Inspiration and creativity in Conan Doyle's Magic Door

This is yet another article in the series inspired by Through the Magic Door, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little volume of essays about books, reading and associated topics.

This post highlights two propositions that Conan Doyle makes about inspiration and creative people: he suggests that inspiration comes from outside and that creative people are often frail and die young.  

It also mentions a few other writers in connection with these topics. 

Inspiration comes from outside
Conan Doyle says this about the source of inspiration:

“...the feeling which every writer of imaginative work must have, that his supreme work comes to him in some strange way from without, and that he is only the medium for placing it upon the paper...Is it possible that we are indeed but conduit pipes from the infinite reservoir of the unknown? Certainly it is always our best work which leaves the least sense of personal effort.”

That last sentence is often very true. Rudyard Kipling said something similar when he gave his Daemon credit for assisting and inspiring him in his work: he said that the writing he did under this influence was 'frictionless'. 

Conan Doyle's mention of a conduit pipe reminds me of another of Rudyard Kipling's Daemon-related images: he likens the end of a good run of genuine, friction-free creativity to “the water-hammer click of a tap turned off.”

Many other writers have speculated about where their inspiration might come from. 

Robert Louis Stevenson for example said that it came from vivid dreams caused by the Brownies!

Frances Hodgson Burnett thought of herself as just the custodian rather than the originator of her gift. So where did this gift come from then?

Maybe some fiction writers really do channel or download their works and ideas from somewhere.

Frances Hodgson Burnett and Isaac Asimov: feeling different and getting angry

The previous article about Frances Hodgson Burnett mentions the low return on investment in terms of the time and effort that I spent investigating her life and works and the small amount of article-inspiring material that I found.

Since then, I have followed up a few more leads and read a biography or two. I have found enough material for a few short articles, which just about makes the exercise worthwhile.

This article highlights some comments in Gretchen Gerzina's biography Frances Hodgson Burnett (2004) that remind me of material in the autobiography of a very different writer.

Feeling different
Frances Hodgson Burnett's sister Edith said something very significant about her:

“I always knew that my sister Frances was different, even when we were children, though, of course, at the time I could not have told you why...there was something about her that set her apart from other people.”

This applies to most of the other writes featured on here. Isaac Asimov for example said this in his autobiography In Memory Yet Green:

”I had begun to suspect that I was not as other children were even before I went to school. Once I was in school, there was no way in which I could avoid the knowledge.“

This is not the only element that Frances Hodgson Burnett had in common with Isaac Asimov.

A few words about Frances Hodgson Burnett on her birthday

The writer Frances Hodgson Burnett was born on this day, November 24th, in 1849. 

She was briefly mentioned in the article that lists some more Sagittarian writers. I read her three most popular children's books when I was very young and quite liked The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, but I knew almost nothing about her. After learning that she was interested in metaphysical matters, I put an investigation of her life on my to-do list.

I have looked again at the children's books and trawled through some biographical material. I found a lot of fairly interesting information about Frances Hodgson Burnett's life, some of it unexpected and some of it depressing. 

Where this blog is concerned, the results of the investigation to date are rather disappointing. Unlike fellow Sagittarian L. M. Montgomery, whose books, journals and letters are packed with article-inspiring material, Frances Hodgson Burnett provides very little that resonates or that I want to quote and comment on.

There is nothing new about her being different from the people around her as a child or being an avid reader and an inventor of exciting adventure stories from an early age. She was not the only writer to find books and the products of her imagination better than real life either.

Wanting to have something to show for my efforts, I selected enough material for a short article. It consists mainly of some elements that Frances Hodgson Burnett had in common with L. M. Montgomery.

Frances Hodgson Burnett and L. M. Montgomery

As might be expected, both Frances Hodgson Burnett and L. M. Montgomery were voracious and compulsive readers from an early age.

Frances Hodgson Burnett has been described as a writing machine; L. M. Montgomery felt compelled to write and was also very prolific. 

Both writers were profoundly influenced by works of the Brontës. There are some parallels to both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden for example.

Both writers had their first stories published when they were still teenagers.

Both writers became the main breadwinner in their families; in Frances Hodgson Burnett's case this started at the age of 18, when she began to make money from writing.

Stella Gibbons’s My American and writing: Part III

There comes a time when Amy Lee changes direction: she stops producing tales of heroism and adventure and joins the school of domestic realism. 

The  reasons given for this drastic transformation are rather contrived and not altogether convincing. I suspect that this element was introduced mainly for the sake of the plot and to make some points; Stella Gibbons could also have used it to clear up some unfinished business of her own .

From danger and death to domesticity

As a child Amy Lee scribbles non-stop, producing exciting adventure stories such as Pharaoh’s Curse: A Tale of  Ancient Egypt and The Wolf of Leningrad: A Thrilling Story of The Russian Revolution purely for her own enjoyment. The books she reads fire her imagination and provide the ideas for her stories.

As a young woman, she writes exciting adventure stories for publication.  She may not have any first-hand knowledge, any personal experience, of the sort of people and action that she writes about, but her readers love her work. She becomes a best-seller; her books are made into films and this gains her world-wide popularity.

After moving to America, Amy Lee changes track and writes a very different kind of story for a whole new constituency of readers:

“Her stories of family life communicated (because she herself felt it) to the passing of an examination or the breaking of a betrothal the excitement she had once given to escapes from death and last-minute rescues, and she charmed her readers by showing them the variety and interest of every day.”

So what happened here? Why did Amy abandon her heroic avatars? Why the farewell to adventure in favour of embracing mundane subject matters? One of the reasons given is that Amy's adventure stories lack moral values; they are in some ways unethical, unedifying and unwholesome, something that she is unaware of until she visits America and comes in for some direct criticism. She also cools off after experiencing danger, death amd great fear at first hand.

Stella Gibbons’s My American and writing: Part II

Stella Gibbons's romance My American contains much writing-related material. The previous article contains extracts that describe the writing process; this article is mainly about the relationship between Amy Lee, adventure stories and Stella Gibbons herself.

There are some autobiographical elements in My American: some of what Stella Gibbons says about Amy Lee, her childhood, her inner states, her imagination and her stories applies to Stella herself. 

Stella Gibbons and adventure stories

Reading about Amy Lee's early tales of danger and adventure such as The Hero of the Desert and The Mummy's Curse reminded me of something I once read about Stella Gibbons: she liked the books of Sir Henry Rider Haggard very much indeed, and more than anything else she wanted to write similar stories.

Her nephew and biographer Reggie Oliver said this:

“Amy as a writer is Stella, but without her sophistication or intellect; and to create her character, Stella projected her immature, adolescent self into Amy’s adulthood. Amy writes romantic adventure stories of the kind that Stella wrote at the age of twelve, based on Rider Haggard and Ouida.”

Amy Lee's early stories certainly sound just like the sort that Stella Gibbons wished she could write. She must eventually have come to realise that she had no talent for creating such stories; she had to settle for describing ordinary people shopping at the Archway in north London as opposed to colourful characters searching for King Solomon's mines in Africa! 

It makes sense that if Stella Gibbons couldn't do in real life something she very much wanted to do, she would do it vicariously in fiction. This may be a second-best substitute and form of compensation, but it is better than nothing – for both readers and writers.

More about Stella Gibbons’s young writer Amy Lee

Stella Gibbons's My American is described as a romance. As mentioned in the first article, the main aspect of interest in the book is not the story itself but what Stella Gibbons has to say about writers and writing. 

The young writer Amy Lee may be a fictional character, but she is in many ways a classic, textbook case. She shares many attributes and experiences with people featured on here. She needs solitude; she lives to read and write. 

A new life for the young orphan Amy Lee
Luckily for Amy her father has left a small amount of money, enough to cover her expenses until she leaves school. 

She moves downstairs to live with her landlady Mrs Beeding, a tough but kindly Yorkshirewoman, and the rest of the Beeding family:

“Their only fault as a family was their inability to imagine a human being who might sometimes wish to be alone; and in this they were not unique.”

Amy has to share a bedroom with one of the Beeding girls; luckily it is not that dreadful young drama queen Mona, who is always poking into Amy’s affairs!

Family life benefits Amy in some ways. She is well fed, well clothed and well treated. Her worst fears are not realised: she even manages to get some time to herself and a place to read:

“For a week after Tim’s funeral Amy was able to escape for a little while every evening up to the flat and read or dream (she did not dare to write, for fear of interruption and consequent discovery)..."

Amy starts to resettle herself into her secret world:

“The Beedings were used to her ways and left her in peace except for an occasional friendly shriek up the stairs, explaining her taste for solitude to one another by saying that Aime was a great reader, for none of them knew that she was also a great writer.”

Jean Rhys and Antonia White: some similarities

I have been working my way through Carole Angier’s definitive and very detailed biography of the writer Jean Rhys. 

Jean Rhys: Life and Work is over 700 pages long; it includes a literary study of her novels and short stories. I suppose that people who want information about Jean Rhys  and her life will find this book a goldmine and people who like her writings will enjoy reading it, but I found it very depressing.

Jean Rhys got a brief mention in one of the articles about Diana Wynne Jones’s Aunt Maria; the time has now come to say something more about her. Anyone who wants very detailed information about her life and works is best off reading the biography; here I just want to highlight a few elements of particular interest, especially ones that she has in common with other featured writers. 

I found some very familiar features in Carole Angier’s biography; I had already encountered much similar material while investigating other writers. Jean Rhys is in many ways a classic, text-book case. Although she has features in common with several other writers, in my opinion it is Antonia White whom Jean Rhys on the whole most resembles. 

Some of the similarities
Both Jean Rhys and Antonia White were very interested in expensive clothes and beauty treatments - to the detriment of their finances! 

They both spent some time at convent schools.

They both attended the Academy of Dramatic Art in London’s Gower Street and later went on the stage in minor roles for a short time. It was not very successful; they found the touring tiring and the life disillusioning. Acting was a false start for both of them.

They were both self-obsessed. They could never bear to be alone. Both made screaming scenes. Both suffered from poor impulse control. Both led tortured lives. 

Writers: three views from L. M. Montgomery

Previous articles have covered some of L.M. Montgomery’s thoughts about reading and writing.

Her short story The Waking of Helen (1901) is a depressing account of a doomed girl. It is of interest because it contains a good summary of three possible ways of looking at well-known writers.

We can view them as elite, fortunate and noble people who are far above the masses; we can respect, admire, even worship them for their achievements and envy them for their position, popularity and immortal names.

We can view them with disappointment, disillusionment, disapproval and disgust when we become aware of their real characters and read about some of the appalling things that they believed, said and did.

We can feel sadness and pity for their unhappy lives when we learn what they had to endure and realise that for them, fame and fortune were no compensation for what they lost or never had.

These ways of looking at writers are not mutually exclusive.

Here are some relevant extracts from the story:

More words about writing from L. M. Montgomery

This article contains a few more hard-hitting quotations on the subject of writers and writing from L. M. Montgomery.

She seems ambivalent about the whole business of being a writer, seeing it as both a gift and a curse:

“You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.”

From Emily Climbs

This may be true in some cases - artists often feel that their works fall far short of their visions - but the converse also applies: some writers may be proud of their productions while their readers may not think much of them.

Disapproval, criticism and discouragement

People who read a lot are often criticised for it, and people who try to write are often discouraged. L. M. Montgomery obviously experienced much disapproval herself:

“’I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,’ scoffed Marilla. ‘You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put on your lessons. 

Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.’”

From Anne of Green Gables

Although this disapproving attitude does a lot of damage, that last line seems quite funny to me.

L. M. Montgomery and the compulsion to read and write

I have found some more significant quotations from Lucy Maud Montgomery. What she has to say about reading and writing, both as herself and through her characters, is of particular interest. She could be speaking for many people of her kind.

Compulsive reading

 “I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” 

From L.M. Montgomery’s personal journals 1899

“We have sent for a lot of new books for our Literary Society library here and when they come I’m simply going on a spree. I shall read all night and all day. I’m a book-drunkard, sad to say, and though I earnestly try to curb my appetite for reading I never met with much success.”

From L.M. Montgomery’s letter of March 1905

Me too. All my life I have been unable to resist this temptation.

‘Book addict’ or ‘reading addict’ is another way of putting it, although there is nothing of the need to take more and more to achieve less and less.

“I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.”

From The Selected Journals Of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 3: 1921-1929

This is all spot on.

Not only are there not enough hours in the day to do all the reading some of us would like, there are not enough years in our lives. We are even more spoiled for choice now than L. M. Montgomery was then.