The Moon and Sixpence
excellent woman. I wish she was in hell._ It is not thus that the
Church in its great days dealt with evidence that was unwelcome.
Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz was an enthusiastic admirer of Charles
Strickland, and there was no danger that he would whitewash him. He had
an unerring eye for the despicable motive in actions that had all the
appearance of innocence. He was a psycho-pathologist, as well as a
student of art, and the subconscious had few secrets from him. No
mystic ever saw deeper meaning in common things. The mystic sees the
ineffable, and the psycho-pathologist the unspeakable. There is a
singular fascination in watching the eagerness with which the learned
author ferrets out every circumstance which may throw discredit on his
hero. His heart warms to him when he can bring forward some example of
cruelty or meanness, and he exults like an inquisitor at the _auto da
fé_ of an heretic when with some forgotten story he can confound the
filial piety of the Rev. Robert Strickland. His industry has been
amazing. Nothing has been too small to escape him, and you may be sure
that if Charles Strickland left a laundry bill unpaid it will be given
you _in extenso_, and if he forebore to return a borrowed half-crown no
detail of the transaction will be omitted.
Chapter II
When so much has been written about Charles Strickland, it may seem
unnecessary that I should write more. A painter’s monument is his work.
It is true I knew him more intimately than most: I met him first before
ever he became a painter, and I saw him not infrequently during the
difficult years he spent in Paris; but I do not suppose I should ever
have set down my recollections if the hazards of the war had not taken
me to Tahiti. There, as is notorious, he spent the last years of his
life; and there I came across persons who were familiar with him. I
find myself in a position to throw light on just that part of his
tragic career which has remained most obscure. If they who believe in
Strickland’s greatness are right, the personal narratives of such as
knew him in the flesh can hardly be superfluous. What would we not give
for the reminiscences of someone who had been as intimately acquainted
with El Greco as I was with Strickland?
But I seek refuge in no such excuses. I forget who it was that
recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they
disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed
scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. But
there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my
flesh each week to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to
read the Literary Supplement of _The Times._ It is a salutary
discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the
fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate
which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way
among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of
a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter
experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some
chance reader a few hours’ relaxation or to while away the tedium of a
journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are
well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition;
to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral
I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his
work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to
aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
Now the war has come, bringing with it a new attitude. Youth has turned
to gods we of an earlier day knew not, and it is possible to see
already the direction in which those who come after us will move. The
younger generation, conscious of strength and tumultuous, have done
with knocking at the door; they have burst in and seated themselves in
our seats. The air is noisy with their shouts. Of their elders some, by
imitating the antics of youth, strive to persuade themselves that their
day is not yet over; they shout with the lustiest, but the war cry
sounds hollow in their mouth; they are like poor wantons attempting
with pencil, paint and powder, with shrill gaiety, to recover the
illusion of their spring. The wiser go their way with a decent grace.
In their chastened smile is an indulgent mockery. They remember that
they too trod down a sated generation, with just such clamor and with
just such scorn, and they foresee that these brave torch-bearers will
presently yield their place also. There is no last word. The new
evangel was old when Nineveh reared her greatness to the sky. These
gallant words which seem so novel to those that speak them were said in
accents scarcely changed a hundred times before. The pendulum swings
backwards and forwards. The circle is ever travelled anew.
Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in which he
had his place into one which is strange to him, and then the curious
are offered one of the most singular spectacles in the human comedy.
Who now, for example, thinks of George Crabbe? He was a famous poet in
his day, and the world recognised his genius with a unanimity which the
greater complexity of modern life has rendered infrequent. He had
learnt his craft at the school of Alexander Pope, and he wrote moral
stories in rhymed couplets. Then came the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars, and the poets sang new songs. Mr. Crabbe continued to
write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I think he must have read the
verse of these young men who were making so great a stir in the world,
and I fancy he found it poor stuff. Of course, much of it was. But the
odes of Keats and of Wordsworth, a poem or two by Coleridge, a few more
by Shelley, discovered vast realms of the spirit that none had explored
before. Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr. Crabbe continued to
write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I have read desultorily the
writings of the younger generation. It may be that among them a more
fervid Keats, a more ethereal Shelley, has already published numbers
the world will willingly remember. I cannot tell. I admire their
polish—their youth is already so accomplished that it seems absurd to
speak of promise—I marvel at the felicity of their style; but with all
their copiousness (their vocabulary suggests that they fingered Roget’s
_Thesaurus_ in their cradles) they say nothing to me: to my mind they
know too much and feel too obviously; I cannot stomach the heartiness
with which they slap me on the back or the emotion with which they hurl
themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little anaemic and
their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf. I
will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should
be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.
Chapter III
But all this is by the way.
I was very young when I wrote my first book. By a lucky chance it
excited attention, and various persons sought my acquaintance.
It is not without melancholy that I wander among my recollections of
the world of letters in London when first, bashful but eager, I was
introduced to it. It is long since I frequented it, and if the novels
that describe its present singularities are accurate much in it is now
changed. The venue is different. Chelsea and Bloomsbury have taken the
place of Hampstead, Notting Hill Gate, and High Street, Kensington.
Then it was a distinction to be under forty, but now to be more than
twenty-five is absurd. I think in those days we were a little shy of
our emotions, and the fear of ridicule tempered the more obvious forms
of pretentiousness. I do not believe that there was in that genteel
Bohemia an intensive culture of chastity, but I do not remember so
crude a promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day. We did
not think it hypocritical to draw over our vagaries the curtain of a
decent silence. The spade was not invariably called a bloody shovel.
Woman had not yet altogether come into her own.
I lived near Victoria Station, and I recall long excursions by bus to
the hospitable houses of the literary. In my timidity I wandered up and
down the street while I screwed up my courage to ring the bell; and
then, sick with apprehension, was ushered into an airless room full of
people. I was introduced to this celebrated person after that one, and
the kind words they said about my book made me excessively
uncomfortable. I felt they expected me to say clever things, and I
never could think of any till after the party was over. I tried to
conceal my embarrassment by handing round cups of tea and rather
ill-cut bread-and-butter. I wanted no one to take notice of me, so that
I could observe these famous creatures at my ease and listen to the
clever things they said.
I have a recollection of large, unbending women with great noses and
rapacious eyes, who wore their clothes as though they were armour; and
of little, mouse-like spinsters, with soft voices and a shrewd glance.
I never ceased to be fascinated by their persistence in eating buttered
toast with their gloves on, and I observed with admiration the
unconcern with which they wiped their fingers on their chair when they
thought no one was looking. It must have been bad for the furniture,
but I suppose the hostess took her revenge on the furniture of her
friends when, in turn, she visited them. Some of them were dressed
fashionably, and they said they couldn’t for the life of them see why
you should be dowdy just because you had written a novel; if you had a
neat figure you might as well make the most of it, and a smart shoe on
a small foot had never prevented an editor from taking your “stuff.”
But others thought this frivolous, and they wore “art fabrics” and
barbaric jewelry. The men were seldom eccentric in appearance. They
tried to look as little like authors as possible. They wished to be
taken for men of the world, and could have passed anywhere for the
managing clerks of a city firm. They always seemed a little tired. I
had never known writers before, and I found them very strange, but I do
not think they ever seemed to me quite real.
I remember that I thought their conversation brilliant, and I used to
listen with astonishment to the stinging humour with which they would
tear a brother-author to pieces the moment that his back was turned.
The artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his
friends offer not only their appearance and their character to his
satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with
such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still
cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the
crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical
appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave
sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can
remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the
conversation never settled down so comfortably as when it turned to the
details of the trade which was the other side of the art we practised.
When we had done discussing the merits of the latest book, it was
natural to wonder how many copies had been sold, what advance the
author had received, and how much he was likely to make out of it. Then
we would speak of this publisher and of that, comparing the generosity
of one with the meanness of another; we would argue whether it was
better to go to one who gave handsome royalties or to another who
“pushed” a book for all it was worth. Some advertised badly and some
well. Some were modern and some were old-fashioned. Then we would talk