The Moon and Sixpence
the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to
pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist
fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And
when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it
you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he
sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge
and sensitiveness and imagination.”
“Why did I always think your pictures beautiful, Dirk? I admired them
the very first time I saw them.”
Stroeve’s lips trembled a little.
“Go to bed, my precious. I will walk a few steps with our friend, and
then I will come back.”
Chapter XX
Dirk Stroeve agreed to fetch me on the following evening and take me to
the café at which Strickland was most likely to be found. I was
interested to learn that it was the same as that at which Strickland
and I had drunk absinthe when I had gone over to Paris to see him. The
fact that he had never changed suggested a sluggishness of habit which
seemed to me characteristic.
“There he is,” said Stroeve, as we reached the café.
Though it was October, the evening was warm, and the tables on the
pavement were crowded. I ran my eyes over them, but did not see
Strickland.
“Look. Over there, in the corner. He’s playing chess.”
I noticed a man bending over a chess-board, but could see only a large
felt hat and a red beard. We threaded our way among the tables till we
came to him.
“Strickland.”
He looked up.
“Hulloa, fatty. What do you want?”
“I’ve brought an old friend to see you.”
Strickland gave me a glance, and evidently did not recognise me. He
resumed his scrutiny of the chess-board.
“Sit down, and don’t make a noise,” he said.
He moved a piece and straightway became absorbed in the game. Poor
Stroeve gave me a troubled look, but I was not disconcerted by so
little. I ordered something to drink, and waited quietly till
Strickland had finished. I welcomed the opportunity to examine him at
my ease. I certainly should never have known him. In the first place
his red beard, ragged and untrimmed, hid much of his face, and his hair
was long; but the most surprising change in him was his extreme
thinness. It made his great nose protrude more arrogantly; it
emphasized his cheekbones; it made his eyes seem larger. There were
deep hollows at his temples. His body was cadaverous. He wore the same
suit that I had seen him in five years before; it was torn and stained,
threadbare, and it hung upon him loosely, as though it had been made
for someone else. I noticed his hands, dirty, with long nails; they
were merely bone and sinew, large and strong; but I had forgotten that
they were so shapely. He gave me an extraordinary impression as he sat
there, his attention riveted on his game—an impression of great
strength; and I could not understand why it was that his emaciation
somehow made it more striking.
Presently, after moving, he leaned back and gazed with a curious
abstraction at his antagonist. This was a fat, bearded Frenchman. The
Frenchman considered the position, then broke suddenly into jovial
expletives, and with an impatient gesture, gathering up the pieces,
flung them into their box. He cursed Strickland freely, then, calling
for the waiter, paid for the drinks, and left. Stroeve drew his chair
closer to the table.
“Now I suppose we can talk,” he said.
Strickland’s eyes rested on him, and there was in them a malicious
expression. I felt sure he was seeking for some gibe, could think of
none, and so was forced to silence.
“I’ve brought an old friend to see you,” repeated Stroeve, beaming
cheerfully.
Strickland looked at me thoughtfully for nearly a minute. I did not
speak.
“I’ve never seen him in my life,” he said.
I do not know why he said this, for I felt certain I had caught a gleam
of recognition in his eyes. I was not so easily abashed as I had been
some years earlier.
“I saw your wife the other day,” I said. “I felt sure you’d like to
have the latest news of her.”
He gave a short laugh. His eyes twinkled.
“We had a jolly evening together,” he said. “How long ago is it?”
“Five years.”
He called for another absinthe. Stroeve, with voluble tongue, explained
how he and I had met, and by what an accident we discovered that we
both knew Strickland. I do not know if Strickland listened. He glanced
at me once or twice reflectively, but for the most part seemed occupied
with his own thoughts; and certainly without Stroeve’s babble the
conversation would have been difficult. In half an hour the Dutchman,
looking at his watch, announced that he must go. He asked whether I
would come too. I thought, alone, I might get something out of
Strickland, and so answered that I would stay.
When the fat man had left I said:
“Dirk Stroeve thinks you’re a great artist.”
“What the hell do you suppose I care?”
“Will you let me see your pictures?”
“Why should I?”
“I might feel inclined to buy one.”
“I might not feel inclined to sell one.”
“Are you making a good living?” I asked, smiling.
He chuckled.
“Do I look it?”
“You look half starved.”
“I am half starved.”
“Then come and let’s have a bit of dinner.”
“Why do you ask me?”
“Not out of charity,” I answered coolly. “I don’t really care a
twopenny damn if you starve or not.”
His eyes lit up again.
“Come on, then,” he said, getting up. “I’d like a decent meal.”
Chapter XXI
I let him take me to a restaurant of his choice, but on the way I
bought a paper. When we had ordered our dinner, I propped it against a
bottle of St. Galmier and began to read. We ate in silence. I felt him
looking at me now and again, but I took no notice. I meant to force him
to conversation.
“Is there anything in the paper?” he said, as we approached the end of
our silent meal.
I fancied there was in his tone a slight note of exasperation.
“I always like to read the _feuilleton_ on the drama,” I said.
I folded the paper and put it down beside me.
“I’ve enjoyed my dinner,” he remarked.
“I think we might have our coffee here, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
We lit our cigars. I smoked in silence. I noticed that now and then his
eyes rested on me with a faint smile of amusement. I waited patiently.
“What have you been up to since I saw you last?” he asked at length.
I had not very much to say. It was a record of hard work and of little
adventure; of experiments in this direction and in that; of the gradual
acquisition of the knowledge of books and of men. I took care to ask
Strickland nothing about his own doings. I showed not the least
interest in him, and at last I was rewarded. He began to talk of
himself. But with his poor gift of expression he gave but indications
of what he had gone through, and I had to fill up the gaps with my own
imagination. It was tantalising to get no more than hints into a
character that interested me so much. It was like making one’s way
through a mutilated manuscript. I received the impression of a life
which was a bitter struggle against every sort of difficulty; but I
realised that much which would have seemed horrible to most people did
not in the least affect him. Strickland was distinguished from most
Englishmen by his perfect indifference to comfort; it did not irk him
to live always in one shabby room; he had no need to be surrounded by
beautiful things. I do not suppose he had ever noticed how dingy was
the paper on the wall of the room in which on my first visit I found
him. He did not want arm-chairs to sit in; he really felt more at his
ease on a kitchen chair. He ate with appetite, but was indifferent to
what he ate; to him it was only food that he devoured to still the
pangs of hunger; and when no food was to be had he seemed capable of
doing without. I learned that for six months he had lived on a loaf of
bread and a bottle of milk a day. He was a sensual man, and yet was
indifferent to sensual things. He looked upon privation as no hardship.
There was something impressive in the manner in which he lived a life
wholly of the spirit.
When the small sum of money which he brought with him from London came
to an end he suffered from no dismay. He sold no pictures; I think he
made little attempt to sell any; he set about finding some way to make
a bit of money. He told me with grim humour of the time he had spent
acting as guide to Cockneys who wanted to see the night side of life in
Paris; it was an occupation that appealed to his sardonic temper and
somehow or other he had acquired a wide acquaintance with the more
disreputable quarters of the city. He told me of the long hours he
spent walking about the Boulevard de la Madeleine on the look-out for
Englishmen, preferably the worse for liquor, who desired to see things
which the law forbade. When in luck he was able to make a tidy sum; but
the shabbiness of his clothes at last frightened the sight-seers, and
he could not find people adventurous enough to trust themselves to him.
Then he happened on a job to translate the advertisements of patent
medicines which were sent broadcast to the medical profession in
England. During a strike he had been employed as a house-painter.
Meanwhile he had never ceased to work at his art; but, soon tiring of
the studios, entirely by himself. He had never been so poor that he
could not buy canvas and paint, and really he needed nothing else. So
far as I could make out, he painted with great difficulty, and in his
unwillingness to accept help from anyone lost much time in finding out
for himself the solution of technical problems which preceding
generations had already worked out one by one. He was aiming at
something, I knew not what, and perhaps he hardly knew himself; and I
got again more strongly the impression of a man possessed. He did not
seem quite sane. It seemed to me that he would not show his pictures
because he was really not interested in them. He lived in a dream, and
the reality meant nothing to him. I had the feeling that he worked on a
canvas with all the force of his violent personality, oblivious of
everything in his effort to get what he saw with the mind’s eye; and
then, having finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that
he seldom brought anything to completion, but the passion that fired
him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied with what he had
done; it seemed to him of no consequence compared with the vision that
obsessed his mind.
“Why don’t you ever send your work to exhibitions?” I asked. “I should
have thought you’d like to know what people thought about it.”
“Would you?”
I cannot describe the unmeasurable contempt he put into the two words.
“Don’t you want fame? It’s something that most artists haven’t been
indifferent to.”
“Children. How can you care for the opinion of the crowd, when you
don’t care twopence for the opinion of the individual?”
“We’re not all reasonable beings,” I laughed.
“Who makes fame? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women.”
“Wouldn’t it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of people
you didn’t know and had never seen receiving emotions, subtle and
passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone likes power. I can’t
imagine a more wonderful exercise of it than to move the souls of men
to pity or terror.”
“Melodrama.”
“Why do you mind if you paint well or badly?”
“I don’t. I only want to paint what I see.”
“I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the certainty that
no eyes but mine would ever see what I had written.”
Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone strangely,
as though he saw something that kindled his soul to ecstasy.
“Sometimes I’ve thought of an island lost in a boundless sea, where I