The Phoenix Land (21 page)

Aardenhout is only a few kilometres from Haarlem.

The Mendlik villa stood in the middle of a park of fine oaks.

I was received so warmly with real Hungarian hospitality that I almost felt as if I were back in my own country in happier times.

My great tie with Mendlik was that he too had been a pupil of Bertalán Székely and shared with me a deep admiration for that great artist who, unhappily, had been misunderstood and little appreciated during his lifetime. His charming wife was a talented sculptor who did me the great honour of doing a small clay bust of my head and shoulders. I have this still, and it gives me great pleasure
45
.

Mendlik’s seascapes were sensational. The best were his sketches in oil, painted from nature, of which among the most impressive was a series he had recently painted on card while sailing from Rotterdam to New York and back. During this voyage Mendlik never set foot on land, since, as an ‘enemy alien’, he was not allowed to land in America. There was a terrible storm during the voyage, so fierce that in order to paint it he had to be tied down on the bridge so as not to be swept away by the waves. He was that sort of painter! The first of the series was
done when first signs of the storm began to appear on the
horizon
. Then came the way the waves changed colour as the storm tossed them about, followed by the effect of the rising wind until the tempest was at its height, raging round the ship with the winds now so strong on the waves that all one could see were greyish-yellow mountains of water colliding into each other, bursting and shattering into watery fragments, although without leaving any foam; and finally an unbroken surface subdued by the hurricane’s strong hands. I am sure that no one else ever painted like that!

It is terrible to think about what it can mean to be lashed to an iron railing during such a storm, when the crest of every wave sweeps over the deck. One is forced to admire the man, as well as his work, who will brave such conditions and endure such sacrifice.

Chapter Ten

I will now recount some of the main incidents of the rest of my stay at The Hague.

Between these milestones life trickled on in quiet monotony. The mornings were spent in the studio and most of the
afternoons
too either there or in my hotel room, drawing; except for those days on which I might go to see some famous collection, either public or private, of which there are so many in this rich little country. Then I spent an occasional evening with János Pelényi and his family or with Elek Nagy, who was then living in a villa where, sometime in March, the storks delivered a by then well-rounded baby son.

They were very proud of this uniformly pink and plump child ‘whose like the world had never seen’ and from whom even a few moments’ separation was so unthinkable that, whenever I went to lunch at their home, there in the centre of the table, instead of a bouquet of flowers, the chubby baby himself would be placed, while throughout the meal the only subject of conversation would be his intelligence and beauty. It was most touching to see the Nagy’s happiness … but for me, who for many long months had had no news either of my father or of my sister and her family, this only added to my sense of being uprooted and homeless.

With the coming of spring Aarlof would take his pupils out into the country so as to make landscape studies. On one of these excursions I was to have an experience that I found most
interesting
since it gave me a new insight into the high degree of
culture
to be found in every strata of Dutch society.

I had seated myself in a marvellously green meadow beside a canal. Behind me were some black-and-white cattle in a row, each one tethered to a stake by a long line. On the other side of the canal was a farmhouse with some fruit trees in the
background
, while in the foreground two boats were tied up. At one side there was a private bridge leading to the homestead.

I set to work to make a picture of this, and when I had been working at it for some time I saw the farmer crossing the bridge and coming towards me. He stepped up quietly and for a little while stood behind me.

For a while he just stood there looking at the drawing. Then he waited a moment and asked if I could possibly finish the boats first because he would soon be taking one of them to row into town. Not straightaway but in half-an-hour? He could wait until then. He added that he had come over to ask me this as he did not want to spoil the progress of the drawing, but as he would have to remove one of the two boats he had thought he would tell me in advance so that I could organize my work accordingly!

Wasn’t that extraordinary? Where else would one find people with such real unaffected goodwill?

I had another experience somewhat similar to this. It occurred when I was doing studies in my hotel room. I had been working on an illustration of the classical tale of the nymph Daphne, who was transformed into a laurel-tree, and I needed to look at a
free-growing
laurel with naturally leafy branches because it would be ridiculous to show the beautiful nymph changing into a bush clipped like a pyramid.

I thought it would not be too difficult to find. Even though in other countries laurels are to be found trimmed into special shapes from the time they are quite small, in this country almost every tree – oaks, beeches, poplars, maples and others too – are carefully pruned right to their utmost tips. To find a laurel
growing
naturally I had to consult a local gardener.

Eventually I found a man who looked after the lawns and flowerbeds of the villas nearby and went to see him.

‘Where,’ I asked, ‘can I find an unclipped laurel?’

‘There are none in The Hague!’ he answered, ‘but if you go to Delft there is a gardener who has quite a large park and who,
especially for painters, had grown all sorts of trees as they would be found in the wild. I should ask him, he is sure to have what you want.’

Once again I was to reflect that only in this perfect country could one now find such politeness and such good manners.

It was now the end of May, and I think it was just about then that Miklós Vadász arrived in The Hague. His brother had told us a long time before that he was coming, and so we had been eagerly awaiting him. We were all glad to see him not only because he was a man everyone liked but also because he brought us news from home, from which we had been completely deprived. Although he told us terrible things about the awful poverty that was everywhere evident, it was still good to get any news and to know what had been the most recent developments. I fancy that this was the time when General Smuts’ mission to the
Hungarian
Soviet was the centre of interest.

Vadász was just as elegant and well turned-out as he always had been, but overlaying his habitual
Weltschmerz
– pessimism and world-weariness – there was a new sense of bitter disillusion. He had come a long way from that excited mood when I had last seen him at the time of the ‘Aster Revolution’. Since then his illusions had proved baseless, and his disappointment was painful and hopeless. It was with deep sadness that he now told us: ‘There is no longer anything to hope for there!’

He too needed to earn a living in The Hague, and so he asked me what might be possible there. I told him that things were very difficult; there were almost no high-class publishers of glossy magazines or elegant journals such as might be found in London or Paris, and what there were did not offer any opportunities for people like us, since all the available posts were already filled by local artists who, although they might not be his equal in skill and talent, were accepted and popular with the Dutch public. At first he did not believe me; but within a few days he was convinced I had been right. Then he decided to do portraits in oil.

This was a forlorn hope, since Holland boasted plenty of
eminent
portrait-painters who already had good connections and whose names were well known. To challenge such men one had to be world famous like Philip László. To me this plan seemed hopeless from the start, even if his talent had matched his ideas.

However, he started off in high spirits and, for the first time in his life, began to paint in oils.

Mrs Andorján sat for his first two attempts which, if I
remember
correctly, were for one large picture and one small.

They were terrible! Really terrible!

This proved how different is painting from drawing. Miklós Vadász, who was such a master draughtsman that even his monochrome drawings could give the effect of colour and whose handling of chalk or merely the 6B Castell Pencil when drawing the most amusing coloured posters or lithographs was so
masterly
, could only produce the oddest of strange effects when trying to paint realistically. In his drawings everything was placed just right, yet in his painting his colours had no depth or light or air but seemed as formless as would some dull-coloured pieces of paper placed haphazardly beside each other.

Not that he himself saw this. He showed me proudly his first efforts, and, although I did shake my head once or twice, I did not want to dampen his enthusiasm and so merely said they would do all right as first attempts but that he still needed more practice. As he thought these first canvasses were perfect he did not accept my opinion; and this, perhaps, is why he never improved. He was firmly convinced that every one of his paintings was a huge success to the point that he declared
repeatedly
that until now he had never realized how ‘simple’ it was to paint!

It was touching to see not only how Miklós Vadász, happily unconscious of the truth, thought his own smears wonderful but also to note his slightly patronizing sympathy not just for my own smears but also for those of all other painters too.

It was about this time that I was trying my hand at copying a Rubens portrait in the Mauritzhuis.

Vadász often came to visit me there and we would wander through one or two rooms in this most exquisite of picture
galleries. Now the Mauritzhuis must certainly be one of the most perfect of the smaller museums. A small two-storey townhouse built of smoothly worked stone, it cannot have more than fifteen or twenty rooms but everything in it, without exception, is first class. All the most famous of Flemish painters are brilliantly represented, Vermeer, Ruysddael, the two Hals, the Bruegels, all of them, as well as many Rembrandts of his finest period when he rendered every canvas he painted transcendent and
mysterious
. Yet Vadász could not pass a single picture without finding some fault or other – only Vermeer escaped his disapproval. Despite all this, I was always pleased to be with him as he was an essentially good-natured and pleasant companion.

I also have him to thank for a most interesting encounter.

One day I was standing in front of my own canvas, while Vadász was sitting on a chair nearby and chatting away, when a new visitor entered the room. He was a tall thin but
powerfully-built
, man with a noble head and impressive bearing. Vadász got up and they greeted each other. Vadász then introduced us, and we exchanged a few polite phrases. Then the two of them talked together. It was Ramsay Macdonald, leader of the British Labour Party.

He had come to Amsterdam for a world Socialist conference, and he had come for just half a day to visit the Mauritzhuis,
putting
off all work just to see the collection. Even though he was the leading spirit, indeed the most important figure at the
congress
, he had taken this time off. It was a only a passing incident, but it seemed to me so typical of this Socialist leader of the
working
class whose epic life struggle was to make his life and love of his country so remarkable.

Aarlof, who had received something of a cold shoulder from me since the affair of the model, now somewhat belatedly decided to make amends for the past and surprised me by producing a really first-class nude female model. She was a most interesting girl, small and fine-boned, with flexible joints and a lovely skin the colour of old ivory. Her body was uniformly golden brown, so
much so that at home I would have taken her for a gypsy. Perhaps she was, although she came from a village near Amsterdam where the whole population is said to be dark-skinned.
Apparently
, they had been settled there since the time of the Spaniards.

Her full, rather Negroid, mouth and bluish curly hair, along with long almond-shaped eyes made her head exceptionally interesting, enhanced as it was by a strange, somewhat
melancholy
expression. I was overjoyed to have her pose for me. She never let me down and remained as my model faithfully all the time I stayed in The Hague.

She was an extremely nice girl and engaged to be married. Her fiancé was an artist, and together they planned a career on the stage, but not until they had enough money to buy what they needed. They loved each other dearly but had decided none the less to wait until then – and everything cost so much! She was quite sad when I said I would only need her in the mornings because then it would take longer to save up what they needed. When she asked if she couldn’t also sit for me in the afternoons and I had to reply that that would be too expensive for
me
, she at once offered to sit in the afternoons for less provided we could work at my hotel. Apparently, if she worked at the studio she had to pay out a part of her earnings (she did not say to whom!); but in my rooms, well, that would be different.

I agreed, not only because she asked me so charmingly but also because she had such an interesting head. I thought I would do one or two portraits of her in watercolour, just as if they had been commissioned. So I asked if she had any good clothes, and she announced proudly that she had
one
that was very beautiful. It was her gala dress, which she wore only on the greatest
occasions
. She said she would bring it for me to see.

The next day she arrived at the hotel in the same old dress she always wore to work, but on her arm, carefully wrapped in paper, she carried her silk dress. She blushed when she had put it on and indeed looked very pretty in it. She was not in the least
flirtatious
, and I am sure was utterly faithful to her beloved artist, but on this day at least she showed how pleased she was to show off her prettiness when dressed in her silken dress, which was so
different
from the worn shabby frock she usually wore.