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

by Morley Roberts

I would never omit an oration
Of Cunninghame Graham or Burns;
And the Army miscalled of Salvation
Should furnish me frolic by turns.

Perchance I would muse o'er a mystic;
Perchance I would booze at a bar;
And when in the mind journalistic
I would read the "Pall Mall" and the "Star."

Never more would I toil with my quill, man,
Or plead for the publishers' pay.—
Oh where and O where is the Gillman,
Who will lodge me and board me for aye?

Now as to his actual earnings. His first book "Children of the Dawn," was published by Hamerton's. So far as I am aware it brought him in nothing. The book, naturally enough, was a dead failure; nobody perceived its promise, and it never sold. I do not think he received a penny on account for it. He got little more for "Outside the Pale," which was published in 1884, the year I went to America, and was dedicated to me, as the initials J.C.H. on the dedication page of the first edition testify. At that time I still retained in signature my second initial. This book was published by Andrews and Company, and it was through it that he first made acquaintance in a business way with George Meredith, then quite a poor man, and working for the firm as a reader just before he went to Chapman and Hall.

In "Outside the Pale," as a manuscript there was a chapter, or part of a chapter, of a curiously romantic kind. It was some such theme as that which I myself treated in a romantic story called "The Purification." Hilda Moon, the idealised heroine of the streets, washed herself pure of her sins in the sea at midnight, if I remember the incident rightly, for I never actually read it. It appears that George Meredith was much taken with the book, but found his sense of fitness outraged by the introduction of this highly romantic incident. It seemed out of tone with the remainder of the book and the way in which it was written. He begged Maitland to eliminate it. Now as a rule Maitland, being a young writer, naturally objected to altering anything, but he knew that Meredith was right. At any rate, even at that period, the older man had had such an enormous experience that Maitland accepted his opinion and acted upon it. He told me that George Meredith came downstairs with him into the street, and standing on the doorstep once more reiterated his advice as to this particular passage. He said in the peculiar way so characteristic of him, "My dear sir, I beg you to believe, it made me shiver!" That passage is missing in the published book.

"Outside the Pale" had a kind of succès d'estime. Certain people read it, and certain people liked it. It was something almost fresh in English. Nevertheless he made little or nothing out of it. Few, indeed, were those who made money out of Andrews and Company at that time. The business was run by Harry Andrews, known in the trade as "the liar," a man who notoriously never spoke the truth if a lie would bring him in a penny. I afterwards published a book with the same firm, and had to deal with the same man. After "Outside the Pale" came "Isabel," which, as I have said, was obviously written under the influence of Tourgeniev. So far as I am aware this influence has not been noted, even by so acute a critic as Thomas Sackville, but I myself was at that time a great reader of Tourgeniev, partly owing to Maitland's recommendation and insistence upon the man, and I recognised his influence at once. Maitland openly acknowledged it, a thing no writer does without very strong reason. This book, of course, was not a success. That, I believe, was the last work he published with Andrews and Company. So far as he was concerned the firm had not been a success. He was still compelled to earn his bread and cheese and rent by teaching.

Although Tourgeniev was the earliest great influence upon Maitland, his influence was very largely that of form. So far as feeling was concerned his god for many years was undoubtedly Dostoievsky. That Russian writer himself suffered and had been down into the depths like the modern writer Gorki, which was what appealed to Maitland. Indeed he says somewhere: "Dostoievsky, a poor and suffering man, gives us with immense power his own view of penury and wretchedness." It was Maitland who first introduced "Crime and Punishment," to me. There is no doubt, when one comes to think of it seriously, a certain likeness between the modern Russian school and Maitland's work, and that likeness is perhaps founded on something deeper than mere community of subject which shows itself here and there. Perhaps there is something essentially Slav-like in Maitland's attitude to life. He was a dreamer, rebellious and unable. If, indeed, his ancestry was partly Teutonic, he might have been originally as much Slav as German.

In 1886, while I was still in America, he began "The Mob." At that time, just when he had almost done the first two volumes, there occurred the Trafalgar Square Riots, in which John Burns, Hyndman, and Henry Hyde Champion, were concerned. Fool as Maitland was about his own affairs, he yet saw that it was a wonderful coincidence from his point of view that he should have been dealing with labour matters and the nature of the mob at this juncture. Some rare inspiration or suggestion led him to rush down with the first two volumes to Messrs. Miller and Company, where they were seen by John Glass, who said to him, "Give us the rest at once and we will begin printing it now." He went home and wrote the third volume in a fortnight while the other two volumes were in the press. This book was published anonymously, as it was thought, naturally enough, that this would give it a greater chance of success. It might reasonably be attributed to any one, and Maitland's name at that time, or indeed at any time afterwards, was very little help towards financial success. Now I am of opinion, speaking from memory, that this book was bought out and out by the publishing firm for fifty pounds. To a young writer who had never made so much fifty pounds was a large sum. In Maitland's exaggerated parlance it was "gross and riotous wealth."

Having succeeded in getting hold of a good firm of notable and well-known publishers, he dreaded leaving them, even though he very soon discovered that fifty pounds for a long three-volume novel was most miserable pay. That he wrote books rapidly at times was no guarantee that he would always write them as rapidly. For once in his life he had written a whole volume in a fortnight, but it might just as well take him many months. There are, indeed, very few of his books of which most of the first volume was not destroyed, rewritten, and sometimes destroyed and again rewritten. Nevertheless he discovered a tremendous reluctance to ask for better terms. It was not only his fear of returning to the old irremediable poverty which made him dread leaving a firm who were not all they might have been, but he was cursed with a most unnecessary tenderness for them. He actually dreaded hurting the feelings of a publishing firm which had naturally all the qualities and defects of a corporation. The reason that he did at last leave this particular firm was rather curious. It shows that what many might think a mere coincidence may prejudice a fair man's mind.

As I have said, he had been in the habit of selling his books outright for fifty pounds. After this had gone on for many books I suggested to him, as everything he wrote went into several editions under the skilful management of the firm, that it might be as well to sell them the first edition only and ask for a royalty on the succeeding ones. Now this would never have occurred to him, and he owned that it was a good idea. So when "The Flower," was finished he sold the first edition for forty pounds, and arranged for a percentage on succeeding editions. He went on with the next book at once. Now as it happened, curiously enough, there was no second edition of "The Flower" called for, and this so disheartened poor Maitland that he sold his two next novels outright for the usual sum.