On Something | Page 8

he has been dead so long, and I can know nothing about
him whatsoever.
Now so it is with any two human minds, not only when they are
separated by centuries and by silence, but when they have their being
side by side under one roof and are companions all their years.

ON A VAN TROMP
Once there was a man who, having nothing else to do and being fond of
that kind of thing, copied with a good deal of care on to a bit of wood
the corner of a Dutch picture in one of the public galleries.
This man was not a good artist; indeed he was nothing but a
humpbacked and very sensitive little squire with about £3000 a year of
his own and great liking for intricate amusements. He was a pretty
good mathematician and a tolerable fisherman. He knew an enormous
amount about the Mohammedan conquest of Spain, and he is, I believe,
writing a book upon that subject. I hope he will, for nearly all history
wants to be rewritten. Anyhow, he, as I have just said, did copy a
corner of one of the Dutch pictures in one of the galleries. It was a
Dutch picture of the seventeenth century; and since the laws of this
country are very complicated and the sanctions attached to them very
terrible, I will not give the name of the original artist, but I will call him
Van Tromp.
Van Tromps have always been recognized, and there was a moment
about fifty years after the artist's death when they had a considerable
vogue in the French Court. Monsieur, who was quite ignorant of such
things, bought a couple, and there is a whole row of them in the little
pavilion at Louveciennes. Van Tromp has something about him at once
positive and elusive; he is full of planes and values, and he interprets
and renders, and the rest of it. Nay, he transfers!
About thirty years ago Mr. Mayor (of Hildesheim and London) thought
it his duty to impress upon the public how great Van Tromp was. This
he did after taking thirteen Van Tromps in payment of a bad debt, and
he succeeded. But the man I am writing about cared nothing for all this:
he simply wanted to see how well he could imitate this corner of the
picture, and he did it pretty well. He begrimed it and he rubbed at it,
and then he tickled it up again with a knife, and then he smoked it, and
then he put in some dirty whites which were vivid, and he played the
fool with white of egg, and so forth, until he had the very tone and
manner of the original; and as he had done it on an old bit of wood it
was exactly right, and he was very proud of the result. He got an old
frame from near Long Acre and stuck it in, and then he took the thing
home. He had done several things of this kind, imitating miniatures,

and even enamels. It amused him. When he got home he sat looking at
it with great pleasure for an hour or two; he left the little thing on the
table of his study and went to bed.
Here begins the story, and here, therefore, I must tell you what the
subject of this corner of the picture was.
The subject of this corner of the picture which he had copied was a
woman in a brown jacket and a red petticoat with big feet showing
underneath, sitting on a tub and cutting up some vegetables. She had
her hair bunched up like an onion, a fashion which, as we all know,
appealed to the Dutch in the seventeenth century, or at any rate to the
plebeian Dutch. I must also tell you the name of this squire before I go
any further: his name was Hammer--Paul Hammer. He was unmarried.
He went to bed at eleven o'clock, and when he came down at eight
o'clock he had his breakfast. He went into his study at nine o'clock, and
was very much annoyed to find that some burglars had come in during
the night and had taken away a number of small objects which were not
without value; and among-them, what he most regretted, his little
pastiche of the corner of the Van Tromp.
For some moments he stood filled with an acute anger and wishing that
he knew who the burglars were and how to get at them; but the days
passed, and though he asked everybody, and even gave some money to
the police, he could not discover this. He put an advertisement into
several newspapers, both London newspapers and local ones, saying
that money would be given