Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

CHAPTER III

As we have already remarked, authors are very much like other people, rarely coming up to the idea formed of them by enthusiastic readers. They are pretty sure to have some idiosyncrasies more or less peculiar; and who, indeed, has not? To know the true character of these individuals, we should see them in their homes rather than in their books.

Having so lately spoken of Landor, we are reminded of another literary character who in many respects resembled him. William Beckford, the English author, utterly despised literary fame, and when he wrote he could afford to do so, for he was a millionnaire. His romance of "Vathek," as an Eastern tale, was pronounced by the critics superior to "Rasselas;" and indeed "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," is hardly in any sense an Eastern tale. "Johnson," says Macaulay, "not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt." Beckford read to Rogers one of his novels in which the hero was a Frenchman who was ridiculously fond of dogs, and in which his own life was clearly depicted. Even this millionnaire author was finally reduced to such necessity as obliged him to sell his private pictures for subsistence. The last which he disposed of was Bellini's portrait of the "Doge of Venice," which was bought for and hung in the National Gallery on the very day that Beckford died, in 1844.

Certainly those authors who give us their own personal experience as a basis for their sketches are no plagiarists. The late Wendell Phillips⁶³ delighted, in his lecture on the "Lost Arts," to prove that there was nothing new under the sun; a not uncongenial task for this "silver-tongued orator," who was an iconoclast by nature. So early as the age of twenty-five he relinquished the practice of the law because he was unwilling to act under an oath to the Constitution of the United States. In one sense there is nothing new under the sun. Genius has not hesitated to borrow bravely from history and legend. The "Amphitrion" of Molière was adopted from Plautus, who had borrowed it from the Greeks, and they from the Indians. Any one reading a collection of the Arabian stories for the first time will be surprised at meeting so many which are familiar, and which he had thought to be of modern birth. La Fontaine borrowed from Petronius the "Ephesian Matron," which had been taken from Greek annals, having been previously transferred from the Arabic, where it appeared taken from the Chinese. There is no ignoring the fact that a large portion of our plots belonged originally to Eastern nations. The graceful, attractive, and patriotic story of William Tell was proven by the elder son of Haller, a century ago, to have been, in the main features, but the revival of a Danish story to be found in Saxo Grammaticus. The interesting legend of the apple was but a fable revived. The English story of Whittington and his Cat was common two thousand years ago in Persia.

When the writer of these pages visited the grand temples of Nikko, in the interior of Japan, he was told that the wonderfully preserved carvings beneath the eaves and on the inner walls, thousands of years old, were executed by one who was known as the "Left-Handed Artist," who was a dwarf, and had but partial use of the right hand. It seems, according to the local legend preserved for so many centuries, that while this artist was working at the ornamentation of the temples at Nikko he saw and fell in love with a beautiful Japanese girl resident in the city; for Nikko was then a city of half a million, though now but a straggling village. The girl would have nothing to do with the artist, on account of his deformity of person. All his attempts to win her affection were vain; she was inflexible. Finally the heart-broken artist returned to Tokio, his native place. Here be carved in wood a life-size figure of his beloved, so perfect and beautiful that the gods endowed it with life, and the sculptor lived with it as his wife, in the enjoyment of mutual love, all the rest of his days. Here, then, in Japan, we have the legend upon which the Greek story of Pygmalion and Galatea is undoubtedly founded.

As regards the subject of plagiarism in general, which is so often spoken of as connected with literary productions, it should be remembered, as Ruskin says, that all men who have sense and feeling are being constantly helped. They are taught by every person whom they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided.⁶⁴ "Literature is full of coincidences," says Holmes, "which some love to believe plagiarisms. There are thoughts always abroad in the air, which it takes more wit to avoid than to hit upon."

It has been truthfully said that no man is quite sane; each one has a vein of folly in his composition, a view which would certainly seem to be illustrated by circumstances which are easily recalled. Take, for instance, the fact that Schiller⁶⁵ could not write unless surrounded by the scent of decayed apples, with which he kept one drawer of his writing-desk well filled. Could we have a clearer instance of monomania? He also required his cup of strong coffee when he was composing, and the coffee was well "laced" with brandy. Bulwer-Lytton, in his life of Schiller, declares that when he wrote at night he drank hock wine. As an opposite and much more agreeable habit, we have that of Méhul, the French composer, and author of over forty successful operas, who could not produce a note of original music except amid the perfume of roses. His table, writing-desk, and piano were constantly covered with them; in this delicious atmosphere he produced his "Joseph in Egypt," which alone would have entitled him to undying fame.

Father Sarpi, who was Macaulay's favorite historian, best known as the author of the "History of the Council of Trent," having the idea that the atmosphere immediately about him became in a degree impregnated with the mental electricity of his brain, was accustomed to build a paper enclosure about his head and person while he was writing. "All air is predatory," he said. Salieri, the Venetian composer, prepared himself for writing by filling a capacious dish at his side with candy and bonbons, which he consumed in large quantities during the process. Sarti, the well-known composer of sacred music, was obliged to work in the dark, or thought that he was, as daylight or artificial light of any sort at such moments utterly disconcerted him. Rossini, on the contrary, seemed to have no special ideas about his surroundings when he was in a mood for composing. He sat down among his friends, laughing and talking all the while that he was creating, and framing with marvellous rapidity strains that will live for all time. The whole of "Tancredi," which first made his fame, was produced in the very midst of social life and merry companionship. He said he found inspiration in the cheerful human voices about him. As to the peculiarities we have noted in others, they must at first have been mere affectations; but such is the force of habit, that no doubt these individuals became confirmed in them and really believed their indulgence a necessity.

Carneades, the Greek philosopher, so famed for his subtle and powerful eloquence, before sitting down to write dosed himself with hellebore, – a strange resort, as it is supposed to act directly upon the liver, and only very slightly to stimulate the brain, besides being a fatal poison in large doses. It is well known that Dryden resorted to singular aids as preparatory to literary composition; being in the habit of first having himself bled and then making a meal of raw meat. The former process, he contended, rendered his brain clear, and the latter stimulated his imagination. In 1668 he held the position now filled by Tennyson, as poet-laureate of England. He was a notable instance of power in poetry, satire, and indecency, whom Cowper characterized as a lewd writer but a chaste companion. Dryden's own couplet will forcibly apply to himself: —

 
"O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!"
 

His "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," according to Dr. Johnson, entitled him to be considered the father of English criticism. His dramas, such as "Mariage à-la-Mode," "All for Love," "Don Sebastian," etc., were, by reason of their indecency, examples of perverted genius. He was sixty-six years old when he wrote his "Alexander's Feast," by far his best literary effort. While Macaulay calls him "an illustrious renegade,"⁶⁶ Dr. Johnson says, "he found the English language brick and left it marble," – a most superlative and ridiculous comment to be made by so erudite a critic.

When James Francis Stephens, the English entomologist, was about to write, he mounted a horse and arranged his thoughts and sentences while at full gallop. This was a plan that Sir Walter Scott also adopted when he wrote "Marmion," galloping up and down the shore of the Firth of Forth. But he concluded that he could do better pen-work in a more rational manner, so this practice did not become habitual with him. Scott made an interesting confession when writing the third volume of "Woodstock." He declared that he had not the slightest idea how the story was to be wound up to a catastrophe. He said he could never lay out a plan for a novel and stick to it. "I only tried to make that which I wrote diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate." Sir David Dalrymple (afterwards Lord Hailes) was a voluminous author on historical and antiquarian subjects. His "Annals of Scotland," published in 1792, was his most important work; Dr. Johnson called it "a book which will always sell, it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such punctuality of citation." Lord Hailes's mode of writing was very domestic, so to speak, being performed by the parlor fire, and amid his family circle of wife and children. He was always ready to answer any appeal, however trifling, and to enter cheerfully into all current family affairs. This seems hardly reconcilable with the extreme nicety and absolute correctness of his work.

Cormontaigne, the French military engineer, wrote an elaborate treatise on fortification in the trenches and while under fire. The Duke of Wellington, when his army was at San Christoval awaiting battle with the French, wrote a complete essay on the purpose of establishing a bank at Lisbon after the English methods. Thomas Hood wrote at night, when the house was still and the children asleep. Ouida⁶⁷ writes with her dogs only as companions, while they lie contentedly at her feet in the bright sunny library whose windows overlook the valley of the Arno and her well-beloved Florence. In the flower-garden before the villa her favorite Newfoundland dog, not long since dead, lies buried beneath a marble monument. Her productive literary capacity is wonderfully rapid, but the demand far exceeds it, and the prices she receives are unprecedented. She has few if any intimate friends, and no confidants, leading a life of almost perfect isolation.

Notwithstanding common-sense and experience have ever taught that the brain is capable of producing its best work when in its normal condition, still a host of writers have resorted systematically to some sort of artificial stimulant to aid them in authorship. History tells us that Æschylus, Eupolis, Cratinus, and Ennius, in the olden time, would not attempt to compose until they had become nearly intoxicated with wine. In more modern times, we know that Shadwell, De Quincey, Psalmanazar the famous literary impostor, Coleridge, Robert Hall, and Bishop Horsley stimulated themselves with fabulous doses of opium. Alfred de Musset, Burns, Edgar A. Poe, Dickens, Christopher North, and a host of others whose names will only too readily occur to the reader, were reckless as to the use of alcohol. They were both fed and consumed by stimulants. We are inclined, however, to forgive much of indiscretion in a brilliant and ardent imagination. Schiller, so lately referred to, was addicted to Rhenish wine in large quantities. Blackstone, author of "Commentaries on the Laws of England," remarkable for his clearness and purity of style, never wrote without a bottle of port by his side, which he emptied at a sitting.

It is related of Bacon that he did not drink wine when engaged in pen-craft, but he was accustomed to have sherry poured into a broad open vessel, and to inhale its fragrance with great relish. He believed that his brain thus received the stimulating influence without the narcotic effect. Sheridan could neither write nor talk until warmed by wine. If about to make a speech in the House, he would, just before rising, swallow half a tumbler of raw brandy. Burke presents a remarkable contrast; his great stimulant being hot water. The most impassioned passages of his speeches had no other physical inspiration; all the rest came from his glowing soul, which was powerful enough to vitalize his body for an oration of four hours' length. The food which sustained him on such occasions was cold mutton, the drink being hot water. Brandy and port, even claret and champagne, would have driven him wild, though they were the ordinary stimulants of his contemporaries. Burke was, like Burns, a man of an excitable temperament; but, unlike Burns, he was wise enough to avoid all dangerous alcoholic excitements, which increased the impulsive elements of his nature and diminished the action of his reason. It will be observed that even in the occasional violence of his invective, his passion is still reasoned passion, or reason penetrated by passion, so as to reach the will as well as to convince the understanding.

Addison, with his bottle of wine at each end of the long gallery at Holland House, where he walked back and forth perfecting his thoughts, will be sure to be recalled by the reader in this connection. Consciously or unconsciously he took a glass of the stimulant at each turn, until wrought up to the required point. Dr. Radcliffe, the eminent London physician and author, was often found in an over-stimulated condition. Summoned one evening to a lady patient, he found that he was too much inebriated to count her pulse, and so muttered, "Drunk! dead drunk!" and hastened homeward. The next morning, while experiencing intense mortification over the recollection, he received a note from the same patient, in which she said, she knew only too well her own condition when he called, and begged him to keep the matter secret, enclosing a hundred-pound note.

Burns was wont oftentimes to compose, as he tells us, "by the lee side of a bowl of punch, which had overset every mortal in the company except the haut-boy and the Muse."⁶⁸ Of course "the pernicious expedient of stimulants," as Carlyle would say, only served to use up more rapidly his already wasted physical strength. Sometimes, however, Burns would compose walking in the open fields. His first effort was to master some pleasing air, and then he easily produced appropriate words for it. One noble trait of Burns's character should not be forgotten. Though he died in abject poverty, he did not leave a farthing of debt owed to any one. Nothing could be finer than Carlyle's exordium in his review of Lockhart's "Life of Burns: " "With our readers in general, with men of right feeling anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his works ever as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves, this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye; for this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines."

As we have seen, musical composers, like those devoted to literature, are apt to have singular fancies. Glück, who was at one time the music-teacher of Marie Antoinette, and whose operas have entitled him to a niche in the temple of fame, could compose only while under the influence of champagne, two bottles of which he would consume at a sitting. He was an eccentric individual, singing and acting the part for which he at the same time wrote the music. Handel, when he felt the inspiration of music upon him, sought the graveyard of some village church, and on the moss-grown stones laid his portfolio and wrote his notes, never trying their harmony until he had completed the entire piece. It seems strange to us, in the light of his great genius, to think what an immense glutton Handel was. We have already spoken of this, but recur to it again in this connection; for one is puzzled how to reconcile the grossness of his appetite with his æsthetic nature. He could devour more food at one dinner than any other composer in three.⁶⁹ Never before was height and breadth of musical genius combined with such enormous appetite for the good things of the table; and yet his digestion was as sound as his love and need of food was portentous. Everything about this great composer was gigantesque, as became a giant. His forgetive brain was recruited by the nourishment drawn from a ravenous yet healthy stomach.

Unlike Handel's mode of composition, Mozart played his music upon the harpsichord before he wrote a note of it upon paper; but he had a most exalted idea of his mission, and prepared himself for composition, not by partaking of a hearty dinner, but by reading favorite classic authors for hours before beginning what was to him a sacred task. His favorite authors on such occasions were Dante and Petrarch. He chose the morning for his compositions; but he would often delay writing his scores for the musicians until it was too late to copy them, and sometimes failed altogether to write out the part intended to be performed by himself; yet when the moment arrived, so perfectly had all been arranged in his mind, he played it without hesitation, instrument in hand. The Emperor Joseph, before whom he was performing on one occasion, observed that the music-sheet before him contained no characters whatever, and asked, "Where is your part?" "Here," replied Mozart, pointing with his finger to his forehead.⁷⁰ He became blind before he was forty years of age, but continued to compose. The duet and chorus in "Judas Maccabæus," and some others of his finest efforts were produced after his total deprivation of sight; nor did he cease to conduct his oratorios in public on account of his blindness.

Spontini, the Italian composer, like Sarti, could only produce his music in the dark, dictating to some one sitting in an adjoining room. Rossini, author of the "Barber of Seville," composed his music as the elder Dumas was accustomed to write; namely, in bed. Offenbach, of opera-bouffe notoriety, almost lived on coffee while creating his dainty aerial music. The writer of these pages met this composer in Paris in 1873, when he was at the height of his popularity, and was told by him that he took no wine or spirit until after his work of composition was completed. Cimarosa, the Italian composer, who won national fame before he was twenty-five, derived his inspiration from the noisy crowd. Auber, the French composer, could write only among the green fields and the silence of the country. Sacchini, another Italian composer, lost the thread of his inspiration unless attended by his favorrite cats, they sitting all about him while he worked, some upon the table, some on the floor, and one always perched contentedly between his shoulders on his neck; he declared that their purring was to him a soothing anodyne, and fitted him for composition by making him content. Eugène Sue would not take up his pen except in full dress and with white kids on his hands. Thus he produced the "Mysteries of Paris," which Dumas designated as "one-gross-of-gloves long." Buffon would only sit down to write after taking a bath and donning pure linen with a full frilled bosom. Haydn⁷¹ declared that he could not compose unless he wore the large seal-ring which Frederick the Great had given him. He would sit wrapped in silence for an hour or more, after which he would seize his pen and write rapidly without touching a musical instrument; and he rarely altered a line. In early life, poor, freezing in a miserable garret, he studied the rudiments of his favorite art by the side of an old broken harpsichord. For a period of six years he endured a bitter conflict with poverty, being often compelled for the sake of warmth to lie in bed most of the day as well as the night. Finally he was relieved from this thraldom by the generosity of his patron, Prince Esterhazy, a passionate lover of music, who appointed him his chapel-master, with a salary sufficient to keep him supplied with the ordinary comforts of life.

Crébillon the elder, a celebrated lyric poet and member of the French Academy, was enamoured of solitude, and could only write effectively under such circumstances. His imagination teemed with romances, and he produced eight or ten dramas which enjoyed popularity in their day, – about 1776. One day, when he was alone and in a deep reverie, a friend entered his study hastily. "Don't disturb me," cried the author, "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot."

We have lately mentioned Dumas. Hans Christian Andersen, speaking of the various habits of authors, thus refers to the elder Dumas, with whom he was intimate: "I generally found him in bed, even long after mid-day, where he lay, with pen, ink, and paper by his side, and wrote his newest drama. On entering his apartment I found him thus one day; he nodded kindly to me, and said: 'Sit down a minute. I have just now a visit from my Muse; she will be going directly.' He wrote on, and after a brief silence shouted 'Vivat' sprang out of bed, and said, 'The third act is finished!'"⁷²

Lamartine was peculiar in his mode of composition, and never saw his productions, after the first draft, until they were printed, bound, and issued to the public. He was accustomed to walk forth in his park during the after part of the day, or of a moonlit evening, with pencil and pieces of paper, and whatever ideas struck him he recorded. That was the end of the matter so far as he was concerned. These pieces of paper he threw into a special box, without a number or title upon them. His literary secretary with much patient ability assorted these papers, arranged them as he thought best, and sold them to the publishers at a royal price. We know of no similar instance where authorship and recklessness combined have produced creditable results. Certainly such indifference argued only the presence of weakness and irresponsibility, which were indeed prominent characteristics of Lamartine.

The remarkable facility with which Goethe's poems were produced is said to have resembled improvisation, an inspiration almost independent of his own purposes. "I had come," he says, "to regard the poetic talent dwelling in me entirely as nature; the rather that I was directed to look upon external nature as its proper subject. The exercise of this poetic gift might be stimulated and determined by occasion, but it flowed forth more joyfully and richly, when it came involuntarily, or even against my will." Addison, whose style is perhaps the nearest to perfection in ancient or modern literature, did not reach that standard without much patient labor. Pope tells us that "he would show his verses to several friends, and would alter nearly everything that any of them hinted was wrong. He seemed to be distrustful of himself, and too much concerned about his character as a poet, or, as he expressed it, 'too solicitous for that kind of praise which God knows is a very little matter after all.'" Pope himself published nothing until it had been a twelvemonth on hand, and even then the printer's proofs were full of alterations. On one occasion this was carried so far that Dodsley, his publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than to attempt to make the necessary alterations. Yet Pope admits that "the things that I have written fastest have always pleased the most. I wrote the 'Essay on Criticism' fast, for I had digested all the matter in prose before I began it in verse."

"I never work better," says Luther, "than when I am inspired by anger: when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart." We are reminded of Burke's remark in this connection: "A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat." Luther, however ribald he may have been at times, had the zeal of honesty. There was not a particle of vanity or self-sufficiency in the great reformer. "Do not call yourselves Lutherans," he said to his followers; "call yourselves Christians. Who and what is Luther? Has Luther been crucified for the world?"

Churchill,⁷³ the English poet and satirist, was so averse to correcting and blotting his manuscript that many errors were unexpunged, and many lines which might easily have been improved were neglected. When expostulated with upon this subject by his publisher, he replied that erasures were to him like cutting away so much of his flesh; thus expressing his utter repugnance to an author's most urgent duty. Though Macaulay tells us that his vices were not so great as his virtues, still he was dissipated and licentious. Cowper was a great admirer of his poetry, and called him "the great Churchill." George Wither,⁷⁴ the English poet, satirist, and political writer, was compelled to watch and fast when he was called upon to write. He "went out of himself," as he said, at such times, and if he tasted meat or drank one glass of wine he could not produce a verse or sentence.

Rogers, who wrote purely con amore, took all the time to perfect his work which his fancy dictated, and certainly over-refined many of his compositions. The "Pleasures of Memory" occupied him seven years. In writing, composing, re-writing, and altering his "Columbus" and "Human Life," each required just double that period of time before the fastidious author felt satisfied to call it finished. Besides this, the second edition of each went through another series of emendations. The observant reader will find that Rogers has often weakened his first and best thoughts by this elaboration. The expression of true genius oftenest comes, like the lightning, in its full power and effect at the first flash. "Every event that a man would master," says Holmes, "must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him." One who has had years of active editorial experience on the daily press can hardly conceive of such fastidious slowness of composition as characterizes some authors. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in speaking of Rogers, Rochefoucauld, Cowper, and others, and their dilatory habits of composition, says, that although men of ordinary talents may be highly satisfied with their productions, men of genius never are, – an assumption which is not borne out by facts, as we shall have occasion to show in these chapters. Modesty is not always the characteristic of genius; and very few popular writers are without a due share of vanity in their natures.

Voltaire somewhere says that an author should write with the rapidity which genius inspires, but should correct with care and deliberation; which doubtless expresses the process adopted by this unscrupulous but versatile writer, of whom Carlyle said: "With the single exception of Luther, there is perhaps, in these modern ages, no other man of a merely intellectual character, whose influence and reputation have become so entirely European as that of Voltaire." Sydney Smith was so rapid a producer that he had not patience even to read over his compositions when finished. He would throw down his manuscript and say: "There, it is done; now, Kate, do look it over, and put dots to the i's and strokes to the t's." He was once advised by a fashionable publisher to attempt a three-volume novel. "Well," said he, after some seeming consideration, "if I do so, I must have an archdeacon for my hero, to fall in love with the pew-opener, with the clerk for a confidant; tyrannical interference of the church-wardens; clandestine correspondence concealed under the hassock; appeal to the parishioners," etc. He was overflowing with humor to the very close of life. He wrote to Lady Carlisle during his last illness, saying, "If you hear of sixteen or eighteen pounds of human flesh, they belong to me. I look as if a curate had been taken out of me."

Buffon caused his "Époques de la Nature" to be copied eighteen times, so many corrections and changes were made. As he was then (1778) over seventy years of age, one would think this an evidence that his mind was failing him. Pope covered with memoranda every scrap of clear paper which came in his way. Some of his most elaborate literary work was begun and finished on the backs of old letters and bits of yellow wrappers. We do not wonder that such fragmentary manuscript always suggested the idea of revision and correction. It is difficult to understand why Pope should have assumed this small virtue of economy and yet often have been lavish in other directions; indeed, it may be questioned whether it was intended to be an act of economy. Such petty parsimony is inexplicable, but certainly it grew into a fixed habit with him. We believe it was Swift who first called him "paper-saving Pope;" but Swift was nearly as eccentric a paper-saver as Pope. He wrote to Dr. Sheridan: "Keep very regular accounts, in large books and a fair hand; not like me, who, to save paper, confuse everything!" Miss Mitford had the same habit of writing upon waste scraps of paper, fly-leaves of books, envelopes, and odd rejected bits, all in so small a hand as to be nearly illegible. William Hazlitt was also remarkable for the same practice, and we are told that he even made the first outline of some of his essays on the walls of his chamber, much to the annoyance of his landlady.