Plate 25. Children Refore A Street Door: The One In The Middle With A “Rommelpot”. After the drawing by Rembrandt, in the British Museum, London
[pg 158] etchings and drawings give us numerous little illustrations in this respect, as may be seen from the superb drawing lately added to the British Museum by the Salting bequest, showing children going about with the star (a structure of oiled paper on a stick, lit from behind with a candle) on Epiphany-evening, and singing before the houses, as they also did, some months later, on Shrove Tuesday, accompanying their songs with the rommelpot, a musical instrument well known from Hals's pictures, and consisting of an earthenware pot, covered with parchment or bladder, through which a stick was moved up and down (plates [24] and [25]). Rembrandt's etchings reproducing tramps and street-types, like his rat-killer, are no doubt so familiar to our readers that we need not recall them by means of reproductions.
The tidiness and orderly habits of the Dutch were effective in putting limits to the disorder and dirt which are so often the nuisance of seaports. This was still more obvious in the interiors of the dwelling-houses where the Dutch housewives exerted the supremacy of their cleaning and washing propensity, « cette propriété hollandaise qui commence par étonner et qui finit, quand on demeure dans le pays, par devenir un besoin, une nécessite…une vertu contagieuse, » as Havard says. A similar sense of order was to be noted in the administration of public charities: orphanages, asylums, hospitals, and similar institutions were founded and generously endowed, mostly by private initiative, and were organised in such a careful and sensible way that most of them have lasted, under the same rules, until our days.[4] Ascending [pg 159]
Plate 26. A Quacksalver on a Market-Place. After the drawing by Rembrandt. In the collection of Frederich August II, in Dresden.
[pg 160] to higher levels we again observe, in the town's democratic magistrates, that orderly spirit and caution which enabled these practical, vigilant authorities to consolidate the town's importance and to develop it to the highest power in the Netherlands, dreaded by foreign competitors and possessing, so to say, the supremacy of the sea. They were characteristic representatives of the citizens' nature: cool-headedness and a very strong feeling of independence, rooted in their own and their fathers' emancipation from Spanish domination, and in their energetic tradesmanship. We here touch a more abstract subject, not less essential in constituting the general disposition of the town, namely, the nature and spirit of its individuals, forming, so to say, the town's own soul. This is a point that should not be overlooked, as the Dutch character and demeanour are two things often misunderstood, which certainly require some insight and explanation in order to be appreciated.
The modern civilized person who found himself transplanted in Amsterdam 250 years ago, might certainly be displeased with the behaviour of even the better classes. We readily concede that their manners were rather raw and lacking in refinement. Sir William Temple, in his “Observations,” published three years after Rembrandt's death, calls the Hollanders “clownish and blunt,” and this typifies them in their attitude towards intellectual foreign people. Amongst themselves, even in circles where a taste for art and science was well developed, coarse festivals, excessive meals, and gross humour was often met with, peculiarities, however, which the Dutchman had in common with Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and other Northern races at that time. The sense of independence and self-reliance, then very strongly developed in the Hollanders, hindered the improvement which the experience gained from foreign journeys to France and Italy, of a few patricians, might have brought. There was also the fact of Amsterdam never having been, like The Hague, a princely residence with its trail of ambassadors and nobility, for which reason the Hollanders in Amsterdam remained more themselves, a characteristic even evident in our day. But if their manners formerly lagged somewhat behind, we must not forget that most of their natural sterling qualities were allowed to develop freely. These characteristics do not always strike the foreigner at first sight, hidden as they are by a certain slowness in expression and heaviness in deportment, springing from the Hollander's habit of deliberation. What frequently is taken for coldness, for insensibility, for haughtiness, appears to be reserve which is put aside only when the Hollander feels very sure of his opinion. To these typical qualities of a trading nation must be added a perseverance of will and a determination to attain, which are often wrongly interpreted as egotism. Any one who has a real friend among Dutchmen will appreciate him as a very staunch one, although it may have taken some time to break the reserve! Openness, good-heartedness, generosity, will [pg 162] then be detected where they were at first not suspected. It may now be understood that the intercourse with Rembrandt was far from easy, because he was a typical Hollander, good-natured, but with an extra amount of impulsiveness and self-esteem, as may be gathered from his biography and from his work. Consequently, if he had numerous acquaintances, his real friends were not many. We find for instance few traces of intimate friendship with other painters, excepting his pupils, although his fellow-artists were very numerous. The landscape-painter Roghman and the rich marine painter-amateur Van de Cappelle, perhaps also Asselÿn, are about the only ones who seem to have been in close relation with the master. Of his pupils the most promising ones, Bol and Flinck, rapidly estranged from their master both socially and artistically,—others like Maes, de Gelder, and Hoogstraten returned to their native town Dordrecht. Only Van den Eeckhout and Philips Koninck appear to have remained on intimate terms with Rembrandt. To his artist-friends we may here add the calligrapher Lieven Coppenol, whose fine etched portraits by Rembrandt the reader will remember, and very likely, too, the celebrated silversmith [Lutma], a man of a very personal talent.
After what was said of the town's and its burghers' outward appearance, we would do well to devote another moment's attention to what we called the town's soul and observe more closely the intellectual life of Amsterdam, thus facilitating a more general understanding of the period.
At the time when Rembrandt established himself in Amsterdam, a great improvement had taken place in its religious conditions. Ever since 1578 the town had [pg 163]