I stayed barely a week in St. Pée d'Ascain, but during that time we talked much both of his work and of mine. Once more his romance of the sixth century was in his mind and on his desk, though he worked more, perhaps, at necessary pot-boilers than at this long pondered task. Although he did not write so much as of old I found it almost impossible to get him to go out with me, save now and again for half an hour in the warmest and quietest part of the day. He had developed a great fear of death, and life seemed to him extraordinarily fragile. Such a feeling is ever the greatest warning to those who know, and yet I think if he had been rather more courageous and had faced the weather a little more, it might have been better for him. During these few days I became very friendly with Madame Espinel and her daughter, but more especially with the latter, because she spoke English, and my French has never been very fluent. It requires at least a month's painful practice for me to become more or less intelligible to those who speak it by nature. As I went away he gave me a copy of his new book "The Meditations of Mark Sumner." It is one of those odd things which occur so frequently in literary life that I myself had in a way given to him the notion of this book. It was not that I suggested that he should write it, indeed I had developed the idea of such a book to him upon my own account, for I proposed at that time to write a short life of an imaginary man of letters to whom I meant to attribute what I afterwards published in "Apteryx." Perhaps this seed had lain dormant in Maitland's mind for years, and when he at last wrote the book he had wholly forgotten that it was I who first suggested the idea. Certainly no two books could have been more different, although my own plan was originally much more like his. In the same way I now believe that my story "The Purification" owed its inception without my being aware of it to the suppressed passage in "Outside the Pale" of which I spoke some time ago. This passage I never read; but, when Maitland told me of it, it struck me greatly and remained in my mind. These influences are one of the great uses of literary companionship among men of letters. As Henry Maitland used to say: "We come together and strike out sparks."
As I went north by train from St. Pée d'Ascain to Bordeaux, passing ancient Dax and all the sombre silences of the wounded serried rows of pines which have made an infertile soil yield something to commerce, Maitland's spirit, his wounded and often sickly spirit, was with me. I say "sickly" with a certain reluctance, and yet that is what I felt, for I know I read "The Meditations" with great revolt in spite of its obvious beauty and literary sincerity. Life, as I know well, is hard and bitter enough to break any man's spirit, and I knew that Maitland had been through a fire that not many men had known, yet as I read I thought, and still think, that in this book he showed an undue failure of courage. If he had been through so many disasters yet there was still much left for him, or should have been. He had not suffered the greatest disaster of all, for since the death of his father in his early youth he had lost none that he loved. The calculated dispirited air of the book afflicted me, and yet, naturally enough, I found it wonderfully interesting; for here was so much of my lifelong friend, even though now and again there are little lapses in sincerity when he put another face on things, and pretended, even to himself, that he had felt in one way and not in another. There is in it only a brief mention of myself, when he refers to the one solitary friend he possessed in London through so many years which were only not barren to him in the acquisition of knowledge.
But even as I read in the falling night I came to the passage in which he speaks of the Anabasis. It is curious to think of, but I doubt if he had ever heard that modern scholarship refuses to believe it was Xenophon who wrote this book. Most assuredly had he heard it he would have rejected so revolutionary a notion with rage and indignation, for to him Xenophon and the Anabasis were one. In speaking of the march of the Greeks he quotes the passage where they rewarded and dismissed the guide who had led them through very dangerous country. The text says: "when evening came he took leave of us, and went his way by night." On reaching Bordeaux I surprised and troubled the telegraph clerk at the railway station by telegraphing to Henry Maitland those words in the original Greek, though naturally I had to write them in common script. Often-times I had been his guide but had never led him in safety.
When I reached England again I wrote him a very long letter about "The Meditations," and in answer received one which I may here quote: "My dear old boy, it is right and good that the first word about 'Mark Sumner' should come from you. I am delighted that you find it readable. For a good ten years I had this book in mind vaguely, and for two years have been getting it into shape. You will find that there is not very much reminiscence; more philosophising. Why, of course, the solitary friend is you. Good old Schmidt is mentioned later. But the thing is a curious blend, of course, of truth and fiction. Why, it's just because the world is 'inexplicable' that I feel my interest in it and its future grows less and less. I am a little oppressed by 'the burden of the mystery'; not seldom I think with deep content of the time when speculation will be at an end. But my delight in the beauty of the visible world, and my enjoyment of the great things of literature, grow stronger. My one desire now is to utter this passion—yet the result of one's attempt is rather a poor culmination for Life."
During this year, and indeed during the greater part of 1902, I was myself very ill and much troubled, though I worked exceedingly hard upon my longest book, "Rachel." In consequence of all I went through during the year I wrote to him very seldom until the beginning of the following spring I was able to send him the book. For a long time after discovering the almost impossibility of making more than a mere living out of fiction, I had in a sense given up writing for the public, as every man is more or less bound to do at last if he be not gratified with commercial success. Indeed for many years I wrote for some three people: for my wife; for Rawson, the naturalist, my almost lifelong friend; and for Maitland, the only man I had known longer than Rawson. Provided they approved, and were a little enthusiastic, I thought all was well, even though I could earn no more than a mere living. And yet I was conscious through all these working years that I had never actually conquered Maitland's utmost approval. For I knew what his enthusiasm was when he was really roused; how obvious, how sincere, and how tremendous. When I reflect that I did at last conquer it just before he died I have a certain melancholy pleasure in thinking of that book of mine, which indeed in many ways means very much to me, much more than I can put down, or would put down for any one now living. Were this book which I am now doing a life of myself rather than a sketch of him, I should certainly put in the letter, knowing that I should be forgiven for inserting it because it was a letter of Maitland's. It was, indeed, a highly characteristic epistle, for when he praised he praised indeed, and his words carried conviction to me, ever somewhat sceptical of most men's approval. He did even more than write to me, for I learnt that he spoke about this book to other friends of his, especially, as I know, to Edmund Roden; and also to George Meredith, who talked to me about it with obvious satisfaction when I next met him. Nothing pleased Maitland better than that any one he loved should do good work. If ever a man lived who was free from the prevalent vices of artistic and literary jealousy, it was Maitland.
But now his time was drawing to an end. He and Thérèse and Madame Espinel left St. Pée d'Ascain in June 1903 and went thirty miles further into the Pyrenees. He wrote to me a few days after reaching the little mountain town of St. Christophe. The change apparently did him good. He declared that he had now no more sciatica, of which disease, by the way, I had not previously heard, and he admitted that his general health was improving. St. Christophe is very picturesquely situated, and Maitland loved it not the less for its associations in ancient legend, since it is not very far from the Port or Col de Roncesvalles, where the legendary Roland was slain fighting in the rearguard to protect Charlemagne's army. He and Thérèse went once further down the valley and stayed a night at Roncesvalles. If any man's live imagination heard the horn of Roland blow I think it should be Maitland. And yet though he took a great pleasure in this country of his, it was not England, nor had he all things at his command which he desired. I find that he now greatly missed the British Museum, which readers of "The Meditations" will know he much frequented in those old days. For he was once more hard at work upon "Basil," and wrote to me that he was greatly in want of exact knowledge as to the procedure in the execution of wills under the later Roman Empire. This was a request for information, and such requests I not infrequently received, always doing my best to tell him what I could discover, or to give him the names of authorities not known to himself. He frequently referred to me about points of difficulty, even when he was in England but away from London. At that time, naturally enough, I knew nothing whatever about wills under the Roman Empire, but in less than a week after he had written to me I think it highly probable that I knew more than any lawyer in London who was not actually lecturing on the subject to some pupils. I sent him a long screed on the matter. Before this reached him I got another letter giving me more details of what he required, and since this is certainly of some interest as showing his literary methods and conscientiousness I think it may be quoted. He says: "And now, hearty thanks for troubling about the legal question. The time with which I am concerned is about A.D. 540. I know, of course, that degeneration and the Gothic War made semi-chaos of Roman civilisation; but as a matter of fact the Roman law still existed. The Goths never interfered with it, and portions even have been handed down. Now the testator is a senator. He has one child only, a daughter, and to her leaves most of his estate. There are legacies to two nephews, and to a sister. A very simple will, you see—no difficulty about it. But he dying, all the legatees being with him at the time, how, as a matter of fact, were things settled? Was an executor appointed? Might an executor be a legatee?
Probate, I think, as you say, there was none, but who inherited? Still fantastic things were done in those times, but what would the law have dictated? Funny, too, that this is the only real difficulty which bothers me in the course of my story. As regards all else that enters into the book I believe I know as much as one can without being a Mommsen. The senator owns property in Rome and elsewhere. I rather suppose it was a case of taking possession if you could, and holding if no one interfered with you. Wills of this date were frequently set aside on the mere assertion of a powerful senator that the testator had verbally expressed a wish to benefit him.... It is a glorious age for the romancer." As a full answer to this letter I borrowed and sent to him Saunders' "Justinian," and received typically exaggerated thanks.
CHAPTER XII
Now again he and I were but correspondents, and I do not think that in those days when I had so much to do, and had also very bad health, I was a very good correspondent. Maitland, although he sometimes apologised humorously, or even nervously, for writing at great length, was an admirable letter writer. He practised a lost art. Sometimes he put into his letters very valuable sketches of people. He did so both to me and to Rivers, and to others, and frequently made sharply etched portraits of people whom he knew at St Pée. He had a curious habit of nicknaming everybody. These nicknames were perhaps not the highest form of art, nor were they even always humorous, still it was a practice of his. He had a peculiarly verbal humor in these matters. Never by any chance, unless he was exceedingly serious, did he call any man by his actual name. Rawson, my most particular friend, whom he knew well, and whose books he admired very much for their style, was always known as "The Rawsonian," and I myself was referred to by a similarly formed name. These are matters of no particular importance, but still they show the man in his familiar moods and therefore have a kind of value—as if one were to show a score of photographs or sketches that were serious and then insert one where the wise man plays the child, or even the fool. There was not a person of any importance in St. Pée d'Ascain, although nobody knew it, who did not rejoice in some absurd nickname.