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

by Morley Roberts

CHAPTER XIV

There have been few men so persecuted by Fortune as to lead lives of unhappiness, lighted only by transient gleams of the sun, who are yet pursued beyond the grave by outcries and misfortune, but this was undoubtedly the case with Maitland. Of course he always had notable ill luck, as men might say and indeed do say, but his ill luck sprang from his nature as well as from the nature of things. When a man puts himself into circumstances to which he is equal he may have misfortunes, or sometimes disasters, but he has not perpetual adversity. Maitland's nature was for ever thrusting him into positions to which he was not equal. His disposition, his very heredity, seems to have invited trouble. So out of his first great disaster sprang all the rest. He had not been equal to the stress laid upon him, and in later life he was never equal to the stress he laid upon himself. This is what ill luck is. It is an instinctive lack of wisdom. I think I said some chapters ago that I had not entirely disposed of the question of his health. I return to the subject with some reluctance. Nevertheless I think what I have to say should be said. It at any rate curiously links the last days of Maitland's life to the earlier times of his trouble, or so it will seem to physicians. I shall do no more than quote a few lines from a letter which he wrote to Lake. He says: "You remember that patch of skin disease on my forehead? Nothing would touch it; it had lasted for more than two years, and was steadily extending itself. At last a fortnight ago I was advised to try iodide of potassium. Result—perfect cure after week's treatment! I had resigned myself to being disfigured for the rest of my life; the rapidity of the cure is extraordinary. I am thinking of substituting iodide of potassium for coffee at breakfast and wine at the other meals. I am also meditating a poem in its praise—which may perhaps appear in the Fortnightly Review." Dr. Lake replied to these dithyrambs with a letter which Maitland did not answer. There is no need to comment upon this more particularly; it will at any rate be clear to those who are not uninstructed in medicine.

His ill luck began early. It lasted even beyond the grave. Some men have accounted it a calamity to have a biography written of them. The first who said so must have been English, for in this country the absence of biographic art is rendered the more peculiarly dreadful by the existence in our language of one or two masterpieces. In some ways I would very willingly cease to speak now, for I have written nearly all that I had in my mind, and I know that I have spoken nothing which would really hurt him. As I have said in the very first chapter, he had an earnest desire that if anything were written about him after his death it should be something true. Still there are some things yet to be put down, especially about "Basil" and its publication. He left this book unfinished: it still lacked some few chapters which would have dealt with the final catastrophe. It fell to the executors to arrange for the publication of the incomplete book. As Maitland had left no money, certainly not that two thousand pounds which he vainly hoped for, there were still his children to consider; and it was thought necessary, for reasons I do not appreciate, to get a preface written for the book with a view, which seemed to me idle, of procuring it a great sale.

It appears that Rivers offered to write this preface if it were wanted. What he wrote was afterwards published. The executors did not approve it, again for reasons which I do not appreciate, for I think that it was on the whole a very admirable piece of work. Yet I do not believe Rivers was sincere in the view he took of "Basil" as a work of art. In later years he acknowledged as much to me, but he thought it was his duty to say everything that could possibly be said with a view of imposing it on a reluctant public. The passage in this article mainly objected to was that which speaks obscurely of his early life at Moorhampton College and refers as obscurely to his initial great disaster. The reference was needed, and could hardly be avoided. Rivers said nothing openly but referred to "an abrupt incongruous reaction and collapse." This no doubt excited certain curiosities in certain people, but seeing that so many already knew the truth, I cannot perceive what was to be gained by entire silence. However, this preface was rejected and Mr. Harold Edgeworth was asked to write another. This he did, but it was a frigid performance. The writer acknowledged his ignorance of much that Maitland had written, and avowed his want of sympathy with most of it.

Naturally enough, the trouble growing out of this dispute gave rise to considerable comment. As some theological buzzards had dropped out of a murky sky upon Maitland's corpse, so some literary kites now found a subject to gloat upon. Nevertheless the matter presently passed. "Basil," unhappily, was no success; and if one must speak the truth, it was rightly a failure. It is curious and bitter to think of that when he was dealing at the last in some kind of peace and quiet with his one chosen subject, that he had thought of for so many years and prepared for so carefully, it should by no means have proved what he believed it. There is, indeed, no such proof as "Basil" in the whole history of letters that the writer was not doing the work that his nature called for. Who that knows "Magna Graecia," and who, indeed, that ever spoke with him, will not feel that if he had visited one by one all the places that he mentions in the book, and had written about them and about the historical characters that he hoped to realise, the book might have been as great or even greater than the shining pages of "Magna Graecia"? It was in the consideration of these things, while reviving the aspects of the past that he felt so deeply and loved so much, that his native and natural genius came out. In fiction it was only when rage and anger and disgust inspired him that he could hope to equal anything of the passion which he felt about his temperamental and proper work. Those books in which he let himself go perfectly naturally, and those books which came out of him as a terrible protest against modern civilisation, are alone great. Yet it is hard to speak without emotion and without pain of "Basil." He believed in it so greatly, and yet believed in it no more than any writer must while he is at work. The artist's own illusion of a book's strength and beauty is necessary to any accomplishment. He must believe with faith or do nothing. Maitland failed because it was not his real work.

In one sense the great books of his middle period were what writers and artists know as "pot-boilers." They were, indeed, written for an actual living, for bread and for cheese and occasionally a very little butter. But they had to be written. He was obliged to do something, and did these best; he could do no other. He was always in exile. That was the point in my mind when I wrote one long article about him in a promising but passing magazine which preened its wings in Bond Street and died before the end of its first month. This article I called "The Exile of Henry Maitland." There is something of the same feeling in much that has been written of him by men perhaps qualified in many ways better than myself had they known him as well as I did. I have, I believe, spoken of the able criticism Thomas Sackville wrote of him in the foreword of the book of short stories which was published after Maitland's death. In the Fortnightly Review Edwin Warren wrote a feeling and sympathetic article about him. Jacob Levy wrote not without discernment of the man. And of one thing all these men seemed tolerably sure, that in himself Maitland stood alone. But he only stood alone, I think, in the best work of his middle period. And even that work was alien from his native mind.

In an early article written about him while he yet lived I said that he stood in a high and solitary place, because he belonged to no school, and most certainly not to any English school. No one could imitate, and no one could truly even caricature him. The essence of his best work was that it was founded on deep and accurate knowledge and keen observation. Its power lay in a bent, in a mood of mind, not by any means in any subject, even though his satiric discussion of what he called the "ignobly decent" showed his strength, and indirectly his inner character. His very repugnance to his early subjects led him to choose them. He showed what he wished the world to be by declaring and proving that it possessed every conceivable opposite to his desires. I pointed out some time ago, but should like to insist upon it again, that in one sense he showed an instinctive affinity for the lucid and subtle Tourgeniev. There is no more intensely depressing book in the entire English language than "Isabel." The hero's desires reached to the stars, but he was not able to steal or take so much as a farthing rushlight. Not even Demetri Roudine, that futile essence of futility, equals this, Maitland's literary child of bitter, unable ambitions. These Russians indeed were the writers with whom Maitland had most sympathy. They moved what Zola had never been able to stir in him, for he was never a Zolaist, either in mind or method. No man without a style could really influence him for more than a moment. Even his beloved Balzac, fecund and insatiable, had no lasting hold upon him, much as he admired the man's ambitions, his unparalleled industry, his mighty construction. For Balzac was truly architectonic, even if barbarous, and though these constructions of his are often imaginary and his perspectives a mystery. But great construction is obviously alien from Maitland. He wanted no elaborate architecture to do his thinking in. He would have been contented in a porch, or preferably in a cloister.

I have declared that his greatest book is "The Exile"—I mean his greatest book among his novels. To say it is a masterpiece is for once not to abuse the word; for it is intense, deeply psychological, moving, true. "L'anatomia presuppone il cadavere," says Gabriele D'Annunzio, but "The Exile" is intolerable and wonderful vivisection. Yet men do bleed and live, and the protagonist in this book—in much, in very much, Henry Maitland—bleeds but will not die. He was born out of the leisured classes and resented it with an incredible bitterness, with a bitterness unparalleled in literature. I know that on one occasion Maitland spoke to me with a certain joy of somebody who had written to him about his books and had selected "The Exile" as the greatest of them. I think he knew it was great. It was, of course, an ineffable failure from the commercial point of view.

On more than one occasion, as it was known that I was acquainted with Maitland, men asked me to write about him. I never did so without asking his permission to do it. This happened once in 1895. He answered me: "What objection could I possibly have, unless it were that I should not like to hear you reviled for log-rolling? But it seems to me that you might well write an article which would incur no such charge; and indeed, by so doing, you would render me a very great service. For I have in mind at present a careful and well-written attack in the current Spectator. Have you seen it? Now I will tell you what my feelings are about this frequent attitude in my critics."

Maitland's views upon critics and reviewing were often somewhat astounding. He resented their folly very bitterly. Naturally enough, we often spoke of reviewers, for both of us, in a sense, had some grievances. Mine, however, were not bitter. Luckily for me, I sometimes did work which appealed more to the general, while his appeal was always to the particular. Apropos of a review of one of Rivers' books he says: "I have also, unfortunately, seen the ——. Now, can you tell me (in moments of extreme idleness one wishes to know such things) who the people are who review fiction for the ——? Are they women, soured by celibacy, and by ineffectual attempts to succeed as authors? Even as they treat you this time they have consistently treated me—one continuous snarl and sneer. They are beastly creatures—I can think of no other term."

It was unfortunate that he took these things so seriously, for nobody knows so well as the reviewers that their work is not serious. Yet, according to them the general effect of Maitland's books, especially "Jubilee," was false, misleading, and libellous; and was in essence caricature. One particular critic spoke of "the brutish stupefaction of his men and women," and said, "his realism inheres only in his rendering of detail." Now Maitland declared that the writer exhibited a twofold ignorance—first of the life he depicted, and again of the books in which he depicted it. Maitland went on to say: "He—the critic—speaks specially of 'Jubilee,' so for the moment we will stick to that. I have selected from the great mass of lower middle-class life a group of people who represent certain of its grossnesses, weaknesses, &c., peculiar to our day. Now in the first place, this group of people, on its worst side, represents a degradation of which the critic has obviously no idea. In the second place, my book, if properly read, contains abundant evidence of good feeling and right thinking in those members of the group who are not hopelessly base. Pass to instances: 'The seniors live a ... life unglorified by a single fine emotion or elevating instinct.' Indeed? What about Mr. Ward, who is there precisely to show that there can be, and are, these emotions and instincts in individuals? Of the young people (to say not a word about Nancy, at heart an admirable woman), how is it possible to miss the notes of fine character in poor Halley? Is not the passionate love of one's child an 'elevating instinct'? nor yet a fine emotion? Why, even Nancy's brother shows at the end that favourable circumstances could bring out in him gentleness and goodness."

There indeed spoke Maitland. He felt that everything was circumstance, and that for nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand circumstance was truly too much, as it had been for him. It appears that the critic added that the general effect of the book was false; and Maitland replied that it would be so to a very rapid skimmer of the book, precisely as the general effect upon a rapid observer of the people themselves would be false. He was enraged to think that though people thought it worth while to write at length about his books, they would not take the trouble to study them seriously. He added: "In this section of the lower middle class the good is not on the surface; neither will it be found on the surface of my narrative."

In this letter he went on to say something more of his books in general. Apropos of a paragraph written by Mr. Glass about his work as a whole, he said: "My books deal with people of many social strata; there are the vile working class, the aspiring and capable working class, the vile lower middle, the aspiring and capable lower middle, and a few representatives of the upper middle class. My characters range from the vileness of 'Arry Parson to the genial and cultured respectability of Mr. Comberbatch. There are books as disparate as 'The Under World' and 'The Unchosen.' But what I desire to insist upon is this, that the most characteristic, the most important, part of my work is that which deals with a class of young men distinctive of our time—well-educated, fairly bred, but without money. It is this fact, as I gather from reviews and conversation, of the poverty of my people which tells against their recognition as civilised beings. 'Oh,' said some one to Butler, 'do ask Mr. Maitland to make his people a little better off.' There you have it."

And there one has also the source of Maitland's fountain of bitterness. He went on to say: "Now think of some of these young men, Hendon, Gifford, Medwin, Pick, Early, Hillward, Mallow. Do you mean to say that books containing such a number of such men deal, first and foremost, with the commonplace and the sordid? Why, these fellows are the very reverse of commonplace; most of them are martyred by the fact of possessing uncommon endowments. Is it not so? This side of my work, to me the most important, I have never yet seen recognised. I suppose Glass would class these men as 'at best genteel, and not so very genteel.' Why, 'ods bodikins! there's nothing in the world so hateful to them as gentility. But you know all this, and can you not write of it rather trenchantly? I say nothing about my women. That is a moot point. But surely there are some of them who help to give colour to the groups I draw." The end of the letter was: "I write with a numbed hand. I haven't been warm for weeks. This weather crushes me. Let me have a line about this letter."

The sort of poverty which crushed the aspiring is the keynote to the best work he did. He knew it, and was right in knowing it. He played all these parts himself. In many protean forms Maitland himself is discerned under the colour and character of his chosen names; and so far as he depicted a class hitherto untouched, or practically untouched, in England, as he declares, he was a great writer of fiction. But he was not a romantic writer. There were some books of romance he loved greatly. We often and often spoke of Murger's "Vie de Bohème." I do not think there was any passage in that book which so appealed to him as when Rodolphe worked in his adventitious fur-coat in his windy garret, declaring genially: "Maintenant le thermomètre va être furieusement vexé." Nevertheless, as I have said before, he knew, and few knew so well, the very bitter truth that Murger only vaguely indicated here and there in scattered passages. In the "Vie de Bohème" these characters "range" themselves at last; but mostly such men did not. They went under, they died in the hospital, they poisoned themselves, they blew out their brains, they sank and became degraded parasites of an uncomprehending bourgeoisie.

I spoke some time back of the painful hour when Maitland came to me to declare his considered opinion that I myself could not write successful fiction. It is an odd thing that I never returned the compliment in any way, for though I knew he could, and did, write great fiction, I knew his best work would not have been fiction in other circumstances. Out of martyrdom may come great things, but not out of martyrdom spring the natural blossoms of the natural mind. That he lived in the devil's twilight between the Dan of Camberwell and the Beersheba of Camden Town, when his natural environment should have been Italy, and Rome, or Sorrento, is an unfading tragedy. Only once or twice in his life did a spring or summer come to him in which he might grow the flowers he loved best and knew to be his natural destiny. The greatest tragedy of all, to my mind, is that final tragedy of "Basil" where at last, after long years of toil in fiction while fiction was yet necessary to his livelihood, he was compelled by his training to put into the form of a novel a theme not fit for such treatment save in the hands of a native and easy story-teller.

I have said nothing, or little except by implication, of the man's style. In many ways it was notable and even noble. To such a literary intelligence, informed with all the learning of the past towards which he leant, much of his style was inevitable; it was the man and his own. For the greater part it is lucid rather than sparkling, clear, if not cold; yet with a subdued rhythm, the result of much Latin and more Greek, for the metres of the Greek tragedies always inspired him with their noble rhythms. Though he was often cold and bitter, especially in his employment of irony, of which he is the only complete master in English literature except Samuel Butler, he could rise to heights of passionate description; and here and there a sense of luxury tinges his words with Tyrian purple—and this in spite of all his sense of restraint, which was more marked than that of almost any living writer.

When I think of it all, and consider his partly wasted years, I even now wonder how it was he induced himself to deal with the life he knew so well; but while that commercialism exists which he abhorred as much as he abhorred the society in which it flourishes, there seems no other practicable method for a man of letters to attain speech and yet to live. I often declared that fiction as we wrote it was truly diagnostic of a disordered and unnecessarily degraded form of civilisation; and he replied with deep feeling that to him the idylls of Theocritus, of Moschus, the simple tragedies, the natural woes and joys of men who ploughed the soil or worked at the winepress, were the truest and most vivid forms and subjects of Art. Neither before his death nor after did he attain the artist's true and great reward of recognition in the full sense that would have satisfied him even if he had remained poor. Nevertheless there were some who knew. There are perhaps a few more who know now that he is gone and cannot hear them. Popularity he never hoped for, and never will attain, but he has a secure place in the hierarchy of the literature of England which he loved. But he appeals now, as he appealed while he lived, not to the idle and the foolish, not to the fashionable mob, but to the more august tribunal of those who have the sympathy which comes from understanding.