de hoogh 

pictures 

recall 

It must have been about five o'clock, and the last rays of the sun slanted through my window and joined the glow of the logs in my fireplace. It was a cold sun, but the room was warm with the woody scent of the fire. I stopped reading. Across the room I could see my books in orderly rows, arranged for their colour-blue and gold, and brown and gold, in the top row. And taller books on the lower shelves. The pale light lay on my etching of Notre Dame from across the Seine. I had bought it on the Quai St. Michel, almost at the spot where the artist 

had sat. It was a bitter evening, when the snow was piling on the side walks and the bouquinistes were all closed up. I remember I had gone on to the Cluny, and found it full of school children scrambling about in the half dark, for there were no lamps. And when I came out the streets were full of hurrying forms, and the shops looked warm and inviting. All sounds of movement were subdued, muffled in the feathery snow. When it was dark I came to my hotel in the Rue Quatrefages, I think it was called l'Ermitage, I know it was cold and bleak. But there was 

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something in Paris that was not cold, in the Pantheon. The ripe and exquisite colouring of Laurens Death of St. Genevieve made one forget the snow, the discomfort. These panels were the loveliest things in Paris. 
Over my fireplace is my favourite de Hoogh. 
Hardly smaller than the original, a picture which hangs with a few others in a square room at the Rijksmuseum. It is a picture of a mother and child in a room, a simple thing of warm colour, with a glimpse through an open doorway. There are many rooms like it in the old houses. In Volendam and Enkhuizen they still polish and scrub their small floors, and stand at their front doors and look upon curious sightseers with amused tolerance. 
I remember stopping to buy some old Delft tiles at a small curiosity shop in Edam. Inside there was an old woman with skin like parchment, out of a Brangwyn picture. And through lingering here I nearly missed the foolish toy train that pants along the sides of canals from Amsterdam to Edam, and on to Volendam. But the toy train is not out of place, for Holland is like a child's fairyland, with squares of green and strips of water, and thatched windmills, and gaily painted wooden houses. Then there are wooden bridges across the canals, painted bright powder blue, that break in the middle to let high-laden barges through. And all the roofs are covered with pantiles or thatch. There is colour everywhere. At Volendam there are fishing vessels lying huddled together, with ropes and sails hanging slack in the still. And at the Spaander you can have coffee and redcrusted cheese, and look out across the Zuider Zee. 
If you return to Amsterdam in the evening and walk along the side of the canals under the limes, you will see the lights in the windows blinking from the gables like tired eyes, and making yellow pools in the water. Or, if you pause in the Herengracht just before it is dark, you will see the old brick houses merge into one shadowy outline on the sky. The sun will leave the walls, but catch the ripple of pantiles and bathe them in gold just before it sets. There is a delightful calm in the evening. It is enough to lean over a bridge and enjoy the fantasy of slow, gurgling water, and the vista of red- 

brown warehouses, tumbling, sprawling, and jogging each other in uneven rows. Some seem to have slipped into the canal, and the water lies against them and turns the brown to green. You hear no sound save the quick step of a child in sabots on the cobbles, or the rattle of a small milk cart as it jogs cheerfully and unevenly into the distance. 
Behind the University, in the OudemElnhuispoort, you can buy books in every language, and, provided you have the time, can end up by paying one-third what was originally asked. The books are spread on tables arranged to form bays, and as you pass along you know when you have reached a new bookseller by the fresh cries which greet you. Otherwise, it is a cheerful book-market without divisions, and a happy confusion hangs over everything. Books creep into strange places, for two volumes which I could not get in London or Paris I found here. 
There is a small shop in old Amsterdam, with a dull green stable door, in a narrow street, about six steps below the pavement level. You are greeted as you pass through this low door by old kettles swinging above your head, so close that you can touch them, and looking more green than copper in the gloom. The place is packed with old chests and pieces of china, and candlesticks and prints, and delft tiles with quaint devices painted on them. Age and mystery cling close in the crowded atmosphere, and it seems that not a beam of clear sun could ever have shone into the midst of these strange fragments. You feel that it is unwise to breathe lest you lift the dust, and you move about with the feeling that you are recognised as a stranger and are not welcome. I remember a slender blue jar, which must have been a newcomer for it was not dusty, and looked appealingly at me as though conscious that neither of us was wanted here. Perhaps by now it has been soothed into content by the friendly dust, or it may be proudly displayed in some trim parlour. Perhaps it has taken its chance to slip off the shelf and end its life in a thousand grains. Perhaps it has gone into a deep sleep, lulled by the muffled voices of the street. Perhaps ... I should have taken it with me. 
r . m. 1928. 
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