The Writer’s Relationship with Time

Last Updated on April 22, 2024 by Candice Landau

Yesterday, I came across a letter that Charles Dickens wrote to Maria Winter in 1855 – a woman with whom Dickens had fallen in unreciprocated love.

In this letter, Dickens writes that he cannot attend an event, not because he does not want to but because his need to write and create prevents him from doing so.

Beyond the perfect description of the urgency that accompanies creation for an artist and the need to obey time or forfeit your life as one, there’s just something so interesting and romantic about the notion of writing letters – as philosophical as these – about love.  Perhaps I’m mad but I enjoyed it.

As it’s a part of the Creative Commons, I’ve pasted it here – in full – for easy recall. You can find the original on Open Correspondence.

_Tuesday, 3rd April, 1855._

MY DEAR MARIA,[61]

A necessity is upon me now–as at most times–of wandering about in my

old wild way, to think. I could no more resist this on Sunday or

yesterday than a man can dispense with food, or a horse can help himself

from being driven. I hold my inventive capacity on the stern condition

that it must master my whole life, often have complete possession of me,

make its own demands upon me, and sometimes, for months together, put

everything else away from me. If I had not known long ago that my place

could never be held, unless I were at any moment ready to devote myself

to it entirely, I should have dropped out of it very soon. All this I

can hardly expect you to understand–or the restlessness and waywardness

of an author’s mind. You have never seen it before you, or lived with

it, or had occasion to think or care about it, and you cannot have the

necessary consideration for it. “It is only half-an-hour,”–“It is only

an afternoon,”–“It is only an evening,” people say to me over and over

again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self

sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes,–or that

the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole

day. These are the penalties paid for writing books. Whoever is devoted

to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to

find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting

to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go my way whether or no.

I thought you would understand that in sending the card for the box I

sent an assurance that there was nothing amiss. I am pleased to find

that you were all so interested with the play. My ladies say that the

first part is too painful and wants relief. I have been going to see it

a dozen times, but have never seen it yet, and never may. Madame Céleste

is injured thereby (you see how unreasonable people are!) and says in

the green-room, “M. Dickens est artiste! Mais il n’a jamais vu ‘Janet

Pride!’”

It is like a breath of fresh spring air to know that that unfortunate

baby of yours is out of her one close room, and has about half-a-pint of

very doubtful air per day. I could only have become her Godfather on the

condition that she had five hundred gallons of open air at any rate

every day of her life; and you would soon see a rose or two in the face

of my other little friend, Ella, if you opened all your doors and

windows throughout the whole of all fine weather, from morning to night.

I am going off; I don’t know where or how far, to ponder about I don’t

know what. Sometimes I am half in the mood to set off for France,

sometimes I think I will go and walk about on the seashore for three or

four months, sometimes I look towards the Pyrenees, sometimes

Switzerland. I made a compact with a great Spanish authority last week,

and vowed I would go to Spain. Two days afterwards Layard and I agreed

to go to Constantinople when Parliament rises. To-morrow I shall

probably discuss with somebody else the idea of going to Greenland or

the North Pole. The end of all this, most likely, will be, that I shall

shut myself up in some out-of-the-way place I have not yet thought of,

and go desperately to work there.

Once upon a time I didn’t do such things you say. No. But I have done

them through a good many years now, and they have become myself and my

life.

Ever affectionately.

Featured image source: Wikimedia Commons