Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham

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I was astonished, and at the same time I was very much excited.
I remembered suddenly my last talk with him.

"Where can one see his work?" I asked. "Is he having any success?
Where is he living?"

"No; he has no success. I don't think he's ever sold a picture.
When you speak to men about him they only laugh.
But I he's a great artist. After all, they laughed
at Manet. Corot never sold a picture. I don't know where he
lives, but I can take you to see him. He goes to a cafe in
the Avenue de Clichy at seven o'clock every evening. If you
like we'll go there to-morrow."

"I'm not sure if he'll wish to see me. I think I may remind
him of a time he prefers to forget. But I'll come all the same.
Is there any chance of seeing any of his pictures?"

"Not from him. He won't show you a thing. There's a little
dealer I know who has two or three. But you mustn't go without me;
you wouldn't understand. I must show them to you myself."

"Dirk, you make me impatient," said Mrs. Stroeve. "How can
you talk like that about his pictures when he treated you as
he did?" She turned to me. "Do you know, when some Dutch
people came here to buy Dirk's pictures he tried to persuade
them to buy Strickland's? He insisted on bringing them here
to show."

"What did think of them?" I asked her, smiling.

"They were awful."

"Ah, sweetheart, you don't understand."

"Well, your Dutch people were furious with you. They thought
you were having a joke with them."

Dirk Stroeve took off his spectacles and wiped them. His
flushed face was shining with excitement.

"Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious
thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the
careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something
wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the
chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he
has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize
it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a
melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own
heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination."

"Why did I always think your pictures beautiful, Dirk?
I admired them the very first time I saw them."

Stroeve's lips trembled a little.

"Go to bed, my precious. I will walk a few steps with our
friend, and then I will come back."

Chapter XX

Dirk Stroeve agreed to fetch me on the following evening and
take me to the cafe at which Strickland was most likely to be found.
I was interested to learn that it was the same as that
at which Strickland and I had drunk absinthe when I had gone
over to Paris to see him. The fact that he had never changed
suggested a sluggishness of habit which seemed to me characteristic.

"There he is," said Stroeve, as we reached the cafe.

Though it was October, the evening was warm, and the tables on
the pavement were crowded. I ran my eyes over them, but did
not see Strickland.

"Look. Over there, in the corner. He's playing chess."

I noticed a man bending over a chess-board, but could see only
a large felt hat and a red beard. We threaded our way among
the tables till we came to him.

"Strickland."

He looked up.

"Hulloa, fatty. What do you want?"

"I've brought an old friend to see you."

Strickland gave me a glance, and evidently did not recognise me.
He resumed his scrutiny of the chessboard.

"Sit down, and don't make a noise," he said.

He moved a piece and straightway became absorbed in the game.
Poor Stroeve gave me a troubled look, but I was not
disconcerted by so little. I ordered something to drink,
and waited quietly till Strickland had finished. I welcomed the
opportunity to examine him at my ease. I certainly should
never have known him. In the first place his red beard,
ragged and untrimmed, hid much of his face, and his hair was long;
but the most surprising change in him was his extreme thinness.
It made his great nose protrude more arrogantly;
it emphasized his cheekbones; it made his eyes seem larger.
There were deep hollows at his temples. His body was cadaverous.
He wore the same suit that I had seen him in five years
before; it was torn and stained, threadbare, and it hung
upon him loosely, as though it had been made for someone else.
I noticed his hands, dirty, with long nails; they were merely
bone and sinew, large and strong; but I had forgotten that
they were so shapely. He gave me an extraordinary impression
as he sat there, his attention riveted on his game -- an
impression of great strength; and I could not understand why
it was that his emaciation somehow made it more striking.

Presently, after moving, he leaned back and gazed with a
curious abstraction at his antagonist. This was a fat,
bearded Frenchman. The Frenchman considered the position,
then broke suddenly into jovial expletives, and with an
impatient gesture, gathering up the pieces, flung them into
their box. He cursed Strickland freely, then, calling for the
waiter, paid for the drinks, and left. Stroeve drew his chair
closer to the table.

"Now I suppose we can talk," he said.

Strickland's eyes rested on him, and there was in them a
malicious expression. I felt sure he was seeking for some gibe,
could think of none, and so was forced to silence.

"I've brought an old friend to see you," repeated Stroeve,
beaming cheerfully.

Strickland looked at me thoughtfully for nearly a minute.
I did not speak.

"I've never seen him in my life," he said.

I do not know why he said this, for I felt certain I had
caught a gleam of recognition in his eyes. I was not so
easily abashed as I had been some years earlier.

"I saw your wife the other day," I said. "I felt sure you'd
like to have the latest news of her."

He gave a short laugh. His eyes twinkled.

"We had a jolly evening together," he said. "How long ago is it?"

"Five years."

He called for another absinthe. Stroeve, with voluble tongue,
explained how he and I had met, and by what an accident we
discovered that we both knew Strickland. I do not know if
Strickland listened. He glanced at me once or twice
reflectively, but for the most part seemed occupied with his
own thoughts; and certainly without Stroeve's babble the
conversation would have been difficult. In half an hour the
Dutchman, looking at his watch, announced that he must go.
He asked whether I would come too. I thought, alone, I might get
something out of Strickland, and so answered that I would stay.

When the fat man had left I said:

"Dirk Stroeve thinks you're a great artist."

"What the hell do you suppose I care?"

"Will you let me see your pictures?"

"Why should I?"

"I might feel inclined to buy one."

"I might not feel inclined to sell one."

"Are you making a good living?" I asked, smiling.

He chuckled.

"Do I look it?"

"You look half starved."

"I am half starved."

"Then come and let's have a bit of dinner."

"Why do you ask me?"

"Not out of charity," I answered coolly. "I don't really care
a twopenny damn if you starve or not."

His eyes lit up again.

"Come on, then," he said, getting up. "I'd like a decent meal."

Chapter XXI

I let him take me to a restaurant of his choice, but on the
way I bought a paper. When we had ordered our dinner,
I propped it against a bottle of St. Galmier and began to read.
We ate in silence. I felt him looking at me now and again,
but I took no notice. I meant to force him to conversation.

"Is there anything in the paper?" he said, as we approached
the end of our silent meal.

I fancied there was in his tone a slight note of exasperation.

"I always like to read the on the drama," I said.

I folded the paper and put it down beside me.

"I've enjoyed my dinner," he remarked.

"I think we might have our coffee here, don't you?"

"Yes."

We lit our cigars. I smoked in silence. I noticed that now
and then his eyes rested on me with a faint smile of amusement.
I waited patiently.

"What have you been up to since I saw you last?" he asked at
length.

I had not very much to say. It was a record of hard work and of
little adventure; of experiments in this direction and in that;
of the gradual acquisition of the knowledge of books and of men.
I took care to ask Strickland nothing about his own doings.
I showed not the least interest in him, and at last I
was rewarded. He began to talk of himself. But with his poor
gift of expression he gave but indications of what he had gone
through, and I had to fill up the gaps with my own imagination.
It was tantalising to get no more than hints
into a character that interested me so much. It was like
making one's way through a mutilated manuscript. I received
the impression of a life which was a bitter struggle against
every sort of difficulty; but I realised that much which would
have seemed horrible to most people did not in the least
affect him. Strickland was distinguished from most Englishmen
by his perfect indifference to comfort; it did not irk him to
live always in one shabby room; he had no need to be
surrounded by beautiful things. I do not suppose he had ever
noticed how dingy was the paper on the wall of the room in
which on my first visit I found him. He did not want arm-chairs
to sit in; he really felt more at his ease on a kitchen chair.
He ate with appetite, but was indifferent to what he ate;
to him it was only food that he devoured to still the
pangs of hunger; and when no food was to be had he seemed
capable of doing without. I learned that for six months he
had lived on a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk a day.
He was a sensual man, and yet was indifferent to sensual things.
He looked upon privation as no hardship. There was something
impressive in the manner in which he lived a life wholly of
the spirit.

When the small sum of money which he brought with him from
London came to an end he suffered from no dismay. He sold no
pictures; I think he made little attempt to sell any; he set
about finding some way to make a bit of money. He told me
with grim humour of the time he had spent acting as guide to
Cockneys who wanted to see the night side of life in Paris;
it was an occupation that appealed to his sardonic temper and
somehow or other he had acquired a wide acquaintance with the
more disreputable quarters of the city. He told me of the
long hours he spent walking about the Boulevard de la
Madeleine on the look-out for Englishmen, preferably the worse
for liquor, who desired to see things which the law forbade.
When in luck he was able to make a tidy sum; but the
shabbiness of his clothes at last frightened the sight-seers,
and he could not find people adventurous enough to trust
themselves to him. Then he happened on a job to translate the
advertisements of patent medicines which were sent broadcast
to the medical profession in England. During a strike he had
been employed as a house-painter.

Meanwhile he had never ceased to work at his art; but, soon
tiring of the studios, entirely by himself. He had never been
so poor that he could not buy canvas and paint, and really he
needed nothing else. So far as I could make out, he painted
with great difficulty, and in his unwillingness to accept help
from anyone lost much time in finding out for himself the
solution of technical problems which preceding generations had
already worked out one by one. He was aiming at something,
I knew not what, and perhaps he hardly knew himself; and I got
again more strongly the impression of a man possessed. He did
not seem quite sane. It seemed to me that he would not show
his pictures because he was really not interested in them.
He lived in a dream, and the reality meant nothing to him.
I had the feeling that he worked on a canvas with all the force
of his violent personality, oblivious of everything in his effort
to get what he saw with the mind's eye; and then, having
finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that he
seldom brought anything to completion, but the passion that
fired him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied
with what he had done; it seemed to him of no consequence
compared with the vision that obsessed his mind.

"Why don't you ever send your work to exhibitions?" I asked.
"I should have thought you'd like to know what people thought
about it."

"Would you?"

I cannot describe the unmeasurable contempt he put into the
two words.

"Don't you want fame? It's something that most artists
haven't been indifferent to."

"Children. How can you care for the opinion of the crowd,
when you don't care twopence for the opinion of the individual?"

"We're not all reasonable beings," I laughed.

"Who makes fame? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women."

"Wouldn't it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of
people you didn't know and had never seen receiving emotions,
subtle and passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone
likes power. I can't imagine a more wonderful exercise of it
than to move the souls of men to pity or terror."

"Melodrama."

"Why do you mind if you paint well or badly?"

"I don't. I only want to paint what I see."

"I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the
certainty that no eyes but mine would ever see what I had
written."

Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone
strangely, as though he saw something that kindled his soul to
ecstasy.

"Sometimes I've thought of an island lost in a boundless sea,
where I could live in some hidden valley, among strange trees,
in silence. There I think I could find what I want."

He did not express himself quite like this. He used gestures
instead of adjectives, and he halted. I have put into my own
words what I think he wanted to say.

"Looking back on the last five years, do you think it was
worth it?" I asked.

He looked at me, and I saw that he did not know what I meant.
I explained.

"You gave up a comfortable home and a life as happy as the
average. You were fairly prosperous. You seem to have had a
rotten time in Paris. If you had your time over again would
you do what you did?"

"Rather."

"Do you know that you haven't asked anything about your wife
and children? Do you never think of them?"

"No."

"I wish you weren't so damned monosyllabic. Have you never
had a moment's regret for all the unhappiness you caused them?"

His lips broke into a smile, and he shook his head.

"I should have thought sometimes you couldn't help thinking of
the past. I don't mean the past of seven or eight years ago,
but further back still, when you first met your wife, and
loved her, and married her. Don't you remember the joy with
which you first took her in your arms?"

"I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is
the everlasting present."

I thought for a moment over this reply. It was obscure,
perhaps, but I thought that I saw dimly his meaning.

"Are you happy?" I asked.

"Yes."

I was silent. I looked at him reflectively. He held my
stare, and presently a sardonic twinkle lit up his eyes.

"I'm afraid you disapprove of me?"

"Nonsense," I answered promptly; "I don't disapprove of the
boa-constrictor; on the contrary, I'm interested in his mental
processes."

"It's a purely professional interest you take in me?"

"Purely."

"It's only right that you shouldn't disapprove of me.
You have a despicable character."

"Perhaps that's why you feel at home with me," I retorted.

He smiled dryly, but said nothing. I wish I knew how to
describe his smile. I do not know that it was attractive,
but it lit up his face, changing the expression, which was
generally sombre, and gave it a look of not ill-natured malice.
It was a slow smile, starting and sometimes ending in
the eyes; it was very sensual, neither cruel nor kindly,
but suggested rather the inhuman glee of the satyr. It was his
smile that made me ask him:

"Haven't you been in love since you came to Paris?"

"I haven't got time for that sort of nonsense. Life isn't
long enough for love and art."

"Your appearance doesn't suggest the anchorite."

"All that business fills me with disgust."

"Human nature is a nuisance, isn't it?" I said.

"Why are you sniggering at me?"

"Because I don't believe you."

"Then you're a damned fool."

I paused, and I looked at him searchingly.

"What's the good of trying to humbug me?" I said.

"I don't know what you mean."

I smiled.

"Let me tell you. I imagine that for months the matter never
comes into your head, and you're able to persuade yourself
that you've finished with it for good and all. You rejoice in
your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul
your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars.
And then, all of a sudden you can't stand it any more, and you
notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud.
And you want to roll yourself in it. And you find some
woman, coarse and low and vulgar, some beastly creature in
whom all the horror of sex is blatant, and you fall upon her
like a wild animal. You drink till you're blind with rage."

He stared at me without the slightest movement. I held his
eyes with mine. I spoke very slowly.

"I'll tell you what must seem strange, that when it's over you
feel so extraordinarily pure. You feel like a disembodied
spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as
though it were a palpable thing; and you feel an intimate
communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf,
and with the iridescence of the river. You feel like God.
Can you explain that to me?"

He kept his eyes fixed on mine till I had finished, and then
he turned away. There was on his face a strange look, and
I thought that so might a man look when he had died under
the torture. He was silent. I knew that our conversation
was ended.

Chapter XXII

I settled down in Paris and began to write a play. I led a
very regular life, working in the morning, and in the
afternoon lounging about the gardens of the Luxembourg or
sauntering through the streets. I spent long hours in the
Louvre, the most friendly of all galleries and the most
convenient for meditation; or idled on the quays, fingering
second-hand books that I never meant to buy. I read a page
here and there, and made acquaintance with a great many
authors whom I was content to know thus desultorily. In the
evenings I went to see my friends. I looked in often on the
Stroeves, and sometimes shared their modest fare. Dirk
Stroeve flattered himself on his skill in cooking Italian
dishes, and I confess that his were very much
better than his pictures. It was a dinner for a King when he
brought in a huge dish of it, succulent with tomatoes, and we
ate it together with the good household bread and a bottle of
red wine. I grew more intimate with Blanche Stroeve, and I
think, because I was English and she knew few English people,
she was glad to see me. She was pleasant and simple, but she
remained always rather silent, and I knew not why, gave me the
impression that she was concealing something. But I thought that
was perhaps no more than a natural reserve accentuated by the
verbose frankness of her husband. Dirk never concealed anything.
He discussed the most intimate matters with a complete
lack of self-consciousness. Sometimes he embarrassed
his wife, and the only time I saw her put out of countenance
was when he insisted on telling me that he had taken a purge,
and went into somewhat realistic details on the subject.
The perfect seriousness with which he narrated his
misfortunes convulsed me with laughter, and this added to
Mrs. Stroeve's irritation.

"You seem to like making a fool of yourself," she said.

His round eyes grew rounder still, and his brow puckered in
dismay as he saw that she was angry.

"Sweetheart, have I vexed you? I'll never take another.
It was only because I was bilious. I lead a sedentary life.
I don't take enough exercise. For three days I hadn't ..."

"For goodness sake, hold your tongue," she interrupted, tears
of annoyance in her eyes.

His face fell, and he pouted his lips like a scolded child.
He gave me a look of appeal, so that I might put things right,
but, unable to control myself, I shook with helpless laughter.

We went one day to the picture-dealer in whose shop Stroeve
thought he could show me at least two or three of Strickland's
pictures, but when we arrived were told that Strickland
himself had taken them away. The dealer did not know why.

"But don't imagine to yourself that I make myself bad blood on
that account. I took them to oblige Monsieur Stroeve, and I
said I would sell them if I could. But really --" He
shrugged his shoulders. "I'm interested in the young men, but
, you yourself, Monsieur Stroeve, you don't think
there's any talent there."

"I give you my word of honour, there's no one painting to-day
in whose talent I am more convinced. Take my word for it,
you are missing a good affair. Some day those pictures will be
worth more than all you have in your shop. Remember Monet,
who could not get anyone to buy his pictures for a hundred francs.
What are they worth now?"

"True. But there were a hundred as good painters as Monet who
couldn't sell their pictures at that time, and their pictures
are worth nothing still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to
bring success? Don't believe it. , it has still
to be proved that this friend of yours has merit. No one
claims it for him but Monsieur Stroeve."

"And how, then, will you recognise merit?" asked Dirk, red in
the face with anger.

"There is only one way -- by success."

"Philistine," cried Dirk.

"But think of the great artists of the past -- Raphael,
Michael Angelo, Ingres, Delacroix -- they were all successful."

"Let us go," said Stroeve to me, "or I shall kill this man."

Chapter XXIII

I saw Strickland not infrequently, and now and then played
chess with him. He was of uncertain temper. Sometimes he
would sit silent and abstracted, taking no notice of anyone;
and at others, when he was in a good humour, he would talk in
his own halting way. He never said a clever thing, but he had
a vein of brutal sarcasm which was not ineffective, and he
always said exactly what he thought. He was indifferent to
the susceptibilities of others, and when he wounded them was amused.
He was constantly offending Dirk Stroeve so bitterly
that he flung away, vowing he would never speak to him again;
but there was a solid force in Strickland that attracted the
fat Dutchman against his will, so that he came back, fawning
like a clumsy dog, though he knew that his only greeting would
be the blow he dreaded.

I do not know why Strickland put up with me. Our relations
were peculiar. One day he asked me to lend him fifty francs.

"I wouldn't dream of it," I replied.

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't amuse me."

"I'm frightfully hard up, you know."

"I don't care."

"You don't care if I starve?"

"Why on earth should I?" I asked in my turn.

He looked at me for a minute or two, pulling his untidy beard.
I smiled at him.

"What are you amused at?" he said, with a gleam of anger in
his eyes.

"You're so simple. You recognise no obligations. No one is
under any obligation to you."

"Wouldn't it make you uncomfortable if I went and hanged
myself because I'd been turned out of my room as I couldn't
pay the rent?"

"Not a bit."

He chuckled.

"You're bragging. If I really did you'd be overwhelmed with
remorse."

"Try it, and we'll see," I retorted.

A smile flickered in his eyes, and he stirred his absinthe in
silence.

"Would you like to play chess?" I asked.

"I don't mind."

We set up the pieces, and when the board was ready he
considered it with a comfortable eye. There is a sense of
satisfaction in looking at your men all ready for the fray.

"Did you really think I'd lend you money?" I asked.

"I didn't see why you shouldn't."

"You surprise me."

"Why?"

"It's disappointing to find that at heart you are sentimental.
I should have liked you better if you hadn't made that
ingenuous appeal to my sympathies."

"I should have despised you if you'd been moved by it," he answered.

"That's better," I laughed.

We began to play. We were both absorbed in the game. When it
was finished I said to him:

"Look here, if you're hard up, let me see your pictures.
If there's anything I like I'll buy it."

"Go to hell," he answered.

He got up and was about to go away. I stopped him.

"You haven't paid for your absinthe," I said, smiling.

He cursed me, flung down the money and left.

I did not see him for several days after that, but one
evening, when I was sitting in the cafe, reading a paper,
he came up and sat beside me.

"You haven't hanged yourself after all," I remarked.

"No. I've got a commission. I'm painting the portrait of a
retired plumber for two hundred francs."[5]

[5] This picture, formerly in the possession of a wealthy
manufacturer at Lille, who fled from that city on the approach
of the Germans, is now in the National Gallery at Stockholm.
The Swede is adept at the gentle pastime of fishing in
troubled waters.

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