FullReads

But there is something more in this coffee-room–something that neither Mynheer Boudier of the Bellevue nor any other landlord in any other hostelry, great or small, up and down the Maas, can boast. This is the coffee-room picture gallery–free to whoever comes.

It began with a contribution from the first impecunious painter in payment of an overdue board-bill, his painting being hung on a nail beside the clock. Now; all over the walls–above the sideboard with its pewter plates and queer mugs; over the mantel holding the Delft, and between the squat windows–are pinned, tacked, pasted and hung–singly and in groups–sketches in oil, pastel, water color, pencil and charcoal, many without frames and most of them bearing the signature of some poor, stranded painter, preceded by the suggestive line, “To my dear friend, the landlord”–silent reminders all of a small cash balance which circumstances quite beyond their control had prevented their liquidating at the precise hour of their departure.

Mynheer had bowed and smiled as each new contribution was handed him and straightway had found a hammer and a nail and up it went beside its fellows. He never made objection: the more the merrier. The ice wind would soon blow across the Maas from Papendrecht, the tall grasses in the marshes turn pale with fright, and the lace-frost with busy fingers pattern the tiny panes, and then Johann would pack the kits one after another, and the last good-byes take place. But the sketches would remain. Oh! yes, the sketches would remain and tell the story of the summer and every night new mugs would be filled around the coal-fire, and new pipes lighted–mugs and pipes of the TOWNSPEOPLE this time, who came to feast their eyes,–and, although the summer was gone, the long winter would still be his. No, Mynheer never objected!

And this simple form of settlement–a note of hand (in color), payable in yearly patronage–has not been confined to modern times. Many an inn owes its survival to a square of canvas–the head of a child, a copper pot, or stretch of dune; and more than one collector now boasts of a masterpiece which had hung for years on some taproom wall, a sure but silent witness of the poverty of a Franz Hals, Wouverman or Van der Helst.

Each year had brought new additions to the impecunious group about Mynheer’s table.

Dear old Marny, with his big boiler amidships, his round, sunburned face shaded by a wide-brimmed, slouch hat–the one he wore when he lived with the Sioux Indians–loose red tie tossed over one shoulder, and rusty velveteen coat, was an old habitue. And so was dry, crusty Malone, “the man from Dublin,” rough outside as a potato and white inside as its meal. And so, too, was Stebbins, the silent man of the party, and the only listener in the group. All these came with the earliest birds and stayed until the boys got out their skates.

But there were others this year who were new. Pudfut, the Englishman, first–in from Norway, where he had been sketching on board some lord’s yacht–he of the grizzly brown beard, brown ulster reaching to his toes, gray-checked steamer-cap and brierwood pipe–an outfit which he never changed–“slept in them,” Marny insisted.

“Me name’s Pudfut,” he began, holding out his hand to Marny. “I’ve got a letter in my clothes for ye from a chap in Paris.”

“Don’t pull it out,” had come the answer. “Put it there!” and within an hour the breezy fellow, his arm through the Englishman’s, had trotted him all over Dort from the Groote Kerk to the old Gate of William of Orange, introducing him to every painter he met on the way, first as Pudfut, then as Puddy, then as Pretty-foot, then as Tootsie-Wootsie, and last as Toots–a name by which he is known in the Quartier to this day. This done, he had taken him up to his own room and had dumped him into an extra cot–his for the rest of the summer.