The Golden Tulip

by Rosalind Laker

  Chapter 6

  AS THE DAYS WENT BY FRANCESCA TENDED THE PLANT AND called everyone in the house to see each stage of advancement as the budding flower thrust strongly through the waxy leaves. Maria had distrusted it from the start.

  “It’s a heathenish growth,” she muttered, but her curiosity was such that she still viewed it daily. Griet also never missed, her work taking her into the room each day in any case. On her own she would regard the plant wistfully, wishing it had come as a personal gift for her instead of to the family. She had her share of beaux, but the only one she cared anything for was at sea and there was no knowing when he would be home again.

  There were few special Christmas preparations in the house apart from an extra-thorough cleaning from cellar to attic with every curtain and all bed drapery freshly laundered. With all the jollity and giving of gifts having taken place at the Feast of St. Nicholaes, the Holy Day of Christmas was a quiet family occasion with church attendance and Bible reading at home.

  The hyacinth flowered fully on Christmas Day. It was short and small-sprayed, but of a deeper blue than anyone had expected and with a sweet scent. Maria was won over in spite of herself.

  “I must admit it is lovely to behold,” she said, inhaling the perfume and deciding it had absolved itself from its unnaturalness by giving forth its beauty for the Holy Day. It was her suggestion that it be placed in the reception hall, where it could be admired by all in a place of honor.

  Francesca had begun her painting of her sisters the morning after she had made her sketch, but that was put aside for the priority painting of the hyacinth once Christmas Day was over. It had to be painted while it was still in its prime. She placed it on a stand in the studio while Aletta arranged some drapery of green and gray behind it. The snow-bright light through the window heightened the bloom’s sapphire brilliance. In silence both girls began to paint.

  By now the weather was bitterly cold. Since before Christmas ice had closed the river. Small boats rested at odd angles along the banks, cushioned in the snow with their masts and rigging lacing the skyline. Sleigh bells jingled everywhere and people of all ages skimmed along on long wooden skates, twice the length of their feet, the metal runners curling up in the front like ships’ prows. Speedy traffic on runners had turned many of the canals into fast highways, and quieter areas were chosen by those wishing to play ice golf and other such sports.

  Sybylla skated at every opportunity. It was exhilarating to speed away from Maria’s watchful eye, although even then she had to stay with approved friends. Sometimes Francesca would join them and they would form a snake, one behind the other, and have a merry time. Aletta never came with them. Often she was absent for hours at a time, carrying a linen bag full of her sketching materials, but when her mittened hands were so cold that she could barely grasp a pencil, all outdoor sketches were rapidly and roughly executed and she would return home to paint in the warmth of her studio-parlor. Since Hendrick never went to his daughters’ private rooms and had made it a rule never to be bothered with any domestic details, he knew nothing of this pattern of work Aletta had set for herself.

  It was as Francesca skated on her own one day, coming home from the fish market, that she happened to see Aletta coming out of the shop of an artist’s supplier with a roll of canvas under her arm. When Aletta arrived home some time later she found Francesca waiting to challenge her.

  “Why are you buying your own canvas? I pay these days for everything that is needed for work and you have always been able to take whatever you wanted for your studio-parlor upstairs.”

  “I want to be independent,” Aletta replied defiantly. “If it’s my own canvas I can use as much as I like and make my paintings the size I prefer.”

  “I wish you’d show me your current work. You lock yourself away in that studio-parlor and nobody else ever enters it, not even Griet since you have taken to cleaning it yourself. I respect your wish for a sanctuary, but why are you so secretive? You painted the hyacinth still life at my side in the studio, and whenever you carry out any other work there you are open enough about it. I simply don’t understand.”

  Aletta put her arms affectionately about Francesca and then stepped away again. “Please be patient with me. I’m set on a path of my own that is right for me at the present time. When I can share it with you I will.”

  “I’m thankful to hear that. I should never want any kind of rift to come about through your cutting yourself away from the rest of us.”

  “It never will,” Aletta promised fervently. “You have my word.”

  “I’m so thankful to hear that.”

  As Aletta continued on her way upstairs she was relieved that she had come through her sister’s questioning as well as she had. She had not wanted to spend any of her precious savings on canvas, but as she already had orders for commissioned pictures it would have been only a matter of time before someone noticed how quickly the studio rolls of canvas were diminishing. She could count herself lucky that Francesca’s suspicions had not been aroused, and the truthful cover of hard work had been her saving.

  Her market had extended beyond any bounds she would have believed possible in so short a time. Housewives had spoken of her to one another and the word had passed around. She had painted many houses and little shops and now, wearied by drawing outside in this cold weather, she was concentrating mostly on interiors. She found that the people who commissioned her work were delighted to have paintings of their rooms. More often than not a family or a couple would group themselves in their kitchen or parlor to be included in the painting. These pictures were the most profitable, for she would charge per head above the basic price of the painting, which was the custom with any group portrait.

  Since she dealt only with strangers in parts of the city where she had no acquaintances, she used her mother’s maiden name of Veldhuis as an extra precaution against being identified or linked in any way with her father.

  Her patrons, all of them hardworking people of a lower order, but with money in their purses from their toil, thought her to be little more than a peddler of her artistic talents. She felt humiliated, for that was her true position, and also she knew the paintings she sold lacked the pure quality they would have had if she did not have to rush through her commissions. When asked to sign a painting she used a monogram of “AV” in a curling form, which impressed her patrons, who were never critical. She hated the deception of not being known by her own name, but consoled herself with the resolve that the day would come when, as a master of a Guild, she could put her full signature to her work.

  WILLEM DE HARTOG called in mid-February, two days after Sybylla’s birthday, to collect the painting The Beggar and the Jewel. In the studio he happened to see Francesca’s painting of her sisters playing the virginal and the viol. It was propped against the wall where it had been placed when finished. After studying it, he left the studio to go in search of her and, finding her in the kitchen, he questioned her about her work.

  “I made my original sketch after watching my sisters play by candlelight, on St. Nicholaes’s Day,” she told him. “I decided afterward to paint them in daylight. They gave me a sitting for that.”

  “What title have you given it?”

  She smiled. “I haven’t really thought. It was just an exercise.”

  “Why not The Sisters’ Concert?”

  She nodded. “I like that.”

  He praised the painting, which pleased her, while privately he thought again how strange it was that at times her work should run so closely to that of Vermeer’s, which she had never seen and knew nothing about. Here was the same flooding of clear light and female forms in a quiet domestic setting, not with the same polished skill, but nevertheless with enchanting and brilliant results.

  Hendrick, measuring a length of canvas, looked around when Willem came back into the studio, flourishing Francesca’s work.

  “I could sell this painting many times over!” Willem announced enthusiastically, to
tally unprepared for Hendrick’s explosion of wrathful sarcasm.

  “You would sell a daub!”

  Willem regarded him sternly. “Be fair to your daughter’s work. Naturally, as yet all her paintings belong to you, but I see no harm in letting her work be seen at this stage by those with an eye to the future, especially those who keep a lookout for the work of any young and promising artist.”

  “Has the renowned Willem de Hartog stooped to scraping up a florin or two where he can for substandard art?”

  Willem was outraged. “Francesca’s work is exceptional and you know it! Why else did you agree that she should have an apprenticeship after you had admitted failing her in tuition?”

  “Damnation to you!” Hendrick grabbed the painting from him. “Yes! She needs instruction! That’s why I’ve never allowed her yet to put a brush to anything of mine in the filling in of backgrounds and drapery!”

  “Bah! Both she and Aletta could have carried out those straightforward tasks for you long ago, but everything you do has to be entirely your own. You were the same when you had full-time apprentices here. Never must anyone else put a brush to your work even in the humblest capacity. Rembrandt could allow it of his pupils, as did others of high repute, but not you! Your conceit would not allow it! Or was it that the day might come when their brushwork might be better than yours? Don’t condemn your daughter’s work to me!”

  Hendrick’s color deepened horribly and he spluttered in his rage. “No painting bearing the name of Visser leaves this studio that doesn’t reach my standards! To the devil with yours!” He then hurled the painting away into a corner.

  Willem went to snatch it up again and study it for damage. Fortunately there was none. He was fuming, but struggled to calm himself. “I’ll take this painting to show to the Guild of St. Luke in Delft. Has Francesca missed those sketches of hers that I have already?”

  “No, but she’ll miss that.” Hendrick was still scowling.

  “You can tell her I’ve taken it to get another opinion on the way her work is developing, which does happen to be the case.” Then, without another word, Willem took the picture of the beggar, which had been made ready, and carried both to his waiting sleigh. He was furious, but he was also amazed to think he had known Hendrick all these years without realizing the full extent of the jealous depths of his nature. Hendrick had been jealous over Anna, but that was understandable, for he had been stupid with love for her, but this new outburst was in another vein altogether. Willem shook his head in despair. Why were artists so troublesome?

  FRANCESCA KNEW NOTHING of the clash between her father and Willem, having been out of the house at the time. It pleased her to know that the art dealer had taken her painting to be viewed by somebody he knew. Hendrick warned her that it could be a long time before she had the outcome passed on to her, but she was puzzled that Willem should not have given her a direct criticism himself. Yet it sounded promising. Was it possible that a sale might be in the offing? She hoped most sincerely that might be the case, for she had the butcher to face that afternoon with no more than a few stivers in her purse and until The Goddess of Spring and The Beggar and the Jewel were sold there would be no more money coming in. “Father, the housekeeping box is empty. How much can you spare me?”

  It turned out that he had had a moderate win at faro the night before and she left the house later with enough in her purse to pay off the amount owed to the butcher and to get a piece of salted beef. She was about to leave the shop with a basket on her arm when there was some commotion at the far end of the street and the butcher came to the door to look out with her. They could see people running and shouting, some waving sticks, before disappearing around a corner into another street.

  “It’s another demonstration against the French,” the butcher said phlegmatically. “Ever since Louis XIV marched into the Spanish Netherlands and took possession we’ve had trouble. Ordinary people are letting the burghers and the merchants know that we don’t intend to let the French be masters here.”

  “That can never happen!” she protested. “Remember how Spain tried in vain to master us for eight decades!”

  He wagged his head. “Things were different then. We didn’t want the Spanish Inquisition established on our good Protestant soil, or our own independence taken from us when we had fought so hard already against the sea for our low-lying land. No man or woman, be he or she Protestant, Catholic or Jew, need go in fear throughout the whole of Holland. Should Louis come it could be another matter.”

  “I’ve heard that opinion voiced in my own home.”

  “And rightly so. Nevertheless, take a route back to your house that keeps you away from the demonstration. There are always hotheads in any mob and innocent bystanders can be caught up in such events.”

  She heeded his advice and took a side street that she did not normally use. What had been said stayed with her. She and her father and sisters and many friends were all with those who wanted to keep the country free of foreign domination. Previously few would have faulted the governing of the states of Holland by the Pensionary, Johan de Witt, who had shouldered the burden when Willem II had died a month before his heir was born. But it had gradually become apparent that de Witt was not standing out against the overtures of Louis XIV of France as firmly as was wished by all the people except the important burghers and the powerful merchants, who feared for their fortunes in the event of war. Hopes that the twenty-year-old prince, Willem III, might speak out on the people’s behalf had come to nothing, and yet it was said that he distrusted Louis, whom he saw as Holland’s most fearsome enemy.

  Francesca’s route took her through a narrow alleyway. She was halfway along it when she heard running feet and the din of raised voices, which meant the mob must have changed direction and was somewhere nearby. She hesitated, not sure whether to go on or to turn back, for by some trick of the alleyway’s acoustics the noise seemed to be coming from both ends of the passageway. Then she saw that this was in fact the case. Ahead of her the yelling crowd was in full pursuit of a terror-stricken young man in a torn coat, his hair awry, who was racing toward her, while over her shoulder she saw a band of the local Civil Guard in gray with wide-brimmed hats and broad sashes coming at a run from behind her. In spite of the din she could hear the shouts from the mob, which told her the cause of the fugitive’s fright.

  “Catch the French spy! Throw him in the canal! Get him!”

  As the young man passed her she looked back again and saw he was making for the protection of the guards. She herself was trapped in the middle of what was going to be a violent and bloody clash! Feeling as terrified as the fugitive, she darted for the entrance of a warehouse. The doors were locked and she pressed herself against them, clutching her basket close. She saw the guards part to let the young man through their ranks and then they closed together in a phalanx. The captain fired a pistol into the air, shouting for the crowd to halt. A few in front did pause briefly, but they were thrust onward by those at the back and the surge forward continued, the mob intent on its prey. So great was the pressure in the narrow alleyway that when the yelling horde came past Francesca her basket was knocked from her arm and she herself was caught up like flotsam on the sea, forced to run with them or be trampled underfoot. She heard pistol shots ring out, but it appeared the firing was still into the air, for nobody fell. Then she was in a maelstrom of fighting men, civilians and the guards in a tumult of shouts and curses, her own screams among them. Suddenly a man, felled by a bludgeon, staggered against her. She screamed again as she felt herself going down with him. Then a strong hand grabbed her wrist, almost wrenching her arm from its socket, and she was clutched hard against a Civil Guard’s thick leather jacket. She was half lifted, half swung off her feet as he thrust her through his own ranks out into safety beyond the alleyway. A moment later she saw it was Pieter who had saved her.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded almost angrily.

  She nodded, unable to speak. A combatant’s
elbow had thudded into her breast as he had hauled her through the melee and she felt sick with pain. Pieter smoothed her disheveled hair back from her face and saw there was blood on her forehead. “Listen to me. My house is in the street running parallel with this one. It has crimson shutters and an oak door with a bronze knocker. Go there! My housekeeper will look after you.”

  Then he was gone, running back into the scrum, and she saw she was being stared at by people who had gathered quickly to watch what was going on from a safe distance. A motherly-looking woman came forward and put an arm around her. “I’ll help you there.”

  At the house the woman banged the knocker and saw her safely into the care of the housekeeper, who did not make the least fuss. It might have been every day that a girl with a torn sleeve, bleeding forehead and loosened tresses appeared on the stoop.

  “I’m Vrouw de Hout,” she said as she removed Francesca’s cloak and sat her on a chair by the fire in a comfortable parlor that was very light and bright with red curtains at the window and a black-and-white-tiled floor. “I’ll get some water to bathe your wound and then we’ll see if you need to have it bound.”

  The blood was stemmed with some clean linen, for it was simply a deep scratch from somebody’s sleeve button. The pain in her breast subsided, although she supposed it would be bruised, and she was given a brush and comb with which to redress her hair. A cup of hot chocolate completed the treatment. Throughout this procedure Vrouw de Hout, who was a middle-aged cheerful-looking woman, chatted, saying that she was a widow and this position of housekeeper suited her very well, because both her married daughters lived in Amsterdam and she was able to see her grandchildren quite often. When Francesca asked about Pieter being in the Civil Guard, she was told that he was in the reserve and fulfilled so many hours of duty a year.

  “He joined for three years when he bought this house. It’s a community service and also he enjoys the social side. The rule is that the officers of any militia corps may not hold more than one banquet a month at their headquarters, but the eating and drinking goes on for two or three days. Not that he is able to attend more than about once in two months, because he is often in Haarlem or—to be more accurate—at his house and bulb fields, which lie a short distance from that town.”