Face on the floor story appears all over state and country

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Like many good Colorado stories, "The Face on the Barroom Floor" paints a beautiful picture of a snap shot in time, and gets told over and over again, until no one is really sure who told it first.  All that is remembered then, and remains — is to point out the very best, or a favorite version of such a story.

It is true in the case of Herndon Davis' painting on the floor of Tabor House Bar, near the Central City Opera House. Other versions of the story pop up around the state, and indeed, the whole country.

Davis had been commissioned by the Central City Opera Association to paint a series of paintings for the Central City Opera House; he was also requested to do some work at the Teller House. One afternoon at the bar he became embroiled in a heated argument with Ann Evans, the project director, about the manner in which his work should be executed. The upshot of the fight was that Davis was told to quit, or else he would be fired.

According to one version of the story, the painting was the suggestion of a busboy named Joe Libby; knowing that Davis would soon be fired, he suggested that the artist "give them something to remember him by."

In Davis' own words,

"The Central City Opera House Association hired me to do a series of paintings and sketches of the famous mining town, which they were then rejuvenating as an opera center and tourist attraction. I stayed at the Teller House while working up there, and the whim struck me to paint a face on the floor of the old Teller House barroom. In its mining boom heyday it was just such a floor as the ragged artist used in d’Arcy's famous old poem. But the hotel manager and the bartender would have none of such tomfoolery. They refused me permission to paint the face. Still the idea haunted me, and in my last night in Central City, I persuaded the bellboy Jimmy Libby to give me a hand. After midnight, when the coast was clear, we slipped down there. Jimmy held a candle for me and I painted as fast as I could. Yet it was 3 AM when I finished."

Whatever the inspiration, Davis did not sign his work, and soon the bar's owners chose to capitalize on it. They advertised the painting as that from the poem "The Face on the Barroom Floor" by Hugh Antoine D'Arcy. The actual subject of the painting is Davis' wife, Edna Juanita (Cotter) Davis "Nita." She lived with Herndon at 1323 Kalamath St,  in Denver, Co

 "The Herndon Davis Collection in our Western History and Genealogy Department is one of our most prized treasures. Anyone dealing with major characters and/or notable buildings in Colorado should check into Davis’s portraits and paintings of notable sites. In some cases Davis provides the only extant image of certain people and places. In hundreds of colorful paintings and drawings he adds impressively to our portrait gallery. The Denver Public Library is pleased to be a collaborator on this overdue book on one of our most popular and prolific artists.”
—James X. Kroll, Manager, Western History and Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library

Herndon Davis, an artist and journalist, dedicated his life to depicting the major landmarks and personalities of Colorado in watercolor, oil, and pen and pencil. Best known for the Face on the Barroom Floor, the portrait of an alluring woman on the floor of the Teller House Hotel barroom in Central City, Colorado, Davis was a prolific artist whose murals, sketches, and portraits can be found all over the state, from the Sage Room of the Oxford Hotel on Seventeenth Street to the Denver Press Club poker room. Despite his numerous contributions, his work was never showcased or exhibited in the traditional manner.

In this biography and first-ever collection featuring most of his life’s work, authors Craig Leavitt and Thomas J. Noel provide a detailed look into Davis’s life and career and include a catalog of almost 200 photographs of his work from Colorado and around the country. They also put his work into the broader context of the time through comparison with such contemporary Colorado artists as Muriel Sibell Wolle, Allen Tupper True, Charles Waldo Love, and Juan Menchaca.

Published to coincide with the Denver Public Library’s 2016 exhibition—the only public display of Davis’s work to date—and bringing deserved attention to this overlooked figure, Herndon Davis: Painting Colorado History, 1901-1962 is an important contribution to Colorado’s cultural history.

Among my favorite Davis works of art however, is the Poker Room Mural at the Denver Press Club. When I worked next door, (we shared a rear parking lot between the two buildings at the time) at Colorado Press Association years ago, I tried to make it to the basement any time I was in the nearby building.

"The Denver Press Club at 1330 Glenarm Place still treasures Davis’s work on its basement poker room walls," writes Craig Leavitt  and Thomas J. Noel in Herndon Davis: Painting Colorado History, 1901-1962.

"That large mural depicts the 1940s Press Room of the Rocky Mountain News, a place Davis frequented and where he worked. Among the immortals whose heads Davis painted on the outer edges of the mural are longtime favorite Rocky Mountain News columnist Lew Casey (editor of the book Denver Murders) and News photographer Harry Rhoads (the most famous and ribald of the press photographers, whose work is preserved in a biography and in the Western History and Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library). On that same Denver Press Club mural, look for Gene Fowler, the Denver Post reporter who graduated to the big time and national fame in New York City. Among Fowler’s many books is one of the liveliest accounts in Denver literature, Timberline: A Story of Bonfils and Tammen. More than just a history of the founders of the Denver Post, this is a colorful, if not always factual, history of Colorado. It portrays in print the wild, funny, vividly colorful good old days that much of Herndon Davis’s work captures. Presumably, the Denver Press Club Davis murals are safe. That fortress claims to be the oldest continuous surviving press club in America and is a designated Denver landmark. And its inner sanctum’s most treasured relic is the Herndon Davis mural."

 

The original poem was written by the poet John Henry Titus in 1872. 

A later version was adapted from the Titus poem by Hugh Antoine d'Arcy in 1887 and first published in the New York Dispatch.

Twas a balmy summer's evening and a goodly crowd was there,

Which well-nigh filled Joe's barroom on the corner of the square,

And as songs and witty stories came through the open door

A vagabond crept slowly in and posed upon the floor.

“Where did it come from?” someone said, “The wind has blown it in.”

“What does it want?” another cried, “Some whiskey, rum or gin?”

“Here Toby, sic him, if your stomach is equal to the work —

I wouldn't touch him with a fork, he’s as filthy as a Turk.”

This badinage the poor wretch took with stoical good grace;

In fact, he smiled as though he thought he'd struck the proper place.

“Come boys, I know there's kindly heart among so good a crowd —

To be in such good company would make a deacon proud.”

“Give me a drink — that’s what I want — I'm out of funds you know;

When I had cash to treat the gang, this hand was never slow.

What? You laugh as though you thought this pocket never held a sou:

I once was fixed as well my boys, as anyone of you.”

“There thanks, that’s braced me nicely; God Bless you one and all;

Next time I pass this good saloon, I'll make another call.

Give you a song? No, I can't do that, my singing days are past;

My voice is cracked, my throat's worn out, and my lungs are going fast.

“Say, give me another whiskey, and I'll tell you what I'll do —

I'll tell you a funny story and a fact I promise too.

That I was ever a decent man, not one of you would think;

But I was, some four or five years back. Say, give me another drink.

“Fill 'er up, Joe, I want to put some life into my frame —

Such little drinks, to a bum like me are miserably tame;

Five fingers! — there, that's the scheme — and corking whiskey too.

Well, here's luck, boys; and landlord, my best regards to you.

“You’ve treated me pretty kindly, and I'd like to tell you how

I came to be the dirty sot, you see before you now.

As I told you once, was a man with muscle, frame and health,

And, but for a blunder, ought to have made considerable wealth.

“I was a painter — not one that daubed on bricks or wood,

But an artist, and for my age I was rated pretty good,

I worked hard at my canvas and was bidding fair to rise,

For gradually I saw the star of fame before my eyes.

“I made a picture, perhaps you've seen, 'tis called the 'Chase of Fame.'

It brought me fifteen hundred pounds and added to my name.

And then I met a woman — now comes the funny part —

With eyes that petrified my brain, and sunk into my heart.

“Why don't you laugh? 'Tis funny, that the vagabond you see

Could ever love a woman and expect her love for me;

But 'twas so, and for a month or two, her smiles were freely given,

And when her loving lips touched mine it carried me to heaven.

“Did you ever see a woman for whom your soul you'd give,

With a form like the Milo Venus, too beautiful to live;

With eyes that would beat the Koh-i-noor, and a wealth of chestnut hair?

If so, 'twas she, for there never was another half so fair.

“I was working on a portrait, one afternoon in May,

Of a fair haired boy, a friend of mine, who lived across the way.

And Madeline admired it, and much to my surprise,

Said she'd like to know the man that had such dreamy eyes.

“It didn't take long to know him, and before the month had flown

My friend had stolen my darling, and I was left alone.

And, ere a year of misery had passed above my head.

The jewel I had treasured so had tarnished, and was dead.

“That's why I took to drink, boys. Why, I never saw you smile,

I thought you'd be amused, and laughing all the while.

Why, what's the matter friend? There's a teardrop in your eye.

Come, laugh like me; 'tis only babes and women that should cry.

“Say boys, if you give me just another whiskey, I'll be glad,

And I'll draw right here a picture, of the face that drove me mad.

Give me that piece of chalk with which you mark the baseball score —

And you shall see the lovely Madeline upon the barroom floor.

Another drink, and with chalk in hand, the vagabond began,

To sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man.

Then, as he placed another lock upon that shapely head,

With a fearful shriek, he leaped and fell across the picture — dead!