by Larry WithamMOGGACH MIXES TULIP MANIA WITH A 17th-CENTURY LOVE TRIANGLE
AT THE GREAT art museums of the world, we typically find a
northern European section with a sampling of large, dark portrait paintings of
a man dressed in black with a white collar “ruff.” Beside him, his wife is
similarly dressed in the austere manner of a Dutch business family of the
seventeenth century.
These are
the past family momentos of the wealthy mercantile class of Amsterdam’s trading
empire, the sorts of people who kept Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and other
now-famous painters in business with commissions.
Novelist Deborah
Moggach has taken two such (fictional) husband-wife portraits and created an
entire story of the two couples, the two painters, and a year-long drama that
surrounds their lives. She has done so not only in an elegant, economical
prose, but in a symmetrical plot that is as tight as the composition of these
kinds of portraits.
And to add
flavor to what essentially is a love-triangle story, the novel is set during
the brief rise of the Dutch tulip market, which enriched Amsterdam for a few
years, at least until the speculative “tulip economy” crashed. Thus the novel’s title, Tulip Fever (2000).
One day the
painter Jan arrives at the home of the wealthy merchant Cornelius to paint him
and his much younger wife, Sophia. The marriage is a pact of sorts: she wants
to escape her dull, impoverish life at home, and Cornelius desires an heir. While
painting, Jan lusts for Sophia, and later she reciprocates. They need to find a
way to extricate her from the marriage.
The die is
cast. From the start, also, the novel’s many short chapters each represent the
point of view, or activity, of one of the five or so main characters. Sophia’s
voice is in the first person “I,” and so her viewpoint—at first devious and
later remorseful—is the primary guide through the entire story.
Another perspective
is given through Maria, the maid, who is young Sophia’s best friend, despite the
social chasm between them. Maria has just gotten pregnant by her bow, Willem.
Fortunately, though, Willem has saved enough money to propose marriage and save
Maria from an unwed scandal.
Then a
misunderstanding ruins everything. One night, Sophia sneaks off to make love
with Jan. She is wearing Maria’s maid cloak. Willem sees the cloak, thinking
it is Maria, and follows. Peaking in the window, he thinks his Maria is having
an affair with the painter. Distraught, Willem goes down to the docks, joins
the navy (which is battling the English for maritime supremacy), and
disappears.
Nobody
knows what happened to Willem. But Sophia, with her adultery, and Maria, with
her pregnancy, each have a problem. They arrive at a bizarre solution,
prompting Sophia to say, “We are two reckless young women; we are in love.”
Their
gambit: Sophia will pretend to be pregnant, Maria will hide her pregnancy, and
when the child is born (apparently to Sophia) old Cornelius will believe that
he has his heir. In such manner, Maria escapes community shunning. And Sophia, meanwhile, can fake
her own death at childbirth. After that, she and Jan will escape to the East
Indies.
All the
while, author Moggach reminds us that painters are working all around Amsterdam.
Jan is among those who will become less famous in art history, but still a
painter whose work will, one day, hang in museums. Jan also has a student,
Jacob, who feels betrayed when Jan plans to close his studio; this means Jacob
will not receive the certificate necessary to join the guild, putting his
career in jeopardy. Jacob wants revenge (and later delivers).
Jan’s plans
now unravel. Taken by the tulip craze, he decides to invest all his money
in the speculative tulip market. He also neglects his painting. Jan hopes to
earn enough money for the East Indies escape. All might have turned out well
until his drunken assistant eats a prize tulip bulb—“the most valuable tulip
bulb in the world”—thinking it is an onion. “We are ruined,” Jan tells Sophia.
As Jan
looks for a solution, Sophia has a sudden religious awakening and Maria bears
the child. They have successfully fooled old Cornelius. Grieving at her sin, Sophia
goes to the canal in a storm and (seemingly) drowns herself.
Back at
home, Maria tells Cornelius the truth—it is her child. Also, Willem suddenly
returns from the seas, now a tough soldier with money. Cornelius acknowledges Willem
as the true father and stands aside. Cornelius then pursues Jan and Sophia on
the ship they are supposed to be booked on (according to informant Jacob, the
betrayed student).
And the
plot now comes full circle.
Maria and
Willem marry and inherit wealth from Cornelius. The rising talent Jacob paints their family portrait. Stranded on board the ship (where Jan and Sophia
did not show up), Cornelius ends up in the East Indies. He goes primitive and
takes up with a young native woman (never to return).
Having lost
Sophia and his tulip wealth, Jan returns to painting, and indeed, in hindsight,
he will become one of the great Dutch masters.
“Out of
suffering he creates great art,” the narrator tells us. Jan becomes known for
his Dutch genre paintings, typically great still lifes that feature the vanity
objects of the wealthy classes. In one painting, he has a book opened to a page
that reads in Latin, “We played, we gambled, we lost.”
Then one
day, six years later, Jan is crossing the market square and a nun in a grey
habit walks by. A gust flutters her veil, and Jan thinks he sees Sophia. She
disappears into the monastery. By now, however, Jan is unable to know whether it
is really Sophia, or, as the narrators concludes, “has dreaming her into life,
into paint, so possessed him that he can no longer separate art from illusion?”
As museum
guides tell us, the old Dutch family portraits are of real people who once,
long ago, were civic leaders. Today, the paintings can be a bore. A novelist
such as Moggach, however, has created a story that reminds us how improbable
some of these lives—both of the portrait sitters and the painters—might have
been.
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