The Arab Boy

I have never seen this fascinating picture but at least one reader may have when it took its holidays in Boston in 2015; home is Kansas City.

You need to know that Gerrit Schouten was a 17th century brewer – nothing wrong with that; my ancestors were distillers (Jameson) and wine merchants (Gilbey). It beautifully depicts the aspirations of the 17th century Dutch bourgeoisie. A spinet or harpsichord supported by putti, expensively apparelled wife and daughters, fashionable puppies, a son deferentially offering his mother a sliver of lemon zest, a maid doing something or other in the eating room, a black boy reaching into a wine cooler; rich tapestries; an abundance of statuary, a fine picture over an elegant chimney piece. The picture is of an elephant, an allusion to the name of Schouten’s brewery in Haarlem.

There are many pictures in this genre, depicting a black servant and dogs. Here’s another.

This leads us to a 19th century solicitor and property developer in Putney and Barnes, Henry Scarth. As in the portraits above, he had a dusky servant, Yussef Sirry, born in Lebanon in about 1830. A public house he built is called The Arab Boy after him. Rather unusually he left his considerable Estate to the Arab boy, something those Dutch burghers most certainly did not consider.

Yesterday we walked on Putney Common where there is an atmospheric cemetery that closed in 1954, although it looks as if it was more than sixty-five years ago.

One of those overgrown headstones is that of Youssef. Henry Scarth had a son – why did he leave everything to Youssef? I don’t know but we repaired to The Arab Boy to ponder.

The Loriners are burnishing their bits and pieces in readiness for autumn hunting and singing along to Manfred Mann.