Charles Dickens was frequently compelled to walk. Pedestrians who spotted Dickens on the streets of London likely assumed he was late for an urgent appointment. Dickens moved at an impressive pace of 4.8 miles per hour. He would have zipped past leisurely strollers and brisk walkers alike. The author was propelled by a creative spark rather than the need to reach a physical destination. He embarked on epic walks while in the throes of composition. “If I couldn’t walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish,” Dickens wrote to his friend John Forster.
William Butler Yeats was frequently enveloped by gusts of creativity. The poet would barrel through city streets like a tornado. He’d wave his arms and mutter as he walked, so absorbed in musings that he lost track of the world around him. Swedish ambassador Erik Palmstierna, who was a friend of Yeats, spotted the poet on one of his outings in London. Yeats had unwittingly drawn a crowd with his wild composition. He only stopped after a gentle tap from Palmstierna.
Whether in the country or the city, Virginia Woolf enjoyed long walks. She often stumbled upon inspiration while out and about. Woolf found herself caught in a creative frenzy while strolling through London in late 1932. She recorded in her diary on November 2, “I have been in such a haze&dream&intoxication, declaiming phrases, seeing scenes, as I walk up Southampton Row.” The story that gripped her in an imaginative fog would eventually develop into a novel called The Years.
As he did not know how to drive, poet Wallace Stevens walked to work. It was roughly two and a half miles from his doorstep to the offices of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, where he served as vice president. During his commute, Stevens composed poetry. In an interview for the New York Times, he observed, “I write best when I can concentrate, and do that best while walking.” Stevens recorded his poetry on slips of paper. Once he arrived at the office, he handed the slips to his secretary to be typed.
A Mysterious Tail
EDGAR ALLAN POE
1809–1849
For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”
In winter 1848, Edgar Allan Poe was swept up in a creative frenzy. He was working on an essay called “Eureka,” which was an exploration of the “Material and Spiritual Universe.” While Poe wrote, the household pet, a large tabby called Catterina, served as an affectionate literary guardian.
At this time, Poe was living in a small cottage in the Bronx. According to a visitor, who stopped by the quaint home in the fall of 1847, Catterina was always a fixture in Poe’s work space. Sometimes Catterina crept onto his lap, but other times she chose a commanding spot to roost, right on his shoulder. There she watched Poe fill pages of prose with brown or black ink, “purring as if in complacent approval of the work proceeding under [her] supervision.”
Catterina wasn’t Poe’s only writing companion. The author had lost his young wife, Virginia, the previous year. Virginia’s mother, Maria Clemm, had lived with the couple for many years, and she remained with Poe after her daughter’s death. Clemm was a kind, maternal presence in Poe’s life. He often leaned on her for emotional support while in the throes of composition. Clemm observed, “He never liked to be alone.” She would accompany Poe into their garden lined with fruit trees. As they strolled, Poe would talk enthusiastically about “Eureka,” his evolving essay. At other times, charged by intense inspiration, Poe would spend hours at his desk. He worked tirelessly, throughout the night, until early morning. And, while he wrote, Clemm was there right by his side. She rested in a chair, letting her eyelids droop as the hours wore on. It seems that her presence was a great comfort to the writer.
Poe had lived with his two writing companions for a long time. Catterina pattered into the author’s life in 1839. Poe was living in Philadelphia with Virginia and Clemm at the time. Biographer Hervey Allen described how Catterina, “in her burgeoning kittenhood, purred on the ample plateau of Mrs. Clemm’s lap.” The kitten quickly became an honorable member of Poe’s family.
The narrator in Poe’s story “The Black Cat” is haunted by a pet cat that he violently mistreated. Unlike his abusive character, Poe was a gentle, doting pet owner. And he developed a special bond with Catterina. Poe dutifully rolled out of bed to let her in or out in the middle of the night. When the author was away, Catterina missed him so much that she refused to eat.
In April 1844, Poe and Virginia had moved to New York. Clemm stayed behind with the cat, planning to move up later, once they had found a good place for all of them to live. After he arrived in the big city, Poe sent a letter back to his mother-in-law, writing, “Sissy [Virginia] had a hearty cry last night because you and Catterina weren’t here.” He also described the delicious feasts that awaited them day and night at their temporary boardinghouse. He added, “I wish Kate [the cat] could see it—she would faint.” Unfortunately, with Poe’s modest income, the entire family couldn’t live in the fine boardinghouse. They found a cheaper option in the city and were reunited later that year. But by the winter, Virginia’s health had declined and they decided to move to the Bronx.
Their small wooden home in the Bronx was surrounded by farms, and Poe had hoped that the fresh country air would help Virginia recover from tuberculosis. But he was a struggling author, with little money, and wasn’t able to offer any luxuries for the ailing woman. Virginia slept on a simple straw bed, covered in an old overcoat that belonged to Poe. Catterina offered what help she could, in the form of body heat, by curling up on Virginia’s chest. Mary Gove Nichols wrote about a visit to the home during this time: “The coat and the cat were the sufferer’s only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet.” After Virginia died in August 1847, Poe stayed in the Bronx with Clemm and their cat. Though he grieved deeply, with Catterina on his shoulder and Clemm by his side, Poe still managed to write.
In the cottage, Poe worked beneath the sloping roof of his attic study or in the cozy living room. His handwriting was unusually neat. In fact, recipients who reviewed Poe’s manuscripts often commented on the meticulous script. George Graham published many of Poe’s pieces in his eponymous magazine. He described Poe as “wandering from publisher to publisher, with his fine, print-like manuscript, scrupulously clean and neatly rolled.” Poe’s final drafts were composed on separate pieces of paper which he then stuck together with sealing wax. With the end of one sheet attached to the beginning of the next one, the papers formed one long piece. The entire text was then wound into a tight scroll. When Poe recited his work, he’d produce one of the scrolls. He was always impeccably dressed, and most often elected to wear a completely black suit. Standing before his audience, in his signature attire, he would commence. And as the story or poem progressed, he’d let the scroll fall to the ground.
Scrolling
Like Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac was partial to scrolls. However, his process differed from Poe’s post-writing assembly (see page 42). In 1951, Kerouac put On the Road down on paper in one great gust. He had been planning the book for some time and had plenty of notes from previous years in his journals.
He decided that an extremely long strip of paper would suit his project perfectly. So he taped pages together and, over the course of three weeks, typed his novel. The scroll allowed Kerouac to maintain a rapid clip without having to pause and reload his typewriter at the end of each page. When he was done, Kerouac triumphantly brought the lengthy tome to his editor, Robert Giroux at Harcourt, Brace. Giroux recalled, “[Kerouac] took one end of the roll and he flung it right across my office, right across the desk and stuff.” To his dismay, Giroux focused on the unusual packaging. He asked, “But Jack, how can you make corrections on a manuscript like that?” Giroux recalled saying, “Jack, you know you have to cut this up. It has to be edited.” Kerouac left the office in a rage. It took several years for Kerouac’s agent, Sterling Lord, to finally find a home for the book, at the Viking Press.
The Traveling Desk
CHARLE
S DICKENS
1812–1870
Before I tasted bit or drop yesterday, I set out my writing-table with extreme taste and neatness, and improved the disposition of the furniture generally.
—Charles Dickens, in a letter to John Forster after arriving at a vacation spot in Broadstairs, Kent
In June 1846, a box addressed to Charles Dickens arrived in Lausanne, Switzerland. It contained an eclectic assortment of statuettes: two bronze, rotund toads, frozen at the end of a climactic sword fight; an eccentric dog salesman, surrounded by his pups, also in bronze; and a rabbit balanced on a leaf. In addition to the mini menagerie, there was a paper knife, a green vase, a desk calendar, blue ink, and writing quills. Dickens needed each one of these items, all in the right place, before he could set to work on his novel Dombey and Son.
Dickens was deeply attached to the objects that sat on his writing desk. His son described the ornaments as something “for his eyes to rest on in the intervals of actual writing.” He found creative comfort in the familiar view. As soon as the precious package arrived, Dickens arranged the pieces on his desk. And, with the stage set, he was finally able to pen a tale about the Dombey family.
Wherever he stayed, whether home or away, Dickens adjusted the surroundings to fit his needs. He required that his study contain the same design in each locale, and his preferences went beyond the workroom. When he arrived in a new space, he would arrange everything, from furniture to luggage, before drifting off to sleep. Author Eliza Lynn Linton recalled that Dickens was even particular about the direction his bed faced: north to south. She recalled, “He backed up his objections by arguments about the earth currents and positive or negative electricity. It may have been a mere fantasy, but it was real enough to him.”
Dickens insisted on order in his home, and it must have been difficult to maintain with ten children. On rare occasions he allowed disruptions in this private space (see page 78). Dickens’s study was always immaculate, but his need for cleanliness permeated the entire home. The children’s rooms were inspected by Dickens on a daily basis.
He kept a steady routine, writing from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day, during which time he expected complete quiet. He preferred to use blue ink, though his choice was not based on color preference. Rather, a special blue ink dried much faster than other colors, which meant he could skip the bothersome task of blotting his work. In the afternoons, Dickens went for a walk, which was never a stroll. His pace was remarkably fast (see page 37).
As much as Dickens preferred to travel with his study, there were times when he simply needed to get away. When The Pickwick Papers first appeared, Dickens was out of London. So he decided that, for luck, he would be out of town for other first publication dates. If a friend dropped by his house to congratulate him on a new work that had just come out, it was likely Dickens was far from the city, hoping for good fortune to hit once again.
Quilled Muses
Charles Dickens was wild about birds. He owned a talking raven named Grip. Dickens was very fond of the mischievous bird, which often exclaimed “Halloa, old girl” and “I am a devil.” The pet served as the model for a loquacious raven of the same name in Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge. Edgar Allan Poe believed that Dickens could have made better use of the talking bird. When Poe reviewed Barnaby Rudge, he argued, “[Grip’s] croaking might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” This criticism has led many scholars to believe that Grip was the inspiration for Poe’s best-known poem, “The Raven.”
Flannery O’Connor was also inspired by birds, though of a completely different feather. As a child she had a chicken that could walk backward, a talent that landed them in a cinema newsreel clip. O’Connor owned a variety of birds: chickens, pheasants, ducks, turkeys, and quail, to name a few. But peacocks were her true passion. In her mid-twenties O’Connor mail-ordered six peacocks, a peahen, and four peachicks, and they captivated her immediately. Eventually an ostentation of forty peafowl strutted around her farm, Andalusia. The striking creatures also popped up in her fiction and were the focus of an essay, “The King of Birds.”
In his autobiography, William Butler Yeats wrote about George Moore’s extreme affection for a blackbird. Every morning the bird would perch in the garden across the street from the Dublin-based author’s apartment and serenade him. Moore kept his windows open so that he could enjoy the blackbird’s songs while he wrote. At some point, Moore began to worry about the safety of his winged friend. Moore’s neighbor owned a cat, for whom the blackbird would make a tasty meal. The concerned author at first threw stones at the cat, but then he went one step further and built a trap for the troublesome feline. Moore’s neighbor reported his eccentric acts against the cat to the local Prevention of Cruelty to Animals organization. And, Moore reported to Yeats, rather than trapping the cat, he accidentally trapped the bird. Though Yeats believed most of Moore’s story, of the trap part, he wrote, “The rest of the tale fills me with doubt.”
Birds aren’t necessarily friendly. An aggressive seagull can terrify its human target. Daphne du Maurier was walking to a farm in Cornwall, and along the way, she saw a farmer plowing a field. A flock of hungry seagulls assembled above the man, swooping around him while he worked. The scene inspired du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” (the film version of the story, set in California rather than Cornwall, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock).
Paper Topography
EDITH WHARTON
1862–1937
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer’s own.
—Edith Wharton, from The Writing of Fiction
Edith Wharton’s dream home was a mansion seated on top of a hill in Lenox, Massachusetts. She had overseen the creation of the estate from conception to final touches. From 1903 to 1911, Wharton lived in this grand building, which she considered her “first real home.” Wharton often invited guests to visit, including elite literary friends, like author Henry James. A guest at her home would not have needed to rush in the morning. There were views to admire from the mansion, aptly named the Mount. The impressive home presided over an artfully designed garden, with colorful flower beds and impeccably manicured hedges and lawns. Laurel Lake glittered in the east and the Berkshire hills faded into the distance. Breakfast would have been delivered to the visitor’s room. And if he or she had any questions or concerns, a maid could be summoned with the simple press of a button. James described the Mount as a place where “comfort prevails.” Meanwhile, during these early hours, the hostess was tucked away in the most private room on the second floor—and she was undoubtedly still in bed.
Wharton spent her mornings beneath a rose-colored bedcover, but she wasn’t squandering her time with extra sleep: She was writing. Wharton’s friend Gaillard Lapsley was among the select few who were admitted into the author’s room during these precious early hours. He recalled Wharton sitting up in her silk nightgown and matching cap, with “the dog of the moment under her left elbow and the bed strewn with correspondence, newspapers and books.” Wharton used a writing board, which rested against her knees. She kept an inkpot by her side, even though, in its position, it was liable to fall at any moment. There she sat, in the comfort of her bed, composing stories about the high society milieu to which she belonged.
Wharton put a great deal of effort into the floor plan of the Mount. Interior design had been her passion since childhood, and so naturally she took great interest in the development of her house. In fact, before she turned to fiction, Wharton cowrote The Decoration of Houses with Ogden Codman Jr. Wharton selected the most isolated, quiet spot on the second floor for her bedroom. Her husband, Teddy, slept in an adjoining room and very rarely spent the night with his wife. Apparently sharing the bed triggered Wharton’s asthma. The marriage was also troubled from the outset. And when Teddy became mentally ill, it dissolved completely. Wharton’s bed at the
Mount was not a site for companionship. It was a place where she could work peacefully and comfortably alone.
In The Writing of Fiction, Wharton observed, “The impression produced by a landscape, a street or a house should always, to the novelist, be an event in the history of the soul.” It seems fitting then that, in a reflexive act, Wharton molded her fictional landscapes into paper topographies. She wrote in blue ink on pale blue stationery, thoroughly revising her prose until it was difficult to read. At that point, she’d rewrite sections on strips of paper and glue them over the illegible parts. Or she would cut up the original page and arrange the slips on another piece. The rise and fall of strips on each page marked the evolution of her prose.
When Wharton completed a page, she let it drop to the ground. Later in the day, a maid would whisk into the room to pick up the scattered paper. Then Anna Bahlmann, Wharton’s secretary, would type the handwritten prose. However, even the typed manuscript was subject to change. Wharton polished her prose, round after round, until she felt it was ready to send to a publisher.
Bahlmann did not begin working with Wharton as a secretary. She had originally served as twelve-year-old Wharton’s governess in New York City. The young Wharton was an enthusiastic student, who gravitated to all sorts of literature. As a child, Wharton had already begun to pen her own stories. She composed her work on blank brown pieces of wrapping paper that had been salvaged by the household maids.
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