Whenever Maitland came to me I cooked his food and my own on a little grid, or in a frying-pan, over the fire in my one room. This fire cost me on an average a whole shilling a week, or perhaps a penny or two more if the coals, which I bought in the street, went up in price. This means that I ran a fire on a hundredweight of coal each week, or sixteen pounds of coal a day. Maitland, who was an expert on coal, assured me that I was extremely extravagant, and that a fire could be kept going for much less. On trying, I found out that when I was exceedingly hard up I could keep in a very little fire for several hours a day on only eight pounds of coal, but sometimes I had to let it go out, and run round to a studio to get warm by some artist's stove,—provided always that the merchant in coke who supplied him had not refused my especial friend any further credit.
At this time Maitland and I were both accustomed to work late, although he was just then beginning to labour at more reasonable times, though not to write fewer hours. As for me, I used to find getting up in the morning at a proper hour quite impossible. Probably this was due to some inherited gout, to poisonous indigestion from my own cooking, or to a continued diet of desiccated soups and "Jungle" beef from Chicago. However, it seemed to Maitland that I was quite in the proper tradition of letters while I was working on a long novel, only published years afterwards, which I used to begin at ten or eleven o'clock at night, frequently finishing at six o'clock in the morning when the sparrows began to chirp outside my window.
As a result of this night-work I used to get up at four o'clock in the afternoon, sometimes even later, to make my own breakfast. Afterwards I would go out to see some of my friends in their studios, and at the time most people were thinking of going to bed I sat down to the wonderfully morbid piece of work which I believed was to bring me fame. This was a rather odd book, called "The Fate of Hilary Dale." It has no claim whatever to any immortality, and from my point of view its only value lies in the fact that there is a very brief sketch of Maitland in it. He is described in these words: "Will Curgenven, writer, teacher, and general apostle of culture, as it is understood by the elect, had been hard at work for some hours on an essay on Greek metres, and was growing tired of it. His dingy subject and dingy Baker Street flat began to pall on him, and he rose to pace his narrow room." Now Will Curgenven, of course, was Maitland and the dingy Baker Street flat was 7K. "'Damn the nature of things,' as Porson said when he swallowed embrocation instead of whisky!" was what I went on to put into his mouth. This, indeed, was one of Maitland's favourite exclamations. It stood with him for all the strange and blasphemous and eccentric oaths with which I then decorated my language, the result of my experiences in the back blocks of Australia and the Pacific Slope of America. In this book I went on to make a little fun of his great joy in Greek metres. I remember that once he turned to me with an assumed air of strange amazement and exclaimed: "Why, my dear fellow, do you know there are actually miserable men who do not know—who have never even heard of—the minuter differences between Dochmiacs and Antispasts!" That, again, reminds me of a passage in "Paternoster Row," which always gives me acute pleasure because it recalls Maitland so wonderfully. It is where one of the characters came in to the hero and wanted his opinion on the scansion of a particular chorus in the "Œdipus Rex." Maydon laid hold of the book, thought a bit, and began to read the chorus aloud. Whereupon the other one cried: "Choriambics, eh? Possible, of course; but treat them as Ionics a minore with an anacrusis, and see if they don't go better." Now in this passage the speaker is really Maitland, for he involved himself in terms of pedantry with such delight that his eyes gleamed. No doubt it was an absurd thing, but Greek metres afforded so bright a refuge from the world of literary struggle and pressing financial difficulty.
"Damn the nature of things!" was Porson's oath. Now Maitland had a very peculiar admiration for Porson. Porson was a Grecian. He loved Greek. That was sufficient for Maitland. In addition to that claim on his love, it is obvious that Porson was a man of a certain Rabelaisian turn of mind, and that again was a sufficient passport to his favour. No doubt if Porson had invited Maitland to his rooms, and had then got wildly drunk, it would have annoyed Maitland greatly; but the picture of Porson shouting Greek and drinking heavily attracted him immensely. He often quoted all the little stories told of Porson, such as the very well-known one of another scholar calling on him by invitation late one evening, and finding the room in darkness and Porson on the floor. This was when his visitor called out: "Porson, where are the candles, and where's the whiskey?" and Porson answered, still upon the floor, but neither forgetful of Greek nor of his native wit.
When any man of our acquaintance was alluded to with hostility, or if one animadverted on some popular person who was obviously uneducated, Maitland always vowed that he did not know Greek, and probably or certainly had never starved. His not knowing Greek was, of course, a very great offence to Maitland, for he used to quote Porson on Hermann:
"The Germans in Greek
Are far to seek.
Not one in five score,
But ninety-nine more.
All save only Hermann,
And Hermann's a German."
Of course a man who lacked Greek, and had not starved, was anathema—not to be considered. And whatever Porson may have done he did know Greek, and that saved his soul. Maitland often quoted very joyfully what he declared to be some of the most charming lines in the English language:
"I went to Strasburg, and there got drunk
With the most learned Professor Runck.
I went to Wortz, and got more drunken
With the more learned Professor Runcken."
But if the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. I never saw Maitland drunk in his life. Indeed he was no real expert in drinking. He had never had any education in the wines he loved. Any amateur of the product of the vine will know how to estimate his actual qualifications as a judge, when I say that Asti, Capri, and especially Chianti seemed to him the greatest wines in the world, since by no means could he obtain the right Falernian of Horace, which, by the way, was probably a most atrocious vintage. As it happened I had been employed for many months on a great vineyard in California, and there had learnt not a little about the making and blending of wine. Added to this I had some natural taste in it, and had read a great deal about wine-making and the great vintages of France and Germany. One could always interest Maitland by telling him something about wine, provided one missed out the scientific side of it. But it was sad that I lacked, from his point of view, the proper enthusiasm for Chianti. Yet, indeed, one knows what was in his classic mind, from the fact that a poor vintage in a real Italian flask, or in something shaped like an amphora, would have made him chuckle with joy far more readily than if a rich man had offered him in a bottle some glorious first growth of the Medoc, Laflitte, Latour, or Haut-Brion. But, indeed, he and I, even when I refused indignantly to touch the Italians, and declared with resolution for a wine of Burgundy or the Médoc, rarely got beyond a Bourgeois vintage.
Nevertheless though I aspired to be his tutor in wines I owed him more than is possible to say in the greater matters of education. My debt to him is really very big. It was, naturally enough, through his influence, that while I was still in my one room in Danvers Street I commenced to read again all the Greek tragedies. By an odd chance I came across a clergyman's son in Chelsea who also had a certain passion for Greek. He used to come to my room and there we re-read the tragedies. Oddly enough I think my new friend never met Maitland, for Maitland rarely came to my room save on Sundays, and those days I reserved specially for him. But whenever we met, either there or at 7K, we always read or recited Greek to each other, and then entered into a discussion of the metrical value of the choruses—in which branch of learning I trust I showed proper humility, for in prosody he was remarkably learned. As for me, I knew nothing of it beyond what he told me, and cared very little, personally, for the technical side of poetry. Nevertheless it was not easy to resist Maitland's enthusiasm, and I succumbed to it so greatly that I at last imagined that I was really interested in what appealed so to him. Heaven knows, in those days I did at least learn something of the matter.