The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  ***

  Now came the end of March when news came from Budapest that the ‘People’s Republic’ had been declared and that the Bolsheviks had come to power.

  With this news the whole reason for my mission vanished.

  Of course none of this was wholly unexpected, but the fait accompli meant that I had to make a momentous decision. Of the funds I had with me, enough of the modest sum of my own money I had brought to pay my personal expenses remained to cover my living costs for the next few months; but I had to face the fact that for a very long time ahead I would not be able to count on receiving any more, either from Transylvania or from Budapest. Who could guess for how long the Soviets would remain in power?

  Pondering all this I decided to cast around for some occupation that would earn me a living. This was not easy in a foreign country. I could not do it with my pen as I could write acceptably only in German and French, neither of which were any use in Holland. I had never learned any craft, and I could hardly start now. I could think of only three sorts of work for which I was fitted.

  The first was to seek employment in some riding school where I could be paid for breaking in young horses. Such jobs, however, were very uncertain as well as time-consuming and there were not likely to be many of them – and those were probably all filled or obtainable only through social introduction and patronage.

  Another idea that would have been more fun was to capitalize on my skill at billiards, learned in the course of many otherwise wasted evenings in Berlin where I had taken part in many semi-professional tournaments. Perhaps someone would take me on as marqueur (billiard coach) in a coffee-house? Then I reflected that this was not really an attractive idea after all and would be a singularly dismal occupation.

  The third seemed the most promising – to become a professional painter. I felt that maybe I could do small portraits that would be good enough for those with limited means. Before the war42 I had often tried my hand at this for my own pleasure; and later, when I was ordered to the headquarters of the German Army of the South, more for political than military duties, I had done a number of smallish watercolour portraits. This, I decided, is what I would try now.

  Two things would be necessary if I were to succeed in this venture. The first would be to drop my title, as such things inevitably give an impression of amateurishness and so people expect something for nothing; and the second that I should first get in some practice so that I would be able to accept commissions without hesitation.

  Accordingly, I moved out of the Hotel Oule Doelen, which was now too expensive for me, and went to live in a little wooden hotel which stood at the edge of the Bosch, that large park which had once been a hunting preserve of the Dutch ruling family and which is situated between Scheveningen and the bathing beaches.

  Luckily, on arrival at my new abode, I was able to write my name in the guest-book as plain Mr Bánffy as, not arriving directly from abroad, no one asked me for my passport.

  Now started a new chapter in my wanderings. It was to prove a busy, amusing and relatively carefree time, to which I always look back with pleasure.

  Notes

  38. Which may be taken as meaning ‘any little gain is better than none’.

  39. At Radun, which was in German territory until it became included in the newly re-created Poland after the 1914–18 War.

  40. Princess Blücher was no more a British spy than that other beautiful Englishwoman married to a German aristocrat: Daisy, Princess of Pless. Both women spent the war years in Germany and both were occasionally to suffer from the same malicious gossip, although this seems to have been completely baseless. Both of these ladies, although loyal to their own country, were equally loyal to that of their husbands.

  41. Béla Kun’s short-lived Communist republic in Hungary.

  42. After leaving the Theresianum in Vienna, Bánffy had studied with the famous Budapest painter Bertalán Székely before studying law at the University of Kolozsvár. Amongst other works of his that still exist are a quantity of his designs for costumes and scenery at the Budapest opera. His daughter still possesses a self-portrait and a painting of her mother – the actress Aranka Varady – as Shakespeare’s Ariel. The painting of Bánffy used as a frontispiece for They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided in Arcadia Books’ edition of the Transylvanian trilogy is a copy of Bánffy’s own self-portrait.

  Chapter Nine

  Soon after I had moved into the simple little wooden Hotel Bellevue, I went to see the Master-Painter Aarlof who ran a school of painting in his attic studio. He lived in a villa on the far side of the beautiful Scheveningen Bosch.

  One could see from a distance that this was the home of no ordinary man. It was quite unlike the modest, typically Dutch homes, of Aarlof’s neighbours, being a sort of exaggerated imitation of the English ‘cottage’ style, with steep roofs which occasionally reached almost to the ground, giant chimney-stacks which towered high above and everywhere windows which jutted out at unexpected places. There were odd protrusions here, as well as rounded bay windows at different heights. These all seemed to be fitted with blown glass panes which resembled giant monocles all clustered one on top of another and gave the impression that behind each one somebody was lying in wait.

  The master of the house was also unlike all the others from those parts. He was like a Frenchman with a scrupulously polite manner rarely found in a Dutchman. Of course, if one has studied in Paris, then … well … of course one has to show it! One owes it to one’s pupils to let them know at once that one is different from the others – you might say more elegant than those who have worked only in this benighted little country. One owes it to one’s public, does one not? Paris, of course…

  His appearance was also Frenchified. He was a thin, stringy, little brown man with bluish-grey hair and curly moustaches dyed as black as soot. Naturally, he wore a brown velvet jacket in the traditional rapin43 style and a flowing silk necktie, loosely knotted in a bow. Oh yes! Everything was just as it should be.

  His manner was kind, even endearing, and his fees were quite high for, as he explained to me when accepting me as a pupil, otherwise it was quite impossible. Not only that but live models were only available if the pupils paid for them, and so if not one had to be content with still life, which in itself he said was educatif (and in this he was right!). But if anyone wanted models, they were not expensive. The cheapest were old women; men were more expensive, and even more expensive still were nudes. He could provide, he said, whatever one wanted, and he was in contact with some of the best available. He then asked if I had any painting materials, and when I said I had not but would buy them that very day, he said: No! He would get them himself, everything of the best quality, canvas, paint, palette, easel, everything. He knew best how to get everything at the lowest possible price (this was not true) since he could get a discount from the shop (which was true).

  All this cost me quite a lot of money, but this was unavoidable if I was to benefit from ‘Master’ Aarlof’s teaching. If I wanted to get in some practice I had to do what I was told.

  The following morning he took me up to the school studio, presented me to his other pupils, showed me my place and set up a still-life arrangement for me made up to two magnificent oranges and a lemon. Then he left.

  Our schoolroom proved to be quite small, hardly more than five-metres square. In front of the inside wall was placed a heavy Neidlinger stove and in front of that was a screen used whenever they had a model. The remaining free space was barely three metres deep. All six of Mr Aarlof’s pupils – there were four women and one man as well as myself – took our places on the shorter side.

  The man was a gruff young fellow, completely devoid of talent. He soon left us after a violent disagreement with the ‘Professor’ conducted in a whisper. Among the women were three charming young girls; one of them, a snub-nosed dark girl, was Aarlof’s daughter; the next, also pretty, was some sort of relation of theirs from Rotterdam; the third, whom Aarlof
treated with marked respect, was the daughter of a distinguished man from The Hague, a Jongheer44 no less, and was a real beauty always elegantly dressed; while the fourth was a sad timeworn widow with lank black hair who, industrious as an ant, worked diligently until nightfall. The first three spent their days giggling and eating sweets or disappearing into the other attic rooms nearby to have a whispered girlish gossip in secret and returning to their drawing boards only when the master’s steps were heard on the stair. And, indeed, why not? I soon learned that both the Jongheer’s daughter and the girl from Rotterdam were engaged, while Aarlof’s daughter seemed already to be in love. Why should they strain themselves to create the image of two oranges and a lemon? They surely had more enthralling things to think about!

  At midday the ‘Professor’ returned. The girls tried to look as if they had been working, and he glanced cursorily at what they had done. Then he uttered a few words to the widow, condescending but polite … and then came to me. He looked at my painstaking but commonplace effort – it was many years since I had painted in oils – and then simulated some slight appreciation, saying that my technique was all wrong and that therefore, on the following day, I should go directly to his own studio downstairs where he would show me how to do it right.

  The next day I was there. Aarlof’s own studio was a splendid, richly furnished dark room with many carpets and voluptuous sofas.

  In front of the window there was the portrait of a woman, nearly finished and pleasant if not very good. It was obviously flattering, elegant and attractive and belonged to the ‘Oh, how lovely!’ school of painting, with all the prettiness of an advertisement for Odol toothpaste or some cosmetic, the sort of picture of which the grandchildren to come would say: ‘Look how beautiful Grandmother was when young!’ No one would ever be disturbed by seeing it on the drawing-room wall: it would not clash with the good quality – if banal – furniture, but it would not interest anyone either.

  However, I should not make fun of Master-Painter Aarlof, for would I not be producing just the same sort of work when I started painting portraits for a living? I must say too that his painting did not lack either skill or knowledge.

  All the same, I have to admit that there was something in his work that I found disagreeable. The whole painted surface – faces, hands, clothes, everything – seemed to shimmer, which had a curious effect on the simple quality of his colours. It reminded me of the strange iridescence one sees on those ‘Souvenirs of Sorrento’ one finds painted on seashells in Naples. It was not long before I discovered how Aarlof achieved this odd effect. It came from his way of painting, and he did it like this: firstly, after establishing his design he would draw all its outlines in charcoal then all the important lines would be reinforced with black India ink; then, when all was ready, he would start to put many different coloured paints on the canvas, completely at random and regardless of the traced outlines of the design, so that they all spread and mingled. This was how he prepared his canvas. At this stage it seemed only like a dazzling display of colour – and it was only then that he began to paint the likeness of what he had before him.

  It was this that gave the strange iridescent shine to the finished portrait; and it was obviously an effect of which Aarlof was very fond, for he had used it for the early pictures he had painted of his wife and young daughter as well as many others I saw in his apartment. I have no idea where he learned this technique for it certainly did not come from his teachers in Paris. It is possible that he got the idea from some of Rembrandt’s greyish skies or perhaps from the warm tones that artist used for deep caves because they too occasionally have the same shimmering look to them. The most striking example I know is to be seen in a Diana and Endymion now in Vienna, where the moonlight seems uniformly grey when seen from close to but has a trembling sort of glitter from afar.

  He showed me several of the pictures he had produced in this way and, since one can learn something from everything, I tried it out on the first studies I did for him. This was not a success. All the same, I did find one part of it useful: this was using India ink to fix the lines first laid with charcoal because, providing on does not let the paint dry (‘peindre dans la pâte’ – as the French say) the inked outlines of the drawing can always be seen even when one has strayed from them.

  ***

  I suspect that Aarlof may not have been all that convinced of his own talent since in all other artistic matters he certainly had excellent judgement.

  Later I was to become sure that this was so. It began when there was to be a masked ball in the town. Aarlof was very excited and induced the three pretty girls in our class to join with him in going as Bluebeard and three of his wives (I need hardly say that the sad-faced widow was not invited to join them). For days nothing else was talked about in the studio. The girls were always trying on caftans and giving each other brief glances at silk bloomers before snatching them away again and hiding them with much giggling, tickling and whispered naughtiness in each other’s ears. Aarlof himself came in several times to show off his yellow brocade turban, which everyone duly admired, and also to offer much advice as to everyone’s costumes.

  The day after the ball no one turned up at the studio, but three days later they all returned and spoke of nothing but the ball. It was splendid, the girls said – ‘Wonderful! Beautiful!’ – and laughed and whispered in corners even more than usual. Aarlof then came up to us to bask in his own glory, and, since he wanted somehow to immortalize the lovely memory for posterity, he gave the order for all the pupils to have ready for the following Saturday – it was then Tuesday – a coloured drawing on the theme of Bluebeard.

  As it happened this proved most opportune for me.

  At home in my little hotel room I worked long into the afternoons, trying out different studies for my ‘Bluebeard’ in sepia, coloured India inks and watercolour.

  By Saturday I was ready with a finished drawing of our Bluebeard, which I had completed with a watercolour wash. I even included a portrait of our Lolotte begging pillar-like on her large behind.

  On Saturday we were all there to show off our efforts. The girls’ work was feeble, although that of the Jongheer’s daughter did have some merit. The widow, offended, at once declared she had not even tried.

  As a result my effort was like a Derby runner competing with Shetland ponies. Aarlof himself was taken by surprise because until then all he had seen of my work had been the painstaking studies I had produced according to his own system, while I had had the benefit of having originally being taught to draw by the great Bertalán Székely. Well! After much praise for my ‘Bluebeard’ he took it away with him.

  At first I was not very happy about this because I thought he wanted to keep it for himself; but what happened next turned out to be most flattering.

  After a few days he took me aside and told me that he had showed my drawing to a fellow-painter who, in his opinion, was one of the greatest living artists. I asked who that might be.

  ‘Van Koneinenburgh. Isn’t his name familiar to you?’

  I had to admit that it was not, although I did manage not to show how funny I found the name since it meant ‘rabbit-hutch’ in Dutch. What a name for an artist! At home people would have died laughing.

  ‘Ça, c’est un peintre!’ said Aarlof, meaning that he was a real master of his art!

  I mumbled some polite words about how happy I would be to meet yet another renowned painter, but Aarlof, to his credit, refused to accept the compliment to himself, making a resigned gesture – as much as to say ‘I am far from being in his class!’ – and going on to say that he had taken my drawing to Van Koneinenburgh, who had liked it and wanted to meet me. And not only that but, on that very day, he was expecting us both to take a cold supper with him.

  So that evening we went to Van Koneinenburgh’s house. He lived in a tiny studio apartment in one of those houses in the oldest part of The Hague. Everything there seemed to have a soft brownish hue as one sees in old Dutch paint
ings. Every corner was piled high with drawings and also paintings that had been started and then abandoned as well as giant portfolios hardly able to contain them all.

  In this dark crabbed little space – such as Rembrandt may well have worked in – Van Koneinenburgh’s wonderful Beethoven-like head seemed doubly impressive.

  He spoke very simply, with no affectation, with the calm air of one whose work was inspired by a single refined spiritual ethic, for one could see that, for him, only art was important, and in life only art mattered. The picture was completed by his wife. She was a local girl, that same sort of housewife one sees skimming milk or mending clothes in seventeenth-century paintings. Broadly built and heavy, every time she looked at her husband one could see in her eyes a strange fanatic flame, a mixture of reverence and maternal love for that gentle husband for whom all struggles seemed vain, who never achieved success, was almost unknown and who only occasionally received some small municipal commission which just tided them over and enabled them to survive – and all this for a man she herself knew to be truly great, as great, in fact, as any in the history on the Netherlands.

  And, indeed, he was a great artist. His style was an unexpected mixture of modern ideas and those of the early Flemish masters. His compositions resembled those of Memling and Jan van Eyk seen through modern eyes. His mastery of draughtsmanship was truly extraordinary, and his execution simple and severe, like that of Dürer. Sometimes a single line would be enough to express his intentions.

  The walls were covered with large-gestured compositions, cartoons for mural competitions that had invariably been won by other painters whose clever facile work was more immediately pleasing but milder and less epoch-making and memorable than his.

  We stayed with him for a long while. I spent most of the time poring over the drawings in the portfolios, refreshed by a glass of beer and some slices of cold meat which were brought in by the artist’s wife. Each time she brought over a new drawing she glanced questioningly at her husband as if to ask if it were all right and not a profanation. Only when he nodded approval did she put the things down beside me. I understood that these studies were sacrosanct, only to be shown to those few who were considered worthy. This was confirmed as we walked home, for Aarlof then told me that it was an exceptional honour as Van Koneinenburgh only showed his work to those he decided were exceptionally deserving.