________________________________________________
_ Looking back, I realise that what I have written about Charles
Strickland must seem very unsatisfactory. I have given
incidents that came to my knowledge, but they remain obscure
because I do not know the reasons that led to them.
The strangest, Strickland's determination to become a painter,
seems to be arbitrary; and though it must have had causes in
the circumstances of his life, I am ignorant of them.
From his own conversation I was able to glean nothing. If I were
writing a novel, rather than narrating such facts as I know of
a curious personality, I should have invented much to account
for this change of heart. I think I should have shown a
strong vocation in boyhood, crushed by the will of his father
or sacrificed to the necessity of earning a living; I should
have pictured him impatient of the restraints of life; and in
the struggle between his passion for art and the duties of his
station I could have aroused sympathy for him. I should so
have made him a more imposing figure. Perhaps it would have
been possible to see in him a new Prometheus. There was here,
maybe, the opportunity for a modern version of the hero who for
the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned.
It is always a moving subject.
On the other hand, I might have found his motives in the
influence of the married relation. There are a dozen ways in
which this might be managed. A latent gift might reveal
itself on acquaintance with the painters and writers whose
society his wife sought; or domestic incompatability might turn
him upon himself; a love affair might fan into bright flame
a fire which I could have shown smouldering dimly in his heart.
I think then I should have drawn Mrs. Strickland quite
differently. I should have abandoned the facts and made her a
nagging, tiresome woman, or else a bigoted one with no
sympathy for the claims of the spirit. I should have made
Strickland's marriage a long torment from which escape was the
only possible issue. I think I should have emphasised his
patience with the unsuitable mate, and the compassion which
made him unwilling to throw off the yoke that oppressed him.
I should certainly have eliminated the children.
An effective story might also have been made by bringing him
into contact with some old painter whom the pressure of want
or the desire for commercial success had made false to the
genius of his youth, and who, seeing in Strickland the
possibilities which himself had wasted, influenced him to
forsake all and follow the divine tyranny of art. I think
there would have been something ironic in the picture of the
successful old man, rich and honoured, living in another the
life which he, though knowing it was the better part, had not
had the strength to pursue.
The facts are much duller. Strickland, a boy fresh from school,
went into a broker's office without any feeling of distaste.
Until he married he led the ordinary life of his fellows,
gambling mildly on the Exchange, interested to the extent
of a sovereign or two on the result of the Derby or the
Oxford and Cambridge Race. I think he boxed a little in his
spare time. On his chimney-piece he had photographs of Mrs.
Langtry and Mary Anderson. He read Punch and the
Sporting Times. He went to dances in Hampstead.
It matters less that for so long I should have lost sight of him.
The years during which he was struggling to acquire
proficiency in a difficult art were monotonous, and I do not
know that there was anything significant in the shifts to
which he was put to earn enough money to keep him. An account
of them would be an account of the things he had seen happen
to other people. I do not think they had any effect on his
own character. He must have acquired experiences which would
form abundant material for a picaresque novel of modern Paris,
but he remained aloof, and judging from his conversation there
was nothing in those years that had made a particular
impression on him. Perhaps when he went to Paris he was too
old to fall a victim to the glamour of his environment.
Strange as it may seem, he always appeared to me not only
practical, but immensely matter-of-fact. I suppose his life
during this period was romantic, but he certainly saw no
romance in it. It may be that in order to realise the romance
of life you must have something of the actor in you; and,
capable of standing outside yourself, you must be able to
watch your actions with an interest at once detached and
absorbed. But no one was more single-minded than Strickland.
I never knew anyone who was less self-conscious. But it is
unfortunate that I can give no description of the arduous
steps by which he reached such mastery over his art as he ever
acquired; for if I could show him undaunted by failure, by an
unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly
persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's
bitterest enemy, I might excite some sympathy for a
personality which, I am all too conscious, must appear
singularly devoid of charm. But I have nothing to go on.
I never once saw Strickland at work, nor do I know that anyone
else did. He kept the secret of his struggles to himself.
If in the loneliness of his studio he wrestled desperately with
the Angel of the Lord he never allowed a soul to divine his
anguish.
When I come to his connection with Blanche Stroeve I am
exasperated by the fragmentariness of the facts at my disposal.
To give my story coherence I should describe the
progress of their tragic union, but I know nothing of the
three months during which they lived together. I do not know
how they got on or what they talked about. After all, there
are twenty-four hours in the day, and the summits of emotion
can only be reached at rare intervals. I can only imagine how
they passed the rest of the time. While the light lasted and
so long as Blanche's strength endured, I suppose that
Strickland painted, and it must have irritated her when she
saw him absorbed in his work. As a mistress she did not then
exist for him, but only as a model; and then there were long
hours in which they lived side by side in silence. It must
have frightened her. When Strickland suggested that in her
surrender to him there was a sense of triumph over Dirk Stroeve,
because he had come to her help in her extremity, he opened
the door to many a dark conjecture. I hope it was not true.
It seems to me rather horrible. But who can fathom the
subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect
from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.
When Blanche saw that, notwithstanding his moments of passion,
Strickland remained aloof, she must have been filled with
dismay, and even in those moments I surmise that she realised
that to him she was not an individual, but an instrument of
pleasure; he was a stranger still, and she tried to bind him
to herself with pathetic arts. She strove to ensnare him with
comfort and would not see that comfort meant nothing to him.
She was at pains to get him the things to eat that he liked,
and would not see that he was indifferent to food. She was
afraid to leave him alone. She pursued him with attentions,
and when his passion was dormant sought to excite it, for then
at least she had the illusion of holding him. Perhaps she
knew with her intelligence that the chains she forged only
aroused his instinct of destruction, as the plate-glass window
makes your fingers itch for half a brick; but her heart,
incapable of reason, made her continue on a course she knew
was fatal. She must have been very unhappy. But the
blindness of love led her to believe what she wanted to be
true, and her love was so great that it seemed impossible to
her that it should not in return awake an equal love.
But my study of Strickland's character suffers from a greater
defect than my ignorance of many facts. Because they were
obvious and striking, I have written of his relations to
women; and yet they were but an insignificant part of his life.
It is an irony that they should so tragically have
affected others. His real life consisted of dreams and of
tremendously hard work.
Here lies the unreality of fiction. For in men, as a rule,
love is but an episode which takes its place among the other
affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels
gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few
men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and
they are not very interesting ones; even women, with whom the
subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.
They are flattered and excited by them, but have an uneasy
feeling that they are poor creatures. But even during the
brief intervals in which they are in love, men do other things
which distract their mind; the trades by which they earn their
living engage their attention; they are absorbed in sport;
they can interest themselves in art. For the most part, they
keep their various activities in various compartments, and
they can pursue one to the temporary exclusion of the other.
They have a faculty of concentration on that which occupies
them at the moment, and it irks them if one encroaches on the
other. As lovers, the difference between men and women is
that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
With Strickland the sexual appetite took a very small place.
It was unimportant. It was irksome. His soul aimed elsewhither.
He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized
his body so that he was driven to an orgy of lust, but
he hated the instincts that robbed him of his self-possession.
I think, even, he hated the inevitable partner in his debauchery.
When he had regained command over himself, he
shuddered at the sight of the woman he had enjoyed.
His thoughts floated then serenely in the empyrean, and he felt
towards her the horror that perhaps the painted butterfly,
hovering about the flowers, feels to the filthy chrysalis from
which it has triumphantly emerged. I suppose that art is a
manifestation of the sexual instinct. It is the same emotion
which is excited in the human heart by the sight of a lovely
woman, the Bay of Naples under the yellow moon, and the
Entombment of Titian. It is possible that Strickland hated
the normal release of sex because it seemed to him brutal by
comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation.
It seems strange even to myself, when I have described a man who
was cruel, selfish, brutal and sensual, to say that he was a
great idealist. The fact remains.
He lived more poorly than an artisan. He worked harder.
He cared nothing for those things which with most people make
life gracious and beautiful. He was indifferent to money.
He cared nothing about fame. You cannot praise him because he
resisted the temptation to make any of those compromises with
the world which most of us yield to. He had no such temptation.
It never entered his head that compromise was possible.
He lived in Paris more lonely than an anchorite in the
deserts of Thebes. He asked nothing his fellows except
that they should leave him alone. He was single-hearted in
his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not only
himself -- many can do that -- but others. He had a vision.
Strickland was an odious man, but I still think be was a great one. _
Read next: CHAPTER 44
Read previous: CHAPTER 42
Table of content of Moon and Sixpence
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
