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.”