The Moon and Sixpence | Page 9

was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high
dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black
frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green
carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the
influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimneypiece. At that time
there must have been five hundred dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same
manner. It was chaste, artistic, and dull.
When we left I walked away with Miss Waterford, and the fine day and her new hat
persuaded us to saunter through the Park.
"That was a very nice party," I said.
"Did you think the food was good? I told her that if she wanted writers she must feed
them well."
"Admirable advice," I answered. "But why does she want them?"
Miss Waterford shrugged her shoulders.
"She finds them amusing. She wants to be in the movement. I fancy she's rather simple,
poor dear, and she thinks we're all wonderful. After all, it pleases her to ask us to
luncheon, and it doesn't hurt us. I like her for it."
Looking back, I think that Mrs. Strickland was the most harmless of all the lion-hunters
that pursue their quarry from the rarefied heights of Hampstead to the nethermost studios
of Cheyne Walk. She had led a very quiet youth in the country, and the books that came
down from Mudie's Library brought with them not only their own romance, but the
romance of London. She had a real passion for reading (rare in her kind, who for the most
part are more interested in the author than in his book, in the painter than in his pictures),
and she invented a world of the imagination in which she lived with a freedom she never
acquired in the world of every day. When she came to know writers it was like
adventuring upon a stage which till then she had known only from the other side of the
footlights. She saw them dramatically, and really seemed herself to live a larger life
because she entertained them and visited them in their fastnesses. She accepted the rules
with which they played the game of life as valid for them, but never for a moment
thought of regulating her own conduct in accordance with them. Their moral
eccentricities, like their oddities of dress, their wild theories and paradoxes, were an

entertainment which amused her, but had not the slightest influence on her convictions.
"Is there a Mr. Strickland?" I asked
"Oh yes; he's something in the city. I believe he's a stockbroker. He's very dull."
"Are they good friends?"
"They adore one another. You'll meet him if you dine there. But she doesn't often have
people to dinner. He's very quiet. He's not in the least interested in literature or the arts."
"Why do nice women marry dull men?"
"Because intelligent men won't marry nice women."
I could not think of any retort to this, so I asked if Mrs. Strickland had children.
"Yes; she has a boy and a girl. They're both at school."
The subject was exhausted, and we began to talk of other things.


Chapter V
During the summer I met Mrs. Strickland not infrequently. I went now and then to
pleasant little luncheons at her flat, and to rather more formidable tea-parties. We took a
fancy to one another. I was very young, and perhaps she liked the idea of guiding my
virgin steps on the hard road of letters; while for me it was pleasant to have someone I
could go to with my small troubles, certain of an attentive ear and reasonable counsel.
Mrs. Strickland had the gift of sympathy. It is a charming faculty, but one often abused
by those who are conscious of its possession: for there is something ghoulish in the
avidity with which they will pounce upon the misfortune of their friends so that they may
exercise their dexterity. It gushes forth like an oil-well, and the sympathetic pour out their
sympathy with an abandon that is sometimes embarrassing to their victims. There are
bosoms on which so many tears have been shed that I cannot bedew them with mine. Mrs.
Strickland used her advantage with tact. You felt that you obliged her by accepting her
sympathy. When, in the enthusiasm of my youth, I remarked on this to Rose Waterford,
she said:
"Milk is very nice, especially with a drop of brandy in it, but the domestic cow is only too
glad to be rid of it. A swollen udder is very uncomfortable."
Rose Waterford had a blistering tongue. No one could say