Nevertheless, even though short on ammunition, van Meegeren’s enemies continue to do battle. They constantly try to embarrass him with questions. They ask him to produce his living models for the Vermeer. He retorts that he had no models, needed none, that an artist who has done three thousand figures in his lifetime can dispense with models. His enemies then divert their attack to his alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Not long ago, a Dutch journalist in Berlin found a book of van Meegeren’s reproduced black-and-white drawings bearing the inscription, “To my beloved Fuehrer, with best wishes, Hans van Meegeren.” His enemies broadcast this news throughout the Netherlands and the Continent. Van Meegeren countered at once. He recalled that during the occupation a German officer, an aspiring artist, had asked for his autograph in a book of his drawings. He obliged with his signature only. He insisted the German officer must have written in the inscription to Hitler over his signature, and sent it on to Der Fuehrer. Van Meegeren demanded that the signature and inscription be studied by Dutch handwriting experts. This was promptly done. The handwriting experts reported that van Meegeren was right, the signature was his own but the inscription to Hitler was by another hand. Van Meegeren asked for the volume itself. He wanted it for evidence in his trial. When the police tried to produce it, it was gone—no one knows where.
So the intrigue and word-baiting continue in Amsterdam. What will be the legal result? Opinions vary widely. A minority feels the case will be dropped in the next year or two, and that van Meegeren will be given his freedom. The majority feels the international jury will be forced to admit that the Vermeer are clever fakes. If so, van Meegeren will most likely be jailed for a period of two to six years or fined two million dollars. This, incidentally, would be a somewhat stiffer sentence than he would have got as a Nazi collaborator.
But Hans van Meegeren wants the stiffer sentence. It will vindicate his honor and blast the complacency of art critics. He also wants to buy his six paintings back. He has had an offer of eight million dollars, a sum widely publicized in Europe, for the lot from a well-known American millionaire. Van Meegeren will not reveal the name of the American.
But van Meegeren does not think that he will ever live to see his victory and collect this new fortune from the United States. “If I should die tomorrow,” he says quietly, “the dealers, museums, critics would be much relieved. The thorn would be out of their side. The case could be dropped, the Vermeer I forged declared authentic, and the experts would never be bothered again. As long as I live, they are on the spot. There is much at stake in my life. Millions of dollars in cash, and years of art-dealer prestige. They know all of this, and they are desperate. That is why I am very careful on the streets these days. When I see a car driving toward me very fast, I duck into a doorway. It would be a shame if an accident happened to me at this stage, wouldn’t it?”
WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE…
When I arrived in the Netherlands in September, 1946, intent on obtaining material about the Hans van Meegeren saga, I was told by members of his intimate circle that I was the first writer to make an effort to present his story in depth through a large-circulation periodical. Before my investigation into the Vermeer forgeries, there had been numerous brief newspaper accounts of the raging art controversy, but these had not attempted to assess van Meegeren’s personality, or consider his full role in the series of hoaxes, nor had they shown the fantastic dilemma his case presented to the authorities.
I was unable to spend time with van Meegeren himself. He was ill. He was also under strict police surveillance and control. Consequently, a considerable amount of my material was acquired through my friendship with M. Petzoldt, a clever Dutch journalist in Amsterdam who was well acquainted with and trusted by van Meegeren. Not only did Petzoldt answer any questions I had to ask, but he acted as a go-between, taking my more personal inquiries to the ailing painter and bringing back van Meegeren’s frank replies. Also, the Amsterdam art expert, M. M. van Dantzig, gave generously of his time and cooperation. And there were at least a dozen other sources in Amsterdam that I eventually tapped for information on van Meegeren.
When I had what I wanted, I moved on to Paris. There I wrote my story, which I called, “How to Be an Old Master.” Before leaving for Madrid, I sent the completed draft to my New York literary agent, Paul R. Reynolds, who immediately placed it with The Saturday Evening Post. They published it under a more provocative title, “The Man Who Swindled Goering,” in their issue of January 11, 1947. Even before the story appeared, the Reader’s Digest had purchased it for a lead reprint, and ran it in their issue of March, 1947.
Few short pieces that I have written have received as much attention as did the van Meegeren story, from those interested in acquiring dramatic rights. I was overwhelmed by inquiries about motion picture, play, and radio rights. Of some interest was a serious inquiry from Edward Gross, who had successfully produced Chicken Every Sunday on Broadway, and who wanted me to convert my van Meegeren article into a stage drama. I agreed to try to do this. I still have a clipping from the February, 1948, theatrical page of a New York daily, which begins: “Edward Gross will cast Irving Wallace’s play, ‘Masterpiece,’ on the Coast Gross plans to open it in Los Angeles this spring and then tour east to Broadway,” The announcement was accurate but premature. I had, indeed, entitled van Meegeren’s story Masterpiece for the stage version, and I had written an outline and almost one full act, when I was forced to abandon the project. I no longer remember exactly why this was, although I suspect that a major reason was that I had run out of eating money just when I had become a father for the first time, and was forced to revive my bank account by becoming a salaried screenwriter.
But if movie and play interest in van Meegeren came to nothing, there was a third source of interest in the dramatic rights, and this one did develop successfully. On January 1, 1948, Paul Muni starred as Hans van Meegeren in a national network radio adaptation of “The Man Who Swindled Goering.” And in 1953, my story was acquired by a television company, and somewhat later, was shown coast-to-coast as The Hoax, featuring Herbert Marshall and Paul Henried.
Unfortunately, Hans van Meegeren did not live to know how widely his fame—or notoriety—was publicized, not only through the radio and television versions of my story on him, but through the great amount of literature concurrently growing up around his legend. To my limited knowledge, there have been at least one dozen, perhaps two dozen, books published since his death which are devoted entirely or in great part to his life and his acts of creative forgery. Merely glancing at my nearest bookshelf, I can see such volumes as The Master Forger by John Godley, Vermeer—van Meegeren: Back to the Truth by Jean Decoen, Van Meegeren’s Faked Vermeer and De Hooghs by Dr. P. B. Coremans, The Art of the Faker by Frank Arnau, The Mystery of van Meegeren by Maurice Moiseiwitsch.
When I left van Meegeren in Amsterdam in the autumn of 1946, he was still awaiting the decision on the seventh Vermeer, the one which he had deliberately forged for a jury of international art judges. Based on this Child Christ in the Temple of the Elders, the art judges would determine if van Meegeren should be tried by the state as a man who had perpetrated fraud by faking six Vermeer and swindling Goering with one, or if he should be tried as a political collaborator who had faked none of them but simply sold real Vermeer, and one of them to a wartime enemy.
After I departed from Amsterdam, Hans van Meegeren lived on for another fifteen months. It was in the early autumn of 1947 that the international art judges came to their decision. They voted that Hans van Meegeren had, indeed, fooled all of them, and their learned colleagues. The seventh Vermeer, done by van Meegeren on assignment, had convinced them that the other six Vermeer were fakes. The key evidence, aesthetic considerations aside, was that presented by one of the judges. Dr. P. B. Coremans, director of the Central Laboratory of the Belgian Museums, who stated that laboratory investigation proved van Meegeren’s seventeenth-century Vermeer contained in their paint a synthetic resin, which had not e
ven been discovered until 1900. Despite the fact that a Swiss chemistry professor dissented—“the micro-chemical analyses on which Coremans has based his findings yield no evidence that any synthetic resinous products are present in the layers of paint”—the other art judges reluctantly agreed with Coremans that although the signatures on the six Vermeer bore the master’s signature, “I.V.M.” (for I. V. Meer), the paintings had been executed by the impostor Hans van Meegeren.
And so, on October 29, 1947, Hans van Meegeren went on trial before the District Court of Amsterdam. To his delight, he went on trial as a George Psalmanazar, as a Thomas Wainewright, as a William Ireland, admirable fakers and impostors all, and not as a commonplace collaborator. The evidence of forgery was heard in a single day. Van Meegeren did not contest it. The state prosecutor demanded that van Meegeren receive two years’ imprisonment for his fraud. The court adjourned for two weeks to consider the sentence it should deliver. On November 12, 1947, the court reconvened. Hans van Meegeren, frail and ailing, awaited the sentence. Because of his ill health (and, perhaps, because of the sympathy of the Dutch public, so appreciative of one who had so daringly tweaked the noses of critics and authorities), the prosecution’s demand for two years’ imprisonment was not heeded. Hans van Meegeren was sentenced to only one year in jail.
Van Meegeren returned to his great house at 321 Keizersgracht to await his official removal to a prison cell. No one came for him. He lived a Kafka nightmare. He waited and waited, and still no one came. There were countless legal actions against him. Those who had bought his forgeries as Vermeer were pressing suits to recover all money paid him. The government wanted back taxes on this disputed income. There were court costs. Van Meegeren’s assets dwindled swiftly. Bankruptcy proceedings were begun.
Among collectors of paintings there was a carnival interest in van Meegeren, the kind of curiosity that lures people to the freak exhibits. From London, New York, Paris, there were orders for portraits, for book illustrations, for new oils “in the style of Vermeer.” Van Meegeren desired to resume with brush, palette and canvas, but was unable to begin. His resolve and wasted body were weak. His impending imprisonment hung over him daily.
In those days of waiting, he had nurses, he had a few friends in, he had regular visits from his son, Jacques. Since there were no police to stop him, he took to walking along the canals in the afternoons, greeting and accepting the compliments of the populace. In the evenings, he often attended his favorite cafe. He drank heavily. He slept lightly, poorly, despite the drugs. He got weaker. After five weeks in limbo, he collapsed. He was rushed to the Valerius Clinic in Amsterdam. During the evening of December 30, 1947, he suffered a severe heart attack and died.
Two days later, Paul Muni dramatized his life, based on my story, for listeners the length and breadth of the United States, and perhaps on that evening, Hans van Meegeren had his resurrection, and his real legend began.
Today, the legend is stronger than ever, the legend of warped genius.
Van Meegeren’s last word to posterity was encompassed in his prison confession. It was, according to a 1946 dispatch by the Reuters news agency: “that he had produced work intrinsically as good as that of the great masters. It gave equal pleasure and therefore did not defraud anybody. The only difference, he said, was the signature.”
Two posthumous judgments would have appealed to him. One concerned his talent, and the other concerned his critics.
In 1949, in London, there appeared Dr. P. B. Coremans’ judgment of Hans van Meegeren’s gifts:
“Van Meegeren was indisputably the greatest forger of all time. As an artist, he achieved the best and the worst since his natural gifts were warped by the line of least resistance, the lust for gain and luxury. These same characteristics are evident in his fakes. An immense conceit and contempt (if not hatred) of the official art world made him create the beautiful painting of the Disciples.”
In 1951, in Rotterdam, there appeared Jean Decoen’s speculation about van Meegeren’s critics:
“One thing remains a mystery to me. It is the attitude of all those who, in 1938, by their statements and writings, announced to the world one of the greatest masterpieces of Dutch art of the seventeenth century. And the qualities, which this work possessed, and which everyone could see, do they no longer exist? Do qualities that go to make a masterpiece exist only in the minds of men, and have they no real foundation? Does everything evaporate because the name of the artist and period in which the painting was made have been changed? It is therefore Name, not work, which possesses this sympathetic magic…Of all van Meegeren’s forgeries examined from distance or close quarters, none can be compared with the Disciples, and I reiterate that if van Meegeren is the maker of it, I take off my hat to him and forgive him all the forgeries that he ever made.”
Here it was, then, the critics’ surrender:
“The greatest forger of all time”—creator, in the twentieth century, of “one of the greatest masterpieces of Dutch art of the seventeenth century…I take off my hat to him.”
Somehow, I cannot believe that Hans van Meegeren would have been displeased with these critics. He had proved that the species could harbor fallible fools. To their credit, the majority of critics, humbled, had recanted from their belief in their omniscience. But there will soon be a new generation of them to renew and perpetuate their exclusive hold on Infinite Wisdom and Final Judgment. For them, the legend of Hans van Meegeren should tower as a disturbing reminder of human fallibility. One can hope.
13
Monsieur Bertillon
At the turn of the century, an enterprising New York publisher traveled to Paris to offer the world’s greatest living detective one dollar a word for his memoirs. Though potentially the offer far exceeded his salary as director of the French Sûreté ’s Identity Department, Alphonse Bertillon firmly refused It. “To write the whole truth for you,” he told the publisher, “I would have to tell secrets, which might be useful to criminals. If I skipped the secrets, I would cheat the public “Undaunted, the publisher promptly offered to pay the same rate if Bertillon would disguise his facts in a fictional detective novel. “Surely you would have no objections to the detective novel?”
“On the contrary,” said Bertillon, “I love detective stories I would like to see Sherlock Holmes’s methods of reasoning adopted by all professional police. Yes, perhaps I will write a mystery story one day when I retire, if I retire. But now I have no tune. It is such a pity. I have so many wonderful stones to tell!”
When at last he died, in harness, just thirty-five years ago, Alphonse Bertillon had still not found time to write his mystery book. But, in his incredible record of achievements in the scientific advances he willed to criminologists the earth over, in the very life he lived, were more “wonderful stories” than any that he might have invented.
Today, every time the FBI comers a Dillinger, every time Scotland Yard catches a Crippen, every time the French Sûreté traps a Landru, they are paying silent tribute to Alphonse Bertillon. Instead of memoirs, Bertillon left behind countless weapons of detection with which the law can evenly pit itself against the wit and savagery of outlaws and killers. He gave the world its first successful means of identifying and classifying criminals, thus catching repeaters. He discovered a method of seeing through aliases, disguises and plastic surgery. He invented police photography. He was among the first detectives to use psychology on criminals successfully. He was the first detective to solve a crime through fingerprints. He was a pioneer in scientific sleuthing.
But it was not easy. Once, when Bertillon was guiding old Louis Pasteur on a tour of the Sûreté, the scientist halted, gazed thoughtfully at the detective, and asked, “Was it difficult. Monsieur Bertillon, getting the government to recognize your discoveries?” Yes, Bertillon admitted, it had been terribly difficult, and added, “But I never despaired. When they resisted, I became more aggressive.” Pasteur smiled. “Ah, then you know—the difficulty is less in discovering t
han in having discoveries understood and adopted.”
In the beginning, Bertillon’s most arduous case was in solving Bertillon. He, who would discover so much, could not find himself. Born in 1853, the second son of a Parisian doctor whose hobbies were studying skulls and physiological statistics, Alphonse Bertillon was the family disgrace. He failed to do satisfactory work at three different schools, and lost a half-dozen jobs, varying from banker to schoolteacher, in France, England, and Scotland.
Then came a job he could not lose. He was drafted for compulsory military service, and, as a private, was stationed with the 139th Infantry Regiment in Clermont-Ferrand, France. There was plenty of leisure, and out of sheer boredom young Bertillon began taking night courses in the medical school of the local university.
Suddenly, for the first time, he found something that interested him. His father’s old hobby—human skulls. Now, fascinated, he began studying them, measuring and classifying hundreds. Soon his interests expanded to the 222 bones of the human skeleton. He made a personal discovery. The skulls and bones of no two human beings were exactly the same. Bertillon began compiling statistics, but before he had enough to substantiate his theory, his military service was ended. He was home, again unemployed. His father was pleased with the statistics, but realistic. “To be a disinterested scientist is well and good, Alphonse, but to be fully disinterested the scientist must make money first. I am going to try just once more to get you a job.”
The Sunday Gentleman Page 38