Erichsen Hugo
Methods of Authors
XII.
Traits of Musical Composers
A long chapter of instances might be penned on the habits of work of musical composers; such as Gluck's habit of betaking himself with his harpsichord on a fine day into some grassy field, where the ideas came to him as fast again as within doors.
Handel, on the contrary, claims to have been inspired for his grandest compositions by the murmurous din of mighty London, – far from mighty as the London of George the Second may seem to those with whom the nineteenth century is waning.
Sarti composed best in the sombre shadows of a dimly-lighted room.
The Monsieur Le Maître commemorated in Rousseau's autobiography typified a numerous section in his constant recourse, en travaillant dans son cabinet, to a bottle, which was replenished as often as emptied, and that was too often by a great deal. His servant, in preparing the room for him, would no more have thought of omitting son pot et son verre than his ruled paper, ink, pens, and violoncello; and one serving did for these, – not so for the drink.
The learned artist Haydn could not work except in court-dress, and used to declare that, if, when he sat down to his instrument, he had forgotten to put on a certain ring, he could not summon a single idea. How he managed to summon ideas before Frederick II. had given him the said ring we are not informed.
Charles Dibdin's method of composition, or, rather, the absence of it, is illustrated in the story of his lamenting his lack of a new subject while under the hair-dresser's hand in a cloud of powder, at his rooms in the Strand, preparing for his night's "entertainment." The friend who was with him suggested various topics, but all of a sudden the jar of a ladder sounded against the lamp-iron, and Dibdin exclaimed, "The lamp-lighter, a good notion," and at once began humming and fingering on his knee. As soon as his head was dressed he stepped to the piano, finished off both music and words, and that very night sang "Jolly Dick, the Lamplighter," at the theatre, nor could he, we are assured on critical authority, well have made a greater hit if the song had been the deliberate work of two authors – one of the words, another of the air – and had taken weeks to finish it, and been elaborated in studious leisure instead of the distraction of dressing-room din.
XIII.
The Hygiene of Writing
Edward Everett Hale gives the following description of his mode of life, which at the same time is full of advice to authors in general: —
"The business of health for a literary man seems to me to depend largely upon sleep. He should have enough sleep, and should sleep well. He should avoid whatever injures sleep.
"This means that the brain should not be excited or even worked hard for six hours before bedtime. Young men can disregard this rule, and do; but as one grows older he finds it wiser to throw his work upon morning hours. If he can spend the afternoon, or even the evening, in the open air, his chances of sleep are better. The evening occupation, according to me, should be light and pleasant, as music, a novel, reading aloud, conversation, the theatre, or watching the stars from the piazza. Of course, different men make and need different rules. I take nine hours for sleep in every twenty-four, and do not object to ten.
"I accepted very early in life Bulwer's estimate that three hours a day is as large an average of desk work as a man of letters should try for. I have, in old newspaper days, written for twelve consecutive hours; but this is only a tour de force, and in the long run you waste strength if you do not hold every day quite closely to the average.
"As men live, with the telegraph and the telephone interrupting when they choose, and this fool and that coming in when they choose to say, 'I do not want to interrupt you; I will only take a moment,' the great difficulty is to hold your three hours without a break. If a man has broken my mirror, I do not thank him for leaving the pieces next each other; he has spoiled it, and he may carry them ten miles apart if he chooses. So, if a fool comes in and breaks my time in two, he may stay if he wants to; he is none the less a fool. What I want for work is unbroken time. This is best secured early in the morning.
"I dislike early rising as much as any man, nor do I believe there is any moral merit in it, as the children's books pretend; but to secure an unbroken hour, or even less, I like to be at my desk before breakfast. As long before as possible I have a cup of coffee and a soda biscuit brought me there, and in the thirty to sixty minutes which follow before breakfast, I like to start the work of the day. If you rise at a quarter past six, there will be comparatively few map pedlers, or book agents, or secretaries of charities, or jailbirds, who will call before eight. The hour from 6.30 to 7.30 is that of which you are most sure. Even the mother-in-law or the mother of your wife's sister's husband does not come then to say that she should like some light work with a large salary as matron in an institution where there is nothing to do.
"I believe in breakfast very thoroughly, and in having a good breakfast. I have lived in Paris a month at a time and detest the French practice of substituting for breakfast a cup of coffee, with or without an egg. Breakfast is a meal at which much time may be spent with great advantage. People are not apt to come to it too regularly, and you may profit by the intermission to read your newspaper and lecture on its contents. There's no harm in spending an hour at the table.
"After breakfast do not go to work for an hour. Walk out in the garden, lie on your back on a sofa and read, in general, 'loaf' for that hour, and bid the servant keep out everybody who rings the bell, and work steadily till your day's stint is done. If you have had half an hour before breakfast, you can make two hours and a half now.
"It is just so much help if you have a good amanuensis; none, if you have a poor one. The amanuensis should have enough else to do, but be at liberty to attend to you when you need. Write as long as you feel like writing; the moment you do not feel like it, give him the pen and walk up and down the room dictating. There are those who say that they can tell the difference between dictated work and work written by the author. I do not believe them. I will give a share in the Combination Protoxide Silver Mine of Grey's Gulch to anybody who will divide this article correctly between the parts which I dictated and those which are written with my own red right hand.
"Stick to your stint till it is done. If Philistines come in, as they will in a finite world, deduct the time which they have stolen from you and go on so much longer with your work till you have done what you set out to do.
"When you have finished the stint, stop. Do not be tempted to go on because you are in good spirits for work. There is no use in making ready to be tired to-morrow. You may go out of doors now, you may read, you may in whatever way get light and life for the next day. Indeed, if you will remember that the first necessity for literary work is that you have something ready to say before you begin, you will remember something which most authors have thoroughly forgotten or never knew.
"This business of writing is the most exhausting known to men. You should, therefore, steadily feed the machine with fuel. I find it a good habit to have standing on the stove a cup of warm milk, just tinged in color with coffee. In the days of my buoyant youth I said, 'of the color of the cheek of a brunette in Seville.' I had then never seen a brunette in Seville; but I have since, and I can testify that the description was good. Beef tea answers as well; a bowl of chowder quite as well as either. Indeed, good clam chowder is probably the form of nourishment which most quickly and easily comes to the restoration or refreshment of the brain of man.
"If this bowl of coffee, or chowder, or soup is counted as one meal, the working man who wishes to keep in order will have five meals a day, besides the morning cup of coffee, or of coffee colored with milk, which he has before breakfast. Breakfast is one; this extended lunch is another; dinner is the third, say at half-past two; tea is the fourth, at six or seven; and, what is too apt to be forgotten, a sufficient supper before bedtime is the fifth. This last may be as light as you please, but let it be sufficient, – a few oysters, a slice of hot toast, clam chowder again, or a bowl of soup. Never go to bed in any danger of being hungry. People are kept awake by hunger quite as much as by a bad conscience.
"Remembering that sleep is the essential force with which the whole scheme starts, decline tea or coffee within the last six hours before going to bed. If the women kind insist, you may have your milk and water at the tea-table, colored with tea; but the less the better.
"Avoid all mathematics or intricate study of any sort in the last six hours. This is the stuff dreams are made of, and hot heads, and the nuisances of waking hours.
"Keep your conscience clear. Remember that because the work of life is infinite you cannot do the whole of it in any limited period of time, and that, therefore, you may just as well leave off in one place as another.
"No work of any kind should be done in the hour after dinner. After any substantial meal, observe, you need all your vital force for the beginning of digestion. For my part, I always go to sleep after dinner and sleep for exactly an hour, if people will only stay away; and I am much more fond of the people who keep away from me at that time than I am of the people who visit me."
XIV.
A Humorist's Regimen
Robert Barr (whose pseudonym, "Luke Sharp," is familiar to the readers of the Detroit Free Press) has written an article on "How a Literary Man Should Live," which may be cited in conclusion: —
"I am not," he says, "an advocate of early rising. I believe, however, that every literary man should have fixed hours for getting up. I am very firm with myself on that score. I make it a rule to rise every morning in winter between the hours of six and eleven, and in summer from half-past five until ten. A person is often tempted to sleep later than the limit I tie myself to, but a little resolution with a person's self at first will be amply repaid by the time thus gained, and the feeling one has of having conquered a tendency to indolence. I believe that a literary man can get all the sleep he needs between eight o'clock at night and eleven in the morning. I know, of course, that some eminent authorities disagree with me, but I am only stating my own experience in the matter, and don't propose to enter into any controversy about it.
"On rising I avoid all stimulating drinks, such as tea or coffee. They are apt to set the brain working, and I object to work, even in its most disguised forms. A simple glass of hot Scotch, say half a pint or so, serves to tide over the period between getting up and breakfast-time. Many literary men work before breakfast, but this I regard as a very dangerous habit. I try to avoid it, and so far have been reasonably successful. I rest until breakfast-time. This gives the person a zest for the morning meal.
"For breakfast the simplest food is the best. I begin with oyster stew, then some cold chicken, next a few small lamb chops and mashed potatoes, after that a good-sized beefsteak and fried potatoes, then a rasher of bacon with fried eggs (three), followed by a whitefish or two, the meal being completed with some light, wholesome pastry, mince pie for preference. Care should be taken to avoid tea or coffee, and I think a word of warning ought to go forth against milk. The devastation that milk has wrought among literary men is fearful to contemplate. They begin, thinking that if they find it is hurting them, they can break off, but too often before they awaken to their danger the habit has mastered them. I avoid anything at breakfast except a large tumbler of brandy, with a little soda water added to give it warmth and strength.
"No subject is of more importance to the literary aspirant than the dividing of the hours of work. I divide the hours just as minutely as I can, and then take as few of the particles as possible. I owe much of my success in life to the fact that I never allow work to interfere with the sacred time between breakfast and dinner. That is devoted to rest and thought. Much comfort can be realized during these hours by thinking what a stir you would make in the literary world if you could hire a man like Howells for five dollars a week to do your work for you. Such help, I find, is very difficult to obtain, and yet some people hold that the labor market is overcrowded. The great task of the forenoon should be preparation for the mid-day meal. The thorough enjoyment of this meal has much to do with a man's success in this life.
"Of course, I do not insist that a person should live like a hermit. Because he breakfasts frugally, that is no reason why he should not dine sumptuously. Some people dine at six and merely lunch at noon. Others have their principal meal in the middle of the day, and have a light supper. There is such merit in both these plans that I have adopted both. I take a big dinner and a light lunch at noon, and a heavy dinner and a simple supper in the evening. A person whose brain is constantly worried about how he can shove off his work on somebody else has to have a substantial diet. The bill of fare for dinner should include everything that abounds in the market – that the literary man can get trusted for.
"After a good rest when dinner is over, remain quiet until supper-time, so that the brain will not be too much agitated for the trials that come after that meal.
"I am a great believer in the old adage of 'early to bed.' We are apt to slight the wisdom of our forefathers; but they knew what they were about when they advised early hours. I always get to bed early, – say two or three in the morning. I do not believe in night work. It is rarely of a good quality. The brain is wearied with the exertions of the day and should not be overtaxed. Besides, the time can be put in with less irksomeness at the theatre, or in company with a lot of congenial companions who avoid the stimulating effects of tea, coffee, and milk. Tobacco, if used at all, should be sparingly indulged in. I never allow myself more than a dozen cigars a day; although, of course, I supplement this with a pipe.
"When do I do my literary work? Why, next day, of course."