There are many methods of writing biography. Each has its
advantages, even the chronological compilation. But chronology is no
strong point of mine, and in this sketch I shall put but little
stress on dates. There is great advantage in describing things as
they impress themselves on the writer. A portrait gains in coherency
and completeness by temporary omissions more than it can ever gain by
the empty endeavour to handle each period fully. In this last
chapter I might have endeavoured to describe Maitland at work, or to
speak of his ambitions, or even to criticise what he had already
done, or to give my own views of what he meant to achieve. There is
authority for every method, and most authorities are bad, save
Boswell--and few would pine for Boswell's qualities at the price of
his failings. Yet one gets help from him everywhere, little as it
may show. Only the other day I came across a passage in the "Journal
of a Tour to the Hebrides" which has some value. Reporting Johnson,
he writes: "Talking of biography, he said he did not think the life
of any literary man in England had been well written. Besides the
common incidents of life it should tell us his studies, his mode of
living, the means by which he attained to excellence, and his opinion
of his own works." Such I shall endeavour to do. Nevertheless
Johnson was wrong. Good work had then been done in biography by
Walton, whose Lives, by the way, Maitland loved; and Johnson himself
was not far from great excellence when he described his friend Savage
in the "Lives of the Poets" in spite of its want of colloquial ease.
There came in then the value of friendship and actual personal
knowledge, as it did in Boswell's "Life," I can only hope that my own
deep acquaintance with Maitland will compensate for my want of skill
in the art of writing lives, for which novel-writing is but a poor
training. Yet the deeper one's knowledge the better it is to
simplify as one goes, taking things by themselves, going forwards or
backwards as may seem best, without care of tradition, especially
where tradition is mostly bad. We do not write biography in England
now as Romain Rolland writes that of Beethoven. Seldom are we
grieved for our heroes, or rejoice with them. Photography, or the
photographic portrait, is more in request than an impression.
However, to resume in my own way, having to be content with that, and
caring little for opinion, that fluctuant critic.
Long as our friendship existed it is perhaps curious that we never
called each other, except on very rare occasions, by anything but our
surnames. This, I think, is due to the fact that we had been at
Moorhampton College together. It is, I imagine, the same thing with
all schoolboys. Provided there is no nickname given, men who have
been chums at school seem to prefer the surname by which they knew
their friends in the early days. I have often noticed there is a
certain savage tendency on the part of boys to suppress their
Christian names, their own peculiar mark. And sometimes I have
wondered whether this is not in some obscure way a survival of the
savage custom of many tribes in which nobody is ever mentioned by his
right name, because in that name there inheres mysteriously the very
essence of his being and inheritance, the knowledge of which by
others may expose him to some occult danger.
I believe I said above that from the time I first met Maitland after
my return from Australia, until I went away again to Arizona, I was
working in the Admiralty and the India Office as a writer at tenpence
an hour. No doubt I thought the pay exiguous, and my prospects worth
nothing. Yet when I came back from America and found him domiciled
at 7K Cumberland Residences, my economic basis in life became even
more exiguous, whatever hope might have said of my literary future.
I was, in fact, a great deal poorer than Maitland. He lived in a
flat and had at least two rooms and a kitchen. Yet it was a horrible
place of extraordinary gloom, and its back windows overlooked the
roaring steam engines of the Metropolitan Railway. In some ways no
doubt my own apartment, when I took to living by myself in Chelsea,
was superior in cheerfulness to 7K. Shortly after my return to
England, when I had expended the fifty pounds I received for my first
book, "The Western Trail," I took a single room in Chelsea, put in a
few sticks of furniture given to me by my people, and commenced
housekeeping on my own account on all I could make and the temporary
ten shillings a week allowed me by my father, who at that time, for
all his native respect for literature, regarded the practice of it
with small hope and much suspicion. I know that it greatly amused
Maitland to hear of his views on the subject of the self revelations
in "The Western Trail," which dealt with my life in Western America.
After reading that book he did not speak to me for three days, and
told my younger brother, "These are pretty revelations about your
brother having been a common loafer." At this Maitland roared, but
he roared none the less when he understood that three columns of
laudation in one of the reviews entirely changed my father's view of
that particular book.
I should not trouble to say anything about my own particular
surroundings if it were not that in a sense they also became
Maitland's, although I went more frequently to him than he came to
me. Nevertheless he was quite familiar with my one room and often
had meals there which I cooked for him. Of course at that time, from
one point of view, I was but a literary beginner and aspirant, while
Maitland was a rising and respected man, who certainly might be poor,
and was poor, but still he had published "The Mob" and other books,
his name was well known, and his prospects, from the literary, if not
from the financial point of view, seemed very good. I was the author
of one book, the result of three years' bitter hard experience,
written in twenty-six days as a _tour de force_, and though I had
ambition I seemed to have nothing more to write about. From my own
point of view Maitland was, of course, very successful. His flat
with more rooms than one in it was a mansion, and he was certainly
making something like a hundred a year. Still, I think that when he
came down to me and found me comparatively independent, he rather
envied me. At any rate I had not to keep an errant wife on the money
that I made with infinite difficulty. He came to see me in Chelsea
in my very early days, and took great joy in my conditions. For one
thing I had no attendance with this room. I was supposed to look
after it for myself in every way. This, he assured me, made my
estate the more gracious, as any one can understand who remembers all
that he has said about landladies and lodging-house servants and
charwomen. He was overjoyed with the list of things I bought: a
fender and fire-irons, a coal-scuttle, a dust-bin, and blacking
brushes. He found me one day shaving by the aid of my own dim
reflection in the glass of an etching which I had brought from home,
because I had no looking-glass and no money to spare to buy one. I
remember we frequently went together over the question of finance.
Incidentally I found his own habit of buying cooked meat peculiarly
extravagant. I have a book somewhere among my papers in which I kept
accounts for my first three months in Chelsea to see how I was going
to live on ten shillings a week, which Maitland assured me was
preposterous riches, even if I managed to make no more.
Naturally enough, seeing that we had been friends for so long, and
seeing that he had encouraged me so greatly to write my first book,
he took a vast interest in all my proceedings, and was very joyous,
as he would have said, to observe that I could not afford sheets but
slept in the blankets which I had carried all over America. I seek
no sympathy on this point, for after all it was not a matter of my
being unable to afford linen; it is impossible for the average
comfortable citizen to understand how disagreeable sheets become
after some thousands of nights spent camping in mere wool, even of
the cheapest. It took me years to learn to resign myself to cold
linen, or even more sympathetic cotton, when I became a respectable
householder.
In the neighbourhood where I lived there was, of course, a great
artistic colony, and as I knew one or two artists already, I soon
became acquainted with all the others. Many of them were no richer
than myself, and as Bohemia and the belief that there was still a
Bohemia formed one of Maitland's greatest joys, he was always
delighted to hear of any of our remarkable shifts to live. It is an
odd thing to reflect that A. D. Mack, Frank Wynne, Albert Croft, and
three other artists whose names I now forget, and I once had a
glorious supper of fried fish served in a newspaper on the floor of
an empty studio. The only thing I missed on that particular occasion
was Maitland's presence, but, of course, the trouble was that
Maitland would seldom associate with anybody whom he did not know
already, and I could rarely get him to make the acquaintance of my
own friends. Yet such experiences as we were sometimes reduced to
more than proved to him that his dear Bohemia existed, though later
in his life, as one sees in "Mark Sumner," he often seemed to doubt
whether it was still extant. On this point I used to console him,
saying that where any two artists butted their foolish heads against
the economic system, there was Bohemia; Bohemia, in fact, was living
on a course of high ideals, whatever the world said of them. At this
hour there are writers learning their business on a little oatmeal,
as George Meredith did, or destroying their digestions, as I did mine
and Henry Maitland's, on canned corn beef. Even yet, perhaps, some
writers and artists are making their one big meal a day on fried fish.
One Sunday when I missed going to Maitland's, because he was then out
of town visiting his family, I had a tale for him on his return. It
appeared that I had been writing, and had got so disgusted with the
result of it that I found I could not possibly stay in my room, and
so determined to go round to my friend Mack. No sooner had I made up
my mind on this subject than there was a knock at the door, and
presently in came Mack himself. I said promptly, "It is no good your
coming here, for I was just going round to you." Whereupon he
replied, "It is no good your coming to me because I have no coal, no
coke, and nobody will give me any more because I owe for so much
already." I replied that I was not going to stay in my room in any
case, and affirmed that I would rather be in his studio in the cold
than the room where I was. Whereupon he suddenly discovered that my
scuttle was actually full of coal, and proposed to take it round to
the studio. This seemed a really brilliant idea, and after much
discussion of ways and means my inventive faculty produced an old
portmanteau and several newspapers, and after wrapping up lumps of
coal in separate pieces of paper we packed the portmanteau with the
coal and carried it round to the studio in Manresa Road. This seemed
to Maitland so characteristic of an artist's life that he was very
much delighted when I told him.
It is an odd thing that in one matter Maitland and I were at that
time much alike. From most points of view there can hardly have been
two more different men, for he was essentially a man of the study and
the cloister, while I was far more naturally a man of the open air.
Nevertheless, when it came to journalism we were both of the same
mind. While I was away from England and he was teaching Harold
Edgeworth's sons, Edgeworth introduced him to John Harley, then
editing the _Piccadilly Gazette_, who offered, and would no doubt
have kept to it, to use as much matter as possible if Maitland would
supply him with something in the journalistic form. Apparently he
found it too much against his natural grain to do this work, and I
was now in the same predicament. It is true that I had something of
a natural journalistic flair which he lacked, but my nose for a
likely article was rendered entirely useless to me by the fact that I
never could write anything until I had thought about it for several
days, by which time it was stale, and much too late from the
newspaper point of view. Nevertheless Maitland did occasionally do a
little odd journalism, for I remember once, before I went to America,
being with him when he received the proofs of an article from the
_St. James' Gazette_, and picking up "Mark Sumner" one may read: "I
thought of this as I sat yesterday watching a noble sunset, which
brought back to my memory the sunsets of a London autumn, thirty
years ago. It happened that, on one such evening, I was by the river
at Chelsea, with nothing to do except to feel that I was hungry, and
to reflect that, before morning, I should be hungrier still. I
loitered upon Battersea Bridge--the old picturesque wooden bridge,
and there the western sky took hold upon me. Half an hour later I
was speeding home. I sat down, and wrote a description of what I had
seen, and straightway sent it to an evening paper, which, to my
astonishment, published the thing next day--'On Battersea Bridge.' I
have never seen that article since I saw the proof of it, but there
was something so characteristic in it that I think it would be worth
some one's while to hunt up the files of the _St. James' Gazette_ in
order to find it. It appears that while he was leaning over the
bridge, enjoying the sunset, there was also a workman looking at it.
The river was at a low stage, for it was at least three-quarters-ebb,
and on each side of the river there were great patches of shining
mud, in which the glorious western sky was reflected, turning the
ooze into a mass of most wonderful colour. Maitland said to me, "Of
course I was pleased to see somebody else, especially a poor fellow
like that, enjoying the beauty of the sunset. But presently my
companion edged a little closer to me, and seeing my eyes directed
towards the mud which showed such heavenly colouring, he remarked to
me, with an air of the deepest interest, 'Throws up an 'eap of mud,
don't she?'"
Sometimes when Maitland came down to me in Danvers Street he used to
go over my accounts and discuss means of making them less. I think
his chief joy in them was the feeling that some of his more
respectable friends, such as Harold Edgeworth, would have been
horrified at my peculiarly squalid existence. In a sense it was, no
doubt, squalid, and yet in another it was perhaps the greatest time
in my life, and Maitland knew it. In the little book in which I kept
my expenses he came across one day on which I had absolutely spent
nothing. This was a great joy to him. On another day he found a
penny put down as "charity." On looking up the book I find that a
note still declares that this penny was given to a little girl to pay
her fare in the bus. I remember quite well that this beneficence on
my part necessitated my walking all the way to Chelsea from Hyde Park
Corner. Yet Maitland assured me that, compared with himself at
times, I was practically a millionaire, although he owned that he had
very rarely beaten my record for some weeks when all expenditure on
food was but three-and-six-pence. One week it actually totalled no
more than one-and-elevenpence, but I have no doubt that I went out to
eat with somebody else on those days--unless it was at the time my
liver protested, and gave me such an attack of gloom that I went to
bed and lay there for three days without eating, firmly determined to
die and have done with the literary struggle. This fast did me a
great deal of good. On the fourth day I got up and rustled
vigorously for a meal, and did some financing with the admirable
result of producing a whole half-crown.
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.
We talked of rhythm, and of Arsis or Ictus. Pyrrhics we spoke of,
and trochees and spondees were familiar on our lips. Especially did
he declare that he had a passion for anapæsts, and when it came to
the actual metres, Choriambics and Galliambics were an infinite joy
to him. He explained to me most seriously the differences between
trimeter Iambics when they were catalectic, acatalectic,
hypercatalectic. What he knew about comic tetrameter was at my
service, and in a short time I knew, as I imagined, almost all that
he did about Minor Ionic, Sapphic, and Alcaic verse. Once more these
things are to me little more than words, and yet I never hear one of
them mentioned--as one does occasionally when one comes across a
characteristic enthusiast--but I think of Henry Maitland and his
gravely joyous lectures to me on that vastly important subject. No
doubt many people will think that such little details as these are
worth nothing, but I shall have failed greatly in putting Maitland
down if they do not seem something in the end. These trifles are,
after all, touches in the portrait as I see the man, and that they
all meant much to him I know very well. To get through the early
days of literary poverty one must have ambition and enthusiasm of
many kinds. Enthusiasm alone is nothing, and ambition by itself is
too often barren, but the two together are something that the gods
may fight against in vain. I know that this association with him,
when I was his only friend, and he was my chief friend, was great for
both of us, for he had much to endure, and I was not without my
troubles. Yet we made fun together of our squalor, and rejoiced in
our poverty, so long as it did not mean acute suffering; and when it
did mean that, we often-times got something out of literature to help
us to forget. On looking back, I know that many things happened
which seem to me dreadful, but then they appeared but part of the
day's work.
It rarely happened that I went to him without some story of the
week's happenings, to be told again in return something which had
occurred to him. For instance, there was that story of the lady who
asked him his experience with regard to the management of butlers.
In return I could tell him of going out to dinner at houses where
people would have been horrified to learn that I had eaten nothing
that day, and possibly nothing the day before. For us to consort
with the comfortably situated sometimes seemed to both of us an
intolerably fine jest, which was added to by the difference of these
comfortable people from the others we knew. Here and there we came
across some fatly rich person who, by accident, had once been
deprived of his usual dinner. It seemed to give him a sympathetic
feeling for the very poor. But, after all, though I did sometimes
associate with such people, I was happier in my own room with
Maitland, or in his flat, where we discussed our Æschylus, or wrought
upon metres or figures of speech--always a great joy to us. Upon
these, too, Maitland was really quite learned. He was full of
examples of brachyology. Anacoluthon he was well acquainted with.
Not even Farrar, in his "Greek Syntax," or some greater man, knew
more examples of chiasmus, asyndeton, or hendiadys. In these byways
he generally rejoiced, and we were never satisfied unless at each
meeting, wherever it might be, we discovered some new phrase, or new
word, or new quotation.
Once at 7K I quoted to him from Keats' "Endymion" the lines about
those people who "unpen their baaing vanities to browse away the
green and comfortable juicy hay of human pastures." All that evening
he was denouncing various comfortable people who fed their baaing
vanity on everything delightful. He declared they browsed away all
that made life worth while, and in return for my gift to him of this
noble quotation he produced something rather more astounding, and
perhaps not quite so quotable, out of Zola's "Nana." We had been
talking of realism, and of speaking the truth, of being direct, of
not being mealy-mouthed; in fact, of not letting loose "baaing
vanities," and suddenly he took down "Nana" and said, "Here Zola has
put a phrase in her mouth which rejoices me exceedingly. It is a
plain, straight-forward, absolutely characteristic sentiment, such as
we in England are not allowed to represent. Nana, on being
remonstrated with by her lover-in-chief for her infidelities, returns
him the plain and direct reply, 'Quand je vois un homme qui me plait,
je couche avec.' He went on to declare that writing any novels in
England was indeed a very sickening business, but he added, "I really
think we begin to get somewhat better in this. However, up to the
last few years, it has been practically impossible to write anything
more abnormal about a man's relations with women than a mere bigamy."
Things have certainly altered, but I think he was one of those who
helped to break down that undue sense of the value of current
morality which has done so much harm to the study of life in general,
and indeed to life itself. His general rage and quarrel with that
current morality, for which he had not only a contempt, but a
loathing which often made him speechless, comes out well in what he
thought and expressed about the Harold Frederick affair. There was,
of course, as everybody knows, a second illegitimate family. While
the good and orthodox made a certain amount of effort to help the
wife and the legal children, they did their very best to ignore the
second family. However, to Maitland's great joy, there were certain
people, notably Mrs. Stephens, who did their very best for the other
children and for the poor mother. Maitland himself subscribed,
before he knew the actual position, to both families, and betrayed
extraordinary rage when he learnt how that second family had been
treated, and heard of the endeavours of the "unco' guid" to ignore
them wholly. But then such actions and such hypocrisy are
characteristic of the middle class in this country and not in this
country alone. He loathed their morals which became a system of
cruelty; their greed and its concomitant selfishness: their timidity
which grows brutal in defence of a position to which only chance and
their rapacity have entitled them.
Apropos of his hatred of current morality, it is a curious thing that
the only quarrel I ever had with him showed his early point of view
rather oddly. Among the few men he knew there was one, with whom I
was a little acquainted, who had picked up a young girl in a tavern
and taken her to live with him. My own acquaintance with her led to
some jealousy between me and the man who was keeping her, and he
wrote to Maitland complaining of me, and telling him many things
which were certainly untrue. Maitland when he considered the fact of
his having ruined his own life for ever and ever by his relations
with a woman of this order, had naturally built up a kind of theory
of these things as a justification for himself. This may seem a
piece of extravagant psychology, but I have not the least doubt that
it is true. Without asking my view of the affair he wrote to me very
angrily, and declared that I had behaved badly. He added that he
wished me to understand that he considered an affair of that
description as sacred as any marriage. Though he was young, and in
these matters no little of a prig, I was also young, and of a hot
temper. That he had not made any inquiries of me, or even asked my
version of the circumstances, so angered me that I wrote back to him
saying that if he spoke to me in that way I should decline to have
anything more to do with him. As he was convinced, most unjustly,
that his view was entirely sound, this naturally enough led to an
estrangement which lasted for the best part of a year, but I am glad
to remember that I myself made it up by writing to him about one of
his books. This was before I went to America, and although I was
working, it was a great grief to me that we did not meet during this
estrangement for any of our great talks, which, both then and
afterwards, were part of my life, and no little part of it. Often
when I think of him I recollect those lines of Callimachus to
Heracleitus in Corey's "Ionica":
"They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky."