Hints to Pilgrims Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The Posture of Authors.

There is something rather pleasantly suggestive in the fashion employed by many of the older writers of inscribing their books from their chambers or lodging. It gives them at once locality and circ.u.mstance. It brings them to our common earth and understanding. Thomas Fuller, for example, having finished his Church History of Britain, addressed his reader in a preface from his chambers in Sion College. "May G.o.d alone have the glory," he writes, "and the ingenuous reader the benefit, of my endeavors! which is the hearty desire of Thy servant in Jesus Christ, Thomas Fuller."

One pictures a room in the Tudor style, with oak wainscot, tall mullioned windows and leaded gla.s.s, a deep fireplace and black beams above. Outside, perhaps, is the green quadrangle of the college, cloistered within ancient buildings, with gay wall--flowers against the sober stones. Bells answer from tower to belfry in agreeable dispute upon the hour. They were cast in a quieter time and refuse to bicker on a paltry minute. The sunlight is soft and yellow with old age. Such a dedication from such a place might turn the most careless reader into scholarship. In the seat of its leaded windows even the quirk of a Latin sentence might find a meaning. Here would be a room in which to meditate on the worthies of old England, or to read a chronicle of forgotten kings, queens, and protesting lovers who have faded into night.

Here we see Thomas Fuller dip his quill and make a start. "I have sometimes solitarily pleased myself," he begins, and he gazes into the dark shadows of the room, seeing, as it were, the pleasant spectres of the past. Bishops of Britain, long dead, in stole and mitre, forgetful of their solemn office, dance in the firelight on his walls. Popes move in dim review across his studies and shake a ghostly finger at his heresy. The past is not a prude. To her lover she reveals her beauty.

And the scholar's lamp is her marriage torch.

Nor need it entirely cool our interest to learn that Sion College did not slope thus in country fashion to the peaceful waters of the Cam, with its fringe of trees and sunny meadow; did not possess even a gothic tower and cloister. It was built on the site of an ancient priory, Elsing Spital, with almshouses attached, a Jesuit library and a college for the clergy. It was right in London, down near the Roman wall, in the heart of the tangled traffic, and street cries kept breaking in--m.u.f.fins, perhaps, and hot spiced gingerbread and broken gla.s.s. I hope, at least, that the good gentleman's rooms were up above, somewhat out of the clatter, where m.u.f.fins had lost their shrillness.

Gingerbread, when distance has reduced it to a pleasant tune, is not inclined to rouse a scholar from his meditation. And even broken gla.s.s is blunted on a journey to a garret. I hope that the old gentleman climbed three flights or more and that a range of chimney-pots was his outlook and speculation.

It seems as if a rather richer flavor were given to a book by knowing the circ.u.mstance of its composition. Not only would we know the complexion of a man, whether he "be a black or a fair man," as Addison suggests, "of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor,"

but also in what posture he works and what objects meet his eye when he squares his elbows and dips his pen. We are concerned whether sunlight falls upon his papers or whether he writes in shadow. Also, if an author's desk stands at a window, we are curious whether it looks on a street, or on a garden, or whether it squints blindly against a wall. A view across distant hills surely sweetens the imagination, whereas the clatter of the city gives a shrewder twist to fancy.

And household matters are of proper concern. We would like to be informed whether an author works in the swirl of the common sitting-room. If he writes within earshot of the kitchen, we should know it. There has been debate whether a steam radiator chills a poet as against an open fire, and whether a plot keeps up its giddy pace upon a sweeping day. Histories have balked before a household interruption.

Novels have been checked by the rattle of a careless broom. A smoky chimney has choked the st.u.r.diest invention.

If a plot goes slack perhaps it is a bursted pipe. An incessant grocer's boy, unanswered on the back porch, has often foiled the wicked Earl in his attempts against the beautiful Pomona. Little did you think, my dear madam, as you read your latest novel, that on the very instant when the heroine, Mrs. Elmira Jones, deserted her babies to follow her conscience and become a movie actress--that on that very instant when she slammed the street door, the plumber (the author's plumber) came in to test the radiator. Mrs. Jones nearly took her death on the steps as she waited for the plot to deal with her. Even a Marquis, now and then, one of the older sort in wig and ruffles, has been left--when the author's ashes have needed attention--on his knees before the Lady Emily, begging her to name the happy day.

Was it not Coleridge's cow that calved while he was writing "Kubla Khan"? In burst the housemaid with the joyful news. And that man from Porlock--mentioned in his letters--who came on business? Did he not despoil the morning of its poetry? Did Wordsworth's pigs--surely he owned pigs--never get into his neighbor's garden and need quick attention? Martin Luther threw his inkpot, supposedly, at the devil. Is it not more likely that it was at Annie, who came to dust? Thackeray is said to have written largely at his club, the Garrick or the Athenaeum.

There was a general stir of feet and voices, but it was foreign and did not plague him. A tinkle of gla.s.ses in the distance, he confessed, was soothing, like a waterfall.

Steele makes no complaint against his wife Prue, but he seems to have written chiefly in taverns. In the very first paper of the _Tatler_ he gratifies our natural curiosity by naming the several coffee-houses where he intends to compose his thoughts. "Foreign and domestic news,"

he says, "you will have from Saint James's Coffee-House." Learning will proceed from the Grecian. But "all accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-House." In the month of September, 1705, he continues, a gentleman "was washing his teeth at a tavern window in Pall Mall, when a fine equipage pa.s.sed by, and in it, a young lady who looked up at him; away goes the coach--"

Away goes the beauty, with an alluring smile--rather an ambiguous smile, I'm afraid--across her silken shoulder. But for the continuation of this pleasant scandal (you may be sure that the pretty fellow was quite distracted from his teeth) one must turn up the yellow pages of the _Tatler_.

We may suppose that Steele called for pens and paper and a sandbox, and took a table in one of White's forward windows. He wished no garden view or brick wall against the window. We may even go so far as to a.s.sume that something in the way of punch, or canary, or negus _luke_, _my dear_, was handy at his elbow. His paragraphs are punctuated by the gay procession of the street. Here goes a great dandy in red heels, with lace at his beard and wrists. Here is a scarlet captain who has served with Marlborough and has taken a whole regiment of Frenchmen by the nose. Here is the Lady Belinda in her chariot, who is the pledge of all the wits and poets. That little pink ear of hers has been rhymed in a hundred sonnets--ear and tear and fear and near and dear. The King has been toasted from her slipper. The pretty creature has been sitting at ombre for most of the night, but now at four of the afternoon she takes the morning air with her lap dog. That great hat and feather will slay another dozen hearts between shop and shop. She is attended by a female dragon, but contrives by accident to show an inch or so of charming stocking at the curb. Steele, at his window, I'm afraid, forgets for the moment his darling Prue and his promise to be home.

There is something rather pleasant in knowing where these old authors, who are now almost forgotten, wrote their books. Richardson wrote "Clarissa" at Parson's Green. That ought not to interest us very much, for n.o.body reads "Clarissa" now. But we can picture the fat little printer reading his daily batch of tender letters from young ladies, begging him to reform the wicked Lovelace and turn the novel to a happy end. For it was issued in parts and so, of course, there was no opportunity for young ladies, however impatient, to thumb the back pages for the plot.

Richardson wrote "Pamela" at a house called the Grange, then in the open country just out of London. There was a garden at the back, and a grotto--one of the grottoes that had been the fashion for prosperous literary gentlemen since Pope had built himself one at Twickenham. Here, it is said, Richardson used to read his story, day by day, as it was freshly composed, to a circle of his lady admirers. Hugh Thompson has drawn the picture in delightful silhouette. The ladies listen in suspense--perhaps the wicked Master is just taking Pamela on his knee--their hands are raised in protest. La! The Monster! Their noses are pitched up to a high excitement. One old lady hangs her head and blushes at the outrage. Or does she c.o.c.k her ear to hear the better?

Richardson had a kind of rocking-horse in his study and he took his exercise so between chapters. We may imagine him galloping furiously on the hearth--rug, then, quite refreshed, after four or five dishes of tea, hiding his villain once more under Pamela's bed. Did it never occur to that young lady to lift the valance? Half a dozen times at least he has come popping out after she has loosed her stays, once even when she has got her stockings off. Perhaps this is the dangerous moment when the old lady in the silhouette hung her head and blushed. If Pamela had gone rummaging vigorously with a poker beneath her bed she could have cooled her lover.

Goldsmith wrote his books, for the most part, in lodgings. We find him starving with the beggars in Axe Lane, advancing to Green Arbour Court--sending down to the cook-shop for a tart to make his supper--living in the Temple, as his fortunes mended. Was it not at his window in the Temple that he wrote part of his "Animated Nature"? His first chapter--four pages--is called a sketch of the universe. In four pages he cleared the beginning up to Adam. Could anything be simpler or easier? The clever fellow, no doubt, could have made the universe--actually made it out of chaos--stars and moon and fishes in the sea--in less than the allotted six days and not needed a rest upon the seventh. He could have gone, instead, in plum-colored coat--"in full fig"--to Vauxhall for a frolic. Goldsmith had nothing in particular outside of his window to look at but the stone flagging, a pump and a solitary tree. Of the whole green earth this was the only living thing.

For a brief season a bird or two lodged there, and you may be sure that Goldsmith put the remnant of his crumbs upon the window cas.e.m.e.nt.

Perhaps it was here that he sent down to the cook-shop for a tart, and he and the birds made a common banquet across the gla.s.s.

Poets, depending on their circ.u.mstance, are supposed to write either in garrets or in gardens. Browning, it is true, lived at Casa Guidi, which was "yellow with sunshine from morning to evening," and here and there a prosperous Byron has a Persian carpet and mahogany desk. But, for the most part, we put our poets in garrets, as a cheap place that has the additional advantage of being nearest to the moon. From these high windows sonnets are thrown, on a windy night. Rhymes and fancies are roused by gazing on the stars. The rumble of the lower city is potent to start a metaphor. "These fringes of lamplight," it is written, "struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest...."

Here, under a sloping roof, the poet sits, blowing at his fingers.

Hogarth has drawn him--the _Distressed Poet_--cold and lean and shabby.

That famous picture might have been copied from the life of any of a hundred creatures of "The Dunciad," and, with a change of costume, it might serve our time as well. The poor fellow sits at a broken table in the dormer. About him lie his scattered sheets. His wife mends his breeches. Outside the door stands a woman with the unpaid milk-score.

There is not a penny in the place--and for food only half a loaf and something brewing in a kettle. You may remember that when Johnson was a young poet, just come to London, he lived with Mr. Cave in St. John's Gate. When there were visitors he ate his supper behind a screen because he was too shabby to show himself. I wonder what definition he gave the poet in his dictionary. If he wrote in his own experience, he put him down as a poor devil who was always hungry. But Chatterton actually died of starvation in a garret, and those other hundred poets of his time and ours got down to the bone and took to coughing. Perhaps we shall change our minds about that sonnet which we tossed lightly to the moon. The wind thrusts a cold finger through c.h.i.n.k and rag. The stars travel on such lonely journeys. The jest loses its relish. Perhaps those merry verses to the Christmas--the sleigh bells and the roasted goose--perhaps those verses turn bitter when written on an empty stomach.

But do poets ever write in gardens? Swift, who was by way of being a poet, built himself a garden-seat at Moor Park when he served Sir William Temple, but I don't know that he wrote poetry there. Rather, it was a place for reading. Pope in his prosperous days wrote at Twickenham, with the sound of his artificial waterfall in his ears, and he walked to take the air in his grotto along the Thames. But do poets really wander beneath the moon to think their verses? Do they compose "on summer eve by haunted stream"? I doubt whether Gray conceived his Elegy in an actual graveyard. I smell oil. One need not see the thing described upon the very moment. Sh.e.l.ley wrote of mountains--the awful range of Caucasus--but his eye at the time looked on sunny Italy. Ibsen wrote of the north when living in the south. When Bunyan wrote of the Delectable Mountains he was snug inside a jail. Shakespeare, doubtless, saw the giddy cliffs of Dover, the Rialto, the Scottish heath, from the vantage of a London lodging.

Where did Andrew Marvell stand or sit or walk when he wrote about gardens? Wordsworth is said to have strolled up and down a gravel path with his eyes on the ground. I wonder whether the gardener ever broke in--if he had a gardener--to complain about the drouth or how the dandelions were getting the better of him. Or perhaps the lawn-mower squeaked--if he had a lawn-mower--and threw him off. But wasn't it Wordsworth who woke up four times in one night and called to his wife for pens and paper lest an idea escape him? Surely he didn't take to the garden at that time of night in his pajamas with an inkpot. But did Wordsworth have a wife? How one forgets! Coleridge told Hazlitt that he liked to compose "walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood." But then, you recall that a calf broke into "Kubla Khan." On that particular day, at least, he was snug in his study.

No, I think that poets may like to sit in gardens and smoke their pipes and poke idly with their sticks, but when it comes actually to composing they would rather go inside. For even a little breeze scatters their papers. No poet wishes to spend his precious morning chasing a frisky sonnet across the lawn. Even a heavy epic, if lifted by a sudden squall, challenges the swiftest foot. He puts his stick on one pile and his pipe on another and he holds down loose sheets with his thumb. But it is awkward business, and it checks the mind in its loftier flight.

Nor do poets care to suck their pencils too long where someone may see them--perhaps Annie at the window rolling her pie-crust. And they can't kick off their shoes outdoors in the hot agony of composition. And also, which caps the argument, a garden is undeniably a sleepy place. The bees drone to a sleepy tune. The breeze practices a lullaby. Even the sunlight is in the common conspiracy. At the very moment when the poet is considering Little Miss m.u.f.fet and how she sat on a tuffet--doubtless in a garden, for there were spiders--even at the very moment when she sits unsuspectingly at her curds and whey, down goes the poet's head and he is fast asleep. Sleepiness is the plague of authors. You may remember that when Christian--who, doubtless, was an author in his odd moments--came to the garden and the Arbour on the Hill Difficulty, "he pulled his Roll out of his bosom and read therein to his comfort....

Thus pleasing himself awhile, he at last fell into a slumber." I have no doubt--other theories to the contrary--that "Kubla Khan" broke off suddenly because Coleridge dropped off to sleep. A cup of black coffee might have extended the poem to another stanza. Mince pie would have stretched it to a volume. Is not Shakespeare allowed his forty winks?

Has it not been written that even the worthy Homer nods?

"A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was: Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pa.s.s, For ever flushing round a summer sky."

No, if one has a bit of writing to put out of the way, it is best to stay indoors. Choose an uncomfortable, straight-backed chair. Toss the sheets into a careless litter. And if someone will pay the milk-score and keep the window mended, a garret is not a bad place in which to write.

Novelists--unless they have need of history--can write anywhere, I suppose, at home or on a journey. In the burst of their hot imagination a knee is a desk. I have no doubt that Mr. Hugh Walpole, touring in this country, contrives to write a bit even in a Pullman. The ingenious Mr.

Oppenheim surely dashes off a plot on the margin of the menu-card between meat and salad. We know that "Pickwick Papers" was written partly in hackney coaches while d.i.c.kens was jolting about the town.

An essayist, on the other hand, needs a desk and a library near at hand.

Because an essay is a kind of back-stove cookery. A novel needs a hot fire, so to speak. A dozen chapters bubble in their turn above the reddest coals, while an essay simmers over a little flame. Pieces of this and that, an odd carrot, as it were, a left potato, a pithy bone, discarded trifles, are tossed in from time to time to enrich the composition. Raw paragraphs, when they have stewed all night, at last become tender to the fork. An essay, therefore, cannot be written hurriedly on the knee. Essayists, as a rule, chew their pencils. Their desks are large and are always in disorder. There is a stack of books on the clock shelf. Others are pushed under the bed. Matches, pencils and bits of paper mark a hundred references. When an essayist goes out from his lodging he wears the kind of overcoat that holds a book in every pocket. His sagging pockets proclaim him. He is a bulging person, so stuffed, even in his dress, with the ideas of others that his own leanness is concealed. An essayist keeps a notebook, and he thumbs it for forgotten thoughts. n.o.body is safe from him, for he steals from everyone he meets.

An essayist is not a mighty traveler. He does not run to grapple with a roaring lion. He desires neither typhoon nor tempest. He is content in his harbor to listen to the storm upon the rocks, if now and then, by a lucky chance, he can shelter someone from the wreck. His hands are not red with revolt against the world. He has glanced upon the thoughts of many men; and as opposite philosophies point upon the truth, he is modest with his own and tolerant toward the opinion of others. He looks at the stars and, knowing in what a dim immensity we travel, he writes of little things beyond dispute. There are enough to weep upon the shadows, he, like a dial, marks the light. The small clatter of the city beneath his window, the cry of peddlers, children chalking their games upon the pavement, laundry dancing on the roofs and smoke in the winter's wind--these are the things he weaves into the fabric of his thoughts. Or sheep upon the hillside--if his window is so lucky--or a sunny meadow, is a profitable speculation. And so, while the novelist is struggling up a dizzy mountain, straining through the tempest to see the kingdoms of the world, behold the essayist snug at home, content with little sights. He is a kind of poet--a poet whose wings are clipped. He flaps to no great heights and sees neither the devil, the seven oceans nor the twelve apostles. He paints old thoughts in shiny varnish and, as he is able, he mends small habits here and there. And therefore, as essayists stay at home, they are precise--almost amorous--in the posture and outlook of their writing. Leigh Hunt wished a great library next his study. "But for the study itself," he writes, "give me a small snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it looking upon trees." How the precious fellow scorns the mountains and the ocean! He has no love, it seems, for typhoons and roaring lions. "I entrench myself in my books," he continues, "equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a pa.s.sage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables." And by movables he means his books. These were his screen against cold and trouble. But Leigh Hunt had been in prison for his political beliefs. He had grappled with his lion. So perhaps, after all, my argument fails.

Mr. Edmund Gosse had a different method to the same purpose. He "was so anxious to fly all outward noise" that he desired a library apart from the house. Maybe he had had some experience with Annie and her clattering broomstick. "In my sleep," he writes, "'Where dreams are mult.i.tude' I sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a library in a garden. The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man.... It sounds like having a castle in Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia."

Montaigne's study was a tower, walled all about with books. At his table in the midst he was the general focus of their wisdom. Hazlitt wrote much at an inn at Winterslow, with Salisbury Plain around the corner of his view. Now and then, let us hope, when the London coach was due, he received in his nostrils a savory smell from the kitchen stove. I taste pepper, sometimes, and sharp sauces in his writing. Stevenson, except for ill-health and a love of the South Seas (here was the novelist showing himself), would have preferred a windy perch over--looking Edinburgh.

It does seem as if a rather richer flavor were given to a book by knowing the circ.u.mstance of its composition. Consequently, readers, as they grow older, turn more and more to biography. It is chiefly not the biographies that deal with great crises and events, but rather the biographies that are concerned with small circ.u.mstance and agreeable gossip, that attract them most. The life of Gladstone, with its hard facts of British policy, is all very well; but Mr. Lucas's life of Lamb is better. Who would willingly neglect the record of a Thursday night at Inner Temple Lane? In these pages Talfourd, Procter, Hazlitt and Hunt have written their memories of these gatherings. It was to his partner at whist, as he was dealing, that Lamb once said, "If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!" Nights of wit and friendly banter! Who would not crowd his ears with gossip of that mirthful company?--George Dyer, who forgot his boots until half way home (the dear fellow grew forgetful as the smoking jug went round)--Charles Lamb feeling the stranger's b.u.mps. Let the Empire totter! Let Napoleon fall! Africa shall be parceled as it may. Here will we sit until the cups are empty.

Lately, in a bookshop at the foot of Cornhill, I fell in with an old scholar who told me that it was his practice to recommend four books, which, taken end on end, furnished the general history of English letters from the Restoration to a time within our own memory. These books were "Pepys' Diary," "Boswell's Johnson," the "Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay" and the "Diary of Crabb Robinson."

Beginning almost with the days of Cromwell here is a chain of pleasant gossip across the s.p.a.ce of more than two hundred years. Perhaps, at the first, there were old fellows still alive who could remember Shakespeare--who still sat in chimney corners and babbled through their toothless gums of Blackfriars and the Globe. And at the end we find a reference to President Lincoln and the freeing of the slaves.

Here are a hundred authors--perhaps a thousand--tucking up their cuffs, looking out from their familiar windows, scribbling their large or trivial masterpieces.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

After-Dinner Pleasantries.

There is a shop below Fourteenth Street, somewhat remote from fashion, that sells nothing but tricks for amateur and parlor use. It is a region of cobblers, tailors and small grocers. Upstairs, locksmiths and b.u.t.tonhole cutters look through dusty windows on the L, which, under some dim influence of the moon, tosses past the buildings here its human tide, up and down, night and morning. The Trick Shop flatters itself on its signboard that it carries the largest line of its peculiar trickery on the western hemisphere--hinting modestly that Baluchistan, perhaps, or Mesopotamia (where magic might be supposed to flourish) may have an equal stock. The shop does not proclaim its greatness to the casual glance. Its enormity of fraud offers no hint to the unsuspecting curb.

There must be caverns and cellars at the rear--a wealth of baffling sham un-rumored to the street, shelves sagging with agreeable deception, huge bales of sleight-of-hand and musty barrels of old magic.

But to the street the shop reveals no more than a small show-window, of a kind in which licorice-sticks and all-day-suckers might feel at home.

It is a window at which children might stop on their way from school and meditate their choice, fumbling in their pockets for their wealth.