Study and Stimulants Part 5

I can tell you nothing of the effects of smoking tobacco, having had no experience. I tried once or twice when young, but, finding it nasty, I did not try again. _Why_ people smoke, I have no notion.

If I am tired of work, a short sleep sets me up again. I really have nothing to say about alcohol--I have never thought about it. I drink wine like other people, and I find brandy an excellent medicine on occasion. I used to drink beer, but some of the doctors say it is not good for me, and some have recommended whisky instead; but I really have no views on the subject. I have drunk wine and beer, as I have eaten beef and mutton, without any theories one way or another.

E.A. FREEMAN.

October 29, 1882.

MR. F. J. FURNIVALL, M. A.

Though I have no claim to be considered as one of the great thinkers and popular authors, I am a small thinker and a decidedly unpopular author, who has nevertheless done some work, I answer, that I have been a teetotaler since the summer of 1841, when I was 16, and I have never smoked except as a lark at school. I was a Vegetarian for about 25 years. I believe alcohol to be highly detrimental to head work.

Tobacco has, I think, done good in only one case that has come under my notice during 40 years; it quieted an excitable man. My father, who was a medical man of wide practice, was very strong against much use of tobacco. He knew two cases of speedy death from the oil in the bowl of a tobacco-pipe being applied to aching teeth. He had several cases of much impaired digestion from smoking.

F. J FURNIVALL.

March 8, 1882.

MR. SAMUEL R. GARDINER, HON. LL. D.

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN KING'S COLLEGE.

In reply to your letter, I beg to say that I never smoked in my life, and don't intend to begin. I take beer at luncheon and dinner, and occasionally a gla.s.s or two of wine, but very often I am four or five days without doing that.

SAMUEL R. GARDINER.

March 9, 1882.

RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M. P.

In answer to your questions, I beg to say that Mr. Gladstone drinks one gla.s.s or two of claret at luncheon, the same at dinner, with the addition of a gla.s.s of light port. The use of wine to this extent is especially necessary to him at the time of greatest intellectual exertion. Smoking he detests, and he has always abstained from the use of very strong and fiery stimulants.

HERBERT J. GLADSTONE.

November 29, 1882.

MDLLE. H. GREVILLE.

Being a lady, though my _nom de plume_ be a man's, I have little experience of either alcohol or tobacco. I must fairly say that though claret agrees with my const.i.tution when properly mixed with water, wine without water, and every kind of liqueurs, makes me very ill, especially when taken between my meals, which are only two in number-- breakfast at twelve, and dinner at seven. I never use any stimulant.

My sleep being scanty, I want sedatives rather than stimulants. I must add, nevertheless, that once or twice in a year, when I felt very tired, and had some work to conclude, especially at night, I happened to smoke one cigarette or Russian papyrus, which revived me promptly, and enabled me to finish my work. If you may be interested in my fas.h.i.+on of working, I may inform you that I work very fast, two hours at once, and then take a rest, or dinner. After resting two hours, I can write two hours again. I write without scratching, or blotting, about 100 lines of any French newspaper feuilleton, not the _Temps_, which is larger, but the _Figuro_, or any similar paper, in half-an-hour's time. I don't think that any-body could write more quickly; I seldom make any corrections, and never copy my work, which is sent to the printer as I write it. I use no stimulants of any kind, but sometimes eat an orange or two. After working towards midnight, I sometimes feel hungry, but I never eat for fear of spoiling my night's rest. I lived many years in Russia, and my experience is, that people who smoke too much suffer from their throat. Emile Augrer has been very ill with his stomach, from smoking too many strong cigars. He ceased, and has been completely healed.

H. GREVILLE.

April 28, 1882.

COUNT GUBERNATIS.

In reply to your favour of the 28th ult., I have the honour to inform you that I do not smoke, because nicotine acts upon my system as a most powerful poison. At the age of ten I had a Havana cigar given me to smoke; after smoking it I fainted and did not come to myself till after a _deep sleep, which lasted twenty-four hours._ When I was twenty, the third part of a cigar was given me to smoke as a remedy for the toothache. I could not finish it. A cold perspiration attended with vomiting and fainting ensued. I therefore judge from the effects of tobacco upon myself that it cannot be such a benefactor of mankind as people have tried to make it out. I am convinced that in any case, smoking lulls the mind to sleep, and when carried to excess tends to produce stupefaction or idiotcy.

Perhaps you are aware that in Little Russia, the people call tobacco the _Devil's herb_; and it is related that the devil planted it under the form of an idolater. For my part I am quite prepared to adopt the opinion of the Russian people. Before the time of Peter the Great, smoking was strictly prohibited in Russia.

The Poet Prati sang one day:

Fuma, pa.s.sagia e medita E diverrai poeta.

(Smoke, ramble alone and think, and thou will soon become a poet.)

That is what he himself does, but my belief is that owing to the abuse of cigars, he so frequently raves (dotes) and his poetry is often cloudy.

As for alcohol, I take it to be proved beyond all doubt, that when taken in very small quant.i.ties it may, in certain cases, do good, but that taken in large quant.i.ties it kills. After having burnt the stomach, it deprives it of its power of digestion. I have seen a great many persons begin to use alcoholic beverages in the hope of acquiring tone, and afterwards get so accustomed to their use, that the best Chianti wine pa.s.sed into their stomach like water. In this case, as in so many other cases, it is a question of measure. Alcohol has a like injurious effect upon the brain as upon the stomach.

I am by no means an authority on the question which you have been good enough to address to me, and can therefore only give you briefly a statement of my own personal experience. Speaking of stimulants, I would mention, for instance, the strange effect produced upon my rather sensitive organism by a single cup of coffee. If I take a cup of coffee at six o'clock in the evening I cannot get to sleep before six in the morning. If I take it at noon I can get to sleep at midnight I know that many people take coffee to keep awake when working through the night. My own opinion is that you cannot work any better with these stimulants. There is a sort of irritation produced by drinking coffee which I do not consider helpful to serious and sustained work. It is possible, however, that works of genius may be produced sometimes in a state of nervous excitement, I suppose when the shattered nerves begin to relax. Manzoni wrote his master pieces when in a state of painful nervous distraction, but alcohol had nothing to do with it; perhaps he had recourse to other stimulants.

(1) When we read that literary producers of any power have gone on working up to the last, even in the near approach of death, we usually find the work done has been of a not unwelcome kind, and often that it has formed part of a long-cherished design. But when the disease of which the sufferer is dying is consumption, or some disease which between paroxysms of pain leaves s.p.a.ces of ease and rest, it is nothing wonderful that work should be done. Some of the best of Paley's works were produced under such conditions, and some of the best of Sh.e.l.ley's. Nor, indeed, is there anything in mere pain which necessarily prevents literary work. The late Mr. T. T. Lynch produced some of his most beautiful writings amid spasms of _angina pectoris_. This required high moral courage in the writer.... It is a curious, though well-known fact, however, that times of illness, when the eyes swim and the hand shakes, are oftentimes rich in suggestion. If the mind is naturally fertile--if there is stuff in it--the hours of illness are by no means wasted. It is then that the "_dreaming_ power" which counts for so much in literary work often a.s.serts itself most usefully.--_The Contemporary Review_, vol. 29, p. 946.

(2) When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the "White Doe of Rylstone," he received a wound in his foot, and he observed that the continuation of his literary labours increased the irritation of the wound; whereas by suspending his work he could diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced perfect cure. In connection with this incident he remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied by protracted labour in composition, always brought on more or less of bodily derangement He preserved himself from permanently injurious consequences by his excellent habit of life.--Hamerton. _The Intellectual Life_.

I know that certain authors think they can write better when taking artificial stimulants. I do not, however, believe that an artificial irritation of the nerves can have any good effect upon our faculty of apprehension. I am even inclined to think that when we write best, _it is not owing_ to nervous _excitement_, but rather because our nerves, after a period of extreme irritation, _leave us a few moments respite_, and it is during these moments the divine spark s.h.i.+nes brightly. When creative genius has accomplished its task, the nerves once more relapse into their former irritability and cause us to suffer; but at the time of creation there is a truce of suffering.

I never use any stimulant to help me in my labours; yet when I have been writing works of fiction, for instance my Indian and Roman Plays, I have nearly always been subject to great nervous agitation. When I suffered most from spasms, I had short intervals of freedom from pain, during which I could write, and those around me asked in astonishment how I could, in the midst of such suffering, write scenes that were cheerful, glowing and impa.s.sioned.

I have occasionally in my time enjoyed these luminous intervals. I do not know whether those who use alcohol as a stimulant have experienced the same. No doubt they have succeeded in exciting their nervous sensibilities; but I a.s.sert that the real work of creative genius is accomplished in the intervals of this purturbation of the nerves which by some is deemed so essential to intellectual labour. When the nerves are excited to the highest pitch, they occasionally suffer, the transitory cessation from which is the divine moment of human creation. It seems to me, however, that this ought to be left to nature, and that every attempt to produce artificial excitement, for the purpose of producing creations of a higher cla.s.s, is futile and beset with danger.

ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS.

March 4, 1882.

M. L. P. GUENIN, REVISING STENOGRAPHER TO THE FRENCH SENATE.

I thank you for having asked my opinion upon the effects of tobacco and alcohol on the mind and the health of men who give themselves up to intellectual work; and hasten to comply with your request. I am not a very resolute adversary of tobacco, because I must admit that I smoke, and at home use wine also: but if their use appears useful or agreeable, I ought to add that whenever I have to undertake any long arduous work, and above all, the reproduction of stenographic law or parliamentary reports, of which the copy is required without delay, I then make use of nothing but pure water. I limit myself as to stimulant to the use of coffee, which enables me to pa.s.s whole days and nights without feeling any want of sleep and, so to say, without fatigue, notwithstanding the labour of the stenographic translations.

As you see, I consider that tobacco and alcohol do not act as stimulants, but rather as narcotics. With me they induce after the first moment of excitement a sort of calm and somnolence altogether incompatible with severe work; and I prefer coffee, always on the condition that as soon as the effort to be accomplished is finished the use of it must cease. I will not invoke the precedents of the celebrated men who have been led to make great use of coffee without impairing their health. It is after many years' experience that I have acted as I have indicated.

L. P. GUENIN.

March 11, 1582.