The private life of Henry Maitland: A record dictated by J. H.

A RECORD DICTATED BY J. H.
REVISED AND EDITED BY MORLEY ROBERTS
HODDER & STOUGHTON NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1912, By George H. Doran Company
INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF MY WIFE

This book was dictated by J.H. mostly in my presence, and I consider it well worth publishing. No doubt Henry Maitland is not famous, though since his death much has been written of him. Most of it, however, outside of literary criticism, has been futile and uninstructed. But J.H. really knew the man, and here is what he has said of him. We shall be told, no doubt, that we have used Maitland's memory for our own ends. Let that be as it may; such an accusation can only be met by denial. When there is no proof of guilt, there may well be none of innocence. The fact remains that Henry Maitland's life was worth doing, even in the abbreviated and censored form in which it now appears. The man was not eminent, only because he was not popular and did not live long enough. One gets to eminence nowadays by longevity or by bad work. While Maitland starved, X or Y or Z may wallow in a million sixpences. In this almost childishly simple account of a man's life there is the essence of our literary epoch. Here is a writing man put down, crudely it may be, but with a certain power. There is no book quite like it in the English tongue, and the critic may take what advantage he will of that opening for his wit.
At any rate here we have a portrait emerging which is real. Henry Maitland stands on his feet, and on his living feet. He is not a British statue done in the best mortuary manner. There is far too little sincere biography in English. We are a mealy-mouthed race, hypocrites by the grave and the monument. Ten words of natural eulogy, and another ten of curious and sympathetic comment, may be better than tons of marble built up by a hired liar with his tongue in his cheek. In the whole book, which cannot be published now, there are things worth waiting for. I have cut and retrenched with pain, for I wanted to risk the whole, but no writer or editor is his own master in England. I am content to have omitted some truth if I have permitted nothing false. The reader who can say truly, I should not have liked to meet Henry Maitland, is a fool or a fanatic, or more probably both. Neither of those who are primarily responsible for this little book is answerable to such. We do not desire his praise, or even his mere allowance. Such as are interested in the art of letters, and in those who practise in the High Court of Literature, will perceive what we had in our minds. Here is life, not a story or a constructed diary, and the art with which it is done is a secondary matter. If Henry Maitland bleeds and howls, so did Philoctetes, and the outcry of Henry Maitland is more pertinent to our lives. For all life, even at its best, is tragic; and there is much in Maitland's which is dramatically common to our world as we see it and live in it. If we have lessened him at times from the point of view of a hireling in biographic praise, we have set him down life size all the same; and as we ask no praise, we care for no blame. Here is the man.