The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter by Timothy Miller

Author:Timothy Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781645060437
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Our cab had drawn to a standstill outside an undistinguished facade. The name of the proprietor, Aristide Bruant, was emblazoned over the door and in the posters that nearly obscured the windows with his likeness, costumed somewhere between a Viennese count and an Argentine gaucho, with a red scarf thrown over his shoulder to signal his solidarity with the proletariat. I realized at once that this Bruant was the model for Vernet’s own bohemian costume.

This then was the Cabaret Le Mirliton, just one of several down-at-the-heels establishments pocking the Boulevard Rochechouart that promised song and dance and bonhomie, or alternately enough noxious drink to make the first three superfluous.

Le Mirliton was of the first kind. As soon as we were inside the door, we were greeted by smoke and noise and the booming voice of the proprietor himself. “My God, look at these two! Have the sewers backed up all the way to Montmartre?”

There was Bruant, striding up and down the top of the bar in the same costume we’d seen in the posters, a gamekeeper’s outfit with a scarlet shirt and scarf, an opera cape and wide-brimmed black hat. He pointed a rattan cane at us and said, “See how they gawk? Like sheep about to be sheared! Muttonheads!”

The crowd laughed. “What are you laughing at?” said Bruant, picking out a balding little pickle of a man in front of him, “You’ve already been sheared to your pink-and-white hide. And the rest of you smell of sheep dip!”

The crowd roared at every word. These were hardly the denizens of the underworld I’d expected to see. They were stock clerks and assistant managers, wine merchants and lace manufacturers, the shank of the bourgeoisie, along with their mistresses and perhaps a few daring wives. They had climbed the butte of Montmartre to come and be scandalized and insulted by the three-penny poet of the bateaux. Bruant gave them good value for their money. A piano player in the corner by the bar banged on the keys, and Bruant tore into a song.

Vernet drew a waitress aside, pushed a few francs into her palm, and whispered in her ear. She pointed to the back room. Then, noticing how much the gentleman had given her, she piloted us to the inner temple herself, the “Institute,” as she called it. This was the half-world where beer steins gave way to glasses of absinthe, where the painters, poets, drug addicts, and dreamers were immured, safe from the bald curiosity of the shopkeepers, their faces picked out only by flickering candlelight. This was where we found him, the monarch of Montmartre at his corner table, a sketchpad on the table in front of him, a girl on either side.

He had seen us, and was waving us over as if we were expected. “Gentlemen! Do join us!” he called.

We approached his table. “Count Toulouse-Lautrec?” Vernet asked.

The gentleman so addressed nodded vigorously, rapping his knuckles on the table. If ever an aristo had spawned a black sheep, here he was.

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