The wonderful work which has here been imperfectly described was accomplished under a shadow. Maitland, who was never really a strong man, was, even before his marriage, not without warnings that he was overtaxing his physical resources. When he delivered his inaugural lecture he was already conscious that his days might be few. "I see again," writes one who was present, "the dim room, the grey light and the shadowy but inspired fragileness of the lecturer who was then fighting a very serious illness.... It was no ordinary lecture, rather a sort of sermon, grave and beautiful with its solemn call to work, even though that work might lie in humble and obscure fields. And the impression that was perhaps most immediately insistent, seeming to underlie each word and sentence, was that the speaker felt the hours of his own work to be already numbered and but few." In 1889, the year after his election to the Downing Chair, a doctor pronounced over him a sentence from which there is generally no successful appeal. "I very much want to see you again," he wrote to a friend, March 12, 1889, "and I don't know that I can wait for another year; this I say rather seriously and only to you; many things are telling me that I have not got unlimited time at my command and I have to take things very easily."

Devoted nursing, great care in diet, and a resolute avoidance of many of the pleasant things of life enabled the work to proceed as buoyantly as ever. There were bouts of illness and pain, when the French novelist and especially the beloved and well-known Balzac had to be invoked, but there were also periods of revival and at one time an assurance that the alarming symptoms had disappeared. But in truth the malady was never dislodged. "Slowly it is doing for me; but quite slowly," he wrote to a friend in 1899, "and it may cheer you to know that I have had ten happy and busy years under the ban." In the summer and autumn of that tenth year there was a sudden change for the worse and it became clear that Maitland could no longer winter in England. "If I have to sing a Nunc Dimittis," he wrote to Mr R. L. Poole, "it will run 'Quia oculi mei viderunt originalem Actum de Uniformitate primi anni Reg. Eliz.' Few can say as much.... I think of a voyage to S. America as S. Africa looks too warm for a man of peace."

From 1898 the Maitlands were compelled to fly south with the approach of winter. Their regular resort was Grand Canary but once, in 1904, this was exchanged for Madeira. Like all other habits idleness requires cultivation and Maitland had never been idle. Under a tropical sky and with an exquisite sense of relief from physical pain he worked his writing muscles as busily as ever. In the first exile he translated that part of Otto Gierke's Deutsche Genossenschaftrecht, which dealt with medieval political theory, and published it with a brilliant Introduction. Later he copied manuscripts of the Year Books lent to him by the wise generosity of the Cambridge University Library and collated or transcribed photographs of those manuscripts which it was impossible to export. The last two winters were divided between the Year Books and the composition of a biography of Leslie Stephen, and so far was exile from being a holiday that the fruit of each winter spent in the fortunate islands was never less than the substantial part of the volume. Some letters shall speak of the impressions and activities of these years.

To Leslie Stephen.

Hotel Santa Catalina,
Las Palmas,
Gran Canaria.
5 Nov. 1898.

I am beginning Guy Fawkes's day by sitting in the verandah before breakfast to write letters for a homeward-bound mail. Certainly it is enjoyable here and I mean to get good out of a delightful climate. Also I mean to convert your half promise of a visit into a whole, and without going beyond the truth I can say that there is a good deal here that should please you. At first sight I was repelled by the arid desolation of the island. I suppose that I ought to have been prepared for grasslessness, but somehow or another I was not. But then the wilderness is broken by patches of wonderful green—the green of banana fields. Wherever a little water can be induced to flow in artificial channels there are all manner of beautiful things to be seen. I have picked a date and mustered enough Spanish to buy me a pair of shoes in the "city" of Las Palmas—a dirty city it is with strange smells; but we are well outside of it. Between Las Palmas and its port there is a little English colony. This hotel is so English that they give me my bill in £ s. d. and my change in British ha'pence which have seen better days. Indeed now I know where our coppers go to when they have become too bad for use at home. Also the "library" of this hotel seems a sort of hades to which the bad three-voller is sent after its decease. But the proposition that all the worst books collect there is (as you must be aware) not convertible into the proposition that only bad books come there, and I see a copy of a certain Life of Henry Fawcett which you may have read. I laze away my time under verandahs and in gardens—but am not wholly inactive. Sometimes when it is cool I walk some miles and explore country that is well worth exploration. By the time you come I shall be ready for an ascent of our central range with you—it touches 6000 ft. I think, and by that time we shall be having cooler weather. Yesterday we were breathless: to-day is cloudy but would be September in England.

It is breakfast time and the porridge is good.

To Leslie Stephen.

S^ta Brigida,
Monte,
G. Canary.
9 Jan. 1899.

I won't pretend but that I am disappointed by your decision, the more so because my hopes of your advent stood higher than Florence's and I had endeavoured to argue that your half-promise was a valuable security. However, I know that we are far from England, and that you are unwilling to leave your household for any long time. Also the two last boats that have come here suffered much in the Bay of Biscay and were very late. So I forgive, though I badly want someone to walk with. The time has come when I feel that walks are pleasant and do me good, but that I am very tired of the contents of my own head. But even a solitary tramp is better than a day in bed, and I am really grateful to this magnificent climate and to those who sent me here. To those who cannot speak Spanish, and I cannot and never shall, the remoter parts of this island are not very accessible. I sometimes find myself beset by a troop of boys who take a fiendish pleasure in dogging the steps of an Englishman who obviously is deaf, dumb and mad. Attempts to reason with them only lead to shouts of Penny! or Tilling!—I cannot even persuade them that Tilling is not an English word. Still at times they leave me in peace and then I can be happy until the next crowd assembles.

To Leslie Stephen.

Hotel S^ta Brigida,
Monte,
Grand Canary.
23 Jan. 1899.

I fear from your last letter that you may take too seriously what I said in play. No, there was no promise, only a certain hope that you might come here, and Reason (with a capital) tells me that your decision is wise and that you must not give up to Canarios what was meant for your home and the Utilitarians. I am really glad to think that you are booking them, and at times I envy you. However I cannot say that I am unhappy in my idleness. When I despaired of you for a companion, I took to myself the soundest looking man in a hotel full of invalids, and gat me up into the hills to accomplish the expedition that I had reserved for you, and we succeeded in mastering not indeed the highest, but the most prominent mountain of the island, if a mountain may be no more than 6000 feet high. This raised me in my own conceit and certainly I had a very enjoyable time. I doubt whether in any of your good ascents you can have seen so gorgeously coloured a view as that which I beheld. A great part of the island lay below me; many of the rocks are bright orange and crimson and these are diversified by patches of brilliant green; the whole was framed in the blue of sky and sea. It was like a raised map that had been over-coloured.

To Frederick Pollock.

Casa PeÑate,
Monte.
Dec. 4, 1899.

Dated in Timelessness, but with you it may be some such day as Dec. 4, and I fancy that cent. XIX may still be persisting. Dated also nominally at Hotel Quiney in Las Palmas where I preserve address for service, but de facto in the garden of a messuage or finca called or known by the name of Bateria in the pueblo of S^ta Brigida—a fort-like structure which I hold as a monthly tenant—windows on four sides all with fine views—on ground floor lives major domo, a hard-worked peasant savouring of the soil—first and only other floor inhabited by me and mine, including our one servant, a Germano-Swiss treasure acquired as we left England—furniture a minimum and no more would be useful—small boy coatless comes to clean boots, run errands and the like, PepÉ to wit—much bargaining at house door with women who bring victuals round and would rather have a chat than money. Madame's mastery of their jargon surprises me daily—I can rarely catch a word. One might fall into vegetarianism here, such is the choice of vegetals.

Lies in the garden on a long chair mostly—has there written for Encyclop. Brit. article on Hist. Eng. Law—space assigned 8 only of their big pages: consequently tight packing of centuries: work of a bookless imagination—but dates were brought from England. Qu. whether editor will suffer the few lines given to J. Austin: they amount to j.a. = o°. Now turning to translate Gierke's chapt. on "Publicistic Doctrine of M.A.[25]"—O.G. has given consent—will make lectures (if I return) and possibly book—but what to do with "Publicistic"? Am reading Creighton's Papacy and Gardiner's History—may be well-informed man some day. Harv. L. Rev. and King's Peace came pleasantly—Alphabet not yet presented to babes but reserved for approaching birthday when it will delight. Meanwhile parents profit by it and are very grateful.

Influence of climate on epistolary style—a certain disjointedness. Can live here or rather can be content to vegetate. A tolerable course for the Lea Francis—some 5 miles long—lies not far away, but must shoulder her and climb a rocky path to reach it. No puncture yet. The alarums and the excursions of horrid war are but little heard here. Interesting talk last night at hotel with German Consul in Liberia much travelled in Africa—very unboerish but thinks we are in for a large affair—all good (says he) for (German) trade. Much that we buy here made in Germany,—they spread apace.

To Frederick Pollock.

Casa PeÑate, Monte,
Las Palmas.
5 Jan. 1900.

I have been wasting too many of my hours in bed—and such hours too—and have consequently written few letters. Somehow or another I was chilled in the course of my voyage: I think it was on board the little Spanish steamer that brought me here from Teneriffe: and after a few days, during which I improvidently cycled to Las Palmas and found that I had to trudge back, I collapsed. However that episode I hope is over, and certainly we are in luck this year. For three weeks the weather has been magnificent; no drop of rain has fallen and day after day the sun has shone. It is like the best English June and there is nothing that tells of midwinter except some leafless poplars and chestnuts. I brought out a minimum thermometer which has refused to register anything less than 54°.

I have been devouring too rapidly my small store of books since I have been cut off from the writing which I projected. What I have seen of my two MSS of the Year Books of Edward II tells me that there is a solid piece of work to be done. One of these MSS is much fuller than the printed book. I cannot understand what demand there can have been for that printed book: it is so very unintelligible—mere nonsense much of it.

The B.G.B. will have to wait—at least so I think at present—as I shall give all my working time to the Y.B.B.—but the volumes of Materialien are very interesting—especially so much as consists of the debates in the Reichstag[26]. By far the keenest debate was about damage done by hares and pheasants: the sportsmen of the Right were very keen about this matter.

... You will gather from this scrawl that I am recumbent in a garden—the fact is so and I won't deny it.

To Leslie Stephen.

22 Jan. 1900.

I can well believe that England is a gloomy place just now. Even here where I see few papers and few English folk, except the family, this ghastly affair sits heavily upon me and is always coming between me and my book: at the moment Gardiners History: from which my thoughts flit off to England and the Transvaal. It don't make things better to doubt profoundly whether we have any business to be at war at all. I remember telling you at Warboys (what a good day that was!) that I deeply mistrusted Chamberlain. Since then I have been thinking worse and worse of him: I hope that I am in the wrong, but only hope.

... Then I feel a beast for lazing here in the sunshine among the Spaniards who heartily enjoy all our misfortunes. And the worst of it is that lazing is obviously and visibly doing me good. Really and truly the temptation comes to me, when the sky is at its bluest, to resign my professorship, realise my small fortune and become a Canario for the days that remain. On the other hand three or four projects occasionally twitch my sleeve—connected with the Selden Society, which has behaved more than handsomely by me. But both sets of motives conspire to keep me lying in the sun and saying with the Apostles "Lord! it is good for us to be here."

Well you don't laze. I congratulate you heartily on coming out at the other end of the Utilitarians. You would not give me the pleasure of proof sheets—I regret it, but shall have the whole book soon and enjoyable it will be. Especially I want to see what you say of Austin. Since I was here I wrote an article "Hist. Engl. Law" for the Encyclop. Britan. and risked about Austin a couple of sentences which are not in accordance with common repute—and now I feel a little frightened. I don't want to be unjust, but I cannot see exactly where the greatness comes in. So I am curious to know your judgment about this—and many other things. I should like a long talk with you in these prehistoric surroundings.

To Frederick Pollock.

Casa PeÑate, Monte,
Les Palmas.
5/2/00.

My opinions about the origin of this wretched war are not worth stating and are extremely distressing to one who holds them. It will be enough to tell you that this summer John Morley seemed to me the one English statesman who was keeping his head cool, and I have not read anything that has changed my mind. I fear that the whole affair will look bad in history. And the worst of it is that the cold fit will come with a vengeance.

We have no good news yet. I hope for some this afternoon. Your letter came by Marseilles—to my surprise, for we rarely get a mail that way. Our last tidings are of speeches made by generals and these do not cheer me. Last night I had a talk with a man who knew the Transvaal and who fears that our volunteer marksmen will not hit much until they have had two months of South African atmosphere: the unaccustomed eye makes wildly incorrect estimates of distance.

You speak of dragoons. "My period," a very short one 1558-63 is full of the "swart-rutter." The English government's one idea of carrying on a big war, if war there was to be, was that of hiring German "swart-rutters." They did much pistolling, and I suppose that you know, I don't, how big a machine was the pistol of those days. Well, the War Office temp. Mary (only there was not one) was open to criticism. Every ounce of powder that England had was imported from the Netherlands. This had to go on for a while under Elizabeth—there are amusing letters from English agents wherein "bales of cloth," and so on, have an esoteric meaning.

A starved Canarian hound has attached itself to us—of the grey-hound type, and sundry small additions are made to the menagerie as occasion serves. A parrot died yesterday—had drunk too much water, so an expert says—was called JosÉ—his fellow Juan still screams. In the neighbouring hotel is another with atrocious German habits acquired from the head waiter—will drink himself drunk with beer and swear terribly. I hear rumours of an additional monkey whose name is to be Loango.

I play schoolmaster—How they have turned the Latin grammar inside out!—and I miss my Rule of Three. In a Spanish Census paper I for once made myself "doctor iuris": Glasgow allows me to say "utriusque." I added to the population capable of reading and writing no less than five names—for our trilingual Switzer was to be included—and this will seriously affect Canarian statistics.

But I like this illiterate folk.

To Henry Jackson.

Casa PeÑate, Monte,
Las Palmas.
18 Feb. 1900.

It is downright wickedly pleasant here. By here I do not mean in Las Palmas—which stinketh—but some seven miles out of it and some 1300 feet above it, in a "finca" that we were lucky enough to hire: that is something between a farm house and a villa. The Spaniard of the middle class is a town-loving animal. He likes to have up country a house to which he can go for six weeks or so in the year and where he keeps a major domo (= bailiff) who supplies the town house with country produce. Such a finca we hired for £1 a week, and there we live very comfortably and very cheaply among vines and oranges and so forth. Life here would have been impossible if my wife had not acquired the Spanish, or rather the Canario, tongue with wonderful rapidity. I fancy that some of her language is strong; but if you want anything here you must shout.

I am right glad to hear that it is no worse with you. But just you be careful about cold. I know it is the worst enemy that I have, and I suspect that you will find the same. I have often wondered how you contrived to live in "a thorough draught." The time comes when one cannot do it, and that time came to me early. In the sunshine I begin to make some flesh, the wind no longer whistles through my ribs and I have not had ache or pain these two months. (Interval during which the writer gets himself out of the aforesaid sunshine which to-day has an African quality.) I wish you could be here, but wonder whether you could be demoralized; some demoralization would do you good, but I cannot imagine you as lazy as I am. Still you might try. And really though I am lazy I have managed to do some things that I should not have done at home and hope to have something to offer the Press when I return. The subject of my meditations is the damnability of corporations. I rather think that they must be damned: the Chartered for example.

News as you suppose comes here fitfully. Sometimes a telegram reaches Las Palmas, and occasionally it is not contradicted. But in the main we depend upon newspapers. I feel somewhat of a beast for being outside all this war trouble, more especially as I went abroad with a very low opinion of the Government's South African policy. That opinion I should like to change but I cannot. Your amateur strategist must be pretty intolerable. I have met a few people here who knew something of the Transvaal and they have none of them been cheerful. The puzzle to me "after the event" is why more was not known in Downing Street. I can't help fearing that when all comes out the whole affair will look very bad....

It will be a very strange book that History of ours[27]. I am extremely curious to see whether Acton will be able to maintain a decent amount of harmony among the chapters. Some chapters that I saw did not look much like parts of one and the same book Before I went off I put my chapter into his lordship's hands. I never was more relieved than when I got rid of it. His lordship's lordship was considerate to an invalid and only excepted to a few new words that I had made, but I daresay he swore—if he ever swears—in private.... I never knew time run as it runs here. Soon I shall have to be thinking of my return with the mixedest feelings. I am going to give Cambridge a last chance. If it cannot keep me at about 9 stone, I shall "realise" such patrimony as I have and buy a finca. Then for the great treatise De Damnabilitate Universitatis.

To Henry Jackson.

Casa PeÑate, Monte,
Las Palmas.
12th January, 1901.

It was very good of you to give me a piece of your New Year's Eve and to tell me much that I wanted to know. For my part I am practising the art of writing while lying flat on my back and am flattering myself that I make some progress, though the management of a pipe complicates the matter. The result of lying abed is that I am getting through much too quickly the small store of books that I brought with me and am falling back on the resources of the one bookshop that the island contains. If this sort of thing goes on I shall be driven to Spanish translations of Zola. I have just finished Feuillet's La Muerta—but then I knew the French original. After what you say I must see whether Erckmann-Chatrian has been done into Spanish. In a list that I have before me I see Dickens down for "Dias penosos" and some Wilkie Collins—but apparently the novel-reading Spaniard lives for the most part on Frenchmen, especially Zola. I shall never talk Spanish. I believe that what is or used to be called a classical education makes many cowards: the dread of "howlers" keeps me silent when I ought to plunge regardless of consequences.

I fancy that the comparison that you instituted between the life of the Roman and the life of the Spaniard as seen by me in these islands might be extended to a good many particulars. When, as happens for about eleven months in the year, you are not living at your finca, you occasionally pay it visits with a party of friends—male friends only—whom you entertain there. You eat a great deal and drink until you are merry—then late in the evening you drive back to town twanging a guitar, and, if you can, you sing inane verses made impromptu. Our landlord had one of these carouses the day before he handed over the house to us, and my wife's account of the state in which the house was when she entered and set some servants to scrub it is not for publication.... Is not this rather classical?

To Frederick Pollock.

Casa PeÑate, Monte.
21 Jan. 1901.

Also I wonder what has gone wrong with the mails—we might be at the other end of the earth, so slow is news to reach us. A rumour came up yesterday from the ciudad which makes me reflect that I don't know for certain whether you have a queen in England or a king. And I can't go and see how all this is, for if I leave my bed, I am soon sent back there again by this blameworthy neuralgia which threatens to become what Glanvill calls morbus reseantisae. Et sic iaceo discinctus discalciatus et sine braccis ut patuit militibus comitatus qui missi fuerunt ad me videndum et qui michi dederunt diem apud Turrim Lundoniae in quindena Pasche.

So I make some progress through Spanish novels—or rather novels that have been translated into Spanish. At present I am in Resurreccion by the Conde Leon Tolstoy—which is easy. I find Perez Galdos a little too hard for my recumbent position, and dictionaries are bad bed-fellows. I have been indolently making for subsequent use a sort of Year Book grammar. I have got a pretty complete Être and avoir—and really I think that the lawyers had a fair command of all the tenses—I have seen some well sustained subjunctives.

You spoke of Maine. Well, I always talk of him with reluctance, for on the few occasions on which I sought to verify his statements of fact I came to the conclusion that he trusted much to a memory that played him tricks and rarely looked back at a book that he had once read: e.g. his story about the position of the half-blood in the Law of Normandy seems to me a mere dream that is contradicted by every version of the custumal.

By the way, when you discoursed of the term "comparative Jurisprudence," had you noticed that Austin used it? I was surprised by seeing it in his book the other day. Burgenses de Cantebrige dederunt michi libertatem burgi sui honoris causa quia edidi cartas suas. Gratificatus Sum.

To John C. Gray,

Professor of Law in the University of Harvard.

Downing College, Cambridge.
21 April, 1901.

My best thanks for Future Interests in Personal Property, which has just come to my hands on my return from the Canaries. For a few days my interest in it must be future, but will be vested, indefeasible, real and not impersonal.

Yours in perpetuity,

(Signed) F. W. Maitland.

To Henry Jackson.

5 Leon y Castillo,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
30 December, 1901.

Here I am lying in the sun which shines as if it were June and not December. This year our "finca" is in the midst of a "pueblo." The front of our house faces a high street which is none too clean—but then you keep the front of your house so shut up that you see nothing of the street and at the back all is orange and coffee and banana and so forth. Telde is the centre of an important trade in tomatos—the whole village is employed in the work of packing them for the English market and sending them off to the shops in Las Palmas. Really it has become a very big industry in these last years and if English people gave up eating tomatos, hundreds of Canarios would be in a bad way. But there! You don't want to hear of foreign parts, and if we could meet our talk would be of Cambridge....

I am told that I have been put back into the Press Syndicate. I do not refuse and shall be very glad if in any way I can further the interests of the big history. The first volume is with me and I enjoy it.

To Leslie Stephen.

5, Leon y Castillo,
Telde,
Las Palmas,
Gran Canaria.
20 Jan. 1902.

I was glad of your letter. I had been in a poor way and it cheered me. Now I am doing well and ride a bit on my cycle along one of the three roads of the island. I thought that you would like Joh. Althusius if you could penetrate the shell[28]. I like all that man's books, and his history of things in general as seen from the point of view of a student of corporations is full of good stuff, besides being to all appearance appallingly learned. I rather fancy that Hobbes's political feat consisted in giving a new twist to some well worn theories of the juristic order and then inventing a psychology which would justify that twist. I shall be very much interested to hear what you have to say about the old gentleman. A many years ago I saw in the Museum a copy of the Leviathan with a note telling how the wretched old atheist was buried head downwards or face downwards or something of the sort in a garden—a nice little legend in the making!

Have you read De Mirabilibus Pecci? Stevenson the Anglo-Saxon scholar, who travelled outwards with me, told me that the first recorded appearance of the name of the Peak (something like Pecesus) shows that the great cavern was called after the Devil's hinder parts. Did Hobbes know that? What a thing it is to be a philologer!

To Leslie Stephen.

5, Leon y Castillo,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
30 Jan. 1902.

Let me wish you a happy new year and then ask for a line in return. It doesn't follow in law or in fact that because I have nothing to say that you care to hear therefore you have nothing to say that I care to hear. Q.E.D.

Why did you make my life miserable by suggesting that grammar does not allow me to wish you a happy new year and does not allow you to send me a letter? I consulted a professed grammarian who told me that "me" and "you" are good datives and "to" in such cases an unnecessary and historically unjustifiable preposition. Go on like this and you will end where the Spaniard is, and he loves "to" his parents, etc. When we still have to contend with relics of a subjunctive you need not be making more difficulties. I am led into these exceedingly uninteresting remarks by the nature of my only pursuit. I had a bad time on the voyage. Something went wrong with my works and since I have been here I have not had much choice between lying almost flat and suffering a good deal of pain. So I have been copying Year Books from the manuscripts that I brought from Cambridge and since the scribes did not finish their words and I have to supply the endings I have been compelled to take a serious interest in old French Grammar. However, things are improving. I had ten minutes on the cycle yesterday and hope soon to see a little of the country. We are in a village this year. It is the centre of the trade in tomatos. Boxes of tomatos with the Telde mark have been seen even in the Cambridge market place. As I lie here I am surrounded by oranges, coffee, bananas, etc., and we have even a true dragon tree. It is wonderfully beautiful. Florence and the children are exceedingly happy and I am beginning to doubt whether I shall get them back to Cambridge when the Spring comes. You would think that Florence had never talked anything but Spanish. Not that I would warrant its Castilian quality, but at any rate it is rapid and highly effectual.

To Henry Jackson.

5, Leon y Castillo,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
1st February, 1902.

I am sorry indeed that the part of your letter to which I looked anxiously contained such bad news—and having said that I think that I won't say more—it is so useless.

The Spaniard ends his letter with S.S.S.Q.B.S.M. and I understand this to mean su seguro servidor que besa sus manos—but he puts it in even when he writes to the papers and there is no thought of any real kissing in the case. I send you two little bits of English for (!) decipherment. They appear day by day and month by month in the Diario de Las Palmas and I hope that they are intelligible to its non-English readers. The said newspaper is one of some half dozen daily rags published in our "ciudad"—I am surprised by their number. They seem largely to live upon ancient English papers—I mean papers which have taken a week to get here and have then been lying about in the hotels for another week or more. Hence queer snips from Tit Bits, etc.

Which makes me think of Acton. (His professed admiration of Tit Bits has some basis in fact: at least I once entered a railway carriage and found him deep in said paper.) What a prodigious catechism he addressed to you! I should like to have seen your reply.... Many thanks for news of the History. I hope that all will go well now: I think that the team looks strong. I hear that I am to serve on the Press Syndicate: I doubt I shall do much good there—still I am quite willing to hear others talk and shall be interested in all that concerns the big book.

These last weeks I have been doing splendidly and have got through a spell of copying which would never have been done had I stayed in England—as you say, life in Cambridge is an interruption. Buckland is a good companion and I think that we have taken our cycles where cycles have not been before—a crowd of ragged boys pursues—"chiquillos" convinced of our insanity.

If you have good news to give, give it.

To John C. Gray.

Downing College,
Cambridge.
19 April, 1902.

I returned yesterday from a winter spent in the Canaries where I am compelled to take refuge. Already I have read your article about gifts for non-charitable purposes and have been delighted by it. It puts an accent on what I think a matter of great historical importance—namely the extreme liberality of our law about charitable trusts. It seems to me that our people slid unconsciously from the enforcement of the rights of a c.q.t. to the establishment of trusts without a c.q.t.—the so-called charitable trusts: and I think that continental law shows that this was a step that would not and could not be taken by men whose heads were full of Roman Law. Practically the private man who creates a charitable trust does something that is very like the creation of an artificial person, and does it without asking leave of the State.

I only saw Thayer for a few hours, but I feel his death as the death of a friend. The loss must be deeply felt at Harvard.

To Henry Jackson.

Downing.
6 July, 1902.

You repay me my letter with usurious interest. However you are sui juris—or ought I to say tui?—and I doubt a court of equity would extend to you the protection which it bestows on improvident young gentlemen.

No I had nothing to write of Acton. A few memorable talks on Sunday afternoons were all I had. To my great regret I did not hear the first of the Eranus papers.... What the literary Nachlass is like I cannot tell and am not likely to know. I saw the notes for an introductory chapter[29] confided to Figgis. They seemed to me to be quite useless in the hands of anyone save him who made them. They struck me as very sad: the notes of a man who could not bring to the birth the multitude of thoughts that were crowding in his mind.

Have you seen Sidgwick's small book on philosophy? I think it in some respects the most Sidgwickian thing that is in print. I can hear most of it—some of it from the hearth-rug or at the Eranus.

I think that the K.C.B. came to Stephen just at the right moment and that he is really pleased by it. About his condition I don't know the exact truth. The good thing is that there is little discomfort. He is writing Ford Lectures for Oxford, but says that he will not be able to deliver them. Have you seen in his George Eliot the remark about Edmund Gurney? "I have always fancied—though without any evidence, that some touches in Deronda were drawn from one of her friends, Edmund Gurney a man of remarkable charm of character and as good-looking as Deronda" (p. 191). What think you?

To Henry Jackson.

20 December, 1902.
Muy SeÑor mio

F. W. Maitland.

From an exercise on the use of the subjunctive. Beyond this point my Spanish will not carry me. Compulsory Greek, acting on a fine natural stupidity, deprived me early of all power of learning languages. I envy my children who chatter to the servants in what is good enough Canario, though I doubt it being Castilian. My voyage was abominable. I am driven into the second class. I like second class men (not women): they are often very interesting people who have seen odd things and been in strange places—but a cabin close to the screw is bad and sleep was out of the question. Two lines of F. Myers (have I got them rightly) got into my head and set themselves to the accompanying noises:—"doubting if any recompense hereafter waits to atone the intolerable wrong?" But this was faithlessness—it is all atoned by a few hours of this glorious sunshine. Already I am regenerate and a new man.... Do you know Paul Bourget's L'Étape? It is not great but it served to kill some bad hours. And do you know Huysman? He looks to me like a debauchee who has turned himself into a ritualistic curate and is very sweet upon his highly artificial style. I am now tackling Gil Blas in the classical Spanish translation which some say is better than the original.

My house of call is Quiney's but I am up country at a place called Tafira.

To Frederick Pollock.

Casa Verda,
Tafira.
17 Jan. 1903.

Your letter about Paris is to hand. Well I envy you. Yours are the joys that I should have liked if I had my choice—but I must not complain, for I am having a superlatively good time. I don't exactly know why it is but the sun makes all the difference to me—I live here and don't live in England. I am even beginning to boast of my powers as a hill rider: but if ever I come here again I shall bring a machine with a very low gear and a free wheel: that is what you want if you live half way up a road that rises pretty steadily for 21 kilometres to 2600 feet. My friend Bennett who has vast experience recommends a gear of 50 for such work.

Meanwhile I push on with the Year Books. My first volume is done in the rough and a good piece is in print. Being away from books I become intrigued in small verbal problems. Am now observing the liberal use of the verb lier. In French you (an advocate) are said to lier the seisin, or the esplees, or the like, in this person or that. When translating I naturally write "lay," and I have a suspicion that the "to lay" of our legal vocabulary (e.g. to lay these damages) really descends from lier—que piensa V^d? That is the sort of triviality that occupies my mind:—however I am meditating a final say about the personality of states and corporations. Why not bring over Salmond to succeed you at Oxford? He is a good man. Local politics are interesting. I think that when Gladstone was in power he never was subjected to such continuous assaults as are directed against the Alcalde of Las Palmas by the organ of opinion that I patronize. Drought and flood, mud and dust, smallpox and measles are all from him, he fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies. But I should like to hear the lectures that you make for los Yanquis (N.B. in a Spanish mouth Americano is apt to mean a Spanish speaking man—and Yanqui is not uncivilly meant).

Much rain has fallen—but a road recovers from the most appalling mud in a very few hours.

To Leslie Stephen.

Casa Verda,
Tafira.
17 Jan. 1903.

The news that we get of you out here is satisfactory rather than satisfying—I mean that we have heard little, but it was all to the good. The last intelligence takes you back to your home and I feel good reason for hoping that long before now you have become reasonably comfortable. What I wish you know.

All here goes well. I am having a supremely good time—the only pains are those given by my conscience or by the voice that exists where my conscience should be—but the remedies for moral twinges are not difficult to come by in this world of sin—which also is (locally) a world of corrupting sunshine.

I brought with me this time all the three supplementary volumes of Dict. Natl. Biog. I stare at them and wonder how anybody can have the energy to make such things. Even novels strike me as laborious productions when the sun is at its best.

We have been having rain: and when it rains here you find that the roof of your house has been surprised by the performance. I am now engaged in drying a boxful of copied Year Book which unfortunately was left beneath a weak point in the ceiling. Is it "ceiling" by the way? I don't know, and while I am in the garden the dictionary is in the house and I don't care a perrita (primarily little bitch but also a five centimo piece) how this or any other word spells itself; and all this I ascribe to the sun.

It will be a good day when I get a postcard signed L. S.—but don't be in a hurry to send one before the spirit moves you.

Back at Hobbes again? I hope so. Florence joins me in hopes—as you can well suppose.

Yours very affectionately,
F. W. Maitland.

To Henry Jackson.

Tafira,
Las Palmas.
14 February, 1903.

We have been having bad news of sorts from home and this has spoilt what would otherwise have been a pleasant time, for though we have had heavy rain—even snow on the hill tops—we keep a really working sun that is up to a sun's business and converts the most appalling mud into dust in the space of a few hours. Until just lately I have been wondrous well. My amusement I have taken in the shape of lessons in Spanish from the hostess of the village inn. She prides herself on not talking like the other folk of Tafira—but asked me whether Perez Galdos wrote Gil Blas. P. G. is by birth a Canario and mighty proud they are of him here. Every little town has a street named after him. To my mind he is a most unequal storyteller—sometimes very good, at others dull.

To Frederick Pollock.

Tafira.
14 March, 1903.

... Did I tell you that a while ago I was informed that I had been elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn (with the "usual fees" forgiven). The news made my hair stand on end—one of the vacant bishoprics would have been less of a surprise.

To A. W. Verrall.

Quiney's Hotel,
Las Palmas.
14 Feb. 1903.

Until just this week I have been doing wonderfully well. Now the messenger of Satan has returned to buffet me and abate my pride. So the cycle has to rest; but I am hopeful that the visitation may be short—it ought to be if the climate has anything to do with the matter, for after some rainy weeks we are on the sun again. El SeÑor Cura "clapped in the prayer for rain" so very effectually that he had to protest before all saints that he had not meant quite so much as all that. Rainmaking is still one of the chief duties of the priesthood in such a country as this.

The proposal made by "the minister" and mentioned by you was rejected by return of post[30]. There were seven or eight good causes for the refusal—all of which will at once occur to your l'dship except perhaps one which I will tell you. My present place has been made extremely easy to me by the very great kindness of such colleagues as it has happened to few to have. Even if I had been a historian and an able-bodied man I should have thought many times before I changed my estate.—And what you say of the crowd at Bury's first lecture—I thought the appointment very good—confirms my view. The Regius Professor of Modern History is expected to speak to the world at large and even if I had anything to say to the W. at L. I don't think that I should like full houses and the limelight. So I go back to the Year Books. Really they are astonishing. I copy and translate for some hours every day and shall only have scratched the surface if I live to the age of Methusalem—but if I last a year or two longer I shall be a "dab" at real actions. It was a wonderful game as intricate as chess and not like chess cosmopolitan. Unravelling it is an amusement not unlike that of turning the insides out of ancient comedies I guess.

To W. W. Buckland.

Telde.
14 Feb. 1903.

Muy estimado colega y querido amigo mÍo

Espero que V^d no ha olvidado lo que ha aprendido de la lengua castillana cuando estaba en Gran Canaria el aÑo prÓximo pasado. Por tanto me esforzarÉ escribir una carta en aquel lenguaje aunque no puedo expresar mis pensamientos sin muchas disparates ridiculosas que quizas V^d perdonarÁ.

Mientras las primeras semanas de mia estancia en Tafira hacia buen tiempo y D. Benito del Colegio de Manuel y yo dabamos algunos largos paseos en nuestras bicicletas. Despues de su partida en Enero llovÍa muchas veces y se ha visto nieve en las cumbres. Los barrancos fueron llenos de agua y le agua se introdujÓ por el tejado de nuestra casa. El fango me recordaba el viaje que hicimos en Marzo de Galdar Á Telde. No mÉ gustaba el frio y no estoy tan biÉn que estaba hace poco tiempo. Mi antiguo enemigo me amenaza pero espero que le vencerÉ. De consiguiente no he ido Á Telde; pero espero ir luego, y si fuere buscarÉ Á Santiago su criado de V^d y le darÉ el duro que mi diÓ para Él. La viruela todavia se enfurece en Telde y en las Palmas tambien.

Todos sus amigos de V^d estan muy bien pero un seÑor cuyo nombre no mencionarÉ estaba fuertemente Ébrio cuando le vÍ la ultima vez....

Quiero leer el libro de Sen. X aunque no sÉ si le podrÉ entender. Es un hombre docto, doctÍsimo pero stogioso—esta ultima no puedo deletrear.

Estas pocas palabras son una recompensa muy ligera por su carta de V^d que me interesÓ mucho y por que estoy muy agradecido pero he tornado un largo tiempo escribiendolas. Si pudiere[31] escribir mas facilmente le contarÍa a V^d todos los sucesos que han acontecido en Gran Canaria. Pero es preciso acabar.

Con muchas memorias
Quedo su afectuoso amigo
F. W. Maitland.
Al muy excelente
Sen. D. G. G. Buckland.

To John C. Gray.

Downing College,
Cambridge.
4 Oct. 1903.

I should like to take this opportunity of asking you a question which you will be able to answer very easily. In 1862 our Parliament made it possible for any seven or more persons associated for any lawful purpose to form themselves into a corporation. But this provision was accompanied by a prohibition. For the future the formation of large partnerships (of more than 20 persons) was forbidden. In effect the legislature said that every big association having for its object the acquisition of gain must be a corporation. Thereby the formation of "unincorporated joint stock companies" was stopped. I may say in passing that now-a-days few Englishmen are aware of the existence of this prohibitory law because the corporate form has proved itself to be very much more convenient than the unincorporate. Now what I should like to know is whether when in your States the time came for general corporation laws there was any parallel legislation against unincorporated companies. I have some of your American books on Corporations and I gather from them that the repressive or prohibitory side of our Companies Act is not represented among you. But am I right in drawing this inference, and (if so) should I also be right in supposing that you would see constitutional objections to such a rule as that of which I am speaking: i.e. a rule prohibiting the formation of large partnerships or unincorporated joint-stock companies? A friend in New York supplied me with some very interesting trust deeds which in effect seemed to create companies of this sort. Should I then be right in supposing that in the U.S.A. the unincorporate company lived on beside the new trading corporation?

I am endeavouring to explain in a German journal how our law (or equity) of trusts enabled us to keep alive "unincorporate bodies" which elsewhere must have perished. Of course I must not speak of America. Still I should like to know in a general way whether the development of the "unincorporated company" which we repressed in 1862 was similarly repressed in the States, and a word or two from you about this matter would be most thankfully received.

By the way—and here I enter your own particular close—I observed that those New York deeds were careful to confine the trust within the limits of the perpetuity rule. Is it settled American law that this is necessary? We explain our clubs by saying that as the whole equitable ownership is vested in the original members there can be no talk of perpetuity—and I believe that there are some extremely important unincorporated companies with transferable shares (formed before 1862—in particular the London Stock Exchange) which are built up on this theory: the theory is that the original shareholders were in equity absolute masters of the land, buildings, etc. Does that commend itself to you?

There! you see what comes of writing to me! A whole catechism! Please think no more of it unless a very few words would set my feet in the straight road.

Most of my time is being given to the Year Books. The first volume is with the binder.

I often look back with great pleasure to the few hours that you and Mrs Gray spent with us in Gloucestershire. Would that I could see you again, but all my journeys have to be to the Canaries.

To John C. Gray.

Downing College,
Cambridge.
15 Nov. 1903.

Your very kind letter of the 4th is exactly what I wanted. But surely there is nothing "odd" in my asking you questions which you of living men can answer best. It would be odd if I went elsewhere.

The brief in Howe v. Morse is extremely interesting. I think that an English Court would take your view in such a case, but when it comes to questions about legacies our judges sometimes say things which stray from the path of rectitude as drawn by Prof. Gray.

I have been trying all this summer to finish an essay designed to explain to Germans the nature of a trust, and especially the manner in which the trust enabled us to keep alive all sorts of "bodies" which were not technically corporate. I am obliged now to flee to the Canaries leaving this unfinished, for a particularly fraudulent summer has made me very useless. Some one ought to explain our trust to the world at large, for I am inclined to think that the construction thereof is the greatest feat that men of our race have performed in the field of jurisprudence. Whether I shall be able to do this remains to be seen—but it ought to be done.

To Leslie Stephen.

Leon y Castillo 5,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
6 Dec. 1903.

I fear that I must not carry my good wishes beyond the point of hoping that the improvement that I saw last time I visited you has gone further and that at any rate you are easy and free from pain. I have just had a week in this island. Part of it I spent foolishly in bed but now I am in a delightful atmosphere and have been thoroughly enjoying your Hobbes. It is worthy of you, and you know what I mean when I say that. I have been all through it once and have corrected most of the typists errors. A few little points must stand over until I can command the whole of the "Works" (I only brought two volumes with me) but they are not of such a kind as would prevent the copy going to the printers, and I propose to send it to them very soon, for they will let me keep the stuff in type until I am again in England. The difficulties to which I refer are words occurring in your quotations from Hobbes—just here and there your writing beats me, but a few minutes with Molesworth will settle the matter....

I think I told you that in my estimate you have written, more rather than less, your due tale of words. I shall add nothing save some tag which will serve as a substitute for the missing end of the final paragraph (said tag I may be able to submit to you) and I shall omit nothing save trifles unless the publishers insist.

I have been speculating as to what T. H. would have said had he lived until 1688. If it becomes clear that your "sovereign" is going to acknowledge the pope's claims, this of course is no breach of any contract between ruler and ruled (for there is no such contract) but is there not an abdication? Putting theory out of the question, which would the old gentleman have disliked most, Revolution against Leviathan, or a Leviathan with the Roman fisherman's hook in his nose?

Well he was a delightful old person and deserved the expositor whom he has found.

To Henry Jackson.

Leon y Castillo 5,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
13 December, 1903.

This may—I cannot be sure that it will—be in time to salute you on Christmas day. Posts are irregular and nine miles of bad road separate us from Las Palmas. So, not being able as yet to cycle to our ciudad, I shall just drop this into the village letter box and trust that it may reach you some day.

I had the good luck to find the Bay of Biscay reflecting a really warm sun and very soon I could hardly believe that so grey a place as Cambridge existed. I arrived here at the end of a prolonged drought and the good folk of Telde "clapped on the prayer for rain": or rather they did much more; they carried round the town a milagroso Cristo whom they keep for great occasions. I am not sure that the priest let him go his rounds until he, the priest, saw that the clouds were collecting thick over the mountains. Anyhow the rain came at once, to the great edification of the faithful. Since then we have celebrated the Immaculate Conception. It is very queer how events get turned into persons. The Conception became a person for the people. I think that the historian of myths would learn a good deal here. Just lately I discovered—it was no great discovery—that the pet name "Concha" is the short for Concepcion, as Lola is the short for Dolores. My protestant mind has been a little shocked by a female form of Jesus, namely "Jesusa."

I am living in hope that Pollock's successor at Oxford may be Vinogradoff. I wish much that we had him at Cambridge.

I am curious to hear any news that there may be concerning the deliberations of the great syndicate. I suppose that something will be known before I return to Cambridge—if ever I return. I say "if ever" for I am always thinking of resignation. Out here I can do a great deal with photographed manuscripts and so on, whereas in England I get nothing done.

You I suppose are deep in "Josephism"—by the way has anybody endeavoured to transfer that term from a manner of treating the church to Mr C.'s fiscal policy? My latest newspaper gives the Duke's oration—how very good our Chancellor can be!—but no doubt that is with you a very ancient history[32]. My own impression when I left England was that the crusade was failing.

To Henry Jackson.

Leon y Castillo 5,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
14 Feb. 1904.

No, you draw a wrong inference from my silence. When I am hurt I cry. When I am not crying I am happy. In this instance I have been very happy indeed and so busy that I have taken six weeks over a novel, and am once more developing a corn on my little finger by copying.... All that you tell me of the Studies Syndicate is extremely interesting—you may rely upon my discretion, for as you remark there is nobody to whom I could babble—even La Manana which is often hard up for news would I fear give me nothing for secret intelligence concerning the S.S.

Writing those initials made me think of your Eranus. I wish that I had heard you. I think that I might have been able to add an ancient story or two. I think that I once told you how the "to wit" placed after the name of a county at the beginning of a legal record (e.g. Cambridgeshire, to wit, A.B. complains that C. D. etc.) represents a mere flourish ? dividing the name of the county from the beginning of the story. This was mistaken for a long S which was supposed to be the abbreviation of scilicet. The Spaniards are fond of using mere initials: after a dead person's name you can put q.d.h.e.g. = que Dios haya en gloria. The case that amuses me most is that you can speak of the Host as S.D.M. (his divine majesty—just like H.R.H.). One day in Las Palmas I had to spring from my bicycle and kneel in the road because S.D.M. was coming along. But I have just had my revenge. I have been mistaken for S.D.M. They ring a little bell in front of him. I rarely ring my bicycle bell because I don't think it a civil thing to do in a land where cycles are very rare. However the other day I was almost upon the backs of two men, so I rang. They started round and at the same time instinctively raised their hats—and instead of S.D.M. there was only an hereje.

To be sure those letters of Acton's are thrilling. I saw them out here last year. Mrs Drew wanted me to edit them. I declined the task, after talking to Leslie Stephen. Obviously I was not the right man. I am boundlessly ignorant of contemporary history and could not in the least tell what would give undeserved and unnecessary pain. On the other hand I should think that H. Paul was the right man for the job.

... I hope that Vol. III is doing well, though I foresee that I shall be slated in all quarters. Acton was an adroit flatterer and induced me to put my hand far into a very nest of hornets.

To A. W. Verrall.

C/o Leacock & Co.
Funchal,
Madeira.
15 Jan. 1905.

It is good to see your hand and kind of you to write to me, especially as I fear that writing is not so easy to you as it once was. I do very earnestly hope that things go fairly well with you and that you have not much pain. Yesterday I was thinking a lot of your courage and my cowardice for I took an off day—off from the biography I mean—and attained an altitude of (say) 5250 feet (a cog-wheel railway saving me 2000 thereof, however) and I was bounding about up there like a kid of the goats—and very base I thought myself not to be lecturing. There is not much left of me avoirdupoisly speaking; but that little bounds along when it has had a good sunning; and to-day I have a rubbed heel and a permanent thirst as in the good old days. Missing a train on said railway I made the last part of the descent in the special Madeira fashion on a sledge glissading down over polished cobble stone pavement—a youth running behind to hold the thing back by a rope: it gives the unaccustomed a pretty little squirm at starting. Up in the hills it is a pleasant world—you pass through many different zones of vegetation very rapidly—at one moment all is laurel and heath—you cross a well-marked line and all is tilling—then you are out among dead bracken on an open hill-top that might be English. Get on a sledge and wiss (or is it wiz?) you go down to the sugar and bananas through bignonia and bougainvillia which blind you by their ferocity.

To Henry Jackson.

Leon y Castillo, 5,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
15 January, 1906.

I have your second letter, not your first. The first may be lying in the Hotel at Las Palmas and I must attempt to get it. This year it is difficult to communicate with the "ciudad" for there has been a prolonged drought and the roads—but did you ever try cycling across a ploughed field? Moreover people here are lazy and casual and the semi-hispanised English people who keep the English hotels are perhaps more casual than the true Jack Spaniards. Well, I must get that letter, for which I thank in advance, even if it costs me a day's labour and some strong language. Meanwhile I will talk of canary birds. The birds are named after our islands. What our islands are named after, nobody, so I am told, knows for certain. Whether the birds are found wild in all the seven islands I don't know. Certainly there are many in Gran Canaria. Also there are many in Madeira. The wild canary is, I believe, always a dusky little chap, brown and green. The sulphur coloured or canary-coloured canary is, I am told, a work of art, and I have heard say that he was made at Norwich: by "made" of course I mean bred by human selection. The most highly priced canaries are, I believe, made in Germany. I have known two guineas asked for a "Hartz Mountain Canary": it sang pp. like a very sweet musical box. On the other hand, wild canaries are cheap here, especially if you go up country and buy of the boys who catch them. My wife quotes as a fair range of price half a peseta to a peseta and a half. The peseta ought to be equivalent to the franc but is much depreciated. So let us say that a bird can be had for a shilling. My wife adds that she would be very happy to import birds for your daughter—and this is not a civil phrase but gospel truth: she is never happier than when she is acquiring pets as principal or agent:—so it is, and I can't help it. I like the song of these dusky birds: it is not nearly so piercing as that of the Norwich variety. I daresay that I have told you some untruths in this ornithological excursus—but at any rate I make no mistake about the price of wild birds or about my wife's willingness—I might say eagerness—to transact business.

[25] Middle Ages. In 1900 Maitland published a translation of part of Otto Gierke's (O.G.) Das deutsche Genossenschaftrecht under the title Political Theories of the Middle Ages.