THE DAILY LIFE OF A NOVELIST.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3883, 29 December 1883, Page 4

THE DAILY LIFE OF A NOVELIST.

The daily life of a popular novelist, but one who writes altogether too much for his own good, is thus described in nn exchange : James Payn, the novelist, lives in one of the most attractive houses in Maida A'Vile, London, and spends most of his time there, except, of coui\sc, when at his office. He says that in his boyhood he never took part iix any games of Bport, and to this cl:ijdoesn't know anything about cricket, tennis, rowing, yachting, horse riding, or anything of tho sort. Ho doesn't take iiny rcoraitiou now ; not even walking or going to the theatre. Leaving his house iti the morning he goes to the nearest cabstand— about twenty steps from his door—and rides to his office. From 10 to 1 o'clock he writes fiction, and then walks—one block— to the licform Club, and takes lunch with his old friend William Black. Then lie goes back to his office and reads manuscript and proofs until A o'clock, when he returns to the Club and plays whist for an hour and a half. Then ho rides home, dines, dozes in his chair, goes to bed and sleeps ten hours, gets up and takes breakfast and starts off again on the same routine, which ho repeats" day after day with no variation or shadow of turning. Ho smokes forty or fifty pipes of tobacco a day, in fact he smokes constantly. He writes an execrable hand, and lias his daughter to copy all his manuscript with a type-writer to send to the printer.