AMSTERDAM

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 86, 11 April 1935, Page 26

AMSTERDAM

THE DIAMOND CITY

BEAUTY AND VARIETY

One of the most misunderstood cities v Europe is Amsterdam. l"or some reason or other this bright capital of the cut diamond has failed to make a vivid impression on the consciousness of the tourist world, yet it has an extraordinary beauty nnd variety all its own. 1 confess that I was greatly surprised when I heard an intelligent Scottish lady, a collector and connoisseur of art, express herself as being thrilled through and through by' Amsterdam, says a .writer in the "Christian Science Monitor." She went there and still .goes there as often as she can to bask in ltd gracious loveliness. I thought at first that she was jcjkmg, but she and subsequently others have opened my eyes. To be sure, Amsterdam has no outstanding churches or public buildings, nor even ahy single structure that acts as a magnet to the romantic alien, but it does have a great deal of that certain something which is charm, and it has almost as many facets as one of the brilliants cue by the celebrated house of Asseher. To sense the charm of Amsterdam one need only escape! the crowded Kalveistraat or JRembrandtsplein and stroll along one of its quiet six-jointed grachts. The ensemble of the'Heerengracht, for instance, is ancient, artistocratic, glorious. . In the centre is the broad canal, flanked on either side by a tree-shaded quay. No two houses are quite alike but almost every one is a gem. They lean forward for the most part, and there is no very good explanation for this. Some bay they were so built to keep the rain otf, others that i; was to make them look taller. The prosaic ones say the foundations settled, but it is peculiar that they should have nearly always settled forward. My own explanation, which is hardly worse than the others, is that since the three top floors of every dwelling constituted a warehouse the forward tilt made it easier to raise the bulky loads from the ground without scraping the front of the house.

HOUSES THAT APPEAL.

Every house in the old city is of a pa:'ticular width, either seven metres, fourteen metres, or twenty-one metres, according to whether the builder of it owned one, two, or three lots. But the heights and materials and designs are incredibly various. Think of any street in London s Bloomsbury and the esact opposite of this is any old gracht in Amsterdam. Bloomsbury goes in for quantity production in design. Amsterdam goes in, or went in, for rugged individualism, ih* houses of hand-made brick, weathered and softened by, age, contrast with tho lighter charm of limestone. Rounded nanbuoyant tops contrast with angular a-nd sunbpnnet tops. All are gracious anil appealing. . '; A young man named Six, loving all tins with discrimination and intelligence, made me really love what the Scottish lady had made me admit. He walked with me along one gracht .after another to toe Thorbeckeplein which boasts the threftstar gracht view of all Amsterdam. he showed me an imposing "three-lot house on Kloveniersburgwal belonging former.y to one Tripp, whose coachman murmured enviously that he would be well content with a house as wide as the front door o; his master's house.' The master, hearing of this remark, promptly built fpr his coachman a house exactly the width of his door. This house, as slender ;as a hop pole, still stands 'cross-gracht frohivtha Tripp mansion. Mr. Six, since I have named him, 19 a tenth generation descendant of that Btugomaster Jan Six whom Rembrandt painted in one of his finest achievements of portraiture. And he is an eleventh generation descendant of Nicholas Tulp,, the surgeon of the celebrated "Anatomy Lesson. This Six is filled with Rembrandt*, and more than the Rijks Museum or any great "picture gallery, brings one into the presence of the master .of masters. • Rembrandt van Rijn is of the very nbrp of Amsterdam. One sees him .here in triumph with many orders and pupils. One sees him happy with Saskia. his wife. One sees adversity, poverty,. bankruptcy,overtake him. And finally one sees, in the Rijks Museum, Rembrandt s own photo-graph-in-oils by himself, made shortly be-fore-his brush was laid aside for ever. . Amsterdam without Rembrandt is inconceivable, like Paris without Xapoleo'i. But what a difference in the legacies these two men left!

THE DIAMOND TRADE

The diamonds of the diamond city iu-3 by no means its least interesting facet, nnd a trip through one of the great cutting establishments is a sheer fascination. As- a note of encouragement to Americans and the New Deal it is nleasant to learn that business is better with the diamond cutters. One of Asscher's officials toid me that business "is not bad, not bad at all" and that employment is nearer to the nominal figure of 700 than it has beeu in a long time. Since America is by vet-y far the best customer of Amsterdam a diamond cutters it would seem to argue that we are not 'bo discouraged as we proclaim, Discouragement does not spur the diamond trade. ' Iv the Asseher works diamonds _are everywhere and none is ever stolen, lhe foreman^ of a room' of cutters receives a hundred rough stones at a time and deals out ten to each of his men. Each man saws his ten into twenty and eventually two hundred beautiful cut stones are returned to the safes of Asseher. One cannot, in a few brisk sentences--, establish the manifold charm of Amsterdam The visitor who disengages _ nr.nself from prejudice will surely find it for himself, perhaps in a gondola ride on the 4mstel River, perhaps in the Loncert"•ebouw under Willein Mengelberg's magic baton, perhaps in uncharted meandering along, chance-chosen graehts, or'autombile rides through ultra-modern suburb?, perhaps in a visit to the flower .auctions of Aalsmeer. Amsterdam is, at any rate, a city of mellow graces, of varied attainments,'and of high aristocracy. The Scottish lady was'right. Mr. Six was right. And, however tardily. I am right.