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.