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_ I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles
Strickland I never for a moment discerned that there was in
him anything out of the ordinary. Yet now few will be found
to deny his greatness. I do not speak of that greatness which
is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful
soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the place he
occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances
reduces it to very discreet proportions. The Prime Minister
out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous
rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame
hero of a market town. The greatness of Charles Strickland
was authentic. It may be that you do not like his art, but at
all events you can hardly refuse it the tribute of your
interest. He disturbs and arrests. The time has passed when
he was an object of ridicule, and it is no longer a mark of
eccentricity to defend or of perversity to extol him.
His faults are accepted as the necessary complement to his merits.
It is still possible to discuss his place in art, and the
adulation of his admirers is perhaps no less capricious than
the disparagement of his detractors; but one thing can never
be doubtful, and that is that he had genius. To my mind the
most interesting thing in art is the personality of the
artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a
thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter
than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him:
the Cretan, sensual and tragic, proffers the mystery of his
soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, or
musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful, satisfies
the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct,
and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater
gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the
fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares
with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most
insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality
which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this
surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures
from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited
so curious an interest in his life and character.
It was not till four years after Strickland's death that
Maurice Huret wrote that article in the Mercure de France
which rescued the unknown painter from oblivion and blazed the
trail which succeeding writers, with more or less docility,
have followed. For a long time no critic has enjoyed in
France a more incontestable authority, and it was impossible
not to be impressed by the claims he made; they seemed
extravagant; but later judgments have confirmed his estimate,
and the reputation of Charles Strickland is now firmly
established on the lines which he laid down. The rise of this
reputation is one of the most romantic incidents in the
history of art. But I do not propose to deal with Charles
Strickland's work except in so far as it touches upon
his character. I cannot agree with the painters who claim
superciliously that the layman can understand nothing of
painting, and that he can best show his appreciation of their
works by silence and a cheque-book. It is a grotesque
misapprehension which sees in art no more than a craft
comprehensible perfectly only to the craftsman: art is a
manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that
all may understand. But I will allow that the critic who has
not a practical knowledge of technique is seldom able to say
anything on the subject of real value, and my ignorance of
painting is extreme. Fortunately, there is no need for me to
risk the adventure, since my friend, Mr. Edward Leggatt, an
able writer as well as an admirable painter, has exhaustively
discussed Charles Strickland's work in a little book[1] which
is a charming example of a style, for the most part, less
happily cultivated in England than in France.
[1] "A Modern Artist: Notes on the Work of Charles
Strickland," by Edward Leggatt, A.R.H.A. Martin Secker, 1917.
Maurice Huret in his famous article gave an outline of Charles
Strickland's life which was well calculated to whet the
appetites of the inquiring. With his disinterested passion
for art, he had a real desire to call the attention of the
wise to a talent which was in the highest degree original;
but he was too good a journalist to be unaware that the "human
interest" would enable him more easily to effect his purpose.
And when such as had come in contact with Strickland in the
past, writers who had known him in London, painters who had
met him in the cafes of Montmartre, discovered to their
amazement that where they had seen but an unsuccessful artist,
like another, authentic genius had rubbed shoulders with them
there began to appear in the magazines of France and America a
succession of articles, the reminiscences of one, the
appreciation of another, which added to Strickland's
notoriety, and fed without satisfying the curiosity of
the public. The subject was grateful, and the industrious
Weitbrecht-Rotholz in his imposing monograph[2] has been able
to give a remarkable list of authorities.
[2] "Karl Strickland: sein Leben und seine Kunst," by Hugo
Weitbrecht-Rotholz, Ph.D. Schwingel und Hanisch. Leipzig, 1914.
The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes
with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in
the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves
from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then
attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance
against the commonplace of life. The incidents of the legend
become the hero's surest passport to immortality. The ironic
philosopher reflects with a smile that Sir Walter Raleigh is
more safely inshrined in the memory of mankind because he set
his cloak for the Virgin Queen to walk on than because he
carried the English name to undiscovered countries.
Charles Strickland lived obscurely. He made enemies rather
than friends. It is not strange, then, that those who wrote of
him should have eked out their scanty recollections with a
lively fancy, and it is evident that there was enough in the
little that was known of him to give opportunity to the romantic
scribe; there was much in his life which was strange and terrible,
in his character something outrageous, and in his fate
not a little that was pathetic. In due course a legend arose
of such circumstantiality that the wise historian would
hesitate to attack it.
But a wise historian is precisely what the Rev. Robert
Strickland is not. He wrote his biography[3] avowedly to
"remove certain misconceptions which had gained currency" in
regard to the later part of his father's life, and which had
"caused considerable pain to persons still living." It is
obvious that there was much in the commonly received account
of Strickland's life to embarrass a respectable family.
I have read this work with a good deal of amusement, and upon
this I congratulate myself, since it is colourless and dull.
Mr. Strickland has drawn the portrait of an excellent husband
and father, a man of kindly temper, industrious habits, and
moral disposition. The modern clergyman has acquired in his
study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an
astonishing facility for explaining things away, but the
subtlety with which the Rev. Robert Strickland has
"interpreted" all the facts in his father's life which a
dutiful son might find it inconvenient to remember must surely
lead him in the fullness of time to the highest dignities of
the Church. I see already his muscular calves encased in the
gaiters episcopal. It was a hazardous, though maybe a gallant
thing to do, since it is probable that the legend commonly
received has had no small share in the growth of Strickland's
reputation; for there are many who have been attracted to his
art by the detestation in which they held his character or the
compassion with which they regarded his death; and the son's
well-meaning efforts threw a singular chill upon the father's
admirers. It is due to no accident that when one of his most
important works, The Woman of Samaria,[4] was sold at
Christie's shortly after the discussion which followed the
publication of Mr. Strickland's biography, it fetched POUNDS
235 less than it had done nine months before when it was
bought by the distinguished collector whose sudden death had
brought it once more under the hammer. Perhaps Charles
Strickland's power and originality would scarcely have
sufficed to turn the scale if the remarkable mythopoeic
faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with impatience a
story which disappointed all its craving for the
extraordinary. And presently Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz produced
the work which finally set at rest the misgivings of all
lovers of art.
[3] "Strickland: The Man and His Work," by his son, Robert
Strickland. Wm. Heinemann, 1913.
[4] This was described in Christie's catalogue as follows:
"A nude woman, a native of the Society Islands, is lying on
the ground beside a brook. Behind is a tropical Landscape
with palm-trees, bananas, etc. 60 in. x 48 in."
Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz belongs to that school of historians
which believes that human nature is not only about as bad as
it can be, but a great deal worse; and certainly the reader is
safer of entertainment in their hands than in those of the
writers who take a malicious pleasure in representing the
great figures of romance as patterns of the domestic virtues.
For my part, I should be sorry to think that there was nothing
between Anthony and Cleopatra but an economic situation; and
it will require a great deal more evidence than is ever likely
to be available, thank God, to persuade me that Tiberius was
as blameless a monarch as King George V. Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz
has dealt in such terms with the Rev. Robert Strickland's
innocent biography that it is difficult to avoid
feeling a certain sympathy for the unlucky parson. His decent
reticence is branded as hypocrisy, his circumlocutions are
roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery.
And on the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an
author, but excusable in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is
accused of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit,
cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of
Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained
belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and
mother, to state that Charles Strickland in a letter written
from Paris had described her as "an excellent woman," since
Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz was able to print the letter in
facsimile, and it appears that the passage referred to ran in
fact as follows: God damn my wife. She is an 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 fe 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. _
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