The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-12-14

q long biography of the Trollope
family has just appeared on the
market. We have never read
one of his books, but for years
in libraries we have seen them
on the shelves-whole rows Of
them, big, thick, and fat. Trol.
lope's mother was a prolific
writer too, though she did not
begin till the age of fifty. Be-
tween the two of them, they wrote
about two hundred books.
The interesting thing about
Trollope's life is that, almost
more than any other novelist
who produced what is consider
ed first-rank work, he had no
sentimental feeling for art" as
such, and looked on his work
az a cold blooded way of max
ing money, and only that. He
considered himself a mechanical
writing machine. And he turned
this machine on every morning,
let it run for exactly four hours,
and then got up to live the life
of a fashionable English gentle
man, which interested him more
than writing. He had horses and
hounds and a taste for society.
He wrote very rapidly, and
when he had enough for a good
fat book, he chopped off his
story, bundled up his manuscript,
and sent it to the printer. Money
was his confessed object, and
only that. And vet his books are
among the finest and most ar
tistic produced in that period.
Year in and year out, he wrote
for exactly four hours a day 3.
no matter what the weather, the
place, the state of his health.
There is a story about Trollope
making a crossing of the English
channel, so sea-sick he could
not stand on his feet, yet fore
ing himself to the writing desk
and grinding away on his money
making books.
A scribbler like the writer of
tbs column can only regard
a man like that with awe.
Sometimes. in writing even
the simplest. most common
place stories. we have found
ourselves completely out of
mood for writing. completely
entagonisfic even TO the mini
mum effort OF thought that
such q story requires. 1t is the
mood of the business man who
gels tired of II all suddenly
of an afternoon and goes out
to play . game of golf. But
Trollope sat down and ground
out first rate and lasting stor-
les in eve more unfavorable
moments.
In a way, that is the secret of
success in writing and in any
other MISUNDERSTANDING away,
persistence, hard work, the mas
terry of will over circumstances.
One of the things that defeats
so many people, whatever their
fields, whether desk work. or
brain work, writing. laboring,
farming. is the difficulty of maxi
ing a beginning. You have to
make a certain number of be-
ginnings, of course, or starve.
But that added effort which
marks the difference between
subsistence living and real sue
cess is very often dependent
on whether a man learns to
plunge into work, no matter what
his feelings. and drive away at
il until the kinks and stiffness
of his thinking or his back u
Giles are worked out. leaving him
in supple working trim.
II might surprise the writer
who does hard physical work
how hard il is for a desk man
to tackle his typewriter or his
business papers some days. The
beginning of any task is always
the most difficult part of 1t. The
moments before danger, action.
conflict. are often more fright
ening than the thing itself. Of
ten il is harder to think about
doing a thing than to do il. And
again and again find that the
performance of some task that
we hated TO begin, is actually
interesting and almost pleasant,
Have YOU ever had a desk or
a box full of old unanswered
letters. unpaid bills, un-met OBJ
legations of one sort or another.
! and odds and ends of six-months
of lazy living, or the product OF
a routinue interrupted for some