THE BAILIFF AT THE DOOR

Evening Star, Issue 20292, 28 September 1929, Page 2

THE BAILIFF AT THE DOOR

A Home weekly paper recently carried a significant story about Rossini, the famous musician. He used to leave the writing of the “overture” to the day or the evening on which the opera was to be produced. On the morning of that day his manager would lay hold on him, lock him up in a room with the necessary writing materials, and as much food as would be needful. “ Men hired for the purpose waited outside on the street beneath the window. Through it the angry, but now inspired, Rossini flung out the leaves hot from' his boiling brain, and only when the last bar had been written and the page flung out did his manager unlock the door.” The writer goes on to refer to other historic incidents in which, when necessity stood at the door, decisions were come to quickly. There was—e.g., the ‘Trial of the Seven Bishops,’ as told by Macaulay. The jury was locked in, carefully guarded, not even food or a candle to light a pipe was permitted to them. At first nine were for acquittal. By and by two of the minority gave way; the third was obstinate, said his conscience was not satisfied. Then said one of the majority, “the largest of the twelve: ‘ Before I find such a petition as this, here I will stay till I am no bigger than a tobacco pipe.’ ” It was 6in the morning before agreement was reached and the verdict of not guilty agreed to. A somewhat similar ordeal was gone through before several grave conclusions were reached in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, It is on record also that Benjamin Jowett gave a young man twenty-four hours to find himself able to accept the historical Christian faith. It was ample. It was not that Jowett thought lightly of unbelief, or that he lacked respect for the workings of the soul. It was simply that he knew his man. And to take one more instance, wo have Oliver Goldsmith. “I used to wonder,” says the authority to whom we are referring, “ how Oliver Goldsmith could write ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ with the bailiffs at the door. Ido not wonder any longer. It is the only way in which work of the highest quality is ever produced.”

j All this suggests the question ; Do j people, especially writing people, do their best work, not when they will, but when they must; not when they are free'to choose their own time, but when necessity is laid upon them? It is cer tainly true of the poet. His best work is not that which he produces at leisure. It is that which he produces under the compulsion of some inward moving or inspiration. It is easy to tell in any volume of poems the difference between those produced at so many verses a day and those produced under the inward divine urge. Blake said of his immortal * Jerusalem ’ that ‘‘he wrote it from immediate dictation . - . without premeditation, and even against my will.” So Milton records his “Celestial patroness” visited him nightly, unimplored, And dictates to me, slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse. You cannot shut the poet up and demand from him and expect to receive anything that bears the stamp of the genuine article, for, as Mathhcw Arnold says, Wo cannot kindle where wo null The fire that in the heart resides. In the matter of prose-writing if may be different. Though even hero the best is not produced to order. George Eliot says “that in all her best writings there was a ‘ not-herself 1 which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely an instrument through which this spirit, as it were, were acting.” But Arnold is, in the main, correct in saying that this “spirit” cannot be ordered up by us when we will. Nevertheless, it is true that when necessity is laid upon writers, when the bailiff is at ' the door and the thing must be done, it does often happen that they then do their best work. Journalists who have to turn out so much copy in a limited time frequently find that much of what they thus produce is better than what they write at their leisure. A minister known to the present writer used to tell that lie was in the habit of writing his evening sermon between the services on Sunday afternoon. He said ho could write it with far greater speed and more effectiveness than at any other time of the week. Of course, he knew what his subject was to bo and had his notes on hand. He said'he rarely was able to compose in cold blood, so to speak, a speech or a sermon" or a lecture that was to be delivered a week hence. He had to feel rhat he was put in a corner, that the bailiff was at the door, and that the thing had to bo done in a certain time without fail. It was in such circumstances that he understood something of what Sir Walter Scott said about writing good verse: “It seems to depend on something different from the will of the author. I sometimes think that my fingers set up of themselves, independent of the head/’ But the preacher to whom we are referring added that he wondered sometimes whether hfs facility in writing on these occasions was due to the stirring of the mind and emotions by the worship ,on Sunday morning, or whether it was a subtle device of Satan to seduce him from quiet, steady work, and then some day make a consummate ass of him. The r same temptation comes after quite unsuspected success in an impromptu speech or a lecture prepared hurriedly. One is tempted to neglect study and trust to the moving spirit on the spur of the moment/ That way lies sooner or later inevitable disaster. * * * Two things emerge for emphasis out of all this. The first is that we are all living much below our possibilities. We have unknown latent powers. We discover that in the body. We do things in a spurt, when unexpected pressure is put upon us that we did not believe ourselves capable of

doing. Tho same is true in the mental and moral sphere. Sudden emergencies open up • possibilities within our nature that wo did not dream were there. Yet there is no such thing anywhere aa innate or inherent powers. A tree or a flower does not grow by its own native energy. Both must have soil, sunshine, showers, etc. So no animal can breathe or walk in a vacuum. This is still more true of man. His ability is never something absolutely inherent in himself. Where does it come from ? Tho physicist says it depends on the food we eat and the air wo breathe — i.e., on purely physical conditions. Tho metaphysical or spiritual theory is that, in the last resort, it depends on forces from tho outside. These are illimitable. The way to power, therefore, in mind or soul is tho way that we have achieved power in material things. We have found, or are daily discovering, forces in Nature ready to serve us if we will obey their laws. So it is in tho mental and spiritual sphere. Both reason and revelation affirm this, and history and experience bear witness to its truth. Shelley said that “ poetry redeems from decay the visitings of the divinity in man.” We have seen men and women of every creed and no creed yet agree that under certain circumstances they are conscious of a power not themselves acting upon them and enabling them to do their best arid greatest work. Is there any way by which we could tap at will the springs of energy of these forces outside us? In reply to a questioner as to how he composed music, Sir Edward Elgar said: “Ido it quite simply. I merely help myself. I can hear music in the air through the day. I can always hear tho floating melodies, and when I sit down and compose I merely take aa much as 1 require.” Probably the surest and most beneficent of the powers that accomplish this is religion. It professes to enable its believers to open un contact with forces that redeem and regenerate. And it proves its claim by presenting redeemed and regenerated lives. Hero we come within sight of a rather startling truth —viz., that duty is not measured by one's own ability. It is measured by one’s own ability plus that which it can borrow and receive from others. It would be both a futile and a cruel thing for an athlete to go into the hospital and ask the patients watch him as he performs prodigies of lifting and leaping and walking, and then to bid them Jump up and do what he has done. That would be mockery of the worst sort. But suppose that bo had tho power to impart to them his own life and energy, what would be their responsibility then? It would be the responsibility of guilt, it would be the responsibility of either stupid or obstinate men and women who declined the power that would raise them up and set them free. And it is something like that which attaches to the refusal of men and women to make use of tho resources which Nature in its fullest interpretation brings to their aid. Professor Soddy says that future ages will regard ours as semisavage because of our stupidity in’not Utilising to the full the stupendous energies of the radio-active elements that have been begging us day and night for generations to let them serve us. And perhaps a greater evidence of this semi-savage state will bo found in our neglect to; tap the immense spiritual resources that were open to everyone. It will all give deepened emphasis to Rusk hits memorable words: “ I do not wonder at what men suffer; I wonder at what they lose.”