The Moon and Sixpence

Chapter XLVII
I 
HAVE
TRIED
to put some connection into the vari-
ous things Captain Nichols told me about
Strickland, and I here set them down in the best
order I can. They made one another’s acquain-
tance during the latter part of the winter follow-
ing my last meeting with Strickland in Paris. How
he had passed the intervening months I do not
know, but life must have been very hard, for
Captain Nichols saw him first in the Asile de Nuit.
There was a strike at Marseilles at the time, and
Strickland, having come to the end of his re-
sources, had apparently found it impossible to
earn the small sum he needed to keep body and
soul together.
The Asile de Nuit is a large stone building where
pauper and vagabond may get a bed for a week,
provided their papers are in order and they can
persuade the friars in charge that they are work-
ingmen. Captain Nichols noticed Strickland for
his size and his singular appearance among the
crowd that waited for the doors to open; they
waited listlessly, some walking to and fro, some
leaning against the wall, and others seated on
the curb with their feet in the gutter; and when
they filed into the office he heard the monk who
read his papers address him in English. But he
did not have a chance to speak to him, since, as
he entered the common-room, a monk came in
with a huge Bible in his arms, mounted a pulpit
which was at the end of the room, and began
the service which the wretched outcasts had to
endure as the price of their lodging. He and
Strickland were assigned to different rooms, and
when, thrown out of bed at five in the morning
by a stalwart monk, he had made his bed and
washed his face, Strickland had already disap-
peared. Captain Nichols wandered about the
streets for an hour of bitter cold, and then made
his way to the Place Victor Gelu, where the sailor-
men are wont to congregate. Dozing against the

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Somerset Maugham
pedestal of a statue, he saw Strickland again. He
gave him a kick to awaken him.
“Come and have breakfast, mate,” he said.
“Go to hell,” answered Strickland.
I recognised my friend’s limited vocabulary,
and I prepared to regard Captain Nichols as a
trustworthy witness.
“Busted?” asked the Captain.
“Blast you,” answered Strickland.
“Come along with me. I’ll get you some break-
fast.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Strickland
scrambled to his feet, and together they went to
the Bouchee de Pain, where the hungry are given
a wedge of bread, which they must eat there
and then, for it is forbidden to take it away; and
then to the Cuillere de Soupe, where for a week,
at eleven and four, you may get a bowl of thin,
salt soup. The two buildings are placed far apart,
so that only the starving should be tempted to
make use of them. So they had breakfast, and so
began the queer companionship of Charles
Strickland and Captain Nichols.
They must have spent something like four
months at Marseilles in one another’s society.
Their career was devoid of adventure, if by ad-
venture you mean unexpected or thrilling inci-
dent, for their days were occupied in the pursuit
of enough money to get a night’s lodging and
such food as would stay the pangs of hunger. But
I wish I could give here the pictures, coloured
and racy, which Captain Nichols’ vivid narrative
offered to the imagination. His account of their
discoveries in the low life of a seaport town would
have made a charming book, and in the various
characters that came their way the student
might easily have found matter for a very com-
plete dictionary of rogues. But I must content
myself with a few paragraphs. I received the
impression of a life intense and brutal, savage,
multicoloured, and vivacious. It made the
Marseilles that I knew, gesticulating and sunny,

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The Moon and Sixpence
with its comfortable hotels and its restaurants
crowded with the well-to-do, tame and common-
place. I envied men who had seen with their own
eyes the sights that Captain Nichols described.
When the doors of the Asile de Nuit were closed
to them, Strickland and Captain Nichols sought
the hospitality of Tough Bill. This was the mas-
ter of a sailors’ boarding-house, a huge mulatto
with a heavy fist, who gave the stranded mari-
ner food and shelter till he found him a berth.
They lived with him a month, sleeping with a
dozen others, Swedes, negroes, Brazilians, on the
floor of the two bare rooms in his house which
he assigned to his charges; and every day they
went with him to the Place Victor Gelu, whither
came ships’ captains in search of a man. He was
married to an American woman, obese and slat-
ternly, fallen to this pass by Heaven knows what
process of degradation, and every day the board-
ers took it in turns to help her with the house-
work. Captain Nichols looked upon it as a smart
piece of work on Strickland’s part that he had
got out of this by painting a portrait of Tough
Bill. Tough Bill not only paid for the canvas,
colours, and brushes, but gave Strickland a pound
of smuggled tobacco into the bargain. For all I
know, this picture may still adorn the parlour of
the tumbledown little house somewhere near the
Quai de la Joliette, and I suppose it could now be
sold for fifteen hundred pounds. Strickland’s
idea was to ship on some vessel bound for Aus-
tralia or New Zealand, and from there make his
way to Samoa or Tahiti. I do not know how he
had come upon the notion of going to the South
Seas, though I remember that his imagination
had long been haunted by an island, all green
and sunny, encircled by a sea more blue than is
found in Northern latitudes. I suppose that he
clung to Captain Nichols because he was ac-
quainted with those parts, and it was Captain
Nichols who persuaded him that he would be
more comfortable in Tahiti.

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183
Somerset Maugham
“ You see, Tahiti’s French,” he explained to me.
“And the French aren’t so damned technical.”
I thought I saw his point.
Strickland had no papers, but that was not a
matter to disconcert Tough Bill when he saw a
profit (he took the first month’s wages of the
sailor for whom he found a berth), and he pro-
vided Strickland with those of an English stoker
who had providentially died on his hands. But
both Captain Nichols and Strickland were bound
East, and it chanced that the only opportunities
for signing on were with ships sailing West. Twice
Strickland refused a berth on tramps sailing for
the United States, and once on a collier going to
Newcastle. Tough Bill had no patience with an
obstinacy which could only result in loss to him-
self, and on the last occasion he flung both
Strickland and Captain Nichols out of his house
without more ado. They found themselves once
more adrift.
Tough Bill’s fare was seldom extravagant, and
you rose from his table almost as hungry as you
sat down, but for some days they had good rea-
son to regret it. They learned what hunger was.
The Cuillere de Soupe and the Asile de Nuit were
both closed to them, and their only sustenance
was the wedge of bread which the Bouchee de
Pain provided. They slept where they could,
sometimes in an empty truck on a siding near
the station, sometimes in a cart behind a ware-
house; but it was bitterly cold, and after an hour
or two of uneasy dozing they would tramp the
streets again. What they felt the lack of most
bitterly was tobacco, and Captain Nichols, for his