Handicapped people sometimes owe their success to the misfortune which
weights them. They seldom know beforehand how far they are going to
reach, and this helps them; for if they knew the greatness of the task
before them they would not attempt it. He who knows he is infirm, and
would yet climb, does not think of the summit which he believes to be
beyond his reach but climbs slowly onwards, taking very short steps,
looking below as often as he likes but not above him, never trying his
powers but seldom stopping, and then, sometimes, behold! he is on the
top, which he would never have even aimed at could he have seen it from
below. It is only in novels and sensational biographies that handicapped
people, “fired by a knowledge of the difficulties that others have
overcome, resolve to triumph over every obstacle by dint of sheer
determination, and in the end carry everything before them.” In real
life the person who starts thus almost invariably fails. This is the
worst kind of start.
The greatest secret of good work whether in music, literature or painting
lies in not attempting too much; if it be asked, “What is too much?” the
answer is, “Anything that we find difficult or unpleasant.” We should
not ask whether others find this same thing difficult or no. If we find
the difficulty so great that the overcoming it is a labour and not a
pleasure, we should either change our aim altogether, or aim, at any rate
for a time, at some lower point. It must be remembered that no work is
required to be more than right as far as it goes; the greatest work
cannot get beyond this and the least comes strangely near the greatest if
this can be said of it.
The more I see of academicism the more I distrust it. If I had
approached painting as I have approached bookwriting and music, that is
to say by beginning at once to do what I wanted, or as near as I could to
what I could find out of this, and taking pains not by way of solving
academic difficulties, in order to provide against practical ones, but by
waiting till a difficulty arose in practice and then tackling it, thus
making the arising of each difficulty be the occasion for learning what
had to be learnt about it—if I had approached painting in this way I
should have been all right. As it is I have been all wrong, and it was
South Kensington and Heatherley’s that set me wrong. I listened to the
nonsense about how I ought to study before beginning to paint, and about
never painting without nature, and the result was that I learned to study
but not to paint. Now I have got too much to do and am too old to do
what I might easily have done, and should have done, if I had found out
earlier what writing _Life and Habit_ was the chief thing to teach me.
So I painted study after study, as a priest reads his breviary, and at
the end of ten years knew no more what the face of nature was like,
unless I had it immediately before me, than I did at the beginning. I am
free to confess that in respect of painting I am a failure. I have spent
far more time on painting than I have on anything else, and have failed
at it more than I have failed in any other respect almost solely for the
reasons given above. I tried very hard, but I tried the wrong way.
Fortunately for me there are no academies for teaching people how to
write books, or I should have fallen into them as I did into those for
painting and, instead of writing, should have spent my time and money in
being told that I was learning how to write. If I had one thing to say
to students before I died (I mean, if I had got to die, but might tell
students one thing first) I should say:—
“Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a
prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble
of the world; only, of course, let them be on a small scale in the first
instance till you feel your feet safe under you. Act more and rehearse
less.”
A friend once asked me whether I liked writing books, composing music or
painting pictures best. I said I did not know. I like them all; but I
never find time to paint a picture now and only do small sketches and
studies. I know in which I am strongest—writing; I know in which I am
weakest—painting; I am weakest where I have taken most pains and studied
most.