Writing In Rooms

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Title:     Writing In Rooms
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

I remember that I was somewhat surprised when E. V. Lucas expressed surprise that I was writing in my room at the hotel where we both happened to be at the same time for several days last summer. He declared with an expression of sharp distaste that he could not write in hotel rooms. But said he had no difficulty in writing on trains. That rather got me, because I can't write at all on trains. And possibly because I was a bit peeved at the easy way in which he spoke of doing that exceedingly difficult thing, writing on trains, I asserted in reply that anybody ought to be able to write in any kind of a room. But I do know, what every writer knows, that the particular room one may be in can make a good deal of difference in the way one is able to write.

Of course, it does appear to be true that there are writers of a kind that can write anywhere in any circumstances, apparently with equal facility and their customary standard of merit, whatever that may be. I suppose war correspondents must be like that, and reporters for daily newspapers. We know that a good many war books were announced as having been written in dugouts, trenches, pill-boxes, tanks, submarines, hospitals, airplanes and so on. In the matter of some of them I should not undertake to dispute that they had even been written in asylums.

I have known, and known well, men of that type of mind which seemed to be so completely under control that at will it could be turned on or off, so to say, like the stream from a water faucet. My friend Joyce Kilmer had such a head. It has been told how some of his most moving poems--for one instance "The White Ships and the Red"--were the result of hurried newspaper assignments: how he could leave a poem in the middle of its composition, go out and lunch heartily for two hours, return and finish the writing of it; how early in his career he would walk up and down a room of his home in suburban New Jersey at two in the morning and dictate (without a pause) to his wife while carrying a shrilly crying child in his arms; how one of the best of his "Sunday stories" was dictated directly after having been taken to a hospital with three ribs fractured by being hit by his commutation train--and how much more. A young man with a brain in perfect practical working condition. But even he was not free from the mysterious tricks of creative writing. For we know that after a daily round sustained for a number of years of high productivity, when he went into the war, which inspired countless others to begin writing, he suddenly ceased to write, practically altogether.

Poets and trains being up, brings to my mind my friend the Reverend Edward F. Garesché, S. J., a source of amusement to many of his friends because of his method of composition. He travels continually. Frequently he will excuse himself from a group with whom he is talking, go to his own seat, request the porter to bring him a card table, get out his travelling typewriter, rattle off several poems, return to his party and resume conversation at about where he had left off. Some of his poems are very good; some (I'm sorry to have to say) are--not so good.

And so round we come again to the matter of writing in rooms. We know how Booth Tarkington writes: in what he calls a "work spree," in a room upstairs at home, a pile of freshly sharpened pencils ready to his hand--and that, doubtless, he wouldn't be able to write anything in an office if he were to be hanged for not doing it. (Probably never goes to an office.) Meredith Nicholson, on the other hand, declares that the only way it is possible for him to write is to go regularly at nine o'clock every morning to an office he has downtown; where he tells anyone who may ask over the telephone that he'll be there until five in the afternoon.

There are persons who like to have others around them, moving about, while they write. And people there are who find it necessary to lock themselves up, and can have no one else in the room. Though in some cases such persons would not mind the bang of a bass-drum just the other side of the door. I know a man who had an office in lower Manhattan where for a considerable period just outside his open window a steam riveter was at work. Terrific it was, the way the noise of this machine smashed the air into tiny particles like a shower of broken glass. Callers who found this man contentedly writing would hold their ears and look at him with their hair on end from amazement. A man of highly nervous organism, too; one who would be very upset if his typewriter had a pale ribbon, or be spoiled for the day if he couldn't find the right pen--worn over just to his liking at the point. But, after the first day or so, Mr. Soaping (name of the gentleman I'm telling you about) I know didn't hear the riveter at all.

Then those exist, Royal Cortissoz is one, who, dictating all they do, can have in the room while they work only their secretary. Frequently is it the case, too, that none but the amanuensis to whom they have been long accustomed will do. A stranger throws 'em completely off. A novelist I know, the writer of a very good style, who becomes very much fussed up, and is practically destroyed, when he suspects a secretary of giving critical attention to the manner of his prose. An embarrassing thing about most stenographers, I have found, is that they are greatly grieved if you say "'em" for "them," or anything like that. Or else they won't let you do such things at all, and edit everything pleasant back into perfectly good copy-book English. Some of them won't even let you split an infinitive.

Who was it, Voltaire, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, somebody, who could write only when elaborately got up in his satins and ruffles? It is what not long ago was called a bromidium to say that humorists are sad people. I'd probably be thought humorous if I should call myself any particular flier as a humorist, but this I know: wherever in my writing I may have approached being amusing that generally was written when I was considerably depressed. Forenoon is the best time for some to write; late at night for others. "Ben Hur," I seem to recall, was penned beneath a noble tree. At any rate, we frequently see pictures of novelists, particularly in England, at work in their gardens. The most familiar photographs, etchings, medallions and so on of Mark Twain and of Robert Louis Stevenson at work are those of them writing in bed. Now I can't (as some so take their breakfast) eat in bed; and I'm quite sure I should never be able comfortably to write anything there. I do not tell you how it is with me because I regard it as of deep interest to you to hear how it is with me, but merely to aid me in assembling a collection of facts concerning the freakishness of writing, and to suggest to you how very different it may be with you.

And I couldn't write under a tree. One writer, perhaps, writes more easily in the winter than in the summer, or it is the other way round. The mind of one, it may be, is stimulated by the companionship of an open fire, and that of another (for aught I know) by the companionship of an ice-box. Personally, I think that it is well in writing for the weather to be cool enough to have the windows down; and that night is the best time, for the reason that your mind (or, at least, my mind) is more gathered together within the circle of light at your desk.

Frequently, however (as you know), after sitting for hours with your mind plumb stalled, it is not until shortly before your bed time that that eccentric engine, your brain, gets buzzed up. Then, probably, you can't call the thing off if you want to. I will tell you a story:

A man there is, of some renown as a writer, who started a new book early last spring. For some considerable time he had been much discouraged about his writing. Hadn't been able to make it go. Could only lift heavily and painfully one stilted sentence after another. Used to take up now and then one or another of his early books and look into it. Marvelled how it was that he ever could have written such clever stuff. Like Swift when late in life he re-read "Gulliver," so did this man exclaim: "What a genius I had at that time!" He felt that the fire had gone out; his inner life seemed to have completely died; he was a hollow shell; could now neither receive nor impart anything worth half a jews-harp. When, one day, he heard rosy, young Hugh Walpole say of himself that of course what he had written was merely a beginning to what he felt he might do, this man looked at rosy, young Hugh Walpole with a deeply gloomy and very jealous eye.

But, lo! as I say, this man started this new book. It began as a series of articles for which he was to be paid--that was why it was begun at all. Now see! With him it was as Professor George Edward Woodberry says of Poe in his admirable "Life"--for a time his genius had "slept." With the start of the new book he awoke. It began to run right out of the ends of his fingers. Took (that book) hold of him completely. He couldn't leave it. Go to bed, have to get up and go at it again. Try to go out for a round of exercise. After a block or so from his quarters, walk slower and slower. Miserable. Tortured. Turn back. Immediately happy again. Soon be back at work. Anybody who entangled him with an invitation anywhere enraged him beyond measure.

New book finished. Everything fine. Got another commission. Easy enough job. Set to at it. Empty vessel again! In despair. He'd make all sorts of excuses to himself to leave his place early in the morning to postpone beginning work. He'd go anywhere, with anybody, to keep as long as possible from facing that task again. Couldn't give any sensible explanation of his prolonged delay to the publishers. Kept putting them off again and again, with one cripple-legged excuse after another, in the hope that he'd come round. Matter became a disgrace.

Still queerer cases than that I know. Fellow who shared an apartment with me one time. When according to the accepted law of nature his mind should have been in a very bad way, then always was he at his best. After leading a regular, wholesome life for a period his mind would become dull, stale and unprofitable. When, following a very different sort of period, he should in all reason have awakened with a splitting head, a swollen eye and a shaking hand, he would get up at about dawn one morning in rattling fine spirits, his mind as clear as a bell, and with an impassioned desire to work. Could, then, write like a streak. But doesn't William James touch upon such a matter as this somewhere?

And Stevenson, how wrong he got the thing! What is it he tells us as to the years of apprenticeship to writing:

It is only after years of such gymnastic that one can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.

Only last night it was I was talking to Jesse Lynch Williams. He said nothing of "legions of words swarming to his call," nary a mention of "dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice." Instead, he asked if I found that writing came easier as time went on. No, he said, it seemed to him that writing became harder and harder the longer one wrote. That he had torn up everything he had done for a long while.

Always the paradox! Again, there are men who write with astonishing ease, or at least with astonishing rapidity, and write well. Not so long ago I began a novel in collaboration with a writer known and admired from coast to coast, a frequent contributor to The Bookman, and one of the best. We were to do this thing turn and turn about, a chapter by me, then a chapter by him, and so on. For something like ten days I toiled over chapter one. I labored and I groaned. When it was finished I was spent. I handed him the manuscript; he stuffed it into his overcoat pocket and went whistling away. Returned within a few days and handed me a wad of copy covering, I think, three chapters. Again I toiled in the sweat of my brow. Gave him another chapter. When, after a couple of weeks or something like that, he returned and I had read what he had done I discovered that he had got people married that I hadn't known were yet born. The collaboration busted up.

My excellent friend does not like me to tell this story, because he thinks it represents me as the conscientious artist and him as the shallow scribbler. Well, that was not so; his chapters were far better than mine. Nevertheless, his name I shall not give; I'll merely say that it has very much the sound of a name borne by one of the Elizabethan dramatists.

Then there is that sort of human head-piece which can only write when it absolutely has to. I allude to the magical instrument of coercion known as a "copy date." I know people, dozens of them, who having a month and a half ahead of them in which to do an article can't possibly get started on it until it is almost too late for them to get it in on time to go to press--when a mad frenzy seizes them, their indolence vanishes like mist before the rising sun, their minds open like a flower, and all is well.

And the "galley slaves," those poor devils who for years have lived under the whip of copy day every day. How they dream of the "real" things they might do, given time. If (they think) the Lord would only subsidize them! Now and then the Devil takes one of them and does this very thing. The happy man gets some sort of a sinecure. All he has to do is to go write. And (in all probability) that's all there is to that story. He is like those things Riley tells about who "swaller theirselves." He gets nothing written.

What do you write with? And why do you write with whatever it is you write with instead of with something else? Why did Mr. Howells (in all the writing of his which I have seen) use a script-letter typewriter instead of a Roman-letter machine? Why does Mr. Le Gallienne do so much of his copy (if not all of it) by hand? Why is it that Mr. Huneker could never either dictate or learn to run a typewriter? How is it possible for those Englishmen--Swinnerton and Bennett, for instance--to put forth in a few months whole novels in the monkish hand of an illuminated missal? (I have seen the original manuscript of "The Old Wives' Tale," every page like a copper-plate engraving, and hardly a correction throughout.) And why is that it seems to me most natural to write some things with a pen, others with a pencil, most things on a typewriter, and yet again mix the use of all three implements in one composition? I cannot tell you.

Some authors, if they are going to write about a slum, have to go and live in a slum while they are writing about a slum. Other authors, if they are going to write about life in an Ohio town, go to Italy to write about life in an Ohio town. In his excellent book "On the Trail of Stevenson" Clayton Hamilton says:

Throughout his lifelong wanderings, Stevenson rarely or never attempted to describe a place so long as he was in it. For his selection of descriptive detail he relied always on the subconscious artistry of memory. He trusted his own mind to forget the non-essential; and he seized upon whatever he remembered as, by that token, the most essential features of a scene--the features, therefore, that cried out to be selected as the focal points of the picture to be suggested to the mind's eye of his readers.

The author of the thirteen volumes known as "The Chronicles of Barsetshire," a detailed picture of the English clergy of his time, had never associated with bishops, deans, and arch-deacons; he built them up (to use his own expression) out of his "moral consciousness."

But round to rooms again. Often has it been told how Anthony Trollope worked. How he accomplished so much--thirty-odd novels besides as many tales--by a method he recommended to all who wish to pursue successfully the literary career. In the drawing room of the Athenæum Club, in a railway carriage, or on the ocean, wherever he might be he seated himself for three hours as a limit, with his watch before him; and regularly as it marked the quarter hour he turned off two hundred and fifty words, undisturbed by any distraction about him. We know that the unlettered man of genius, John Bunyan, wrote his immortal allegory "The Pilgrim's Progress" in Bedford jail. And there is being advertised now a book recently written in an American prison. And much writing has been done in garrets. Then here's our old friend George Moore. Again and again he has told of exactly the places it was necessary for him to live in while he wrote certain books. I open at random "Ave"; and I find this:

I descended the hillside towards the loveliest prospect that ever greeted mortal eyes.... And I walked thinking if there were one among my friends who would restore Mount Venus sufficiently for the summer months, long enough for me to write my book.

Now, to be quite frank with you, I didn't intend to write this paper at all. You may remember that when I set out I was merely in disagreement with Mr. Lucas concerning the matter of writing in a hotel room. One thing (as it will) led to another; and the upshot has been all this pother. However, there are, I hope, no bones broken--and that's saying a good deal for any kind of a discussion in these unsettled times.

What I am coming to is (the fashionable thing to come to nowadays) the psychic. A fellow I know was much puzzled. He recently got back to 16 Gramercy Park from a trip around the world. I saw him there having some toast and a pot of tea. He told me these interesting circumstances. He would be at a superbly appointed hotel in some city. Beautiful suite of rooms. Commodious bath-room with lovely bay-window. Everything to make for perfect mental and physical well-being. Impotent to write there. Later runs into some terrible dump of a lodging house. Horrible din of low noises all about. One dirty window looks out on scene of squalor. So cold at night has to put chair on bed and sit there to be nearer gas jet. Gets on wonderfully with writing. Strikes another place, handsomest of all; writes pretty well. Comes to most fearful place yet; can't write at all.

Couldn't make head nor tail of the matter, this fellow. Discussed the thing with many people. Finally found young woman who gave convincing explanation. It's like this: Undoubtedly you are, in any room, affected by something of the spirit which lingers there of former occupants. Maybe they were persons, whatever their station in life, sympathetic to your spirit--maybe not.

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: Writing In Rooms

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