DRUDGERY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3309, 9 November 1883, Page 3

DRUDGERY.

The daily life of a peculiar novelist, but one who writes altogether too much for his own good, is thus described in an exchange “ James Payn, the novelist, lives in one of the most attractive houses in Maida Vale, London, and spends most of his time there, except, of course, when at his office. He says that in his boyhood he never took part in any games of sport, and to this day doesn’t know anything about cricket, tennis, , rowing, yachting, horseriding, or anything of the sort, He dosen’t take any recreation now; not even walking or going to the theatre. Leaving his house in 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 Reform Clnb and takes lunch with his old friend William Black. Then he goes back to his office and reads manuscript and proofs until 4 o’clock, when he returns to the Club and plays whist for an hour and a half. Then he 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 he repeats day after day with no variation or shadow of turning. He smokes forty or fifty pipes of tobacco a day;in fact he smokes constantly. He writes an execrable hand, and has his daughter copy all his manuscript with a type-writer to send to the printer.