A Troublesome Picture [pp. 115-123]

A4PPZ~ETOETS' JO URNAL.
ing, Esq.;" or, "'The Praying Monk,' a superb
masterpiece, which recalls Salvator Rosa, Rubens,
Titian, with something of the power of Michael Angelo and the grace of Sully."
A good many vicissitudes followed the picture,
but scarcely more unusual than those which fall to
the lot of a bedstead or any other piece of furniture.
In I848, when the first American owner of the picture died, it became the property of the deceased
gentleman's daughter. In time the family moved
from Staten Island to New York City, and the picture was given to a friend, who valued it simply as
associated with Washington Irving. This person,
without the least artistic pretensions, had a wife who
prattled pictures, knowing nothing about them, and,
what was worse, was utterly unconscious of her own
idiocy in regard to form or color. The husband
called the picture "Irving's Old Saint," the wife
dubbed it "Irving's Old Fright."
Want of care, and principally because the picture
was hung in a gloomy hall, right over the belching
heat of a furnace, predisposed the old master to star
and crackle, so that in time the cavern was riven with
great seams, as if occasioned by an earthquake. Little bits of paint would peel off and fly away, until
the man's face seemed as if attacked with erythema.
As the hall was dark, and the picture only visible
when the gas was lit, its entire destruction was simply a question of time. As it interfered with the
position of a very grand architectural hat-rack of
lofty proportions, one day the lady of the house consigned the picture to the garret, where, face to the
wall, it passed a good many years in profound repose, in company with old trunks, dilapidated fenders, ramshackle chairs, and other disjecta memnbrca
of household articles. The husband had never
missed it. About two years ago, a Mansard roof having to be superposed upon the house, the contents
of the garret were sent adrift, and at last were
swamped in anl auction. I have now a catalogue of
a sale which reads as follows:
"Property of a private gentleman declining housekeeping.
No. 102. An ice-pitcher.
io3. Lot of second-hand bathing-tubs.
104. Lot of stoves and fenders.
105.' The Old Monk.' A work of the Spanish
masters. Very fine."
This closed the first period of the representative
of the old Spanish school.
II.
MY good friend Rudolph Lederhos, who keeps the
musical lager-beer saloon, bought the old Irving pict ure for precisely eight dollars and a quarter. When I
recognized, with something of a start, this picture of
my youth, gracing Lederhos's walls, he said to me:
"There, now, you are looking at my old man! It
was a foolish purchase, and you will laugh at me.
But you see," he continued, confidentially, "a stupid
waiter let a bottle of weiss-beer burst just over
against the wall there, and it made a dirty streak on
my new paper. The paper-hanging man, he says
that it would cost me fifteen dollars to have a new
panel put in, and he wasn't quite sure he could
match the color. I goes through William Street,
and I just pass an auction. I see that old picture.
I measure it, and find the size suit me to an inch
or so. Then I have an idea of my own about the
picture, which I tell you. So I buy it, and have him
hung up here. There comes to me that man Mollerus, a Hollander, who drinks a good deal of my
wine and don't pay quick. He is a painter, and has
got some work making scenes for theatres. I speak
to him this very day about a job I want done with
that picture. I get him to paint me a wine-flask in
the old fellow's hand, with a tumbler in the other,
with a piece of cheese near a loaf of bread, and an
onion-with a bit of ham with a bone in it-and a
pack of cards on the bench, and then I has a cheap,
first-class picture, as is suited to the business. What
you think?"
I was horror-stricken! I hastened to assure Lederhos that the picture was better as it was. I advised delay, hoping to prevent something which
seemed to me almost akin to sacrilege.
"Well, I ain't in no such dreadful hurry," replied Lederhos, who had apparently some vague
ideas of the unity of art, "but a praying man with
blisters all over his face, where the paint has rub off,
ain't no use in a place where they drinks beer, plays
billiards, and listens to the music."
With Mollerus, under whose hands at some future day the poor picture was to be desecrated, I had
little acquaintance. All I knew about the man was
that he was an habitual drinker. Rather tall ancd
bulky, he resembled in heaviness of pose and lethargic action the Netherlander, but his face was not
of the Frisian type. As some peculiar fish, predisposed to fat, increase only in their bodies, while the
bone-case of the head remains rigidly fixed within
absolute limits, and refuses to collect an atom of
adipose matter, so Mollerus, the Hollander, was
huge and flabby everywhere else but as to his head,
over which the skin seemed pulled as if in tension.
But here all icthyological resemblances ceased. Mol lerus's eyes were not the least fish-like, but were
piercing black, the dark pigment running into the
pupils and clouding them, while his hair was coal black and crisp. Possibly when Spanish rule was
rife in the Netherlands centuries ago, some swarthy
Asturian halberdier had crossed his blood with a
Gelderland woman, and the flashing Guadiana and
the torpid Maas had united and flowed down to the
Zuyder Zee. Two types of qaite opposite races, I
thought, were discoverable in Mollerus, which had, I
fancied, never exactly commingled.
Mollerus's English and Dutch were by no means
fluent. When he did talk, however-which was but
rarely -he usually spoke in monosyllables. The
man was apparently a gloomy, misanthropic fellow,
caring for no other companion save his bottle. His
dress was dirty and shabby, and he mostly wore a
heavy, slouched hat, sombrero-like, over his eyes.
I suppose the picture remained in its position for
fully six months. Lederhos, who never forgot any
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