In this article from 1922, we are invited to spend an evening at a local public house that has long been popular with artists. The author, who signs the piece with the initials YY, meets with an array of curious characters including pub landlords, merchants and farmers, and listens as they recall “with sparkling eyes the days that are no more”. As these characters recount stories of the inn’s previous inhabitants, they engage in debates around the lives of artists – who “in those days… could both drink and paint: now they can do neither” – and the value of contemporary art.
Men cannot meet without dipping into their memories in search of wonders. On entering an inn the other day in a part of the country that has long been popular with artists, I found the landlord and some of the oldest inhabitants recalling with sparkling eyes the days that were no more. The talk lingered especially around the name of a dead painter who had once lived there and whose work I had known since I was a boy. “He was a marvel,” the landlord said tenderly; “he never sold his work. I mean to say, he never worked for money. Never painted a pot-boiler in his life.”
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