In later life, he was part of the circle of expatriates based on the Italian island of Capri, where he shared a villa with the novelist Edward Frederic Benson.
"[3] Brooks stayed at a pension (boarding house) in Heidelberg in 1890, where he formed a close relationship with the young Somerset Maugham.
He fired the younger man's imagination and became the arbiter of his tastes.The character Hayward in Maugham's Of Human Bondage, an "esthete who is just back from Germany and admires Pater" and influences Philip, the young protagonist, is "obviously based on Ellingham Brooks.
"[4] Five years later, Maugham and Brooks crossed paths again in Capri: Somerset Maugham, who was a regular visitor, captured the dark side in his classic short story "The Lotus Eater," about a British bank manager who throws over his life in London to live in Capri and swears to commit suicide when his money runs out.
The character was based on Maugham's friend and lover, John Ellingham Brooks, who came to Capri as part of an exodus of homosexuals from England in the wake of Oscar Wilde's conviction, in 1895, for "acts of gross indecency."