Newport daily independent., 1903-04-11


 vine, but I know your work very we'll" And he was particularly mad with an old lady who had said: Tt 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 ori- gin and process of imaginative thought? However, I've got the the- ory of it all right now"
 He gave me the theory. It was rath- CT 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 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 short story that he had promised to deliver that week.
 Afterwards I 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. l sit and gape 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 off, can't get there. A week ago, if you'd given me a bit of paper, could have sworn to start stOry-mind a 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."
 Lazy? I've never worked so hard in my life. All I've done has been few letters of excuses to editors. The rest won't come-do what l will. Why, I can't even go on with work that I've begun. I've got a long novel under way, half-finished in fact. 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 advised him to give up work and go aysay for bit, and in a friendly way he abused me for my pains. Did 1 know what he'd got to do in the course of fortnight? Did I want him to offend every editor and publisher that he had anything to do with? Did l suppose he was a 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 woTld-inetfectual 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 a fortnights hoh- day.
 l don't know where he went at first. He left London that night. I got wild and incoherent letter from him, with the Ramsgate post mark, but he said that he was leaving immediately. The next letter 1 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 tho loss of creative mental potency was a 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- 1 sells.
 I found him leaving his hotel for i the place in the Rue d'Anspach where ne generally dined, He was smiling and in the best of spirits. It was while he was buying the revolver, and not i thinking in the least about writing, | lIdl tue iNCd NdAAiN NO iAllls AlN NNh V ] 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 magination-from which hO had been cut off.
 turn to this period, for the sake
 
 raphy of Deyine perpetrated by the Rev. William Dodsley Sales, and l find this:
 "Abuot this time an il-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. The naples blush. and the wild flower,