________________________________________________
_ During the journey back to England I thought much of
Strickland. I tried to set in order what I had to tell his wife.
It was unsatisfactory, and I could not imagine that she
would be content with me; I was not content with myself.
Strickland perplexed me. I could not understand his motives.
When I had asked him what first gave him the idea of being a
painter, he was unable or unwilling to tell me. I could make
nothing of it. I tried to persuade myself than an obscure
feeling of revolt had been gradually coming to a head in his
slow mind, but to challenge this was the undoubted fact that
he had never shown any impatience with the monotony of his life.
If, seized by an intolerable boredom, he had determined
to be a painter merely to break with irksome ties, it would
have been comprehensible, and commonplace; but commonplace is
precisely what I felt he was not. At last, because I was
romantic, I devised an explanation which I acknowledged to be
far-fetched, but which was the only one that in any way
satisfied me. It was this: I asked myself whether there was
not in his soul some deep-rooted instinct of creation, which
the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew
relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues,
till at last it took possession of his whole being and forced
him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the
strange bird's nest, and when the young one is hatched it
shoulders its foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest
that has sheltered it.
But how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize
upon this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin, perhaps, and to
the misfortune of such as were dependent on him; and yet no
stranger than the way in which the spirit of God has seized men,
powerful and rich, pursuing them with stubborn vigilance
till at last, conquered, they have abandoned the joy of the
world and the love of women for the painful austerities of
the cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may
be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a
cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury
of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may
be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water.
Strickland had the directness of the fanatic and the ferocity
of the apostle.
But to my practical mind it remained to be seen whether the
passion which obsessed him would be justified of its works.
When I asked him what his brother-students at the night
classes he had attended in London thought of his painting,
he answered with a grin:
"They thought it a joke."
"Have you begun to go to a studio here?"
"Yes. The blighter came round this morning -- the master,
you know; when he saw my drawing he just raised his eyebrows
and walked on."
Strickland chuckled. He did not seem discouraged.
He was independent of the opinion of his fellows.
And it was just that which had most disconcerted me in my
dealings with him. When people say they do not care what
others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves.
Generally they mean only that they will do as
they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their
vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act
contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are
supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not
difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when
your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem.
You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the
inconvenience of danger. But the desire for approbation is
perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man.
No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the
unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and
arrows of outraged propriety. I do not believe the people who
tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of
their fellows. It is the bravado of ignorance. They mean
only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which
they are convinced none will discover.
But here was a man who sincerely did not mind what people
thought of him, and so convention had no hold on him; he was
like a wrestler whose body is oiled; you could not get a grip
on him; it gave him a freedom which was an outrage.
I remember saying to him:
"Look here, if everyone acted like you, the world couldn't go on."
"That's a damned silly thing to say. Everyone doesn't want to
act like me. The great majority are perfectly content to do
the ordinary thing."
And once I sought to be satirical.
"You evidently don't believe in the maxim: Act so that every
one of your actions is capable of being made into a universal rule."
"I never heard it before, but it's rotten nonsense."
"Well, it was Kant who said it."
"I don't care; it's rotten nonsense."
Nor with such a man could you expect the appeal to conscience
to be effective. You might as well ask for a reflection
without a mirror. I take it that conscience is the guardian
in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved
for its own preservation. It is the policeman in all our
hearts, set there to watch that we do not break its laws.
It is the spy seated in the central stronghold of the ego.
Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread
of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his
enemy within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant
always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed
desire to break away from the herd. It will force him to
place the good of society before his own. It is the very
strong link that attaches the individual to the whole.
And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are
greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster.
He sits him in a seat of honour. At last, like a courtier
fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders,
he prides himself on the sensitiveness of his conscience.
Then he has no words hard enough for the man who does not
recognise its sway; for, a member of society now, he realises
accurately enough that against him he is powerless. When I
saw that Strickland was really indifferent to the blame his
conduct must excite, I could only draw back in horror as from
a monster of hardly human shape.
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:
"Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall
change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me."
"My own impression is that she's well rid of you," I said.
"My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it.
But women are very unintelligent." _
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