The embarrassment of riches
Peter Quennell
AN INTERPRETATION OF DUTCH CULTURE IN THE GOLDEN AGE by Simon Schama
Collins f19.95
In his preface to this extremely substan- tial book, which, with its appendices, notes, bibliography and other learned apparatus, contains nearly 700 pages and finds room for over 300 illustrations, Pro- fessor Schama, an alumnus of Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard, makes a somewhat unexpected statement. Although his sub- ject is the 17th-century Dutch Republic during the age of its greatest power and prosperity, his description omits, or lightly passes over, some important aspects of the scene. 'There is nothing here', he warns his readers, 'about theatre or poetry or music, and if there are images in abundance, they are summoned as impressions of mentality, not vessels of Art'.
Should he write of culture, he explains, `I don't mean Culture'. What then is the vision of Holland's Golden Age that he provides for the English reader's benefit? He sees in it, he tells us:
an allegiance fashioned as the consequence, not the cause of freedom . . . defined by common habits . . . a manner of sharing a peculiar — very peculiar — space at a particular time . . . the product of the encounter between fresh historical experi- ence and the constraints of geography.
Thus his approach to his theme is socio- logical rather than cultural or aesthetic; and, although Dutch painting is among the noblest contributions that Holland has made to the imaginative wealth of Europe, he has evidently chosen his pictures much more often because they enabled him to underline a social point than for their own artistic worth. True, in his index we find numerous references to Rembrandt; but they are considerably outnumbered by tributes to that second-rate artist Jan Steen; while Vermeer's dazzling genius only thrice receives a brief mention. We learn, for instance, that, like Steen, he was eventually converted to Catholicism, and that he painted 'exquisite parlours', where- as Steen preferred whorehouses and 'row- dy kitchens', but little of the technical methods Vermeer employed, such as the complex window that, it is said, he had built to give his sitters the gently revealing light he needed.
A previous writer who has inspired the present treatise is, oddly enough, Henry James, who in 1874 watched a Dutch housemaid scrubbing a pavement that was very obviously clean with a thoroughness that struck him as 'compulsive', since it served no practical purpose, but was no doubt, James thought, dictated by 'her own temperament'. 'The mysteries of that temperament', Professor Schama writes, `are the subject of this book of essays.'
Amsterdam is a modern metropolis with which he is evidently well-acquainted: and he sharpens his researches by lively glimp- ses of the city that he knows today, where during summer months the narrower streets, he says, are redolent of frying oil and shag tobacco. Is excessive smoking still a Dutch vice? In the 17th century it was certainly so regarded; and the professor devotes much of a whole chapter and a host of illustrations to current abuses of the habit, emphasising its link with other vices and pointing out the sexual symbolism of the pipe in Jan Steen's pictures of contem- porary kitchens and brothels. It seems probable, he rather unnecessarily adds, that 'the act of blowing smoke at a woman was already a sexually insulting jest'. At the same period, however, the rich and pleasure-loving Dutchman might also be an expert horticulturist: and `Tulipoma- nia', the passion for rare tulips, which would afterwards spread to England, be- came in the years 1636 and 1637 an alarming speculative craze. By those who pursued it, fortunes were won and lost; a farmer paid the equivalent of 2,500 florins for a single precious specimen; and new variations of this delicate Turkish flower regularly reached the market. Here as elsewhere, Professor Schama is endlessly informative, though the information he supplies on a range of different topics crime and punishment, feasts and festivals, the education of children, 'housewives and hussies', the homosexual underworld and the effect of geography on the Dutch character — may sometimes be laid on a little too thick; and the author's prose style is occasionally awkward. The embarrass- ment of riches as a basic theme encourages now and then a superfluity of words. This is, in fact, just the kind of book that proves all the more enjoyable with the help of some judicious skipping.
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