AMSTERDAM

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20106, 13 May 1935, Page 10

AMSTERDAM

THE DIAMOND CITY BEAUTY AND VARIETY One of the most misunderstood cities in Europe is Amsterdam. For 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 and variety all its own. I 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 its gracious loveliness. I thought at first that she was joking, but she and subsequently others have opened my eyes.

To be sure, Amsterdam has no outstanding churches or public buildings, nor even any 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 brilliants cut by the celebrated house of Asscher. To sense the charm of Amsterdam one need only escape the crowded Kalvetstraat or Rembrandtsplein 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 say they were so built to keep the rain off, others that it 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 particular 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 exact 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. The houses of hand-made brick, weathered and softened by age, contrast with the lighter charm of limestone. Rounded flambouyant tops contrast with angular and sunbonnet tops. All are gracious and appealing. A young man named Six, loving all this 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 the Thorbeckeplein which boasts the three-star gracht view of all Amsterdam. He showed me an imposing “three-lot” house on Kloveniersburgw T al belonging formerly to one Tripp, whose coachman murmured enviously that he would be well content with a house as wide as the front door of his master’s house. The master, hearing of this remark, promptly built for his coachman a house exactly the width of his door. This house, as slender as a hop pole, still stands cross-gracht from the Tripp mansion. Mr Six, since I have named him. is a tenth generation descendant of that Bugomaster 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 Rembrandts, 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 fibre 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 photograph-in oils by himself made shortly before his brush was laid aside for ever. Amsterdam without Rembrandt is inconceivable, like Paris without Napoleon. But what a difference in the legacies these two men left! The Diamond Trade The diamonds of the diamond city are by no means its least interesting facet, and 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 pleasant to learn that business is better with the diamond cutters. One of Asscher’s officials told me that business “is not bad, not bad at all,” and that employment is nearer to the normal figure of 700 than it has been in a long time. Since America is by far the best customer of Amsterdam’s diamond cutters it would seem to argue that we are not so discouraged as we proclaim. Discouragement does not spur the diamond trade.

In the Asscher works diamonds are everywhere and none is ever stolen. The 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 the ten into twenty and eventually two hundred beautiful cut stones are returned to the safes of Asscher. One cannot, in a few brisk sentences, establish the manifold charm of Amsterdam. The visitor who disengages himself from prejudice will surely find it for. himself, perhaps in a gondola ride on the Amsel River, perhaps in the Concertgebouw under Willem Mengelberg’s magic baton, perhaps in uncharted meanderings along chancechosen grachts, or suburbs, 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.