When in possession of a yearly income equal to L.2000 sterling, he would not permit the agent who collected his rents to bring them in from the country to Amsterdam, lest he should be obliged to invite him to dinner. He preferred setting out on a fine day, and going himself to the agent's house. In this way he saved two dinnersthe one which he got, and the one, he avoided giving. 'So that's well managed!' he used to say.
This sordid disposition often exposed him to practical jokes from his pupils; but he possessed a quiet temper, and was not easily annoyed. One day a rich citizen came in, and asked him the price of a certain picture.
'Two hundred florins,' said Rembrandt.
'Agreed,' said his visitor. 'I will pay you to-morrow, when I send for the picture.'
About an hour afterwards a letter was handed to the painter. Its contents were as follow: 'Master RembrandtDuring your absence a few days since, I saw in your studio a picture representing an old woman churning butter. I was enchanted with it; and if you will let me purchase it for 300 florins, I pray you to bring it to my house, and be my guest for the day.' The letter was signed with some fictitious name, and bore the address of a village several leagues distant from Amsterdam.
Tempted by the additional 100 florins, and caring little for breaking his engagement, Rembrandt set out early next morning with his picture. He walked for four hours without finding his obliging correspondent, and at length, worn out with fatigue, he returned home. He found the citizen in his studio, waiting for the picture. As Rembrandt, however, did not despair of finding the man of the 300 florins, and as a falsehood troubled but little his blunted conscience, he said: 'Alas! an accident has happened to the picture; the canvas was injured, and I felt so vexed that I threw it into the fire. Two hundred florins gone! However, it will be my loss, not yours, for I will paint another precisely similar, and it shall be ready for you by this time to-morrow.'
'I am sorry,' replied the amateur, 'but it was the picture you have burned which I wished to have; and as that is gone, I shall not trouble you to paint another.'
So he departed, and Rembrandt shortly afterwards received a second letter to the following effect: 'Master Rembrandt You have broken your engagement, told a falsehood, wearied yourself to death, and lost the sale of your pictureall by listening to the dictates of avarice. Let this lesson be a warning to you in future.'
'So,' said the painter, looking round at his pupils, 'one of you must have played me this pretty trick. Well, well, I forgive it. You young varlets do not know the value of a florin as I know it.'
Sometimes the students nailed small copper coins on the floor, for the mischievous pleasure of seeing their master, who suffered much from rheumatism in the back, stoop with pain and difficulty, and try in vain to pick them up.
Rembrandt married an ignorant peasant who had served him as cook, thinking this a more economical alliance than one with a person of refined mind and habits. He and his wife usually dined on brown bread, salt herrings, and small beer. He occasionally took portraits at a high price, and in this way became acquainted with the Burgomaster Six, a man of enlarged mind and unblemished character, who yet continued faithfully attached to the avaricious painter. His friendship was sometimes put to a severe test by such occurrences as the following:
Rembrandt remarked
one day that the price of his engravings had fallen.
'You are insatiable,' said the burgomaster.
'Perhaps so. I cannot help thirsting for gold.'
'You are a miser.'
'True: and I shall be one all my life.'
''Tis really a pity,' remarked his friend, 'that you will not be able after death to act as your own treasurer, for whenever that event occurs, all your works will rise to treble their present value.'
A bright idea struck Rembrandt. He returned home, went to bed, desired his wife and his son Titus to scatter straw before the door, and give out, first, that he was dangerously ill, and then deadwhile the simulated fever was to be of so dreadfully infectious a nature that none of the neighbours were to be admitted near the sick-room. These instructions were followed to the letter; and the disconsolate widow proclaimed that, in order to procure money for her husband's interment, she must sell all his works, any property that he left not being available on so short a notice.
The unworthy trick succeeded. The sale, including every trivial scrap of painting or engraving, realised an enormous sum, and Rembrandt was in ecstasy. The honest burgomaster, however, was nearly frightened into a fit of apoplexy at seeing the man whose death he had sincerely mourned standing alive and well at the door of his studio. Meinherr Six obliged him to promise that he would in future abstain from such abominable deceptions. One day he was employed in painting in a group the likenesses of the whole family of a rich citizen. He had nearly finished it, when intelligence was brought him of the death of a tame ape which he greatly loved. The creature had fallen off the roof of the house into the street. Without interrupting his work, Rembrandt burst into loud lamentations, and after some time announced that the piece was finished. The whole family advanced to look at it, and what was their horror to see introduced between the heads of the eldest son and daughter an exact likeness of the dear departed ape. With one voice they all exclaimed against this singular relative which it had pleased the painter to introduce amongst them, and insisted on his effacing it.