Everyone liked Tadema with his genial personality. It is a curious thing that though of Dutch descent, he was really born in Wimpole Street, London. He lived more or less in Holland until he was sixteen, when he went to Belgium to study Art, but he never drew his pictures, except in his mind’s eye; he painted straight on the canvas. He was the first exponent of art and archæology in combination. When he returned to Holland they assured him that he was no longer Dutch, and if he wished to be considered so, he must be naturalised. “Ridiculous,” he said, “I shall do nothing of the kind, and if your rules are so absurd, I shall have nothing more to do with Holland.” “I was annoyed and I left, and England has been my home ever since,” he continued as he was relating this to me. “The funny part is, that when I wear my uniform to go to a Levée, I am always taken for an English admiral. You see I am short and fat, and have a beard, and the man in the street seems to associate that with the commander of the sea. Anyway, I have so often been taken for an admiral, that I sometimes forget I am a painter.”
If Tadema looked like an admiral instead of a painter, Somerset Maugham looks like a smart London young man rather than a medico who has taken to the drama.
What a strange career! A young doctor, in a small practice, he spent his spare time writing plays. For eight years Lady Frederick was refused a hearing. Then one day he heard that Ethel Irving wanted a comedy in a hurry—looked up his book, saw Mary Moore had had it for a year, dashed off in a hansom (there weren’t many taxis in 1905), made her unearth it, went on in the hansom, left it with Ethel Irving, and within twenty-four hours it was accepted. She was great in the part. Success followed. Mrs. Dot had been refused by managers for five years. Once accepted, it roped money in. Success number two.
In 1910 he laughingly told me he had just used up the last of his stock of plays, and would then (having made a fortune in the old ones) have to begin something new. He owned he had altered and written them all up a bit, but they were the same plays that all the managers had previously refused.
When an artist paints a portrait, he leaves out the disagreeable traits, when a photographer takes a photo he rubs out the wrinkles, and when an author writes a personal book he leaves out all the most personal touches.
The longer I live the more convinced I am that each tiny act has a wider reaching result. For instance, I wrote Iceland for fun. Ten years afterwards that girlish diary was selling on the bookstalls at a time when I badly wanted the money it brought in. Once I wrote a thing I hated. I wavered, but finally published it, and that wretched article has turned up again and again to annoy me and jeer at me.
We make a friend of good social standing, perhaps a little way above us intellectually and socially, that friendship leads to others of a similar kind. By chance we become acquainted with someone below our own sphere and usual standard. He is right enough in his way; but his friends fasten upon us. Without being positively rude various undesirable people are foisted upon us. We do a kind act. Years afterwards that kindness is unexpectedly returned with interest. We do a cruel deed and that deed haunts us along life’s path by its consequences. Everything counts in the game of life, and yet nothing counts but an easy conscience.
A thick veil, therefore, covers many most striking episodes and events. Diplomats have met at my house to discuss important world-wide questions. Politicians have talked over knotty points in my drawing-room hidden away from the eyes of the reporter. My little home has witnessed striking interviews, and the walls have heard wondrous tales of world-wide repute unfolded and discussed. I have often been of use in this way, and am proud of the strange confidences that have been placed in me, but such trust cannot be betrayed, and although I could tell many wondrous facts, my readers must not be disappointed that they should be withheld. Discretion is not a vice.
Silence is often golden.