Forgotten Prins and the Cartographer’s Day-Room Where His Bearings Faltered

A breath-held hush settles over Prins House, deepest in the abandoned cartographer’s day-room where Matthias Jeroen Prins, a modest Dutch mapmaker who charted waterways for local merchants, once guided his quill through patient coordinates. Now the weakened bearing on his final draft lingers like a truth he never dared confirm.

A Bearing Drawn Through the Mapmaker’s Measured Hours

Matthias, born 1873 near Leiden, learned plotting from his uncle Cornelis Prins, whose cracked protractor rests beside a lantern stand.

His mornings followed steady cadence: vellum stretched taut across boards, ink tested on margin scraps, compass points traced in incremental arcs to honor each curve of shoreline. His order lingers—weights aligned along the table’s lip, folded charts sorted by region, pencils stacked like quiet sentries. Even the worn notch in the surveyor’s board recalls where he braced his wrist before plotting a bearing he feared might drift off course.

When His Craft Strayed from Its Intended Course

Quiet rumor suggested Matthias’s latest commission—a river trade map—misrepresented a bend crucial for navigation, prompting a merchant’s frustration and whispered doubts about his precision. In the interior corridor, Cornelis’s protractor pouch lies torn at the seam. A compass case rests overturned beneath a wall bracket, its contents scattered. A revised draft sits half-hidden under a console, final bearings overwritten into near illegibility. A thin trail of graphite dust marks one stair tread, evidence of hurried packing or second thoughts. None of these signs confirm error, yet each leans toward a private weight he could not steady.

Only the fading bearing on his final draft remains—an unfinished contour suspended in silence. Whatever stilled Matthias’s hand endures unresolved.

Prins House remains abandoned still.