Now if Van Ostade or Teniers had risen to prosecute him for forging their signatures, and he had been found guilty and condemned to severe punishment, it would have served him right. He was a perfect gem of a forger. He picked up a stock of those dirty old pictures painted on worm-eaten panels that used to abound in the sale-rooms of Antwerp. On these he would paint what might be called replicas with variations, cribbing left and right from old mildewed prints that were scattered all about the floor. He would scrape and scumble, brighten and deaden with oils and varnishes; he would dodge and manipulate till his picture, after a given time spent in a damp cellar, would emerge as a genuine old master. I once asked a dealer whom I knew to be a regular customer of his, at what price he sold one of those productions. "I really can't say," he answered; "I only do wholesale business. I buy for exportation to England and America." If any of my friends here or over there possess some work of Van-der-something's, I sincerely congratulate them, for the little man was a genius in his way.
Of my friend the German I have only to say that, poor fellow, he spent but a short life of pleasure and of pain. What became of his Circe I never sought to know. It was a clear case of "Ne cherchez pas la femme!"
The first friend I made on my arrival in Antwerp was Jean Heyermans (detto il Pegghi), and a very useful one he proved himself, for he at once took me in hand, helped me to find home and hearth, and generally gave me the correct tip, so valuable to the stranger. He lost no time in teaching me some of those full-flavoured Flemish idioms which from the first enabled me to emphasise my meaning when I wished to express it in unmistakable language.
He himself was a remarkable linguist, speaking English, French, and German fluently, in addition to his native language, Dutch; so he soon chummed with du Maurier and me in several languages, and became one of our set. He was always ready to follow us in our digressions from the conventional course, and we felt that many of our best international jokes would have been lost had it not been for his comprehension and appreciation. His father, too, was a kind friend to us, inviting us to his house to hear Music and talk Art, to ply knives and forks, and to empty glasses of various dimensions. That gentleman's corpulence had reached a degree which clearly showed that he must have "lost sight of his knees" some years back, but he was none the less strong and active. There were two daughters, one pathetically blind, the other sympathetically musical.
How our friend came by the name of Peggy none of us know, but he figures as such in many of du Maurier's drawings.
"If Peggy," he says, in a letter from Malines, "doesn't come on Sunday, may the vengeance of the gods overtake him! Tell him so. I'll meet him at the train." And then he sketches the meeting and greeting of the two, and the railway guard starting his train with the old-fashioned horn-signal on the G.E.C. then in use.
My friend Jean soon started on his career as a regular exhibitor in Belgium and Holland, besides which he developed a remarkable taste and talent for teaching.
"What would you advise about Pen's studies?" said Robert Browning one afternoon as we sat in my little studio, talking about his son's talents and prospects. (This was a few years after my final return to England.) "Send him to Antwerp," I said, "to Heyermans; he is the best man I know of to start him."