St. Tammany farmer., 1903-05-09

vine. but 1 know your work very Well -
And he was particularly mad with an
old lady who had said: "It is marvel
to me how you come to think of these
things"
"Why worry?" I asked.
Because her blandly idiotic question
has stuck in my head. How does one
think of stories? What are the ORR
gin and process of imaginative
thought? However, I've got the the
ory of it all right now
He gave me the theory. Itwas rath-
er dull and did not convince me in the
least; it had not quite convinced him
either. However, as it was rather dull,
I got him to talk about other things.
He came in again at II next MORN
ing. He said that dining-out was a
mistake, and he found he could not
work properly He took me away with
him to Richmond, returning in the aft
ernoon. as he wanted to begin on a
short story that he had promised to
deliver that week.
Afterwards 1 did not see him for
ten days. Then one night he came
round, and seemed rather sulky and
depressed. I asked him what was the
matter, and he began to curse "that
old woman
"What old woman?"
"That brute who asked me how
came to think of those things. She's
killed it stone dead. I sit and cape and
wonder how one comes to think of
things; but I can't think of them any
more myself. I'm outside, I'm cut of,
I can't get there. A week ago, if you d
given me bit of paper, 1 could have
sworn to start story-mind, story
that would do-inside of ten minutes.
How much do you think I've done these
last ten days? Not single thing"
Lazy beggar."
in my life. All I've done has been a
few letters of excuses to editors. The
rest won't come--do what I will. Why,
l can't even go on with work that I've
begun. I've got a long novel under
way, half-fnished in fact. I made
the people in it myself, and now don t
even know how the fools would talk. "
Divine was, as his critics have
noticed, particularly good in the writ
ing of dialogue. He got the character
istic words always. On this occasion
I advised him to give up work and go
away for bit, and in a friendly way
he abused me for my pains. Did l
know what he'd got to do in the course
of a fortnight? Did I want him to
offend every editor and publisher that
he had anything to do with? Did I
suppose he was millionaire?
So he went away with new theory.
made on the spot and quite rotten.
of the way in which he had previously
managed to think of things. And the
ten days became a month before l
saw him again; had been called away
from London in the interval.
He seemed pretty bad. He looked
worried and dead tired. He had put
in four weeks of the most exhausting
work in the world-ineffectual work.
He had got nothing done. He talked
very little, and said that he supposed
he was finished, but that it was funny
it should have come suddenly. l got
him to see doctor, and the doctor
did his best to scare him, and then
packed him off for fortnight's holi-
day.
1 don't know where he went at first.
He left London that night. I got a
wild and incoherent letter from him,
with the Ramsgate post mark, but he
said that he was leaving Immediately.
The next letter got, at the end Of
fortnight, was on the note paper of
one of the hotels in Brussels that
overlook the park. He said that the
loss, Of creative mental potency was
humiliation that he was not pre-
pared to endure any longer. And he
said many other things which need not
be repeated, and sent me off to Brus-
sells.
I found him leaving his hotel for
the place in the Rue d'Anspach where
ne generally dined. He was smiling
dlO III lAC UCSb VI oH114ISs wa 10 " AA1C
he was buying the revolver, and not
thinking in the least about writing.
that the idea came to him. He went
back to the hotel and wrote it down
at once. The power had come back
as strangely as it had left him. Or.
as he put it, he was once more en rap
port with the real world-the world
Of the imagination-from which he
had been cut off.
I turn to this period, for the sake
of amusement, in the so-called biog-
raphy of Devine perpetrated by the
Rev. William Dodsley Sales, and find
this:
"Abuot this time an ill-advised visit
to Brussels, in the company of one Of
his friends, upset Devine's health and
threw him much behindhand with his
work. BLACK and White, London.