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

by Morley Roberts

CHAPTER XIII

For ever on looking backwards one is filled with regrets, and one thing I regret greatly about Henry Maitland is that, though I might perhaps have purchased his little library, the books he had accumulated with so much joy and such self-sacrifice, I never thought of this until it was too late. Books made up so much of his life, and few of his had not been bought at the cost of what others would consider pleasure, or by the sacrifice of some sensation which he himself would have enjoyed at the time. Now I possess none of his books but those he gave me, save only the little "Anthologia Latina" which Thérèse herself sent to me. This was a volume in which he took peculiar delight, perhaps even more delight than he did in the Greek anthology, which I myself preferred so far as my Greek would then carry me. Many times I have seen him take down the little Eton anthology and read aloud. Now I myself may quote:

Animula vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Qua nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula, rigida, nudula——

I believe his library was sold in Paris, for now that Thérèse had no settled home it was impossible to carry it about with her. Among these books were all those beautifully bound volumes which he had obtained as prizes at Moorhampton College, and others which he had picked up at various times in the various bookshops of London, so many of which he speaks of in "The Meditations"—his old Gibbon in quarto, and some hundreds of others chosen with joy because they appealed to him in a way only a book-lover can understand. He had a strange pleasure in buying old copies of the classics, which shows that he was perhaps after all more of a bookman than a scholar. He would perhaps have rather possessed such a copy of Lucretius as is on my own shelves, which has no notes but is wonderfully printed, than the newest edition by the newest editor. He was conscious that his chief desire was literature rather than scholarship. Few indeed there are who know the classics as well as he did, who read them for ever with so much delight.

Maitland, for an Englishman, knew many languages. His Greek, though not extraordinarily deep, was most familiar. He could read Aristophanes lying on the sofa, thoroughly enjoying it, and rarely rising to consult Liddell and Scott, a book which he adored in the most odd fashion, perhaps because it knew so much Greek. There was no Latin author whom he could not read fluently. I myself frequently took him up a difficult passage in Juvenal and Persius, and rarely, if ever, found him at fault, or slow to give me help. French he knew very nearly as well as a Frenchman, and spoke it very fluently. His Italian was also very good, and he spoke that too without hesitation. Spanish he only read; I do not think he often attempted to speak it. Nevertheless he read "Don Quixote" in the original; and his Italian can be judged by the fact that he read Dante's "Divina Commedia" almost as easily as he read his Virgil. German too was an open book to him, and he had read most of the great men who wrote in it, understanding even the obscurities of "Titan." I marked down the other day many of the books in which he chiefly delighted, or rather, let me say, many of the authors. Homer, of course, stood at the head of the list, for Homer he knew as well as he knew Shakespeare. His adoration for Shakespeare was, indeed, I think, excessive, but the less said of that the better, for I have no desire to express fully what I think concerning the general English over-estimation of that particular author. I do, however, understand how it was that Maitland worshipped him so, for whatever may be thought of Shakespeare's dramatic ability, or his characterisation, or his general psychology, there can be no dispute about his having been a master of "beautiful words." Milton he loved marvellously, and sometimes he read his sonnets to me. Much of "Lycidas" he knew by heart, and some of "Il Penseroso." Among the Latins, Virgil, Catullus, and Tibullus were his favourites, although he took a curious interest in Cicero, a thing in which I was never able to follow him. I once showed to Maitland in the "Tusculan Disputations" what Cicero seemed to think a good joke. It betrayed such an extraordinary lack of humour that I was satisfied to leave the "Disputations" alone henceforth. The only Latin book which I myself introduced to Maitland was the "Letters" of Pliny. They afterwards became great favourites with him because some of them dealt with his beloved Naples and Vesuvius. Lucian's "Dialogues" he admired very much, finding them, as indeed they are, always delightful; and it was very interesting to him when I showed him to what extent Disraeli was indebted to Lucian in those clever jeux d'esprit "Ixion in Heaven," "Popanilla," and "The Infernal Marriage." The "Golden Ass" of Apuleius he knew almost by heart. Petronius he read very frequently; it contained some of the actual life of the old world. He knew Diogenes Laertius very well, though he read that author, as Montaigne did, rather for the light he throws upon the private life of the Greeks than for the philosophy in the book; and he frequently dipped into Athenæus the Deipnosophist. Occasionally, but very occasionally, he did read some ancient metaphysics, for Plato was a favourite of his—not, I think, on account of his philosophy, but because he wrote so beautifully. Aristotle he rarely touched, although he knew the "Poetics." He had a peculiar admiration for the Stoic Marcus Aurelius, in which I never followed him because the Stoic philosophy is so peculiarly inhuman. But, after all, among the Greeks his chief joy was the tragedians, and there was no single play or fragment of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that he did not know almost by heart. Among the Frenchmen his great favourites were Rabelais and Montaigne and, later, Flaubert, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Zola, Balzac, and the Goncourts. As I have said before, he had a great admiration for the Russian writers of eminence, and much regretted that he did not know Russian. He once even attempted it, but put it aside. I think Balzac was the only writer of importance that he read much of who did not possess a style; he owned that he found him on that account at times almost impossible to read. Nevertheless he did read him, and learnt much from him; but his chief admiration among the French on the ground of their being artists was for Flaubert and Maupassant. Zola's style did not appeal to him; in fact in many of his books it is little better than Balzac's. Maitland's love of beautiful words and the rhythms of prose was as deep as that of Meredith; and as I have said, his adoration of Shakespeare was founded on the fact that Shakespeare still remains the great enchanter in the world of phrases. He read English very deeply. There was little among the fields of English prose that he did not know well; but again he loved best those who had a noble style of their own, notably Sir Thomas Browne. If a man had something to say and did not say it well, Maitland read him with difficulty and held him at a discount. That is why he loved Landor at his best, why he loved Meredith, and why he often adored Hardy, especially in Hardy's earlier works, before he began to "rail at the universe" and disturb him. I think among other living writers of English fiction I can hardly mention more than one of whom he spoke with much respect, and he was Henry James. As he was a conservative he was especially a conservative critic. He found it difficult to appreciate anything which was wholly new, and the rising school of Celtic literature, which means much, and may mean more, in English literature, did not appeal to him greatly. He lived in the past, even in English, and often went back to Chaucer and drank at his well and at the everlasting fountain of Malory. So, as I have said, he loved old Walton. Boswell he read yearly at least, for he had an amazing admiration for old Johnson, a notable truth-teller. The man who could say what he thought, and say it plainly, was ever his favourite, although I could never induce him to admire Machiavelli, for the coldness of Machiavelli's intellect was a little too much for him. The pure intellect never appealed to Maitland. I think if he had attempted "The Critique of Pure Reason" he would have died before he had learnt Kant's vocabulary. Yet I once gave him a copy of it in the original. The only very modern writer that he took to was Walt Whitman, and the trouble I had in getting him to see anything in him was amazing, though at last he succumbed and was characteristically enthusiastic.

What he wanted in literature was emotion, feeling, and humour—literature that affected him sensuously, and made him happy, and made him forget. For it is strange when one looks back at his books to think how much he loved pure beauty, though he found himself compelled to write, only too often, of the sheer brutality of modern civilisation and the foulest life of London. Of course he loved satire, and his own mind was essentially in some ways satiric. His greatest gift was perhaps that of irony, which he frequently exercised at the expense of his public. I remember very well his joy when something he had written which was ironically intended from the first word to the last was treated seriously by the critics. He was reminded, as he indeed reminded me, of Samuel Butler's "Fairhaven," that book on Christianity which was reviewed by one great religious paper as an essay in religious apologetics. This recalls to my mind the fact that I have forgotten to say how much he loved Samuel Butler's books, or those with which he was more particularly acquainted, "Erewhon" and "Erewhon Revisited." Anything which dug knives into the gross stupidity of the mass of English opinion afforded him the intensest gratification. If it attacked their religion or their vanity he was equally delighted, and when it came to their hypocrisy—in spite of the defence he made later in "The Meditations" of English hypocrisy—he was equally pleased. In this connection I am reminded of a very little thing of no particular importance which occurred to him when he was upon one occasion at the Royal Academy. That year Sir Frederick Leighton exhibited a very fine decorative panel of a nude figure. While Maitland was looking at it a typical English matron with three young flappers of daughters passed him. One of the girls stood in front of this nude and said, "Oh, mamma, what is this?" Whereupon her mother replied hurriedly, "Only a goddess, my dear, only a goddess! Come along,—only a goddess." And he quoted to himself and afterwards to me, from "Roman Women": "And yet I love you not, nor ever can, Distinguished woman on the Pincian!" If I remember rightly, the notable address to Englishwomen in T.E. Brown's poem was published separately in a magazine which I brought to him. It gave great occasion for chuckling.

I have not attempted to give any far-reaching notion of all Maitland's reading, but I think what I have said will indicate not unfairly what its reach was. What he desired was to read the best that had been written in all western languages; and I think, indeed, that very few men have read so much, although he made, in some ways, but little use of it. Nevertheless this life among books was his true life. Among books he lived, and among them he would have died. Had any globe-trotting Gillman offered to show him the world, he would have declined, I think, to leave the littoral of the Mediterranean, though with a book-loving Gillman he might have explored all literature.