Excerpts from 2002 Letter About Haarlem and the Franz Hals Museum, p1: Haarlem is a small, friendly city. It has a wonderful old church (1300-1500) with several great features. Both Mozart and Hayden played the huge organ. It has 5,000 pipes. We were lucky. Someone was practicing on the organ when we got there. Sound that you could feel in your belly. The oldest part of St. Bavokerk is the choir, under the floor of which Franz Hals is buried. It is beautiful, of course, and remarkably cold. It must have been 50 degrees in the church, while outside was 75 or 80 degrees!
In talking to the docent, we found that the statue in the Great Market Square is of a local man whom the Dutch "almost’ credit with discovering moveable type. We were told that the local legend is that when the statue hears the church bells, he turns the page of the book he is shown holding. The applicable phrase, of course, is "when he hears"!Also in town is a long row of 17th century houses for the elderly. Some were rehabbed in the early 1900’s to be homes. A main building that had been a part of the complex became the Franz Hals Museum. The museum has a lot of his portraits, as well as a number of others of his era. In one room they have a series of his paintings of the local militia done over a twenty year span . You almost had to stop yourself from winking at some of the militia or going up and patting a shoulder and asking, "How’s it going? ". A bunch of good old boys, looking rakishly alive and looking around for some fun. Also in the room were two paintings of the trustees of the old folks home. These had hung there ever since he had painted them. One of them was painted when Hals was in his 80’s.
In another part of the museum was an extremely well-furnished small doll house from the 17th century, about 7 foot square. Not a child’s toy, but a house that had been put together as a hobby by a young woman of wealth, and the result was a miniature house that provided a glimpse into the reality of wealthy living at the time. There were crank handles with rope around a spindle low down on each side of the cabinet. We asked about them. First the docent pointed out a portrait of a woman wearing a hoop skirt in a family scene painting off on the left wall. This was the young woman who had "done" the house. With that kind of dress one cannot bend down to tend to the lower floor of the house. So if you wanted to redecorate, you would have the maid crank those handles to lift the house to a level that was comfortable. (continued.........)