A Wanderer in Holland Part 10

I have called Hals the glory of Haarlem, yet he was only an adopted son, having been born in Antwerp about 1580. But his parents were true Haarlemers, and Frans was a resident there before he reached man's estate.

The painter's first marriage was not happy; he was even publicly reprimanded for cruelty to his wife. In spite of the birth of his eldest child just thirty-four weeks earlier than the proprieties require, his second marriage seems to have been fortunate enough. Some think that we see Mynheer and Myvrouw Hals in the picture--No. 1084 in the Ryks Museum--which is reproduced on the opposite page. If this jovial and roguish pair are really the painter and his wife, they were a merry couple. Children they had in abundance; seven sons, five of whom were painters, and three daughters. Abundance indeed was Hals'

special characteristic; you see it in all his work--vigorous, careless abundance and power. He lived to be eighty-five or so. Mrs. Hals, after a married life of fifty years, continued to flourish, with the a.s.sistance of some relief from the town, for a considerable period.

In the Haarlem Museum may be seen a picture of Hals' studio, painted by Berck Heyde, in 1652, containing portraits of Hals himself, then about seventy, and several of his old pupils--Wouvermans, Dirck Hals, his brother, four of his sons, the artist himself and others. Hals taught also Van der Helst, whose work at times comes nearest to his own, Versp.r.o.nk, Terburg and Adrian van Ostade.

To see the work of Hals at his best it is necessary to visit Holland, for we have but little here. The "Laughing Cavalier" in the Wallace Collection is perhaps his best picture in a public gallery in England. But the Haarlem Museum is a temple dedicated to his fame, and there you may revel in his l.u.s.ty powers.

The room in which his great groups hang is perhaps in effect more filled with faces than any in the world. Entering the door one is immediately beneath the bold and laughing scrutiny of a host of genial masterful arquebusiers, who make merry on the walls for all time. Such a riot of vivid portraiture never was! Other men have painted single heads as well or better: but Hals stands alone in his gusto, his abundance, his surpa.s.sing brio. It is a thousand pities that neither Lamb nor Hazlitt ever made the journey to Haarlem, because only they among our writers on art could have brought a commensurate gusto to the praise of his brush.

I have reproduced one of the groups opposite page 150, but the result is no more than a memento of the original. It conveys, however, an impression of the skill in composition by which the group is made not only a collection of portraits but a picture too. If such groups there must be, this is the way to paint them. The Dutch in the seventeenth century had a perfect mania for these commemorative canvases, and there is not a stadhuis but has one or more. Rembrandt's "Night Watch" and Hals' Haarlem groups are the greatest; but one is always surprised by the general level of excellence maintained, and now and then a lesser man such as Van der Helst climbs very nigh the rose, as in his "De Schuttersmaaltyd" in the "Night Watch" room in the Ryks Museum. The Corporation pieces of Jan van Ravesteyn in the Munic.i.p.al Museum at The Hague are also exceedingly vivid; while Jan de Bray's canvases at Haarlem, in direct compet.i.tion with Hals', would be very good indeed in the absence of their rivals.

Among other painters who can be studied here is our Utrecht friend Jan van Scorel, who has a large "Adam and Eve" in the pa.s.sage and a famous "Baptism of Christ"; Jan Versp.r.o.nk of Haarlem, Hals' pupil, who has a very quiet and effective portrait (No. 210) and a fine rich group of the lady managers of an orphanage; and Cornelius Cornellessen, also of Haarlem, painter of an excellent Corporation Banquet. In the collection are also a very charming little Terburg (No. 194) and a fascinating unsigned portrait of William III. as a pale and wistful boy.

Haarlem was the mother or instructor of many painters. There is Dirck Hals, the brother of Frans, who was born there at the end of the sixteenth century, and painted richly coloured scenes of fas.h.i.+onable convivial life. He died at Haarlem ten years before Frans. A greater was Bartholomew van der Helst, who was Hals' most a.s.similative pupil. He was born at Haarlem about 1612, and is supposed to have studied also under Nicolas Elias. His finest large work is undoubtedly the "Banquet" to which I have just referred, but I always a.s.sociate him with his portrait of Gerard Bicker, Landrichter of Muiden, that splendid tun of a man, No. 1140 in the Gallery of Honour at the Ryks Museum (see opposite page 86). One of his most beautiful paintings is a portrait of a woman in our National Gallery, on a screen in the large Netherlands room: a picture which shows the influence of Elias not a little, as any one can see who recalls Nos. 897 and 899 in the Ryks Museum--two very beautiful portraits of a man and his wife.

Haarlem and Oudenarde both claim the birth of Adrian Brouwer, a painter of Dutch topers. As to his life little is known. Tradition says that he drank and dissipated his earnings, while his work is evidence that he knew inn life with some particularity; but his epitaph calls him "a man of great mind who rejected every splendour of the world and who despised gain and riches". Brouwer, who was born about 1606, was put by his mother, a dressmaker at Haarlem, into the studio of Frans Hals. Hals bullied him, as he bullied his first wife. Escaping to Amsterdam, Brouwer became a famous painter, his pictures being acquired, among others, by Rembrandt in his wealthy days, and by Rubens. He died at Antwerp when only thirty-three. We have nothing of his in the National Gallery, but he is represented at the Wallace Collection.

At Haarlem was born also, in 1620, Nicolas Berchem, painter of charming scenes of broken arches and columns (which he certainly never saw in his own country), made human and domestic by the presence of people and cows, and suffused with gentle light. We have five of his pictures in the National Gallery. Berchem's real name was Van Haarlem. One day, however, when he was a pupil in Van Goyen's studio, his father pursued him for some fault. Van Goyen, who was a kindly creature, as became the father-in-law of Jan Steen, called out to his other pupils--"Berg hem" (Hide him!) and the phrase stuck, and became his best-known name. Nicolas married a termagant, but never allowed her to impair his cheerful disposition.

Haarlem was the birthplace also of Jacob van Ruisdael, greatest of Dutch landscape painters. He was born about 1620. His idea was to be a doctor, but Nicolas Berchem induced him to try painting, and we cannot be too thankful for the change. His landscapes have a deep and grave beauty: the clouds really seem to be floating across the sky; the water can almost be heard tumbling over the stones. Ruisdael did not find his typical scenery in his native land: he travelled in Germany and Italy, and possibly in Norway; but whenever he painted a strictly Dutch scene he excelled. He died at Haarlem in 1682; and one of his most exquisite pictures hangs in the Museum. I do not give any reproductions of Ruisdael because his work loses so much in the process. At the National Gallery and at the Wallace Collection he is well represented.

Walking up and down beneath the laughing confidence of these many bold faces in the great Hals' room at Haarlem I found myself repeating Longfellow's lines:--

He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, And carried away the Dean of Jaen And sold him in Algiers.

Surely the hero, Simon Danz, was something such a man as Hals painted. How does the ballad run?--

A DUTCH PICTURE.

Simon Danz has come home again, From cruising about with his buccaneers; He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, And carried away the Dean of Jaen And sold him in Algiers.

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles And weatherc.o.c.ks flying aloft in air, There are silver tankards of antique styles, Plunder of convent and castle, and piles Of carpets rich and rare.

In his tulip garden there by the town Overlooking the sluggish stream, With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown The old sea-captain, hale and brown, Walks in a waking dream.

A smile in his gray mustachio lurks Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain.

And the listed tulips look like Turks, And the silent gardener as he works Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.

The windmills on the outermost Verge of the landscape in the haze, To him are towers on the Spanish coast, With whisker'd sentinels at their post, Though this is the river Maese.

But when the winter rains begin, He sits and smokes by the blazing brands, And old sea-faring men come in, Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin, And rings upon their hands.

They sit there in the shadow and s.h.i.+ne Of the flickering fire of the winter night, Figures in colour and design Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, Half darkness and half light.

And they talk of their ventures lost or won, And their talk is ever and ever the same, While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, From the cellars of some Spanish Don, Or convent set on flame.

Restless at times, with heavy strides He paces his parlour to and fro; He is like a s.h.i.+p that at anchor rides, And swings with the rising and falling tides And tugs at her anchor-tow.

Voices mysterious far and near, Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, Are calling and whispering in his ear, "Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here?

Come forth and follow me!"

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again, For one more cruise with his buccaneers; To singe the beard of the King of Spain, And capture another Dean of Jaen And sell him in Algiers.

One thought leads to another. It is impossible also to remain long in the great Hals' room of the Museum without meditating a little upon the difference between these arquebusiers and the Dutch of the present day. Pa.s.sing among these people, once so mighty and ambitious, so great in government and colonisation, in seamans.h.i.+p and painting, and seeing them now so material and self-centred, so bound within their own small limits, so careless of literature and art, so intent upon the profits of the day and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been. Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus? "There but for the grace of G.o.d goes England"--is that a reasonable utterance?

One sees the difference concretely as one pa.s.ses from these many Corporation and Regent pieces in the galleries of Holland to the living Dutchmen of the streets. I saw it particularly at Haarlem on a streaming wet day, after hurrying from the Museum to the Cafe Brinkmann through some inches of water. At a table opposite, sipping their coffee, were two men strikingly like two of Frans Hals'

arquebusiers. Yet how unlike. For the air of masterful recklessness had gone, that good-humoured glint of power in the eye was no more. Hals had painted conquerors, or at any rate warriors for country; these coffee drinkers were meditating profit and loss. Where once was authority is now calculation.

I quote a little poem by Mr. Van Lennep of Zeist, near Utrecht, which shows that the Dutch, whatever their present condition, have not forgotten:--

The sh.e.l.l, when put to child-like ears, Yet murmurs of its bygone years, In echoes of the sea; The Dutch-born youngster likes the sound, And ponders o'er its mystic ground And wondrous memory.

Thus, in Dutch hearts, an echo dwells, Which, like the ever-mindful sh.e.l.ls, Yet murmurs of the sea: That sea, of ours in times of yore, And, when De Ruyter went before, Our road to victory.

Chapter X

Amsterdam

The Venice of the North--The beauty of gravity--No place for George Dyer--The Keizersgracht--Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat--The Ghetto--Pile-driving--Erasmus's sarcasm--The new Bourse--Learning the city--Tramway perplexities--The unnecessary guide--The Royal Palace--The New Church--Stained gla.s.s--The Old Church--The five carpets--Wedding customs--Dutch wives to-day and in the past--The Begijnenhof--The new religion and the old--The Burgerweesmeisjes--The Eight Orange Blossoms--Dutch music halls--A Dutch Hamlet--The fish market--Rembrandt's grave--A nation of shopkeepers--_Max Havelaar_--Mr. Drystubble's device--Lothario and Betsy--The English in Holland and the Dutch in England--Athleticism--A people on skates--The chaperon's perplexity--Love on the level.

Amsterdam is notable for two possessions above others: its old ca.n.a.ls and its old pictures. Truly has it been called the Venice of the North; but very different is its sombre quietude from the sunny Italian city among the waters. There is a beauty of gaiety and a beauty of gravity; and Amsterdam in its older parts--on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht--has the beauty of gravity. In Venice the ca.n.a.l is of course also the street: gondolas and barcas are continually gliding hither and thither; but in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht the water is little used. One day, however, I watched a costermonger steering a boat-load of flowers under a bridge, and no words of mine can describe the loveliness of their reflection. I remember the incident particularly because flowers are not much carried in Holland, and it is very pleasant to have this impression of them--this note of happy gaiety in so dark a setting.

An unprotected roadway runs on either side of the water, which makes the houses beside these ca.n.a.ls no place for Charles Lamb's friend, George Dyer, to visit in. Accidents are not numerous, but a company exists in Amsterdam whose business it is to rescue such odd dippers as horses and carriages by means of elaborate machinery devised for the purpose. Only travellers born under a luckier star than I are privileged to witness such sport.

In the main Amsterdam is a city of trade, of hurrying business men, of ceaseless clanging tramcars and crowded streets; but on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht you are always certain to find the old essential Dutch gravity and peace. No tide moves the sullen waters of these ca.n.a.ls, which are lined with trees that in spring form before the narrow, dark, discreet houses the most delicate green tracery imaginable; and in summer screen them altogether. These houses are for the most part black and brown, with white window frames, and they rise to a great height, culminating in that curious stepped gable (with a crane and pulley in it) which is, to many eyes, the symbol of the city. I know no houses that so keep their secrets. In every one, I doubt not, is furniture worthy of the exterior: old paintings of Dutch gentlemen and gentlewomen, a landscape or two, a girl with a lute and a few tavern scenes; old silver windmills; and plate upon plate of serene blue Delft. (You may see what I mean in the Sua.s.so rooms at the Stedelijk Museum.) I have walked and idled in the Keizersgracht at all times of the day, but have never seen any real signs of life. Mats have been banged on its doorsteps by clean Dutch maidservants armed with wicker beaters; milk has been brought in huge cans of bra.s.s and copper s.h.i.+ning like the sun; but of its life proper the gracht has given no sign. Its true life is houseridden, behind those spotless and very beautiful lace curtains, and there it remains.

One of the wittiest of the old writers on Holland (of whom I said something in the second chapter), Owen Feltham the moralist, describes in his _Brief Character of the Low Countries_ an Amsterdam house of the middle of the seventeenth century. Thus:--

When you are entered the house, the first thing you encounter is a Looking-gla.s.se. No question but a true Embleme of politick hospitality; for though it reflect yourself in your own figure, 'tis yet no longer than while you are there before it. When you are gone once, it flatters the next commer, without the least remembrance that you ere were there.

The next are the vessels of the house marshalled about the room like watchmen. All as neat as if you were in a Citizen's Wife's Cabinet; for unless it be themselves, they let none of G.o.d's creatures lose any thing of their native beauty.

Their houses, especially in their Cities, are the best eye-beauties of their Country. For cost and sight they far exceed our English, but they want their magnificence. Their lining is yet more rich than their outside; not in hangings, but pictures, which even the poorest are there furnisht with. Not a cobler but has his toyes for ornament. Were the knacks of all their houses set together, there would not be such another _Bartholmew_-Faire in _Europe_....

Their beds are no other than land-cabines, high enough to need a ladder or stairs. Up once, you are walled in with Wainscot, and that is good discretion to avoid the trouble of making your will every night; for once falling out else would break your neck perfectly. But if you die in it, this comfort you shall leave your friends, that you dy'd in clean linnen.

Whatsoever their estates be, their houses must be fair. Therefore from _Amsterdam_ they have banisht seacoale, lest it soyl their buildings, of which the statelier sort are sometimes sententious, and in the front carry some conceit of the Owner. As to give you a taste in these.