A guidebook claims Winslow Homer painted every inch of the Cape Ethel landscape except Schneer Rock. Supposedly he set his easel opposite the dramatic blue-black rock only to see the philistine sea breeze fling his paints and brushes into the waves. Whereupon the artist gathered up what was left of his equipment and left Schneer Rock in a huff, never to return.
The guidebook's author advises his readers to do the same. The rock, he writes, resembles a fat swimmer who has waddled into the sea at waist height to take a clandestine pee. It has no geological or aesthetic interest, he adds, unless you happen to be an ornithologist studying seagull crap density. Suffice it to say, I wrote this guidebook and I am still seeking a publisher.
Schneer rock was named after Igbert Schneer, an eighteenth-century blackguard of fearsome reputation. His portrait can be found on page thirteen of a rare book called Infamous Rogues of Bygone Days (Boston, 1912). Reproduced in lurid color, it depicts an aggressively bald colonial-era man with greenish skin and strands of lank, brown hair dripping from the sides of his scalp. The shoulders beneath his cloak appear to be uneven, suggesting a crooked spine, maybe even a withered arm clutching a dagger, or just complete indifference to what the world thought of him. If you ask me, Igbert looks not unlike a hunchbacked toad emerging from the slimy depths of a stagnant pond. But then I am a direct descendent of his and so inclined to charitable opinion. Most people consider him much uglier than that.
Fortunately, my vanity can claim absolutely zero family resemblance. Infamy, roguishness and - praise be! - greenish pallor apparently disappeared from the Schneer gene pool upon Igbert's death. His son, Josiah, was by all accounts a gentleman farmer of conventional aspect and unremarkable habits. Nevertheless, I often study the portrait of Igbert Schneer pondering his repulsive physiognomy and vile personality. Were these biological anomalies confined to Igbert's life alone? Or do such deviant characteristics merely lie dormant in the Schneer bloodline, waiting for a suitable concoction of polluted DNA to congeal?
At these times, like Dr Jekyll clasping an empty test-tube, I stare into the bathroom mirror, scrutinizing my face for telltale signs of an unhealthy greenish glow, wrinkling lips, and the creeping horror of male pattern baldness. But bland, inoffensive features stare back at me. An unkind observer might note the beginnings of a widow's peak and some slight thinning on the crown - average attrition for my age - but no spine chilling hint of jade ears or an emerald nose. Yet paranoia still whispers that perhaps Igbert also looked normal in his early thirties, before deformity and psychosis took possession of his soul. Ample time for my own self to deteriorate beyond the pale. Alas, this printed illustration of an old man in an antiquarian book is the only surviving image of Igbert Schneer, so there is no way of knowing.
Mystery, intrigue, and even innuendo surround the whereabouts of the original oil painting from which the book plate was made. According to family legend, it once hung over the fireplace in the old Schneer homestead. The wretched thing was removed, however, when my great-grandmother complained that its creepy eyes not only followed her around the room but also up the staircase, across the landing, and into her boudoir. They say her husband threw the picture into the sea at Schneer Rock. It sank beneath the waves only to resurface every November 25th, Igbert's birthday, floating along the shoreline at low tide, casting a balefully leering eye upon any local ladies desperate enough to try sunbathing on Schneer Rock's windy, desolate beach. The last recorded sighting was made in 1957 by a Miss Gloria Bolk, although her friend claimed it was merely a dead jellyfish that Gloria saw, and not a haunted canvas emerging from the inky depths.
I interviewed Gloria at the homeless shelter where she now lives - built on the former site of the old Schnrer family homestead - finding the woman to be a very credible witness. Between gulps of peach schnapps, she confirmed the picture of the man she observed in the sea was identical to the one I showed her on page thirteen of Infamous Rogues of Bygone Days, albeit with seaweed and barnacles completely obscuring the subject's face, a condition only to be expected after so long in the water. He had your ears, she told me, except his were shaped more lumps of dead jellyfish.
I mention none of this in my Cape Ethel guidebook, except for a brief paragraph touching on the fact that Schneer Rock's large homeless population are the nation's number one consumers of peach schnapps. I'm saving the story for another book, an extremely slim coffee table-sized volume of old photographs to be titled Igbert Schneer: A Life & After Life In A Picture.
