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.”
Dickens’ love of order was very marked; his writing materials were always neatly arranged, and his household was a model of order.
The highways and byways of London were familiar to him, and many happy hours were spent rambling in them. He had a theory that the number of hours engaged in literary labour should have a corresponding time spent in pedestrian exercise, and he frequently enjoyed a twenty miles’ walk.
Thackeray was not very particular as to the place or time when he wrote. He liked to perform his literary labours in a pleasant room. It is certain, from the large number of books that he produced in a limited time, that he must have written at a considerable speed. He had also the happy facility of being able to dictate his works when composing them.
Previous to commencing a book George Eliot would read all she could find bearing on the subject. Sometimes she would study over a thousand works to write one book. She spared no pains in perfecting her productions.
Charles Reade wrote much and well. He rose at eight o’clock, took breakfast at nine, and at ten commenced his literary work, which usually lasted until two in the afternoon. He wrote in his drawing-room, and when the French windows were closed no sounds from the street could be heard. When once fairly on the way with a novel he worked with rapidity. He wrote with a large pen, with very black ink, on large sheets of drab-coloured paper. Each sheet was numbered as written, and thrown on the floor, which, after a few hours’ writing, was completely covered. A maid servant gathered up the manuscript, which, after being put in order, was sent to a copyist, who made, in a round hand, a clear copy. Mr. Reade then went carefully over it, making improvements by omissions and additions. The revised sheets were once more copied for the printer. He seldom dictated a story, but had not any objection to the company of a friend in his room when busy with his pen. He would sometimes relieve the monotony of his work by watching a game of tennis on his lawn, or the gambols of his tame hares, or the traffic passing in the street at the bottom of his garden. Mr. Reade did not take any lunch; he dined late, and generally finished the day by a visit to the theatre.
Alphonse Daudet, the greatest of living French novelists, is a painstaking man, and usually spends a year in writing a story. He takes a deep interest in his work; indeed, it seems to get the mastery over him; and when engaged on “Le Nabob” he worked about twenty hours a day. He related to an interviewer his method of work, and it transpired that he carries about with him a small book, and enters in it notes bearing on his subject. Next he reproduces his jottings and expands them, and as he completes the items he severs them out of his list. His wife then takes the manuscript in hand and makes a clear copy, and, at the same time, corrects any slight errors of redundancy. Daudet goes carefully over it, making additions and polishing according to his fancy. It is afterwards rewritten for the press.
Shortly after the death of Mrs. Henry Wood, her son, Mr. Charles W. Wood, published in the Argosy some very interesting particulars of her literary life. She was a born author, and at the age when children play with dolls she was composing stories. She was a ready writer. Her powerful prize temperance tale “Danesbury House” was commenced and completed in twenty-eight days.
Respecting her manner of writing her novels, says her son: “She first composed her plot. Having decided upon the main idea, she would next divide it into the requisite number of chapters. Each chapter was then elaborated. Every incident in every chapter was thought out and recorded, from the first chapter to the last. She never changed her plots or incidents. Once thought out, her purpose became fixed, and was never turned aside for any fresh departure or emergency that might arise in the development of the story. The drama had then become to her as if it actually existed. Every minute detail of the plot was written out before a line of the story was begun. All was so elaborately sketched that anyone with sufficient power would have no difficulty in writing the story with the plot in possession. The only difference would have been the evidence of another hand.
“The plot of each novel occupied a good many pages of close, though not small writing. It would take her, generally speaking, about three weeks to think it out from beginning to end. During those times she could not bear the slightest interruption. But I have occasionally gone into her study, though never without being startled, almost awed, by the look upon her face. She would be at all times in a reclining chair, her paper upon her knees, and the expression of her eyes, large, wide-opened, was so intense and absorbed, so far away, it seemed as if the spirit had wandered into some distant realm and had to be brought back to its tenement before the matter, suddenly placed before her, could be attended to. It, indeed, took many moments to recall her attention, elsewhere concentrated.” Mr. Wood observes, “Only on rare or important occasions was such intrusion ever permitted for the thread of her ideas once broken could very seldom be resumed the same day, and, as she never wrote a line of anything when composing a plot, she would consider that the day had been partly lost or wasted.”
When Mrs. Wood was writing a story, on entering her study she consulted the outline she had prepared, and then worked on the allotted portion of her task. She did not recopy her manuscripts, yet they contained