I do not think I have said very much, except by bitter implication, of his financial position, or what he earned. But his finances were a part of his general life's tragedy. There is a passage somewhere at the end of a chapter in "In the Morning" which says: "Put money in thy purse; and again, put money in thy purse; for, as the world is ordered, to lack current coin is to lack the privileges of humanity, and indigence is the death of the soul." I have been speaking wholly in vain if it is not understood that he was a man extremely difficult to influence, even for his own good. This was because he was weak, and his weakness came out with most exceeding force in all his dealings with publishers and editors. For the most part he was atrociously paid, but the fact remains that he was paid, and his perpetual fear was that his books would presently be refused, and that he would get no one to take them if he remonstrated with those who were his taskmasters. In such an event he gloomily anticipated, not so much the workhouse, but once more a cellar off the Tottenham Court Road, or some low, poverty-stricken post as a private tutor or the usher of a poor school. Sometimes when we were together he used to talk with a certain pathetic jocosity, or even jealousy, of Coleridge's luck in having discovered his amiable patron, Gillman. He did not imagine that nowadays any Gillmans were to be found, nor do I think that any Gillman would have found Maitland possible. One night after we had been talking about Coleridge and Gillman he sat down and wrote a set of poor enough verses, which are not without humour, and certainly highly characteristic, that ran as follows:
THE HUMBLE ASPIRATION OF H.M., NOVELIST
"Hoc erat in votis."
Oh could I encounter a Gillman,
Who would board me and lodge me for aye,
With what intellectual skill, man,
My life should be frittered away!
What visions of study methodic
My leisurely hours would beguile!—
I would potter with details prosodic,
I would ponder perfections of style.
I would joke in a vein pessimistic
At all the disasters of earth;
I would trifle with schemes socialistic,
And turn over matters for mirth.
From the quiddities quaint of Quintilian
I would flit to the latest critiques;—
I would visit the London Pavilion,
And magnify lion-comiques.
With the grim ghastly gaze of a Gorgon
I would cut Hendersonian bores—
I would follow the ambulant organ
That jingles at publicans' doors.
In the odorous alleys of Wapping
I would saunter on evenings serene;
When the dews of the Sabbath were dropping
You would find me on Clerkenwell Green.
At the Hall Scientific of Bradlaugh
I would revel in atheist rant,
Or enjoy an attack on some bad law
By the notable Mrs. Besant.