labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the tortoise which always
catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses more time in
glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise
to make half his journey.
I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and
painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They
have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lessons as they
entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they
have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at
ease. I have done double their work--though burdened with another
profession,--and have done it almost without an effort. I have not
once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger
of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to "copy."
The needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost always
been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates
and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly
demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.
There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to
such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his
imagination should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves
him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been
able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the
shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for
the divine moment of melting. If the man whose business it is to
write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or
smoked too many cigars,--as men who write sometimes will do,--then
his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the
condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have
sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy
which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence.--Mens
sana in corpore sano. The author wants that as does every other
workman,--that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the
surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on
my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than
the inspiration.
It will be said, perhaps, that a man whose work has risen to no
higher pitch than mine has attained, has no right to speak of the
strains and impulses to which real genius is exposed. I am ready
to admit the great variations in brain power which are exhibited by
the products of different men, and am not disposed to rank my own
very high; but my own experience tells me that a man can always do
the work for which his brain is fitted if he will give himself the
habit of regarding his work as a normal condition of his life. I
therefore venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship
as the business of their lives, even when they propose that that
authorship be of the highest class known, to avoid enthusiastic
rushes with their pens, and to seat themselves at their desks day
by day as though they were lawyers' clerks;--and so let them sit
until the allotted task shall be accomplished.
While I was in Egypt, I finished Doctor Thorne, and on the following
day began The Bertrams. I was moved now by a determination to excel,
if not in quality, at any rate in quantity. An ignoble ambition
for an author, my readers will no doubt say. But not, I think,
altogether ignoble, if an author can bring himself to look at his
work as does any other workman. This had become my task, this
was the furrow in which my plough was set, this was the thing the
doing of which had fallen into my hands, and I was minded to work
at it with a will. It is not on my conscience that I have ever
scamped my work. My novels, whether good or bad, have been as good
as I could make them. Had I taken three months of idleness between
each they would have been no better. Feeling convinced of that, I
finished Doctor Thorne on one day, and began The Bertrams on the
next.
I had then been nearly two months in Egypt, and had at last
succeeded in settling the terms of a postal treaty. Nearly twenty
years have passed since that time, and other years may yet run on
before these pages are printed. I trust I may commit no official
sin by describing here the nature of the difficulty which met me.
I found, on my arrival, that I was to communicate with an officer
of the Pasha, who was then called Nubar Bey. I presume him to have
been the gentleman who has lately dealt with our Government as to
the Suez Canal shares, and who is now well known to the political
world as Nubar Pasha. I found him a most courteous gentlemen, an
Armenian. I never went to his office, nor do I know that he had an
office. Every other day he would come to me at my hotel, and bring
with him servants, and pipes, and coffee. I enjoyed his coming
greatly; but there was one point on which we could not agree. As
to money and other details, it seemed as though he could hardly
accede fast enough to the wishes of the Postmaster-General; but
on one point he was firmly opposed to me. I was desirous that the
mails should be carried through Egypt in twenty-four hours, and he
thought that forty-eight hours should be allowed. I was obstinate,
and he was obstinate; and for a long time we could come to
no agreement. At last his oriental tranquillity seemed to desert
him, and he took upon himself to assure me, with almost more than
British energy, that, if I insisted on the quick transit, a terrible
responsibility would rest on my head. I made this mistake, he
said,--that I supposed that a rate of travelling which would be
easy and secure in England could be attained with safety in Egypt.
"The Pasha, his master, would," he said, "no doubt accede to
any terms demanded by the British Post Office, so great was his
reverence for everything British. In that case he, Nubar, would at
once resign his position, and retire into obscurity. He would be
ruined; but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly
follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head." I smoked my
pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee, with oriental quiescence
but British firmness. Every now and again, through three or four
visits, I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit
could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way,--and
astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no
longer any question of bloodshed or of resignation of office, and
he assured me, with energetic complaisance, that it should be his
care to see that the time was punctually kept. It was punctually
kept, and, I believe, is so still. I must confess, however, that my
persistency was not the result of any courage specially personal to
myself. While the matter was being debated, it had been whispered
to me that the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company had
conceived that forty-eight hours would suit the purposes of their
traffic better than twenty-four, and that, as they were the great
paymasters on the railway, the Minister of the Egyptian State,
who managed the railway, might probably wish to accommodate them.
I often wondered who originated that frightful picture of blood
and desolation. That it came from an English heart and an English
hand I was always sure.