The Golden Tulip (12 page)

In retrospect, looking back now to that moment, Francesca was certain it was when the spark had been kindled in her to follow the path of a painter to the exclusion of all else.

“I should like to offer Cornelia a home with us, Father.”

Hendrick nodded willingly. “That should be done without delay.”

“I’ll go to Rozengracht at once!” She took a step toward the stair hall.

He stirred in his chair. “I’ll not come with you. I’ve no wish to go out again today.” Wearily he rose to his feet. “I’d like to spend the rest of the day quietly in my studio.”

She understood. There was no better place in which to mourn a fellow artist than in one’s own studio. When she arrived at Rozengracht it was to learn that Cornelia had already been taken into the care of kind relatives and a good home for her was assured.

Four days later Hendrick attended the funeral at Westerkerk and saw Rembrandt laid to rest beside Titus and Hendrickje Stoffels. Throughout the following weeks Hendrick was as cast down as if it had been his own knell that he had heard. The painting of Titus drew him as though it were a new acquisition and had not graced his home for a long time. The depth and meaning of the work, combined with its beauty and harmony, moved him till his throat ached, so great was the admiration that swelled his heart. He also began pausing to look at the Hals painting that he owned: a toper with the drunken flush to his cheeks, merriment in his eyes and a tankard in hand. Hendrick marveled anew at the glittering brushwork, the pulse of life created by those gashlike strokes of color. It was inevitable that his own technique should have been influenced by such a tutor, whose temperament had been so much like his own and to whom laughter, alcohol and good company had also been all-important. Three years ago Hals, an old man in his eighties, had died and now Rembrandt, only sixty-three, had followed him. Both had ended their days in abject poverty, virtually forgotten by society. Was that to be his own fate too?

One morning as he stood in front of the painting of the toper, Francesca came and stood beside him. She was wearing her gardening apron, and gloves were tucked in the pocket. She comprehended the mood that was depressing him and slipped her arm through his.

“You know,” he said in a voice torn by regret, “I should have gone to see old Hals before he died. I kept meaning to make the trip to Haarlem, but somehow I never did. I suppose, having heard he was still painting, I thought he would go on forever, but of course none of us do.”

“Why not make the trip to Haarlem one day and pay your respects at his last resting place?” Francesca suggested. “If you went by passenger boat on the canals you could either stay the night or be home again by midnight.”

He gave a nod but did not commit himself. “I’ll think about it.”

She continued on her way out to the courtyard. It was a fine morning on which to plant the tulip bulbs that had come from a field somewhere near Haarlem. Griet had told her about the delivery, the order for which Hendrick had forgotten to mention, and said that the tulip grower would call for payment another day. It was only the previous week that she had replanted the bulbs she had taken up in June, but she enjoyed gardening and was always content at it, even when engaged in the more monotonous chores of digging and weeding. Aletta shared her interest and would have helped her with the bulbs if she had not gone out to sketch a view of the Amstel by one of the old bridges.

Kneeling down on a folded rug, Francesca dug holes in the sandy soil at regular intervals and set in the new bulbs, which were of excellent quality, being hard with skins that were a good rusty color. When they came into bloom she might gather some to take indoors and begin a floral arrangement for her canvas, painting other flowers as they blossomed in turn, until a huge bouquet from the different seasons was completed, a not unusual procedure.

The tulip would always be her favorite flower, its long-stemmed grace and elegance surpassing to her eyes even the beautiful centiflora rose that presented such an abundance of tinted petals as to resemble a confusion of petticoats. Maybe the romantic in her had been irrevocably drawn to the tulip when long ago she had heard how supposedly it had first come into being. According to the Persian legend, it was when Fernad had pined in anguish for his love, the exquisite Shirin, that the wild tulip had sprung up from where his tears had dyed the sand, its petals blood red. She could never look at tulips without remembering their association with tender love and deepest passion.

It seemed strange to her that although they had been cultivated in the exotic gardens of Persia and Turkey, it was not until just over a hundred years before her birth that the tulip had reached Europe. An ambassador to Turkey from the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor had been so impressed by the tulip that when he returned home to Vienna he took with him some seeds and bulbs, which he presented to Ferdinand I. These grew and flourished until soon other countries were transplanting this new flower shaped like an eastern turban. There were many tales as to how it eventually came to Holland, but the most likely was that a cargo of bulbs arrived by ship in Amsterdam. Whatever its means of travel, the tulip took to Dutch soil as if Holland were its natural habitat and it had always belonged there.

Red, yellow and also white tulips, as well as some striped ones, had grown in the Visser garden for as long as Francesca could remember. She had no real preference in color, finding something to admire in every one, but she looked forward to the bloom that would be produced by the recently delivered bulbs. It was to be a shaded crimson with feathered petals, and was more expensive than any she would have chosen. At least it did not come into the category of the rare hues that commanded top prices and had made many a horticulturist extremely prosperous. Yet never again would bulbs fetch the exorbitant prices they had done some years ago when what had become known as “tulipomania” had swept the country. People from all walks of life became speculators in bulbs expected to bring forth new patterns or exceptional colors and that might soon become worth their weight in gold. Houses with all their contents were exchanged for a single bulb; livestock from farms, tools of trade and premises and family heirlooms all went in the general madness as fortunes were made overnight. Often a bulb changed hands figuratively several times, the buyers and the sellers never seeing the actual product, exactly as financial deals were carried out at the Exchange in Amsterdam, and at those in London, Paris and elsewhere.

This horticultural madness came about through the cultivated tulip’s unique way of producing its own variations through a natural breaking down of the bulb into new forms, the colors of the offsets staying virtually steadfast. Those who had never gambled in their lives before threw caution aside and the wild speculation was maintained throughout every month of the three years that the fever lasted, giving opportunities to tricksters and swindlers in a whirlwind of fraud. When the market crashed many were left without a roof over their heads. Hendrick had been in the first years of his apprenticeship, but he had gambled a small inheritance and, with the good luck that rallied to him at certain times, he had emerged from the chaos with a thousand florins more than the sum with which he had started.

Francesca rose from her knees, brushed dirt from her apron and picked up the rug. Her task was done. In the early spring she would come out each day to watch the first shoots emerge. She went back indoors with a lighthearted step.

When Aletta returned home she had made several detailed sketches. Francesca looked at them with interest. “You have worked hard, Aletta.”

She did not notice the gleam of excitement in her sister’s eyes. “I’m going to have no time for anything else except work now,” Aletta said as she took the sketches from Francesca and carried them away upstairs.

To Francesca’s surprise Hendrick had taken more note of her suggestion about making a trip to Haarlem than she had supposed. As his spirits recovered once more, he made the announcement at breakfast one morning that there was to be a family outing to the old city of his apprenticeship.

“We’ll go tomorrow to pay our respects at my old master’s tomb and then take a look around. It will be Saturday, so there’ll be lots to see. I’ll borrow a horse and sporting cart to get us there. Its owner owes me a favor.” It was not the most comfortable form of transport, being much like a wooden tub on wheels, and passengers were rocked about, but it was much quicker than the canal boat and it was free.

Sybylla clapped her hands excitedly. “An outing! What a treat!”

Aletta looked uncertain. “It’s getting colder every day. Suppose it should snow and hinder our return.”

Francesca thought it was unusual for Aletta to make such a comment. It was almost as if she were seeking any sort of excuse to prevent the trip. “I don’t think we need worry about that,” she said firmly.

“Indeed not!” Hendrick endorsed. In any case, once he had decided on a course of action that suited him personally he could rarely be persuaded otherwise. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at Francesca. “We can afford it, can’t we?”

“Oh! Yes!” she replied with a laugh, excited herself at the prospect. It was the custom at the week’s end for families to pour out of the towns and cities for picnics in summer, or to country taverns and the entertainments provided there when the weather was colder. As a family in the past there had been many such expeditions, but since Anna had died there had been none. Hendrick had not been able to endure any avoidable occasion that emphasized her absence. Francesca was sure that this outing would be good for him and for all of them. Neither she nor her sisters had ever been to Haarlem, although it was only thirteen miles away. “We’ll take a picnic!”

“Be sure you include a bottle of wine with the food,” Hendrick insisted jovially.

Francesca had another thought. There was only one outstanding debt in her household ledger and that was for the bulbs. “Do you happen to know whereabouts near Haarlem I could find the premises of the tulip grower van Doorne, who supplied the new bulbs?”

Hendrick shook his head, puzzled as to why she should have asked. “I ordered them at the market here in Amsterdam. Do you need more?”

“No, there are plenty, but I would like to pay him.”

Hendrick’s gesture tossed such an unimportant matter aside. “He’ll be back for his money soon enough.”

That was what she hoped to avoid. By making direct payment at van Doorne’s premises it would be a way of erasing all those distressing times when she and all the household, except Hendrick, who usually managed to disappear, had been pestered for money. At least van Doorne’s location should not be hard to discover once she was in Haarlem.

Maria sighed. “My old bones won’t allow me to go on this outing.”

Francesca sympathized and then Aletta spoke up defensively. “I won’t be going tomorrow either.”

They all looked at her in surprise. “Why not?” Hendrick asked.

“I want to finish my painting of the bridge over the Amstel.”

“There’ll be other days.”

“No.” She had her obstinate look. “If I’m to be a serious artist I can’t drop everything for a day of frivolity.”

Sybylla looked at her pityingly. Aletta was becoming as old in her ways as Maria. She herself was not interested in visiting Hals’s tomb, but she was in seeing the shops and whatever Haarlem had to offer, particularly in its young men. Maria kept far too close an eye on her at home and it would be wonderful to be free of her for once.

“You’re becoming more of a stick-in-the-mud every day, Aletta,” she gibed.

“Better that than to think of nothing else except ogling anything in breeches that walks along the street!” Aletta countered fiercely.

Sybylla’s face flushed a guilty scarlet. “Listen to that viperish tongue! Can I help it if men look at me and not at you?”

It was not entirely true, for it was only Aletta’s natural hauteur that discouraged advances. At the moment there was a flush of angry pink in her cheeks. “I’m not interested in riffraff, Sybylla!”

Hendrick had become exasperated. He had no tolerance of quarrels that he himself had not instigated. “Be silent both of you! Aletta shall stay at home if that is what she wishes. I’ll not discourage anyone from work.” His faintly pious note might have led a stranger to suppose he was never away from his easel himself. “At least Aletta will be here if Willem can’t hold back any longer from collecting the painting.”

It was decided that an early start should be made. Even so, Aletta was up before anyone else in the morning and already in the studio at work when breakfast was served.

“Aren’t you coming to eat?” Sybylla asked, looking in at the door. She had Hendrick’s virtue in never sulking and, again like him, she quite enjoyed a clash of temperaments, feeling invigorated by it. This morning she would willingly have embraced her sister in reconciliation if it had been necessary, but Aletta had already forgotten their tiff.

“I’ve eaten.” Aletta did not glance away from her canvas, but continued to paint steadily. “I told you yesterday that I wanted to get this painting finished.”

Sybylla noticed a half-eaten slice of bread and cheese on a plate that must have forced a space for itself on the cluttered side table. Whatever drink had been left in a cup was now cold and soaked up into a carelessly cast-aside paint rag that had landed across it. “I’ll fetch you a fresh drink anyway. There’s hot chocolate this morning.” She went across to pick up the cup and then stood to study the painting of the bridge and neighboring buildings. “What’s so vital about this one? Why the rush? Have you a buyer for it?” Her words had been intended as a jest, but Aletta looked so startled that Sybylla paused, grinning triumphantly at her. “So that’s it!”

Aletta rushed to the door and closed it to avoid anyone overhearing before she came back to where her sister stood. “I think I have. That day I was sketching at the bridge I included a row of property with a bakery in the foreground. The baker’s wife came by, looked over my shoulder as people do, and offered to buy my sketch. I told her it was for a painting and she became quite excited and said if it was good she would buy it as a surprise gift for her husband’s fiftieth birthday. He would be so proud to have such a painting to hang in his shop.”