerville told Harriet Martineau that he once laid a wager with a friend that he would abuse Mrs. Somerville in a loud voice to her face, and she would take no notice; and he did so. Sitting close to her, he confided to his friend the most injurious things – that she rouged, that she wore a wig, and such nonsense uttered in a very loud voice; her daughters were in a roar of laughter, while the slandered lady sat placidly writing. At last her husband made a dead pause after her name, on which she looked up in an innocent manner saying, “Did you speak to me?”

Southey too could write in the presence of his family. A more remarkable method of composition was that of Barry Cornwall. He composed his best poems in the busy streets of London, only leaving the crowd to enter a shop to commit to paper the verses he had made.

The poet Gray usually worked himself into the “mood” by reading some other poet, generally Spenser.

Shelley always composed out of doors sometimes on the roof tops. Trelawney describes how he found him in a grove near Florence by a pool of water; he was gazing unconsciously into the depths. Trelawney did not disturb him, but when Shelley came out of his trance he had written one of his finest lyrics, in a hand-writing that no other man could decipher.

Wordsworth mainly composed his poems during his rural rambles. It was not an unusual circumstance for him to write with a slate pencil on a smooth piece of stone his newly made lines. Surely the hillsides and lovely dales of Lake-land were fitting places for the great high priest of nature to give birth to his poetry. He repeated his poems aloud as he composed them, a practice which greatly puzzled the common people. We cannot perhaps better illustrate the strange impression it made on the country folk than by repeating an anecdote told to Dr. Charles Mackay by an American gentleman. He said – “One of his countrymen had lost his way in a vain attempt to discover Rydal Mount; had taken a wrong turn and gone three or four miles beyond or to the side of the point he should have aimed at. Meeting an old woman in a scarlet cloak, who was gathering sticks, he asked her the way to Rydal Mount. She could not tell him; she did not know. ‘Not know,’ said the American, ‘the house of the great Wordsworth?’ ‘No.’ ‘What, not the house of the man whose fame brings people here from all parts of the world?’ ‘No,’ she insisted, ‘but what was he great in? – was he a preacher or a doctor?’ ‘Greater than preacher or doctor – he was a poet.’ ‘Oh, poet!’ she replied; ‘and why did you not tell me that before? I know who you mean now. I often meet him in the woods, jabbering his pottery (poetry) to himself. But I’m not afraid of him. He’s quite harmless, and almost as sensible as you or me.’” This is the old story – a man, however great, is not much thought of in his own district.

It is generally understood that Lord Tennyson composed much of his poetry during his rural rambles.

Edwin Arnold, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote his “Light of Asia” whilst travelling in the railway carriage to and from his newspaper office.

Some authors appear to be able to write at any time and in any place. Anthony Trollope did much writing in a railway train. “It was,” he says, “while I was engaged on ‘Barchester Towers’ that I adopted a system of writing, which for some years afterwards I found to be very serviceable to me. My time was greatly occupied in travelling, and the nature of my travelling was now changed. I could not any longer do it by horseback. Railroads afforded me my means of conveyance, and I found that I passed in railway carriages very many hours of my existence… If I intended to make a profitable business of writing, and, at the same time, to do my best for the Post Office, I must turn my hours to more account than I could by reading. I made for myself, therefore, a little tablet, and I found after a few days’ exercise that I could write as quickly in a railway carriage as I could at my own desk. I worked with a pencil, and what I wrote my wife copied afterwards. My only objection to the practice came from the appearance of literary ostentation, to which I felt myself to be subject when going to work before four or five fellow passengers. But I got used to it.”

Trollope never attached any importance to a writing mood; to use his own phrase, he sat down to work just “as a cobbler sits down to make shoes.” When at home he rose at from half-past four to five o’clock daily, and, attired in his dressing-gown, he went to his writing-room. During the cold weather his old and favourite Irish servant made a fire in it before he arrived. He placed his watch before him, and he trained himself to write two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes, and he says that he was able to perform the feat as regularly as his watch went.

He believed that a serial was spoilt if written month by month as published. Only once during his long career did he commence publishing a story before the manuscript was completed, and that was “Framley Parsonage,” in the pages of Cornhill Magazine. It is admitted to be one of his best books. He wielded the pen of a ready writer for nearly forty years, and in this period produced an enormous quantity of work. He stands in this respect almost on a level with Sir Walter Scott. No writer of the highest genius writes like Trollope, though it was Keats’ habit to write a certain number of lines a day when he was engaged on “Endymion.” Emerson remarks “a poet must wait many days in order to glorify one.”

The late Bishop Wilberforce managed to write in his chaise even when driven over rough roads, as well as in railway carriages. His lordship appeared to be able to use his pen in most unlikely quarters.

Amongst authors noted as early risers must be included Charles Dickens. He has told us how the solemn and still solitude of the morning had a charm for him. It was seldom that he wrote before breakfast; as a rule he confined his writing between the hours of breakfast and luncheon. Dickens was by no means a rapid writer. When engaged on a novel he regarded three of his not very large pages of manuscript as a good day’s work, and four as excellent. He did not recopy his writings, although they contained numerous corrections which, however, were clearly made. Prior to commencing a new story he suffered much from despondency. He spoke of himself as “going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go about his sugar before he touches it.”