Even big names get stuck in some rut
Nadine Dreyer looks at the daily routines (or not) of famous personages in history
Sitting at her desk dreaming up some of the most beloved characters in the English language, Jane Austen asked that a certain squeaky hinge never be oiled so she always had a warning when someone was approaching her room. Just one tin of Three-In-One and there might never have been a Mr Darcy.
Her sister Cassandra did most of the cooking and housework so Jane had time for her novels. “Composition seems impossible to me with a head full of joints of mutton & doses of rhubarb,” she wrote.
Today many people are having to reinvent their daily routines as work goes virtual. So how did some of the world’s greatest artists — and some of the biggest scumbags — organise their days?
Billboard editor Timothy White described a normal day in the life of reggae’s king in Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley.
Marley presided over a communal home on Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica, with band members and assorted disciples of the Rastafarian religion. The routine was always the same; everybody would try to get up in the morning before Marley, but no-one ever did. Some would attempt to outlast him the night before, but that never worked, either. “It was uncanny; Bob was always the last to take to his little mattress in his upstairs bedroom (bare except for a portrait of Haile Selassie hanging on the wall) and the first to awake.”
Regardless of the previous night’s revelries, Marley and the rest of the brethren would be ready at sunrise for a jog, wrote White. Afterwards they would drive to a waterfall, scrub each other’s locks, and then position themselves in the roaring falls “so that the torrents pounded against their chests and backs”.
Alex Haley, author of Roots, spent two days with jazz deity Miles Davis while doing a profile for Playboy magazine.
Davis lived in a five-storey converted Russian Orthodox Church on West 77th Street, near the Hudson River in New York City. Haley describes how the musician worked out in his basement gymnasium, made veal chops Italian style for his family, gave boxing lessons to his three sons, plucked out beginner’s chords on a guitar and blew one of his two Martin trumpets, running up and down the chromatic scale “with searing speed”.
In Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, author Mason Currey explores how musicians, writers and artists arranged their days so they could produce their amazing work.
Louis Armstrong smoked dope (“gage”, as he called it) almost daily and couldn’t go to sleep until he had taken his dose of a “potent herbal laxative”. Armstrong believed so strongly in its curative powers that he recommended it to all his friends.
According to Currey, Satchmo even had a card printed with a photo of himself sitting on a toilet, above the caption “Leave It All Behind Ya”.
“Make breakfast, clean the dishes, do the laundry.” Poet Sylvia Plath made sure she did all the housework by 9am so she could start writing.
Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood, his 1960s classic, in bed. “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.”
Martha Freud, wife of Sigmund, “laid out his clothes, chose his handkerchiefs, and even put toothpaste on his toothbrush”, notes Currey. Now what would his shrink say about that?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a reputation as a party animal but his early years in Vienna were pretty organised. The day began with his hair being done “by 6am” and leading on to two hours of composing his sublime music, four hours of teaching, lunch, then either concerts or more composition before a trip to see his future wife, Constanze, writes Currey.
Ludwig van Beethoven insisted on precisely 60 coffee beans to a cup (often hand-counting them to make sure). He once tried to break a chair over the head of a patron and friend so it wasn’t prudent to stuff this up.
Gustav Mahler’s wife bribed the neighbours with opera tickets to stop their dogs yapping while he was composing. He was prolific, so there must have been many over-the-fence arm-wrestles.
Currey writes that Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 after his full day of work in the advertising business, sitting at the kitchen table in his Manhattan apartment for two or three hours. “Success from that book allowed him to quit his day job and write for a couple of hours in the morning and then again after lunch and a nap.”
If Mark Twain’s family needed to speak to him in an emergency they blew a horn. Knocking on the door of his study was strictly not allowed.
Pablo Picasso once described the process of making art. “While I work I leave my body outside the door, the way Muslims take off their shoes before entering a mosque.”
Josephine Baker was a sensation during the 1920s when she arrived in Paris as a young dancer and performer. The poet e e cummings called her the most beautiful star on the Parisian stage.
In La Folie du Jour, the African-American legend appeared in nothing but a skirt of 16 vertical rubber bananas attached to a cloth girdle, parodying the “exotic savage”. To prepare for a show she would rehearse around the clock for six weeks before opening night. She was always chronically late and one evening the stage manager was forced to kick open the door to her dressing room, only to find the leading lady naked on the floor eating lobster with her fingers.
A biographer wrote that she had a menagerie in her dressing room — rabbits (in her wardrobe), mice (in her drawers), a baby tiger, cats, dogs, a boa constrictor, and birds everywhere.
Margaret Thatcher’s reputation as the Iron Lady was undoubtedly helped by the fact that she could operate with four hours of sleep a night. Her ability to whip her lackeys until three in the morning and then be up at seven to torture their nervous systems enhanced her reputation as the Caesar in Curlers.
During her long reign, from 1558 to 1603,
Queen Elizabeth I had her face caked with makeup each morning. Her skin was scarred from smallpox so she covered the pockmarks with heavy white makeup made of white lead and vinegar, which slowly poisoned her.
She spent a lot of time posing for portraits. One of them showed eyes and ears embroidered on her cloak, signalling to her enemies: I’m watching you.
Mahatma Gandhi walked 18km a day, calling it the “prince of exercise”. He also loved cycling and when he lived in Johannesburg in the early 1900s was one of the first people to oppose a law that discriminated against people riding bikes on the streets.
In the early 1800s, when Napoleon lorded over France, dinner chez Napoleon was a dreary nightly ritual. The tableware, no doubt stolen from beheaded aristocrats, was exquisite but the food was inedible and the wine foul. Nobody spoke unless the emperor said something.
When Bonaparte was asked how many hours of sleep people needed, he is said to have replied: “Six for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool.”
Barack Obama started his day in the White House at 6.45am with a workout — weights and cardio. According to The New York Times he would read several newspapers, eat breakfast with his family and help pack his two daughters off to school before making the 30-second commute downstairs to the Oval Office.
Winston Churchill loved to work from bed and spent a lot of time fighting Nazi Germany from under his blankets. He would always take a weak whisky and soda to his study before lunchtime.
A handwritten note on a flight to the US in June 1954 shows his idea of a good breakfast, which was to be served on two trays.
“1st Tray. Poached egg, Toast, Jam, Butter,
Coffee and milk, Jug of cold milk, Cold Chicken or Meat.
“2nd Tray. Grapefruit, Sugar Bowl, Glass orange squash (ice), Whisky soda.” He then adds: “Wash hands, cigar.”
Karl Marx dreamt up his plots to overthrow the capitalist classes in the reading room at the British
Beethoven insisted on exactly 60 coffee beans. He once tried to break a chair over the head of a friend so it wasn’t prudent to stuff this up
If Mark Twain’s family needed to speak to him in an emergency they blew a horn. Knocking on the door of his study was strictly not allowed
Museum. He normally arrived at 9am and stayed until it closed at 7pm.
This was followed by long hours of working and chain-smoking at night. He suffered frequent attacks of liver disease, boils and an inflammation of the eyes. “I am plagued like Job, though not so God-fearing,” he wrote in 1858.
Joseph Stalin loved to read and boasted that he read at least 500 pages a day. He also had a habit of borrowing books from libraries and not returning them. (“You want the book back? Off to the gulag!”)
Chairman Mao’s life was chronicled by his doctor, Li Zhisu. He depicts Mao as a Chinese Caligula who seduced countless young women, “their numbers increasing and their average ages declining” as Mao grew older.
He often slept during the day and remained in his pyjamas for weeks at a time. He would summon his lieutenants at any time of the day.
Mao never bathed and never brushed his teeth, which were coated with a green patina from eating tea leaves. When Li suggested to him that he should use a toothbrush, Mao replied: “A tiger never brushes his teeth.”
Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to an acquaintance in 1912: “Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.”
Countless men’s magazines have written about Muhammad Ali’s regimen for readers who could only dream about attaining his physique.
The three-time world heavyweight champion is regarded by most pundits as the greatest boxer ever and a relentless champion for human rights.
As soon as he was introduced to boxing as a teenager, Ali trained to become the best.
He woke at 5.30am every day and did some light stretching followed by a six-mile run in heavy army-style boots that he would usually complete in 40 minutes.
His diet usually consisted of healthy and natural unprocessed food — rice, vegetables and fruit — and was high in protein sources such as chicken and steak. He never smoked or drank.
He refused to be called up for the Vietnam War, saying: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong … no Vietcong ever called me ‘nigger’.”
Artists, icons, tyrants … one thing’s for sure, few of them would be sitting at home without booze and cigarettes watching Netflix.