His Work," by his son, Robert
Strickland. Wm. Heinemann, 1913.

[4] 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."

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. Personally I think it was rash of
Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained
belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and
mother, to state that Charles Strickland in a letter written
from Paris had described her as "an excellent woman," since
Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz was able to print the letter in
facsimile, and it appears that the passage referred to ran in
fact as follows: <i God damn my wife. She is an excellent woman.
I wish she was in hell.> It is not thus that the Church
in its great days dealt with evidence that was unwelcome.

Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz was an enthusiastic admirer of Charles
Strickland, and there was no danger that he would whitewash him.
He had an unerring eye for the despicable motive in
actions that had all the appearance of innocence. He was a
psycho-pathologist, as well as a student of art, and the
subconscious had few secrets from him. No mystic ever saw
deeper meaning in common things. The mystic sees the
ineffable, a