AUTHORS’ STUDIES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 14 November 1925, Page 13

AUTHORS’ STUDIES.

JT is interesting, as a rough index to their characters, to discover in what sort of surroundings our favourite authors have preferred to work.. A few have liked more or less lively company. Jane Austen was- accustomed! to write in the warmth of her family circle. Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe produced- “Uncle Tom’s-Cabin’’ in a tiny room full of noisy children. Most authors preferred seclusion and worked in studies which have always been typical of the minds of their owners. Dr Johnson’s room was most untidy. Boswell lias told of a visit: “T found* a number of good books, but

TYPICAL OF THE MIND

very dusty and in great confusion. The floor was strewed with manuscript leaves, in Johnson’s own, handwiiting I observed an apparatus for chemical experiments, of which Johnson was very fond. ’ ’ Leigh Hunt worked amid a similar disorder. 'Carlyle lias described his house. It has two rooms, says T.P.’s and Cassell’s. Weekly. In one were, a dusty table, a ragged carpet, and on the floor “books, paper, egg-shells, scis. sors; and. last night, when I was there, the torn heart of a half-quartern loaf.” This was the living room where Hunt did some writing.”. \ The other apartment, or study

proper, was rather better. It was slightly furnished, having “only two chairs. a book-ease and a. writing table.” Here the essayist, did most of his work. Not all authors, however, are untidy. Some have had a passion for neatness. In the studies of Longfellow, Douglas Jerrold and: Lord Morley orderliness was the dominant note. Xot a sheet of paper was out of place. Occasionally a writer insists on luxury as the- mother of invention. Such a one. was Buhver Lytton, whose library was a splendid room, gorgeously furnished, and perfumed until Oriental incense.. The' novelist himself often worked dressed in a coloured: fez and Eastern robe. These may be called the .“studyworkers.” Others, however, have at times found their rooms uncongenial, a lid have sought inspiration in the open air. These, it may be noted, were chiefly poets:

Some have been attracted by towns and crowds. A favourite writing place of Victor Hugo was the. top of a Paris omnibus. .). S. Mill constructed the framework of liis “Logic” and Byron composed part of his “Corsair” while walking the streets of London. But the quiet country places have given ideas more bountiful. Keats thought out the “Ode to a Xightingale” while strolling along the lanes of Hampstead. Browning composed part of “Paracelsus” in a lonely Avood near Dulwich. Perhaps of all our poets, Burns and Wordsworth owed most to the open air. Concerning the latter a story is told of how a visitor, being sliOAvn over his house. Avas informed: “This is Mr WordsAvorth’s library, but his study- is out' of doors.”; Surely typical of him who found' ' In nature and the language of the sense . The anchor of my purest thoughts.