ON THE ROAD WITH CHAS AND PETE

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mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-q8rBRBrg2G..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-q8rBRBrg2G..." width="436" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O6hxuhg6no..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Can this be true?</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’ve always known that Charles Dickens was a very enthusiastic (probably obsessive) walker, sometimes by day and sometimes all night, since he suffered from insomnia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Even so I was amazed, belatedly, to read an essay by Peter Ackroyd titled “All the time in the world – writers and the nature of time,” in which he says Dickens “insisted on walking for as much time each day as he wrote.”</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O6hxuhg6no..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O6hxuhg6no..." width="640" /></a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Literally insisted?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Did he actually calculate how long he’d worked each <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>day and then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">insist </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on walking for exactly the same number of hours?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It does seem strange, but I’m not saying he didn’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eUnTPtDG_h..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eUnTPtDG_h..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is an extant interview with an unnamed somebody who took dictation for Dickens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It appeared in the </span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louisville Commercial</span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> and then in the <i>Brooklyn Daily Eagle, </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">in 1882</span></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Part of it runs like this:</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“‘You were an amanuensis of Charles Dickens, were you not?’</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">‘Yes, I did shorthand work for Mr. Dickens for eighteen months. I did not take dictation for any of his novels, only his fugitive pieces. He dictated to me most of his articles in <i>All the Year Round.</i> He was a very clever gentleman to those under him. He always treated me very well, indeed. Most people seem to think Dickens was a ready writer. This is by no means the case. He used to come into his office in St. Catherine Street about eight o’clock in the morning and begin dictating. He would walk up and down the floor several times after dictating a sentence or a paragraph and ask me to read it. I would do so, and he would, in nine cases out of ten, order me to strike out certain words and insert others. He was generally tired out by eleven o’clock, and went down to his club on the Strand. “</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well, that would work, wouldn’t it – three hours work, lunch, three hours walking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But did he then go back and work for a few hours more, which required a few more hours walking?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Maybe.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aZSD4RYQ8W..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="458" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aZSD4RYQ8W..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">All those “writing habits of famous authors” websites will tell you that Dickens <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>walked for three hours a day, but he must surely have walked more hours than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You’ll also find sources that say he walked 12 miles a day, some say he often walked twenty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You do the math.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">History.com tells us “</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">He kept to a military-strict schedule, always writing in his study between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. before striking off on three-hour walks.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Which would presumably leave him two hours short by Ackroyd’s account, unless he made it up later.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P-FhGVnPAD..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P-FhGVnPAD..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ackroyd is, or at least was, a walker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Recent interviews have described him as wheezing when he walks, and one describes him as having a torn ligament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Still </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">2014 </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">piece in the Financial Times, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">he’s quoted as saying, </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“My hobby was always walking. That’s what I did most of. Experiencing the sensation and the atmosphere of it and getting the pavement underneath your feet is very good therapy.”</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">    </span>The author of the piece, Hannah Beckerman, wonders were he finds time for such therapy, given that he’s always writing three projects at any one time biography in the morning, history book in the afternoon, fiction in the evening. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>His answer: “If you cut up your day well enough, it’s perfectly possible to do anything.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>No doubt.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ackroyd and I did share an American agent for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>She didn’t have many tales of his walking, though there were a few of him falling over drunk and being bundled into taxis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There was also talk that he’d reformed. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not very good at cutting up my day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There are some days on which I do very little work at all – because of a combination of sloth and self-doubt - which means there are days when I actually spend more time walking that I spend writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">insist</i> on it.</span></div><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>