Chapter XVIII

by William Somerset Maugham

　　In point of fact, I met Strickland before I had been afortnight in Paris.I quickly found myself a tiny apartment on the fifth floor ofa house in the Rue des Dames, and for a couple of hundredfrancs bought at a second-hand dealer's enough furniture tomake it habitable. I arranged with the concierge to make mycoffee in the morning and to keep the place clean. Then Iwent to see my friend Dirk Stroeve.Dirk Stroeve was one of those persons whom, according to yourcharacter, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or anembarrassed shrug of the shoulders. Nature had made him a buffoon.He was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had metin Rome, and I still remembered his pictures. He had agenuine enthusiasm for the commonplace. His soul palpitatingwith love of art, he painted the models who hung about thestairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna, undaunted bytheir obvious picturesqueness; and his studio was full ofcanvases on which were portrayed moustachioed, large-eyedpeasants in peaked hats, urchins in becoming rags, and womenin bright petticoats. Sometimes they lounged at the steps ofa church, and sometimes dallied among cypresses against acloudless sky; sometimes they made love by a Renaissance well-head,and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna by the sideof an ox-waggon. They were carefully drawn and carefully painted.A photograph could not have been more exact. One ofthe painters at the Villa Medici had called him Le Maitrede la Boite a Chocoloats. To look at his pictures you wouldhave thought that Monet, Manet, and the rest of theImpressionists had never been."I don't pretend to be a great painter," he said, "I'm not aMichael Angelo, no, but I have something. I sell. I bringromance into the homes of all sorts of people. Do you know,they buy my pictures not only in Holland, but in Norway andSweden and Denmark? It's mostly merchants who buy them, andrich tradesmen. You can't imagine what the winters are likein those countries, so long and dark and cold. They like tothink that Italy is like my pictures. That's what theyexpect. That's what I expected Italy to be before I camehere."And I think that was the vision that had remained with himalways, dazzling his eyes so that he could not see the truth;and notwithstanding the brutality of fact, he continued to seewith the eyes of the spirit an Italy of romantic brigands andpicturesque ruins. It was an ideal that he painted -- a poor one,common and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal; and itgave his character a peculiar charm.It was because I felt this that Dirk Stroeve was not to me,as to others, merely an object of ridicule. His fellow-paintersmade no secret of their contempt for his work, but he earned afair amount of money, and they did not hesitate to make freeuse of his purse. He was generous, and the needy, laughing athim because he believed so naively their stories of distress,borrowed from him with effrontery. He was very emotional, yethis feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd,so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude.To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despisedhim because he was so foolish. I imagine that a pickpocket,proud of his light fingers, must feel a sort of indignationwith the careless woman who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag withall her jewels in it. Nature had made him a butt, but haddenied him insensibility. He writhed under the jokes,practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at hisexpense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to exposehimself to them. He was constantly wounded, and yet his good-nature was such that he could not bear malice: the viper mightsting him, but he never learned by experience, and had nosooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it oncemore in his bosom. His life was a tragedy written in theterms of knockabout farce. Because I did not laugh at him hewas grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympatheticear the long list of his troubles. The saddest thing aboutthem was that they were grotesque, and the more pathetic they were,the more you wanted to laugh.But though so bad a painter, he had a very delicate feelingfor art, and to go with him to picture-galleries was a rare treat.His enthusiasm was sincere and his criticism acute.He was catholic. He had not only a true appreciation of theold masters, but sympathy with the moderns. He was quick todiscover talent, and his praise was generous. I think I havenever known a man whose judgment was surer. And he was bettereducated than most painters. He was not, like most of them,ignorant of kindred arts, and his taste for music andliterature gave depth and variety to his comprehension of painting.To a young man like myself his advice and guidance wereof incomparable value.When I left Rome I corresponded with him, and about once intwo months received from him long letters in queer English,which brought before me vividly his spluttering, enthusiastic,gesticulating conversation. Some time before I went to Parishe had married an Englishwoman, and was now settled in astudio in Montmartre. I had not seen him for four years,and had never met his wife.