I do not think that this letter requires much comment or illustration. Although it is written soberly enough, and without actual accusation, its meaning is as plain as daylight. His wife was alternately too familiar, or at open hostility with the servant; none could endure her temper. She complained to him, or the servant complained to him, and he had to make peace, or to try to make it—mostly in vain. And then the quarrel broke out anew, and the servant left. The result was that Maitland himself often did the household work when he should have been writing. He was dragged away from his ordinary tasks by an uproar in the kitchen; or perhaps one or both of the angry women came to him for arbitration about some point of common decency. There is a phrase of his in "The Meditations" which speaks of poor Hooker, whose prose he so much admired, being "vixen-haunted." This epithet of his is a reasonable and admirable one, but how bitter it was few know so well as myself.
In this place it does not seem to me unnatural or out of place to comment a little on Raymond, the chief character in "The Vortex." He was undoubtedly in a measure the later Maitland. His idea was to present a man whose character developed with somewhat undue slowness. He said that Raymond would probably never have developed at all after a certain stage but for the curious changes wrought in his views and sentiments by the fact of his becoming a father. Of course it must be obvious to any one, from what I have said, that Maitland himself would never have remained so long with his second wife after the first few months if it had not been that she was about to become a mother. The earlier passages in "The Vortex" where he speaks about children, or where Raymond himself speaks about them, are meant to contrast strongly with his way of thinking in the later part of the book when this particular character had children of his own. The author declared that Raymond, as a bachelor, was largely an egoist. Of course the truth of the matter is that Maitland himself was essentially an egoist. I once suggested to him that he came near being a solipsist, a word he probably had never heard of till then, as he never studied psychology, modern or otherwise. However, when Raymond grew riper in the experience which killed his crude egoism, he became another man. Maitland, in writing about this particular book, said: "That Raymond does nothing is natural to the man. The influences of the whirlpool—that is London—and its draught on the man's vitality embarrass any efficiency there might have been in him." Through the whole story of Maitland one feels that everything that was in any way hostile to his own views of life did essentially embarrass, and almost make impossible, anything that was in him. He had no strength to draw nutriment by main force from everything around him, as a strong man does. He was not so fierce a fire as to burn every kind of fuel.
I remember in this connection a very interesting passage in Hamley's "Operations of War": "When a general surveying the map of the theatre finds direct obstacles in the path he must advance by, he sees in them, if he be confident of his skill in manoeuvring, increased opportunities for obtaining strategical successes ... in fact, like any other complications in a game, they offer on both sides additional opportunities to skill and talent, and additional embarrassments to incapacity." But then Maitland loathed and hated and feared obstacles of every kind. He was apt to sit down before them wringing his hands, and only desperation moved him, not to attack, but to elude them. It is an odd thing in this respect to note that he played no games, and despised them with peculiar vigour. There is a passage in one of his letters to Rivers about a certain Evans, mentioned with a note of exclamation, and thus kindly embalmed: "Evans, strange being! Yet, if his soul is satisfied with golf and bridge, why should he not go on golfing and bridging? At all events he is working his way to sincerity."
The long letter I quoted from above was written, I believe, in 1895, when the boy was nearly three years old. I have not attempted, and shall not attempt, to give any detailed account month by month, or even year by year, of his domestic surroundings. It was a wonder to me that the marriage lasted, but still it did last, and all one knew was that some day it must come to an end. The record of his life in these days would be appalling if I remembered it sufficiently, or had kept a diary—as no doubt I ought to have done—or had all the documents which may be in existence dealing with that time. That he endured so many years was incredible, and still he did endure, and the time went on, and he worked; mostly, as he said to me, against time, and a good deal on commission. He wrote: "The old fervours do not return to me, and I have got into the very foolish habit of perpetually writing against time and to order. The end of this is destruction." But still I think he knew within him that it could not last. Had it not been for the boy, and, alas, for the birth of yet another son, he would now have left her. He acknowledged it to me—if he could not fight he would have to fly.
This extraordinary lack of power to deal with any obstacle must seem strange to most men, though no doubt many are weak. Yet few are so weak as Maitland. Oddly enough I have heard the idea expressed that there was more power of fight in Maitland than he ever possessed, and on inquiry I have learned that this notion was founded on a partial, or perhaps complete misunderstanding of certain things he expressed in the latter part of "The Vortex." Towards the end of the book it seems to be suggested that Maitland, or Raymond, tended really towards what he calls in one of his letters a "barrack-room" view of life. Some people seem to think that the man who was capable of writing what he did in that book really meant it, and must have had a little touch of that native and natural brutality which makes Englishmen what they are. But Maitland himself, in commenting on this particular attitude of Raymond, declared that this quasi or semi-ironic imperialism of the man was nothing but his hopeless recognition of facts which filled him with disgust. The world was going in a certain way. There was no refusing to see it. It stared every one in the eyes. Then he adds: "Butwhata course for things to take!"
Raymond in fact talks with a little throwing up of the arm, and in a voice of quiet sarcasm, "Go ahead—I sit by and watch, and wonder what will be the end of it all." This was his own habit of mind in later years. He had come at last and at long last, to recognise a course of things which formerly he could not, or would not, perceive; and he recognised it with just that tossing of arm or head, involuntary of course. I do not think that at this time he would have seen a battalion of Guards go by and have turned to me saying: "And this,thisis the nineteenth century!" He once wrote to Rivers, what he had said a hundred times to me: "I have a conviction that all I love and believe in is going to the devil. At the same time I try to watch with interest this process of destruction, admiring any bit of sapper work that is well done." It is rather amusing to note that in the letter, written in the country, which puts these things most dolefully, he adds: "The life here shows little trace of vortical influence." Of course this is a reference to the whirlpool of London.
In 1896 I was myself married, and went to live in a little house in Fulham. I understood what peace was, and he had none. As Maitland had not met my wife for some years I asked him to come and dine with us. It was not the least heavy portion of his burden that he always left his own house with anxiety and returned to it with fear and trembling. This woman of his home was given to violence, even with her own young children. It was possible, as he knew, for he often said so to me, that he might return and find even the baby badly injured. And yet at last he made up his mind to accept my invitation. Whether it was the fact that he had accepted one from me—and I often fancy that his wife had a grudge against me because I would not go to her house any more—I do not know, but when I met him in the hall of my own house I found him in the most extraordinary state of nervous and physical agitation. Though usually of a remarkable, if healthy, pallor, he was now almost crimson, and his eyes sparkled with furious indignation. He was hot, just as if he had come out of an actual physical struggle. What he must have looked like when he left Ewell I do not know, for he had had all the time necessary to travel from there to Fulham to cool down in. After we shook hands he asked me, almost breathlessly, to allow him to wash his face, so I took him into the bathroom. He removed his coat, and producing his elastic band from his waistcoat pocket, put it about his hair like a fillet, and began to wash his face in cold water. As he was drying himself he broke out suddenly: "I can't stand it any more. I have left her for ever." I said: "Thank heaven that you have. I am very glad of it—and for every one's sake don't go back on it."
Whatever the immediate cause of this outburst was, it seems that that afternoon the whole trouble came to a culmination. The wife behaved like a maniac; she shrieked, and struck him. She abused him in the vilest terms, such as he could not or would not repeat to me. It was with the greatest difficulty that I at last got him calm enough to meet any one else. When he did calm down after he had had something to eat and a little to drink, the prospect of his freedom, which he believed had come to him once more, inspired him with pathetic and peculiar exhilaration. In one sense I think he was happy that night. He slept in London.
I should have given a wholly false impression of Maitland if any one now imagined that I believed that the actual end had come to his marriage. No man knew his weakness better than I did, and I moved heaven and earth in my endeavours to keep him to his resolution, to prevent him going back to Epsom on any pretext, and all my efforts were vain. In three days I learned that his resolution had broken down. By the help of some busybody who had more kindness than intelligence, they patched up a miserable peace, and he went back to Ewell. And yet that peace was no peace. Maitland, perhaps the most sensitive man alive, had to endure the people in the neighbouring houses coming out upon the doorstep, eager to inquire what disaster was occurring in the next house. There were indeed legends in the Epsom Road that the mild looking writer beat and brutalised his wife, though most knew, by means of servants' chatter, what the actual facts were.
It was in this year that he did at last take an important step which cost him much anxiety before putting it through. His fears for his eldest child were so extreme that he induced his people in the north to give the child a home—the influence and example of the mother he could no longer endure for the boy. His wife parted with the child without any great difficulty, though of course she made it an occasion for abusing her husband in every conceivable way. He wrote to me in the late summer of that year: "I much want to see you, but just now it is impossible for me to get to town, and the present discomfort of everything here forbids me to ask you to come. I am straining every nerve to get some work done, for really it begins to be a question whether I shall ever again finish a book. Interruptions are so frequent and so serious. The so-called holiday has been no use to me; a mere waste of time—but I was obliged to go, for only in that way could I have a few weeks with the boy who, as I have told you, lives now at Mirefields and will continue to live there. I shall never let him come back to my own dwelling. Have patience with me, old friend, for I am hard beset." He ends this letter with: "If the boy grows up in clean circumstances, that will be my one satisfaction."
Whether he had peace or not he still worked prodigiously, though not perhaps for so many hours as was his earlier custom. But his health about this time began to fail. Much of this came from his habits of work, which were entirely incompatible with continued health of brain and body. He once said to Rivers: "Visitors—I fall sick with terror in thinking of them. If by rare chance any one comes here it means to me the loss of a whole day, a most serious matter." And his whole day was, of course, a long day. No man of letters can possibly sit for ever at the desk during eight hours, as was frequently "his brave custom" as he phrased it somewhere. If he had worked in a more reasonable manner, and had been satisfied with doing perhaps a thousand words a day, which is not at all an unreasonably small amount for a man who works steadily through most of the year, his health might never have broken down in the way it did. He had been moved in a way towards these hours, partly by actual desperation; partly by the great loneliness which had been thrust upon him; very largely by the want of money which prevented him from amusing himself in the manner of the average man, but chiefly by his sense of devotion to what he was doing. One of his favourite stories was that of Heyne, the great classical scholar, who was reported to work sixteen hours a day. This he did, according to the literary tradition, for the whole of his working life, except upon the day when he was married. He made, for that occasion only, a compact with the bride that he was to be allowed to work half his usual stint. And half Heyne's usual amount was Maitland's whole day, which I maintain was at least five hours too much. This manner of working, combined with his quintessential and habitual loneliness made it very hard, not only upon him, but also on his friends. It was quite impossible to see him, even about matters of comparative urgency, unless a meeting had been arranged beforehand. For even after his work was done, it was never done. He started preparing for the next day, turning over phrases in his mind, and considering the next chapter. I believe that in one point I was very useful to him in this matter, for I suggested to him, as I have done to others, that my own practice of finishing a chapter and then writing some two or three lines of the next one while my mind was warm upon the subject, was a vast help for the next day's labour.
Now the way he worked was this. After breakfast, at nine o'clock, he sat down and worked till one. Then he had his midday meal, and took a little walk. In the afternoon, about half-past three, he sat down again and wrote till six o'clock or a little after. Then he worked again from half-past seven to ten. I very much doubt whether there is any modern writer who has ever tried to keep up work at this rate who did not end in a hospital or a lunatic asylum, or die young. To my mind it shows, in a way that nothing else can, that he had no earthly business to be writing novels and spinning things largely out of his subjective mind, when he ought to have been dealing with the objective world, or with books. I myself write with a certain amount of ease. It may, indeed, be difficult to start, but when a thing is begun I go straight ahead, writing steadily for an hour, or perhaps an hour and a half—rarely any more. I have then done my day's work, which is now very seldom more than two thousand words, although on one memorable occasion I actually wrote thirteen thousand words with the pen in ten hours. Maitland used to write three or four of his slips, as he called them, which were small quarto pages of very fine paper, and on each slip there were twelve hundred words. Whether he wrote one, or two, or three slips in the day he took an equal length of time.
Among my notes I find one about a letter of his written in June 1895 to Mrs. Lake, declining an invitation to visit Dr. Lake's house which, no doubt, would have done him a great deal of good. He says: "Let me put before you an appalling list of things that have to be done, (1) Serial story (only begun) of about eighty thousand words. (2) Short novel for Cassell's to be sent in by end of October. Neither begun nor thought of. (3) Six short stories for theEnglish Illustrated—neither begun nor thought of. (4) Twenty papers forThe Sketchof a thousand words each. Dimly foreseen." Now to a man who had the natural gift of writing fiction and some reasonable time to do it in, this would seem no such enormous amount of work. For Maitland it was appalling, not so much, perhaps, on account of the actual amount of labour—if it had been one book—but for its variousness. He moved from one thing to another in fiction with great slowness.
As I have said, his health was not satisfactory. I shall have something to say about this in detail a little later. It was his own opinion, and that of certain doctors, that his lung was really affected by tuberculosis. Of this I had then very serious doubts. But he wrote in January 1897: "The weather and my lung are keeping me indoors at present, but I should much like to come to you. Waterpipes freezing—a five-pound note every winter to the plumber. Of course this is distinctly contrived by the building fraternity."
But things were not always as bad as may be gathered from a casual consideration of what I have said. In writing a life events come too thickly. For instance in 1897 he wrote to me: "Happily things are far from being as bad as last year." It appears that a certain lady, a Miss Greathead, about whom I really know nothing but what he told me, interested herself with the utmost kindness in his domestic affairs. He wrote to me: "Miss Greathead has been of very great use, and will continue to be so, I think. This house is to be given up in any case at Michaelmas, and another will not be taken till I see my way more clearly. Where I myself shall live during the autumn is uncertain. We must meet in the autumn. Work on—I have plans for seven books."
What dismal catastrophe or prolonged domestic uproar led to the final end of his married life in 1897 I do not know. Nor have I cared to inquire very curiously. The fact remains, and it was inevitable. Towards the end of the summer he made up his mind to go to Italy in September. He wrote to me: "All work in England is at an end for me just now. I shall be away till next spring—looking forward with immense delight to solitude. Of course I have a great deal to do as soon as I can settle, which I think will be at Siena first." As a matter of fact the very next letter of his which I possess came to me from Siena. He said: "I am so confoundedly hard at work upon the Novelists book that I find it very difficult to write my letters. Thank heaven, more than half is done. I shall go south about the tenth of November. It is dull here, and I should not stay for the pleasure of it. You know that I do not care much for Tuscany. The landscape is never striking about here, and one does not get the glorious colour of the south." So one sees how Italy had awakened his colour sense. As I have said, it was after his first visit to Italy that I noted, both in his books and his conversation, an acute awakening passion for colour. I think it grew in him to the end of his life. He ended this last letter to me with: "Well, well, let us get as soon as possible into Magna Graecia and the old dead world."
I said some time ago that I had finished all I had to write about the Victorian novelists, and yet I find there is something still to say of Dickens, and it is not against the plan of such a rambling book as this to put it down here and now. When he went to Siena to write his book of criticism it seemed to me a very odd choice of a place for such a piece of work, and indeed I wondered at his undertaking it at any price. It is quite obvious to all those who really understand his attitude towards criticism of modern things that great as his interest was in Dickens it would never have impelled him to write a strong, rough, critical book mostly about him had it not been for the necessity of making money. Indeed he expressed so much to me, and I find again in a letter that he wrote to Mrs. Rivers, with whom he was now on very friendly terms, "I have made a good beginning with my critical book, and long to have done with it, for of course it is an alien subject." No doubt there are at least two classes of Maitland's readers, those who understand the man and love his really characteristic work, and those who have no understanding of him at all, or any deep appreciation, but probably profess a great admiration for this book which they judge by the part on Dickens. I think that Andrew Lang was one of these, judging from a criticism that he once wrote on Maitland. I know that I have often heard people of intelligence express so high an opinion of the "Victorian Novelists" as to imply a lack of appreciation of his other work. The study is no doubt written with much skill, and with a good writer's command of his subject, and command of himself. That is to say, he manages by skill to make people believe he was sufficiently interested in his subject to write about it. To speak plainly he thought it a pure waste of time, except from the mere financial point of view, just as he did his cutting down of Mayhew's "Life of Dickens"—which, indeed, he considered a gross outrage, but professed his inability to refuse the "debauched temptation" of the hundred and fifty pounds offered him for the work.
It would be untrue if I seemed to suggest that he was not enthusiastic about Dickens, even more so than I am myself save at certain times and seasons. For me Dickens is a man for times and periods. I cannot read him for years, and then I read him all. What I do mean is that Maitland's love of this author, or of Thackeray, say, would never have impelled him to write. Yet there is much in the book which is of great interest, if it were only as matter of comment on Maitland's own self. The other day I came across one sentence which struck me curiously. It was where Maitland asked the reader to imagine Charles Dickens occupied in the blacking warehouse for ten years. He said: "Picture him striving vainly to find utterance for the thoughts that were in him, refused the society of any but boors and rascals, making perhaps futile attempts to succeed as an actor, and in full manhood measuring the abyss which sundered him from all he had hoped." When I came to the passage I put the book down and pondered for a while, knowing well that as Maitland wrote these words he was thinking even more of himself than of Dickens, and knowing that what was not true of his subject was most bitterly true of the writer. There is another passage somewhere in the book in which he says that Dickens could not have struggled for long years against lack of appreciation. This he rightly puts down to Dickens' essentially dramatic leanings. The man needed immediate applause. But again Maitland was thinking of himself, for he had indeed struggled many years without any appreciation save that of one or two friends and some rare birds among the public. I sometimes think that one of Maitland's great attractions to Dickens lay in the fact, which he himself mentions and enlarges on, that Dickens treated of the lower middle class and the class immediately beneath it. This is where the great novelist was at his best, and in the same way these were the only classes that Maitland really knew well. There is in several things a curious likeness between Dickens and Maitland, though it lies not on the surface. He says that Dickens never had any command of a situation although he was so very strong in incident. This was also a great weakness of Henry Maitland. It rarely happens that he works out a powerful and dramatic situation to its final limits, though sometimes he does succeed in doing so. This failure in dealing with great situations is peculiarly characteristic of most English novelists. I have frequently noticed in otherwise admirable books by men of very considerable abilities and attainments, with tolerable command of their own language, that they have on every occasion shirked the great dramatic scene just when it was expected and needed. Perhaps this is due to the peculiarmauvaise honteof the English mind. To write, and yet not to give oneself away, seems to be the aim of too many writers, though the great aim of all great writing is to do, or to try to do, what they avoid. The final analysis of dreadful passion and pain comes, perhaps, too close to them. They feel the glow but also a sensation of shame in the great emotions. There are times that Maitland felt this, though perhaps unconsciously. It is at any rate certain that, like so many people, he never actually depicted with blood and tears the frightful situations in which his life was so extraordinarily full.
It is an interesting passage in this book in which Maitland declares that great popularity was never yet attained by any one deliberately writing down to a low ideal. Above all men he knew that the artist was necessarily sincere, however poor an artist he might be. So Rousseau in his "Confessions" asserts that nothing really great can come from an entirely venal pen. I remember Maitland greatly enjoyed a story I told him about myself. While I was still a poverty-stricken and struggling writer my father, who had no knowledge whatever of the artistic temperament, although he had a very great appreciation of the best literature of the past, came to me and said seriously: "My boy, if you want money and I know you do, why do you not write 'Bow Bells Novelettes'? They will give you fifteen pounds for each of them." I replied to him, not I think without a tinge of bitterness at being so misunderstood: "My dear sir, it is as much a matter of natural endowment to be a damned fool as to be a great genius, and I am neither."
I have said that Maitland was most essentially a conservative, indeed in many ways a reactionary, if one so passive can be called that. I think the only actual revolutionary utterance of his mind which stands on record is in the "Victorian Novelists." It is when he is speaking of Mr. Casby of the shorn locks. He wrote: "This question of landlordism should have been treated by Dickens on a larger scale. It remains one of the curses of English life, and is likely to do so till the victims of house-owners see their way to cutting, not the hair, but the throats, of a few selected specimens."
It may seem a hard thing to say, but it is a fact, that any revolutionary sentiment there was in Maitland was excited, not by any native liberalism of his mind, or even by his sympathy for the suffering of others, but came directly out of his own personal miseries and trials. He had had to do with landlords who refused to repair their houses, and with houses which he looked upon as the result of direct and wicked conspiracy between builders and plumbers. But his words are capable of a wider interpretation than he might have given them.
If I had indeed been satisfied that this departure of Maitland's to Italy had meant the end of all the personal troubles of his marriage, I should have been highly satisfied, and not displeased with any part I might have taken in bringing about so desirable a result. But I must say that, knowing him as I did, I had very serious doubts. I was well aware of what a little pleading might do with him. It was in fact possible that one plaintive letter from his wife might have brought him back again. Fortunately it was never written. The woman was even then practically mad, and though immensely difficult to manage by those friends, such as Miss Greathead and Miss Kingdon, who interested themselves in his affairs and did much more for him at critical times than I had been able to do, she never, I think, appealed to her husband. But it was extraordinary, before he went to Italy, to observe the waverings of his mind. When he was keeping his eldest boy at Mirefields, supplying his wife with money for the house and living in lodgings at Salcombe, he wrote giving a rough account of what he might do, or might have to do, and ended up by saying: "Already, lodgings are telling on my nerves. I almost think I suffer less even from yells and insults in a house of my own." He even began to forget "the fifth-rate dabblers in the British gravy," for which fine phrase T.E. Brown is responsible. Maitland ought to have known it and did not. It was this perpetual wavering and weakness in him which perplexed his friends, and would indeed have alienated at last very many of them had it not been for the enduring charm in all his weakness. Nevertheless he was now out of England, and those who knew him were glad to think it was so. He was, perhaps, to have a better time. Nevertheless, even so, he wrote to his friend Lake: "Yes, it is true that I am going to glorious scenes, but do not forget that I go with much anxiety in my mind—anxiety about the little children, the chances of life and death, &c., &c. It is not like my Italian travel eight years ago, when—save for cash—I was independent. I have to make a good two hundred a year apart from my own living and casual expenses. If I live I think I shall do it—but there's no occasion for merriment." Yet if it was no occasion for mere merriment it was an occasion for joy. He knew it well, and so did those know who understand the description that Maitland gave in "Paternoster Row," of the sunset at Athens. It is very wonderfully painted, and as he describes it he makes Gifford say: "Stop, or I shall clutch you by the throat. I warned you before that I cannot stand these reminiscences." And this reminds me that when I wrote to him once from Naples, he replied: "You fill me with envious gloom." But now, when he had finished his pot-boiler of Siena, he was going south to Naples, his "most interesting city of the modern world," and afterwards farther south to the Calabrian Hills, and the old dead world of Magna Graecia.
As a result of that journey he gave us "Magna Graecia." This book of itself is a sufficient proof that he was by nature a scholar, an inhabitant of the very old world, a discoverer of the time of the Renaissance, a Humanist, a pure man of letters, and not by nature a writer of novels or romances. Although Maitland's scholarship was rather wide than deep save in one or two lines of investigation, yet his feeling for all those matters with which a sympathetic scholarship can deal was amazingly deep and true. Once in Calabria and the south he made and would make great discoveries. In spite of his poverty, which comes out so often in the description of his conditions upon this journey, he loved everything he found there with a strange and wonderful and almost pathetic passion. I remember on his return how he talked to me of the far south, and of his studies in Cassiodorus. One incident in "Magna Graecia," which is related somewhat differently from what he himself told me at the time, pleased him most especially. It was when he met two men and mentioned the name of Cassiodorus, whereupon they burst out with amazement, "Cassiodoria, why we know Cassiodoria!" That the name should be yet familiar to these live men of the south gratified his historic sense amazingly, and I can well remember how he threw his head back and shook his long hair with joy, and burst into one of his most characteristic roars of laughter. It was a simple incident, but it brought back the past to him.
Of all his books I think I love best "Magna Graecia." I always liked it much better than "The Meditations of Mark Sumner," and for a thousand reasons. For one thing it is a wholly true book. In "The Meditations," he falsified, in the literary sense, very much that he wrote. As I have said, it needs to be read with a commentary or guide. But "Magna Graecia" is pure Maitland; it is absolutely himself. It is, indeed, very nearly the Maitland who might have been if ill luck had not pursued him from his boyhood. Had he been a successful man on the lines that fate pointed out to him; had he succeeded greatly—or nobly, as he would have said—at the University; had he become a tutor, a don, a notable man among men of letters, still would he have travelled in southern Italy, and made his great pilgrimage to the Fonte di Cassiodorio. Till he knew south Italy his greatest joy had been in books. That he loved books we all know. There, of a certainty, "The Meditations" is a true witness. But how much more he loved the past and the remains of Greece and old, old Italy, "Magna Graecia" proves to us almost with tears.
I have said that Maitland was perhaps not a deep scholar, for scholarship nowadays must needs be specialised if it is to be deep. He had his odd prejudices, and hugged them. The hypothesis of Wolf concerning Homer visibly annoyed him. He preferred to think of the Iliad and the Odyssey as having been written by one man. This came out of his love of personality—the great ones of the past were as gods to him. All works of art, or books, or great events were wholly theirs, for they made even the world, and the world made them not. Though I know that he would have loved, in many ways, a book such as Gilbert Murray's "Rise of the Greek Epic," yet Murray's fatally decisive analysis of the Homeric legend would have pained him deeply. On one occasion I remember sending to him, partly as some reasonable ground for my own scepticism, but more, I think, out of some mischievous desire to plague him, a cleverly written pamphlet by a barrister which threw doubts upon the Shakespearean legend. He wrote to me: "I have read it with great indignation. Confound the fellow!—he disturbs me." But then he was essentially a conservative, and he lived in an alien time.
What he suffered, endured, and enjoyed in Magna Graecia and his old dead world, those know who have read with sympathy and understanding. It was truly as if the man, born in exile, had gone home at last—so much he loved it, so well he understood the old days. And now once more he came back to England to a happier life, even though great anxieties still weighed him down. Yet with some of these anxieties there was joy, for he loved his children and thought very much of them, hoping and fearing. One of the very first letters I received from him on his return from Italy is dated May 7, 1898, and was written from Henley in Arden: "You have it in your power to do me a most important service. Will you on every opportunity industriously circulate the news that I am going to live henceforth in Warwickshire? It is not strictly true, but a very great deal depends on my real abode being protected from invasion. If you could inspire a newspaper paragraph.... I should think it impudent to suppose that newspapers cared about the matter but that they have so often chronicled my movements, and if by any chance the truth got abroad it would mean endless inconvenience and misery to me. You shall hear more in detail when I am less be-devilled." All this requires little comment. Every one can understand how it was with him.
Later in the year he wrote to me: "My behaviour is bestial, but I am so hard driven that it is perhaps excusable. All work impossible owing to ceaseless reports of mad behaviour in London. That woman was all but given in charge the other day for assaulting her landlady with a stick. My solicitor is endeavouring to get the child out of her hands. I fear its life is endangered, but of course the difficulty of coming to any sort of arrangement with such a person is very great.... Indeed I wish we could have met before your departure for South Africa. My only consolation is the thought that something or other decisive is bound to have happened before you come back, and then we will meet as in the old days, please heaven. As for me, my literary career is at an end, and the workhouse looms larger day by day. I should not care, of course, but for the boys. A bad job, a bad job." But better times were perhaps coming for him. The child that he refers to as still in the hands of his mother was his youngest boy. Much of his life at this time is lost to me because much happened while I was absent in South Africa, where I spent some months in travel. I remember it pleased him to get letters from me from far-off places such as Buluwayo. He always had the notion that I was an extraordinarily capable person, an idea which only had some real truth if my practical capacities were compared with his strange want of them. By now he was not living in Warwickshire; indeed, if I remember rightly, on my return from Africa I found him at Godalming.
When I left Cape Town I was very seriously ill, and I remained ill for some months after my return home. Therefore it was some time till we met again. But when we did meet it was at Leatherhead, where he was in lodgings, pleased to be not very far from George Meredith, who indeed, I think, loved him. It was, of course, as I have said, through Maitland that I first met Meredith. For some reason which I do not know, Maitland gave him a volume of mine, "The Western Trail," which the old writer was much pleased with. Indeed it was in consequence of his liking for that book that he asked me to dine with him just before I went to Africa. Maitland was not present at this dinner, he was then still in Warwickshire; but Meredith spoke very affectionately of him, and said many things not unpleasing about his work. But probably Meredith, like myself, thought more of the man than he did of his books, which is indeed from my point of view a considerable and proper tribute to any writer. Sometimes the work of a man is greater than himself, and it seems a pity when one meets him; but if a man is greater than what he does one may always expect more, and some day may get it. It was apropos of Maitland, in some way which I cannot exactly recall, that Meredith, who was in great form that night, and wonderful in monologue—as he always was, more especially after he became so deaf that it was hard to make him hear—told us an admirably characteristic story about two poor schoolboys. It appeared, said Meredith, that these two boys, who came of a clever but poverty-stricken house, did very badly at their school because they were underfed. As Meredith explained this want of food led to a poor circulation. What blood these poor boys had was required for the animal processes of living, and did not enable them to carry on the work of the brain in the way that it should have done. However, it one day happened that during play one of these boys was induced to stand upon his head, with the result that the blood naturally gravitated to that unaccustomed quarter. His ideas instantly became brilliant—so brilliant, indeed, that a great idea struck him. He resumed his feet, rushed home, and communicated his discovery to his brother, and henceforward they conducted their studies standing upon their heads, and became brilliant and visibly successful men. Of course it was a curious thing, though not so curious when one reflects on the nature of men who are really men of letters, that Meredith and Henry Maitland had one thing tremendously in common, their love of words. In my conversation with Meredith that day I mentioned the fact that I had read a certain interview with him. I asked him whether it conveyed his sentiments with any accuracy. He replied mournfully: "Yes, yes,—no doubt the poor fellow got down more or less what I meant, but he used none of my beautiful words, none of my beautiful words!"
It does not seem unnatural to me to say something of George Meredith, since he had in many ways an influence on Maitland. Certainly when it came to the question of beautiful words they were on the same ground, if not on the same level. I myself have met during my literary life, and in some parts of the world where literature is little considered, many men who were reputed great, and indeed were great, it may be, in some special line, yet Meredith was the only man I ever knew to whom I would have allowed freely the word "great" the moment I met him, without any reservation. This I said to Maitland and he smiled, feeling that it was true. I remember he wrote to Lake about Meredith, saying: "You ought to read 'Richard Feverel,' 'Evan Harrington,' 'The Egoist,' and 'Diana of the Crossways.' These, in my opinion, are decidedly his best books, but you won't take up anything of his without finding strong work." And "strong work" with Maitland was very high praise indeed.
By now, when he was once more in Surrey, we did not meet so infrequently as had been the case after his second marriage and before the separation. It is true that his living out of London made a difference. Still I now went down sometimes and stayed a day with him. We talked once more in something of our old manner about books and words, the life of men of letters, and literary origins or pedigrees, always a strong point in him. It was ever a great joy to Maitland when he discovered the influence of one writer upon another. For instance, it was he who pointed out to me first that Balzac was the literary parent of Murger, as none indeed can deny who have read the chapter in "Illusions Perdues" where Lucien Rubempré writes and sings the drinking song with tears in his eyes as he sits by the bedside of Coralie, his dead mistress. This he did, as will be remembered, to obtain by the sale of the song sufficient money to bury her. From that chapter undoubtedly sprang the whole of the "Vie de Bohème," though to it Murger added much, and not least his livelier sense of humour. Again, I well remember how Maitland took down Tennyson—ever a joy to him, because Tennyson was a master of words though he had little enough to say—and showed me the influence that the "Wisdom of Solomon," in the Apocrypha, had upon some of the last verses of "The Palace of Art." No doubt some will not see in a mere epithet or two that Solomon's words had any connection with the work of the Poet-Laureate, whom I nicknamed, somewhat to Maitland's irritation, "the bourgeois Chrysostom." Yet I myself have no doubt that Maitland was right; but even if he were not he would still have taken wonderful joy in finding out the words of the two verses which run: "Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasant fall of water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains; these things made them swoon for fear." Of course he loved all rhythm, and found it sometimes in unexpected places, even in unconsidered writers. There was one passage he used to quote from Mrs. Ewing, who, indeed, was no small writer, which he declared to be wonderful, and in its way quite perfect: "He sat, patient of each succeeding sunset, until this aged world should crumble to its close." Then, again, he rejoiced when I discovered, though no doubt it had been discovered many times before, that his musical Keats owed so much to Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess."
It would be a very difficult question to ask, in some examination concerning English literature, what book in English by its very nature and style appealed most of all to Henry Maitland. I think I am not wrong when I say that it was undoubtedly Walter Savage Landor's "Imaginary Conversations." That book possesses to the full the two great qualities which most delighted him. It is redolent of the past, and those classic conversations were his chief joy; but above and beyond this true and great feeling of Landor's for the past classic times there was the most eminent quality of Landor's rhythm. I have many times heard Maitland read aloud from "Æsop and Rhodope," and I have even more often heard him quote without the book the passage which runs: "There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope, that are not soon mute, however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated of which the echo is not faint at last." Maitland knew, and none knew better, that in a triumphant passage there is triumphant rhythm, and in a passage full of mourning or melancholy the accompanying and native rhythm is both melancholy and mournful. How many times, too, I have heard him quote, again from Landor, "Many flowers must perish ere a grain of corn be ripened."
All this time the wife was I know not where, nor did I trouble much to inquire. Miss Kingdon and Miss Greathead looked after her very patiently, and did good work for their friend Maitland, as he well knew. But although he was rejoiced to be alone for a time, or at any rate relieved from the violent misery of her presence, I came once more to discern, both from things he said and from things he wrote to me, that a celibate life began again to oppress him gravely. Yet it was many months before he at last confided in me fully, and then I think he only did it because he was certain that I was the one friend he possessed with whom he could discuss any question without danger of moral theories or prepossessions interfering with the rightful solution. Over and beyond this qualification for his confidence there was the fact that I knew him, whereas no one else did. To advise any man it is necessary to know the man who is to be advised, for wisdomin vacuoorin vitromay be nothing but foolishness. Others would have said to him, "Look back on your experience and reflect. Have no more to do with women in any way." No doubt it would have been good advice, but it would have been impossible for him to act on it. Therefore when he at last opened his mind to me and told me of certain new prospects which were disclosing themselves to him, I was not only sympathetic but encouraging. It seems that in the year 1898 he first met a young French lady of Spanish origin with whom he had previously corresponded for some little time. Her name was Thérèse Espinel. She belonged to a very good family, perhaps somewhat above thehaute bourgeoisie, and was a woman of high education and extreme Gallic intelligence. As I came to know her afterwards I may also say that she was a very beautiful woman, and possessed, what I know to have been a very great charm to Maitland, as it always was to me, a very sweet and harmonious voice—it was perhaps the most beautiful human voice for speaking that I have ever heard. Years afterwards I took her to see George Meredith. He kissed her hand and told her she had beautiful eyes. As she was partly Spanish she knew Spanish well. Her German was excellent, her English that of an educated Englishwoman. It appears that she came across Maitland's "Paternoster Row," and it occurred to her that it should be translated into French. She got into correspondence with him about this book, and in 1898 came over to England and made his acquaintance. It is curious to remember that on one other occasion Maitland got into correspondence with another French lady, who insisted emphatically that he was the one person whom she could trust to direct her aright in life—a notion at the time not a little comical to me, and also to the man who was to be this soul's director.
When these two people met and proved mutually sympathetic it was not unnatural that he should tell her something of his own life, especially when one knows that so much of their earlier talks dealt with "Paternoster Row" and with its chief character, so essentially Henry Maitland. He gave her, indeed, very much of his story, yet not all of it, not, indeed, the chief part of it, since the greatest event in his life was the early disaster which had maimed and distorted his natural career and development. Yet even so much as he told her of his first and second marriage—for he by no means concealed from the beginning that he was yet married—very naturally engaged her womanly compassion. Adding this to her real and fervent admiration of his literary powers, his personality and story seem to have inclined her to take an even tenderer interest in him. She was certainly a bright and wonderful creature, although not without a certain native melancholy, and possessed none of those conventional ideas which wreck some lives and save others from disaster. Therefore I was not much surprised, although I had not been told everything that had happened, when Maitland wrote to me that he contemplated taking a very serious step. It was indeed a very serious one, but so natural in the circumstances, as I came to hear of them, that I myself made no strictures on his scheme. It was no other than the proposal that he and this new acquaintance of his should cast in their lot together and make the world and her relatives believe that they were married. No doubt when I was consulted I found it in some ways difficult to give a decision. What might be advisable for the man might not be so advisable for his proposed partner. He was making no sacrifice, and she was making many. Nevertheless, I hold the view that these matters are matters for the people concerned and are nobody else's business. The thing to be considered from my point of view was whether Maitland would be able to support her, and whether she was the kind of woman who would retain her hold upon him and give him some peace and happiness towards the end of his life. In thinking over these things I remembered that the other two women had not been ladies. They had not been educated. They understood nothing of the world which was Maitland's world, and, as I knew, a disaster was bound to come in both cases. But now it appeared to me that there was a possible hope for the man, and a hope that such a step might almost certainly end in happiness, or at any rate in peace. That something of the kind would occur I knew, and even if this present affair went no farther, yet some other woman would have to be dealt with even if she did not come into his life for a long while. Thérèse Espinel was at any rate, as I have said, beautiful and accomplished, essentially of the upper classes, and, what was no small thing from Maitland's point of view, a capable and feeling musician. Of such a woman Maitland had had only a few weeks' experience many years before. I thought the situation promised much, and raised no moral objection to the step he proposed to take as soon as I saw he was strongly bent in one direction. For one thing I was sure of, and it was that anything whatever which put a definite obstacle in the way of his returning to his wife was a thing to be encouraged. It was, in fact, absolutely a duty; and I care not what comments may be made upon my attitude or my morals.
That Maitland would have gone back to his wife eventually I have very little doubt, and of course nothing but disaster and new rage and misery would have come of his doing so. For these reasons I did everything in my power to help and encourage him in a matter which gave him extreme nervousness and anxiety. I know he said to me that the step he proposed to take early in 1899 grew more and more serious the more he thought of it. Again, I think there was no overwhelming passion at the back of his mind. Yet it was a true and sincere affection, of that I am sure. But there were many difficulties. It appears that the girl's father had died a few months before, and as there was some money in the family this fact involved certain serious difficulties about the future signing of names when all the legal questions concerned with the little property that there was came to be settled. Then he asked me what sort of hope was there that this pretended marriage would not become known in England. He said: "I fear it certainly would." When I reflect now upon the innumerable lies and subterfuges that I myself indulged in with the view of preventing anybody knowing of this affair in London, I can see he was perfectly justified in his fears, for when the step was at last taken I was continually being asked about Maitland's wife. Naturally enough, it was said by one set of people that she was with him in France; while it was said by others, much better informed, that she was still in England. I was sometimes requested to settle this difficult matter, and I did find it so difficult that at times I was compelled to state the actual truth on condition that what I said was regarded as absolutely confidential.
He and Thérèse did, indeed, discuss the possibility of braving the world with the simple truth, but that he knew would have been a very tremendous step for her. The mother was yet living, and she played a strange part in this little drama—a part not so uncommonly played as many might think. She became at last her daughter'sconfidanteand learned the whole of Maitland's story, and although she opposed their solution of the trouble to the very best of her power, when it became serious she at last gave way and consented to any step that her daughter wished to take, provided that there was no public scandal.
Of course, many people will regard with horror the part that her mother played in this drama, imputing much moral blame. There are, however, times when current morality has not the value which it is commonly given, and I think Madame Espinel acted with great wisdom, seeing that nothing she could have pleaded would have altered matters. Her daughter was no longer a child; she was a grown-up woman, not without determination, and entirely without religious prejudice, a thing not so uncommon with the intellectual Frenchwoman. Certainly there are some who will say that a public scandal was better than secrecy, and in this I am at one with them. Nevertheless there was much to consider, for there would certainly have been what Henry himself called "a horrific scandal," seeing that the family had many aristocratic relatives. Maitland, in fact, stated that it would be taking an even greater responsibility than he was prepared to shoulder if this were done. He wrote to me asking for my opinion and counsel, especially at the time when there was a vague and probably unfounded suggestion that he might be able to get a divorce from his wife. It appears more than one person wrote to him anonymously about her. I am sure he never believed what they told him, nor do I. No doubt from some points of view I have been very unjust to his wife, though I have tried to hold the balance true, but I never saw, or heard from Maitland, anything to suggest that his wife was not all that she should have been in one way, just as she was everything she should not have been in another. Seeing that Maitland would have given ten years of his life and every penny he possessed to secure a divorce, it is certain that he absolutely disbelieved what he was told. In fact, if he could have got a divorce by consent or collusion he would have gladly engaged to pay her fifty pounds a year during his life, whatever happened and whatever she did. But of course this could not be said openly, either by myself or by him, and nothing came out of the suggestion, whoever made it first.
I proposed to him one afternoon when I was with him that he should make some inquiries as to what an American divorce would do for him. Whether it were valid or not, it might perhaps make things technically easier and enable him to marry in France with some show of legality. At the moment he paid no attention to what I said, or seemed to pay no attention, but it must have sunk into his mind, for a few days afterwards he wrote to me and said: "Is it a possible thing to get a divorce in some other country as things are?—a divorce which would allow of a legal marriage, say, in that same country. I have vaguely heard such stories, especially of Heligoland. The German novelist, Sacher Masoch, is said to have done it—said so by his first wife, who now lives in Paris." Upon receiving this letter of his I wrote and reminded him of what I had said about American divorces, and gave him all the information that I had in my mind and could collect at the moment, especially mentioning Dakota or Nevada as two States of the United States which had the most reasonable and wide-minded views of marriage and divorce. For this letter he wrote and thanked me heartily, but quoted from a letter of Thérèse which seemed to indicate, not unclearly, that she preferred him to take no steps which might lead to long legal processes. They should join their fortunes together, taking their chance as to the actual state of affairs being discovered afterwards. His great trouble, of course, was the absolute necessity of seeming in Paris to be legally married, out of regard for her relatives. Besides these connections of her family, she knew a very great number of important people in Paris and Madrid, and many of them should receive by custom thelettres de faire part. With some little trouble the financial difficulties with regard to the signing of documents were got over for the moment by a transfer of investments from Thérèse to her mother. On this being done their final determination was soon taken, and they determined, after this "marriage" was completed, to leave Paris and live somewhere in the mountains, perhaps in Savoy; and he then wrote to me: "You will be the only man in London who knows this story. Absolute silence—it goes without saying. If ever by a slip of the tongue you let a remark fall that my wife was dead,tant mieux; only no needless approach of the topic. A grave, grave responsibility mine. She is a woman to go through fire for, as you saw. An incredible woman to one who has spent his life with such creatures.... I have lately paid a bill of one pound for damage done by my wife, damage in a London house where she lived till turned out by the help of the police. Incredible stories about her. She attacked the landlord with a stick, and he had seriously to defend himself. Then she tore up shrubs and creepers in the garden. No, I have had my time of misery. It must come to an end."
In the first part of this letter which I have just quoted he says, "She is a woman to go through fire for, as you saw." This expression does not mean that I had ever met her, but that I had seen sufficient of her letters to recognise the essential fineness of her character. I urged him once more to a rapid decision, and he promised that he would let nothing delay it. Nevertheless it is perfectly characteristic of him that, having now finally decided there should be no attempt at any divorce, he proceeded instantly to play with the idea again. No doubt he was being subjected to many influences of different kinds, for I find that he sent me a letter in which he told me that it seemed to be ascertained that an American divorce and remarriage would satisfy French law. If that was so, he would move heaven and earth to get all the necessary details of the procedure. He had written to a friend in Baltimore who knew all about such matters, but he implored me to find out if there were not some book which gave all possible information about the marriage and divorce laws of all the separate States of North America. He asked: "Do you really think that I can go and present myself for a divorce without the knowledge of the other person? The proceedings must be very astounding." His knowledge of America was not equal to my own, much as I had spoken to him about that country. The proceedings in divorce courts in some of the United States have long ceased to astonish anybody. He told me, however, that he had actually heard of American lawyers advertising for would-be divorcers, and he prayed devoutly that he could get hold of such a man. I did my best to rake up for him every possible piece of information on the subject, and no doubt his friend in Baltimore, of whom I know nothing, on his part sent him information. It seemed, however, that any proceeding would involve some difficulties, and on discovering this he instantly dropped the whole scheme. I find that he wrote to me afterwards, saying: "It is probable that I leave England at the end of April. Not one syllable about me to any one, of course. The step is so bold as to be really impudent, and I often have serious fears, not, of course, on my own account. You shall hear from abroad.... If some day one could know tranquillity and all meet together decently."
After many qualms, hot and cold fits, despondency, and inspirations of courage, he at last took the decisive step. In May he was in Paris, and I think it was in that month that the "marriage" took place. I am singularly ignorant of the details, for he seemed to be somewhat reluctant to speak of them, and I do not even know whether any actual ceremony took place or not, nor am I much concerned to know. They were at any rate together, and no doubt tolerably happy. He wrote me nothing either about this subject or anything else for some time, and I was content to hear nothing. I do know, however, that they spent the summer together in Switzerland, moving from Trient, near the Col de Balme, to Locarno, on Lago Maggiore. He wrote to me once from the Rhône Valley saying that as a result of his new domestic peace and comfort, even though it were but the comfort of Swiss hotels, and owing also to the air of the mountains, which always suited him very well, he was in much better health than he had been for years past. His lung, the perpetual subject of his preoccupation, appears to have given him little trouble, although, knowing that its state was attributable in some measure to emphysema, he wrote to me for detailed explanations of that particular complaint. During the whole of this time, the only honeymoon he had ever had, he was, however, obliged to work very hard, for he was in ceaseless trouble about money. In his own words, he had to "publish furiously" in order to keep pace with his expenses. There was his wife in England, and there were also his children to be partially provided for. But for the time all went well with him. There were fears of all sorts, he told me, but they were to be forgotten as much as possible. He and Thérèse returned to Paris for the winter.
During this time, or just about this time, which was when the South African War was raging, I wrote for a weekly journal, which I used to send regularly to Paris with my own contributions marked in it. This temporary aberration into journalism so late in my literary life interested him much. He wrote to me: "In the old garret days who would have imagined the strange present? I suppose you have now a very solid footing in journalism as well as in fiction. Of course it was wise to get it, as it seems more than probable that the novelists will be starved out very soon. With Europe in a state of war, which may last for a decennium, there will be little chance for story-tellers." Then, in spite of his new happiness, his inherited or acquired pessimism got the worst of him. He adds: "I wish I had died ten years ago. I should have gone away with some hope for civilisation, of which I now have none. One's choice seems to be between death in the workhouse, or by some ruffian's bullet. As for those who come after one, it is too black to think about."
No doubt this was only his fun, or partly such. There is one phrase in Boswell's "Johnson" that he always loved amazingly; it is where Johnson declares that some poor creature had "no skill in inebriation." Maitland perhaps had no skill in inebriation when he drank at the fountain of literary pessimism, for indeed when he did drink there his views were fantastic and preposterous. As a matter of fact he was doing very well, in spite of the workhouse in Marylebone Road, from which he was now far enough. There might be little chance for story-tellers, yet his financial position, for the first time in his life, was tolerably sound. One publisher even gave him three hundred pounds on account for a book which I think was "The Best of all Things." For this book he also received five hundred dollars from America; so, for him, or indeed for almost any writer, he was very well paid. Little as the public may believe it, a sum of three hundred pounds on account of royalties is as much as any well-known man gets—unless by some chance he happens to be one of the half-dozen amazingly successful writers in the country, and they are by no means the best. It has been at my earnest solicitation that he had at last employed an agent, though, with his peculiar readiness to receive certain impressions, he had not gone to one I recommended, but to another, suddenly mentioned to him when he was just in the mood to act as I suggested. This agent worked for him very well, and Maitland was now getting five guineas a thousand words for stories, which is also a very good price for a man who does really good work. It is true that very bad work is not often well paid, but the very best work of all is often not to be sold at any price. About this time I obtained for him a very good offer for a book, and he wrote to me: "It is good to know that people care to make offers for my work. What I aim at is to get a couple of thousand pounds safely invested for my two boys. Probably I shall not succeed—and if I get the money, what security have I that it will be safe in a year or two? As likely as not the Bank of England will lie in ruins." After all, I must confess that he was skilful in the inebriation of his pessimism, for to me these phrases are delightful, in spite of the half-belief with which they were uttered.
During the last winter of 1900 he wrote to me from Paris that he proposed to be in London for a few days in the spring of 1901, but much depended on the relation, which seemed to him highly speculative, between the money he received and the money he was obliged to spend. Apparently he found Paris anything but cheap. According to his own account, he was therefore in perpetual straits, in spite of the good prices he now obtained for his work. He added in this letter: "I hope to speak with you once more, before we are both shot or starved." This proposal to come across the Channel in the spring ended in smoke. He was not able to afford it, or was reluctant to move, or more likely reluctant to expose himself to any of the troubles still waiting for him in England. So long as his good friends who were looking after his wife, and more or less looking after his children, could do their work and save him from anxiety, he was not likely to wish his peace disturbed by any discussions on the subject. When he had decided not to come he sent me a letter in which one of the paragraphs reads: "I am still trying to believe that there is a King of England, and cannot take to the idea, any more than to the moral and material ruin which seems to be coming upon the old country. Isn't it astounding that we have the courage to write books? We shall do so, I suppose, until the day when publishers find their business at an end. I fear it may not be far off." At this moment, being more or less at peace, and working with no peculiar difficulty, he declared himself in tolerable health, although he affirmed he coughed a great deal. It seemed to me that he did not think so much about his health as he had done before and was to do later, and he displayed something like his old real nature with regard to literary enterprise. It was just about this time that he reminded me of his cherished project for a story of the sixth century A.D. This, of course, was the book published after his death, "Basil." He had then begun to work upon it, and said he hoped to finish it that summer. This cheered him up wonderfully, and he ended one letter to me with: "Well, well, let us be glad that again we exchange letters with address other than that of workhouse or hospital. It is a great demand, this, to keep sane and solvent—I dare hope for nothing more." Occasionally in his letters there seemed to me to be slight indications that he was perhaps not quite so happy as he wished to be.
During that summer my wife and I were in Switzerland, and he wrote to me, while we were on the Lake of Geneva, from Vernet-les-Bains in the Eastern Pyrenees. By this time Thérèse and I, although we had never met, were accustomed to send messages to each other. It was a comfort to me to feel that he was with some one of whom I could think pleasantly, and whom I much wished to know. We had, indeed, proposed to meet somewhere on the Continent, but that fell through, partly because we were obliged to return to England earlier than we had proposed. Nevertheless, although we did not meet, and though I had some fears for him, I was tolerably happy about him and his affairs, and certainly did not anticipate the new crisis which was approaching, nor the form it would take.
It was Maitland's custom to rely for advice and assistance on particular people at certain crises. In some cases he now appealed to Rivers; in very many he appealed to me; but when his health was particularly involved it was his custom to relapse desperately on his friend Dr. Lake. He even came to Lake on his return from Magna Graecia when he had taken Potsdam on his way home to England. He had gone there at Schmidt's strong invitation and particular desire that he should taste for once a real Westphalian ham. It is a peculiarly savage and not wholly safe custom of Germans to eat such hams uncooked, and Maitland, having fallen in with this custom, though he escaped trichinosis, procured for himself a peculiarly severe attack of indigestion. He came over from Folkestone to Lake in order to get cured. The ham apparently had not given him the lasting satisfaction which he usually got out of fine fat feeding. As I have said, Lake and Maitland had been friends from the time that Maitland's father bought his chemist's business from the Doctor's father. For they had been schoolfellows together at Hinkson's school in Mirefields. Nevertheless it was only in 1894 that they renewed their old acquaintance. Dr. Lake saw him once at Ewell, soon after a local practitioner had frightened Maitland very seriously by diagnosing phthisis and giving a gloomy prognosis. On that occasion Lake went over Maitland's chest and found very little wrong. Technically speaking, there was perhaps a slight want of expansion at the apex of each lung, and apparently some emphysema at the base of the left one, but certainly no active tubercular mischief.
I speak of these things more or less in detail because health played so great a part in the drama of his life; as, indeed, it does in most lives. It is not the casual thing that novelists mostly make of it. It is a perpetually acting cause. Steady ill-health, even more than actually acute disease, is what helps to bring about most tragedies. When Lake made his diagnosis, with which I agree, though there is something else I must presently add to it, he took him to London, that he might see a notable physician, in order to reassure Maitland's mind thoroughly. They went together to Dr. Prior Smithson. I have never noted that it was Maitland who introduced Dr. Lake to Rivers. When Lake had arranged this London visit Maitland wrote to Rivers saying: "I am coming up to town to see a scoundrel specialist in diseases of the lung, who is as likely as not to upset all my plans of life. But don't be afraid of my company; you shall have no pathology. There will be with me an old schoolfellow of mine, a country surgeon, in whose house I am staying at present. He would think it very delightful to meet you." They did meet upon that occasion, when Dr. Smithson confirmed Lake's diagnosis and temporarily did a great deal to reassure Maitland. From my own medical knowledge and my general study of Maitland, combined with what some of his doctors have told me, I have come to the conclusion that he did suffer from pulmonary tuberculosis, but that it was practically arrested at an early stage. However, even arrested tuberculosis in many cases leaves a very poor state of nutrition. That his joy in food remained with him, though with a few lapses, points strongly to the conclusion that at this time tuberculosis was certainly not very active in him. He always needed much food, and food, especially, which he liked and desired. To want it was a tragedy, as I shall show presently.
In 1897 when he went down to Salcombe he reported to Lake a great improvement in health, saying that his cough was practically gone, and that of course the wonderful weather accounted for it. He ate heartily, and even walked five miles a day without fatigue. He added: "The only difficulty is breathing through the nose. The other day a traction engine passed me on the road, and the men upon it looked about them wondering where the strange noises came from. It was my snoring! All the nasal cavities are excoriated! But I shall get used to this. I have a suspicion that it isnotthe lung that accounts for this difficulty, for it has been the same ever since I can remember." By this he probably meant merely that it had lasted a long time. There was a specific reason for it. From Salcombe he reported to Lake that he had recovered a great deal of weight, but that for some time his wheezing had been worse than ever when the weather got very bad. He wrote: "Then again a practical paradox that frenzies one, for sleep came when bad weather prevented me from being so much out of doors!" All this he did not understand, but it is highly probable that at that time he had a little actual tubercular mischief, and a slight rise of temperature. As frequently happens, enforced rest in the house did for him what nothing else could do. But his health certainly was something of a puzzle. In 1898, when he was in Paris with Thérèse, he saw a Dr. Piffard, apparently not a lung specialist, but, as I am told, a physician of high standing. This doctor spoke rather gravely to him, and of course told him that he was working much too hard, for he was still keeping up his ridiculous habit of writing eight hours a day. He said that there was a moist spot in the right lung, with a little chronic bronchitis, and that the emphysema was very obvious. He had, too, some chronic rheumatism, and also on the right side of his forehead what Maitland described as a patch of psoriasis. Psoriasis, however, is not as a rule unilateral, and it was due to something else. This patch had been there for about a year, and was slowly getting worse. Dr. Piffard prescribed touching him under the right clavicle with the actual cautery, and for the skin gave him some subcutaneous injections of an arsenical preparation. He fed him with eggs, milk, and cod-liver oil, ordering much sleep and absolute rest. During this treatment he improved somewhat, and owned that he was really better. The cough had become trifling, his breath was easier and his sleep very good. His strength had much increased. He also declared that he saw a slight amelioration in the patch of so-called psoriasis. The truth is, I think, that nearly all this improvement was due to making him rest and eat. No doubt very much of his ill-health was the result of his abnormal habits, although there was something else at the back of it. For one thing he had rarely taken sufficient exercise, the exercise necessary for his really fine physique. As I have said, he never played a game in his life after he left Hinkson's school in Mirefields. Cricket he knew not. Football was a mystery to him, and a brutal mystery at that. It is true that occasionally he rowed in a boat at the seaside, for he did so at Salcombe when his eldest boy was there with him, but any kind of game or sport he actually loathed. It was a surprise to me to find out that Rivers, while he was at Folkestone, actually persuaded him to take to a bicycle. He even learned to like it. Rivers told Lake that he rode not badly, and with great dignity; and as Rivers rode beside him he heard him murmur: "Marvellous proceedings! Was the like ever seen?"
However, the time was now coming when he was to appeal to Lake once more. In 1901 he had proposed to come over to England and see me, but he said that the doctor in Paris had forbidden him to go north, rather indicating the south for him. He wrote to me: "Now I must go to the centre of France—I don't think the Alps are possible—and vegetate among things which serve only to remind me that here isnotEngland. Then, again, I had thought night and day of an English potato, of a slice of English meat, of tarts and puddings, and of teacakes. Night and day had I looked forward to ravening on these things. Well, well!" But he did at last come back to England for some time.
There is no doubt that the feeding in his French home was not fat, or fine, or confused feeding. Probably the notion of a Scotch haggis would give any French cook a fit of apoplexy. Just before he did come over from Paris, Lake had a letter from him which was much like the one he wrote to me: "Best wishes for the merry, merry time,—if merriment can be in the evil England of these days. I wish I could look in upon you at Christmas. I should roar with joy at an honest bit of English roast beef. Could you post a slice in a letter?—with gravy?" Lake said to his wife when he received this letter: "Why, this is written by a starving man!" Naturally enough, although I heard from him comparatively seldom, I had always been aware of these hankerings of his for England and English food. He did not take kindly to exile, or to the culinary methods of a careful French interior. Truly as he loved the Latin countries, there was much in their customs which troubled him greatly, and the food was his especial trouble when he was not being fed in Italy with oil and Chianti. I find occasional melancholy letters of his upon the subject, when he indulged in dithyrambs about the fine abundance of feeding in England—eggs and bacon and beer. There was no doubt he was not living in the way he should have lived. At any rate, it was about this time—although I did not know it, as I was either in the North of England or abroad, I forget which—that he came once more to Lake, and was found standing on his doorstep tolerably early in the morning. According to the doctor, on his arrival from Paris he was in the condition of a starved man. The proof of this is very simple. At that time, and for long after, Rivers was living at Folkestone, and as Lake's house was at that time full he was unable to entertain Maitland for long, and it was proposed that he should go over for a time and stay at Folkestone. When Lake examined Maitland he was practically no more than a skeleton, but after one week in Rivers' house he had picked up no less than seven pounds weight. There were then no physical signs of active mischief in the lungs except the remaining and practically incurable patch of emphysema. Although this sudden increase of weight does not entirely exclude tuberculosis, it is yet rather uncommon for so rapid an increase to take place in such cases, and it rather puts tuberculosis out of court as being in any way the real cause of much of his ill-health. Now of all this I knew very little, or next door to nothing, until afterwards. Although I was aware that he was uneasy about many things, I had not gathered that there was anything seriously wrong with him except his strong and almost irresistible desire to return to England. I now know that his reticence in speaking to me was due to his utter inability to confess that his third venture had almost come to disaster over the mere matter of the dining-table. I knew so much of the past that he feared to tell me of the present, though I do not think he could have imagined that I should say anything to make him feel that he had once again been a sad fool for not insisting good-humouredly on having the food he wanted. But he was ashamed to speak to me of his difficulties, fearing, perhaps, that I might not understand, or understand too well.