第一章(5) It is due to no accident that when one of his most important works , The Woman of Samaria , This was described in Christie ' s catalogue as follows : " A nude woman , a native of the Society Islands , is lying on the ground beside a brook . Behind is a tropical Landscape with palm-trees , bananas , etc . 60 in . x 48 in . "
When The Woman of Samaria was sold at Christie ' s shortly after the discussion which followed the publication of Mr . Strickland ' s biography , it fetched POUNDS 235 less than it had done nine months before when it was bought by the distinguished collector whose sudden death had brought it once more under the hammer .
Perhaps Charles Strickland ' s power and originality would scarcely have sufficed to turn the scale if the remarkable mythopoeic faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with impatience a story which disappointed all its craving for the extraordinary .
And presently Dr . Weitbrecht-Rotholz produced the work which finally set at rest the misgivings of all lovers of art .
Dr . Weitbrecht-Rotholz belongs to that school of historians which believes that human nature is not only about as bad as it can be , but a great deal worse ; and certainly the reader is safer of entertainment in their hands than in those of the writers who take a malicious pleasure in representing the great figures of romance as patterns of the domestic virtues .
For my part , I should be sorry to think that there was nothing between Anthony and Cleopatra but an economic situation ; and it will require a great deal more evidence than is ever likely to be available , thank God , to persuade me that Tiberius was as blameless a monarch as King George V .
Dr . Weitbrecht-Rotholz has dealt in such terms with the Rev . Robert Strickland ' s innocent biography that it is difficult to avoid feeling a certain sympathy for the unlucky parson .
His decent reticence is branded as hypocrisy , his circumlocutions are roundly called lies , and his silence is vilified as treachery .
And on the strength of peccadillos , reprehensible in an author , but excusable in a son , the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness , humbug , pretentiousness , deceit , cunning , and bad cooking .
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