ij]ifQREAv|)ELANJ

A WANDERER IN HOLLAND

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SUSSKX
THE OPEN ROAD
THE FRIENDLY TOWN

A WANDERER IN
HOLLAND

E. V. LUCAS

WITH 20 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY HERBERT MARSHALL
AND 34 ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER OLD DUTCH MASTERS

I

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1905

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface  xi

CHAPTER I
Rotterdam  i
CHAPTER II
The Dutch in English Literature  19
CHAPTER III
Dordrecht and Utrecht  30
CHAPTER IV
Delft  48
CHAPTER V
The Hague  63
CHAPTER VI
Scheveningen and Katwyk  85
CHAPTER VII
Leyden  94
CHAPTER VIII
Leyden's Painters, a Fanatic and a Hero . . . .107
CHAPTER IX
Haarlem  "8
v

vi CONTENTS CHAPTER X PAGE
Amsterdam  153
CHAPTER XI
Amsterdam's Pictures .  173
CHAPTER XII
Around Amsterdam : South and South-East .... 184
CHAPTER XIII
Around Amsterdam : North  195
CHAPTER XIV
Alkmaar and Hoorn, The Helder and Enkhuisen . . . 206
CHAPTER XV
Friesland : Stavoren to Leeuwarden  226
CHAPTER XVI
Friesland (continued) : Leeuwarden and Neighbourhood . 235
CHAPTER XVII
Groningen to Zutphen  250
CHAPTER XVIII
Arnheim to Bergen-op-Zoom  26i
CHAPTER XIX
MlDDELBURG  285
CHAPTER XX
Flushing  2g$

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
Sunrise on the Maas  Frontispiece
Rotterdam  To face page 6
Gouda  „ 18
The Great Church, Dort  „ 36
Utrecht  „ 44
On the Beach, Scheveningen  ,, 92
Leyden  „ 98
The Turf Market, Haarlem  „ 128
St. Nicolas Church, Amsterdam .... „ 154
Canal in the Jews' Quarter, Amsterdam . . „ 162
Volendam  „ 202
Cheese Market, Alkmaar  „ 206
The Harbour Tower, Hoorn  „ 214
Market Place, Weigh-House, Hoorn ... „ 220
The Dromedaris Tower, Enkhuisen ... ,, 226
Harlingen  „ 242
Kampen  „ 256
Arnheim  „ 264
The Market Place, Nymwegen .... „ 276
Middelburg  „ 286

To face 11

page

2
12

14
22263°

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN MONOTONE
Girl's Head. Jan Vermeer of Delft (Mauritshuis)
The Store Cupboard. Peter de Hooch (Ryks) .
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Portrait of a Youth. Jan van Scorel (Boymans
Museum, Rotterdam) 
The Sick Woman. Jan Steen (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Anxious Family. Josef Israels ....
View of Dort. Albert Cuyp (Ryks) ....
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Never-Ending Prayer. Nicholas Maes (Ryks) „ 34
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
A Lady. Paulus Moreelse (Ryks) .... „ 40
Pilgrims to Jerusalem. Jan van Scorel (Kunstliefde
Museum, Utrecht)  „ 46
View of Delft. Jan Vermeer (Mauritshuis) . . ,,58
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The School of Anatomy. Rembrandt (Mauritshuis) ,, 66
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
A Young Woman. Rembrandt (Mauritshuis) . . ,, 68
The Steen Family. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis) . . ,,74
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Menagerie. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis) . . ,,80
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Portrait of G. Bicker, Landrichter of Muiden. Van
der Heist (Ryks)  „ 86
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IX

The Syndics. Rembrandt (Ryks) .... To face page 104
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Oyster Feast. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis) .
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Young Housekeeper. Gerard Dou (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Breakfast. Gabriel Metsu (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Groote Kerk. Johannes Bosboom (Boymans
Museum, Rotterdam) 

The Painter and his Wife (?). Frans Hals (Ryks
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Group of Arquebusiers. Frans Hals (Haarlem)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Cat's Dancing Lesson. Jan Steen (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The " Night Watch ". Rembrandt (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Reader. Jan Vermeer (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Milking Time. Anton Mauve .
Paternal Advice. Gerard Terburg (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Spinner. Nicholas Maes (Ryks) .
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Clara Alewijn. Dirck Santvoort (Ryks) .
Family Scene. Jan Steen (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Little Princess. Paulus Moreelse (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Shepherd and his Flock. Anton Mauve
Helene van der Schalke. Gerard Terburg (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Elizabeth Bas. Rembrandt (Ryks) .
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl

PREFACE
TT would be useless to pretend that this book
is authoritatively informing. It is a series
of personal impressions of the Dutch country and
the Dutch people, gathered during three visits,
together with an accretion of matter, more or
less pertinent, drawn from many sources, old and
new, to which I hope I have given unity. For
trustworthy information upon the more serious
side of Dutch life and character I would
recommend Mr. Meldrum's Holland and the
Hollanders. My thanks are due to my friends,
Mr. and Mrs. Emil Liiden, for saving me from
many errors by reading this work in MS.
E. V. L.

A WANDERER IN HOLLAND

CHAPTER I
ROTTERDAM
To Rotterdam by water— To Rotterdam by rail— Holland's monotony of
scenery— Holland in England— Rotterdam's few merits— The life of
the river— The Rhine— Walt Whitman— Crowded canals— Barge
life — The Dutch high-ways — A perfect holiday — The canal's in
fluence on the national character— The florin and the franc — Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu— The old and the poor— Holland's health-
Funeral customs — The chemists' shops — Erasmus of Rotterdam —
Latinised names — Peter de Hooch — True aristocracy — The Boy
mans treasures — Modern Dutch art — Matthew Maris — The Rotter
dam Zoo — -The herons — The stork's mission — The ourang-outang —
An eighteenth-century miser — A successful merchant — The Queen-
Mother— Tom Hood in Rotterdam— Gouda.
IT was possible until the autumn of 1904 to sail all the
way to Rotterdam; but passengers by the Harwich
route are now landed at the Hook, which is just a wharf
and a railway station. I am sorry for this, because after
a rough passage it was very pleasant to glide in the early
morning steadily up the Maas and gradually acquire a
sense of Dutch quietude and greyness. But to disembark
at the Hook at five a.m. and proceed by train has now
become a necessity ; and one therefore misses the river,
with the little villages on its banks, each with a tiny canal-
harbour of its own ; the groups of trees in the early mist ;

2 THE CHARM OF MONOTONY
the gulls and herons; and the increasing traffic as one
drew nearer Schiedam and at last reached that forest of
masts which is known as Rotterdam.
But now that the only road to Rotterdam is the road of
iron all that is past, and yet there is some compensation,
for short as the journey is one may ground oneself very
thoroughly in the characteristic scenery of Holland before
it is finished. No one who looks steadily out of the
windows between the Hook and Rotterdam has much to
learn thereafter. Only changing skies and atmospheric
effects can provide him with novelty, for most of Holland
is Hke that. He has the formula. Nor is it necessarily
new to him if he knows England well, North Holland
being merely the Norfolk Broads, the Essex marshlands
about Burnham-on-Crouch, extended. Only in its pecu
liarity of light and in its towns has Holland anything that
we have not at home.
England has even its canal life too, if one cared to in
vestigate it ; the Broads are populous with wherries and
barges ; cheese is manufactured in England in a score of
districts ; cows range our meadows as they range the
meadows of the Dutch. We go to Holland to see the
towns, the pictures and the people. We go also because
so many of us are so constituted that we never use our
eyes until we are on foreign soil. It is as though a Cook's
ticket performed an operation for cataract.
But because one can learn the character of Dutch
scenery so quickly — on a single railway journey— I do not
wish to suggest that henceforward it becomes monotonous
and trite. One may learn the character of a friend very
quickly, and yet wish to be in his company continually.
Holland is one of the most delightful countries to move
about in : everything that happens in it is of interest I

GIRL'S HEAD
JAN VERMEER OF DELFT
From the picture in the Mauritshuis

THE RHINE AND THE THAMES 3
have never quite lost the sense of excitement in crossing a
canal in the train and getting a momentary glimpse of its
receding straightness, perhaps broken by a brown sail. In
a country where, between the towns, so little happens, even
the slightest things make a heightened appeal to the ob
server; while one's eyes are continually kept bright and
one's mind stimulated by the ever-present freshness and
clearness of the land and its air.
Rotterdam, it should be said at once, is not a pleasant
city. It must be approached as a centre of commerce and
maritime industry, or not at all ; if you do not like sailor
men and sailor ways, noisy streets and hurrying people,
leave Rotterdam behind, and let the train carry you to The
Hague. It is not even particularly Dutch : it is cosmo
politan. The Dutch are quieter than this, and cleaner.
And yet Rotterdam is unique — its church of St. Lawrence
has a grey and sombre tower which has no equal in the
country ; there is a windmill on the Cool Singel which is
essentially Holland ; the Boymans Museum has a few admir
able pictures ; there is a curiously fascinating stork in the
Zoological Gardens ; and the river is a scene of romantic
energy by day and night. I think you must go to Rotter
dam, though it be only for a few hours.
At Rotterdam we see what the Londoner misses by
having a river that is navigable in the larger sense only
below his city. To see shipping at home we must make
our tortuous way to the Pool ; Rotterdam has the Pool
in her midst. Great ships pass up and down all day.
The Thames, once its bustling mercantile life is cut short
by London Bridge, dwindles to a stream of pleasure ; the
Maas becomes the Rhine.
('¦', Walt Whitman is the only writer who has done justice
to a great harbour, and he only by that sheer force of

4 WALT ON THE HARBOUR
enumeration which in this connection rather stands for than
is poetry. As a matter of fact it is the reader of such an
inventory as we find in " Crossing Brooklyn Feny " that is
the poet : Whitman is only the machinery. Whitman
gives the suggestion and the reader's own memory or
imagination does the rest. Many of the lines might as
easily have been written of Rotterdam as of Brooklyn : —
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine
pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,
The White wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the
wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome
crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the
granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd on each
side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighbouring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning
high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light
over the tops of the houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
There is of course nothing odd in the description of one
harbour fitting another, for harbours have no one nation
ality but all. Whitman was not otherwise very strong
upon Holland. He writes in " Salut au Monde " of " the
sail and steamships of the world " which in his mind's eye
he beholds as they
Wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, The Hague, Copenhagen.
It is not easy for one of the " sail or steamships of the
world " to wait steamed up at The Hague ; because The
Hague has no harbour except for small craft and barges.

SPRING CLEANING PASSIM 5
Shall we assume, with great charity, that Walt feared that
the word Rotterdam might impair his rhythm ?
Not only big shipping : I think one may see barges and
canal boats in greater variety at Rotterdam than anywhere
else. One curious thing to be noticed as they lie at rest
in the canals is the absence of men. A woman is always
there ; her husband only rarely. The only visible captain
is the fussy, shrewish little dog which, suspicious of the
whole world, patrols the boat from stem to stern, and warns
you that it is against the law even to look at his property.
I hope his bite is not equal to his bark.
Every barge has its name. What the popular style was
seven years ago, when I was here last, I cannot remember ;
but to-day it is " Wilhelmina ". English suburban villas
have not a greater variety of fantastic names than the canal
craft of Holland ; nor, with all our monopoly of the word
" home," does the English suburban villa suggest more com
pact cosiness than one catches gleams of through their cabin
windows or down their companions.
Spring cleaning goes on here, as in the Dutch houses, all
the year round, and the domiciliary part of the vessels is
spotless. Every bulwark has a washing tray that can be
fixed or detached in a moment. " It's a fine day, let us
kill something," says the Englishman; " Here's an odd
moment, let us wash something," says the Dutch vrouw.
In some of the Rotterdam canals the barges are so
packed that they lie touching each other, with their
burgees flying all in the same direction, as the vanes of
St. Sepulchre's in Holborn cannot do. How they ever get
disentangled again and proceed on their free way to their
distant homes is a mysteiy. But in the shipping world
incredible things can happen at night.
One does not, perhaps, in Rotterdam realise all at once

6 A LOTOS-EATER
that every drop of water in these city-bound canals is
related to every other drop of water in the other canals of
Holland , however distant. From any one canal you can reach
in time every other. The canal is really much more the
high road of the country than the road itself. The barge
is the Pickford van of Holland. Here we see some of the
secret of the Dutch deliberateness. A country which must
wait for its goods until a barge brings them has every
opportunity of acquiring philosophic phlegm.
After a while one gets accustomed to the ever-present
canal and the odd spectacle (to us) of masts in the streets
and sails in the fields. All the Dutch towns are amphibious,
but some are more watery than others.
The Dutch do not use their wealth of water as we should.
They do not swim in it, they do not race on it, they do not
row for pleasure at all. Water is their servant, never a
light-hearted companion.
I can think of no more reposeful holiday than to step on
board one of these barges wedged together in a Rotter
dam canal, and never lifting a finger to alter the natural
course of events— to accelerate or divert — be earned by it
to, say, Harlingen, in . Friesland : between the meadows ;
under the noses of the great black and white cows ; past
herons fishing in the rushes ; through little villages with
dazzling milk-cans being scoured on the banks, and the
good-wives washing, and saturnine smokers in black velvet
slippers passing the time of day ; through big towns, by rows
of sombre houses seen through a delicate screen of leaves ;
under low bridges crowded with children ; through narrow
locks ; ever moving, moving, slowly and sm-ely, sometimes
sailing, sometimes quanting, sometimes being towed, with
the wide Dutch sky overhead, and the plovers ay ing in it,
and the clean west wind driving the windmills, and every-

ROTTERDAM

THE FLORIN AND THE FRANC 7
thing just as it was in Rembrandt's day and just as it will
be five hundred years hence.
Holland when all is said is a country of canals. It may
have cities and pictures, windmills and cows, quaint build
ings, and quainter costumes, but it is a country of canals
before all. The canals set the tune. The canals keep it
deliberate and wise.
One can be in Rotterdam, or in whatever town one's
travels really begin, but a very short time without dis
covering that the Dutch unit — the florin — is a very
unsatisfactory servant. The dearness of Holland strikes
one continually, but it does so with peculiar force if one
has crossed the frontier from Belgium, where the unit is
a franc. It is too much to say that a sovereign in Holland
is worth only twelve shillings : the case is not quite so
extreme as that; but a sovereign in Belgium is, for all
practical purposes, worth twenty-five shillings, and the
contrast after reaching Dutch soil is very striking. One
has to recollect that the spidery letter " f," which in those
friendly little restaurants in the Rue Hareng at Brussels
had stood for a franc, now symbolises that far more serious
item the florin; and f. 1.50, which used to be a trifle of
one and threepence, is now half a crown.
Even in our own country, where we know something
about the cost of things, we are continually conscious of
the fallacy embodied in the statement that a sovereign is
equal to twenty shillings. We know that in theory that
is so ; but we know also that it is so only as long as the
sovereign remains unchanged. Change it and it is worth
next to nothing — half a sovereign and a little loose silver.
But in Holland the disparity is even more pathetic. To
change a sovereign there strikes one as the most ridiculous
business transaction of one's life.

8 TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Certain things in Holland are dear beyond all under
standing. At The Hague, for example, we drank Eau
d'Evian, a very popular bottled water for which in any
French restaurant one expects to pay a few pence; and
when the bill arrived this simple fluid cut such a dashing
figure in it that at first I could not recognise it at all.
When I put the matter to the landlord, he explained that
the duty made it impossible for him to charge less than
f. 1.50 (or half a crown) a bottle; but I am told that his
excuse was too fanciful. None the less, half a crown was
the charge, and apparently no one objects to pay it. The
Dutch, on pleasure or eating bent, are prepared to pay
anything. One would expect to get a reasonable claret
for such a figure ; but not in Holland. Wine is good there,
but it is not cheap. Only in one hotel — and that in the
unspoiled north, at Groningen — did I see wine placed auto
matically upon the table, as in France.
Rotterdam must have changed for the worse under
modern conditions ; for it is no longer as it was in Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu's day. From Rotterdam in 1716
she sent the Countess of Mar a pretty account of the city :
" All the streets are paved with broad stones, and before
the meanest artificers' doors seats of various coloured
marbles, and so neatly kept that, I will assure you, I
walked all over the town yesterday, Incognita, in mv
slippers, without receiving one spot of dirt ; and you may
see the Dutch maids washing the pavement of the street
with more application than ours do our bed-chambers. The
town seems so full of people, with such busy faces, all in
motion, that I can hardly fancy that it is not some cele
brated fair ; but I see it is every day the same.
" The shops and warehouses are of a surprising neatness
and magnificence, filled with an incredible quantity of fine

A COMPETENCY EVERYWHERE 9
merchandise, and so much cheaper than what we see in
England, I have much ado to persuade myself I am still
so near it. Here is neither dirt nor beggary to be seen.
One is not shocked with those loathsome cripples, so common
in London, nor teased with the importunities of idle fellows
and wenches, that choose to be nasty and lazy. The
common servants and the little shopwomen here are more
nicely clean than most of our ladies ; and the great variety
of neat dresses (every woman dressing her head after her
own fashion) is an additional pleasure in seeing the town."
The claims of business have now thrust aside many of
the little refinements described by Lady Mary, her descrip
tion of which has but to be transferred to some of the
smaller Dutch towns to be however in the main still ac
curate. But what she says of the Dutch servants is true
everywhere to this minute. There are none more fresh and
capable ; none who carry their lot with more quiet dignity.
Not the least part of the very warm hospitality which is
offered in Dutch houses is played by the friendliness of the
servants. Every one in Holland seems to have enough ; no one too
much. Great wealth there may be among the merchants,
but it is not ostentatious. Holland still seems to have no
poor in the extreme sense of the word, no rags. Doubtless
the labourers that one sees are working at a low rate, but
they are probably living comfortably at a lower, and are not
to be pitied except by those who still cherish the illusion
that riches mean happiness. The dirt and poverty that
exist in every English town and village are very uncommon.
Nor does one see maimed, infirm or very old people, except
now and then — so rarely as at once to be reminded of their
rarity. One is struck, even in Rotterdam, which is a peculiarly

10 THE RITUAL OF DISSOLUTION
strenuous town, by the ruddy health of the people in the
streets. In England, as one walks about, one sees too often
the shadow of Death on this face and that ; but in Holland
it is difficult to believe in his power, the people have so
prosperous, so permanent, an air.
That the Dutch die there is no doubt, for a funeral is
an almost daily object, and the aanspreker is continually
hurrying by; but where are the dead? The cemeteries
are minute, and the churches have no churchyards. Of
Death, however, when he comes the nation is very proud.
The mourning customs are severe and enduring. No ex
pense is spared in spreading the interesting tidings. It is
for this purpose that the aanspreker flourishes in his impor
tance and pomp. Draped heavily in black, from house to
house he moves, wherever the slightest ties of personal or
business acquaintanceship exist, and announces his news.
A lady of Hilversum tells me that she was once formally
the recipient of the message, " Please, ma'am, the baker's
compliments, and he's dead," the time and place of the
interment following. I said draped in black, but the
aanspreker is not so monotonous an official as that. He
has his subtleties, his nuances. If the deceased is a child,
he adds a white rosette ; if a bachelor or a maid, he in
timates the fact by degrees of trimming.
The aanspreker was once occasionally assisted by the
huilebalk, but I am afraid his day is over. The huilebalk
accompanied the aansprekers from house to house and wept
on the completion of their sad message. He wore a wide
awake hat with a very large brim and a long-tailed coat.
If properly paid, says my informant, real tears coursed
down his cheeks ; in any case his presence was a luxury
possible only to the rich.
The aanspreker is called in also at the other end of

DRUGS AND NONCHALANCE 11
life. Assuming a more jocund air, he trips from house to
house announcing little strangers.
That the Dutch are a healthy people one might gather
also from the character of their druggists. In this country,
even in very remote towns, one may reveal one's symptoms
to a chemist or his assistant feeling certain that he will
know more or less what to prescribe. But in Holland the
chemists are often young women, who preside over shops
in which one cannot repose any confidence. One likes a
chemist's shop at least to look as if it contained reasonable
remedies. These do not. Either our shops contain too
many drugs or these too few. The chemist's sign, a large
comic head with its mouth wide open (known as the
gaper), is also subversive of confidence. A chemist's shop
is no place for jokes. In Holland one must in short do
as the Dutch do, and remain well.
Rotterdam's first claim to consideration, apart from its
commercial importance, is that it gave birth to Erasmus,
a bronze statue of whom stands in the Groote Market,
looking down on the stalls of fruit. Erasmus of Rotter
dam — it sounds like a contradiction in terms. Gherardt
Gherardts of Rotterdam is a not dishonourable cacophany
— and that was the reformer's true name ; but the fashion
of the time led scholars to adopt a Hellenised, or Latinised,
style. Erasmus Desiderius, his new name, means Beloved
and long desired. Grotius, Barlaeus, Vossius, Arminius, all
sacrificed local colour to smooth syllables. We should be
very grateful that the fashion did not spread also to the
painters. What a loss it would be had the magnificent
rugged name of Rembrandt van Rhyn been exchanged for
a smooth emasculated Latinism.
Rotterdam had another illustrious son whose work as
little suggests his birthplace — the exquisite painter Peter

12 TRUE ARISTOCRACY
de Hooch. According to the authorities he modelled his
style upon Rembrandt and Fabritius, but the influence of
Rembrandt is concealed from the superficial observer. De
Hooch, whose pictures are very scarce, worked chiefly at
Delft and Haarlem, and it was at Haarlem that he died
in 1681. If one were put to it to find a new standard of
aristocracy superior to accidents of blood or rank one
might do worse than demand as the ultimate test the pos
session of either a Vermeer of Delft or a Peter de Hooch.
One only of Peter de Hooch's pictures is reproduced in
this book — " The Store Cupboard ". This is partly because
there are, I think, better paintings of his in London than
at Amsterdam. At least it seems to me that his pictm-e
in our National Gallery of the waiting maid is finer than
anything by De Hooch in Holland. But in no other work
of his that I know is his simple charm so apparent as in
"The Store Cupboard". This is surely the Christmas
supplement carried out to its highest power — and by its
inventor. The thousands of domestic scenes which have
proceeded from this one canvas make the memory reel ; and
yet nothing has staled the prototype. It remains a sweet
and genuine and radiant thing. De Hooch had two
fetishes — a rich crimson dress or jacket and an open door.
His compatriot Vermeer, whom he sometimes resembles,
was similarly addicted to a note of blue.
No one has managed direct sunlight so well as De
Hooch. The light in his rooms is the fight of day. One
can almost understand how Rembrandt and Gerard Dou
got their concentrated effects of illumination; but how
this omnipresent radiance streamed from De Hooch's
palette is one of the mysteries. It is as though he did not
paint light but found light on his canvas and painted
everything else in its midst.

THE STORE OUTBOARD
PETER DE HOOCH
From the picture, in the Ryks Museitu

SOME ROTTERDAM PICTURES 13
Rotterdam has some excellent pictures in its Boymans
Museum; but they are, I fancy, overlooked by many
visitors. It seems no city in which to see pictures. It is
a city for anything rather than art — a mercantile centre,
a hive of bees, a shipping port of intense activity. And
yet perhaps the quietest little Albert Cuyp in Holland is
here, " De Oude Oostpoort te Rotterdam," a small evening
scene, without cattle, suffused in a golden glow. But all
the Cuyps, and there are six, are good — all inhabited by
their own light.
Among the other Boymans treasures which I find I
have marked (not necessarily because they are good — for
I am no judge — but because I liked them) are Ferdinand
Bol's fine free portrait of Dirck van der Waeijen, a boy
in a yellow coat ; Erckhart's " Boaz and Ruth," a small
sombre canvas with a suggestion of Velasquez in it ;
Hobbema's "Boomrijk Landschap," one of the few paint
ings of this artist that Holland possesses. The English,
I might remark, always appreciative judges of Dutch art,
have been particularly assiduous in the pursuit of Hob-
bema, with the result that his best work is in our country.
Holland has nothing of his to compare with the " Avenue
at Middelharnis," one of the gems of our National Gallery.
And his feathery trees may be studied at the Wallace
Collection in great comfort.
Other fine landscapes in the Boymans Museum are three
by Johan van Kessel, who was a pupil of Hobbema, one
by Jan van der Meer, one by Koninck, and, by Jacob van
Ruisdael, a cornfield in the sun and an Amsterdam canal
with white sails upon it. The most notable head is that
by Karel Fabritius ; Hendrick Pot's " Het Lokstertje "
is interesting for its large free manner and signs of the
influence of Hals ; and Emmanuel de Witte's Amsterdam

14 MODERN DUTCH PAINTERS
fishmarket is curiously modem. But the figure picture
which most attracted me was "Portret van een jongeling,'
by Jan van Scorel, of whom we shall learn more at Utrecht.
This little portrait, which I reproduce on the opposite
page, is wholly charming and vivid.
The Boymans Museum contains also modern Dutch
paintings. Wherever modern Dutch paintings are to
be seen, I look first for the delicate art of Matthew Maris,
and next for Anton Mauve. Here there is no Matthew
Maris, and but one James Maris. There is one Mauve.
The modern Dutch painter for the most part paints the
same picture so often. But Matthew Maris is full of sur
prises. If a new picture by any of his contemporaries
stood with its face to the wall one would know what to
expect. From Israels, a fisherman's wife ; from Mesdag,
a grey stretch of sea ; from Bosboom, a superb church
interior ; from Mauve, a peasant with sheep or a peasant
with a cow ; from Weissenbruch, a stream and a willow ;
from Breitner, an Amsterdam street; from James Maris
a masterly scene of boats and wet sky. Usually one would
have guessed aright. But with Matthew Maris is no
certainty. It may be a little dainty girl lying on her side
and watching butterflies ; it may be a sombre hillside at
Montmartre ; it may be a girl cooking ; it may be scaf
folding in Amsterdam, or a mere at evening, or a baby's
head, or a village street. He has many moods, and he is
always distinguished and subtle.
Rotterdam has a zoological garden which, although
inferior to ours, is far better than that at Amsterdam,
while it converts The Hague's Zoo into a travesty. Last
spring the lions were in splendid condition. They are well
housed, but fewer distractions are provided for them than
in Regent's Park. I found myself fascinated by the herons

PORTRAIT OF A YOUTH
JAN VAN SCOREL
From the picture i7i the Boy7iia7is Museum, Rotterdam

THE STORK 15
who were continually soaring out over the neighbouring
houses and returning like darkening clouds. In England,
although the heron is a native, we rarely seem to see him ;
while to study him is extremely difficult. In Holland he
is ubiquitous : both wild and tame.
More interesting still was the stork, whose nest is set
high on a pinnacle of the buffalo house. He was building
in the leisurely style of the British working man. He
would negligently descend from the heavens with a stick.
This he would lay on the fabric and then carefully perform
his toilet, looking round and down all the time to see that
every one else was busy. Whenever his eye lighted upon
a* toddling child or a perambulator it visibly brightened.
" My true work ! " he seemed to say ; " this nest building
is a mere by-path of industry." After prinking and over
looking, and congratulating himself thus, for a few minutes,
he would stroll off, over the housetops, for another stick.
He was the unquestionable King of the Garden.
Why are there no heronries in the English public parks ?
And why is there no stork ? The Dutch have a proverb,
" Where the stork abides no mother dies in childbed ".
Still more, why are there no storks in France ? The
author of Feconditi should have imported them.
No Zoo, however well managed, can keep an ourang-
outang long, and therefore one should always study that
uncomfortably human creature whenever the opportunity
occurs. I had great fortune at Rotterdam, for I chanced
to be in the ourang-outang's house when his keeper
came in. Entering the enclosure, he romped with him
in a score of diverting ways. They embraced each other,
fed each other, teased each other. The humanness of
the creature was frightful. Perhaps our likeness to
ourang-outangs (except for our ridiculously short arms,

16 A MERCHANT PRINCE
inadequate lower jaws and lack of hair) made him similarly
uneasy. Rotterdam, I have read somewhere, was famous at the
end of the eighteenth century for a miser, the richest man
in the city. He always did his own marketing, and once
changed his butcher because he weighed the paper with
the meat. He bought his milk in farthings worths, half of
which had to be delivered at his front door and half at the
back, "to gain the little advantage of extra measure".
Different travellers note different things, and William
Chambers, the publisher, in his Tour in Holland in 1839,
selected for special notice another type of Rotterdam
resident : " One of the most remarkable men of this [the
merchant] class is Mr. Van Hoboken of Rhoon and Pend-
recht, who lives on one of the havens. This individual
began life as a merchant's porter, and has in process of
time attained the highest rank among the Dutch mercan
tile aristocracy. He is at present the principal owner of
twenty large ships in the East India trade, each, I was
informed, worth about fourteen thousand pounds, besides
a large landed estate, and much floating wealth of differ
ent descriptions. His establishment is of vast extent, and
contains departments for the building of ships and manu
facture of all their necessary equipments. This gentleman,
until lately, was in the habit of giving a splendid fete once
a year to his family and friends, at which was exhibited
with modest pride the porter's truck which he drew at the
outset of his career. One seldom hears of British merchants
thus keeping alive the remembrance of early meanness of
circumstances." At one of Rotterdam's stations I saw the Queen-Mother,
a smiling, maternal lady in a lavender silk dress, carrying a
large bouquet, and saying pretty things to a deputation

HOOD'S ROTTERDAM POEM 17
drawn up on the platform. Rotterdam had put out its
best bunting, and laid six inches of sand on its roads, to do
honour to this kindly royalty. The band played the tender
national anthem, which is always so unlike what one ex
pects it to be, as her train steamed away, and then all the
grave bearded gentlemen in uniforms and frock coats who
had attended her drove in their open carriages back to the
town. Not even the presence of the mounted guard made
it more formal than a family party. Everybody seemed on
the best of friendly terms of equality with everybody else.
Tom Hood, who had it in him to be so good a poet, but
living in a country where art and literature do not count,
was permitted to coarsen his delicate genius in the hunt
for bread, wrote one of his comic poems on Rotterdam.
In it are many happy touches of description : —
Before me lie dark waters
In broad canals and deep,
Whereon the silver moonbeams
Sleep, restless in their sleep ;
A sort of vulgar Venice
Reminds me where I am ;
Yes, yes, you are in England,
And I'm at Rotterdam.
Tall houses with quaint gables,
Where frequent windows shine,
And quays that lead to bridges,
And trees in formal line,
And masts of spicy vessels
From western Surinam,
All tell me you're in England,
But I'm in Rotterdam.
With headquarters at Rotterdam one may make certain
small journeys into the neighbourhood — to Dordrecht by
river, to Delft by canal, to Gouda by canal ; or one may
take longer voyages, even to Cologne if one wishes. But I

18 GOUDA
do not recommend it as a city to linger in. Better than
Rotterdam's large hotels are, I think, the smaller, humbler
and more Dutch inns of the less commercial towns. This
indeed is the case all over Holland : the plain Dutch inn
of the neighbouring small town is pleasanter than the large
hotels of the city ; and, as I have remarked in the chapter
on Amsterdam, the distances are so short, and the trains
so numerous, that one suffers no inconvenience from staying
in the smaller places.
Gouda (pronounced Hooda) it is well to visit from Rotter
dam, for it has not enough to repay a sojourn in its midst.
It has a Groote Kerk and a pretty isolated white stadhuis.
But Gouda's fame rests on its stained glass — gigantic re
presentations of myth, history and scripture, chieflv by
the brothers Crabeth. The windows are interesting rather
than beautiful. They lack the richness and mystery which
one likes to find in old stained glass, and the church itself
is bare and cold and unfriendly. Hemmed in by all this
coloured glass, so able and so direct, one sighs for a
momentary glimpse of the rose window at Chartres, or even
of the too heavily kaleidoscopic patterns of Brussels Cathe
dral. No matter, the Gouda windows in their way are
very fine, and in the sixth, depicting the story of Judith
and Holofernes, there is a very fascinating little Diireresque
tower on a rock under siege.
If one is taking Gouda on the way from Rotterdam
to Amsterdam, the surrounding country should not be
neglected from the carriage windows. Holland is rarely
so luxuriant as here, and so peacefully beautiful.

CHAPTER II
THE DUTCH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Hard things against the Dutch — Andrew Marvell's satire — The iniquity
of living below sea-level — Historic sarcasms — " Invent a shovel and
be a magistrate" — Heterogeneity — Foot warmers — A champion of
the Hollow Land — The Dutch Drawn to the hife— Dutch suspicion
— Sir William Temple's opinion — and Sir Thomas Overbuiy's — Dr.
Johnson's project — Dutch courtesy — Dutch discourtesy — National
manners — A few phrases — The origin of " Dutch News " — A vindica
tion of Dutch courage.
TO say hard things of the Dutch was once a recognised
literary pastime. At the time of our war with
Holland no poet of any pretensions refrained from writing
at least one anti-Batavian satire, the classical example of
which is Andrew Marvell's " Character of Holland " (follow
ing Samuel Butler's), a pasquinade that contains enough
wit and fancy and contempt to stock a score of the nation's
ordinary assailants. It begins perfectly : —
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but th' off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heav'd the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell
Of shipwrackt cockle and the muscle-shell :
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shoar ;
And div'd as desperately for each piece
(19)

20 NAPOLEON AND ALVA
Of earth, as ift had been of ambergreece ;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away ;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roul,
Transfusing into them their dunghil soul.
How did they rivet, with gigantick piles,
Thorough the center their new-catched miles ;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground ;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky 1
Yet still his claim the injur'd ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog ore their steeples plaid :
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boyl ;
The earth and water play at level-coyl.
The fish oft-times the burger dispossest,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest,
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole sholes of Dutch serv'd up for Cabillau ;
Or, as they over the new level rang'd
For pickled herring, pickled heeren chang'd.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake.
The poor Dutch were never forgiven for living below the
sea-level and gaining their security by magnificent feats
of engineering and persistence. Why the notion of a
reclaimed land should have seemed so comic I cannot
understand, but Marvell certainly justified the joke.
Later, Napoleon, who liked to sum up a nation in a
phrase, accused Holland of being nothing but a deposit of
German mud, thrown there by the Rhine : while the Duke
of Alva remarked genially that the Dutch were of all
peoples those that lived nighest to hell ; but Marvell's
sarcasms are the best. Indeed I doubt if the literature
of droll exaggeration has anything to compare with " The
Character of Holland ".

KING OF THE DUTCH 21
The satirist, now thoroughly warmed to his congenial
task, continues: —
Therefore Necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings ;
For, as with pygmees, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry, he that treasures grain,
Among the blind, the one-ey'd blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that draines :
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands ;
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father, speak ;
To make a bank, was a great plot of State,
Invent a shov'l, and be a magistrate.
So much for the conquest of Neptune, which in another
nation were a laudable enough enterprise. Marvell then
passes on to the national religion and the heterogeneity of
Amsterdam : —
'Tis probable Religion, after this,
Came next in order, which they could not miss ;
How could the Dutch but be converted, when
Th' Apostles were so many fishermen ?
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their land, so them did re-baptize.
Though Herring for their God few voices mist,
And Poor-John to have been th' Evangelist,
Faith, that could never twins conceive before,
Never so fertile, spawn'd upon this shore
More pregnant than their Marg'ret, that laid down
For Hans-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town.
Sure when Religion did itself imbark,
And from the East would Westward steer its ark,
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground,
Each one thence pillag'd the first piece he found :
Hence Amsterdam, Turk-Christian-Pagan-Jew,
Staple of sects, and mint of schisme grew ;
That bank of conscience, where not one so strange
Opinion bat finds credit, and exchange.
In vain for Catholicks ourselves we bear ;

22 RELIGION AND FOOTSTOOLS
The universal Church is only there.
Nor can civility there want for tillage,
Where wisely for their Court, they chose a village :
How fit a title clothes their governours,
Themselves the hogs, as all their subject bores !
Let it suffice to give their country fame,
That it had one Civilis call'd by name,
Some fifteen hundred and more years ago,
But surely never any that was so.
There is something rather splendid in the attitude of a
man who can take a whole nation as his butt and bend
every circumstance to his purpose of ridicule and attack.
Our satirists to-day are contented to pillory individuals or
possibly a sect or clique. Marvell's enjoyment in his own
exuberance and ingenuity is so apparent and infectious
that it matters nothing to us whether he was fair or
unfair. The end is inconclusive, being a happy recollection that
he had omitted any reference to stoofjes, the footstools
filled with burning peat which are used to keep the feet
warm in church. Such a custom was of course not less
reprehensible than the building of dykes to keep out the
sea. Hence these eight lines, which, however, would have
come better earlier in the poem :—
See but their mermaids, with their tails of fish,
Reeking at church over the chafing-dish !
A vestal turf, enshrin'd in earthen ware,
Fumes through the loopholes of a wooden square ;
Each to the temple with these altars tend,
But still does place it at her western end ;
While the fat steam of female sacrifice
Fills the priest's nostrils, and puts out his eyes.
Not all the poets, however, abused the Dutch. John
Hagthorpe, in his England's Exchequer in 1625 (written
before the war : hence, perhaps, his kindness) thus addressed
the " hollow land/' :—

THE SICK WOMAN
JAN STEEN
Fro77i the picture in the Ryks Museum

" THE DUTCH DRAWN TO THE LIFE " 23
Fair Holland, had'st thou England's chalky rocks,
To gird thy watery waist ; her healthful mounts,
With tender grass to feed thy nibbling flocks :
Her pleasant groves, and crystalline clear founts,
Most happy should'st thou be by just accounts,
That in thine age so fresh a youth do'st feel
Though flesh of oak, and ribs of brass and steel.
But what hath prudent mother Nature held
From thee — that she might equal shares impart
Unto her other sons — that's not compell'd
To be the guerdons of thy wit and art ?
And industry, that brings from every part
Of every thing the fairest and the best,
Like the Arabian bird to build thy nest ?
Like the Arabian bird thy nest to build,
With nimble wings thou flyest for Indian sweets,
And incense which the Sabaan forests yield,
And in thy nest the goods of each pole meets, —
Which thy foes hope, shall serve thy funeral rites —
But thou more wise, secur'd by thy deep skill,
Dost build on waves, from fires more safe than hill.
To return to the severer critics — in 1664 was published
a little book called The Dutch Drawn to the Life, a hostile
work not improbably written with the intention of exciting
English animosity to the point of war. A great deal was
made of the success of the Dutch fisheries and the mis
management of our own. The nation was criticised in all
its aspects — " well nigh three millions of men, well-propor
tioned, great lovers of our English beer ". The following
passage on the drinking capacity of the Dutch would have
to be modified to-day : —
By their Excise, which riseth with their charge, the more money they
pay, the more they receive again, in that insensible but profitable way :
what is exhaled up in clouds, falls back again in showers : what the
souldier receives in pay, he payes in Drink : their very enemies, though
they hate the State, yet love their liquor, and pay excise : the most idle,
slothful, and most improvident,' that selleth his blood for drink, and his
flesh for bread, serves at his own charge, for every pay day he payeth his
sutler, and he the common purse.

24 EVENING STARRE AND MORNING STARRE
Here are other strokes assisting to the protraiture " to
the life" of this people: "Their habitations are kept
handsomer than then- bodies, and their bodies than their
soules". — "The Dutch man's building is not large, but
neat ; handsome on the outside, on the inside hung with
pictures and tapestry. He that hath not bread to eat
hath a picture." — "They are seldom deceived, for they
will trust nobody. They may always deceive, for you must
trust them, as for instance, if you travel, to ask a bill of
Particulars is to purre in a wasp's nest, you must pay what
they ask as sure as if it were the assessment of a Subsidy."
But the wittiest and shrewdest of the prose critics of
Holland was Owen Feltham, from whom I quote later.
His little book on the Low Countries is as packed with
pointed phrase as a satire by Pope : the first half of it
whimsically destructive, the second half eulogistic. It is
he who charges the Dutch convivial spirits with drinking
down the Evening Starre and drinking up the Morning
Starre. The old literature tells us also that the Dutch were
not always clean. Indeed, their own painters prove this :
Ostade pre-eminently. There are many allusions in Eliza
bethan and early Stuart literature to their dirt and rags.
In Earle's Microcosmography, for example, a younger
brother's last refuge is said to be the Low Countries,
" where rags and linen are no scandal ". But better
testimony comes perhaps from The English Schole-Master,
a seventeenth-century Dutch- English manual, from which
I quote at some length later in this book. Here is a
specimen scrap of dialogue : —
S. May it please you to give me leave to go out ?
M. Whither?
S. Home.

TEMPLE AND OVERBURY 25
M. How is it that you goe so often home ?
S. My mother commanded that I and my brother should come to her
this day.
M. For what cause ?
S. That our mayd may beat out our clothes.
M. What is that to say ? Are you louzie ?
S. Yea, very louzie.
Sir William Temple, the patron of Swift, the husband
of Dorothy Osborne, and our ambassador at The Hague
— where he talked horticulture, cured his gout by the
remedy known as Moxa, and collected materials for the
leisurely essays and memoirs that were to be written at
Moor Park — knew the Dutch well and wrote of them with
much particularity. In his Observations upon the United
Provinces he says this : " Holland is a country, where
the earth is better than the air, and profit more in request
than honour ; where there is more sense than wit ; more
good nature than good humour, and more wealth than
pleasure : where a man would chuse rather to travel than
to live ; shall find more things to observe than desire ;
and more persons to esteem than to love. But the same
qualities and dispositions do not value a private man and
a state, nor make a conversation agreeable, and a govern
ment great : nor is it unlikely, that some very great King
might make but a very ordinary private gentleman, and
some very extraordinary gentleman might be capable of
making but a very mean Prince."
Among other travellers who have summed up the Dutch
in a few phrases is Sir Thomas Overbuiy, the author of
some witty characters, including that very charming one
of a Happy Milk Maid. In 1609 he thus generalised upon
the Netherlander : " Concerning the people : they are
neither much devout, nor much wicked ; given all to drink,
and eminently to no other vice ; hard in bargaining, but

26 OTHER WANDERERS IN HOLLAND
just; surly and respectless, as in all democracies; thirsty,
industrious, and cleanly ; disheartened upon the least ill-
success, and insolent upon good ; inventive in manufactures,
and cunning in traffick : and generally, for matter of action,
that natural slowness of theirs, suits better (by reason of
the advisedness and perseverance it brings with it) than
the rashness and changeableness of the French and Floren
tine wits; and the equality of spirits, which is among
them and Switzers, renders them so fit for a democracy :
which kind of government, nations of more stable wits,
being once come to a consistent greatness, have seldom
long endured."
Many Englishmen have travelled in Holland and have
set down the record of their experiences, from Thomas
Coryate downwards. But the country has not been inspir
ing, and Dutch travels are poor reading. Had Dr. Johnson
lived to accompany Bos well on a projected journey we
should be the richer, but I doubt if any very interesting
narrative would have resulted. One of Johnson's con
temporaries, Samuel Ireland, the engraver, and the father
of the fraudulent author of Vortigern, wrote A Picturesque
Tour through Holland, Brabant, and part of France, in
1789, while a few years later one of Charles Lamb's early
"drunken companions," Fell, wrote A Tour through the
Batavian Republic, 1801 ; and both of these books yield a
few experiences not without interest. Fell's is the duller.
I quote from them now and again throughout this volume,
but I might mention here a few of their more general
observations. Fell, for example, was embarrassed by the very formal
politeness of the nation. " The custom of bowing in
Holland," he writes, " is extremely troublesome. It is not
sufficient, as in England, that a person slightly moves his

THE ANXIOUS FAMILY
JOSEF ISRAELS

DUTCH MANNERS TO STRANGERS 27
hat, but he must take it off his head, and continue un
covered till the man is past him to whom he pays the
compliment. The ceremony of bowing is more strictly
observed at Leyden and Haerlem, than at Rotterdam or
The Hague. In either of the former cities, a stranger of
decent appearance can scarcely walk in the streets without
being obliged every minute to pull off his hat, to answer
some civility of the same kind which he receives ; and these
compliments are paid him not only by opulent people, but
by mechanics and labourers, who bow with all the gravity
and politeness of their superiors."
Such civilities to strangers have become obsolete. So far
from courtesy being the rule of the street, it is now, as I
have hinted in the next chapter, impossible for an English
woman whose clothes chance to differ in any particular
from those of the Dutch to escape embarrassing notice.
Staring is cai*ried to a point where it becomes almost a
blow, and laughter and humorous sallies resound. I am
told that the Boer war to a large extent broke down old
habits of politeness to the English stranger.
When one thinks of it, the Dutch habit of staring at
the visitor until he almost wishes the sea would roll in and
submerge him, argues a want of confidence in their country,
tantamount to a confession of failure. Had they a little
more trust in the attractive qualities of their land, a little
more imagination to realise that in other eyes its flatness
and quaintness might be even alluring, they would accept
and acknowledge the compliment by doing as little as pos
sible to make their country's admirers uncomfortable.
" Dutch courage," to which I refer below, is not our
only use of Dutch as a contemptuous adjective. We say
" Dutch Gold " for pinchbeck, " Dutch Myrtle " for a weed.
" I shall talk to you like a Dutch uncle " is another saying,

28 "DUTCH NEWS"
not in this case contemptuous but rather complimentary —
signifying " I'll dress you down to some purpose ". One
piece of slang we share with Holland : the reference to the
pawnbroker as an uncle. In Holland the kindly friend
at the three brass balls (which it may not be generally
known are the ancient arms of Lombardy, the Lombards
being the first money lenders,) is called Oom Jan or Uncle
John. There is still another phrase, " Dutch news," which might
be explained. The term is given by printers to very
difficult copy — Dean Stanley's manuscript, for example, was
probably known as Dutch news, so terrible was his hand,
— and also to " pie ". The origin is to be found in the
following paragraph from Notes and Queries. (The Sir
Richard Phillips concerned was the vegetarian publisher so
finely touched off by Borrow in Lavengro.)
In his youth Sir Richard Phillips edited and published a paper at
Leicester, called the Herald. One day an article appeared in it headed
' Dutch Mail,' and added to it was an announcement that it had arrived
too late for translation, and so had been cut up and printed in the original.
This wondrous article drove half of England crazy, and for years the best
Dutch scholars squabbled and pored over it without being able to arrive
at any idea of what it meant. This famous ' Dutch Mail ' was, in reality,
merely a column of pie. The story Sir Richard tells of this particular pie
he had a whole hand in is this : —
" One evening, before one of our publications, my men and a boy
overturned two or three columns of the paper in type. We had to get
ready in some way for the coaches, which, at four o'clock in the morning,
required four or five hundred papers. After every exertion we were short
nearly a column ; but there stood on the galleys a tempting column of pie.
It suddenly struck me that this might be thought Dutch. I made up the
column, overcame the scruples of the foreman, and so away the country
edition went with its philological puzzle, to worry the honest agricultural
reader's head. There was plenty of time to set up a column of plain
English for the local edition.'.' Sir Richard tells of one man whom he
met in Nottingham who for thirty-four years preserved a copy of the
Leicester Herald, hoping that some day the matter would be explained.

« DUTCH COURAGE " 29
I doubt if any one nation is braver than any other ; and
the fact that from Holland we get the contemptuous term
" Dutch courage," meaning the courage which is dependent
upon spirits (originally as supplied to malefactors about
to mount the scaffold), is no indication that the Dutch
lack bravery. To one who inquired as to the derivation
of the phrase a poet unknown to me thus replied, some-
when in the reign of William IV. The retort, I think,
was sound : — Do you ask what is Dutch courage ?
Ask the Thames, and ask the fleet,
That, in London's fire and plague years,
With De Ruyter yards could mete :
Ask Prince Robert and d'Estrees,
Ask your Solebay and the Boyne,
Ask the Duke, whose iron valour
With our chivalry did join,
Ask your Wellington, oh ask him,
Of our Prince of Orange bold,
And a tale of nobler spirit
Will to wond'ring ears be told ;
And if ever foul invaders
Threaten your King William's throne,
If dark Papacy be running,
Or if Chartists want your own,
Or whatever may betide you,
That needs rid of foreign will,
Only ask of your Dutch neighbours,
And you'll see Dutch courage still.

CHAPTER III
DORDRECHT AND UTRECHT
By water to Dordrecht — Her four rivers — The milkmaid and the coat of
arms — The Staple of Dort — Overhanging houses — Albert Cuyp—
Nicolas Maes — Ferdinand Bol — Ary Scheffer — G. H. Breitner — A
Dort carver — The Synod of Dort — " The exquisite rancour of theo
logians " — La Tulipe Noire — Bernard Mandeville — The exclusive
Englishman — The Castle of Loevenstein — The escape of Grotius —
Gorcum's taste outraged — By rail to Utrecht — A free church — The
great storm of 1674 — Utrecht Cathedral — Jan van Scorel — Paul
Moreelse — A too hospitable museum.
DORDRECHT must be approached by water, because
then one sees her as she was seen so often, and
painted so often, by her great son Albert Cuyp, and by
countless artists since.
I steamed from Rotterdam to Dordrecht on a grey
windy morning, on a passenger boat bound ultimately for
Nymwegen. We carried a very mixed cargo. In a cage
at the bows was a Friesland mare, while the whole of the
deck at the stern was piled high with motor spirit. Be
tween came myriad ban-els of beer and other merchandise.
The course to Dordrecht (which it is simpler to call Dort)
is up the Maas for some miles ; past shipbuilding yards,
at Sylverdyk (where is a great heronry) and Kinderdyk ;
past fishermen dropping their nets for salmon, which they
may take only on certain days, to give their German
brethren, higher up the river, a chance ; past meadows
golden with marsh marigolds ; past every kind of craft,
(30)

5 ^

> 33 ~
3 ^

DORDRECHT'S FOUR RIVERS 31
most attractive of all being the tjalcks with their brown or
black sails and green-lined hulls, not unlike those from
Rochester which swim so steadily in the reaches of the
Thames about Greenwich. The journey takes an hour
and a half, the last half-hour being spent in a canal lead
ing south from the Maas and ultimately joining Dort's
confluence of waters.
It is these rivers that give Dort her peculiar charm.
There is a little cafe on the quay facing the sunset where
one may sit and lose oneself in the eternally interesting
movement of the shipping. I found the town distracting
under the incessant clanging of the tram bell (yet grass
grows among the paving-stones between the rails) ; but
there is no distraction opposite the sunset. On the even
ing that I am remembering the sun left a sky of fiery
orange barred by clouds of essential blackness.
Dort's rivers are the Maas and the Waal, the Linge and
the Merwede ; and when in 1549 Philip of Spain visited
the city, she flourished this motto before him : —
Me Mosa, me Vahalis, me Linga Morvaque cingunt
Biternam Batavae virginis ecce fidens.
The fidelity, at least to Philip and Spain, disappeared ;
but the four rivers still as of old surround Dort with a
cincture. I must give, in the words of the old writer who tells it,
the pretty legend which explains the origin of the Dort
coat of arms : " There is an admirable history concerning
that beautiful and maiden city of Holland called Dort.
The Spaniards had intended an onslaught against it, and
so they had laid thousands of old soldiers in ambush. Not
far from it there did live a rich farmer who did keep many
cows in his ground, to furnish Dort with butter and milk.
The milkmaid coming to milk saw all under the hedges

32 THE HISTORIC MILKMAID
soldiers lying ; seemed to take no notice, but went singing
to her cows ; and having milked, went as merrily away.
Coming to her master's house, she told what she had seen.
The master wondering at it, took the maid with him and
presently came to Dort, told it to the Burgomaster, who
sent a spy immediately, found it true, and prepared for
their safety ; sent to the States, who presently sent soldiers
into the city, and gave order that the river should be let
in at such a sluice, to lay the country under water. It
was done, and many Spaniards were drowned and utterly
disappointed of then- design, and the town saved. The
States, in the memory of the merry milkmaid's good service
to the country, ordered the farmer a large revenue for ever,
to recompense his loss of house, land, and cattle ; caused
the coin of the city to have the milkmaid under her cow
to be engraven, which is to be seen upon the Dort dollar,
stivers, and doights to this day; and so she is set upon
the water gate of Dort ; and she had, during her life, and
her's for ever, an allowance of fifty pounds per annum. A
noble requital for a virtuous action."
Dort's great day of prosperity is over ; but once she
was the richest town in Holland — a result due to the
privilege of the Staple. In other words, she obtained the
right to act as intermediary between the rest of Holland
and the outer world in connection with all the wine, corn,
timber and whatever else might be imported by way of
the Rhine. At Dort the cargoes were unloaded. For
some centuries she enjoyed this privilege, and then in 1618
Rotterdam began to resent it so acutely as to take to
arms, and the financial prosperity of the town, which
would be tenable only by the maintenance of a fleet,
steadily crumbled. To-day she is contented enough, but
the cellars of Wyn Straat, once stored with the juices

A HINT OF VENICE 33
of Rhenish vineyards, are empty. The Staple is no
more, Dort is perhaps the most painted of all Dutch towns,
and with reason ; for certainly no other town sits with
more calm dignity among the waters, nor has any other
town so qnaintly medieval a canal as that which extends
from end to end, far below the level of the streets, crossed
by a series of little bridges. Seen from these bridges it is
the nearest thing; to Venice in all Holland — nearer than
anything in Amsterdam. One may see it not only from
the bridges, but also from little flights of steps off the main
street, and everywhere it is beautiful : the walls rising
from its surface reflected in its depths, green paint splashed
about with perfect effect, bright window boxes, here and
there a woman washing clothes, odd gables above and
bridges in the distance.
Dordrecht's converging facades, which incline towards
each other like deaf people, are, I am told, the result not
of age and sinking foundations, but of design. When
they were built, very many years ago, the city had a law
directing that its roofs should so far project beyond the
perpendicular as to shed their water into the gutter, thus
enabling the passers-by on the pavement to walk unharmed.
I cannot give chapter or verse for this comfortable theory ;
which of course preceded the ingenious Jonas Hanway's
invention of the umbrella. In a small and very imperfect
degree the enactment7 anticipates the covered city of Mr.
H. G. Wells's vision. A Dutch friend to whom I put
the point tells me that more probably the preservation of
bricks and mural carvings was intended, the dryness of
the wayfarer being quite secondary or unforeseen.
Dort's greatest artist was Albert Cuyp, born in 1605.
His body }\§§ jn the church of the Augustines in the same
3

34 CUYP AND MAES
city, where he died in 1691— true to the Dutch painters'
quiet gift of living and dying in their birthplaces. Cuyp
has been called the Dutch Claude, but it is not a good
description. He was more human, more simple, than
Claude. The symbol for him is a scene of cows ; but he
had great versatility, and painted horses to perfection.
I have also seen good portraits from his busy brush.
Faithful to his native town, he painted many pictures of
Dort. We have two in the National Gallery. I have re
produced opposite page 30 his beautiful quiet view of the
town in the Ryks Museum. Dort has changed but little
since then : the schooner would now be a steamer — that is
almost all. The reproduction can give no adequate sug
gestion of Cuyp's gift of diffusing golden light, his most
precious possession.
Another Dort painter, below Albert Cuyp in fame, but
often above him, I think, in interest and power, is Nicolas
Maes, born in 1632 — a great year in Dutch art, for it saw
the birth also of Vermeer of Delft and Peter de Hooch.
Maes, who studied in Rembrandt's studio, was perhaps
the greatest of all that master's pupils. England, as has
been so often the case, appreciated Maes more wisely than
Holland, with the result that some of his best pictures
are here.
But one must go to the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam to
see his finest work of all—" The Endless Prayer," No. 1501,
reproduced on the opposite page. We have at the National
Gallery or the Wallace Collection no Maes equal to this.
His "Card players," however, at the National Gallery, a
free bold canvas, more in the manner of Velasquez than of
his immediate master, is in its way almost as interesting.
To " The Endless Prayer " one feels that Maes's master,
Rembrandt, could have added nothing. It is even conceiv-

THE NEVER-ENDING PRAYER
NICOLAS MAES
From the picture in the Ryks Museum.

THE SACCHARINE SCHEFFER 35
able that he might have injured it by some touch of asperity.
From this picture all Newlyn seems to have sprung.
According to Pilkington, Maes gave up his better and
more Rembrandtesque manner on account of the objection
of his sitters to be thus painted. Such are sitters !
Dordrecht claims also Ferdinand Bol, the pupil and
friend of Rembrandt, and the painter of the Four Regents
of the Leprosy Hospital in the Amsterdam stadhuis. He
was born in 1611. For a while his pictures were considered
by connoisseurs to be finer than those of his master. We
are wiser to-day ; yet Bol had a fine free way that is
occasionally superb, often united, as in the portrait of Dirck
van der Waeijen at Rotterdam, to a delicate charm for
which Rembrandt cared little. His portrait of an as
tronomer in our National Gallery is a great work, and at
the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam his "Roelof Meulenaer,"
No. 543, should not be missed. Bol's favourite sitter seems
to have been Admiral de Ruyter — if one may judge by the
number of his portraits of that sea ravener which Holland
possesses. By a perversity of judgment Dort seems to be more
proud of Ary Scheffer than of any of her really great sons.
It is Ary Scheffer's statue — not Albert Cuyp's or Nicolas
Maes's — which rises in the centre of the town ; and Ary
Scheffer's sentimental and saccharine inventions fill three
rooms in the museum. It is amusing in the midst of this
riot of meek romanticism to remember that Scheffer painted
Carlyle. Dort has no right to be so intoxicated with the
excitement of having given birth to Scheffer, for his father
was a German, a mere sojourner in the Dutch town.
The old museum of Dort has just been moved to a new
building in the Lindengracht, and in honour of the event
a loan exhibition of modern paintings and drawings was

36 A CARVER OF WOOD
opened last summer. The exhibition gave peculiar op
portunity for studying the work of G. H. Breitner, the
painter of Amsterdam canals. The master of a fine sombre
impressionism, Breitner has made such scenes his own.
But he can do also more tender and subtle things. In
this collection was a little oil sketch of a mere which would
not have suffered had it been hung between a Corot and a
Daubigny ; and a water-colour drawing of a few cottages
and a river that could not have been strengthened by any
hand. Another artist of Dort was Jan Terween Aertz, born
in 1511, whose carvings in the choir of the Groote Kerk
are among its chief glories. It is amazing that such spirit
and movement can be suggested in wood. That the very
semblance of life can be captured by a painter is wonderful
enough ; but there seems to me something more ex
traordinary in the successful conquest of the difficulties
which confront an artist of such ambition as this Dort
carver. His triumph is even more striking than that of
the sculptor in marble. The sacristan of Dort's Groote
Kerk seems more eager to show a brass screen and a gold
christening bowl than these astounding choir stalls; but
tastes always differ.
By the irony of fate it was Dort — the possessor of
Terween's carving of the Triumph of Charles V. (a pendant
to the Triumph of the Church and the Eucharist) — that,
in 1 572, only a few years after the carving was made, held
the Congress which virtually decided the fate of Spain in
the Netherlands. Brill had begun the revolution (as we
shall see in our last chapter), Flushing was the first to
follow suit, Enkhuisen then caught the fever ; but these
were individual efforts : it was the Congress of Dort that
authorised and systematised the revolt.

THE GREAT CHURCH, DORT

THE SYNOD OF DORT 37
The scheme of this book precludes a consecutive account
of the great struggle between Holland and Spain — a
struggle equal almost to that between Holland and her
other implacable foe, the sea. I assume in the reader a
sufficient knowledge of history to be able to follow the
course of the contest as it moves backwards and forwards
in- these pages — the progress of the narrative being dic
tated by the sequence of towns in the itinerary rather
than by the sequence of events in time. The death of
William the Silent, for example, has to be set forth in the
chapter on Delft, where the tragedy occurred, and where he
lies buried, long before we reach the description of the siege
of Haarlem and the capture of De Bossu off Hoorn, while
for the insurrection of Brill, which was the first tangible
token of Dutch independence, we have to wait until the
last chapter of all. The reader who is endowed with
sufficient history to reconcile these divagations should, I
think, by the time the book is finished, have (with Motley's
assistance) a vivid idea of this great war, so magnificently
waged by Holland, which lowers in the background of
almost every Dutch town.
A later congress at Dort was the famous Synod in
1618-19, in which a packed house of Gomarians or Contra-
Remonstrants, pledged to carry Out the wishes of Maurice,
Prince of Orange, the Stadtholder, affected to subject the
doctrines of the Arminians or Remonstrants to consci
entious examination. These doctrines as contained in the
five articles of the Arminians were as follows, in the words
of Davies, the historian of Holland : " First, that God had
resolved from the beginning to elect into eternal life those
who through his grace believed in Jesus Christ, and con
tinued stedfast in the faith ; and, on the contrary, had
resolved to leave the obstinate and unbelieving to eternal

38 CHRISTIANS IN CONVOCATION
damnation ; secondly, that Christ had died for the whole
world, and obtained for all remission of sins and reconcilia
tion with God, of which, nevertheless, the faithful only are
made partakers^ thirdly, that man cannot have a saving
faith by his own free will, since while in a state of sin he
cannot think or do good, but it is necessary that the grace
of God, through Christ, should regenerate and renew the
understanding and affections ; fourthly, that this grace is
the beginning, continuance, and end of salvation, and that
all good works proceed from it, but that it is not irre
sistible ; fifthly, that although the faithful receive by grace
sufficient strength to resist Satan, sin, the world, and the
flesh, yet man can by his own act fall away from this state
of grace."
After seven months wrangling and bitterness, at a cost
of a million guelders, the Synod came to no conclusion
more Christian than that no punishment was too bad for
the holder of such opinions, which were dangerous to the
State and subversive of true religion. The result was that
Holland's Calvinism was intensified ; Barneveldt (who had
been in prison all the time) was, as we shall see, beheaded ;
Grotius and Hoogenbeets were sentenced to imprisonment
for life ; and Episcopius, the Remonstrant leader at the
Synod, was, together with many others, banished. Epis
copius heard his sentence with composure, merely remark
ing, " God will require of you an account of your conduct
at the great day of His judgment. There you and the
whole Synod will appear. May you never meet with a
judge such as the Synod has been to us."
Davies has a story of Episcopius which is too good to
be omitted. On banishment he was given his expenses by
the States. Among the dollars given to Episcopius was
one, coined apparently in the Duchy of Brunswick, bearing

ALEXANDRE THE GREAT 39
on the one side the figure of Truth, with the motto, " Truth
overcomes all things " ; and on the reverse, "In well-doing
fear no one ". Episcopius was so struck with the coincidence
that he had the coin set in gold and carefully preserved.
It is impossible for any one who has read La Tulipe
Noire not to think of that story when wandering about
Dort ; but it is a mistake to read it in the town itself, for
the Great Alexandre's fidelity to fact will not bear the
strain. Dumas never wore his historical, botanical, geo
graphical and ethnographical knowledge more like a flower
than in this brave but breathless story. In Boxtel's envy
we may perhaps believe ; in Gryphon's savagery ; and in the
craft and duplicity of the Stadtholder ; but if ever a French
philosopher and a French grisette masqueraded as a Dutch
horticulturist and a Frisian waiting-maid they are Cornelius
van Baerle and his Rosa ; and if ever a tulip grew by magic
rather than by the laws of nature it was the tulipe noire.
No matter ; there is but one Dumas. According to Flotow
the composer, William III. of Holland told Dumas the
story of the black tulip at his coronation in 1849, remark
ing that it was time that the novelist turned his attention
to Holland ; but two arguments are urged against this
origin, one being that Paul Lacroix — the "Bibliophile
Jacob " — is said, on better authority, to have supplied the
germ of the romance, and the other (which is even better
evidence), that had the stimulus come from a monarch
Dumas would hardly have refrained from saying so (and
more) in the preface of the book.
Cornelius de Witt, whose tragedy is at the threshold
of the romance, was apprehended at Dort, on his bed of
sickness, and carried thence to the Hague, to be imprisoned
in the Gevangenpoort, which we shall visit, and torn to
pieces by the populace close by.

40 TO GORCUM BY RIVER
Another literary association. From Dort came the
English cynical writer Bernard Mandeville, born in 1670,
author of The Fable of the Bees, that very shrewd and
advanced commentary upon national hypocrisies — so ad
vanced, indeed, that several of the more revolutionary of
the thinkers of the present day, who,* ideas are thought
peculiarly modern, have not really got beyond it. After
leaving Leyden as a doctor of medicine, Mandeville settled
in England, somewhen at the end of the seventeenth cen
tury, and became well known in the Coffee Houses as a wit
and good fellow.
We are a curious people when we travel. At Dort I
heard a young Englishman inquiring of the landlord how
best to spend his Sunday. " One can hardly go on one of
the river excursions," he remarked ; " they are so mixed."
And the landlord, with a lunch at two florins, fifty, in his
mind, which it was desirable that as many persons as
possible should eat and pay for, heartily agreed with him.
None the less it seemed well to join the excursion to
Gorinchem ; and thence we steamed on a fine cloudy
Sunday, the river whipped grey by a strong cross wind,
and the little ships that beat up and passed us, all aslant.
At Gorinchem (pronounced Gorcum) we changed at once
into another steamer, a sorry tub, as wide as it was short,
and steamed to Woudrichem (called Worcum) hoping to
explore the fortress of Loevenstein. But Loevenstein is
enisled and beyond the reach of the casual visitor, and
we had therefore to sit in the upper room of the Belle-
vue inn, overlooking the river, and await the tub's de
liberate return, while the tugs and the barges trailed past.
Save for modifications brought about bv steam, the scene
can be now little different from that in the days when
Hugo Grotius was imprisoned in the castle.

AaW

| ||g
1 1
^3r *
1 1
B^j
Kiwi
wmSmSM
i
m^lf^Wf'vm
A LADY
l'AULUS MOREELSE
F7-07/1 the picture wi the Ryks Museum
A CROWN TO HER HUSBAND 41
The philosopher's escape is one of the best things in
the history of wives. Two ameliorations were permitted
him by Maurice — the presence of the Vrouw Grotius and
the solace of books. As it happened, this lenience could
not have been less fortunately (or, for Grotius, more for
tunately) framed. Books came continually to the prisoner,
which, when read, were returned in the same chest that
conveyed his linen to the Gorcum wash. At first the guard
carefully examined each departing load ; but after a while
the form was omitted. Grotius's wife, a woman of no common
order (when asked why she did not sue for her husband's
pardon, she had replied, " I will not do it : if he have
deserved it let them strike off his head"), was quick to
notice the negligence of the guard, and giving out that
her husband was bedridden, she concealed him in the chest,
and he was dumped on a tjalck and carried over to Gorcum.
While on his journey he had the shuddering experience of
hearing some one remark that the box was heavy enough to
have a man in it ; but it was his only danger. A Gorcum
friend extricated him ; and, disguised as a carpenter armed
with a footrule, he set forth on his travels to Antwerp. Once
certain that Grotius was safe, his wife informed the guard,
and the hue and cry was raised. But it was raised in vain.
At first there was a suggestion that the lady should be
retained in his stead, but all Holland applauded her deed
and she was permitted to go free.
The river, as I have said, must be still much the same
as in Grotius's day ; while the two towns Gorcum and
Worcum cluster about their noble church towers as of
old. Worcum is hardly altered ; but Gorcum's railway
and factories have enlarged her borders. She has now
twelve thousand inhabitants, some eleven thousand of
whom were in the streets when, the tub having at length

42 THE FATAL HAT
crawled back with us, we walked through them to the
station. Odd how one nation's prettiness is another's grotesque.
My companion was wearing one of those comely straw hats
trimmed with roses which we call Early Victorian, and which
the hot summer of 1904 brought into fashion again on
account of their peculiar suitability to keep off the sun.
In England we think them becoming ; upon certain heads
they are charming. But no head must wear such a hat at
Gorcum unless it would court disaster. The town is gay
and spruce, bright as a new pin ; the people are outrageous.
I suppose that the hat turned down at the precise point
at which, according to Gorcum's canons of taste, it should
have turned up. Whatever it did was unpardonable, and
we had to be informed of the solecism. We were informed
in various ways : the men whistled, the women sniggered,
the girls laughed, the children shouted and ran beside us.
The same hat had been disregarded by the sweet-mannered
friendly Middelburgians ; it had raised no smile at Breda.
At Dordrecht, it is true, eyes had been opened wide ; at
Bergen-op-Zoom mouths had opened too ; but such atten
tion was nothing compared with Gorcum's pains to make
two strangers uncomfortable.
As it happened, we had philosophy, and the discomfort
was very slight. Indeed, after a while, as we ran the
gauntlet to the station, annoyance gave way to interest.
We found ourselves looking ahead for distant wayfarers
who had not yet tasted the rare joy which rippled like a
ship's wake behind us. We waited for the ecstatic moment
when their faces should light with the joke. Sometimes
a mother standing at the door would see us and call to
her family to come — and come quickly, if they would not
be disappointed ! Women, lurking behind Holland's blue

THE GAUNTLET RUN 43
gauze blinds, would be seen to break away with a hasty
summoning movement. Children down side streets who
had j ust realised then- exceptional fortune would be heard
shouting the glad tidings to their friends. The porter who
wheeled our luggage was stopped again and again to
answer questions concerning his fantastic employers.
In course of time — it is a long way to the station — we
grew to feel a shade of pique if any one passed us and took
no notice. To bulk so hugely in the public eye became a
new pleasure. I had not known before what Britannia
must feel like on the summit of the largest of the cars
in a circus procession.
I am convinced that such costly and equivocal success as
the British arms achieved over the Boers had nothing to do
with Gorcum's feelings. The town's aesthetic ideals were
honestly outraged, and it took the simplest means of
making its protest.
We did not mean to wait at the station ; having
left our luggage there, we had intended to explore the
town. But there is a limit even to the passion for notoriety,
and we had reached it, passed it. We read and wrote
letters in that waiting-room for nearly three hours.
At Gorcum was born, in 1637, Jan van der Heyden, a
very attractive painter of street scenes, combining exactitude
of detail with rich colour, who used to get Andreas van
der Velde to put in the figures. He has a view of Cologne
in the National Gallery which is exceedingly pleasing, and
a second version in the Wallace Collection. I shall never
forget his birthplace.
We came into Utrecht in the evening. At Culemberg
the country begins to grow very green and rich : smooth
meadows and vast woods as far as one can see : plovers all
the way. The light transfiguring this scene was exactly

44 UTRECHT CATHEDRAL
the golden light which one sees in Albert Cuyp's most
peaceful landscapes.
When I was last on this journey the time was spring, and
the sliding, pointed roofs of the ricks were at their lowest,
with their four poles high and naked above them, hke
scaffolding. But now, in August, they were all resting on
the top pegs, a solid square tower of hay beneath each ;
looking in the evening light for all the world as if every
farmer had his private Norman church.
The note of Utrecht is superior satisfaction. It has
discreet verdant parks, a wonderful campanile, a Univer
sity, large comfortable houses, carriages and pairs. Its
cathedral is the only church in Holland (with the exception
of the desecrated fane at Veere) for the privilege of enter
ing which I was not asked to pay. I have an uneasy
feeling that it was an oversight, and that if by any chance
this statement meets an authoritative eye some one may
be removed to one of the penal establishments and steps
be taken to collect my debt. But so it was. And yet it
is possible that the free right of entrance is intentional ;
since to charge for a building so unpardonably disfigured
would be a hardy action. The Gothic arches have great
beauty, but it is impossible from any point to get more
than a broken view on account of the high painted wooden
walls with which the pews have been enclosed.
The cathedral is only a fragment ; the nave fell in,
isolating the bell tower, during a tempest in 1674, and by
that time all interest in churches as beautiful and sacred
buildings having died out of Holland, never to return, no
effort was made to restore it. But it must, before the
storm, have been superb, and of a vastness superior to any
in the country.
I find a very pleasant passage upon Holland's o-reat

DUTCH ARCHITECTURAL GEMS 45
churches, and indeed upon its best architecture in general,
in an essay on Utrecht Cathedral by Mr. L. A. Corbeille.
" Gothic churches on a grand scale are as abundant in the
Netherlands as they are at home, but to find one of them
drawn or described in any of the otherwise comprehensive
architectural works, which appear from time to time, is
the rarest of experiences. The Hollanders are accused of
mere apishness in employing the Gothic style, and of
downright dulness in apprehending its import and beauty.
Yet a man who has found that bit of Rotterdam which
beats Venice ; who has seen, from under Delft's lindens on
a summer evening, the image of the Oude Kerk's leaning
tower in the still canal, and has gone to bed, perchance
to awake in the moonlight while the Nieuwe Kerk's
many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old roofs
and gables ; who has drunk his beer full opposite the
stadhuis at Leyden, and seen Haarlem's huge church
across magnificent miles of gaudy tulips, and watched from
a brown-sailed boat on the Zuider Zee a buoy on the horizon
grow into the water-gate of Hoorn ; who knows his Gouda
and Bois-le-duc and Alkmaar and Kampen and Utrecht :
this man does not fret over wasted days."
Mr. Corbeille continues, later : " Looking down a side
street of Rotterdam at the enormous flank of St. Lawrence's,
and again at St. Peter's in Leyden, it seems as if all the
bricks in the world have been built up in one place. Apart
from their smaller size, bricks appear far more numerous
in a wall than do blocks of stone, because they make a
stronger contrast with the mortar. In the laborious
articulation of these millions of clay blocks one first finds
Egypt ; then quickly remembers how indigenous it all is,
and how characteristic of the untiring Hollander, who
rules the waves even more proudly than the Briton, and

46 JAN VAN SCOREL
has cheated them of the very ground beneath his feet.
And if sermons may be found in bricks as well as stones,
one has a thought while looking at them about Christianity
itself. Certainly there is often pitiful littleness and short
comings in the individual believer, just as each separate
brick of these millions is stained or worn or fractured ; and
yet the Christian Church, august and significant, still
towers before men ; even as these old blocks of clay com
pile vastly and undeniably in an overpowering whole."
Among a huddle of bad and indifferent pictures in the
Kunstliefde Museum is a series of four long paintings
by Jan van Scorel (whom we met at Rotterdam), represent
ing a band of pilgrims who travelled from Utrecht to
Jerusalem in the sixteenth century. Two of these pictures
are reproduced on the opposite page, the principal figure
in the lower one — in the middle, in white — being Jan van
Scorel himself. The faces are all such as one can believe in ;
just so, we feel, did the pilgrims look, and what a thousand
pities there was no Jan van Scorel to accompany Chaucer !
These are the best pictures in Utrecht, which cannot have
any great interest in art or it would not allow that tramway
through its bell tower. In the reproduction the faces neces
sarily become very small, but they are still full of character,
and one may see the sympathetic hand of a master in all.
Jan van Scorel was only a settler in Utrecht ; the most
illustrious citizen to whom it gave birth was Paulus
Moreelse, but the city has, I think, only one of his pictures,
and that not his best. He was bom in 1571, and he died
at Utrecht in 1638. His portraits are very rich : either
he had interesting sitters or he imparted interest to them.
Opposite page 40 I have reproduced his portrait of a
lady in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam, which amongst
so many fine pictures one may perhaps at the outset treat

PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM
JAN VAN SCOREL
Front the picture in the KuiisUiefde Museum, Utrecht

A RECEPTIVE MUSEUM 47
with too little ceremony, but which undoubtedly will assert
itself. It is a picture that, as we say, grows on one : the
Unknown Lady becomes more and more mischievous, more
and more necessary.
The little Archiepiscopal Museum at Utrecht is as small
— or as large — as a museum should be : one can see it
comfortably. It has many treasures, all ecclesiastical, and
seventy different kinds of lace ; but to me it is memorable
for the panel portrait of a woman by Jan van Scorel, a
very sweet sedate face, beautifully painted, which one would
like to coax into sHess religious mood.
Utrecht is very proud of a wide avenue of lime trees — a
triple avenue, as one often sees in Holland — called the Malie-
baan ; but more beautiful are the semi-circular Oude and
Nieuwe Grachts, with their moat-like canals laving the walls
of serene dignified houses, each gained by its own bridge.
At the north end of the Maliebaan is the Hoogeland
Park, with a fringe of spacious villas that might be in
Kensington ; and here is the Antiquarian Museum, notable
among its very miscellaneous riches, which resemble the
bankrupt stock of a curiosity dealer, for the most elaborate
dolls' house in Holland — perhaps in the world. Its date
is 1680, and it represents accurately the home of a wealthy
aristocratic doll of that day. Nothing was forgotten by
the designer of this miniature palace ; special paintings, very
nude, were made for its salon, and the humblest kitchen
utensils are not missing. I thought the most interesting
rooms the office where the Major Domo sits at his intricate
labours, and the store closet. The museum has many very
valuable treasures, but so many poor pictures and articles
— all presents or legacies — that one feels that it must be
the rule to accept whatever is offered, without any scrutiny
of the horse's teeth.

CHAPTER IV
DELFT
To Delft by canal — House-cleaning by immersion — The New Church —
William the Silent's tomb — His assassin — The story of the crime —
The tomb of Grotius — Dutch justice — The Old Church — Admiral
Tromp — The mission of the broom — The sexton's pipe — Vermeer
of Delft — Lost masterpieces — The wooden petticoat — Modern Delft
pottery and old breweries.
I TRAVELLED to Delft from Rotterdam in a little
steam passenger barge, very long and narrow to fit
it for navigating the locks ; which, as it is, it scrapes.
We should have started exactly at the hour were it not
that a very small boy on the bank interrupted one of the
crew who was unmooring the boat by asking for a light
for his cigar, and the transaction delayed us a minute.
It rained dismally, and I sat in the stuffy cabin, either
peering at the country through the window or talking with
a young Dutchman, the only other traveller. At one
village a boy was engaged in house-cleaning by immersing
the furniture, piece by piece, bodily in the canal. Now
and then we met a barge in full sail on its way to Rotter
dam, or overtook one being towed towards Delft, the man
at the rope bent double under what looked like an im
possible task.
Little guides to the tombs in both the Old and the New
Church of Delft have been prepared for the convenience of
visitors by Dr, G, Mom, and translations in English have
(48)

WILLIAM THE SILENT'S TOMB 49
been made by D. Goslings, both gentlemen, I presume,
being local savants. The New Church contains the more
honoured dust, for there repose not only William the
Silent, who was perhaps the greatest of modern patriots
and rulers, but also Grotius.
The tomb of William the Silent is an elaborate erection,
of stone and marble, statuary and ornamentation. Justice
and Liberty, Religion and Valour, represented by female
figures, guard the tomb. It seems to me to lack impressive-
ness : the man beneath was too fine to need all this display
and talent. More imposing is the simplicity of the monu
ment to the great scholar near by. Yet remembering the
struggle of William the Silent against Spain and Rome, it
is impossible to stand unmoved before the marble figure of
the Prince, lying there for all time with his dog at his feet
— the dog who, after the noble habit of the finest of such
animals, refused food and drink when his master died, and
so faded away rather than owe allegiance and affection to
a lesser man.
There is an eloquent Latin epitaph in gold letters on
the tomb ; but a better epitaph is to be found in the last
sentence of Motley's great history, perhaps the most
perfect last sentence that any book ever had : " As long
as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation,
and when he died the little children cried in the streets ".
Opposite the Old Church is the Gymnasium Publicum.
Crossing the court-yard and entering the confronting door
way, one is instantly on the very spot where William the
Silent, whose tomb we have just seen, met his death on
July 10th, 1584.
The Prince had been living at Delft for a while, in this
house, his purpose partly being to be in the city for the
christening of his son Frederick Henry. To him on July
4

50 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF ASSASSINS
8th came a special messenger from the French Court with
news of the death of the Duke of Anjou ; the messenger,
a protege of the Prince's, according to his own story being
Francis Guion, a mild and pious Protestant, whose father
had been martyred as a Calvinist. How far removed was
the truth Motley shall tell : " Francis Guion, the Calvinist,
son of the martyred Calvinist, was in reality Balthazar
Gerard, a fanatical Catholic, whose father and mother
were still living at Villefans in Burgundy. Before reaching
man's estate, he had formed the design of murdering the
Prince of Orange, ' who, so long as he lived, seemed like to
remain a rebel against the Catholic King, and to make
every effort to disturb the repose of the Roman Catholic
Apostolic religion '. When but twenty years of age, he
had struck his dagger with all his might into a door, ex
claiming, as he did so, ' Would that the blow had been in
the heart of Orange ! ' "
In 1582, however, the news had gone out that Jaureguy
had killed the Prince at Antwerp, and Gerard felt that his
mission was at an end. But when the Prince recovered,
his murderous enthusiasm redoubled, and he offered himself
formally and with matter-of-fact precision to the Prince
of Parma as heaven's minister of vengeance. The Prince,
who had long been seeking such an emissary, at first de
clined the alliance : he had become too much the prev of
soldiers of fortune who represented themselves to be expert
murderers but in whom he could put no trust. In Motley's
words : " Many unsatisfactory assassins had presented them
selves from time to time, and Alexander had paid money in
hand to various individuals — Italians, Spaniards, Lorrainers,
Scotchmen, Englishmen, who had generally spent the sums
received without attempting the job. Others were sup
posed to be still engaged in the enterprise, and at that

GERARD'S OPPORTUNITY 51
moment there were four persons — each unknown to the
others, and of different nations — in the city of Delft, seeking
to compass the death of William the Silent. Shag-eared,
military, hirsute ruffians, ex-captains of free companies and
such marauders, were daily offering their services ; there
was no lack of them, and they had done but little. How
should Parma, seeing this obscure, undersized, thin-bearded,
runaway clerk before him, expect pith and energy from him ?
He thought him quite unfit for an enterprise of moment,
and declared as much to his secret councillors and to the
King." Gerard, however, had supporters, and in time the
Prince of Parma came to take a more favourable view of
his qualifications and sincerity, but his confidence was
insufficient to warrant him in advancing any money for
the purpose. The result was that Gerard, whose domin
ating idea amounted to mania, proceeded in his own way.
His first step was to ingratiate himself with the Prince of
Orange. This he did by a series of misrepresentations and
fraud, and was recommended by the Prince to the Signeur
of Schoneval, who on leaving Delft on a mission to the
Duke of Anj ou, added him to his suite.
The death of the Duke gave Gerard his chance, and he
obtained permission to cany despatches to the Prince of
Orange, as we have seen. The Prince received him in his
bedroom, after his wont. Motley now relates the tragedy :
" Here was an opportunity such as he (Gerard) had never
dared to hope for. The arch-enemy to the -Church and to
the human race, whose death would confer upon his de
stroyer wealth and nobility in this world, besides a crown
of glory in the next, lay unarmed, alone, in bed, before the
man who had thirsted seven long years for his blood.
" Balthazar could scarcely control his emotions suf-

52 THE PATH MADE EASY
ficiently to answer the questions which the Prince addressed
to him concerning the death of Anjou, but Orange, deeply
engaged with the despatches, and with the reflections
which their deeply important contents suggested, did not
observe the countenance of the humble Calvinistic exile,
who had been recently recommended to his patronage by
Villiers. Gerard had, moreover, made no preparation for
an interview so entirely unexpected, had come unarmed,
and had formed no plan for escape. He was obliged to
forego his prey most when within his reach, and after com
municating all the information which the Prince required,
he was dismissed from the chamber.
" It was Sunday morning, and the bells were tolling for
church. Upon leaving the house he loitered about the court
yard, furtively examining the premises, so that a sergeant
of halberdiers asked him why he was waiting there.
Balthazar meekly replied that he was desirous of attending
divine worship in the church opposite, but added, pointing
to his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without at
least a new pair of shoes and stockings, he was unfit to
join the congregation. Insignificant as ever, the small,
pious, dusty stranger excited no suspicion in the mind of the
good-natured sergeant. He forthwith spoke of the want
of Gerard to an officer, by whom they were communicated
to Orange himself, and the Prince instantly ordered a sum
of money to be given him. Thus Balthazar obtained from
William's charity what Parma's thrift had denied — a fund
for carrying out his purpose !
" Next morning, with the money thus procured he pur
chased a pair of pistols, or small carabines, from a soldier,
chaffering long about the price because the vendor could
not supply a particular kind of chopped bullets or slugs
which he desired. Before the sunset of the following day

JULY 10, 1584 53
that soldier had stabbed himself to the heart, and died
despairing, on hearing for what purpose the pistols had
been bought.
" On Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past
twelve, the Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed
by the ladies and gentlemen of his family, was going to
the dining-room. William the Silent was dressed upon
that day, according to his usual custom, in very plain
fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of
dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown, — such as had
been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt.
A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended
one of the Beggars' medals, with the motto, ' Fideles au
roy jusqu'd la besace,' while a loose surcoat of gray frieze
cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide slashed
underclothes completed his costume.1
" Gerard presented himself at the doorway, and demanded
a passport. The Princess, struck with the pale and agi
tated countenance of the man, anxiously questioned her
husband concerning the stranger. The Prince carelessly
observed, that ' it was merely a person who came for a
passport,' ordering, at the same time, a secretary forthwith
to prepare one. The Princess, still not relieved, observed
in an undertone that ' she had never seen so villanous a
countenance ". Orange, however, not at all impressed with
the appearance of Gerard, conducted himself at table with
his usual cheerfulness, conversing much with the burgo
master of Leewarden, the only guest present at the family
dinner, concerning the political and religious aspects of
Friesland. At two o'clock the company rose from table.
The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his private
1 The whole dress worn by the Prince on this tragical occasion is still
to be seen at The Hague in the National Museum. — Motley.

54 THE PRINCE'S LAST WORDS
apartments above. The dining-room, which was on the
ground-floor, opened into a little square vestibule which
communicated, through an arched passage-way, with the
main entrance into the court-yard. This vestibule was
also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase leading
to the next floor, and was scarcely six feet in width.1
" Upon its left side, as one approached the stairway, was
an obscure arch, sunk deep in the wall, and completely
in the shadow of the door. Behind this arch a portal
opened to the narrow lane at the side of the house. The
stairs themselves were completely lighted by a large
window, half-way up the flight. The Prince came from the
dining-room, and began leisurely to ascend. He had only
reached the second stair, when a man emerged from the
sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him,
discharged a pistol full at his heart."
When Jaureguy had fired at the Prince two years earlier,
the ball passing through his jaw, the Prince, as he faltered
under the shock, cried, " Do not kill him — I forgive
him my death ! " But he had no time to express any
such plea for his assailant after Gerard's cruel shots.
"Three balls," says Motley, "entered his body, one of
which, passing quite through him, struck with violence
against the wall beyond. The Prince exclaimed in
French, as he felt the wound, ' O my God, have mercy
upon my soul ! O my God, have mercy upon this poor
people ! '
"These were the last words he ever spoke, save that
when his sister, Catherine of Schwartzburgh, immediately
afterwards asked him if he commended his soul to Jesus
Christ, he faintly answered, ' Yes '."
1 The house now called the Prinsen Hof (but used as a barrack) still
presents nearly the same appearance as it did in 1584. — Motley,

THE TOMB OF GROTIUS 55
Never has the pistol done worse work. The Prince was
only fifty-one ; he was full of vigour ; his character had
never been stronger, his wisdom never more mature. Had
he lived a few years longer the country would have been
saved years of war and misery.
One may stand to-day exactly where the Prince stood
when he was shot. The mark of a bullet in the wall is
still shown. The dining-room, from which he had come,
now contains a collection of relics of his great career.
Let us return to the New Church, past the statue of
Grotius in the great square, in order to look again at that
philosopher's memorial. Grotius, who was born at Delft,
was extraordinarily precocious. He went to Leyden Uni
versity and studied under Scaliger when he was eleven ;
at sixteen he was practising as a lawyer at The Hague.
This is D. Goslings' translation of the inscription on his
tomb : — Sacred to Hugo Grotius
The Wonder of Europe, the sole astonishment of the learned world,
the splendid work of nature surpassing itself, the summit of genius, the
image of virtue, the ornament raised above mankind, to whom the de
fended honour of true religion gave cedars from the top of Lebanon
whom Mars adorned with laurels and Pallas with olive branches, when
he had published the right of war and peace : whom the Thames and the
Seine regarded as the wonder of the Dutch, and whom the court of
Sweden took in its service : Here lies Grotius. Shun this tomb, ye
who do not burn with love of the Muses and your country.
Grotius can hardly have burned with love of the sense of
justice of his own country, for reasons with which we are
familiar. His sentence of life-long imprisonment, passed
by Prince Maurice of Orange, who lies hard by in the
same church, was passed in 1618. His escape in the chest
(like General Monk in Twenty Years After) was his last
deed on Dutch soil. Thenceforward he lived in Paris and

56 TROMP'S BROOM
Sweden, England and Germany, writing his De Jure Belli
et Pads and other works. He died in 1645, when Holland
claimed him again, as Oxford has claimed Shelley.
The principal tomb in the Old Church of Delft is that
of Admiral Tromp, the Dutch Nelson. While quite a
child he was at sea with his father off the coast of Guinea
when an English cruiser captured the vessel and made him
a cabin boy. Tromp, if he felt any resentment, certainly
lived to pay it back, for he was our victor in thirty-three
naval engagements, the last being the final struggle in the
English-Dutch war, when he defeated Monk off Texel in
the summer of 1653, and was killed by a bullet in his
heart. The battle is depicted in bas-relief on the tomb,
but the eye searches the marble in vain for any reminder
of the broom which the admiral is said to have lashed to
his masthead as a sign to the English that it was his
habit to sweep their seas. The story may be a myth, but
the Dutch sculptor who omitted to remember it and believe
in it is no friend of mine.
This is D. Goslings' translation of Tromp's epitaph : —
For an Eternal Memorial
You, who love the Dutch, virtue and true labour, read and mourn.
The ornament of the Dutch people, the formidable in battle, lies low,
he who never lay down in his life, and taught by his example that a
commander should die standing, he, the love of his fellow-citizens, the
terror of his enemies, the wonder of the ocean.
Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, a name comprehending more praise
than this stone can contain, a stone truly too narrow for him, for whom
East and West were a school, the sea the occasion of triumph, the whole
world the scene of his glory, he, a certain ruin to pirates, the successful
protector of commerce ; useful through his familiarity, not low ; after
having ruled the sailors and the soldiers, a rough sort of people, in a
fatherly and efficaciously benignant manner ; after fifty battles in which
he was commander or in which he played a great part ; after incredible
victories, after the highest honours though below his merits, he at last

TWO EPITAPHS 57
in the war against the English, nearly victor but certainly not beaten,
on the loth of August, 1653, of the Christian era, at the age of fifty-six
years, has ceased to live and to conquer.
The fathers of the United Netherlands have erected this memorial in
honour of this highly meritorious hero.
There lie in Delft's Old Church also Pieter Pieterzoon
Hein, Lieut. -Admiral of Holland ; and Elizabeth van
Mamix, wife of the governor of Bergen-op-Zoom, whose
epitaph runs thus : —
Here am I lying, I Elizabeth, born of an illustrious and ancient
family, wife to Morgan, I, daughter of Marnix, a name not unknown in
the world, which, in spite of time, will always remain. There is virtue
enough in having pleased one husband, which his so precious love testi
fies. The tomb of Antony van Leeuwenhock, the inventor of
the microscope, is also to be seen in the church. "As
everybody, O Wanderer," the epitaph concludes, "has re
spect for old age and wonderful parts, tread this spot
with respect ; here grey science lies buried with Leeuwen
hock." Each of the little guide-books, which are given to every
purchaser of a ticket to enter the churches, is prefaced by
four " Remarks," of which I quote the third and fourth ; —
3. Visitors are requested not to bestow gifts on the sexton or his
assistants, as the former would lose his situation, if he accepted ; he is
responsible for his assistants.
4. The sexton or his assistants will treat the visitors with the greatest
politeness.I am not certain about the truth of either of these clauses,
particularly the last. Let me explain.
The sexton of the Old Church hurried me past these
tombs with some impatience. I should naturally have
taken my time, but his attitude of haste made it im
perative to do so. Sextons must not be in a hurry. After

58 THE SEXTON'S PIPE
a while I found out why he chafed : he wanted to smoke.
He fumbled his pipe and scraped his boots upon the stones.
I studied the monuments with a scrutiny that grew more
and more minute and elaborate ; and soon his matches
were in his hand. I wanted to tell him that if I were the
only obstacle he might smoke to his heart's content, but
it seemed to be more amusing to watch and wait. My
return to the tomb of the ingenious constructor of the
microscope settled the question. Probably no one had
ever spent more than half a minute on poor Leeuwenhock
before ; and when I turned round again the pipe was
alight. The sexton also was a changed man : before, he
had been taciturn, contemptuous ; now he was communi
cative, gay. He told me that the organist was blind —
but none the less a fine player ; he led me briskly to the
carved pulpit and pointed out, with some exaltation, the
figure of Satan with his legs bound. The cincture seemed
to give him a sense of security.
In several ways he made it impossible for me to avoid
disregarding Clause 3 in the little guide-books ; but I feel
quite sure that he has not in consequence lost his situation.
Delft's greatest painter was Johannes Vermeer, known
as Vermeer of Delft, of whom I shall have much to say both
at the Hague and Amsterdam. He was born at Delft in
1632, he died there in 1675 ; and of him but little more
is known. It has been said that he studied under Karel
Fabritius (also of Delft), but if this is so the term of pupil
age must have been very brief, for Fabritius did not reach
Delft (from Rembrandt's studio) until 1652, when Vermeer
was twenty, and he was killed in an explosion in 1654.
One sees the influence of Fabritius, if at all, most strongly
in the beautiful early picture at The Hague, in the orave
grand manner, of Diana, but the influence of Italy is even

VIEW OK DELFT
JAN VERMEER
From the pu ture in the Mauritshu

VERMEER OF DELFT 59
more noticeable. Fabritius's " Siskin " is hung beneath the
new Girl's Head by Vermeer (opposite page 2 of this book),
but they have nothing in common. To see how Vermeer de
rived from Rembrandt via Fabritius one must look at the
fine head by Fabritius in the Boymans Museum at Rotter
dam, so long attributed to Rembrandt, but possessing a
certain radiance foreign to him.
How many pictures Vermeer painted between 1653, when
he was admitted to the Delft Guild as a master, and 1675,
when he died, cannot now be said ; but it is reasonable to
allot to each of those twenty-three years at least five works.
As the known pictures of Vermeer are very few — fewer than
forty, I believe — some great discoveries may be in store for
the diligent, or, more probably, the lucky.
I have read somewhere — but cannot find the reference
again — of a ship that left Holland for Russia in the
seventeenth century, carrying a number of paintings by the
best artists of that day — particularly, if I remember,
Gerard Dou. The vessel foundered and all were lost. It
is possible that Vermeer may have been largely represented.
Only comparatively lately has fame come to him, his
first prophet being the French critic Thore (who wrote as
" W. Burger "), and his second Mr. Henri Havard, the
author of very pleasant books on Holland from which I
shall occasionally quote. Both these enthusiasts wrote
before my frontispiece was exhibited, or their ecstasies
might have been even more intense.
In the Senate House at Delft in 1641 John Evelyn the
diarist saw " a mighty vessel of wood, not unlike a butter-
churn, which the adventurous woman that hath two hus
bands at one time is to wear on her shoulders, her head
peeping out at the top only, and so led about the town,
as a penance ". I did not see this ; but the punishment

60 SIGN-BOARDS
was not peculiar to Delft. At Nymwegen these wooden
petticoats were famous too.
Nor did I visit the porcelain factory, having very little
interest in its modern products. But the old Delft ware
no one can admire more than I do. A history of Delft
written by Dirk van Bleyswijck and published in 1667,
tells us that the rise of the porcelain industry followed the
decline of brewing. The author gives with tears a list of
scores of breweries that ceased to exist between 1600 and
1640. All had signs, among them being : —

The Popinjay.
The Great Bell.
The White Lily.
The Three Herrings.
The Double Battle-axe.

The Three Acorns.
The Black Unicorn.
The Three Lilies.
The Curry-Comb.
The Three Hammers.

The Double Halberd.
I would rather have explored any of those breweries than
the modern Delft factory.
Ireland, by the way, mentions a whimsical sign-board
which he saw somewhere in Holland, but which I regret
to say I did not find. " It was a tree bearing fruit, and the
branches filled with little, naked urchins, seemingly just
ripened into life, and crying for succour : beneath, a woman
holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children, as if
intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found
it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch
inscription prefixed to her name : —
'Vang my, ik Zal Zoot Zyn,'
that is, ' Catch me, I'll be a sweet boy '. This new mode
of procreation, so truly whimsical, pleased me," Ireland adds,
" not a little."
Let me close this chapter by quoting from an essay by my

THE BELLS OF DELFT 61
friend, Mr. Belloc, a lyrical description of the Old Church's
wonderful wealth of bells : " Thirdly, the very structure of
the thing is bells. Here the bells are more even than the
soul of a Christian spire ; they are its body, too, its whole
self. An army of them fills up all the space between the
delicate supports and framework of the upper parts. For
I know not how many feet, in order, diminishing in actual
size and in the perspective also of that triumphant elevation,
stand ranks on ranks of bells from the solemn to the wild,
from the large to the small, a hundred, or two hundred or
a thousand. There is here the prodigality of Brabant and
Hainaut and the Batavian blood, a generosity and a pro
ductivity in bells without stint, the man who designed it
saying : ' Since we are to have bells, let us have bells ; not
measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells,
but careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells ; bells
without fear, bells excessive and bells innumerable ; bells
worthy of the ecstacies that are best thrown out and
published in the clashing of bells. For bells are single,
like real pleasures, and we will combine such a great
number that they may be like the happy and complex life
of a man. In a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells
and reap a harvest till our town is famous in its bells.' So
now all the spire is more than clothed with them ; they
are more than stuff or ornament : they are an outer and
yet sensitive armour, all of bells.
" Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number only,
but also in their use — for they are not reserved in any way,
but ring tunes and add harmonies at every half and a
quarter and at all the hours both by night and by day.
Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession of noise
through this; they are far too high and melodious, and
(what is more) too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of

62 THE MUSIC OF THE SPIRE
Delft to be more than a perpetual and half-forgotten im
pression of continual music ; they render its 'air sacred and
fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence as to
leave one — when one has passed from their influence — ask
ing what balm that was which soothed all the harshness
of sound about one."

CHAPTER V
THE HAGUE
Dutch precision — Shaping hands — Nature under control — Willow v.
Neptune — The lost star — S'Gravenhage — The Mauritshuis — Rem
brandt — The "School of Anatomy'' — Jan Vermeer of Delft — The
frontispiece— Other pictures — The Municipal Museum — Baron Steen-
gracht's collection — The Mesdag treasures — French romantics at
The Hague — The Binnenhof — John van Olden Barneveldt — Man's
cruelty to man — The churches — The fish market and first taste of
Scheveningen — A crowded street — Holland's reading— The Bosch —
The club — The House in the Wood — Mr. " Secretary " Prior — Old
marvels — Howell the receptive and Coryate the credulous.
ALTHOUGH often akin to the English, the Dutch
character differs from it very noticeably in the
matter of precision. The Englishman has little precision ;
the Dutchman has too much. He bends everything to it.
He has at its dictates divided his whole country into
parellelograms. Even the rushes in his swamps are
governed by the same law. The carelessness of nature is
offensive to him ; he moulds and trains on every hand, as
one may see on the railway j ourney to The Hague. Trees
he endures only so long as they are obedient and equidist
ant : he likes them in avenues or straight lines ; if they
grow otherwise they must be pollarded. It is true that
he has not touched the Bosch, at The Hague ; but since
his hands perforce have been kept off its trees, he has run
scores of formal straight well-gravelled paths beneath their
branches. (63)

64 THE DUTCHMAN'S RESTRAINING HAND
This passion for interference grew perhaps from exulta
tion upon successful dealings with the sea. A man who
by his own efforts can live in security below sea-level, and
graze cattle luxuriantly where sand and pebbles and salt
once made a desert, has perhaps the right to feel that
everything in nature would be the better for a little manipu
lation. Eyes accustomed to the careless profusion that one
may see even on a short railway journey in England are
shocked to find nature so tractable both in land and water.
The Dutchman's pruning, however, is not done solely
for the satisfaction of exerting control. These millions of
pollarded willows which one sees from the line have a
deeper significance than might ever be guessed at : it is
they that are keeping out Holland's ancient enemy, the
sea. In other words, a great part of the basis of the
strength of the dykes is imparted by interwoven willow
boughs, which are constantly being renewed under the
vigilant eyes of the dyke inspectors. For the rest, the
inveterate trimming of trees must be a comparatively
modern custom, for many of the old landscapes depict
careless foliage — Koninck's particularly. And look, for
instance, at that wonderful picture — perhaps the finest
landscape in Dutch art — Rembrandt's etching " The Three
Trees". There is nothing in North Holland to-day as
unstudied as that. I doubt if you could now find three
trees of such individuality and courage.
When I was first at The Hague, seven years ago, I
stayed not, as on my last visit, at the Oude Doelen, which
is the most comfortable hotel in Holland, but at a more
retired hostelry. It was spacious and antiquated, with
large empty rooms, and cool passages, and an air of decay
over all. Servants one never saw, nor any waiter proper ;
one's every need was carried out by a very small and very

THE LOST STAR 65
enthusiastic boy. " Is the hroom good, sare ? " he asked,
as he flung open the door of the bedroom with a superb
flourish. " Is the sham good, sare ? " he asked as he laid
a pot of preserve on the table. He was the landlady's son
or grandson, and a better boy never lived, but his part,
for all his spirit and good humour, was a tragic one. For
the greatest misfortune that can come upon an hotel-
keeper had crushed this house : Basdeker had excised their
star! The landlady moved in the background, a disconsolate
figure with a grievance. She waylaid us as we went out
and as we came in. Was it not a good hotel ? Was not
the management excellent? Had we any complaints?
And yet — see — once she had a star and now it was gone.
Could we not help to regain it ? Here was the secret of
the grandson's splendid zeal. The little fellow was fight
ing to hitch the old hotel to a star once more, as Emerson
had bidden.
Alas, it was in vain ; for that was seven years ago, and
I see that Baedeker still withholds the distinction. What
a variety of misfortune this little world holds ! While
some of us are indulging our right to be unhappy over a
thousand trivial matters, such as illness and disillusion,
there, are inn- keepers on the Continent who are staggering
and struggling under real blows.
I wondered if it were better to have had a star and lost
it, than never to have had a star at all. But I did not
ask. The old lady's grief was too poignant, her mind too
practical, for such questions.
S'Gravenhage or Den Haag, or The Hague as we call it,
being the seat of the court, is at once the most civilised
and most expensive of the Dutch cities. But it is not
conspicuously Dutch, and is interesting rather for its
5 '

66 THE VYVER
pictures and for its score of historic buildings about the
Vyver than for itself. Take away the Vyver and its sur
rounding treasures and a not very noteworthy European
town would remain.
And yet to say so hardly does justice to this city, for
it has a character of its own that renders it unique :
cosmopolitan and elegant ; catholic in its tastes ; indulgent
to strangers ; aristocratic ; well -spaced and well built ;
above all things, bland.
And the Vyver is a jewel set in its midst, beautiful by
day and beautiful by night, with fascinating reflections in
it at both times, and a special gift for the transmission of
bells in a country where bells are really honoured. On
its north side is the Vyverberg with pleasant trees and a
row of spacious and perfectly self-composed white houses,
one of which, at the corner, has in its windows the most
exquisite long lace curtains in this country of exquisite
long lace curtains.
On the south side are the Binnenhof and the Maurits
huis — in the Mauritshuis being the finest works of the
two greatest Dutch painters, Rembrandt of the Rhine,,
and Vermeer of Delft. It is largely by these possessions
that The Hague holds her place as a city of distinction.
Rembrandt's " School of Anatomy " and Paul Potter's
" Bull " are the two pictures by which every one knows the
Mauritshuis collection ; and ft is the bull which maintains
the steadier and larger crowd. But it is not a work that
interests me. My pictures in the Mauritshuis are above
all the "School of Anatomy," Vermeer's "View of Delft,"
his head of a young girl, and the Jan Steens. We have
magnificent Rembrandts in London ; but we have nothing
quite on the same plane of interest or mastery as the
"School of Anatomy ". Holland has not always retained

THE SCHOOL OF ANATOMY
REMBRANDT
From the picture in the Mauritshuis

"THE SCHOOL OF ANATOMY" 67
her artists' best, but in the case of Rembrandt and
Hals, Jan Steen and Vermeer, she has made no mistakes.
Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy," his " Night Watch,"
and his portrait of Elizabeth Bas are all in Holland. I
can remember no landscape in Holland in the manner of
that in our National Gallery in which, in conformity with
the taste of certain picture buyers, he dropped in an in
essential Tobias and Angel ; but for the finest examples
of his distinction and power as a painter of men one must
go to The Hague and Amsterdam. In the Mauritshuis
are sixteen Rembrandts, including the portrait of himself
in a steel casque, and (one of my favourites) the head of
the demure nun-like and yet merry-hearted Dutch maiden
reproduced opposite the next page, which it is impossible
to forget and yet difficult, when not looking at it, to recall
with any distinctness — as is so often the case with one's
friends in real life.
If any large number of visitors to Holland taken at
random were asked to name the best of Rembrandt's
pictures they would probably say the " Night Watch ".
But I fancy that a finer quality went to the making of the
" School of Anatomy ". I fancy that the " School of Ana
tomy" is the greatest work of art produced by northern
Europe. To Jan Steen and his work we come later, in the chapter
on Leyden, but of Vermeer, whom we saw at Delft, this is
one place to speak. Of the " View of Delft " there is a
reproduction opposite page 58, yet it can convey but
little suggestion of its beauty. In the case of the frontis
piece the picture loses only its colour : a great part of its
beauty and charm is retained ; but the " View of Delft "
must be seen in the original before one can speak of it at
all, Its appeal is more intimate than any other old Dutch

68 OF THE FRONTISPIECE
landscape that I know. I say old, because modern painters
have a few scenes which soothe one hardly less — two or
three of Matthew Maris's, and Mauve's again and again.
But before Maris and Mauve came the Barbizon influence ;
whereas Vermeer had no predecessors, he had to find his
delicate path for himself. To explain the chann of the
"View of Delft" is beyond my power; but there it is.
Before Rembrandt one stands awed, in the presence of an
ancient giant ; before Vermeer one rejoices, as in the pre
sence of a friend and contemporary.
The head of a young girl, from the same brush, which
was left to the nation as recently as 1903, is reproduced
opposite page 2. To me it is one of the most beautiful
things in Holland. It is, however, in no sense Dutch :
the girl is not Dutch, the painting is Dutch only be
cause it is the work of a Dutchman. No other Dutch
painter could compass such liquid clarity, such cool sur
faces. Indeed, none of the others seem to have tried :
a different ideal was theirs. Apart, however, from the
question of technique, upon which I am not entitled to
speak, the picture has to me human interest beyond de
scription. There is a winning charm in this simple Eastern
face that no words of mine can express. All that is hard
in the Dutch nature dissolves beneath her reluctant smile.
She symbolises the fairest and sweetest things in the
Eleven Provinces. She makes Holland sacred around
Vermeer, although always a superb craftsman, was not
always inspired. In the next room to the " View of Delft "
and the girl's head is his " New Testament Alleaorv." a
picture which I think I dislike more than any other so
false seems to me its sentiment and so unattractive its
character. Yet the sheer painting of it is little short of
miraculous.

A VOUNG WOMAN
REMBRANDT
From the pictit7-e i7i the Mauritsfutis

BOSBOOM 69
Among other Dutch pictures in the Mauritshuis which
I should like to mention for their particular charm are
Gerard Dou's "Young Housekeeper," to which we come
in the chapter on Leyden's painters ; Ostade's " Proposal,"
one of the pleasantest pictures which he ever signed ;
Ruisdael's "View of Haarlem" and Terburg's portraits.
I single these out. But when I think of the marvels of
painting that remain, of which I have said not a word, I
am only too conscious of the uselessness of such a list.
Were this a guide-book I should say more, mentioning also
the work of the other schools, not Dutch, notably a head of
Jane Seymour by Holbein, a Velasquez, and so forth. But
I must not.
After the Mauritshuis, the Municipal Museum, which
also overlooks the Vyver's placid surface, is a dull place
except for the antiquary. In its old views of the city,
which are among its most interesting possessions, the evo
lution of the neighbouring Doelen hotel may be studied by
the curious — from its earliest days, when it was a shoot
ing gallery, to its present state of spaciousness and repute,
basking in its prosperity and cherishing the proud know
ledge that Peter the Great has slept under its hospitable
roof, and that it was there that the Russian delegate re
sided when, in 1900, the Czar convoked at The Hague the
Peace Conference which he was the first to break.
In one room of the Municipal Museum are the palette
and easel of Johannes Bosboom, Holland's great painter
of churches. His last unfinished sketch rests on the easel.
No collection of modern Dutch art is complete without a
sombre study of Gothic arches by this great artist. All his
work is good, but I saw nothing better than the water-
colour drawing in the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam,
which is reproduced opposite page 132.

70 THE MESDAG MUSEUM
At The Hague one may also see, whenever the family is
not in residence, the collection of Baron Steengracht in
one of the ample white mansions on the Vyverberg. Most
interesting of the pictures to me are Jan Steen's family
group, which, however, for all its wonderful drawing, is
not in his most interesting manner; a very deft Metsu,
" The Sick Child " ; a horse by Albert Cuyp ; a character
istic group of convivial artists by Adrian Brouwer, includ
ing Hals, Ostade, Jan Steen and the painter himself; and
— best of all — Terburg's wholly charming " Toilette," an
old woman combing the head of a child.
Quite recently the Mesdag Museum has been added to
the public exhibitions of The Hague. This is the house of
Hendriks Willem Mesdag, the artist, which, with all its
Barbizon treasures, with noble generosity he has made
over to the nation in his lifetime. Mesdag, who is himself
one of the first of living Dutch painters, has been acquir
ing pictures for many years, and his collection, by repre
senting in every example the taste of a single connoisseur,
has thus the additional interest of unity. Mesdag's own
paintings are mostly of the sea — a grey sea with a few fish
ing boats, very true, very quiet and simple. How many
times he and James Maris painted Scheveningen's shore
probably no one could compute. His best-known work
is probably the poster advertising the Harwich and Hook-
of-Holland route, in which the two ports are joined by a
chain crossing a grey sea — best known, because every one
has seen this picture : it is at all the stations ; although
few, I imagine, have connected with it the name and fame
of the Dutch artist and patron of the arts.
In the description of the Ryks collection at Amsterdam
I shall say something about the pleasure of choosino- one's
own particular picture from a gallery. It was amusing to

COROT AND DIAZ 71
indulge the same humour in the Mesdag Museum : per
haps even more so than at the Ryks, for one is certain that
by no means could Vermeer's little picture of "The Reader,"
— the woman in the bluejacket — for example, be abstracted
from those well-guarded walls, whereas it is just conceiv
able that one could select from these crowded little Mesdag
rooms something that might not be missed. I hesitated
long between a delicate Matthew Maris, the very essence
of quietude, in which a girl stands by a stove, cooking ;
Delacroix's wonderful study of dead horses in the desert ;
a perfect Diaz (No. 114), an old woman in a red shawl by
a pool in a wood, with its miracle of lighting ; a tender
little Daumier, that rare master ; a Segantini drenched in
sincerity and pity ; and a bridge at evening (No. 127) by
Jules Dupre. All these are small and could be slipped
under the overcoat with the greatest ease !
Having made up my mind I returned to each and
lost all my decision. I decided again, and again un
certainty conquered. And then I made a final examina
tion, and chose No. 64 — a totally new choice — a little
lovely Corot, depicting a stream, two women, much
essential greenness, and that liquid light of which Corot
had the secret.
But I am not sure that the Diaz (who began by being
an old master) is not the more exquisite picture.
For the rest, there are other Corots, among them one
of his black night pieces ; a little village scene by Troyon ;
some apples by Courbet, in the grandest manner surely in
which apples ever were painted ; a Monticelli ; a scene of
hills by Georges Michel which makes one wish he had
painted the Sussex Downs ; a beautiful chalk drawing by
Millet ; some vast silent Daubignys ; a few Mauves ; a
very interesting early James Maris in the manner of Peter

72 THE BINNENHOF
de Hooch, and a superb later James Maris — wet sand
and a windy sky.
The flower of the French romantic school is represented
here, brought together by a collector with a sure eye. No
visitor to The Hague who cares anything for painting should
miss it ; and indeed no visitor who cares nothing for painting
should miss it, for it may lure him to wiser ways.
The Binnenhof is a mass of medieval and later buildings
extending along the south side of the Vyver, which was
indeed once a part of its moat. The most attractive view
of it is from the north side of the Vyver, with the long
broken line of roof and gable and turret reflected in the
water. The nucleus of the Binnenhof was the castle or
palace of William II., Count of Holland in the thirteenth
century — also Emperor of Germany and father of Florence
V., who built the great hall of the knights (into which,
however, one may penetrate only on Thursdays), and whose
tomb we shall see in Alkmaar church. The Stadtholders
made the Binnenhof their headquarters ; but the present
Royal Palace is half a mile north-west of it. Other build
ings have been added from time to time, and the trams are
now allowed to rush through with their bells jangling the
while. The desecration is not so glaring as at Utrecht, but
it seems thoroughly wrong — as though we were to permit
a line to traverse Dean's Yard at Westminster. A more
appropriate sanction is that extended to one or two
dealers in old books and prints who have their stalls in
the Binnenhofs cloisters.
It was in the Binnenhof that the scaffold stood on which
John van Barneveldt was beheaded in 161 9, the almost inevit
able result of his long period of differences with the Stadt-
holder Maurice, son of William the Silent. His arrest, as
we have seen, followed the Synod of Dort, Grotius being also

BARNEVELDT'S END 73
removed by force. Barneveldt's imprisonment, trial and
execution resemble Spanish methods of injustice more
closely than one likes to think. I quote Davies' fine ac
count of the old statesman's last moments: "Leaning on
his staff, and with his servant on the other side to support
his steps, grown feeble with age, Barneveldt walked com
posedly to the place of execution, prepared before the great
saloon of the court-house. If, as it is not improbable, at
the approach of death in the midst of life and health, when
the intellect is in full vigour, and every nerve, sense and
fibre is strung to the highest pitch of tension, a foretaste
of that which is to come is sometimes given to man, and
his over-wrought mind is enabled to grasp at one single
effort the events of his whole past life — if, at this moment
and on this spot, where Barneveldt was now to suffer a
felon's death,— where he had first held out his fostering
hand to the infant republic, and infused into it strength
and vigour to conquer the giant of Europe, — where he had
been humbly sued for peace by the oppressor of his country,
— where the ambassadors of the most powerful sovereigns
had vied with each other in soliciting his favour and sup
port, — where the wise, the eloquent, and the learned, had
bowed in deference to his master-spirit ; — if, at this moment,
the memory of all his long and glorious career on earth
flashed upon his mind in fearful contrast to the present
reality, with how deep feeling must he have uttered the
exclamation as he ascended the scaffold, ' Oh God ! what
then is man ? '
" Here he was compelled to suffer the last petty indignity
that man could heap upon him. Aged and infirm as he
was, neither stool nor cushion had been provided to
mitigate the sense of bodily weakness as he performed the
last duties of mortal life ; and kneeling down on the bare

74 A NOBLE WIDOW
boards, he was supported by his servant, while the minister,
John Lamotius, delivered a prayer. When prepared for
the block, he turned to the spectators and said, with a
loud and firm voice, ' My friends, believe not that I am a
traitor. I have lived a good patriot, and such I die '. He
then, with his own hands, drew his cap over his eyes, and
bidding the executioner 'be quick,' bowed his venerable
head to the stroke.
" The populace, from various feelings, some inspired by
hatred, some by affection, dipped their handkerchiefs in his
blood, or carried away morsels of the blood-stained wood
and sand ; a few were even found to sell these as relics. The
body and head were laid in a coffin and buried decently,
but with little ceremony, at the court church of the Hague.
"The States of Holland rendered to his memory that
justice which he had been denied while living, by the words
in which they recorded his death. After stating the time
and manner of it, and his long period of service to his
country, the resolution concludes, ' a man of great activity,
diligence, memory, and conduct ; yea, remarkable in every
respect. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
he fall ; and may God be merciful to his soul.' "
A very beautiful story is told of Bameveldt's widow.
Her son plotting to avenge his father and crush the
Stadtholder was discovered and imprisoned. His mother
visited Maurice to ask his pardon. " Why," said he, " how
is this — you value your son more than your husband ! You
did not ask pardon for him." "No," said Bameveldt's
widow ; " I did not ask pardon for my husband, because
he was innocent ; I ask pardon for my son, because he is
guilty." Prince Maurice never recovered from the error — to put
for the moment no worse epithet to it — of the death of

s

<

z

FT?'

J-

-

^

z

¦f.

^

H

y
<
>
i/:
•;
a
<
X
-V
MORE ILLUSTRIOUS BLOOD 75
Barneveldt. He had killed his best counsellor; thence
forward his power diminished ; and with every rebuff he who
had abandoned his first adviser complained that God had
abandoned him. Davies sums up the case thus: "The
escutcheon of Maurice is bright with the record of many
a deed of glory; the fabric of his country's greatness
raised by his father, strengthened and beautified by him
self ; her armies created the masters of military science to
the civilized world ; her States the centre and mainspring of
its negotiations ; her proud foe reduced to sue humbly at her
feet. But there is one dark, deep stain on which the eye
of posterity, unheeding the surrounding radiance, is con
stantly fixed : it is the blood of Barneveldt."
The Binnenhof leads to the Buitenhof, a large open
space, the old gateway to which is the Gevangenpoort
prison — scene of another shameful deed in the history of
Holland, the death of John and Cornelius de Witt. The
massacre occurred two hundred and thirty-three years ago
— in 1672. Cornelius de Witt was wrongfully accused of
an attempt to procure the assassination of the Stadtholder,
William III. To him, in his cell in the Gevangenpoort,
came, on 22nd August, John de Witt, late Grand Pension
ary, brought hither by a bogus message.
I quote from Davies, who elsewhere makes it clear that
(as Dumas says) William III. was privy to the crime : " His
friends, fearful of some treachery, besought him to pause
and inquire into the truth of the summons before he obeyed
it ; and his only daughter threw herself at his feet, and
implored him with floods of tears not to risk unnecessarily
a life so precious. But his anxiety for his brother, with
whom he had ever lived on terms of the tenderest affection,
proved stronger than their remonstrances ; and setting out
on foot, attended by his servant and two secretaries, he

76 THE ASSASSINATION
hastened to the prison. On seeing him, Cornelius de Witt
exclaimed in astonishment, ' My brother, what do you
here ? ' ' Did you not then send for me ? ' he asked ; and
receiving an answer in the negative, ' Then,' rejoined he,
' we are lost '.
" During this time one of the judges sent for Tichelaar,
and suggested to him that he should incite the people not
to suffer a villain who had intended to murder the Prince
to go unpunished. True to his instructions, the miscreant
spread among the crowd collected before the prison doors
the report, that the torture inflicted on Cornelius de Witt
was a mere pretence, and that he had only escaped the
death he deserved because the judges favoured his crime.
Then, entering the gaol, he presented himself at the
window, and exclaimed to the crowd below, ' The dog and
his brother are going out of prison ! Now is your time ;
revenge yourselves on these two knaves, and then on thirty
more, their accomplices.'
" The populace received his address with shouts and cries
of ' To arms, to arms ! Treason, treason ! ' and pressed in
a still denser crowd towards the prison door. The States
of Holland, immediately on information of the tumult,
sent three troops of cavalry, in garrison at the Hague, for
the protection of the gaol, and called out to arms six
companies of burgher guards. But in the latter they only
added fresh hosts to the enemies of the unfortunate captives.
One company in especial, called the ' Company of the Blue
Flag,' was animated with a spirit of deadly vengeance against
them ; its leader, Verhoef, having that morning loaded his
musket with a determination either to kill the De AVitts
or perish in the attempt. They pressed forward towards
the prison, but were driven back by the determined appear
ance of the cavalry, commanded by the Count de Tilly.

OF THE DE WITTS 77
" So long as these troops remained, it was evident that
the fell purpose of the rioters was impracticable. Accord
ingly, a report was raised that a band of peasants and
sailors was coming to plunder The Hague ; and two
captains of the burgher guards took occasion from thence
to demand of the Council of State, that the soldiers should
be drawn off from their station, in order to protect the
houses from pillage. First a verbal order, and on Tilly's
refusing obedience to such, a written one, was sent, com
manding him to divide his troops into four detachments,
and post them upon the bridges leading into the town.
' I shall obey,' said he, as he perused the mandate ; ' but
it is the death-warrant of the brothers.'
"His anticipations were too soon realized. No sooner
had he departed than the rioters were supplied by some
of those mysterious agents who were actively employed
throughout the whole of these transactions, with wine,
brandy, and other incitements to inflame their already
maddening fury. Led on by Verhoef and one Van Bank-
hem, a sheriff of The Hague, they assailed the prison
door with axes and sledge-hammers, threatening to kill all
the inmates if it were not instantly opened. Terrified, or
corrupted, the gaoler obeyed their behests. On gaining
admittance they rushed to an upper room, where they found
their victims, who had throughout the whole of the tumult
maintained the greatest composure. The bailiff, reduced
to a state of extreme debility by the torture, was reclining
on his bed ; his brother was seated near him, reading the
Bible. They forced them to rise and follow them ' to the
place,' as they said, ' where criminals were executed '.
" Having taken a tender leave of each other, they began
to descend the stairs, Cornelius de Witt leaning on his
brother for support. They had not advanced above two

78 THE GEVANGENPOORT
or three paces when a heavy blow on the head from be
hind precipitated the former to the bottom. He was then
dragged a short distance towards the street, trampled
under foot, and beaten to death. Meanwhile, John de
Witt, after receiving a severe wound on the head with the
butt-end of a musket, was brought by Verhoef, bleeding
and bare-headed, before the furious multitude. One Van
Soenen immediately thrust a pike into his face, while an
other of the miscreants shot him in the neck, exclaiming
as he fell, ' There goes down the Perpetual Edict '. Raising
himself on his knees, the sufferer lifted up his hands and
eyes to heaven in deep and earnest prayer. At that moment,
one Verhagen struck him with his musket. Hundreds
followed his example, and the cruel massacre was completed.
" Barbarities too dreadful for utterance or contemplation,
all that phrenzied passion or brutal ferocity could suggest,
were perpetrated on the bodies of these noble and virtuous
citizens ; nor was it till night put an end to the butchery,
that their friends were permitted to convey their mangled
remains to a secret and obscure tomb."
In the Nieuwe Kerk at The Hague the tomb of the De
Witts may be seen and honoured.
The Gevangenpoort is well worth a visit. One passes
tortuously from cell to cell — most of them associated with
some famous breaker of the laws of God or man, principally
of man. Here you may see a stone hollowed by the drops
of water that plashed from the prisoner's head, on which
they were timed to fall at intervals of a few seconds— a form
of torture imported, I believe, from China, and after some
hours ending inevitably in madness and death. Beside
such a refinement the rack is a mere trifle and the Gevano-en-
poort's branding irons and thumb screws become only toys.
A block, retaining the cuts made by the axe after it had

CROWDS OF AN EVENING 79
crashed through the offending neck, is also shown ; and the
names of prisoners written in their blood on the walls may
be traced. The building is a monument in stone of what
man can do to man in the name of justice.
I referred just now to the Nieuwe Kerk, the resting-
place of the De Witts. There lies also their contem
porary, Spinoza, whose home at Rynsburg we shall pass
on our way to Katwyk from Leyden. His house at The
Hague still stands— near his statue. The Groote Kerk
is older ; but neither church is particularly interesting.
From the Groote Kerk's tower one may, however, see a vast
deal of country around The Hague — a landscape contain
ing much greenery — and in the west the architectural
monsters of Scheveningen only too visible. We shall
reach Scheveningen in the next chapter, but while at The
Hague it is amusing to visit the fish market in order to
have sight of the good women of that town clustered about
the stalls in their peculiar costume. They are Scheven
ingen 's best. The adjoining stadhuis is a very interesting
example of Dutch architecture.
The Hague has excellent shops, and one street — the
Lange Pooten — more crowded in the evening, particularly
on Sunday evening, than any I know. Every Dutch town
has certain crowded streets in the evening, because to walk
up and down after dinner is the national form of recrea
tion. There are in the large cities a few theatres and
music halls, and in the smaller, concerts in the summer ;
but for the most part the streets and the cafes are the
great attraction. Each town has one street above all
others which is frequented in this way. At The Hague
it is the Lange Pooten, running into Spui Straat ; at
Amsterdam it is Kalverstraat.
Dutch shops are not very interesting, and the book-shops

o

80 ENGLISH BOOKS IN DUTCH
in particular tire a disappointment. This is because it is
not a reading people. The newspapers are sound and
practical before all things : business before pleasure is their
motto ; and native literature is not fostered. Publishers
who bring out new Dutch books usually do so on the old
subscription plan. But the book-shops testify to the popu
larity of translations from other nations and also of foreign
books in the original. The latest French and German
fiction is always obtainable. Among translations from the
English in 1904 I noticed a considerable number of copies
of the Sherlock Holmes tales and also of two or three
of Miss Corelli's works. These for adults ; for boys the
reading par excellence was a serial romance, in weekly or
monthly parts, entitled " De Wilsons en de Ring des Doods
of het Spoor van pen Diamenten ". The Wilsons, I gather,
have been having a great run in Holland. A lurid scene
in Maiden Lane was on the cover. Another story which
seemed to be popular had the engaging title " Beleaguered
by Jaguars ".
The Hague is very proud of the Bosch — the great wood
to the east of the city, with a few deer and many tall and
unpollarded trees, where one may walk and ride or drive
very pleasantly.
The Bosch has no restaurant within its boundaries. I
mention this in order to save the reader the mortification
of being conducted by a polite but firm waiter back to the
gates of the pavilion in which he may reasonably have
supposed he was as much entitled to order tea as any of
the groups enjoying that beverage at the little tables
within the enclosure, whose happiness had indeed led him
to enter it. They are, however, members of a club, to which
he has no more right of entry than any Dutch stranger
would have to the Athenaeum.

THE MENAGERIE
JAN STEEN
From the picture in the Mauritshuis

THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 81
The Huis ten Bosch, or House in the Wood, which all
good travellers must explore, is at the extreme eastern end
of the Bosch, with pleasure grounds of its own, including
a lake where royal skating parties are held. This very
charming royal residence, now only occasionally occupied,
is well worth seeing for its Chinese and Japanese decorations
alone — apart from historical associations and mural paint
ings. For mural paintings unless they are very quiet I
must confess to caring nothing, nor does a bed on which a
temporal prince breathed his last, or his first, move me to
any degree of interest ; but on the walls of one room of the
House in the Wood is some of the most charming Chinese
embroidery I ever saw, while another is decorated in blue
and white of exquisite delicacy. With these gracious
schemes of upholstery I shall always associate the Huis ten
Bosch. At Leyden we shall find traces of Oliver Goldsmith :
here at The Hague one may think of Mat. Prior, who
was secretary to our Ambassador for some years and even
wrote a copy of spritely verses on the subject.
THE SECRETARY.
Written at The Hague, 1696.
With labour assiduous due pleasure I mix,
And in one day atone for the bus'ness of six.
In a little Dutch chaise, on a Saturday night,
On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right :
No memoirs to compose, and no post-boy to move,
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love ;
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee :
This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine
To good or ill-fortune the third we resign.
Thus scorning the world, and superior to Fate,
I drive in my car in professional state ;
So with Phia thro' Athens Pisistratus rode,

82 PRIOR AND HOWELL
Men thought her Minerva, an<f riim a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse,
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse,
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose
In Holland half-drowned in int'rest and prose ?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried
When The Hague and the present are both on my side ?
And is it enough for the joys of the day
To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say,
When good Vandergoes and his provident Vrow,
As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow,
That, search all the province, you'll find no man dar is
So blest as the Englishen Heer Secretdr is ?
Let me close this rambling account of The Hague with
a passage from James Howell, in one of his conspicuously
elaborate Familiar Letters, written in 1622, describing
some of the odd things to be seen at that day in or about
the Dutch city : " We went afterwards to the Hague,
where there are hard by, though in several places, two
wonderful things to be seen, the one of Art, the other of
Nature ; that of Art is a Waggon or Ship, or a monster
mixt of both like the Hippocentaure who was half man and
half horse ; this Engin hath wheels and sails that will hold
above twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn
or mov'd by nothing else, and will run, the wind being good,
and the sails hois'd up, above fifteen miles an hour upon
the even hard sands : they say this Invention was found out
to entertain Spinola when he came thither to treat of
the last Truce." Upon this wonder, which I did not see,
civilisation has now improved, the wind being but a captious
and untrustworthy servant compared with petrol or steam.
None the less there is still a very rapid wheeled ship at
Zandvoort. But the record of Howell's other wonder is visible still.
He continues: "That wonder of Nature is a Church-

THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE! 83
monument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with
365 children about them, which were all delivered at one
birth ; they were half male, half female ; the two Basons in
which they were Christened hang still in the Church, and
the Bishop's Name who did it; and the story of this
Miracle, with the year and the day of the month mentioned,
which is not yet 200 years ago ; and the story is this :
That the Countess walking about her door after dinner,
there came a Begger-woman with two Children upon
her back to beg alms, the Countess asking whether those
children were her own, she answer'd, she had them both
at one birth, and by one Father, who was her husband.
The Countess would not only not give her any alms, but
reviled her bitterly, saying, it was impossible for one man
to get two children at once. The Begger-woman being
thus provok'd with ill words, and without alms, fell to
imprecations, that it should please God to show His judg
ment upon her, and that she might bear at one birth as
many children as there be days in the year, which she did
before the same year's end, having never bom child before."
The legend was naturally popular in a land of large
families, and it was certainly credited without any reserva
tion for many years. In England the rabbit-breeding
woman of Dorking had her adherents too. What the
beggar really wished for the Dutch lady was as many
children at one birth as there were days in the year in
which the conversation occurred — namely three, for the
encounter was on January 3rd. Or so I have somewhere
read. But it is more amusing to believe in the greater
number, especially as a Dutch author has put it on record
that he saw the children with his own eyes. They were
of the size of shrimps, and were baptised either singly or
collectively by Guy, Bishop of Utrecht. All the boys were

84 CORY ATE THE CREDULOUS
named John and all the girls Elizabeth. They died the
same day.
Thomas Coryate of the Crudities, who also tells the tale,
believed it implicitly. "This strange history," he says,
"will seem incredible (I suppose) to all readers. But it
is so absolutely and undoubtedly true as nothing in the
world more."
And here, hand in hand with Veritas, we leave The
Hague.

CHAPTER VI
SCHEVENINGEN AND KATWYK
The Dutch heaven — Huyghens' road — Sorgh Vliet's builder — Jacob Cats
— Homely wisdom — President Kruger — A monstrous resort — Giant
snails — The black-headed mannikins — The etiquette of petticoats
— Katwyk — The old Rhine — Noordwyk — Noordwyk-Binnen.
GOOD Dutchmen when they die go to Scheveningen ;
but my heaven is elsewhere. To go thither is,
however, no calamity, so long as one chooses the old road.
It is being there that so lowers the spirits. The Oude
Scheveningen Weg is perhaps the pleasantest, and certainly
the shadiest, road in Holland : not one avenue but many,
straight as a line in Euclid. On either side is a spreading
wood, among the trees of which, on the left hand, as
one leaves The Hague, is Sorgh Vliet, once the retreat of
old Jacob Cats, lately one of the residences of a royal
Duke, and now sold to a building company. The road
dates from 1666, its projector being Constan tin Huyghens,
poet and statesman, whose statue may be seen at the half
way halting-place. By the time this is reached the charm
of the road is nearly over : thenceforward it is all villas and
Scheveningen. But we must pause for a little while at Sorgh Vliet
(which has the same meaning as Sans Souci), where two
hundred years ago lived in genial retirement the writer
who best represents the shrewd sagacity of the Dutch
(85)

86 IDEAL ILLUSTRATIONS
character — Jacob Cats, or Vader Cats as he was affection
ately called, the author of the Dutch " Household Bible,"
a huge miscellaneous collection of wise saws and modem
instances, humour and satire, upon all the businesses of life.
Mr. Austin Dobson, who leaves grains of gold on all
he touches, has described in his Side-Walk Studies the
huge illustrated edition of Cats' Works (Amsterdam, 1655)
which is held sacred in all rightly constituted old-fashioned
Dutch households. I have seen it at the British Museum,
and it seems to me to be one of the best picture-books in
the world.
As Mr. Dobson says, the life of old Holland is repro
duced in it. " What would one not give for such an illus
trated copy of Shakespeare ! In these pages of Jacob Cats
we have the authentic Holland of the seventeenth century :
— its vanes and spires and steep-roofed houses ; its gardens
with their geometric tulip-beds, their formally-clipped
alleys and arches, their shining parallelograms of water.
Here are its old-fashioned interiors, with the deep fire
places and queer andirons, the huge four-posters, the prim
portraits on the wall, the great brass-clamped coffers and
carved armories for the ruffs and starched collars and stiff
farthingales of the women. In one picture you may see
the careful housewife mournfully inspecting a moth-eaten
garment which she has just taken from a chest that Wardour
Street might envy ; in another she is energetically cuffing
the ' foolish fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian
coach-dog overturn the cauldron at the fire. Here an
old crone, with her spectacles on, is cautiously probino- the
contents of the said cauldron with a fork ; here the mistress
of the house is peeling pears ; here the plump and soft
hearted cheese-wife is entertaining an admirer  outside
there are pictures as vivid. Here are the clumsy leather-

PORTRAIT OF G. BICKER, LANDRICHTKR OF MUIDEN
VAN DER HELST
From the picture in the Jiyks Museum

HOMESPUN WISDOM 87
topped coach with its masked occupant and stumbling
horses ; the towed treJcschuit, with its merry freight, sliding
swiftly through the low-lying landscape ; the windy mole,
stretching seaward, with its blown and flaring beacon-fire.
Here again in the street is the toy-shop with its open front
and store of mimic drums and halberds for the martial little
burghers ; here are the fruiteress with her stall of grapes
and melons, the rat-catcher with his string of trophies, the
fowler and his clap-net, the furrier with his stock of skins."
In 1860 a number of Van der Venne's best pictures were
redrawn by John Leighton to accompany translations of
the fables by Richard Pigot. As a taste of Cats' quality
I quote two of the pieces. Why the pictures should have
been redrawn when they might have been reproduced ex
actly is beyond my understanding. This is one poem : —
LIKE MELONS, FRIENDS ARE TO BE FOUND IN PLENTY,
OF WHICH NOT EVEN ONE IS GOOD IN TWENTY.
In choosing Friends, it's requisite to use
The self-same care as when we Melons choose :
No one in haste a Melon ever buys,
Nor makes his choice till three or four he tries ;
And oft indeed when purchasing this fruit,
Before the buyer can find one to suit,
He's e'en obliged t' examine half a score,
And p'rhaps not find one when his search is o'er.
Be cautious how you choose a friend ;
For Friendships that are lightly made,
Have seldom any other end
Than grief to see one's trust betray'd !
And here is another : —
SMOKE IS THE FOOD OF LOVERS.
When Cupid open'd Shop, the Trade he chose
Was just the very one you might suppose.
Love keep a shop ? — his trade, Oh I quickly name !
A Dealer in tobacco — Fie for sharne I

88 FATHER JACOB CATS
No less than true, and set aside all joke,
From oldest time he ever dealt in Smoke ;
Than Smoke, no other thing he sold, or made ;
Smoke all the substance of his stock in trade ;
His Capital all Smoke, Smoke all his store,
'Twas nothing else ; but Lovers ask no more —
And thousands enter daily at his door !
Hence it was ever, and it e'er will be
The trade most suited to his faculty : —
Fed by the vapours of their heart's desire,
No other food his Votaries require ;
For, that they seek — The Favour of the Fair,
Is unsubstantial as the Smoke and air.
From these rhymes, with their home-spun philosophy,
one might assume Cats to have been merely a witty peasant.
But he was a man of the highest culture, a great jurist,
twice ambassador to England, where Charles I. laid his
sword on his shoulder and bade him rise Sir Jacob, a
traveller and the friend of the best intellects. From an
interesting article on Dutch poetry in an old Foreign
Quarterly Review I take an account of the aphorist :
" Vondel had for his contemporary a man, of whose popu
larity we can hardly give an idea, unless we say that to
speak Dutch and to have learnt Cats by heart, are almost
the same thing. Old Father Jacob Cats — (we beg to
apologize for his unhappy name — and know not why, like
the rest of his countrymen, he did not euphonize it into
some well-sounding epithet, taken from Greece or Rome —
Elouros, for example, or Felisius ; Catsius was ventured
upon by his contemporaries, but the honest grey-beard
stuck to his paternities) — was a man of practical wisdom
— great experience — much travel — considerable learning 
and wonderful fluency. He had occupied hio-h offices of
state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and children's
children, to that agreeable retreat which we mentioned as
not far from The Hague, where we have often dreamed his

AND HIS WORKS 89
sober and serious — but withal cheerful and happy, spirit,
might still preside. His moralities are sometimes prolix,
and sometimes rather dull. He often sweeps the bloom
away from the imaginative anticipations of youth — and in
that does little service He will have everything sub
stantial, useful, permanent. He has no other notion of
love than that it is meant to make good husbands and
wives, and to produce painstaking and obedient children.
" His poetry is rhymed counsel — kind, wise, and good.
He calculates all results, and has no mercy for thoughts,
or feelings, or actions, which leave behind them weariness,
regret or misery. His volumes are a storehouse of pru
dence and worldly wisdom. For every state of life he
has fit lessons, so nicely dovetailed into rhyme, that the
morality seems made expressly for the language, or the
language for the morality. His thoughts — all running
about among the duties of life — -voluntarily move in har
monious numbers, as if to think and to rhyme were one
solitary attribute. For the nurse who wants a song for
her babe — the boy who is tormented by the dread of the
birch — the youth whose beard begins to grow — the lover
who desires a posey for his lady's ring — for the husband —
father — grandsire — for all there is a store — to encourage —
to console — and to be grateful for. The titles of his works
are indices to their contents. Among them are De
Ouderdom, Old Age ; Buyten Leven, Out-of-Doors Life ;
Hofgedachten, Garden Thoughts ; Gedachten op Slapelooze
Nachten, Thoughts of Sleepless Nights ; Trouwring, Mar
riage Ring ; Zelfstriit, Self-struggle, etc. Never was a
poet so essentially the poet of the people. He is always
intelligible — always sensible — and, as was well said of him
by Kruijiff, Smiling he teaches truth, and sporting wins to virtue,"

90 SCHEVENINGEN'S SANDS
When President Kruger died last year the memoirs of
him agreed in fixing upon the Bible as his only reading.
But I am certain he knew Vader Cats by heart too. If
ever a master had a faithful pupil, Vader Cats had one
in Oom Paul. The vivid yet homely metaphors and
allegories in which Oom Paul conveyed so many of his
thoughts were drawn from the same source as the emblems
of Vader Cats. Both had the iEsopian gift.
We have no one English writer with whom to compare
Cats ; but a syndicate formed of Fuller and Burton, Cobbett
and Quarles might produce something akin.
Scheveningen is half squalid town, half monstrous
pleasure resort. Upon its sea ramparts are a series of
gigantic buildings, greatest of which is the Curhaus, where
the best music in Holland is to be heard. Its pier and
its promenade are not at the first glimpse unlike Brighton's ;
but the vast buildings have no counterpart with us, except
perhaps at Blackpool. What is, however, peculiar to
Scheveningen is its expanse of sand covered with sentry-
box wicker chairs. To stand on the pier on a fine day in
the season and look down on these thousands of chairs
and people is to receive an impression of insect-like activity
that I think cannot be equalled. Immovable as they are, the
chairs seem to add to the restlessness of the seething mass.
What a visitor from Mars would make of it is a mystery ;
but he could hardly fail to connect chair and occupant.
Here, he would say, is surely the abode of giant snails !
On a windy day the chairs must be of great use ; but in
heat they seem to me too vertical and too hard. One
must, however, either sit in them or lie upon sand. There
is not a pebble on the whole coast: indeed there is not
a pebble in Holland. Life after lying upon sand can
become to some of us a burden almost too difficult to bear

THE LITTLE BIRDS 91
but the Dutch holiday-maker does not seem to find it so.
As for the children, they are truly in Paradise. There
can be no sand better to dig in than that of Scheveningen ;
and they dig in it all day. A favourite game seems to be
to surround the parental sentry-boxes with a fosse. Every
family has its castle, and every castle its moat.
I have been twice to Scheveningen, and on each occasion
I acquired beneath its glittering magnitude a sense of
depression. That leaven of tenderness which every col
lection of human beings must have was harder to find at
Scheveningen than anywhere in Holland — everything was
so ordered, so organised, for pleasure, pleasure at any price,
pleasure almost at the point of the bayonet.
But on the second occasion one little incident saved the
day — an encounter with a strolling bird-fancier who dealt
in Black-Headed Mannikins. Two of these tiny brisk
birds, in their Quaker black and brown, sat upon his cane
to attract purchasers. They fluttered to his finger, perched
on his hat, simulated death in the palm of his hand, and
went through other evolutions with the speed of thought
and the bright spontaneous alacrity possible only to a
small loyal bird. These, however, were not for sale : these
were decoys ; the saleable birds lay, packed far too close,
in little wooden boxes in the man's bag. And Scheveningen
to me means no longer a mile of palaces, no longer a " hot
huddle of humanity " on the sand among myriad sentry-
boxes : its symbol is just two Black-Headed Mannikins.
From the Curhaus it is better to return „to the Hague by
electric tram along the new road. Save for passing a field
where the fishwives of Scheveningen in their blue shawls
spread and mend their nets, this road is dull and suburban ;
but from it, when the light is failing, a view of Schevenin-
gen's domes and spires may be gained which, softened and

92 PETTICOATS AND SPINOZA
made mysterious by the gloaming, translates the chief
watering-place of Holland into an Eastern city of romance.
The fishwives of Scheveningen, I am told, carry the art
of petticoat wearing to a higher point than any of their
sisters. The appearance of the homing fleet in the offing
is a signal for as many as thirty of these garments to be
put on as a mark of welcome to a returning husband.
Probably no shore anywhere in the world has been so
often painted as that of Scheveningen — ever since the
painting of landscape seemed a worthy pursuit. James
Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and
huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores ; Mesdag's
too. Perhaps it was the artists that prevailed on the fisher
men to wear crimson knickerbockers — the note of warm
colour that the scene demands.
Here, although it is separated from Scheveningen by
some miles of sand, I should like to say something of
Katwyk — which is Leyden's marine resort. A steam-tram
carries people thither many times a day. The rail, when first
I travelled upon it, in April, ran through tulips ; in August,
when I was there again, the patches of scarlet and orange
had given way to acres of massive purple-green cabbages
which, in the evening light, were vastly more beautiful.
At Rynsburg, one of the villages on the way, dwelt in
1650-51 Benedict Spinoza, the philosopher, and there he
wrote his abridgement of the Meditations of Descartes, his
master in philosophy, who had for a while lived close by at
Endegeest. Spinoza, who was born at Amsterdam in 1632,
died in 1677. His house at Rynsburg, which he shared
with a Colleginat (one of a sect of Remonstrants who had
their headquarters there) is now a Spinoza museum ; his
statue is at The Hague.
Katwyk-an-Zee is a compact little pleasure resort with

KATWYK AND NOORDWYK 93
the usual fantastic childish villas. Its most interesting
possession is the mouth of the Old Rhine, now restricted
by a canal and controlled by locks. There is perhaps no
better example of the Dutch power over water than the
contrast between the present narrow canal through which
the river must disembogue and the unprofitable marsh
which once spread here. The locks, which are nearly a
hundred years old, were among the works of the engineer
Conrad, whose monument is in Haarlem church.
From the Old Rhine's mouth to Noordwyk is a lonely
but very bracing walk of three miles along the sand, with
the dunes on one's right hand and the sea on one's left.
One may meet perhaps a few shell gatherers, but no one
else. We drove before us all the way a white company
consisting of a score of gulls, twice as many tern, two
oyster catchers and one curlew. They rose and settled, rose
and settled, always some thirty yards away,-"until Noordwyk
was reached, when we left them behind. Never was a
Japanese screen so realised as by these birds against the
pearl grey sea and yellow sand.
Katwyk is more cheery than Noordwyk ; but Noordwyk
has a prettier street — indeed, in its old part there is no
prettier street in Holland in the light of sunset. As
Hastings is to Eastbourne, so is Katwyk to Noordwyk ;
Scheveningen is Brighton, Yarmouth, and Blackpool in one.
A very pretty lace cap is worn at Noordwyk by villagers
and visitors alike, to hold the hair against the west wind.
From Noordwyk we walked to Noordwyk-Binnen, the
real town, parent of the seaside resort; and there, at a
table at the side of the main street, by an avenue so leafy
as to exclude even glints of the sky, we sipped something
Dutch whose name I could not assimilate, and waited for
the tram for Leyden. It was the greenest tunnel I ever saw.

CHAPTER VII
LEYDEN
Steam-trams — Holland for the people — Quiet Leyden — The Meermans-
burg — Leyden's museums — The call of the open — Oliver Goldsmith
— A view of the Dutch — "Polite Learning" — "The Traveller" —
James Howell — John Evelyn and the Burgundian Jew — Colloquia
Peripatetica — St. Peter's and St. Pancras's — The Kermis — Drinking
in Holland — Poffertjes and Wafelen — America's master.
WE travelled to Leyden from The Hague by the
steam-tram, through cheerful domestic surround
ings, past little Englishy cottages and gardens. It was
Sunday morning, and the villagers of Voorburg and Voor-
schoten and the other little places en route were idle and gay.
In England light railways are a rarity; Holland is
covered with a net-work of them. The little trains rush
along the roads all over the country, while the roadside
willows rock in their eddying wake. To stand on the
steam-tram footboard is one very good way to see Holland.
In England of course we can never have such conveniences,
England being a free country in which individual rights
come first. But Holland exists for the State, and such an
idea as the depreciation or ruin of property by running a
tram line over it has never suggested itself. It is true that
when the new electric tramway between Amsterdam and
Haarlem was projected, the comic papers came to the
defence of outraged Nature ; but they did not really mean
it, as the assthetic minority in England would have meant it
(94)

THE DUTCH STUDENT 95
The steam-tram journeys are always interesting; and
my advice to a traveller in Holland is to make as much
use of them as he can. This is quite simple as their time
tables are included in the official Reisgids. I like them at
all times ; but best perhaps when one has to wait in the
heart of some quiet village for the other tram to come up.
There is something very soothing and attractive in these
sudden cessations of noise and movement in the midst of a
totally strange community.
Leyden is a paradise of clean, quiet streets — a city of
professors, students and soldiers. It has, I think, the
prettiest red roofs in any considerable Dutch town : not
prettier than Veere's, but Veere is now only a village. Philo
sophers surely live here : book-worms to whom yesterday,
to-day and to-morrow are one. The sense of commercial
enterprise dies away : whatever they are at Amsterdam,
the Dutch at Leyden cease to be a nation of shopkeepers.
It was holiday time when I was there last, and the town
was comparatively empty. No songs floated through the
windows of the clubs. In talk with a stranger at one of the
cafes, I learned that the Dutch student works harder in the
holidays than in term. In term he is a social and imbibing
creature ; but when the vacation comes and he returns to
a home to which most of the allurements which an Eng
lish boy would value are wanting, he applies himself to his
books. I give the statement as I heard it.
One of the pleasantest buildings in Leyden is the Meer-
mansburg — a spreading almshouse in the Oude Vest, sur
rounding a square garden with a massive pump in the
midst. A few pictures are shown in the Governors' room
over the entrance, but greater interest attaches to the little
domiciles for the pensioners of the Meerman trust. A
friendly concierge with a wooden leg showed us one of

96 LEYDEN'S MUSEUMS
these compact houses — a sitting-room with a bed-cupboard
in one wall, and below it a little larder, like the cabin of a
ship. At the back a tiny range, and above, a gan-et. One
could be very comfortable in such quarters.
Leyden has other hofjes, as these homes of rest are called,
into one of which, gay with geraniums, I peeped — a little
court of clean cottages seen through the doorway like a
Peter de Hooch.
I did not, I fear, do my duty by Leyden's many museums.
The sun shone ; the boats swam continually down the Old
Rhine and the New ; and the sea at Katwyk and Noordwyk
sent a call across the intervening meadows. Some day
perhaps I shall find myself at Leyden again, when the sky
is grey and the thirst for information is more strongly
upon me. Ethnography, comparative anatomy, physiology
— there is nothing that may not be learned in the Leyden
museums ; but such learning is not peculiarly Dutch, nor
are the treasures of these museums peculiarly Dutch, and
I felt that I might with a clear conscience leave them to
others. Have we not Bloomsbury ?
I did, however, climb the Burg, which is a circular fortress
on a mound between the two rivers, so cleverly hidden away
among houses that it was long ere I could find it It is
gained through an ancient courtyard full of horses and
carriages — like a scene in Dumas. From the Burg one
ought to have a fine view, but Leyden's roofs are too
near. And in the Natural History Museum I walked
through miles of birds stuffed, and birds articulated, until
I felt that I could give a year's income to be on terms
again with a living blackbird — even one of those that eat
our Kentish strawberries at sunrise.
I did not penetrate to the interior of the University,
having none to guide me, but I was pleased to remember

OLIVER GOLDSMITH 97
that Oliver Goldsmith had been a student there not so
very long ago. Indeed, as I walked about the town, I
thought much of Goldsmith as he was in 1755, aged
twenty-seven, with all his books to write, wandering
through the same streets, looking upon the same houses
and canals, in the interval of acquiring his mysterious
medical degree (ultimately conferred at Louwain). His
ingenious project, it will be remembered — by those whose
memories (like my own) cling to that order of information,
to the exclusion of everything useful and improving —
Goldsmith's delightful plan for subsistence in Holland was
to teach the English language to the Dutch, and in return
receive enough money to keep him at the University of
Leyden and enable him to hear the great Professor Albinus.
It was not until he reached Holland that those adorable
Irish brains of his realised that he who teaches English to
a Dutchman must first know Dutch.
Goldsmith, who spent his life in doing characteristic
things — few men have done more— when once he had
determined to go to Holland, took a passage in a vessel
bound for Bordeaux. At Newcastle-on-Tyne, however,
on going ashore to be merry, he was arrested as a Jacobite
and thrown into prison for a fortnight. The result was
that the ship sailed without him. It was just as well
for him and for us, for it sank at the mouth of the
Garonne. In 1755, however, he was in Leyden, although
by what route, circuitous or direct, he reached that city we
do not know.
He lost little time in giving his Uncle Contarine an
account of his impressions of Holland and its people. Here
is a portion of a long letter : " The modern Dutchman is
quite a different creature from him of former times: he
in everything imitates a Frenchman, but in his easy dis»
7

98 THE DUTCH AND THE SCOTCH
engaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company.
The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly
what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of
Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright
Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature : upon
a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat
laced with black ribbon ; no coat, but seven waistcoats,
and nine pairs of breeches ; so that his hips reach almost
up to his arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now
fit to see company, or make love. But what a pleasing
creature is the object of his appetite ! Why she wears
a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace : and for every
pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.
"A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic
admirer but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every
women carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which,
when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats ; and at this
chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I take it that
this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy
healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his
superfluous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this
amusement, overflows with such viscidities as tint the
complexion, and give that paleness of visage which low
fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch
woman and Scotch will bear an opposition. The one is
pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy : the one walks as
if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes
too masculine a stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive
either country of its share of beauty ; but must sav, that
of all objects on this earth, an English farmer's daughter
is most charming. Every woman there is a complete
beauty, while the higher class of women want many of the
requisites to make them even tolerable.

1 ' % W'i

*>*¦.

WINTER 99
" Their pleasures here are very dull though very various.
You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian
comedy, as good an amusement as either of the former.
This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is
generally a magician, and in consequence of his diabolical
art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons
of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in
a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he
touches the glass from which another was drinking. 'Twas
not his face they laughed at, for that was masked. They
must have seen something vastly queer in the wooden
sword, that neither I, nor you, sir, were you there, could
see. " In winter, when their canals are frozen, every house
is forsaken, and all people are on the ice ; sleds drawn by
horses, and skating, are at that time the reigning amuse
ments. They have boats here that slide on the ice, and
are driven by the winds. When they spread all their sails
they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their
motion is so rapid the eye can scarcely accompany them.
Their ordinary manner of travelling is very cheap and very
convenient : they sail in covered boats drawn by horses ;
and in these you are sure to meet people of all nations.
Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and the
English play at cards. Any man who likes company may
have them to his taste. For my part I generally detached
myself from all society, and was wholly taken up in observ
ing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty ;
wherever I turn my eye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues,
grottos, vistas, presented themselves ; but when you enter
their towns you are charmed beyond description. No
misery is to be seen here ; every one is usefully em
ployed.

100 SCOTCH AND DUTCH AGAIN
"Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast.
There hills and rocks intercept every prospect : here 'tis all
a continued plain. There you might see a well-dressed
duchess issuing from a dirty close ; and here a dirty Dutch
man inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared
to a tulip planted in dung ; but I never see a Dutchman
in his own house but I think of a magnificent Egyptian
temple dedicated to an ox. Physic is by no means here
taught so well as in Edinburgh : and in all Leyden there
are but four British students, owing to all necessaries being
so extremely dear and the professors so very lazy (the
chemical professor excepted) that we don't much care to
come hither."
When the time came to make the "Inquiry into the
State of Polite Learning" Leyden had to suffer. Gold
smith laid about him with no gentle hand. " Holland,
at first view, appears to have some pretensions to polite
learning. It may be regarded as the great emporium, not
less of literature than of every other commodity. Here,
though destitute of what may be properly called a language
of their own, all the languages are understood, cultivated
and spoken. All useful inventions in arts, and new dis
coveries in science, are published here almost as soon as
at the places which first produced them. Its individuals
have the same faults, however, with the Germans, of making
more use of then- memory than their j udgment. The chief
employment of then- literati is to criticise, or answer, the
new performances which appear elsewhere.
"A dearth of wit in France or England naturally pro
duces a scarcity in Holland. What Ovid says of Echo
may be applied here,  ' nee reticere loquenti,
Nee prior ipsa loqui didicit' 

"THE TRAVELLER" 101
they wait till something new comes out from others ;
examine its merits and reject it, or make it reverberate
through the rest of Europe.
" After all, I know not whether they should be allowed
any national character for polite learning. All then- taste
is derived to them from neighbouring nations, and that in
a language not their own. They somewhat resemble their
brokers, who trade for immense sums without having any
capital." Goldsmith did not finish there. His observations on the
Continent served him, with a frugality that he did not
otherwise practise, at least thrice. He used them in the
" Inquiry into Polite Learning," he used them in the story
of the Philosophic Vagabond in the Vicar of Wakefield, and
still again in "The Traveller". This is the summary of
Holland in that poem : —
To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow ;
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile ;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted.bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign.
Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil
Impels the native to repeated toil,
Industrious habits in each bosom reign,
And industry begets a love of gain.

102 UNCLE CONTARINE'S FLOWER
Hence all the good from opulence that springs,
With all those ills superfluous treasure brings,
Are here display'd. Their much-lov'd wealth imparts
Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts :
But view them closer, craft and fraud appear,
Even liberty itself is barter'd here.
At gold's superior charms all freedom flies,
The needy sell it, and the rich man buys;
A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves,
Here wretches seek dishonourable graves,
And calmly bent, to servitude conform,
Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm.
It was with his good Uncle Contarine's money that Gold
smith travelled to Leyden. The time came to leave, and
Oliver was again without resources. He borrowed a suf
ficient sum from Dr. Ellis, a fellow-countryman living there,
and prepared for his departure. But on his way from the
doctor's he had to pass a florist's, in whose window there
chanced to be exhibited the very variety of flower which
Uncle Contarine had so often praised and expressed a
desire to possess. Given the man and the moment, what
can you expect ? Goldsmith, chief among those blessed
natures who never interrupt a genex-ous impulse, plunged
into the florist's house and despatched a costly bundle of
bulbs to Ireland. The next day he left Leyden with a
guinea in his pocket, no clothes but those he stood in,
and a flute in his hand. For the rest you must see the
story of the Philosophic Vagabond.
Evelyn x-ecords an amusing experience at Leyden in
August, 1641 : " I was brought acquainted with a Bur-
gundian Jew, who had married an apostate Kentish woman.
I asked him divers questions ; he told me, amongst other
things, that the World should never end, that our souls
transmigrated, and that even those of the most holy persons
did penance in the bodies of brutes after death, and so he

THE BURGUNDIAN JEW 103
interpreted the banishment and savage life of Nebuchad
nezzar ; that all the Jews should rise again, and be led to
Jerusalem ; that the Romans only were the occasion of our
Saviour's death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks do) to be
a great prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me
several books of their devotion, which he had translated
into English for the instruction of his wife ; he told me
that when the Messiah came, all the ships, barks, and
vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain strange
whirlwinds, be loosed from then- anchors, and transported
in a moment to all the desolate ports and havens through
out the woi-ld, wherever the dispersion was, to convey their
brethren and tribes to the Holy City ; with other such-like
stuff. He was a merry drunken fellow, but would by no
means handle any money (for something I purchased of
him), it being Saturday ; but desired me to leave it in the
window, meaning to x-eceive it on Sunday morning."
In an old book-shop at Leyden I bought from an odd
lot of English books, chiefly minor fiction for travellers, the
Colloquia Peripatetica of John Duncan, LL.D., Professor
of Hebrew in the New College, Edinburgh. " I'm first a
Christian, next a Catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth a Paedo-
baptist, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot x-everse the
order," is one of his emphatic utterances. Here are others,
not unconnected with the country we are travelling in :
" Poor Ei-asmus truckled all his life for a hat. If he could
only have been made a cardinal ! You see the longing for
it in his very features, and can't help regarding him with
mingled respect and pity." Of Thomas a Kempis, the
recluse of Deventer : " A fine fellow, but hazy, and weak
betimes. He and his school tend (as some one has well
said) to make humility and humiliation change places."
Finally, of the Bible : " The three best translations of the

104 THE KERMIS
Bible, in my opinion, are, in order of merit, the English,
the Dutch, and Diodati's Italian version. As to Luthex-,
he is admirable in rendering the prophets. He says either
just what the prophets did say, or that which you see at
once they might have said."
Leyden has two vast churches, St. Peter's and St.
Pancras's. Both are immense and unadorned ; I think
that St. Pancras's is the lightest church I was ever in.
St. Peter's ought to be filled with memorials of the town's
illustrious sons, but it has few. As I have said elsewhere,
I asked in vain for the grave of Jan Steen, who was buried
here. It was at Leyden that I saw my fix-st Kermis, or fair,
seven years ago, and ate my first poffertjes and wafelen.
Writing as a foreigner, in no way concerned with the
matter, I may express regret that the Kermis is not what
it was in Holland. Possibly were one living in Holland,
one would at once join the anti-Kermis party; but I hope
not. In Amsterdam the anti- Kermis party has succeeded,
and though one may still in that city at certain seasons
eat wafelen and poffertjes, the old glories have departed,
just as they have departed from so many English towns
which once broke loose for a few nights every year. Even
Bax-net Fair is not what it was.
Noise seems to be the principal objection. Personally, I
never saw any drunkenness ; and thei-e is so little real
revelry that one turns one's back on the naphtha lamps in
this town and that, in Leyden and the Hoorn, Apeldoorn
and Middelburg, with the sad conviction that the times are
out of joint, and that Teniers and Ostade and Brouwer,
were they reborn to-day, would probably either have to
take to painting Christmas supplements or earn their
living at a reputable trade. It is not that the Dutch

¦n a -n

POFFERTJES AND WAFELEN 105
no longer drink, but that they now do it with more
privacy.
The travelling temples reserved for the honour of pof
fertjes and wafelen are the most noticeable features of
any Kermis. They are divided, quite like restaurants,
into little cubicles for separate parties. Flowers and
ferns make them gay; the waiters may even wear even
ing dress, but this is a refinement which would have
annoyed Jan Steen ; on the tables is white American
cloth ; and curtains of coloured material and muslin,
with bright ribbons, add to the vivacity of the occasion.
To eat poffertjes and wafelen is no light matter : one
must regard it as a ritual.
Poffertjes come first — these are little round pancakey
blobs, twisted and covered with butter and sugar. Then
the wafelen, which are oblong wafers stamped in a mould
and also buttered and sugared. You eat twenty -four pof
fertjes and two wafelen : that is, at the first onset. After
wards, as many more as you wish. Lager beer is drunk
with them. Some prefer Frambozen lemonade.
To eat them is a duty ; to see them cooked is a joy. I
have watched the cooks almost for hours. The poffertjes
ax-e made by hundreds at once, in a tray indented with
little hollows over a fire. The cook is continually busy
in twisting the little dabs of paste into the hollows and
removing those that are ready. The wafelen are baked in
iron moulds (there is one in Jan Steen's " Oyster Feast ")
laid on a rack in the fire. The cook has eight moulds
in working order at once. When the eighth is filled
from the pail of batter at his side, the first is done ; and
so on, ceaselessly, all day and half the night, like a
natural law.
A woman stands by to spread butter and sugax-, and

106 THE ORIGIN OF QUICK LUNCHES
the plate is whisked away in a moment. The Americans
boast of their quick lunches ; but I am convinced that they
borrowed celerity in cooking and serving from some Knicker
bocker deviser of poffertjes and wafelen in the early days of
New York. I wonder that Washington Irving omitted to
say so.

CHAPTER VIII
LEYDEN'S PAINTERS, A FANATIC AND A HERO
Rembrandt of the Rhine — His early life at Leyden — Jan Steen — Jan van
Goyen — Brewer and painter — Pictures for beer — Jan Steen's grave
— His delicacy and charm — His native refinement — A painter of
hands — Jan Steen and Morland — Jan Steen and Hogarth — The Red
Sea — The Flood — Jan of Leyden — The siege of Munster — Gigantic
madness — Gerard Dou — Godfrey Schalcken — Frans van Mieris —
William van Mieris — Gabriel Metsu — Beckford's satire — Leyden's
poor pictures — The siege of Leyden — Adrian van der Werf.
LEYDEN was the mother of some precious human clay.
Among her sons was the greatest of Dutch painters,
Rembrandt van Rijn ; the most lovable of them, Jan Steen ;
and the most patient of them, Gei-ard Dou.
Of Rembrandt's genius it is late in the day to write,
nor have I the power. We have seen certain of his pictures
at The Hague ; we shall see others at Amsterdam. I can
add nothing to what is said in those places, but here, in
Leyden (which has ten thousand stuffed birds, and not a
single picture by her greatest son), one may dwell upon his
early days and think of him wandering as a boy in the
surrounding country unconsciously absorbing effects of
light and shade.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July
15, 1606, probably in a house at the corner of the Wed-
desteg, near the Wittepoort, on the bank of the Rhine.
It was the same year that gave England Macbeth and King
(107)

108 REMBRANDT'S YOUTH
Lear. His father was a miller, his mother the daughter of
a Leyden baker : it was destined that the son of these
simple folk should be the greatest painter that the north of
Europe has produced.
They did not foresee such a fate, but they seem suf
ficiently to have realised that their son had unusual aptitude
for him to be sent to study law at the University. But he
meant from the fix-st to paint, and when he should have
been studying text-books he was studying nature. The old
miller, having a wise head, gave way, and Rembrandt was
allowed to enter the studio of Jacob van Swanenburgh.
That was probably in 1622, when he was sixteen ; in 1624
he knew so much more than Swanenburgh had ever dreamed
of that he passed on to Amsterdam, to see what could be
learned from Peter Lastman. But Lastman was of little
use, and Rembrandt soon x-eturned to Leyden.
There he set up his own studio, painting, however1, at his
father's house — possibly even in the mill itself — as much
as he could ; and for seven years he taught younger men at
Leyden his secrets. He x-emained at Leyden until 1631,
moving then again to Amsterdam and beginning the
greatest period of his life. At Leyden he had painted
much and etched much ; perhaps the portrait of himself in
a steel gorget, at The Hague, is his finest Leyden picture.
It was not until 1632, the year in which he married his
Saskia, that the first of his most famous works, " The School
of Anatomy," was painted. Yet Leyden may consider that
it was she that showed the way ; she may well be proud.
Rembrandt's later life belongs to Amsterdam ; but
Leyden had other illustrious sons who were faithful to
her to the end. Chief of these was Jan Steen.
Harmens the miller, as we have seen, became the father
of a boy named Rembrandt in 1606 ; it was twenty years

JAN STEEN 109
later that Steen the brewer i-ejoiced over the birth of a son
called Jan.
Of Jan's childhood we know nothing, but as a young
man he was sent by his father to Utrecht to study under
Nicholas Knupfer. Then he passed on to Adrian van
Ostade and probably to Adrian Brouwer, with both of
whom and Frans Hals we saw him carousing, after his
wont, in a picture by Brouwer in Baron Steengracht's
house at The Hague. Finally he became the pupil of Jan
van Goyen, painter of the beautiful " Valkhof at Nymegen,"
No. 991 in the Ryks Museum, a picture which always makes
me think of Andrew Marvell's poem on the Bermudas.
Like many another art pupil, Jan Steen married his
master's daughtei-.
Jan van Goyen, I might add, was another of Leyden's
sons. He was born in 1596 and he died at The Hague in
1666, while London was suffering under the Plague.
Jan Steen seems to have intended to make brewing his
staff and painting merely his cane ; but good nature and
a terrible thirst were too much for him. Fx-om brewing he
descended to keeping a tavern, "in which occupation," to
quote Ireland, " he was himself his best customer ". After
a while, having exhausted his cellar, he took seriously to
painting in order to x-enew it, paying for his liquor with his
brush. Thus " for a long time his works were to be found
only in the hands of dealers in wine ". Who, after this,
shall have the hardihood to speak evil of the grape ?
Jan is not supposed to have lived at Leyden after his
marriage to Margaretta van Goyen, in 1649, until 1669,
when his father died. In 1672 he is known to have taken
a tavern at Leyden at the Lange Brug.
Of the intervening years little is known. He was pro
bably at Haarlem part of the time and at The Hague

110 A MASTER OF CHARM
part of the time. In 1667 he paid his rent— only twenty-
nine florins — with three pictures " painted well as he was
able ". Margaretta died in 1669 — a merry large woman
we must suppose her from her appearance in Jan's pictures,
and the mother of four or five children who may often be
seen in the same scenes. Jan married again in 1673 and
died in 1697.
He was buried in St. Peter's Church, Leyden, leaving
more than five hundred pictures to his name. The youth
who, in the absence of the koster, accompanied me through
St. Peter's Church, so far from knowing where Jan Steen
was buried, had never even heard his name. (And at the
Western Church in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt is said to
have been buried, his x-esting-place cannot be pointed out.
But never a Dutch admiral's gx-ave is in doubt.)
For all his roystering and l-ecklessness, for all his drinking
and excess, Jan Steen's work is essentially delicate. He
painted the sublimated essence of comedy. Teniers, Ostade,
Brouwer are coarse and boorish beside him ; Metsu and
Mieris genteel. Even when he is painting low life Jan
Steen is distinguished, a gentleman. And now and then he
touches the springs of tears, so exquisite in his sympathetic
understanding. He remains the most lovable painter in
Holland, and the tenderest — in a country where tenderness
is not easily found.
Look, for example, at the two pictui-es at The Hague
which are reproduced opposite pages 74 and 80. The first
represents the Steen family. The jolly Jan himself is smok
ing at the table; the old brewer and the elder Mrs. Steen are
in the foreground. I doubt if any picture exists in which
the sense of innocent festivity is better expi-essed. It is all
perhaps rather a muddle : Mi-s. Steen has some hard work
before her if the house is to be restored to a Dutch pitch

THE OYSTER FEAST
JAN SI'EEN
F>om the picture in the Mauritshu

STEEN AND MORLAND 111
of cleanliness and order ; but how jolly every one is ! Jan
himself looks just as we should expect.
The triumph of the " Oyster Feast," on the opposite page,
seems to me to be the girl kneeling in the corner. Here
is drawing indeed. The charge brought by the mysterious
painter in Balzac's story against Pom-bus, that one was
unable to walk behind the figure in his picture, could never
hold with Jan Steen. His every figure stands out surrounded
by atmosphere, and never more so than in the "Oyster
Feast ". Again, in the " Cat's Dancing Lesson " (opposite
page 158), what drawing there is in the girl playing the
pipe, and what life in the whole scene !
It is odd that Jan Steen in Holland, and George Morland
in England, both topers, should have had this secret of
simple charm so highly developed : one of nature's curious
ironies, very confusing to the moralist. In the second
Hague pictm-e (opposite page 80) Leyden's genial tosspot
has achieved a farther triumph — he has painted one of the
most radiantly delicate figures in all art. One must go
to Italy and seek among the early Madonnas to find any
thing to set beside the sweet Wordsworthian character of
this little Dutch girl who feeds the animals.
It was Jan Steen's way to scamp much of every pictux-e ;
but in every picture you will find one figure that could not
be excelled. Nothing probably could be more slovenly,
more hideously unpainted, than, for example, the bed and
the guitar-case in the "Sick Woman" — No. 2246 at the
Ryks Museum — opposite page 22. But I doubt if human
skill has ever transcended the painting of the woman's face,
or the sheer drawing of her. Look at her arm and hand
— Jan Steen never went wrong with arms and hands.
Look at the hands of the boy playing the pipe in the
picture opposite page 158 ; look at the woman filling a

112 THE DUTCH BURNS
pipe at the table. To-day we are accustomed to pictures
containing children : they are as necessary as sunsets to
picture buyers : all our figure-painters lavish their talents
upon them ; but who had ever troubled to paint a real
peasant child before Jan Steen ? It was this rough toper
that showed the way, and no one since has ever excelled
him. Parallels have been drawn between Jan Steen and
Hogarth, and there are critics who would make Jan a
mox-alist too. But I do not see how we can compare
them. Steen did what Hogarth could not, Hogarth did
what Steen would not. Hogarth is rarely charming, Steen
is rarely otherwise. It is not Hogarth with whom I should
associate Jan, but Burns. He is the Dutch Burns — in
colour. I wish we had more facts concerning him, for he must
have been a great man and humorist. The story is
told of Hogarth that on being commissioned to paint a
scriptural picture of the Red Sea for a too parsimonious
pati-on who had beaten him down and down, he rebuked
him for his meanness by px-oducing a canvas entirely
covered with red paint. " But what is this ? " the patron
asked. " The Red Sea — surely." " Where then are the
Israelites ? " " They have all crossed over." " And
Pharaoh's hosts ? " " They are all drowned." The story
is perhaps an invention ; but a somewhat similar joke is
credited to Jan Steen. His commission was the Flood, and
his picture when finished consisted of a sheet of water with
a Dutch cheese in the midst bearing the arms of Leyden.
The cheese and the arms, he pointed out, proved that people
had been on the earth ; as for Noah and the ark, they
were out of the picture.
Jan Steen's picture of "A Quaker's Funeral" I have

JAN OF LEYDEN 113
not seen, but according to',Pilkington it is impossible to
behold it and refrain from laughter. The subject does not
strike one as being in itself mirthful.
A century earlier Leyden had produced another Jan,
separated from Jan Steen by a difference wide asunder as
the poles. Yet a very wonderful man in his brief season,
standing high among the world's great madmen. I mean
Jan Bockelson, the Anabaptist, known as Jan of Leyden,
who, beginning as pure enthusiast, succumbed, as so many
a leader of women has done, to the intoxication of authority,
and became the slave of grandiose ambition and excesses.
Every country has had its mock Messiahs : they rise
periodically in England, not less at the present day than
in the darker ages (hysteria being more powerful than
light) ; yet the history of none of these spiritual monarchs
can compare with that of the tailor's son of Leyden.
The story is told in many places, but nowhere with
such dramatic picturesqueness as by Professor Karl Pearson
in his Ethic of Freethought. " As the illegitimate son
of a tailor in Leyden," says Professor Pearson — Jan's
mother was the maid of his fathex-'s wife — " his early life
was probably a harsh and bitter one. Very young he
wandered from home, impressed with the miseries of his
class and with a general feeling of much injustice in the
world. Four years he spent in England seeing the poor
driven off the land by the sheep ; then we find him in
Flanders, married, but still in vague search of the Eldorado ;
again roaming, he visits Lisbon and Liibeck as a sailor,
ever seeking and inquiring. Suddenly a new light bursts
upon him in the teaching of Melchior Hofmann [the
Anabaptist] ; he fills himself with dreams of a glorious
kingdom on eai-th, the rule of justice and of love. Still
a little while and the prophet Mathys ci-osses his path,

114 THE MAKINGS OF A FANATIC
and tells him of the New Sion and the extermination of
the godless."
Mathys, or Jan Mathiesen, was a baker of Haarlem,
who, constituted an Anabaptist bishop, was preaching the
new gospel through the Netherlands and gathering recx-uits
to the community of God's saints which had been estab
lished at Munster .• " Full of hope for the future," says
Professor Pearson, " Jan sets out for Munster to join the
saints. Still young, handsome, imbued with a fiery en
thusiasm, actor by nature and even by choice, he has no
small influence on the spread of Anabaptism in that city.
The youth of twenty-thi-ee expounds to the followers of
Rottmann the beauties of his ideal kingdom of the good
and the true. With his whole soul he preaches to them
the i-edemption of the oppressed, the destruction of tyranny,
the community of goods, and the rule of justice and
bi-otherly love. Women and maidens slip away to the
secret gatherings of the youthful enthusiast ; the glowing
young prophet of Leyden becomes the centre of interest
in Munster. Dangerous, very dangerous ground, when
the pure of heart are not around him ; when the spirit
' chosen by God ' is to proclaim itself free of the flesh.
"The wox'ld has judged Jan harshly, condemned him
to endless execration. It were better to have cursed the
generations of oppression, the flood of persecution, which
fox-ced the toiler to revolt, the Anabaptists to madness.
Under other circumstances the noble enthusiasm, with
other surroundings the strong will, of Jan of Leyden might
have left a different mark on the page of history. Dx-agged
down in this whirlpool of fanaticism, sensuality, and despair,
we can only look upon him as a factor of the historic j udg
ment, a necessary actor in that tx-agedy of Munster, which
forms one of the most solemn chapters of the Greater Bible."

A KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 115
Gradually Jan rose to be head of the saints, Mathiesen
having been killed, and none other displaying so much
strength of purpose or magnetic enthusiasm. And here his
mind gave way. Like so many absolute rulers before and
since, he could not resist the ecstacies of supremacy. To
resume Professor Pearson's narrative : " The sovereign of
Sion — although ' since the flesh is dead, gold to him is but
as dung' — yet thinks fit to appear in all the pomp of
earthly majesty. He appoints a court, of which Knipper-
dollinch is chancellor, and wherein there are many officers
from chambex-lain to cook. He forms a body-guard, whose
members are dressed in silk. Two pages wait upon the king,
one of whom is a son of his grace the bishop of Munster.
The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously attired,
one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of their
coats are embroidered the arms of Sion — the earth-sphere
pierced by two crossed swords, a sign of universal sway
and its instruments — while a golden finger-ring is token of
their authority in Sion. The king himself is magnificently
arrayed in gold and purple, and as insignia of his office, he
causes sceptre and spurs of gold to be made. Gold ducats
are melted down to form crowns for the queen and him
self; and lastly a golden globe pierced by two swords
and surmounted by a cross with the wox-ds, ' A King of
Righteousness o'er all ' is borne before him. The attend
ants of the Chancellor Knipperdollinch are dressed in red
with the crest, a hand raising aloft the sword of justice.
Nay, even the queen and the fourteen queenlets must have
a separate court and brilliant uniforms.
"Thrice a week the king goes in glorious array to the
market-place accompanied by his body-guards and officers
of state, while behind ride the fifteen queens. On the
market-place stands a magnificent throne with silken

116 MUNSTER FALLS
cushions and canopy, whereon the tailor-monarch takes
his seat, and alongside him sits his chief queen. Knipper-
dollinch sits at his feet. A page on his left bears the book
of the law, the Old Testament ; another on his right an
unsheathed sword. The book denotes that he sits on the
throne of David ; the sword that he is the king of the
just, who is appointed to exterminate all unrighteousness.
Bannock-Bernt is court-chaplain, and preaches in the
market-place before the king. The sermon over, justice
is administered, often of the most terrible kind ; and then
in like state the king and his court return home. On the
streets he is greeted with cries of: ' Hail in the name of
the Lord. God be praised ! ' "
Meanwhile underneath all this riot of splendour and
power and sensuality, the pangs of starvation were begin
ning to be felt. For the army of the bishop of Munster
was outside the city and the siege was very studiously main
tained. The privations became more and more terrible,
and more and more terrible the means of allaying them.
The bodies of citizens that had died wex-e eaten ; and then
men and women and childx-en were killed in order that
they might be eaten too. Under such conditions, is it
any wonder that Munster became a city of the mad, mad
beyond the sane man's wildest dreams of excess ?
A few of the least demented of Jan's followers at length
determined that the tragedy must cease, and the city was
delivered into the bishop's hands. " What judgment,"
writes Professor Pearson, " his grace the bishop thinks fit
to pass on the leaders of Sion at least deserves record.
Rottmann has fallen by St. Martin's Church, fighting
sword in hand, but Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch
are brought prisoners before this shepherd of the folk.
Scoffingly he asks Jan : ' Art thou a king ? ' Simple, yet

JAN OF LEYDEN'S FATE 117
endlessly deep the reply : ' Art thou a bishop ? ' Both
alike false to their callings — as father of men and shep
herd of souls. Yet the one cold, self-seeking sceptic, the
other ignorant, passionate, fanatic idealist. ' Why hast
thou destx-oyed the town and my folk?' 'Priest, I have
not destroyed one little maid of thine. Thou hast again
thy town, and I can repay thee a hundredfold.' The
bishop demands with much cuiiosity how this miserable
captive can possibly repay him. 'I know we must die,
and die tex-ribly, yet before we die, shut us up in an iron
cage, and send us round through the land, charge the
curious folk a few pence to see us, and thou wilt soon
gather together all thy heax-t's desire.' The jest is gxim,
but the king of Sion has the advantage of his grace
the bishop. Then follows torture, but there is little to
extract, for the king still holds himself an instrument sent
by God — though it were for the punishment of the world.
Sentence is read on these men — placed in an iron cage they
shall be shown x-ound the bishop's diocese, a tenible warning
to his subjects, and then brought back to Munster; there
with glowing pincers their flesh shall be torn from the bones,
till the death-stroke be given with red-hot dagger in throat
and heart. For the rest let the mangled x-emains be placed
in iron cages swung from the tower of St. Lambert's Church.
"On the 26th of January, 1536, Jan Bockelson and
Knipperdollinch meet theif fate. A high scaffolding is
erected in the market-place, and before it a lofty throne
for his grace the bishop, that he may glut his vengeance to
the full. Let the rest pass in silence. The most reliable
authorities tell us that the Anabaptists remained calm and
firm to the last. ' Art thou a king ? ' ' Art thou a bishop ? '
The iron cages still hang on the church tower at Munster ;
placed as a warning, they have become a show ; perhaps

118 GERARD DOU
some day they will be treasured as weird mentors of the
truth which the world has yet to learn from the story of
the Kingdom of God in Munster."
A living German artist of great power, named Joseph
Sattlei-, too much of whose time has recently been given to
designing book-plates, produced some few years ago an ex-
traordinaxy illustrated history of the Anabaptists in Munster.
Many artists have essayed to portray madness, but I know
of no work more terrible than his.
We have travelled far from Leyden's peaceful studios.
It is time to look at the work of Gerard Dou. Rembrandt
we have seen was the son of a millex-, Jan Steen of a brewer ;
the elder Dou was a glazier. His son Gerard was born in
Leyden in 1613. The father was so far interested in the
boy's gifts that he apprenticed him to an engraver when
he was nine. At the age of eleven he passed to the studio
of a painter on glass, and on St. Valentine's day, 1628, he
became a pupil of Rembrandt. From Rembrandt, how
ever, he seems to have learned only the charm of contrasts
of light and shade. None of the great rugged strength of
the master is to be seen in his minute and patient work, in
which the genius of taking pains is always apparent. " He
would frequently," says Ireland, " paint six or seven days
on a hand, and, still more wonderful, twice the time on
the handle of a broom. . . . The minuteness of his per
formance so affected his sight that he wore spectacles at
the age of thirty."
Gerard Dou's success was not only artistic ; it was also
financial. Rembrandt's prices did not compare with those
of his pupil, whose art coming more within the sympa
thetic range and understanding of the ordinary man
naturally was more sought after than the Titanic and
less comfortable canvasses of the greater cx-aftsman.

THE YOUNG HOUSEKEEPER
GERARD DOU
Fro77i the picture in the Mauritshuis

"THE YOUNG HOUSEKEEPER" 119
Dou did exceedingly well, one of his patrons even paying
him a yearly honorarium of a thousand florins for the
privilege of having the refusal of each new picture. " The
Poulterer's Shop" at our National Gallery is a perfect
example of his fastidious minuteness and charm. But he
painted pictures also with a tenderer brush. I give on the
opposite page a x-epx-oduction of the most charming picture
by Gerard Dou that I know — " The Young Housekeeper "
at The Hague. This is a very miracle of painting in evexy
inch, and yet the pains that have been expended upon the
cabbage and the fish ax-e not for a moment dispi-oportion-
ate : the cabbage and the fish, for all their finish, x-emain
subordinate and appropriate details. The picture is the
picture of the mother and the children. "The Night
School " — No. 795 in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam —
is, I believe, more generally admix-ed, but "The Young
Housekeeper " is the better. " The Night School " might
be described as the work of a pocket Rembrandt ; " The
Young Housekeeper " is the work of an artist of rare in
dividuality and sympathy. At the Wallace Collection
may be seen a hermit by Dou quite in his best nocturnal
manner. Gerard Dou died at Leyden, where he had spent nearly
all his quiet life, in 1676. He is buxied at St. Peter's, but
his grave does not seem to be known there.
Dou had many imitators, some of whom studied under
him. One of the chief was Godfried Schalcken of Dort,
whose picture of an " Old Woman Scouring a Pan " may
be seen in the National Gallery, while the Wallace Collec
tion has several examples of his skill. Schalcken seems to
have been a man of great brusquerie, if two stories told by
Ireland of his sojourn in England are true. William III.,
for example, when sitting for his picture, with a candle in

120 THE TWO MIERIS
his hand, was suffered by Schalcken to bum his fingers.
" One is at a loss," says Ireland, " to determine which was
most to blame, the monarch for want of feeling, or the
painter of politeness. The following circumstance, however,
will place the deficiency of the latter beyond controversy.
A lady sitting for her pox-trait, who was more admired for
a beautiful hand than a handsome face, after the head was
finished, asked him if she should take off her glove, that he
might insert the hand in the pictm-e, to which he replied,
he always painted the hands from those of his valet." The
most attx-active picture by Schalcken that I have seen is
a girl sewing by candle light, in the Wallace Collection.
It pairs off with the chax-ming little Gerax-d Dou at the
Ryks— No. 796.
Dou said that the " Prince of his pupils " was Frans van
Mieris of Delft, who combined the manner and predilec
tions of his master with those of Terburg. He was very
popular with collectors, but I do not experience any great
joy in the presence of his work, which, with all its miracul
ous deftness, is yet lacking in personal feeling. Mieris,
says Ireland, " was frequently paid a ducat per hour for
his works. His intimacy and friendship for Jan Steen,
that excellent painter and bon vivant, seems to have led
him into much inconvenience. After a night's debauch,
quitting Jan Steen, he fell into a common drain ; whence
he was extricated by a poor cobbler and his wife, and,
treated by them with much kindness, he l-epaid the obli
gation by presenting them with a small picture, which, by
his recommendation, was sold for a considerable sum."
The amazingly minute picture of "The Poulterer's
Shop " which hangs in the National Gallery as a pendant
to Dou's work with the same title, is by William van
Mieris, the son of Dou's favourite pupil. He also was

BREAKFAST
GABRIEL METSU
From the picture in the Ryks Museum

GABRIEL METSU 121
box-n at Leyden, that teeming mother of painters. Frans
van Mieris, his father, died at Leyden in 1681 ; William
died at Leyden in 1747.
Above the work of Frans van Mieris I would put that of
Gabriel Metsu, another of Dou's pupils, and also a son of
Leyden, where he was born in 1630. Upon Metsu's work
Terburg, however, exercised more influence than did Gex-ard
Dou. "The Music Lesson" and "The Duet" at the
National Gallery are good examples of his pleasant paint
ing. Even better is his work at the Wallace Collection.
He died in 1667 in Amsterdam, where one of his best
pictures " The Breakfast " — No. 1553 at the Ryks — may
be seen. There ax-e many fine examples at the Louvre.
He was always graceful, always charming, with a favourite
model — pei-haps his wife — the pleasant plump woman who
occurs again and again in his work. She is in "The
Breakfast" (see the opposite page).
Mention of Gerard Dou and his pupils reminds me of
a little-known satire on art-criticism written by " Vathek "
Beckford . Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters
it is called, among the painters being Sucrewasser of Vienna,
and Watersouchy of Amsterdam. It is Watersouchy who
concerns us, for he was a Dutch figure painter who carried
the art of detail farther than it had been carried before.
I quote a little from Beckford's account of this genius, since
it helps to bring back a day when the one thing most
desired by the English collector was a Dutch picture — still
life, boors, cows, ruins, or domestic interior — no matter
what subject or how mechanically painted so long as it
was done minutely enough.
" Whilst he remained at Amsterdam, young Watersouchy
was continually improving, and arrived to such perfection
in copying point lace, that Mierhop entreated his father

122 THE GREAT WATERSOUCHY
to cultivate these talents, and to place his son under the
patronage of Gerard Dow, ever renowned for the exquisite
finish of his pieces. Old Watersouchy stared at the pro
posal, and solemnly asked his wife, to whose opinion he
always paid a deference, whether painting was a genteel
profession for their son. Mierhop, who overheard their
conversation, smiled disdainfully at the question, and
Madam Watersouchy answered, that she believed it was
one of your liberal arts. In feW words, the father was
persuaded, and Gerard Dow, then resident at Leyden,
prevailed upon to receive the son as a disciple.
"Our young artist had no sooner his foot within his
master's apartment, than he found every object in harmony
with his own disposition. The colours finely ground, and
ranged in the neatest boxes, the pencils so delicate as to be
almost imperceptible, the varnish in elegant phials, the
easel j ust where it ought to be, filled him with agreeable
sensations, and exalted ideas of his master's merit. Gerard
Dow on his side was equally pleased, when he saw him
moving about with all due cix-cumspection, and noticing
his little prettinesses at every step. He therefore began his
pupil's initiation with great alacrity, first teaching him
cautiously to open the cabinet door, lest any particles of
dust should be dislodged and fix upon his canvas, and
advising him never to take up his pencil without sitting
motionless a few minutes, till every mote casually floating
in the air should be settled. Such instructions were not
thrown away upon Watersouchy : he treasured them up,
and refined, if possible, upon such refinements."
In course of time Watersouchy gained the patronage of
a rich but frugal banker named Baise-la-Main, who seeing
his value, arranged for the painter to occupy a room in his
house. " Nobody," Beckford continues, " but the master

BECKFORD'S SATIRE 123
of the house was allowed to enter this sanctuary. Hex-e
our artist remained six weeks in grinding his colours, com
posing an admirable varnish, and preparing his canvass, for
a performance he intended as his chef d'asuvre. A fort
night more passed before he decided upon a subject. At
last he determined to commemorate the opulence of
Monsieur Baise-la-Main, by a perspective of his counting-
house. He chose an interesting moment, when heaps of
gold lay glittering on the counter, and citizens of distinc
tion were soliciting a secure repository for their plate and
jewels. A Muscovite wrapped in fur, and an Italian
glistening in brocade, occupied the foreground. The eye
glancing over these figures highly finished, was directed
through the windows of the shop into the area in front of
the cathedral ; of which, however, nothing was discovered,
except two sheds before its entrance, where sevex-al barbers
were represented at their different occupations. An effect
of sunshine upon the counter discovered every coin that
was scattered upon its surface. On these the painter had
bestowed such intense labour-, that their very legends were
distinguishable. " It would be in vain to attempt conveying, by words,
an idea adequate to this chef d'asuvre, which must have
been seen to have been duly admired. In three months it
was far advanced ; during which time our artist employed
his leisure hours in practising jigs and minuets on the
violin, and writing the first chapter of Genesis on a watch-
paper, which he adorned with a miniature of Adam and
Eve, so exquisitely finished, that every ligament in their
fig-leaves was visible. This little jew d'esprit he presented
to Madam Merian."
Leyden's earliest painter was Lucas Jacobz, known as
Lucas van Leyden, who was box-n in 1494. He painted

124 THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN
in oil, in distemper and on glass; he took his subjects
from nature and from sci-ipture ; he engraved better than
he painted ; and he was the friend of Diix-er. Leyden
possesses his triptych, " The Last Judgment," which to me
is interesting rather as a piece of pioneering than as a
work apart. After settling for a while at Middelbuig and
Antwerp, he returned to Leyden, where he died in 1533.
In spite of her record as the mother of great painters,
Leyden tx-eats pictures with some indiffex-ence. The Muni
cipal Museum has little that is of value. Of most interest
pex-haps is the Peter van Veen, opposite " The Last Judg
ment," representing a scene in the siege of Leyden by the
Spaniards under Valdez in 1574, which has a companion
upstairs by Van Bree, depicting the Burgomaster's hex-oic
feat of oppox-tunism in the same period of stress.
Adrian Van der Werf was this Burgomaster's name (his
monument stands in the Van der Werf park), and nothing
but his coux-age and address at a critical moment saved the
city. Motley tells the story in a fine passage. " Mean
time, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers
had been in a state of uncertainty for many days ; being
aware that the fleet had set fox-th for their relief, but
knowing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to
surmount. They had guessed its progress by the illumina
tion from the blazing villages ; they had heard its salvos
of artillery on its ax-rival at North Aa ; but since then, all
had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in
sickening alternation, distracting every breast. They knew
that the wind was unfavourable, and, at the dawn of each
day, every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the
steeples. So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt,
as they anxiously stood on towers and house-tops that
they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while

FAMINE 125
thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for
even the misery endured at Harlem had not reached that
depth and intensity of agony to which Leyden was now
i-educed. Bread, maltcake, horse-flesh, had entirely dis
appeared ; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin were esteemed
luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible,
for their milk, still remained ; but a few were killed from
day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly
sufficient to support life among the famishing population.
Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where
these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel
which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran
along the pavement ; while the hides, chopped and boiled,
wei-e greedily devoured.
" Women and children, all day long, were seen search
ing gutters and dung hills for morsels of food, which they
disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green
leaves were stripped from the trees, every living hex-b was
converted into human food, but these expedients could
not avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful, —
infants starved to death on the maternal breasts, which
famine had parched and withered ; mothers dropped dead
in the streets, with their dead children in their arms.
" In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found
a whole family of corpses, fathei-, mother and children,
side by side ; for a disorder called the plague, naturally
engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kind
ness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence
stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed in
habitants fell like grass beneath it scythe. From six
thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this
scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out — women
and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the

126 MAYOR AND HERO
entrance of their fox-eign foe — an evil mox-e horrible than
pest or famine.1
" The missives from Valdez, who saw more vividly than
the besieged could do, the uncertainty of his own position,
now poured daily into the city, the enemy becoming more
prodigal of his vows, as he felt that the ocean might yet
save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants, in their
ignorance, had gradually abandoned their hopes of relief,
but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was
sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however,
occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates,
and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster,
as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the
more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der
Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through
the streets.
"A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a
triangular place in the centre of the town, into which many
of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one
side of which stood the church of St. Pancx-as, with its high
brick tower surmounted by two pointed turrets, and with
two ancient lime tx-ees at its entrance. There stood the
burgomaster, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark
visage, and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved
his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and then exclaimed, in
language which has been almost literally preserved, ' What
would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do
not break our vows and surrender our city to the Spaniards?
— a fate more horrible than the agony which she now en
dures. I tell you I have made an oath to hold this city,
1 Mendoza's estimate of the entire population as numbering only four
teen thousand before the siege is evidently erroneous. It was probably
nearer fifty thousand. — Motley.

THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY 127
and may God give me strength to keep my oath ! I can
die but once ; whether by your hands, the enemy's, or by
the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so
that of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we
shall starve if not soon relieved ; but starvation is prefer
able to the dishonoured death which is the only alternative.
Your menaces move me not ; my life is at your disposal ;
here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my
flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger,
but expect no surrender, so long as I remain alive.'"
Leyden was at last relieved by William of Orange, who
from his sick-bed had arranged for the piercing of the
dykes and letting in enough water to swim his ships and
rout the Spaniards.
Out of tribulation comes good. For their constancy
and endurance in the siege the Prince offered the people
of Leyden one of two benefits — exemption from taxes or
the establishment of a University. They took the Uni
versity.

CHAPTER IX
HAARLEM
Tulip culture — Early speculation — The song of the tulip— Dutch garden
ing new and old — A horticultural pilgrimage — The Haarlem dunes
— Gardens without secrets — Zaandvoort — Through Noord-Holland
and its charms — The church of St. Bavo — Whitewash v. Mystery —
— The true father of the Reformation — Printing paves the way— The
Hout — Laocoon and his sons — The siege of Haarlem — Dutch forti
tude — The real Dutch courage — The implacable Alva — Broken
promises — A tonic for Philip — The women of Haarlem — A pledge to
mothers — The great organ — Three curious inhabitants — The Teyler
Museum — Frans Hals — A king of abundance — Regent pieces — The
secondary pictures in the Museum — Dirck Hals — Van der Heist —
Adrian Brouwer — Nicolas Berchem — Ruisdael — The lost mastery —
Echoes of the past.
HAARLEM being the capital of the tulip country,
the time to visit it is the spring. To travel from
Leyden to Haarlem by rail in April is to pass through
floods of colour, reaching then- finest quality about Hillegom.
The beds are too formal, too exactly pax-allel, to be beauti
ful, except as sheets of scarlet or yellow ; for careless beauty
one must look to the heaps of blossoms piled up in the
corners (later to be used on the beds as a fertiliser), which
are always beautiful, and doubly so when reflected in a canal.
From a balloon, in the flowering season, the tulip gardens
must look like patchwork quilts.
Tulip Sunday, which represents the height of the season
(con-esponding to Chestnut Sunday at Bushey Park) is about
(128)

THE TURF-MARKET, HAARLEM

TULIPS 129
the third Sunday in April. One should be in Holland then.
It is no country for hot weather : it has no shade, the trains
become unbearable, and the canals are very unpleasant. But
in spring it is always fresh.
Tulip cultivation is now a steady humdrum business,
very different from the early days of the fashion for the
flower, in the seventeenth century, when speculators lost
their heads over bulbs as thoroughly as over South-Sea
stock in the great Bubble period. Thousands of florins
wex-e given for a single bulb. The bulb, however, did not
always change hands, often serving merely as a gambling
basis ; it even may not have existed at all. Among genuine
connoisseurs genuine sales would of coui-se be made, and it
is recorded that a " Semper Augustus " bulb was once
bought for 13,000 florins. At last the Government inter-
fei-ed; gambling was put down; and " Semper Augustus "
fell to fifty florins.
It was to Haaxiem, it will be remembered, that the fair
Frisian travelled with Cornelius van Baei-le's solitary flower
in La Tulipe Noire, and won the prize of 100,000 florins
offered for a blossom of pure nigiitude by the Horticultural
Society of Haaxiem. Hence the addition of the Tulipa
Nigra Rosa Baerleensis to the list of desirable bulbs. Dumas
puts into the mouth of Cornelius a very charming song of
the tulip : — Nous sommes les filles du feu secret,
Du feu qui circule dans les veines de la terre ;
Nous sommes les filles de l'aurore et de Ja rosee,
Nous sommes les filles de l'air,
Nous sommes les filles de l'eau ;
Mais nous sommes avant tout les filles du ciel.
The Dutch are now wholly practical. Their reputation
as gardeners has become a commercial one, resting upon
9

130 THE FORMAL GARDEN
the fortunate discovery that the tulip and the hyacinth
thrive in the sandy soil about Haarlem. For flowers as
flowers they seem to me to care little or nothing. Their
cottages have no pretty confusion of blossoms as in our
villages. You never see the cottager at work among his
roses ; once his necessary labours are over, he smokes
and talks to his neighboui-s : to grow flowers for aesthetic
reasons were too ornamental, too unproductive a hobby.
JEsthetically the Dutch are dead, or are alive only in the
matter of green paint, which they use with such charming
effect on their houses, their mills and their boats. What
is pretty is old — as indeed is the case in our own country,
if we except gardens. Modern Dutch architecture is
without attraction, modern Delft porcelain a thing to cry
over. If any one would know how an old formal Dutch garden
looked, there is a model one at the back of the Ryks
Museum in Amsterdam. But the art is no more practised.
A few circular beds in the lawn, surrounded by high wire
netting — -that is for the most part the modern notion of
gardening. In an interesting repox-t of a visit paid to the
Netherlands and France in 1817 by the secretary of the
Caledonia Horticultural Society and some congenial com
panions, may be read excellent descriptions of old Dutch
gardening, which even then was a thing of the past Here
is the account of a typical formal garden, near Utrecht :
"The large divisions of the garden are made by tall and
thick hedges of beech, hornbeam, and oak, variously shaped,
having been tied to frames and thus trained, with the aid
of the shears, to the desired form. The smaller divisions
are made by hedges of yew and box, which in thickness and
density resemble walls of brick. Grottoes and fountains
are some of the principal ornaments. The grottoes are

HAARLEM'S DUNES 131
adorned with masses of calcareous stuff, corals and shells,
some of them apparently from the East Indies, others
natives of our own seas. The principal gx-otto is large, and
studded with thousands of crystals and shells. We were
told that its construction was the labour of twelve years.
The fountains are of various devices, and though old, some
of them were still capable of being put in action. Frogs
and lizards placed at the edgings of the walks, and spouting
water to the risk of passengers, were not quite so agreeable ;
and other figures were still in worse taste.
" There is a long berceau walk of beech, with numerous
windows or openings in the leafy side wall, and many
statues and busts, chiefly of Italian marble, some of them
of exquisite workmanship. Several large urns and vases
certainly do honour to the sculptor. The subjects of the
bas-relief ornaments are the histories of Saul and David,
and of Esther and Ahasuerus."
I saw no old Dutch garden in Holland which seemed to
me so attractive as that at Levens in Westmorland.
It is important at Haarlem to take a drive over the
dunes — the billowy, grassy sand hills which stretch between
the city and the sea. If it is in April one can begin the
drive by passing among every variety of tulip and hyacinth,
through air made sweet and heavy by these flowers. Just
outside Haarlem the road passes the tiniest deer pai-k that
ever I saw — with a great house, great trees, a lawn and a
handful of deer all packed as close as they can be. Now
and then one sees a stork's nest high on a pole before a
house. On leaving the green and luxuriant flat country a
climbing pave road winds in and out among the pines on
the edge of the dunes ; past little villas, belonging chiefly
to Amsterdam business men, each surrounded by a naked

132 VILLA NAMES
garden with the merest suggestion of a boundary. For the
Dutch do not like walls or hedges. This level open land
having no natural secrecy, it seems as if its inhabitants had
decided there should be no artificial secrecy either. When
they sit in their gardens they like to be seen. An English
man's first care when he plans a country estate is not to be
overlooked ; a Dutchman would cut down every tree that
intervened between his garden chair and the high road.
Fun has often been made of the names which the
Dutch merchants give to their country houses, but they
seem to me often to be chosen with more thought than
those of similar villas in our country. Here are a few
specimens : Buiten Gedachten (Beyond Expectation), Ons
Genoegen (Our Contentment), Lust en Rust (Pleasure and
Rest), Niet Zoo Quaalyk (Not so Bad), Myn Genegenhied
is Voldaan (My Desire is Satisfied), Mijn Lust en Leven (My
Pleasure and Life), Vriendschap en Gezelschap (Friendship
and Sociability), Vreugde bij Vrede (Joy with Peace),
Groot Genoeg (Large Enough), Buiten Zorg (Without
Care). These names at any rate convey sentiments which
we may take to express their owners' true feelings in their
owners' own language ; and as such I prefer them to the
" Chatsworths " and " Belle-vues," " Cedars " and " Towers,"
with which the suburbs of London teem. In a small inland
street in Brighton the other day I noticed a " Wave Crest ".
The dunes extend for miles : an empty wilderness of
sand with the grey North Sea beyond. Fx-om the high
points one sees inland not only Haarlem, just below, but
the domes and spires of Amstei-dam beyond.
One may return to Haarlem by way of Bloemendaal,
a green valley with shady walks and a good hotel; or
extend the drive to Haarlem's watering-place Zaandvoort,
which otherwise can be gained by steam-tram, and where,

THE ORUOTE KERK
JOHANNES CUSIiOOM
From t/w picture in the Boymans Museum, Rotterdam

DUTCH ENGLISH 133
says the author of Through Noord-Holland, " the billowing
is strong and strengthening". The same author tells us
also that " the ponnies and asses have a separated standing-
place, whilst sevex-e stipulations warrant the bathers for
trouble of the animals and their driver ".
Of this book I ought perhaps to say more, for I am
greatly indebted to it. Most of the larger towns of Hol
land have guides, and for the most part they are written
in good English, albeit of Dutch extraction ; but Through
Noord-Holland is an agreeable exception in that it covers
all the ground between Amsterdam and the Helder, and
is constructed in a peculiar sport of Babel. In Dutch it is
I have no doubt an ordinary guide-book ; in English it is
something far more precious. The following extract from
the preface to the second edition ought to be quoted before
I bonow further from its pages : —
Being completed with the necessary alterations and corrections I send
it into the world for the second time. As it will be published besides in
Dutch also in French and English, the aim of the edition will surely be
favoured, and our poor misappreciated country that so often is regarded
with contempt by our countrymen as well as by foreigners will soon be
an attraction for tourists. For were not it those large extensive quiet
heatheries those rustling green woods and those quiet low meadows
which inspired our great painters to bring their fascinating landscapes on
the cloth ? Had not that bloomy sky and that sunny mysterious light,
those soft green meadows with their multi-coloured flowers, through
which the river is streaming as a silver band, had not all this a quieting
influence to the agitated mind of many of us, did not it give the quiet
rest and did not it whisper to you ; here . . . here is it good ? And for
this our country we want to be a reliable guide by the directions of which
we can savely start.
With Zaandvoort we may associate Dirck van Santvoort
who painted the portx-ait of the curious girl — No. 2133 at
the Ryks Museum — reproduced opposite page 236. Of
the painter very little is known. He belongs to the great

134 THE CHURCH REPELLENT
period, flourishing in the middle of the seventeenth century
— and that is all. But he had a very cunning hand and
an interesting mind, as the few pictures to his name attest.
In the same room at the Ryks Museum where the pox-trait
hangs is a large group of ladies and gentlemen, all wearing
some of the lace which he dearly loved to paint. And in
one of the recesses of the Gallery of Honour is a quaint
little lady from his delicate brush — No. 2131 — well worth
study. Haarlem's great church, which is dedicated to St. Bavo,
is one of the finest in Holland. All that is needed to make
it perfect is an infusion of that warmth and colour which
once it possessed but of which so few traces have been
allowed to remain. The Dutch Protestants, as I remarked
at Utrecht, have shown singular efficiency in denuding
religion of its external graces and charm. There is no
church so beautiful but they would reduce it to bleak and
arid cheerlessness. Place even the cathedral of Chartres
in a Dutch market-place, and it would be a whitewashed
desert in a week, while little shops and houses would be
built against its sacred walls. There is hardly a great
church in Holland but has some secular domicile clinging
like a barnacle to its sides.
The attitude of the Dutch to their churches is in fact
very much that of Quakers to their meeting-houses — even
to the retention of hats. But whereas it is reasonable for
a Quaker, having made for himself as plain a rectangular
building as he can, to attach no sanctity to it, thei-e is an
incongruity when the same attitude is maintained amid
beautiful Gothic arches. The result is that Dutch churches
are more than chilling. In the simplest English village
church one receives some impression of the friendliness of
religion ; but in Holland — of course I speak as a stranger

THE FORERUNNER OF ERASMUS 135
and a foreignei- — i-eligion seems to be a cold if not a re
pellent thing.
One result is that on looking back over one's travels
through Holland it is almost impossible to disentangle in
the memory one whitewashed church from another. They
have a common monotony of internal aridity : one distin
guishes them, if at all, by some accidental possession —
Gouda, for example, by its stained glass ; Haarlem by its
organ, and the swinging ships ; Delft by the tomb of
William the Silent; Utrecht by the startling absence of
an entx-ance fee.
At Haarlem, as it happens, one is peculiarly able to
study cause and effect in this matter of Protestant bleak
ness, since there stands befox-e the door of this wonderful
chux-ch, once a Roman Catholic temple, drenched, I doubt
not, in mystery and coloux-, a certain significant statue.
To Erasmus of Rotterdam is generally given the parent
age of the Reformation. Whatever his motives, Erasmus
stands as the forerunner of Luther. But Erasmus had his
forerunner too, the discoverer of printing. For had not a
means of rapidly multiplying and cheapening books been
devised, the people, who were after all the back-bone of the
Reformation, would never have had the oppox-tunity of
themselves reading the Bible — either the Vulgate ox-
Erasmus's New Testament — and thus seeing for themselves
how wide was the gulf fixed between Chx-ist and the
Christians. It was the discovery of this discrepancy which
prepared them to stand by the reformers, and, by support
ing them and urging them on, assist them to victory.
Stimulated by the desire to be level with Rome for his
own early fetters, and desiring also an antagonist wox-thy
of his satix-ical powers, Erasmus (or so I think) hit inde
pendently upon the need for a revised Bible. But Luther

136 GUTENBURG OR COSTER ?
to a large extent was the outcome of his times and of
popular feeling. A spokesman was needed, and Luther
stepped forward. The inventor of printing made the way
possible ; Erasmus showed the way ; Luther took it.
Now the honour of inventing printing lies between two
claimants, Laurens Janszoon Costex-, of Haarlem (the
original of this statue) and Gutenbux-g of Mayence. The
Dutch like to think that Coster was the man, and that his
secx-et was sold to Gutenburg by his servant Faust. Be
that as it may — and the weight of evidence is in favour of
Gutenburg — it is interesting as one stands by the statue
of Coster under the shadow of Haarlem's great church to
think that this was perhaps the true parent of that great
upheaval, the true pavior of the way.
Whatever Coster's claim to priority may be, he certainly
was a printer, and it is only fitting that Haarlem should
possess so fine a library of early books and MSS. as it does.
Another monument to Coster is to be seen in the Hout,
a wood of which Haarlem is very proud. It has a fine
avenue called the Spanjaards Laan, and is a very pleasant
shady place in summer, hardly inferior to the Bosch at The
Hague. " The delightful walks of the Hout," says the
author of Through Noord-Holland, " and the caressing song
of the nightingale and other birds, do not only invite the
Haarlemmers to it, but the citizens of the neighbouring
towns as well."
On the boi-der of the wood is a pavilion which holds
the collections of Colonial curiosities. In front of the
pavilion (I quote again from Through Nooi-d-Holland,
which is invaluable), " stands a casting of Laskson and his
sons to a knot, which has been manufactured in the last
centuries before Christ. The original has been digged up
at Rome in 1500." Shade of Lessine- !

THE SIEGE 137
The cannon-ball embedded in the wall of the chux-ch,
which the sacristan shows with so much interest, recalls
Haarlem's great siege in 1572 — a siege notable in the
history of warfare for the courage and endurance of the
townspeople against terrible odds. The stoxy is worth
telling in full, but I have not space and Motley is very
accessible. But I sketch, with his assistance, its salient
features. The attack began in mid-wintei-, when Haaxiem Mere,
a great lake in the east which has since been drained and
poldered, was frozen over. For some time a dense fog
covex-ed it, enabling loads of provisions and arms to be
safely conveyed into the city.
Don Fredexic, the son of the Duke of Alva, who com
manded the Spanish, began with a success that augured
well, a force of 4,000 men which max-ched from Leyden
under De la Marck being completely routed. Among the
captives taken by the Spaniards, says Motley, was " a
gallant officei-, Baptist Van Trier, for whom De la Marck
in vain offered two thousand crowns and nineteen Spanish
pxisonei-s. The proposition was refused with contempt.
Van Trier was hanged upon the gallows by one leg until
he was dead, in return for which bax-barity the nineteen
Spaniards were immediately gibbeted by De la Marck.
With this interchange of cruelties the siege may be said
to have opened.
" Don Frederic had stationed himself in a position op
posite to the gate of the Cross, which was not very strong,
but fortified by a ravelin. Intending to make a very shoi-t
siege of it, he established his batteries immediately, and
on the 18th, 19th, and 20th December directed a furious
cannonade against the Cross-gate, the St. John's gate, and
the curtain between the two. Six hundred and eighty

138 SAINTS AS MASONRY
shots were discharged on the first, and nearly as many on
each of the two succeeding days. The walls were much
shattered, but men, women, and children worked night and
day within the city, repairing the breaches as fast as made.
They brought bags of sand, blocks of stone, cart-loads of
earth from every quarter, and they stripped the churches
of all their statues, which they threw by heaps into the
gaps. They sought thus a more practical advantage from
those sculptured saints than they could have gained by
only imploring their interposition. The fact, however,
excited horror among the besiegers. Men who were daily
butchering their fellow-beings, and hanging their prisoners
in cold blood, affected to shudder at the enormity of the
offence thus exercised against graven images.
" After three days' cannonade, the assault was ordered,
Don Frederic only intending a rapid massacre, to crown
his achievements at Zutphen and Naarden. The place, he
thought, would fall in a week, and after another week of
sacking, killing, and ravishing, he might sweep on to
' pastures new ' until Holland was overwhelmed. Romero
advanced to the breach, followed by a numerous storming
party, but met with a resistance which astonished the
Spaniards. The church bells x-ang the alarm throughout
the city, and the whole population swarmed to the walls.
The besiegers were encountered not only with sword and
musket, but with every implement which the burghers'
hands could find. Heavy stones, boiling oil, live coals,
were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers ; hoops, smeared
with pitch and set on fire, wei-e dexterously thrown upon
their necks. Even Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity
were obliged to shrink before the steady determination of
a whole population animated by a single spirit. Romero
lost an eye in the conflict, many officers were killed and

GRIM HUMOUR 139
wounded, and three or four hundred soldiers left dead in
the breach, while only three or four of the townsmen lost
their lives. The signal of recall was reluctantly given, and
the Spaniards abandoned the assault.
" Don Frederic was now aware that Haarlem would not
fall at his feet at the first sound of his trumpet. It was
obvious that a siege must precede the massacre. He gave
ox-ders, therefore, that the ravelin should be undermined,
and doubted not that, with a few days' delay, the place
would be in his hands."
The Prince of Orange then made, from Sassenheim,
another attempt to relieve the town, sending 2,000 men.
But a fog falling, they lost their way and fell into the
enemy's hands. " De Koning," says Motley, " second in
command, was among the prisoners. The Spaniards cut
off his head and threw it over the walls into the city, with
this inscription : ' This is the head of Captain De Koning,
who is on his way with reinforcements for the good city
of Haarlem '. The citizens retorted with a practical jest,
which was still more barbarous. They cut off the heads
of eleven prisoners and put them into a barrel, which they
threw into the Spanish camp. A label upon the barrel
contained these words : ' Deliver these ten heads to Duke
Alva in payment of his tenpenny tax, with one additional
head for interest '."
Day after day the attack continued and was repulsed.
Meanwhile, unknown to the Spaniards, the besieged
burghers were silently and swiftly building inside the
ravelin a solid half-moon shaped battlement. On the 31st
of December, the last day of 1572, the great assault was
made. " The attack was unexpected, but the forty or fifty
sentinels defended the walls while they sounded the alarm.
The tocsin bells tolled, and the citizens, whose sleep was

140 THE SPANIARDS REPULSED
not apt to be heavy during that perilous winter, soon
manned the ramparts again. The daylight came upon
them while the fierce struggle was still at its height. The
besieged, as before, defended themselves with musket and
rapier, with melted pitch, with firebrands, with clubs and
stones. Meantime, after morning prayers in the Spanish
camp, the trumpet for a general assault was sounded. A
tremendous onset was made upon the gate of the Cross,
and the ravelin was carried at last. The Spaniards poured
into this fort, so long the object of their attack, expecting
instantly to sweep into the city with sword and fire. As
they mounted its wall they became for the first time aware
of the new and stronger fortification which had been
secretly constructed on the inner side. The reason why
the ravelin had been at last conceded was revealed. The
half moon, whose existence they had not suspected, rose
before them bi-istling with cannon. A sharp fire was
instantly opened upon the besiegers, while at the same
instant the ravelin, which the citizens had undermined,
blew up with a severe explosion, carrying into the air all
the soldiers who had just entered it so triumphantly. This
was the turning point. The retreat was sounded, and the
Spaniards fled to their camp, leaving at least three hundred
dead beneath the walls. Thus was a second assault, made
by an overwhelming force and led by the most accomplished
generals of Spain, signally and gloriously repelled by the
plain bux-ghers of Haarlem."
Cold and famine now began to assist the Spaniards, and
the townsfolk were x-educed to eveiy privation. The
Spaniards also suffered and Don Frederic wished to raise the
siege. He suggested this step to his father, but Alva was
made of sterner stuff. He sent from Nymwegen a grim
message : " ' Tell Don Frederic,' said Alva, ' that if he be

IMPLACABLE ALVA 141
not decided to continue the siege till the town be taken,
I shall no longer consider him my son, whatever my opinion
may formerly have been. Should he fall in the siege, I will
myself take the field to maintain it ; and when we have
both perished, the Duchess, my wife, shall come from
Spain to do the same.' Such language was unequivocal,
and hostilities were resumed as fiercely as before. The
besieged welcomed them with rapture, and, as usual, made
daily the most desperate sallies. In one outbreak the
Haarlemers, under cover of a thick fog, marched up to the
enemy's chief battery, and attempted to spike the guns
before his face. They were all slain at the cannon's mouth,
whither patriotism, not vainglory, had led them, and lay
dead around the battery, with their hammers and spikes
in their hands. The same spirit was daily manifested.
As the spring advanced, the kine went daily out of the
gates to their peaceful pasture, notwithstanding all the
turmoil within and around; nor was it possible for the
Spaniards to capture a single one of these creatures, with
out paying at least a dozen soldiei-s as its price. ' These
citizens,' wrote Don Fi-ederic, 'do as much as the best
soldiers in the woi-ld could do.' "
The whole story is too dreadful to be told ; but events
proved the implacable old soldier to be right. Month
after month passed, assault after assault was repulsed by
the wretched but indomitable burghers ; but time was all
on the side of the enemy. On July 12th, after the frustra
tion again and again of hopes of relief from the Prince
of Orange, whose plans were doomed to failure on every
occasion, the city surrendered on the promise of complete
forgiveness by Don Frederic.
The Don, howevei-, was only a subordinate ; the Duke
of Alva bad other views. He quickly arrived on the

142 THE CITY FALLS
scene, and as quickly his presence made itself felt. "The
garrison, during the siege, had been reduced from four
thousand to eighteen hundred. Of these the Germans,
six hundred in number, were, by Alva's order, dismissed,
on a pledge to serve no more against the King. All
the rest of the garrison were immediately butchered,
with at least as many citizens. . . . Five executioners,
with their attendants, were kept constantly at work ;
and when at last they were exhausted with fatigue, or
perhaps sickened with horror, three hundred wretches
were tied two and two, back to back, and drowned in the
Haarlem Lake. At last, after twenty-three hundred human
creatures had been murdered in cold blood, within a city
where so many thousands had previously perished by
violent or by lingering deaths ; the blasphemous farce of a
pardon was enacted. Fifty-seven of the most prominent
burghers of the place were, however, excepted from the act
of amnesty, and taken into custody as security for the
future good conduct of the other citizens. Of these
hostages some were soon executed, some died in prison,
and all would have been eventually sacrificed, had not the
naval defeat of Bossu soon afterwards enabled the Prince
of Orange to rescue the remaining prisoners. Ten thousand
two hundred and fifty-six shots had been discharged against
the walls during the siege. Twelve thousand of the be
sieging army had died of wounds or disease during the
seven months and two days between the investment and
the surrender. In the earlier part of August, after the exe
cutions had been satisfactorily accomplished, Don Fi-ederic
made his triumphal entry, and the first chapter in the inva
sion of Holland was closed. Such was the memorable siege of
Haarlem, an event in which we are called upon to wonder
equally at human capacity to inflict and to endure misery.

THE NOBLE KENAU 143
" Philip was lying dangerously ill at the wood of Segovia,
when the happy tidings of the reduction of Haarlem, with
its accompanying butchery, arrived. The account of all
this misery, minutely detailed to him by Alva, acted like
magic. The blood of twenty-three hundred of his fellow-
creatures — coldly murdered by his orders, in a single city
— proved for the sanguinary monax-ch the elixir of life : he
drank and was refreshed. ' The principal medicine which
has cured his Majesty,' wrote Secretary Cayas from Madrid
to Alva, ' is the joy caused to him by the good news which
you have communicated of the surrender of Haarlem.' "
I know nothing of the women of Haarlem to-day, but
in the sixteenth century they were among the bravest
and most efficient in the world, and it was largely their
efforts and example which enabled the city to hold out
so long. Motley describes them as a corps of three
hundred fighting women, "all females of respectable char
acter, armed with sword, musket, and dagger. Their chief,
Kenau Hasselaer, was a widow of distinguished family, and
unblemished reputation, about forty-seven years of age,
who, at the head of her amazons, participated in many of
the most fiercely contested actions of the siege, both within
and without the walls. When such a spirit animated the
maids and matrons of the city, it might be expected
that the men would hardly surrender the place without
a struggle." Haarlem still px-eserves the pretty custom of hanging
lace by the doors of houses which the stoxk is expected
to visit or has just visited. Its origin was the humanity
of the Spanish general, during this great siege, in receiving
a deputation of matrons from the town and promising
protection from his soldiery of all women in childbed.
Eveiy house was to go unharmed upon which a piece of

144 THE GREAT ORGAN
lace signifying a confinement was displayed. This was a
promise with which the Duke of Alva seems not to have
interfered. The author of Through Noord-Holland thus eloquently
describes the effect of Haarlem's great ox-gan — for long the
finest in the world : " Vibrating rolls the tone through
the church-building, followed by sweet melodies, running
through each register of it ; now one hears the sound of
trumpets or soft whistling tunes then again piano music or
melancholical hautboy tunes chiming as well is deceivingly
imitated." Free recitals are given on Tuesdays and Thurs
days from one to two. On other days the organist can be
persuaded to play for a fee. Charles Lamb's friend Fell
paid a ducat to the organist and half a crown to the blower-,
and heard as much as he wanted. He found the vox humana
" the voice of a psalm-singing clerk ". Other travellers have
been more fortunate. Ireland tells us that when Handel
played this ox-gan the organist took him either for an angel
or a devil.
Among Haarlem's architectural attractions is the very
interesting Meat Market, hard by the great church, one
of the most agreeable pieces of floridity between the
Middelburg stadhuis and the Leeuwarden chancellerie.
There is also the fine Amsterdam Gate, on the road to
Amsterdam. In the Teyler Museum, on the Spaax-ne, is a poor col
lection of modex-n oil paintings, some good modern water
colours and a very fine collection of drawings by the
masters, including several Rembrandts. In this room
one may well plan to spend much time. One of the
best Israels that I saw in Holland is a little watei--colour
interior that is hung here. I asked one of the attendants
if they had anything by Matthew Maris, but he denied his

THE PAINTER AND HIS WIFE (?)
FRANS HALS
From the pictJtre i/i the Ryks Museum

FRANS HALS 145
existence. James he knew, and William ; but there was
no Matthew. " But he is your most distinguished artist,"
I said. It was great heresy and not to be tolerated. To
the ordinary Dutchman art begins with Rembrandt and
ends with Israels. This perhaps is why Matthew Maris
has taken refuge in St. John's Wood.
And now we come to Haarlem's chief glory — which is
not Coster the printer, and not the church of Bavo the
Saint, and not the tulip gardens, and not the florid and
beautiful Meat Market ; but the painter Frans Hals, whose
masterpieces hang in the Town Hall.
I have, called Hals the glory of Haarlem, yet he was
only an adopted son, having been born in Antwerp about
1580. But his pax-ents were true Haarlemers, and Frans
was -a resident there before he reached man's estate.
The painter's first maniage was not happy ; he was even
publicly reprimanded for cruelty to his wife. In spite
of the birth of his eldest child just thirty-four weeks
earlier than the proprieties require, his second marriage,
however, seems to have been fortunate. Some think
that we see Mynheer and Myvrouw Hals in the picture
— No. 1084 in the Ryks Museum — which is reproduced
on the opposite page. If this jovial and roguish pair are
really the painter and his wife, they were a merry couple.
Children they had in abundance ; seven sons, five of whom
were painters, and three daughters. Abundance indeed
was Hals' special characteristic ; you see it in all his work
— vigorous, careless abundance and power. He lived to be
eighty-five or so. Mrs. Hals, after a married life of fifty
years, continued to flourish, with the assistance of some
relief from the town, for a considerable period.
In the Haarlem Museum may be seen a picture of Hals'
studio, painted by Berck Heyde, in 1652, containing portraits

146 GUSTO
of Hals himself, then about seventy, and several of his old
pupils — Wouvermans, Dirck Hals, his brother, four of his
sons, the artist himself and others. Hals taught also Van
der Heist, whose work at times comes nearest to his own,
Verspronk, Terburg and Adrian van Ostade.
To see the work of Hals at his best it is necessary to
visit Holland, for we have but little hex-e. The " Laughing
Cavalier" in the Wallace Collection is perhaps his best
picture in a public gallery in England. But the Haarlem
Museum is a temple dedicated to his fame, and there you
may revel in his lusty powers.
The room in which his great groups hang is perhaps
in effect more filled with faces than any in the world.
Entering the door one is immediately beneath the bold
and laughing scrutiny of a host of genial masterful arque-
busiers, who make merry on the walls for all time. Such
a riot of vivid portraiture never was ! Other men have
painted single heads as well or better: but Hals stands
alone in his gusto, his abundance, his surpassing brio. It
is a thousand pities that neither Lamb nor Hazlitt ever
made the journey to Haarlem, because only they among
our writers on art could have brought a commensurate
gusto to the praise of his brush.
I have reproduced one of the groups opposite page 150,
but the result is no more than a memento of the original.
It conveys, however, an impression of the skill in composi
tion by which the group is made not only a collection
of portraits but a picture too. If such groups there
must be, this is the way to paint them. The Dutch in the
seventeenth century had a perfect mania for these com
memorative canvases, and there is not a stadhuis but has
one or more. Rembrandt's " Night Watch " and Hals'
Haarlem groups are the greatest ; but one is always sur-

HAARLEM'S PAINTERS 147
prised by the genex-al level of excellence maintained, and
now and then a lesser man such as Van der Heist climbs
very nigh the rose, as in his " De Schuttersmaaltyd " in the
"Night Watch" room in the Ryks Museum. The Cor
poration pieces of Jan van Ravesteyn in the Municipal
Museum at The Hague are also exceedingly vivid ; while
Jan de Bray's canvases at Haarlem, in direct competition
with Hals', would be very good indeed in the absence of
their rivals.
Among other painters who can be studied here is our
Utrecht friend Jan van Scorel, who has a large "Adam
and Eve" in the passage and a famous "Baptism of Christ";
Jan Verspronk of Haarlem, Hals' pupil, who has a very
quiet and effective portrait (No. 210) and a fine rich group
of the lady managers of an orphanage ; and Cornelius Cor-
nellessen, also of Haarlem, painter of an excellent Corpora
tion Banquet. In the collection are also a very charming
little Terburg (No. 194) and a fascinating unsigned portrait
of William III. as a pale and wistful boy.
Haarlem was the mother or instructor of many painters.
There is Dirck Hals, the brother of Frans, who was born
there at the end of the sixteenth century, and painted
richly coloured scenes of fashionable convivial life. He
died at Haarlem ten years before Frans. A gx-eater was
Bartholomew van der Heist, who was Hals' most assimi
lative pupil. He was born at Haarlem about 1612, and is
supposed to have studied also under Nicolas Elias. His
finest large work is undoubtedly the " Banquet " to which
I have just refen-ed, but I always associate him with his
portrait of Gerard Bicker, Landrichter of Amsterdam, that
splendid tun of a man, No. 1140 in the Gallery of Honour
at the Ryks Museum (see opposite page 86). One of his
most beautiful paintings is a portrait of a woman in our

148 BROUWER AND BERCHEM
National Gallery, on a screen in the large Netherlands
room : a picture which shows the influence of Elias not a
little, as any one can see who recalls Nos. 897 and 899 in
the Ryks Museum — two very beautiful portraits of a man
and his wife.
Haarlem and Oudenarde both claim the birth of Adrian
Brouwei-, a painter of Dutch topers. As to his life little
is known. Tradition says that he drank and dissipated
his earnings, while his work is evidence that he knew inn
life with some particularity ; but his epitaph calls him " a
man of great mind who rejected every splendour of the
world and who despised gain and riches ". Brouwer, who
was born about 1606, was put by his mother, a dressmaker
at Haarlem, into the studio of Frans Hals. Hals bullied
him, as he bullied his first wife. Escaping to Amsterdam,
Brouwer became a famous painter, his pictures being ac
quired, among others, by Rembrandt in his wealthy days,
and by Rubens. He died at Antwerp when only thirty-
thx-ee. We have nothing of his in the National Gallexy,
but he is represented at the Wallace Collection.
At Haarlem was box-n also, in 1620, Nicolas Bercnem,
painter of charming scenes of broken arches and columns
(which he certainly never saw in his own country), made
human and domestic by the presence of people and cows,
and suffused with gentle light. We have five of his pictures
in the National Gallery. Berchem's real name was Van
Haarlem. One day, however, when he was a pupil in Van
Goyen's studio, his father pursued him for some fault. Van
Goyen, who was a kindly creature, as became the father-in-
law of Jan Steen, called out to his other pupils — " Berg
hem " (Hide him ! ) and the phrase stuck, and became his
best-known name. Nicolas married a termagant, but never
allowed her to impair his cheerful disposition.

RUISDAEL 149
Haarlem was the birthplace also of Jacob van Ruis-
dael, greatest of Dutch landscape painters. He was born
about 1620. His idea was to be a doctor, but Nicolas
Berchem induced him to try painting, and we cannot be
too thankful for the change. His landscapes have a deep
and grave beauty : the clouds really seem to be floating
across the sky ; the water can almost be heard tumbling
over the stones. Ruisdael did not find his typical scenery
in his native land : he travelled in Germany and Italy,
and possibly in Norway ; but whenever he painted a
strictly Dutch scene he excelled. He died at Haarlem in
1682 ; and one of his most exquisite pictui-es hangs in the
Museum. I do not give any reproductions of Ruisdael
because his work loses so much in the px-ocess. At the
National Gallery and at the Wallace Collection he is well
represented. Walking up and down beneath the laughing confidence
of these many bold faces in the great Hals' room at
Haarlem I found myself repeating Longfellow's lines : —
He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
And sold him in Algiers.
Surely the hero, Simon Danz, was something such a man
as Hals painted. How does the ballad run? —
A DUTCH PICTURE.
Simon Danz has come home again,
From cruising about with his buccaneers ;
He has singed the beard of the King of,Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
And sold him in Algiers.
In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles
And weathercocks flying aloft in air,
There are silver tankards of antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
Of carpets rich and rare,

150 SIMON DANZ
In his tulip garden there by the town
Overlooking the sluggish stream,
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown
The old sea-captain, hale and brown,
Walks in a waking dream.
A smile in his gray mustachio lurks
Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain.
And the listed tulips look like Turks,
And the silent gardener as he works
Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.
The windmills on the outermost
Verge of the landscape in the haze,
To him are towers on the Spanish coast,
With whisker'd sentinels at their post,
Though this is the river Maese.
But when the winter rains begin,
He sits and smokes by the blazing brands,
And old sea-faring men come in,
Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin,
And rings upon their hands.
They sit there in the shadow and shine
Of the flickering fire of the winter night,
Figures in colour and design
Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,
Half darkness and half light.
And they talk of their ventures lost or won,
And their talk is ever and ever the same,
While they drink the red wine of Tarragon,
From the cellars of some Spanish Don,
Or convent set on flame.
Restless at times, with heavy strides
He paces his parlour to and fro ;
He is like a ship that at anchor rides,
And swings with the rising and falling tides
And tugs at her anchor-tow,

THE OLD AND THE NEW 151
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in his ear,
" Simon Danz ! Why stayest thou here ?
Come forth and follow me ! "
So he thinks he shall take to the sea again,
For one more cruise with his buccaneers ;
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen
And sell him in Algiers.
One thought leads to another. It is impossible also to
remain long in the great Hals' room of the Museum with
out meditating a little upon the difference between these
arquebusiers and the Dutch of the present day. Passing
among these people, once so mighty and ambitious, so
great in government and colonisation, in seamanship and
painting, and seeing them now so material and self-centred,
so bound within their own small limits, so careless of
literature and art, so intent upon the profits of the day
and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what
perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near
us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been.
Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus ? " There
but for the grace of God goes England" — is that a reason
able utterance ?
One sees the difference concretely as one passes from
these many Corporation and Regent pieces in the galleries
of Holland to the living Dutchmen of the streets. I saw
it particularly at Haarlem on a streaming wet day, after
hurrying from the Museum to the Cafe Brinkmann through
some inches of water. At a table opposite, sipping their
coffee, were two men strikingly like two of Frans Hals'
arquebusiers. Yet how unlike. For the air of mas
terful recklessness had gone, that good-humoured glint

152 AN ECHO
of power in the eye was no more. Hals had painted
conquerors, or at any rate warriors for country; these
coffee drinkers were meditating profit and loss. Where
once was authority is now calculation.
I quote a little poem by Mr. Van Lennep of Zeist,
near Utrecht, which shows that the Dutch, whatever their
present condition, have not forgotten : —
The shell, when put to child-like ears,
Yet murmurs of its bygone years,
In echoes of the sea ;
The Dutch-born youngster likes the sound,
And ponders o'er its mystic ground
And wondrous memory.
Thus, in Dutch hearts, an echo dwells,
Which, like the ever-mindful shells,
Yet murmurs of the sea :
That sea, of ours in times of yore,
And, when De Ruyter went before,
Our road to victory.

CHAPTER X
AMSTERDAM
The Venice of the North — The beauty of gravity — No place for George
Dyer — The Keizersgracht — Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat— The
Ghetto — Pile-driving — Erasmus's sarcasm — The new Bourse — Learn
ing the city — Tramway perplexities — The unnecessary guide —
The Royal Palace— The New Church— Stained glass— The Old
Church — The five carpets — Wedding customs — Dutch wives to
day and in the past — The Begijnenhof — The new religion and the
old — The Burgerweesmeisjes — The Eight Orange Blossoms — Dutch
music halls — A Dutch Hamlet — The fish market— Rembrandt's
grave — A nation of shopkeepers — Max Havelaar — Mr. Drystubble's
device — Lothario and Betsy — The English in Holland and the Dutch
in England — Athleticism — A people on skates — The chaperon's
perplexity — Love on the level.
AMSTERDAM is notable for two possessions above
others : its old canals and its old pictures. Truly
has it been called the Venice of the North ; but very
different is its sombre quietude from the sunny Italian
city among the waters. There is a beauty of gaiety and
a beauty of gravity ; and Amsterdam in its older parts —
on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht — has the beauty
of gravity. In Venice the canal is of course also the
street : gondolas and barcas are continually gliding hither
and thither ; but in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht
the water is little used. One day, however, I watched a
costermonger steering a boat-load of flowers under a bridge,
and no words of mine can describe the loveliness of their
(153)

154 THE KEIZERSGRACHT'S SECRET
reflection. I remember the incident particularly because
flowers are not much caxried in Holland, and it is very
pleasant to have this impression of them — this note of
happy gaiety in so dark a setting.
An unprotected roadway runs on either side of the
water, which makes the houses beside these canals no
place for Charles Lamb's friend, George Dyer, to visit in.
Accidents are not numerous, but a company exists in Amster
dam whose business it is to rescue such odd dippers as
horses and carriages by means of elaborate machinery
devised for the pux-pose. Only travellers born under a
luckier star than I are piivileged to witness such sport.
In the main Amstei-dam is a city of trade, of hurrying
business men, of ceaseless clanging tramcars and crowded
streets ; but on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht
you are always certain to find the old essential Dutch
gi-avity and peace. No tide moves the sullen waters of
these canals, which are lined with trees that in spring form
before the narrow, dark, discreet houses the most delicate
green tracery imaginable ; and in summer screen them
altogether. These houses are for the most part black
and bi-own, with white window frames, and they lise to a
great height, culminating in that curious stepped gable
(with a crane and pulley in it) which is, to many eyes, the
symbol of the city. I know no houses that so keep their
secrets. In every one, I doubt not, is furniture worthy
of the exterior: old paintings of Dutch gentlemen and
gentlewomen, a landscape or two, a girl with a lute and a
few tavern scenes; old silver windmills; and plate upon
plate of serene blue Delft. (You may see what I mean
in the Suasso rooms at the Stadelijks Museum.) I have
walked and idled in the Keizersgracht at all times of the
day, but have never seen any real signs of life. Mats have

at* VMHR
ST. NICOLAS nlURCII, A.MSTEIUIAM

OWEN FELTHAM 155
been banged on its doox-steps by clean Dutch maidservants
ax-med with wicker beaters ; milk has been brought in huge
cans of brass and copper shining like the sun ; but of its
life proper the gracht has given no sign. Its true life is
houseridden, behind those spotless and very beautiful lace
curtains, and there it remains.
One of the wittiest of the old writers on Holland (of
whom I said something in the second chapter), Owen Felt-
ham the moi-alist, describes in his Brief Character of the
Low Countries an Amsterdam house of the middle of the
seventeenth century. Thus: —
When you are entered the house, the first thing you encounter is a
Looking-glasse. No question but a true Embleme of politick hospitality ;
for though it reflect yourself in your own figure, 'tis yet no longer than
while you are there before it. When you are gone once, it flatters the
next commer, without the least remembrance that you ere were there.
The next are the vessels of the house marshalled about the room like
watchmen. All as neat as if you were in a Citizen's Wife's Cabinet ; for
unless it be themselves, they let none of God's creatures lose any thing of
their native beauty.
Their houses, especially in their Cities, are the best eye-beauties of
their Country. For cost and sight they far exceed our English, but they
want their magnificence. Their lining is yet more rich than their out
side ; not in hangings, but pictures, which even the poorest are there
furnisht with. Not a cobler but has his toyes for ornament. Were the
knacks of all their houses set together, there would not be such another
Bartholmew-Faiie in Europe. . . .
Their beds are no other than land-cabines, high enough to need a
ladder or stairs. Up once, you are walled in with Wainscot, and that is
good discretion to avoid the trouble of making your will every night ; for
once falling out else would break your neck perfectly. But if you die in
it, this comfort you shall leave your friends, that you dy'd in clean linnen.
Whatsoever their estates be, their houses must be fair. Therefore
from Amsterdam they have banisht seacoale, lest it soyl their buildings,
of which the statelier sort are sometimes sententious, and in the front
carry some conceit of the Owner. As to give you a taste in these.
Christus Adjutor Meus ;
Hoc abdicato Perenne Quero ;
Hie Medio tuitus Itur,

156 REFLECTIONS
Every door seems studded with Diamonds. The nails and hinges
hold a constant brightnesse, as if rust there was not a quality incident to
Iron. Their houses they keep cleaner than their bodies; their bodies
than their souls. Goe to one, you shall find the Andirons shut up in
net-work. At a second, the Warming-pan muffled in Italian Cutworke.
At a third the Sconce clad in Cambrick.
The absence of any lively traffic on the canals, as in Venice,
has this compensation, that the surface is left untroubled
the more minutely to mirror the houses and trees, and, at
night, the ti-amcax-s on the bridges. The lights of these
cars form the most vivid reflections that I can x-ecollect.
But the quiet x-epx-oduction of the stately black facades is
the more beautiful thing. An added dignity and repose
are noticeable. I said just now that one desired to learn
the seci-et of the calm life of these ancient grachts. But
the secret of the actual houses of fact is as nothing com
pared with the secx-et of those other houses, mox-e sombx«,
moi-e mysteiious, more x-eserved, that one sees in the water.
To penetrate their impressive doors were an achievement, a
distinction, indeed ! With such a purpose suicide would
lose half its terrors.
For the greatest contx-ast to these black canals, you must
seek the Kalverstx-aat and Wannoes Straat. Kalverstraat,
running south from the Dam, is by day filled with shoppers
and by night with gossipers. No street in the world can
be more consistently busy. Damrak is of coux-se always a
scene of life, but Damrak is a thox-oughfare — its population
moving continually either to or from the station. But
those who use the Kalverstraat may be said almost to live
in it. To be there is an end in itself. Wannoes Straat,
parallel with Damrak on the other side of the Bourse, be
hind the Bible Hotel, is famous for its gigantic x-estaurant
—the hugest in Europe, I believe — the Krasnapolsky, a
palace of bewildering mirrors, and for concert halls and

THE GHETTO 157
other accessories of the gayer life. But this book is no
place in which to enlarge upon the natural history of
Warmoes Straat and its southern continuation, the Nes.
For the principal cafes, as distinguished from restaurants,
you must seek the Rembrandt's Plein, in the midst of
which stands the master's statue. The pavement of this
plein on Sunday evening in summer is almost impassable
for the tables and chairs that spread over it and the crowds
overflowing; from Kalverstraat.
But there is still to be mentioned a district of Amster
dam which from the evening of Friday until the evening of
Saturday is more populous even than Kalverstraat. This
is the Jews' quarter, which has, I should imagine, more
parents and children to the square foot than any residential
region in Europe. I struggled through it at sundown one
fine Saturday — to say I walked through it would be too
misleading — and the impression I gathered of seething
vivacity is still with me. These people surely will inherit
the earth.
Spinoza was a child of this Ghetto : his birthplace at
41 Waterloo Plein is still shown ; and Rembrandt lived at
No. 4 Jodenbree Straat for sixteen years.
A large number of the Amsterdam Jews are diamond
cutters and polishers. You may see in certain cafes dealers
in these stones turning over priceless little heaps of them
with the long little finger-nail which they preserve as a
scoop. Amsterdam may be a city builded on the sand ; but none
the less will it endure. Indeed the sand saves it ; for it is
in the sand that the wooden piles on which every house
rests find their footing, squelching through the black mud
to this comparative solidity. Some of the piles are as long
as 52 ft., and watching them being driven in, it is impossible

158 PILE-DRIVING
to believe that stability can ever be attained, every blow of
the monkey accounting for so very many inches. When one
watches pile-driving in England it is difficult to see the
effect of each blow ; but during the five or fewer minutes
that I spent one day on Damrak observing the preparation
for the foundations of a new house, the pile must have
gone in nearly a foot each time, and it was very near the
end of its journey too. In course of years the black brackish
mud petrifies not only the piles but the wooden girders
that are laid upon them.
Pile-driving on an extensive scale can be a very picturesque
sight. Breitner has painted several pile-driving scenes, one
of which hangs in the Stadelijks Museum at Amsterdam.
Statistics ax-e always impressive. I have seen somewhere
the number of piles which support the new Bourse and
the Central Station ; but I cannot now find them. The
Royal Palace stands on 13,659. Erasmus of Rotterdam
made merry quite in the manner of an English humorist
over Amsterdam's wooden foundations. He twitted the
inhabitants with living on the tops of trees, like rooks.
But as I lay awake from daybreak to a civilised hour for
two mornings in the Hotel Weimar at Rotterdam — pre
vented from sleeping by the pile-driving for the hotel
extension — I thought of the apologue of the pot and the
kettle. I refened just now to the new Bourse. When I was at
Amsterdam in 1897, the water beside Damrak extended
much farther towards the Dam than it does now. Where
now is the new Bourse was then shipping. But the
new Bourse looks stable enough to-day. As to its archi
tectural charms, opinions differ. My own feeling is that
it is not a style that will wear well. For a permanent
public building something more classic is probably desire-

THE CAT'S DANCING LESSON
JAN STEEN'
From the picture t7i the Ryks Museum

THE DAM 159
able ; and at Amstei-dam, that city of sombre colouring,
I would have had darker hues than the red and yellow that
have been employed. The site of the old Bourse is now an
open space.
It is stated that the kindly custom of allowing the children
of Amsterdam the run of the Bourse as a playground for a
week every year is some compensation for the suppression
of the Kermis, but another story makes the sanction a
perpetual reward for an heroic deed against the Spaniai-ds
performed by a child in 1622.
My advice to any one visiting Amsterdam is first to
study a map of the city — Basdeker gives a very useful one
— and thus to begin with a general idea of the lie of the
land and the water. With this knowledge, and the assist
ance of the trams, it should not appear a vexy bewildering
place. The Dam is its heart : a fact the acquisition of which
will help very sensibly. All roads in Amsterdam lead to the
Dam, and all lead from it. The Dam gives the city its
name — Amstel dam, the dam which stops the river Amstel
on its course to the Zuyder Zee. It also gives English and
American visitors opportunities for facetiousness which I
tingle to recall. Every tram sooner or later reaches the
Dam : that is another simplifying piece of information.
The course of each tram may not be very easily acquired,
but with a common destination like this you cannot be
carried very far wrong.
One soon learns that the trams stop only at fixed points,
axxd waits accordingly. The next lesson, which is not quite
so simple, is that some of these points belong exclusively to
trams going one way and some exclusively to trams going
the other. If there is one thing calculated to reduce a
perplexed foi-eigner in Amsterdam to rage and despair, it
is, after a tiring day among pictures, to hail a half empty

160 A SHORT WAY WITH GUIDES
tram at a fixed point, with Tram-halte written on it, and
be treated to a pitying smile from the driver as it rushes
by. Upon such mortifications is education based ; for one
then looks again more narrowly at the sign and sees that
underneath it is a little arrow pointing in the opposite
direction to which one wished to go. One then walks on to
the next point, at which the arrow will be pointing home
wards, and waits there. Sometimes — O happy moment —
a double arrow is found, facing both ways.
It is on the Dam that guides will come and pester you.
The guide carries an umbrella and offers to show Amster
dam in such a way as to save you much money. He is
quite useless, and the quickest means of getting free is to
say that you have come to the city for no other purpose
than to pay extravagantly for everything. So stupend
ous an idea checks even his importunity for a moment, and
while he still reels you can escape. The guides outside the
Ryks Museum who offer to point out the beauties of the
pictures are less persistent. It would seem as if they were
aware of the unsoundness of their case. There is no
need to reply to these at all.
On the Dam also is the Royal Palace, which once was
the stadhuis, but in 1808 (when Amsterdam was the third
city of the French Empire) was offered to Louis Napoleon
for a residence. Queen Wilhelmina occasionally stays there,
but The Hague holds her true home. The apartments are
florid and not very interesting ; but if the ascent of the
tower is permitted one should certainly make it. It is
interesting to have Amsterdam at one's feet. Only thus
can its peculiar position and shape be understood : its old
part an almost perfect semicircle, with canal-ai-cs within
arcs, and its northern shoi-e washed by the Y.
Also on the Dam is the New Church, which is to be seen

THE KOSTER 161
more for the tomb of De Ruyter than for any architectural
graces. The old sea dog, whose dark and determined
features confront one in Bol's canvases again and again in
Holland, reposes in full dress on a cannon amid symbols of
his victories. Close by, in the Royal Palace, are some of
the flags which he wrested from the English. Other
admirals also lie there, the Dutch naval commander never
having wanted for honour in his own country.
The New Church, where the monarchs of Holland are
crowned, has a very lax-ge new stained-glass window repre
senting the coronation of Queen Wilhemina — one of the
most satisfying new windows that I know, but quite lack
ing in any religious suggestion. That poet who considered
a church the best retreat, because it is good to contemplate
God through stained glass, would have fared badly in
Holland. The New Church is new only by comparison with the
Old. It was built in 1410, rebuilt in 1452 and 1645.
Amsterdam's Old Church, on the other side of Warmoes
Straat, dates from 1300. The visitor to the New Church
is handed a brief historical leaflet in exchange for his
twenty-five cents, and is left to his own devices ; but the
Old Church has a koster who takes a pride in showing his
lions and who deprecates gifts of money. An elderly, clean-
shaved man with a humorous mouth, he might be taken
for Holland's leading comedian. Instead, he displays
ecclesiastical treasures, of which in 1904 there were fewer
than usual, two of the three fine old windows representing
the life of the Virgin being under x-epair behind a screen.
The tombs and monuments are not interesting — admirals
of the second rank and such small fry.
It is in the^Old Church that most of the weddings of
Amsterdam are celebrated. Thursday is the day, for then

162 WEDDINGS
the fees are practically nothing; on other days to be
manied is an expense. The koster deplores the modem
materialism which leads so many young men to be satisfied
with the civil function ; but the little enclosure, like a small
arena, in which the church blesses unions, had to me a
hardly less business-like appearance than a registry office.
The comedian overflows with details. For the covering
of the floor, he explains, there are five distinct carpets,
ranging in price from five guelders to twenty-five for the
hire, according to the means or ostentation of the party.
Thursdays are no holiday for the church officials, one
couple being hardly united before the horses of the next
are pawing the paving stones at the door.
I saw on one Thursday three bridal parties in as many
minutes. The happy bride sat on the back seat of the
brougham, immediately before her being two mirrors in
the shape of a heart supporting a bouquet of white flowers.
Contemplating this simple imagery she rattles to the
ecclesiastical arena and the sanctities of the five, ten,
fifteen, twenty or twenty-five guelder carpet. After, a
banquet and jokes.
This is the second banquet, for when the precise pre
liminaries of a Dutch engagement are settled a betrothal
feast is held. Friends are bidden to the wedding by the
x-eceipt of a box of sweets and a bottle of wine known
as " Bride's tears ". For the wedding day itself there is a
particular brand of wine which contains little grains of
gold. The Dutch also have special cake and wine for the
celebration of births.
The position of the Dutch wife is now very much that
of the wife in England ; but in Holland's great days
she ruled. Something of her quality is to be seen in the
stories'of Bameveldt's widow and Grotius's wife, and the

CANAL IN 'I HE JEWS* QUARTER, AMSTERDAM

WIVES OF THE PAST 163
hei-oism and address of the widow Kenau Hasselaer during
the siege of Haarlem. Davies has an interesting page or two
on this subject : " To be master of his own house is an idea
which seems never to have occurred to the mind of a genuine
Dutchman ; nor did he often commence any undex-taking,
whether public or private, without first consulting the
partner of his cares ; and it is even said, that some of the
statesmen most distinguished for their influence in the
affairs of their own country and Eux-ope in general, were
accustomed to receive instructions at home to which they
ventured not to go counter. But the dominion of these
lordly dames, all despotic though it were, was ever exex-ted
for the benefit of those who obeyed. It was the earnest
and undaunted spirit of their women, which encouraged
the Dutch to dare, and their calm fortitude to endure, the
toils, privations, and sufferings of the first yeax-s of the war
of independence against Spain ; it was their activity and
thrift in the management of their private incomes, that
supplied them with the means of defraying an amount of
national expenditure wholly unexampled in history ; and
to their influence is to be ascribed above all, the decorum
of manners, and the purity of morals, for which the society
of Holland has at all times been remarkable. But though
they preserved their virtue and modesty uncontaminated
amid the general corruption, they were no longer able to
maintain their sway. The habit which the Dutch youth
had acquired, among other foreign customs, of seeking
amusement abroad, rendered them less dependent for happi
ness on the comforts of a married life ; while, accustomed
to the more dazzling allurements of the women of France
and Italy, they were apt to ovexiook or despise the quiet
and unobtrusive beauties of those of their own country.
Whether they did not better consult their own dignity in

164 A HOME OF PEACE
emancipating themselves from this subjection may be
a question ; but the fact, that the decline of the re
public and of the female sex went hand in hand, is
indubitable." To return to Amsterdam's sights, the church which I
x-emember with most pleasure is the English Reformed
Church, which many visitors never succeed in finding at
all, but to which I was taken by a Dutch lady who knew
my tastes. You seek the Spui, where the electric trams
start for Haarlem, and enter a very small dooi-way on the
north side. It seems to lead to a private house, but instead
you find yourself in a very beautiful little enclosure of old
and quaint buildings, exquisitely kept, each with a screen
of pollarded chestnuts before it ; in the midst of which is a
toy white church with a gay little spire that might ha\ e
wandered out of a fairy tale. The enclosure is called The
Begijnenhof, or Court of the Begijnen, a little sisterhood
named after St. Begga, daughter of Pipinus, Duke of
Brabant, — a saint who lived at the end of the seventh
century and whose day in the Roman Catholic Calendar is
December 17.
The church was originally the church of these nuns, but
when the old rehgion was overthrown in Amsterdam, in
1578, it was taken from them, although they were allowed
— as happily they still are — to retain possession of the
court around it.
In 1607 the church passed into the possession of a settle
ment of Scotch weavers who had been invited to Amsterdam
by the merchants, and who had made it a condition of ac
ceptance that they should have a conventicle of their own.
It is now a resort of English church-going visitors on
Sunday. Most of Holland's churches — as of England's  once be-

BLACK AND RED 165
longed to Rome, and it is impossible to forget their ancient
ownership ; but I remember no other case where the new
religion is practised, as in the Begijnenhof, in the heart
of the enemy's camp. In the very midst of the homes of
the quiet sweet Begijnen sisters are the voices of the usurp
ing Reformers heard in prayer and praise.
One little concession, however, was made by the appropri-
ators of the chapel. Until as x-ecently as 1865 a special part
of the building the original Roman consecration of which
had not been nullified was retained by the sistex-hood in
which to bury their dead. The ceremony was very im
pressive. Twelve of the nuns carried then- dead com
panion three times round the court before entering the
church. But all that is ovex-, and now they must seek
burial elsewhere, without their bordei-s.
One may leave the Begijnenhof by the other passage
into Kalverstraat, and walking up that busy street towards
the Dam, turn down the St. Lucien Steeg, on the left, to
another of Amsterdam's homes of ancient peace — the muni
cipal orphanage, which was once the Convent of St. Lucien.
The Dutch are exceedingly kind to their poor, and the
orphanages and almshouses (Oudemannen and Oudevrouwen
houses as they are called) are very numerous. The Muni
cipal Orphanage of Amsterdam is among the most interest
ing ; and it is to this refuge that the gix-ls and boys belong
whom one sees so often in the streets of the city in curious
pax-ti-coloured costume — red and black vertically divided.
The Amsterdamsche bui-gerweesmeisjes, as the girls are
called, make in procession a very pretty and impressive sight
— with their white tippets and caps above their di-esses of
black and red.
This reminds me that one of the most agreeable pei-for-
mances that I saw in any of the Dutch music halls (which

166 HALLS OF VARIETY
are not good, and which are rendered very tedious to English
people by reason of the interminable interval called the
Pause in the middle of the evening), was a series of folk
songs and dances by eight girls known as the Orange
Blossoms, dressed in different traditional costumes of the
north and south — Friesland, Marken, and Zeeland. They
were quite charming. They sang and danced very prettily,
as housewives, as fisher girls, but pai-ticularly as Amster-
damsche burgerweesmeisjes.
In the music halls both at Amsterdam and Rotterdam I
listened to comic singei-s inexorably endowed with too many
songs apiece ; but I saw also some of those amazing feats
of acrobatic skill and exhibitions of clean strength which
alone should cause people to encourage these places of
entertainment, where the standard of excellence in such
displays is now so high. I did not go to the theatre in
Holland. My Dutch was too elementary for that. My
predecessor Ireland, however, did so, and saw an amusing
piece of literalness introduced into Hamlet. In the im
passioned scene, he tells us, between the prince and his
mother, " when the hero starts at the imagined appearance
of his father, his wig, by means of a concealed spring,
jumped from ' the seat of his distracted brain,' and left
poor Hamlet as bare as a Dutch willow in winter."
The Oude Kerk has very beautiful bells, but Amsterdam
is no place in which to hear such sweet sounds. The
little towns for bells. Near the church is the New Market,
with the very charming old weigh-house with little ex
tinguisher spires called the St. Anthonysveeg. Here the
fish max-ket is held ; and the fish market of a city like
Amsterdam should certainly be visited. The Old Mai-ket
is on the western side of the Dam, under the western
church. " It is said," remarks the author of Through

NATIONS OF SHOPKEEPERS 167
Noord-Holland, " that Rembrandt has been buried in this
church, though his grave has never been found."
Napoleon's sarcasm upon the English — that they were
a nation of shopkeepers — never seemed to me very shrewd :
but in Holland one realises that if any nation is to be thus
signally stigmatised it is not the English. As a matter of
fact we are very indiffei-ent shopkeepers. We lack several
of the needful qualities : we lack foresight, the sense of
order and organised industry, and the strength of mind
to resist the temptations following upon a great coup. A
nation of shopkeepers would not go back on the shop so
completely as we do. No nation that is essentially snob
bish can be accurately summed up as a nation of shop
keepers. The French for all their distracting gifts of art
and mockery are better shopkeepers than we, largely be
cause they are more sensibly contented. They take short
views and live each day more fully. But the Dutch are
better still ; the Dutch are truly a nation of shopkeepers.
If one would see the Amsterdam merchant as the satirist
sees him, the locus classicus is Multatuli's famous novel
Max Havelaar, where he stands delightfully nude in the
person of Mr. Drystubble, head of the firm of Last and
Co., Coffee-brokers, No. 37 Laurier Canal. Max Havelaar
was published in the early sixties to draw attention to
certain scandals in Dutch colonial administration, and it
has lived on, and will live, by reason of a curious blend of
vivacity and intensity. Here is a little piece of Mx\ Dry-
stubble's mind : —
Business is slack on the Coffee Exchange. The Spring Auction will
make it right again. Don't suppose, however, that we have nothing
to do. At Busselinck and Waterman's trade is slacker still. It is a
strange world this: one gets a deal of experience by frequenting the
Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried — I mean
Busselinck and Waterman — to do me out of the custom of Ludwig Stern.

168 DRYSTUBBLE
As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange, I will tell
you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg, who always
employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that out — I mean
that bungling business of Busselinck and Waterman. They had offered
to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They are low fellows —
nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop them. Any one
in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern, " that we too
would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for consideration on
account of the long services of Last and Co."
I have calculated that our firm, during the last fifty years, has gained
four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion dates from
the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled Colonial
produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won't reduce the
brokerage. I went to the Polen coffee-house, ordered pen and paper, and wrote : —
" That because of the many honoured commissions received from
North Germany, our business transactions had been extended" — (it is the
simple truth) — " and that this necessitated an augmentation of our staff-
fit is the truth : no more than yesterday evening our bookkeeper was in
the office after eleven o'clock to look for his spectacles);— "that, above
all things, we were in want of respectable, educated young men to con
duct the German correspondence. That, certainly, there were many
young Germans in Amsterdam, who possessed the requisite qualifications,
but that a respectable firm " — (it is the very truth),—" seeing the frivolity
and immorality of young men, and the daily increasing number of ad
venturers, and with an eye to the necessity of making correctness of
conduct go hand in hand with correctness in the execution of orders " —
(it is the truth, I observe, and nothing but the truth), — " that such a firm
— I mean Last and Co., coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal — could not be
anxious enough in engaging new hands."
All that is the simple truth, reader. Do you know that the young
German who always stood at the Exchange, near the seventeenth pillar,
has eloped with the daughter of Busselinck and Waterman ? Our Mary,
like her, will be thirteen years old in September.
" That I had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler "— (Saffeler travels for
Stern) — " that the honoured head of the firm, Ludwig Stern, had a son, Mr.
Ernest Stern, who wished for employment for some time in a Dutch house.
" That I, mindful of this " — (here I referred again to the immorality of
employes, and also the history of that daughter of Busselinck and Water
man; it won't do any harm to tell it) — " that I, mindful of this, wished
with all my heart, to offer Mr. Ernest Stern the German correspondence
of our firm."

BETSY'S MURDERER 169
From delicacy I avoided all allusion to honorarium or salary ; yet I
said : —
" That if Mr. Ernest Stern would like to stay with us, at 37 Laurier
Canal, my wife would care for him as a mother, and have his linen
mended in the house" — (that is the very truth, for Mary sews and knits
very well), — and in conclusion I said, " that we were a religious family."
The last sentence may do good, for the Sterns are Lutherans. I
posted that letter. You understand that old Mr. Stern could not very
well give his custom to Busselinck and Waterman, if his son were in our
office. When Max Havelaar gets to Java the nanative is less
satisfactory, so tangential does it become, but there are
enough passages in the manner of that which I have quoted
to keep one happy, and to show how entertaining a satirist
of his own countrymen at home " Multatuli " (whose real
name was Edward Douwes Dekker) might have been had
he been possessed by no grievance.
The book, which is very well worth reading, belongs to
the literature of humanity and protest. Its author had
to suffer much acrimonious attack, and was probably
called a Little Hollander, but the fragment from an un
published play which he placed as a motto to his book
shows him to have lacked no satirical power to meet the
enemy : —
Officer. — My Lord, this is the man who murdered Betsy.
Judge. — He must hang for it. How did he do it ?
Officer. — He cut up her body in little pieces, and salted them.
Judge. — He is a great criminal. He must hang for it.
Lothario. — My Lord, I did not murder Betsy : I fed and clothed
and cherished her. I can call witnesses who will prove me to be a good
man, and no murderer.
Judge. — You must hang. You blacken your crime by your self-
sufficiency. It ill becomes one who ... is accused of anything to set
up for a good man.
Lothario. — But, my Lord, . . . there are witnesses to prove it ; and
as I am now accused of murder . . .
Judge. — You must hang for it. You cut up Betsy — you salted the

170 A COUNTRY OF ESSENTIALS
pieces — and you are satisfied with your conduct — three capital counts —
who are you, my good woman ?
Woman. — I am Betsy.
Lothario. — Thank God ! You see, my Lord, that I did not murder
her. Judge. — Humph ! — ay — what ! — What about the salting ?
Betsy. — No, my Lord, he did not salt me : — on the contrary, he did
many things for me ... he is a worthy man !
Lothario. —You hear, my Lord, she says I am an honest man I
Judge. — Humph! — the third count remains. Officer, remove the
prisoner, he must hang for it ; he is guilty of self-conceit.
Shopkeeping — to return to Amsterdam — is the Dutch
people's life. An idle rich class they may have, but it does
not assert itself. It is hidden away at The Hague or at
Arnheim. In Amsterdam every one is busy in one trade
or another. There is no Pall Mall, no Rotten Row. There
is no Bond Street or Rue de la Paix, for this is a country
where money tries to procure money's worth, a country
of essentials. Nor has Holland a Lord's or an Oval, Epsom
Downs or Hui-linsham.
Perhaps the quickest way to visualise the differences of
nations is to imagine them exchanging countries. If the
English were to move to Holland the whole face of the
land would immediately be changed. In summer the flat
meadows near the towns, now given up to cows and plovers,
would be dotted with cricketers ; in winter with football-
players. Outriggers and canoes, punts and house-boats,
would break out on the canals. In the villao-es such strange
phenomena as idle gentlemen in knickerbockers and idle
ladies with parasols would suddenly appear-.
To continue the list of changes (but not for too long)
the trains would begin to be late ; from the waiting-rooms
all free newspapers would be stolen ; churches would be
made more comfortable; hundreds of newspapers would
exist where now only a handful are sufficient; the hour

ICE V. CHAPERON 171
of breakfast would be later; business would begin later;
drunken men would be seen in the streets, dirt in the
cottages. If the Dutch came to England the converse would
happen. The athletic grounds would become pasture land ;
the dirt of our slums and the gentry of our villages would
alike vanish ; Westminster Abbey would be whitewashed ;
and . . . But I have said enough.
It must not be thought that the Dutch play no games.
As a matter of fact they were playing golf, as old pictures
tell, before it had found its way to England at all ; and
there are now many golf clubs in Holland. The Dutch
are excellent also at lawn tennis ; and I saw the youth of
Franeker very busy in a curious variety of rounders. There
are horse-racing meetings and trotting competitions too.
But the nation is not naturally athletic or sporting. It
does not even walk except on business.
In winter, however, the Dutch are completely trans
formed. No sooner does the ice bear than the whole people
begin to glide, and swirl, and live their lives to the poetry
of motion. The canals then become the real streets of
Amsterdam. A Dutch lady — a mother and a grandmother
— threw up her hands as she told me about the skating
parties to the Zuyder Zee. The skate, it seems, is as much
the enemy of the chaperon as the bicycle, although its
reign is briefer. Upon this subject I am personally ignor
ant, but I take that gesture of alarm as final.
And yet M. Havard, who had a Frenchman's eye and
therefore knew, says that if Etna in full eruption were taken
to Holland, at the end of the week it would have ceased
even to smoke, so destructive to enthusiasm is the well-
disciplined nature of the Dutch woman.
M. Havard refen-ed rather to the women of the open

172 IF THERE WERE TREES
country than the dwellers in the town. I can understand
the rural coolness, for Holland is a land without mystery.
Everything is plain and bare : a man in a balloon would
know the amours of the whole populace. What chance
has Cupid when there are no groves ? But let Holland be
afforested and her daughters would keep Etna burning
warmly enough ; for I am persuaded that it is not that
they are cold but that the physical development of the
country is against them.

CHAPTER XI
AMSTERDAM'S PICTURES
Dutch art in the palmy days— The Renaissance — A miracle — What
Holland did for painting — The " Night Watch '' — Rembrandt's
isolation — Captain Franz Banning Cocq — Elizabeth Bas — The Staal-
meesters — If one might choose one picture — Vermeer of Delft again—
Whistler — " Paternal Advice " — Terburg — The romantic Frenchmen
again — The Dutch painter's ideal — The two Maris — Old Dutch
rooms — The Six Collection — " Six's Bridge " and the wager — The
Fodor Museum.
THE superlative excellence of Dutch painting in the
seventeenth century has never been explained, and
probably never will be. The ordinary story is that on
settling down to a period of independence and compai-ative
peace and prosperity after the cessation of the Spanish
war, the Dutch people called for good art, and good art
came. But that is too simple. That a poet, a statesman
or a novelist should be produced in response to a national
desire is not inconceivable ; for poets, statesmen and novel
ists find their material in the air, as we say, in the ideas
of the moment. They are for the most part products of
their time. But the great Dutch painters of the seven
teenth century were expressing no real idea. Nor, even
supposing they had done so, is it to be understood how
the demand for them should yield such a supply of unsur
passed technical power : how a perfectly disciplined hand
should be instantly at the public service.
(173)

174 THE CALL FOR GENIUS
That Holland in an expansive mood of satisfaction at
her success should have wished to see groups of her gallant
arquebusiers and pox-traits of her eminent burghers is not
to be wondered at, and we can understand that respectable
painters of such pictures should arise in some force to
supply the need — j ust as wherever in this country at the
present day there are cricketers and actresses, there also
are photographers. That painters of ordinary merit should
be forthcoming is, as I have said, no wonder : the mystery
is that masters of technique whose equal has never been
before or since should have arisen in such numbers ; that
in the space of a few years — -between say 1590 and 1635 —
should have been born in a country never before given to
the cultivation of the ai-ts Rembrandt and Jan Steen,
Vermeer and De Hooch, Van der Heist and Gerard Dou,
Fabritius and Maes, Ostade and Van Goyen, Potter and
Ruisdael, Terburg and Cuyp. That is the staggering
thing. Another curious cix-cumstance is that by 1700 it was
practically all ovei-, and Dutch art had become a conven
tion. The gods had gone. Not until very recently has
Holland had any but half gods since.
It may of course be urged that Italy had witnessed a
somewhat similar phenomenon. But the spiritual stimulus
of the Renaissance among the naturally artistic southerners
cannot, I think, be compared with the stimulus given by
the establishment of prosperity to these cold and mateiial
northerners. The making of great Italian art was a
gradual process : the Dutch masters sprang forth fully
armed at the first word of command. In the preceding
generation the Rembrandts had been millers ; the Steens
brewex-s ; the Dous glaziers ; and so forth. But the
demand for pictures having sounded, their sons were

A FIRESIDE FRIEND 175
prepared to be painters of the first magnitude. Why try
to explain this amazing event? Let there rather be
miracles. I have said that the great Dutch paintex-s expressed no
idea ; and yet this is not perfectly true. They expressed
no constructive idea, in the way that a poet or statesman
does ; but all had this in common, that they were informed
by the desire to represent things — intimate and local things
— as they are. The great Italians had gone to religion and
mythology for their subjects : nearer at hand, in Antwerp,
Rubens was pursuing, according to his lights, the same
tradition. The great Dutchmen were the first painters
to bend their genius exclusively to the honour of their
own country, its worthies, its excesses, its domestic virtues,
its trivial dailiness. Hals and Rembrandt lavished their
power on Dutch arquebusiers and governors of hospitals,
Dutch burgomasters and physicians ; Ostade and Bx-ouwer
saw no indignity in painting Dutch sots as well as Dutch
sots could be painted ; De Hooch introduced miracles of
sunlight into Dutch cottages; Maes painted old Dutch
housewives, and Metsu young Dutch housewives, to the
life; Vermeer and Terburg immortalised Dutch ladies at
their spinets ; Albert Cuyp toiled to suffuse Dutch meadows
and Dutch cows with a golden glow ; Jan Steen glorified
the humblest Dutch family scenes ; Gerard* Dou spent
whole weeks upon the fingers of a common Dutch hand.
In short, art that so long had been at the service only of
the Church and the proud, became suddenly, without
losing any of its divinity, a fireside friend. That is what
Holland did for painting.
It would have been a great enjoyment to me to have
made this chapter a companion to the Ryks Museum : to
have said a few words about all the pictures which I like

176 "THE NIGHT WATCH"
best. But had I done so the rest of the book would have
had to go, for all my space would have been exhausted.
And therefore, as I cannot say all I want to say, I propose
to say very little, keeping only to the most importunate
pictures. Here and there in this book, particularly in the
chapters on Dordrecht, Haarlem, and Leyden's painters,
I have already touched on many of them.
The particular shining glory of the Ryks Museum is
Rembrandt's " Night Watch," and it is well, I think, to
make for that picture at once. The direct approach is
down the Gallery of Honour, where one has this wonder
ful canvas befoi-e one all the way, as near life as perhaps
any picture ever painted. It is possible at first to be dis
appointed : expectation perhaps had been running too
high ; the figure of the lieutenant (in the yellow jerkin)
may stxike one as a little mean. But do not let this
distress you. Settle down on one of the seats and take
Rembrandt easily, " as the leaf upon the tree " ; settle
down on another, and from the new point of view take
him easily, "as the grass upon the weir". Look at Van
der Heist's fine company of arquebusiers on one of the side
walls ; look at Franz Hals' company of arquebusiers on the
other ; then look at Rembrandt again. Every minute his
astounding power is winning upon you. Walk again up
the Gallery of Honour and turning quickly at the end,
see how much light there is in the " Night Watch ".
Advance upon it slowly. . . . This is certainly the finest
technical triumph of pigment that you have seen. What
a glow and greatness.
After a while it becomes evident that Rembrandt was
the only man who ought to have painted arquebusiers at
all. Van der Heist and Fi-anz Hals are sinking to the
level of gifted amateurs. Why did not Rembrandt paint

THE REMBRANDTS 177
all the pictures? you begin to wonder. And yet the
Hals and the Van der Heists were so good a little while
ago. Hals and Van der Heist are, however, to recover their
own again ; for the " Night Watch," I am told, is to
be moved to a building especially erected for it, where
the lighting will be mox-e satisfactory than connoisseurs
now consider it. Perhaps it is as well. It is hard to
be so near the rose ; and there are few pictures in the
x-ecesses of the Gallexy of Honour which the " Night
Watch " does not weaken ; some indeed it makes quite
foolish. It is not of course really a night watch at all. Captain
Franz Banning Cocq's ax-quebusiers are leaving their Doelen
in broad day ; the centralisation of sunlight from a high
window led to the mistake, and nothing now will ever
change the title.
How little these careless gallant arquebusiers, who paid
the painter-man a hundred florins apiece to be included in
the picture, can have thought of the destiny of the work !
Of Captain Franz Banning Cocq as a soldier we know
nothing, but as a sitter he is hardly second to any in the
world. But it is not the " Night Watch" that I recall with the
greatest pleasure when I think of the Ryks Rembrandts.
It is that wise and serene old lady in the Van der Poll
room — Elizabeth Bas — who sits there for all time, un
surpassed among portraits. This picture alone is worth
a visit to Holland. I recall also, not with more pleasure
than the " Night Watch," but with little less, the superb
group of syndics in the Staalmeester room. It is this
picture — with the " School of Anatomy " at The Hague —
that in particular makes one wish it had been possible for
12

178 IF ONE MIGHT CHOOSE
all the Corporation pieces to have been from Rembrandt's
brush. It is this picture which deprives even Hals of some
of his divinity, and makes Van der Heist a dull dog. If
ever a picture of Dutch gentlemen was painted by a Dutch
gentleman it is this.
Having seen the " Night Watch " again, it is a good
plan to study the Gallery of Honour. To pick out one's
favourite picture is here not difficult : it is No. 1501, "The
Endless Prayer," by Nicolas Maes, of which I have said
something in the chapter on Dordrecht, the painter's birth
place. Its place is very little below that of Elizabeth Bas,
by Maes's master.
It is always interesting in a fine gallery to ask oneself
which single picture one would choose before all others if
such a privilege were offered. The answer if honest is a
sure revelation of temperament, for one would select of a
certainty a picture satisfying one's prevailing moods rather
than a picture of any sensational character. In other words,
the picture would have to be good to live with. To choose
from thousands of masterpieces one only is a very delicate
test. If the Dutch Government, stimulated to gratitude for
the encomiastic character of the present book, were to offer
me my choice of the Ryks Museum pictures I should not
hesitate a moment. I should take No. 2527 — "Woman
Reading a Letter " (damaged), by Vermeer of Delft. You
will see a reproduction in black and white on the opposite
page ; but how wide a gulf between the picture and the
process block. The jacket, for example, is the most lovely
cool blue imaginable.
This picture, apai-t from its beauty, is interesting as an
illustration of the innovating courage of Vermeer. Who
else at that date would have placed the woman's head

THE READER
JAN VERMEER
From the picture in the Ryks Museum

MONEY POWERLESS 179
against a map almost its own colour ? Many persons think
that such daring began with Whistler. It is, however,
Terburg who most often suggests Whistler. Vex-meer had,
I think, a rarer distinction than Terburg. Vermeer would
never have painted such a crowded group (however masterly)
as that of Terburg's " Peace of Munster " in our National
Gallery; he could not have brought himself so to pack
humanity. Among all the Dutch masters I find no such
fastidious aristocrat.
He, Vermeer, has another picture at the Ryks — " De
brief" (No. 2528) — which technically is wonderful; but
the whole effect is artificial and sophisticated, very different
from his best transparent mood.
Any mortification, by the way, which I might suffer
from the knowledge that No. 2527 can never be mine is
allayed by the knowledge, equally certain, that it can
never be any one else's. Money is powerless here. To
the offer of a Rothschild the Government would return as
emphatic a negative as to a i-equest from me.
The room in which is Vermeer's " Reader " contains also
Maes's " Spinning Woman " (see page 230), two or three
Peter de Hoochs and the best Jan Steen in the Ryks.
It is indeed a room to linger in, and to return to, inde
finitely. De Hooch's " Store Room " (No. 1248), of which
I have already spoken, is in one of the little " Cabinet
piece " rooms, which ai*e not too well lighted. Here also
one may spend many hours, and then many hours mox-e.
The " Peace of Munster " has been called Terburg's
masterpiece : but the girl in his " Paternal Advice," No.
570 at the Ryks, seems to me a finer achievement. The
grace and beauty and truth of her pose and the miraculous
painting of her dress are unrivalled. Yet judged as a
picture it is, I think, dull. The colouring is dingy, time

180 TERBURG
has not dealt kindly with the background ; but the figure
of the girl is pexfect. I give a reproduction opposite page
190. It was this picture, in one of its replicas, that Goethe
describes in his Elective Affinities : a description which pro
cured for it the probably inaccurate title "Parental
Advice ".
We have a fine Terburg in our National Gallery — " The
Music Lesson " — and here too is his " Peace of Munster,"
which certainly was a great feat of painting, but which
does not, I think, reproduce his peculiar characteristics and
charm. These may be found somewhere between " The
Music Lesson " and the portrait next the Vermeer in the
smallest of the three Dutch rooms. Even more ingratia
ting than " The Music Lesson " is " The Toilet " at the
Wallace Collection. Terburg might be called a pocket
Velasquez — a description of him which will be appreciated
at the Ryks Museum in the presence of his tiny and
captivating " Helena van der Schalcke," No. 573, one of
the gems of the Cabinet pieces (see opposite page 290),
and his companion pictures of a man and his wife, each
standing by a piece of red furniture — I think Nos. 574
and 575. The execution of the woman's muslin collar
is among the most dexterous things in Dutch art.
Fi-om the Ryks Museum it is but a little way (past the
model Dutch garden) to the Stadelijks Museum, where
modern painting may be studied — Israels and Bosboom,
Mesdag and James Maris, Breitner and Jan van Beers,
Blommers and Weissenbruch.
There is also one room dedicated to paintings of the
Barbizon school, and of this I would advise instant search.
I rested my eyes here for an hour. A vast scene of cattle
by Troyon (who, such is the poverty of the Dutch alphabet,
comes out monstrously upon the frame as Troijon) ; a

DUTCH ROMANTICS 181
mysterious valley of trees by Corot ; a wave by Courbet ;
a mere at evening by Daubigny — these are like cool firm
hands upon one's forehead.
The statement Nothing graceful, wise, or sainted, —
That is how the Dutchman painted,
is so sweeping as to be untrue. Indeed it is wholly absurd.
The truth simply is that one goes to Dutch art for the
celebration of fact without mystery or magic. In other
wox-ds, Dutch painting is painting without poetry ; and it
is this absence of poetry which makes the romantic French
men appear to be such exotics when one finds them in
Holland, and why it is so pleasant in Holland now and
then to taste their quality, as one may at the Stadelijks
Museum and in the Mesdag Collection at The Hague.
We must not forget, however, that under the French
influence certain modern Dutch painters have been quickened
to celebrate the fact with poetry. In a little room adjoin
ing the great French room at the Stadelijks Museum will
be found some perfect things by living or very recent
artists for whom Corot did not work in vain : a mere by
James Maris, with a man in a blue coat sitting in a boat ;
a marsh under a white sky by Matthew Maris ; a village
scene by the same exquisite craftsman. These three pictures,
but especially the last two, are in their way as notable and
beautiful as anything by the great names in Dutch art.
On the ground floor of the Stadelijks Museum is the
series of rooms named after the Suasso family which should
on no account be missed, but of which no notice is given
by the Museum authorities. These rooms are furnished
exactly as they would have been by the best Dutch families,
their furniture and hangings having been brought from old
houses in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht. The

182 THE SUASSO ROOMS
kitchen is one of the prettiest things in Holland — with its
shining brass and copper, its delicate and dainty tiles and
its air of cheerful brightness. Some of the carving in the
other rooms is superb ; the silver, the china, the clocks are
all of the choicest. The custodian has a childlike interest
in secret drawers and unexpected x-ecesses, which he exhibits
with a gusto not habitual in the Dutch cicerone. For
the run of these old rooms a guelder is asked ; one sees the
three rooms on the other side of the entrance hall for twenty-
five cents, the church and museum unit of Holland. But
they were uninteresting beside the larger suite. They
consist of an old Dutch apothecary's shop and laboratory ;
a madhouse cell ; and the bedroom of a Dutch lady who
has just presented her lord with an infant. We see the
mother in bed, a doctor at her side, and in the foreground
a nurse holding the baby. Except that the costumes and
accessories are authentic the tableau is in no way superior
to an ordinary waxwork.
At the beginning of the last chapter I said that the
Keizersgracht and Heerengracht do not divulge their
secrets ; they present an impassive and inscrutable front,
grave and sombre, often black as night, beyond which the
foreigner may not penetrate. But by the courtesy of the
descendants of Rembrandt's friend Jan Six, in order that
pleasure in their collection of the old masters may be
shared, No. 511 Heerengracht is shown on the presentation
of a visiting card at suitable hours. Here may be seen
two more of the rare pictures of Vermeer of Delft — his
famous " Milk Woman " and a Dutch facade in the manner
of Peter de Hooch, with an added touch of grave delicacy
and distinction. Peter de Hooch is himself represented in
this little gallery, but the pictux-e is in bad condition.
There is also an interesting and uncharacteristically

REMBRANDT'S WAGER 183
dramatic Nicolas Maes called " The Listener ". But the
pride of the house is the little group of portraits by
Rembrandt. It was, by the way, at Bux-gomaster Six's house at
Elsbroek that Rembrandt's little etching called "Six's
Bridge" was executed. Rembrandt and his friend had
just sat down to dinner when it was discovered that there
was no mustard. On a servant being sent to buy or borrow
some, Rembrandt made a bet that he would complete an
etching of the bridge before the man's return. The artist
won. Another little private collection, which has (now become
a regular resort, with fixed hours, is that known as the
Fodor Museum, at No. 609 Keizersgracht ; but I do not
recommend a visit unless one is absolutely a glutton for
paint.

CHAPTER XII
AROUND AMSTERDAM : SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST
Dutch railways — Amsterdam as a centre — Town and country — Milking
time — Scotch sceneryin Holland — Hilversum — Laren — Anton Mauve
— Buckwheat Sunday — Dress in Holland — Naarden's hour of agony
— The indomitable Dutch — Through Noord-Holland again — Muider-
berg— Muiden's Castle.
THE Dutch have several things to learn from the
English; and there ax-e certain lessons which we
might acquire from them. To them we might impart the
uses of the salt-spoon, and ask in return the secret of
punctuality on the railways.
The Dutch railways are admirable. The trains come in
to the minute and go out to the minute. The officials are
intelligent and polite. The carriages are good. Every
station has its waiting-room, where you may sit and read,
and drink a cup of coffee that is not only hot and fresh
but is recognisably the product of the berry. It is impos
sible to travel in the wrong train. It is vexy difficult not
to get out at the right station. The fares ax-e very reason
able. The stationmasters ai-e the only visible and tangible
members of the Dutch aristocracy. The disposition of one's
luggage is vexy simple when once it has been mastered.
The time tables are models of clarity.
The only blot on the system is the detestable double
fastening to the carriage doors, and the curious fancy,
(184)

AMSTERDAM AS A CENTRE 185
prevalent on the Continent, that a platform is a vanity.
It is a perpetual wonder to me that some of the wider
Dutch ever succeed in climbing into their trains at all ; and
yet after accomplishing one's own ascent one discovers
them seated there comfortably and numerously enough,
showing no signs of the struggle.
Travellers who find the Dutch tendency to closed windows
a trial beyond endurance may be interested to know
that it is law in Holland that if any passenger wish it the
window on the lee side may be open. With the knowledge
of this enactment all difficulty should be over — provided
that one has sufficient strength of purpose (and acquaintance
with the Dutch language) to enforce it.
All this preamble concerning railways is by way of
introduction to the statement (hinted at in the first
chapter) that if the traveller in Holland likes, he can
see a great part of the country by staying at Amsterdam
— making the city his headquarters, and every day journey
ing here and there and back again by train or canal.
A few little neighbouring towns it is practically necessary
to visit from Amsterdam ; and for the most part, I take it,
Leyden and Haarlem are made the object of excursions
either from Amsterdam or The Hague, rather than places
of sojourn, although both have excellent quiet inns much
more to my taste than anything in the largest city. Indeed
I found Amsterdam's hotels exceedingly unsatisfactory;
so much so that the next time I go, when the electric
railway to Haarlem is open, I am proposing to invert
completely the usual process, and, staying at Haarlem,
study Amsterdam from there.
For the time being, however, we must consider ourselves
at Amstex-dam, branching out north or south, east or west,
every morning.

186 MILKING TIME
A vexy interesting excursion may be made to Hilversum,
returning by the steam-tram through Laren, Naarden and
Muiden. The rail runs at first through flat and very
verdant meadows, where thousands of cows that supply
Amsterdam with milk are grazing ; and one notices again
the suddenness with which the Dutch city ends and the
Dutch country begins. Our English towns have straggling
outposts : new houses, scaffold poles, cottages, allotments,
all break the transition from city to country ; the urban
gives place to suburban, and suburban to rural, gradually,
every inch being contested. But the Dutch towns —
even the great cities — end suddenly ; the country begins
suddenly. In England for the most part the cow comes to the
milker ; but in Holland the milker goes to the cow. His
first duty is to bind the animal's hind legs together, and
then he sets his stool at his side and begins. Anton
Mauve has often painted the scene — so often that at
milking time one looks from the carriage windows at a
very gallery of Mauves. I noticed this particularly on an
afternoon journey from Amsterdam to Hilversum, between
the city and Weesp, where the meadows (cricket grounds
manques) are flat as billiard tables.
The train later runs between great meres, some day
perhaps to be reclaimed, and then dashes into country that
resembles very closely our Government land about Woking
and Bisley — the first sand and firs that we have seen in
Holland. It has an odd and unexpected appearance ; but
as a matter of fact hundreds of square miles of Holland
in the south and east have this chax-acter; while there
ax-e stretches of Dutch heather in which one can feel in
Scotland. AH about Naarden and Hilversqm are sanatoria, country-

MILKING TIME
ANTON MAUVE

ANTON MAUVE 187
seats and pleasure grounds, the softening effect of the pines
upon the strong air of the Zuyder Zee being very bene
ficial. Many of the heights have towers or pavilions, some
of which move the author of Through Noord-Holland to
ecstasies. As thus, of the Larenberg : " The most charm
ing is the tower, where one can enjoy a perspective that
only rarely presents itself. We can see here the towers of
Nijkerk, Harder wijk, Utrecht, Amersfoort, Bunschoten,
Amsterdam and many others." And again, of a wood at
Heideheuvel : " The perspective beauty here formed cannot
be said in words ".
Hilversum is the Chislehurst of Holland — a discreet and
wealthy suburb, where business men have their villas amid
the trees. It is a pleasant spot, excellent from which to
explore. The author of Through Noord-Holland thus describes
Laren, which lies a few miles from Hilversum and is
reached by tram : " Surrounded by arable land and hilly
heathery it is richly provided with picturesque spots ;
country-seats, villas, ordinary houses and farms are follow
ing one another. For those who are searching for rest
and calmness is this village very recommendable." But to
say only that is to omit Laren's principal claim to distinc
tion — its fame as the home of Anton Mauve.
No great painter of nature probably ever adapted less
than Mauve. His pictures, oils and water-colours alike,
are the real thing, very true, very beautiful, low-toned,
always with a touch of wistfulness and melancholy. He
found his subjects every whex-e, and justified them by the
sympathy and truth of his exquisite modest art.
Chiefly he painted peasants and cows. What a spot of
red was to Corot, the blue linen jacket of the Dutch peasant
was to his disciple. I never hear the name of Mauve with-

188 THE BLUE JACKET
out instantly seeing a black and white cow and a boy in a
blue jacket amid Holland's evening green.
At Laren Mauve's fame is kept sweet by a little colony
of artists, who like to draw their inspiration where the
great painter drew his.
North of Laren, on the sea coast, is the fishing village of
Huizen, where the women have a neat but very sedate
costume. They wear white caps with curved sides that
add grace to a pretty cheek. Having, however, the odd
fancy that a flat chest is more desirable than a rounded
one, they compress their busts into narrow compass, striving
as far as possible to preserve vertical lines. At the waist
a plethora of petticoats begins, spreading the skirts to in-
oi-dinate width and emphasising the meagreness above.
The sombre attire of the Huizen women is a contrast to
most of the traditional costumes of Holland, which are
charming, full of gay colour and happy design. The art
of dress seems otherwise to be dead in Holland to-day. In
the towns the ordinary conventional dress is dull ; and in
the country it is without any charm. Holland as a whole,
omitting the costumes, cannot be said to have any more
knowledge of clothes than we have. It is only by the blue
linen jackets of the men in the fields that the situation is
saved and the Dutch are proved our superiors. How cool
and grateful to the eyes this blue jacket can be all admirers
of Mauve's pictures know.
Naarden and Muiden are curiously mediaeval. The steam-
tram has been rushing along for some miles, past beer
gardens and villas, when suddenly it slows to walking pace
as we twist in and out over the bridges of a moat, and
creeping through the tunnel of a rampart are in the
narrow streets of a fortified town. Both Naarden and
Muiden are surrounded by moats and fortifications,

NAARDEN 189
Naarden's crowning hour of agony was in 1572, since it
had the misfortune to stand in the path of Don Frederic
on his way from Zutphen, where not a citizen had been left
alive, to Amsterdam. The story of the surrender of the
city to Don Romero under the pledge that life and property
should be respected, and of the dastardly and fiendish dis
regard of this pledge by the Spaniax-ds, is the most ghastly
in the whole war. From Motley I take the account of the
tragedy : — ¦
" On the 22nd of November a company of one hundred
troopers was sent to the city gates to demand its surrender.
The small ganison which had been left by the Prince was
not disposed to x-esist, but the spirit of the burghers was
stouter than their walls. They answered the summons by
a declaration that they had thus far held the city for the
King and the Prince of Orange, and, with God's help, would
continue so to do. As the horsemen departed with this
reply, a lunatic, called Adrian Krankhoeft, mounted the
ramparts, and discharged a culverine among them. No
man was injured, but the words of defiance, and the shot
fired by a madman's hand, were destined to be fearfully
answered. " Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the place, which was at
best far from strong, and ill provided with arms, ammuni
tion, or soldiers, despatched importunate messages to Sonoy,
and to other patriot generals nearest to them, soliciting
reinforcements. Their messengers came back almost empty-
handed. They brought a little powder and a great many
promises, but not a single man-at-arms, not a ducat, not a
piece of artillery. The most influential commanders, more
over, advised an honourable capitulation, if it were still
possible. " Thus baffled, the burghers of the little city found their

190 SUSPICIONS
proud position quite untenable. They accordingly, on the
1st of December, despatched the burgomaster and a senator
to Amersfoort, to make terms, if possible, with Don
Frederic. When these envoys reached the place, they were
refused admission to the general's presence. The army
had already been ordered to move forward to Naarden, and
they were directed to accompany the advance guard, and
to expect their reply at the gates of their own city. This
command was sufficently ominous. The impression which
it made upon them was confirmed by the warning voices
of their friends in Amersfoort, who entreated them not to
return to Naarden. The advice was not lost upon one
of the two envoys. After they had advanced a little dis
tance on their journey, the burgomaster, Laurentszoon, slid
privately out of the sledge in which they were travelling,
leaving his cloak behind him. 'Adieu ; I think I will not
venture back to Naarden at present,' said he calmly, as he
abandoned his companion to his fate. The other, who
could not so easily desert his children, his wife, and his
fellow-citizens in the hour of danger, went forward as calmly
to share in then- impending doom.
" The army reached Bussum, half a league distant from
Naarden, in the evening. Here Don Frederic established
his headquarters, and proceeded to invest the city. Senator
Genit was then directed to return to Naarden, and to bring
out a more numerous deputation on the following morn
ing, duly empowered to surrender the place. The envoy
accordingly returned next day, accompanied by Lambert
Hortensius, rector of a Latin academy, together with four
other citizens. Before this deputation had reached Bussum,
they were met by Julian Romero, who informed them that
he was commissioned to treat with them on the part of Don
Frederic. He demanded the keys of the city, and gave the

PATERNAL ADVICE
GERARD TERBURG
t the picture in the Ryks Mas

TREACHERY 191
deputation a solemn pledge that the lives and property of
all the inhabitants should be sacredly respected. To attest
this assurance, Don Julian gave his hand three several times
to Lambert Hortensius. A soldier's word thus plighted,
the commissioners, without exchanging any written docu
ments, sunendered the keys, and immediately afterwards
accompanied Romero into the city, who was soon followed
by five or six hundred musketeers.
"To give these guests an hospitable reception, all the
housewives of the city at once set about preparations for
a sumptuous feast, to which the Spaniards did ample
justice, while the colonel and his officers were entertained
by Senator Gerrit at his own house. As soon as this con
viviality had come to an end, Romero, accompanied by his
host, walked into the square. The great bell had been
meantime ringing, and the citizens had been summoned to
assemble in the Gast Huis Church, then used as a town
hall. In the coux'se of a few minutes 500 had entered the
building, and stood quietly awaiting whatever measures
might be offered for their deliberation. Suddenly a priest,
who had been pacing to and fro before the church door,
entered the building and bade them all prepare for death ;
but the announcement, the preparation, and the death,
were simultaneous. The door was flung open, and a band
of armed Spaniards rushed across the sacred threshold.
They fired a single volley upon the defenceless herd, and
then sprang in upon them with sword and dagger. A yell
of despair arose as the miserable victims saw how hopelessly
they were engaged, and beheld the ferocious faces of their
butchers. The carnage within that narrow space was com
pact and rapid. Within a few minutes all were despatched,
and among them Senator Gerrit, from whose table the
Spanish commander had but just risen. The church was

192 HORTENSIUS
then set on fire, and the dead and dying were consumed
to ashes together.
" Inflamed but not satiated, the Spaniards then rushed
into the streets, thirsty for fresh honors. The houses were
all rifled of their contents, and men were forced to cany
the booty to the camp, who were then struck dead as their
reward. The town was then fired in every direction, that
the skulking citizens might be forced from their hiding-
places. As fast as they came forth they were put to death by
their impatient foes. Some were pierced with rapiers, some
were chopped to pieces with axes, some were sunounded
in the blazing streets by troops of laughing soldiers, intoxi
cated, not with wine but with blood, who tossed them to
and fro with their lances, and derived a wild amusement
from their dying agonies. Those who attempted resistance
were crimped alive like fishes, and left to gasp themselves
to death in lingering torture. The soldiers becoming mox-e
and more insane, as the foul work went on, opened the
veins of some of their victims, and drank their blood as if
it were wine. Some of the burghers were for a time spared,
that they might witness the violation of their wives and
daughters, and were then butchered in company with these
still more unfortunate victims. Miracles of brutality were
accomplished. Neither church nor hearth was sacred. Men
were slain, women outraged at the altars, in the streets, in
their blazing homes. The life of Lambert Hortensius was
spared out of regard to his leanxing and genius, but he
hardly could thank his foes for the boon, for they struck
his only son dead, and tore his heart out before his father's
eyes. Hardly any man or woman survived, except by
accident. A body of some hundred burghers made their
escape across the snow into the open country. They were,
however, ovei-taken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon

MASSACRE 193
the trees by the feet, to freeze, or to perish by a more
lingering death. Most of them soon died, but twenty, who
happened to be wealthy, succeeded, after enduring much
tortui-e, in purchasing their lives of their inhuman perse
cutors. The principal burgomaster, Heinrich Lamberts-
zoon, was less fortunate. Known to be affluent, he was
tortured by exposing the soles of his feet to a fire until
they were almost consumed. On promise that his life
should be spared he then agreed to pay a heavy ranson ;
but hardly had he furnished the stipulated sum when, by
express order of Don Frederic himself, he was hanged in
his own doorway, and his dissevered limbs afterwards nailed
to the gates of the city.
" Nearly all the inhabitants of Naarden, soldiers and
citizens, were thus destroyed ; and now Don Fi-ederic issued
peremptory orders that no one, on pain of death, should
give lodging or food to any fugitive. He likewise forbade
to the dead all that could now be forbidden them — a grave.
Three weeks long did these unburied bodies pollute the
streets, nor could the few wretched women who still cowered
within such houses as had escaped the flames ever move
from their lurking-places without treading upon the fester
ing remains of what had been their husbands, their fathers,
or their brethren. Such was the express command of him
whom the flatterers called the ' most divine genius ever
known '. Shortly afterwards came an order to dismantle
the fortifications, which had certainly proved sufficiently
feeble in the hour of need, and to x-aze what was left of
the city from the surface of the earth. The work was faith
fully accomplished, and for a long time Naarden ceased to
exist." The Naarden of to-day sprang from the ruins. Mendoza's
comment upon the siege ran thus : " The sack of Naarden

194 THE DUTCH GUIDE AGAIN
was a chastisement which must be believed to have taken
place by express permission of a Divine Providence ; a
punishment for having been the first of the Holland towns
in which heresy built its nest, whence it has taken flight to
all the neighbouring cities ". None the less, " the hearts of
the Hollanders," says Motley, "were rather steeled to re
sistance than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden " ;
as Don Frederic found when he passed on to besiege Haarlem
and later Alkmaar.
To Muiderburg, between Naarden and Muiden, I have
not been, and therefore with the more readiness quote my
indispensable author : —
In summer is Muiderberg by its situation at the Zuiderzee a favourite
little spot and very recommendable for nervous people. The number of
those who sought cure and found it here is enormous. It is the vacation-
place by excellence. There is a church with square tower and organ.
About the tower, the spire of which is failing, various opinions go round
how this occured, by war, by shooting or storm.
The beautiful beech-grove in the center of the village, where a lot of
forest-giants are rising in the sky in severe rows, is a favorite place, in
the middle of which is a hill with fine pond.
A couple of years ago Geertruida Carelsen wrote in her Berlin letters
that Muiderberg perhaps is the only bathing-place where sea and wood
are united. There are three well-known graveyards.
Of Muiden's very picturesque moated castle — the ideal
castle of a romance— Peter Cornellissen Hooft, the poet
and historian, was once custodian. It was built in the
thirteenth century and restored by Florence V., who was
subsequently incarcerated there. As the Noord-Holland
guide-book sardonically remarks, "He will never have
thought that he built his own prison by it ",

CHAPTER XIII
AROUND AMSTERDAM : NORTH
To Marken — An opera-bouffe island — Cultivated and profitable simpli
city — Broek-in-Waterland — Cow-damp — The two doors — Ginger
bread and love — Dead cities — Monnickendam — The overturned
camera — Dutch phlegm — Brabant the quarrelsome — Edam — Hol
land's great churches — Edam's roll of honour — A beard of note — A
Dutch Daniel Lambert — A virgin colossus — A ship-owner indeed
— -The mermaid — Volendam — Taciturnity and tobacco — Purmerend
— The land of windmills — Zaandam — Green paint at its highest
power — A riverside inn — Peter the Great.
AN excursion which every one will say is indispensable
takes one to Marken (pronounced Marriker) ; but I
have my doubts. The island may be reached from Amster
dam either by boat, going by way of canal and returning
by sea, or one may take the steam-tram to Monnickendam
or Edam, and then fall into the hands of a Marken mariner.
To escape his invitations to sail thither is a piece of good
fox*tune that few visitors succeed in achieving.
Marken in winter wears perhaps a genuine air ; in the
season of tourists it has too much the suggestion of opera
bouffe. The men's costume is comic beyond reason ; the
inhabitants are pictui-esque of set design ; the old women
at their doorways are too consciously the owners of quaint
habitations, glimpses of which catch the eye by well-
studied accident. I must confess to being glad to leave :
for either one was intruding upon a simple folk entix-ely
(195)

196 "MARRIKER"
surrounded by water ; or the simple folk, knowing human
nature, had made itself up and sent out its importunate
young from strictly mercenary motives. In either case
Marken is no place for a sensitive traveller. The theory
that the Marken people ax-e savages is cex-tainly a wrong one ;
they have carried certain of the privileges of civilisation very
far and can take care of themselves with unusual cleverness.
Moreover, no savage would cover his legs with such garments
as the men adhere to.
What is wrong with Marken is that for the most part it
subsists on sight-seers, which is bad ; and it too generally
suggests that a stage-manager, employed by a huge Trust,
is somewhere in the background. It cannot be well with a
community that encourages its children to beg of visitors.
The women, however, look sensible : fine upstanding
creatures with a long curl of yellow hair on each side of
their faces. One meets them now and then in Amsterdam
streets, by no means dismayed by the traffic and bustle.
Their head-dresses are striking and gay, and the front of
their bodices is elaborately embroidei-ed, the prevailing
colours being red and pink. Bright hues are also very
popular within doors on this island, perhaps by way of
counteracting the external monotony, the Marken walls
being washed with yellow and hung with Delft plates, while
the furniture and hangings all have a cheerful gaiety.
The island is flat save for the mounds on which its
villages are built, each house standing on poles to allow
the frequent inundations of the winter free way. If one
has the time and money it is certainly better to visit
Marken in a fishing-boat than in the steamer — provided
that one can trust oneself to navigatoi-s masquerading in
such bloomers.
The steamers from Amsterdam pause for a while at

BROEK 197
Broek and Monnickendam. Broek-in-Waterland, to give
it its full title, is one of the quaintest of Dutch villages.
But unfortunately Broek also has become to some extent a
professional " sight ". Its cleanliness, however, for which
it is famous, is not an artificial effect attained to impress
visitors, but a genuine enough characteristic. The houses
are gained by little bridges which, with various other
idiosyncrasies, help to make Broek a delight to children.
If a company of children were to be allowed to manage a
small republic entirely alone, the whimsical millionaire who
fathered the project might do worse than buy up this
village for the experiment.
In the model dairy farm of Broek, through which visitors
file during the time allowed by the steam-boat's captain,
things happen as they should : the cows' tails are tied to
the roof, and all is spick and span. The author of Through
Noord-Holland tells us that among the dairy's illustrious
visitors was an Italian duchess from Livorno who ordered
cheese for herself, for the Princess Borghese and for the
Duke of Ceri. Everything in the farm, he adds, "is
glimmering and glittering ".
One of the phenomena of Broek is thus explained by the
same ingenious author : " By beholding the dark-tinted
columns attentively one sees something dull here and there.
In the year 1825, when the gx-eat flood inundated whole
Broek, men as well as cattle flied into the church, which
lies so much higher and remained quite free of water. By
the exhalations of the cows, the cow-damp, has the^wood
been blemished and made dull at many places, chamois
nor polish could help, the dullness remained." The church
has beauties to set against the phenomenon of cow-damp,
and among them a very elaborate carved pulpit in various
precious woods, and some fine lamps.

198 LOVERS
Ireland tells us that the front doors of many of Broek's
houses are opened only twice in their owners' lives — when
they marry and when they die. For the rest the back
door must serve. The custom is not confined to Broek,
but is found all over North Holland. These ceremonial
front doors are often very ornate. It was also at Broek
that Ireland picked up his information as to the best
means of winning the Dutch heart. " Laughable as it
may seem, a safe expedient to insure the affections of the
lower class of these lasses, is to arm yourself well with
gingerbread. The first question the lover is asked after
knocking at the door-, when the parents are supposed to be
in bed, is, ' Have you any gingerbread ? ' If he replies in
the affirmative, he finds little difficulty in gaining admis
sion. A second visit ensures his success, and the lady yields."
I can add a little to this. When a young man thinks of
courting he first speaks to the parents, and if they are will
ing to encourage him he is asked to spend the evening with
their daughter. They then discreetly retire to bed and leave
the world to him. Under his arm is a large cake, not
necessarily of gingerbread, and this he deposits on the
table, with or without words. If he is acceptable in the
girl's eyes she at once puts some more peat on the fire. He
then knows that all is well with him : the cake is cut,
and Romance is king. But if the fire is not replenished
he must gather up his cake and return to his home. A
very favourite Dutch picture represents " The Cutting of
the Cake ". I have heard that the Dutch wife takes hex-
husband's left arm ; the Dutch fiancee her lover's risrht.
Monnickendam, on the shox-es of the Zuyder Zee, is
now a desolate sleepy spot ; once it was one of the great
towns of Holland, at the time when The Hague was a
village. I say Zuyder Zee, but strictly speaking it is on

THE OVERTURNED CAMERA 199
the Gouwzee, the name of the straits between Monnick
endam and Marken. It is here, in winter, when the ice
holds, that a fair is held, to which come all Amsterdam on
skates, to eat poffertjes and wafelen.
Monnickendam affords our first sight of what are called
veiy misleadingly the "Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee,"
meaning merely towns which once were larger and busier.
Monnickendam was sufficiently important to fit out a fleet
against the Spanish in 1573, under Cornelius Dirckszoon
(whose tomb we saw at Delft) and capture Bossu in the
battle of Hoorn.
To-day Monnickendam suggests nothing so little as a
naval engagement. People live there, it is true, but one
sees very few of them. Only in an old English market
town on a hot day — such a town as Petworth, for example,
in Sussex — do you get such desertion and quiet and im
perturbability. Monnickendam has, however, a treasure
that few English towns can boast — its charming little
stadhuis tower, one of the prettiest in Holland, with a
happy peal of bells, and mechanical horses in action once
an hour ; while the tram line running right down the main
street periodically awakens the populace.
When last I visited Monnickendam it was by steam-tram ;
and at a little half-way station, where it is necessary to
wait for another tram, our engine driver, stoker and guard
were elaborately photographed by an artist who seemed to
be there for no other purpose. He placed his tripod on
the platform ; grouped the officials ; gave them — and inci
dentally a score of heads protruding from the carriages —
a sufficient exposure, and was preparing another plate when
an incoming tram dashed up so unexpectedly as to cause
him to jump, and, in jumping, to overturn his tripod and
precipitate the camera under the carriage wheels. Now

200 EDAM
here was a tragedy worthy of serious treatment. A French
man would have danced with rage ; an Englishman would
have wanted to know whose fault it was and have threat
ened reprisals. But the Dutchman merely looked a little
pained, a little surprised, and in a minute or two was pre
paring a friendly group of the officials of the tram which
had caused the accident. I do not put the incident for
ward as typical ; but certainly one may travel far in Hol
land without seeing exhibitions of temper. I mentioned
the nation's equability to the young Dutchman in the canal
boat between Rotterdam and Delft. " Ah ! " he said,
" you should go to Brabant. They fight enough there ! "
I did go to Brabant, but I saw no anger or quarrelsome
ness ; yet I suppose he had his reasons.
The steam-tram to Monnickendam runs on to Edam,
whence one may command both Volendam and Purmerend.
Edam is famous for its cheese, but the traveller in Holland
as a rule reserves for Alkmaar cheese market his interest in
this industry ; and we will do the same. Broadly speaking
Edam sends forth the red cheeses, Alkmaar the yellow ; but
no hard and fast line can be dx-awn. Were it not for its
cheese market Edam would be as " dead " as Monnicken
dam, but cheese saves it. It was once a power and the
water-gate of Amsterdam, at a time when the only way to
the Dutch capital was by the Zuyder Zee and the Y.
Edam is at the mouth of the Y, its name really being
Ydam. The size of its Groote Kerk indicates something
of this past importance, for it is immense : a Gothic build
ing of the fourteenth century, cold and drear enough, but
a little humanised by some coloured glass from Gouda, often
in very bad condition. In the days when this church was
built Edam had twenty-five thousand inhabitants: now
there are only five thousand.

THREE PERSONAGES 201
It is difficult to lose the feeling of disproportion between
the size of the Dutch churches and that of the villages
and congregations. The villages are so small, the churches
so vast. It is as though the churches were built to com
pensate for the absence of hills. From any one spire in
Holland one must be able to see almost all the others.
The stained glass in Edam's great chux-ch has reference
rather to Holland's temporal prosperity than to religion.
More intex-esting is the room over the southern door, which
was used first for a prison, and later for a school, the libraxy
of which still may be seen. Edam possesses in addition to
the immense chui-ch of St. Nicholas a little church of the
Virgin, with a spire full of bells, badly out of the per
pendicular. The town has also some intei-esting old houses,
one or two of great beauty, and many enriched by quaint
bas-reliefs. The stadhuis is comparatively modern and not extern
ally attractive. Within, however, Edam does honour to
three fantastic figures who once were to be seen in her
streets — Peter Dircksz, Jan Comellissen and Tiijntje Kever,
portraits of whom grace the town hall. Their claims to
fame are certainly genuine, although unexpected. Peter's
idiosyncrasy was a beard which had to be looped up to pre
vent it trailing in the mud ; Jan, at the age of forty-two,
when the artist set to work upon him, weighed thirty-two
stones and six pounds ; while Trijntje was a maiden nine
feet tall and otherwise ample. Peter and Trijntje were,
I believe, true children of Edam, but .Jan was a mere im
port, having conveyed his bulk thither from Friesland.
Like our own Daniel Lambert, he kept an inn. One of
Trijntje's shoes is also preserved — liker to a boat than
anything else.
I have by no means exhausted Edam's roll of honour.

202 THE MERMAID
Shipowner Ostexien must be added— a burgher, who, in
1682, when his portrait was painted, could point (and in
the canvas does point, with no uncertain finger,) to ninety-
two ships of which he was the possessor. And a legend of
Edam tells how once in 1403, when the country was inun
dated by the sea, some girls taking fresh water to the cows
saw and captured a mermaid. Her (like the lady in Mr.
Wells's story) they dressed and civilised, and taught to sow
and spin, but could never make talk. Possibly it is this
mermaid who, caught in a fisherman's net, is represented
in bas-relief (as the fish that pleases all tastes) on one of
the facades of Edam, with accompanying verses which
must not be translated, embodying comments upon the
nature of the haul by various typical and very plain-spoken
members of society — a soldier and a schoolmaster, a monk
and a fowler, for example.
Edam has yet another hex-o. On the Dam bridge are
ii-on-backed benches which never grow rusty. " One owes
this particularity," says Through Noord-Holland, " to the
invention of an Edamer about 1569, who also took his
secret with him into the grave."
To the little fishing village of Volendam, paradise of
quaint costumes and gay prettinesses, artists invariably
resort. Like much of Monnickendam, and indeed almost
all Dutch seaside settlements, the village is, if not below
sea-level, almost invisible from the water, on account of
an obliterating dyke. At the Helder one can consider
the x-ampart reasonable, but here, where there is no foe
but the Zuyder Zee, it may seem fantastic. If we lived
there in winter, however, the precaution would soon be
justified, for the Zuyder Zee can on occasion x-oar like a lion.
It is odd to reflect that Volendam, Monnickendam and
Marken may become ordinary inland hamlets in the midst

VOLENDAM AND PURMEREND 203
of green fields if the great scheme for draining the
Zuyder Zee is carried through.
If the people and village of Volendam are to be described
in a phrase, they may be called better Markeners in a
better Max-ken. The decoration of the pointed red-roofed
houses is similar; there is the same prevailing and vexy
ingratiating passion for blue Delft — and a very beautiful
blue too ; the clothes of the men and women have a family
resemblance. But Volendam is in every way better —
although its open drain is a sore trial : it is more human,
more natural. The men hold the record for Dutch taci
turnity. They also smoke more persistently and wear larger
sabots than I saw anywhere else, leaving them outside their
doors with a religious exactitude that suggests that the good-
wives of Volendam know how to be obeyed. The women
discard the Marken ringlets and richness of embroidery, but
in the matter of petticoats they approach the Scheveningen
and Huizen standards. Their jewellery resolves itself into
a coral necklace, while the men wear silver buttons — both
coming down from mother to daughter1, and father to son.
The fishing fleet of Volendam sails as far as the North
Sea, but it is always in Volendam by Saturday morning.
Hence if you would see the Volendam fishermen in their
greatest strength the time to visit the little town is at the
end of the week or on Sunday.
The day for Purmerend is Tuesday, because then the
market is held, in the castle plein, among mediaeval sur
roundings. To this market the neighbourhood seems to
send its whole population, by road and water, in gay cart
and comfortable wherry. According to my unfailing in
formant in these regions, the Purmerend stadhuis, in
order "to aggrandise the cheese market," was in 1633
" set back a few meters by screwing-fbrce ".

204 WINDMILLS AND GREEN PAINT
The excursion to Marken and the excursion to Edam
and its neighbourhood take each a day; but between
Amsterdam and Zaandam, just off the great North Canal,
steamers ply continually, and one may be there in half an
hour. The journey must be made, because Zaandam is
superficially the gayest town in Holland and the capital of
windmill land. In an hour's drive (obviously no excursion
for Don Quixote) one may pass hundreds. These mills do
everything except grind corn. For the most part the
Dutch mills pump : but they also saw wood, and cut
tobacco, and make paper, and indeed perform all the tasks
for which in countries less windy and less leisurely steam
or water power is employed. The one windmill in Holland
which always springs to my mind when the subject is
mentioned is, however, not among Zaandam's legions : it
is that solitary and imposing erection which rises from
the water in the Coolsingel in Rotterdam. That is my
standard Dutch mill. Another which I always recall
stands outside Bergen-op-Zoom, on the way to Tholen —
all white.
The Dutch mill differs from the English mill in three
important respects : it is painted more gaily (although for
England white paint is certainly best) ; it has canvas on
its sails ; and it is often thatched. Dutch thatching is
very smooth and px-etty, like an antelope's skin ; and never
more so than on the windmills.
Zaandam lies on either side of the river Zaan, here
broad and placid and north of the dam more like the
Thames at Teddington, say, than any stretch of water in
Holland. A single stx-eet runs beside the river for about
a mile on both banks, the houses being models of smil
ing neatness, picked out with cheerful green paint. At
Zaandam green paint is at its greenest. It is the national

VOLENDAM

PETER THE GREAT 205
pigment ; but nowhere else in Holland have they quite so
sure a hand with it. To the critics who lament that there
is no good Dutch painting to-day, I would say "Go to
Zaandam". Not only is Zaandam's green the greenest,
but its red roofs are the reddest, in Holland. A single
row of trees runs down each of its long streets, and on
the other side of each are illimitable fields intersected by
ditches which on a cloudless afternoon might be strips of
the bluest ribbon.
We sat for an hour in the garden of " De Zon," a little
inn on the west bank half-way between the dam and the
bridge. The landlady brought us coffee, and with it letters
from other travellers who had liked her garden and had
written to tell her so. These she read and purred over, as
a good landlady is entitled to do, while we watched the
barges float past and disappear as the distant lock opened
and swallowed them.
South of the dam the interest is centred in the hut where
for a while in 1697 Peter the Great lived to see how the
Dutchmen built their ships. The belief that no other
motive than the inspection of this very uninteresting
cottage could bring a stranger hither is a tenet of faith
to which the Zaandamer is bound with shackles of iron.
The moment one disembarks the way to Peter's residence
begins to be pointed out. Little boys run before ; sturdy
men walk beside ; old men (one with a wooden leg) struggle
behind. It was later that the Czar crossed to England and
worked in the same way at Deptford ; but no visitor to
Deptford to-day is required to see his lodging there.
The real interest of Zaandam is not its connection with
Peter the Great but the circumstance that it was the birth
place of Anton Mauve, in 1838. He died at Arnheim in
1888, Neither Zaandam nor Arnheim honours him.

CHAPTER XIV
ALKMAAR AND HOORN, THE HELDER AND ENKHUISEN
To Alkmaar by canal — The Cheese Market — The Weigh House clock —
Buyers and sellers — The siege of Alkmaar — To Hoorn by sea — A
Peaceful harbour — Hoorn's explorer sons — John Haring's bravery
— The defeat of De Bossu — Negro heroes — Hoorn's streets — and
museum — Market day — and Kermis — Nieuwediep — The Helder —
The Lighthouse — Hotel characters — The praise of the porter — Texel
— Medemblik — King Radbod's hesitancy — Enkhuisen— Paul Potter
— Sir William Temple and the old philosopher — The Dromedary.
IF the weather is fine one should certainly go to Alkmaar
by canal. The journey by water, on a steamer, is
always interesting and intensely invigorating. It is only
one remove from the open sea, so flat is the country, so free
the air.
Alkmaar's magnet is its cheese market, which draws little
companies of travellers thither every Friday in the season.
To see it rightly one must reach Alkmaar on the preced
ing afternoon, to watch the arrival of the boats from the
neighbouring farms, and see them unload their yellow freight
on the market quay. The men who catch the cheeses are
exceedingly adroit — it is the neax-est thing to an Eno-lish
game that is played in Holland. Before thev are finally
placed in position the cheeses are liberally greased, until
they glow and glitter like orange fires. All the after
noon the boats come in, with then- collections from the
various dairies on the water. By i-oad also come cheeses
(206)

CHEESE MARKET. ALKMAAR

BARGAINS 207
in wagons of light polished wood painted blue within ; and
all the while the carillon of the beautiful grave Weigh
House is ringing out its little tunes — the wedding march
from " Lohengrin " among them — and the little mechanical
horsemen are charging in the tourney to the blast of the
little mechanical trumpeter. At one o'clock they run only
a single course ; but at noon the glories of Ashby-de-la
Zouche are enacted.
By nine o'clock on the Friday morning the market
square is covered with rectangular yellow heaps arranged
with Dutch systematic order and symmetry, many of them
protected by tarpaulins, and the square is filled also with
phlegmatic sellers and buyers, smoking, smoking, unceas
ingly smoking, and discussing the weather and the cheese,
the cheese and the Government.
Not till ten may business begin. Instantly the first
stroke of ten sounds the aspect of the place is changed.
The Government and the weather recede ; cheese emerges
triumphant. Tarpaulins are stripped off; a new expres
sion settles upon the features both of buyers and sellers ;
the dealers begin to move swiftly from one heap to an
other. They feel the cheeses, pat them, listen to them,
plunge in their scoops and remove a long pink stick which
they roll in their fingers, smell or taste and then neatly
replace. Meanwhile, the seller stands by with an air part
self-satisfaction, part contempt, part pity, part detachment,
as who should say " It mattei-s nothing to me whether this
fussy fellow thinks the cheese good or not, buys it or not ;
but whether he thinks it good or bad, or whether he buys,
or leaves it, it is still the best cheese in Alkmaar market,
and some one will give me my price ".
The seller gnaws his cigar, the buyer asks him what he
asks The buyer makes an offer. The seller refuses. The

208 ALKMAAR
buyer increases it. The seller either refuses or accepts.
In accepting, or drawing near acceptance, he extends his
hand, which the buyer stxikes once, and then pausing,
strikes again. Apparently two such movements clench
the bargain ; but I must confess to being a bad guide here,
for I could find no absolute rule to follow. The whole
process of Alkmaar chaffering is exceedingly pex-plexing
and elusive. Otherwise the buyer walks away to other
cheeses, the seller by no means unconscious of his move
ments. A little later he returns, and then as likely as not
his terms are accepted, unless another has been beforehand
with him and bought the lot.
Not until half-past ten strikes may the weighing begin.
At that hour the many porters suddenly spring into
activity and hasten to the Weigh House with their loads,
which are ticketed off by the master of the scales.
The scene is altogether very Dutch and very interesting ;
and one should make a point of crossing the canal to get
a general view of the market, with the river craft in the
foreground, the bustling dealers behind, and above all the
elaborate tower and facade of the Weigh House.
Alkmaar otherwise is not of great interest. It has a
large light chux-ch, bare and bleak according to custom,
with very attractive green curtains against its whitewash,
in which, according to the author of Through Noord-
Holland, is a tomb containing " the entrails of Count
Florence the Fifth ". Here also is a model of one of De
Ruyter's ships. Alkmaar also possesses a chai-ming Oude
Mannen en Oude Vrouwen Huis (or alms house, as we
say) with white walls and a very pretty tower ; quiet,
pleasant streets; and on its outskirts a fine wood called
the Alkmaarder Hout.
In the Museum, which is not too interesting, is a picture

THE SIEGE 209
of the siege of Alkmaar, an episode of which the town has
every right to be proud. It was the point of attack by
the Duke of Alva and his son after the conquest of
Haarlem — that hollow victoiy for Spain which was more
costly than many defeats. Philip had issued a decree
threatening the total depopulation of Holland unless its
cities submitted to the charms of his attractive religion.
The citizens of Alkmaar were the first to defy this proclama
tion. Once again Motley comes to our aid with his vivid
narrative : " The Spaniards advanced, burned the village of
Egmont to the ground as soon as the patriots had left it,
and on the 21st of August Don Frederic, appearing before
the walls, proceeded formally to invest Alkmaar. In a
few days this had been so thoroughly accomplished, that,
in Alva's language, ' it was impossible for a sparrow to
enter or go out of the city '. The odds were somewhat
unequal. Sixteen thousand veteran troops constituted the
besieging force. Within the city were a garrison of eight
hundred soldiers, together with thirteen hundred burghers,
capable of bearing arms. The rest of the population con
sisted of a very few refugees, besides the women and
children. Two thousand one hundred able-bodied men,
of whom only about one-third were soldiers, to resist six
teen^ thousand regulars !
" Nor was there any doubt as to the fate which was
reserved for them, should they succumb. The Duke was
vociferous at the ingratitude with which his clemency had
hitherto been requited. He complained bitterly of the
ill success which- had attended his monitoxy circulars ; re-
px-oached himself with inci-edible vehemence, for his px-evious
mildness, and protested that, after having executed only
twenty-three hundred persons at the surrender of Haarlem,
besides a few additional bux-ghers since, he had met with

210 ALVA ON KINDNESS
no conespondent demonstrations of affection. He promised
himself, however, an ample compensation for all this in
gratitude in the wholesale vengeance which he purposed
to wreck upon Alkmaar. Already he gloated in anticipa
tion over the havoc which would soon be let loose within
those walls. Such ravings, if invented by the pen of
fiction, would seem a puerile caricature ; proceeding, au
thentically, from his own, they still appear almost too
exaggerated for belief. ' If I take Alkmaar,' he wrote to
Philip, ' I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive ;
the knife shall be put to every throat. Since the example
of Harlem has proved of no use, perhaps an example of
cruelty will bring the other cities to their senses.' He
took occasion also to read a lecture to the party of con
ciliation in Madrid, whose counsels, as he believed, his
sovereign was beginning to heed. Nothing, he maintained,
could be more senseless than the idea of pardon and
clemency. This had been sufficiently proved by recent
events. It was easy for people at a distance to talk
about gentleness ; but those upon the spot knew better.
Gentleness had produced nothing, so far; violence alone
could succeed in future. 'Let your Majesty,' he said, 'be
disabused of the impression, that with kindness anything
can be done with these people. Already have matters
reached such a point that many of those born in the
country, who have hitherto advocated clemency, are now
undeceived, and acknowledge their mistake They are of
opinion that not a living soid should be left in Alkmaar,
but that every individual should be put to ilie sn-ord.'. . .
" Affairs soon approached a crisis within the beleaguered
city. Daily skirmishes, without decisive result, had taken
place outside the walls. At last, on the 18th of September,
after a steady cannonade of nearly twelve hours, Don

REPULSE 211
Fredexic at three in the afternoon, ordered an assault.
Notwithstanding his seven months' experience at Haarlem,
he still believed it certain that he should cany Alkmaar
by storm. The attack took place at once upon the Frisian
gate, and upon the red tower on the opposite side. Two
choice regiments, recently arrived from Lombardy, led the
onset, rending the air with their shouts, and confident of
an easy victory. They were sustained by what seemed
an overwhelming force of disciplined troops. Yet never,
even in the recent history of Haarlem, had an attack been
received by more dauntless breasts. Every living man was
on the walls. The storming parties were assailed with
cannon, with musketry, with pistols. Boiling water, pitch
and oil, molten lead, and unslaked lime, were poured
upon them every moment. Hundreds of tarred and burn
ing hoops were skilfully quoited around the necks of the
soldiers, who struggled in vain to extricate themselves from
these fiery ruffs, while as fast as any of the invaders planted
foot upon the breach, they were confronted face to face
with sword and dagger by the burghers, who hurled them
headlong into the moat below.
"Thrice was the attack renewed with ever-increasing
rage — thrice repulsed with unflinching fortitude. The
storm continued four hours long. During all that period,
not one of the defenders left his post, till he dropped from
it dead or wounded. The women and children, unscared
by the balls flying in every dix-ection, or by the hand-to-
hand conflicts on the ramparts, passed steadily to and fro
from the arsenals to the fortifications, constantly supplying
their fathers, husbands, and brothers with powder and
ball. Thus, every human being in the city that could
walk had become a soldier. At last darkness fell upon the
scene. The trumpet of recall was sounded, and the Span-

212 THE SPANIARDS IN REVOLT
iards, utterly discomfited, retired from the walls, leaving
at least one thousand dead in the trenches, while only
thirteen burghers and twenty-four of the ganison lost
their lives. Thus was Alkmaar preserved for a little
longer — thus a large and well-appointed army signally
defeated by a handful of men fighting for their firesides
and altars. Ensign Solis, who had mounted the breach
for an instant, and miraculously escaped with life, after
having been hurled from the battlements, reported that he
had seen ' neither helmet nor harness,' as he looked down
into the city ; only some plain-looking people, generally
dressed like fishermen. Yet these plain-looking fishermen
had defeated the veterans of Alva. . . .
" The day following the assault, a fresh cannonade was
opened upon the city. Seven hundred shots having been
discharged, the attack was ordered. It was in vain ; neither
threats nor entreaties could induce the Spaniards, hitherto
so indomitable, to mount the breach. The place seemed
to their imagination protected by more than mortal powers,
otherwise how was it possible that a few half-starved fisher
men could already have so triumphantly overthrown the
time-honoured legions of Spain. It was thought, no doubt,
that the Devil, whom they worshipped, would continue to
protect his children. Neither the entreaties nor the
menaces of Don Frederic were of any avail. Several
soldiers allowed themselves to be run through the body
by their own officers, rather than advance to the walls,
and the assault was accordingly postponed to an indefinite
period." What seemed at first an unfortunate accident turned
the scale. A messenger bearing despatches from the
Prince of Orange fell into Spanish hands and Don Frederic
learned that the sea was to be let in. Motley continues :

WATER TO THE RESCUE 213
" The resolution taken by Orange, of which Don Frederic
was thus unintentionally made aware, to flood the country
far and near rather than fail to protect Alkmaar, made a
profound impression upon his mind. It was obvious that
he was dealing with a determined leader, and with desper
ate men. His attempt to cany the place by storm had
signally failed, and he could not deceive himself as to the
temper and disposition of his troops ever since that re
pulse. When it should become known that they were
threatened with submersion in the ocean, in addition to
all the other horrox-s of war, he had reason to believe that
they would retire ignominiously from that remote and
desolate sand hook, where, by remaining, they could only
find a watery grave. These views having been discussed in
a council of officers, the result was reached that sufficient
had been already accomplished for the glory of the Spanish
arms. Neither honour nor loyalty, it was thought, re
quired that sixteen thousand soldiers should be sacrificed
in a contest, not with man, but with the ocean.
" On the 8th of October, accox-dingly, the siege, which
had lasted seven weeks, was raised, and Don Frederic re
joined his father in Amsterdam. Ready to die in the last
ditch, and to overwhelm both themselves and their foes in
a common catastrophe, the Hollanders had at last com
pelled their haughty enemy to fly from a position which
he had so insolently assumed."
Every one is agreed that Hoorn should be approached
by water, because it rises from the sea like an enchanted
city of the East, with its spires and its Harbour Tower
beautifully unreal. And as the ship comes nearer there
is the additional interest of wondering how the apparently
landlocked harbour is to be entered, a long green bar
seeming to stretch unbrokenly from side to side. At the

214 THE BLESSED HORN
last minute the passage is revealed, and one glides into this
romantic port. I put Hoorn next to Middelburg in the
matter of charm, but seen from the sea it is of greater
fascination. In many ways Hoorn is mox-e remarkable
as a town, but more of my heart belongs to Middel
burg. I sat on the coping of the harbour at sundown and
watched a mei-ry party dining in the saloon of a white
and exceedingly comfortable-looking yacht, some thirty
or forty yards away. Two neat maids continually passed
from the galley to the saloon, and laughter came over the
water. The yacht was from Arnheim, its owner having
all the appearance of a retired East Indian official. In the
distance was a tiny sailing boat with its sail set to catch
what few puffs of wind were moving. Its only occupant
was a man in crimson trousers, the reflection from which
made little splashes of warm colour in the pearl grey sea.
At Hoom there seems to be a tendency to sail for pleasure,
for as we came away a party of chattering girls glided out
in the care of an elderly man — bound for a cruise in the
Zuyder Zee.
It is conjectured that Hoorn took its name from the
mole protecting the harbour, which might be considered
to have the shape of a horn. The city as she used to be
(now dwindled to something less, although the cheese
industry makes her prosperous enough and happy enough)
was called by the poet Vondel the trumpet and capital of
the Zuyder Zee, the blessed Horn. He referred particu
larly to the days of Tromp, whose ravaging and victorious
navy was composed largely of Hoom ships.
Cape Horn, at the foot of South America, is the name-
child of the Dutch port, for the fix-st to discover the passage
round that headland and to give it its style was Willem

THE HARBOUR TOWER, HOORN

JOHN HARING 215
Schouten, a Hoorn sailor. It was another Hoorn sailor,
Abel Tasman, who discovered Van Diemen's Land (now
called after him) and also New Zealand ; and a third, Jan
Pieters Coen (whose statue may be seen at Hoorn) who
founded the Dutch dominions in the East Indies, and
thus changed the whole character of his own country,
leading to that orientalising to which I have so often
referred. A more picturesque hero was John Haring of Hoorn,
who performed a great feat in 1572, when De Sonoy, the
Prince of Orange's general, was fighting De Bossu, the
Spanish Admiral, off the Y, just at the beginning of the
siege of Haarlem. An unexpected force of Spaniards from
Amsterdam overwhelmed the few men whom De Sonoy
had mustered for the defence of the Diemei-dyk. I quote
Motley's account : " Sonoy, who was on his way to their
rescue, was frustrated in his design by the unexpected faint
heartedness of the volunteers whom he had enlisted at Edam.
Braving a thousand perils, he advanced, almost unattended,
in his little vessel, but only to witness the overthrow and
expulsion of his band. It was too late for him singly to
attempt to rally the retreating troops. They had fought
well, but had been forced to yield before superior numbers,
one individual of the little army having performed prodigies
of valour. John Haxing, of Hoorn, had planted himself
entirely alone upon the dyke, where it was so narrow
between the Y on the one side and Diemer Lake on
the other, that two men could hardly stand abreast. Here,
armed with swoi'd and shield, he had actually opposed
and held in check one thousand of the enemy, during
a period long enough to enable his own men, if they
had been willing, to rally, and effectively to repel the
attack. It was too late, the battle was too far lost to

216 A SEA FIGHT
be restored ; but still the brave soldier held the post,
till, by his devotion, he had enabled all those of his com
patriots who still remained in the entrenchments to make
good their retreat. He then plunged into the sea, and,
untouched by spear or bullet, effected his escape. Had
ne been a Greek or a Roman, a Horatius or a Chabras,
his name would have been famous in history — his statue
erected in the market-place ; for the bold Dutchman on his
dyke had manifested as much valour in a sacred cause as the
most classic heroes of antiquity."
Then came the siege of Haarlem, and then the siege
of Alkmaar. Hoox-n's turn followed, but Hoorn was
gloriously equal to it in the hands of Admiral Dirckzoon,
whose sword is in the Alkmaar museum, and whose tomb
is at Delft. Motley shall tell the story : " On the 11th
October, however, the whole patriot fleet, favored by a
strong easterly breeze, bore down upon the Spanish armada,
which, numbering now thirty sail of all denominations,
was lying off and on in the neighbourhood of Hoorn and
Enkhuyzen. After a short and general engagement,
nearly all the Spanish fleet retired with precipitation,
closely pursued by most of the patriot Dutch vessels.
Five of the King's ships were eventually taken, the rest
effected their escape. Only the Admiral remained, who
scorned to yield, although his forces had thus basely
deserted him. His ship, the ' Inquisition,' for such was hex-
insolent appellation, was far the largest and best manned of
both the fleets. Most of the enemy had gone in pursuit of
the fugitives, but four vessels of inferior size had attacked the
'Inquisition ' at the commencement of the action. Of these,
one had soon been silenced, while the other three had
grappled themselves inextricably to her sides and prow.
The four drifted togethex-, before wind and tide, a severe

JOHN HARING AGAIN 217
and savage action going on incessantly, during which the
navigation of the ships was entirely abandoned. No
scientific gunnery, no military or naval jtactics were dis
played or requix-ed in such a conflict. It was a life-and-
death combat, such as always occurred when Spaniard
and Netherlander met, whether on land or water. Bossu
and his men, armed in bullet-proof coats of mail, stood
with shield and sword on the deck of the ' Inquisition,' ready
to repel all attempts to board. The Hollander, as usual,
attacked with pitch hoops, boiling oil, and molten lead.
Repeatedly they effected their entrance to the Admiral's
ship, and as often they were repulsed and slain in heaps, or
hurled into the sea.
" The battle began at three in the afternoon, and con
tinued without intermission through the whole night.
The vessels, drifting together, struck on the shoal called
the Nek, near Wydeness. In the heat of the action the
occunence was hardly heeded. In the morning twilight,
John Haring, of Hoorn, the hero who had kept|one thousand
soldiers at bay upon the Diemer dyke, clambered on board
the ' Inquisition,' and hauled her colors down. The gallant
but premature achievement cost him his life. He was shot
through the body and died on the deck of the ship, which
was not quite ready to strike her flag. In the course of
the forenoon, however, it became obvious to Bossu that
further resistance was idle. The ships were aground near
a hostile coast, his own fleet was hopelessly dispersed, three-
quarters of his crew were dead or disabled, while the
vessels with which he was engaged were constantly re
cruited by boats from the shore, which brought fresh men
and ammunition, and removed their killed and wounded.
At eleven o'clock Admiral Bossu surrendered, and with
three hundred prisoners was carried into Holland. Bossu

218 DE RUYTER'S NEGROES
was himself imprisoned at Hoorn, in which city he was
received, on his arrival, with great demonstrations of
popular hatred."
De Bossu remained in prison for three years. Later
he fought for the States. His goblet is preserved at
Hoorn. His collar is at Monnickendam and his sword
at Enkhuisen.
The room in the Protestant orphanage where De Bossu
was imprisoned is still to be seen ; and you may see also
at the corner of the Grooteoost the houses from which the
good wives and housekeepers watched the progress of the
battle, and on which a bas-relief representation of the
battle was afterwards placed in commemoration.
Two more heroes of Hoorn may be seen in effigy on the
facade of the State College, opposite the Weigh House,
guarding an English shield. The shield is placed there,
among the others, on account of a daring feat performed
by two negro sailors in De Ruyter's fleet in the Thames,
who ravished from an English ship in distress the shield
at her stern and presented it to Hoorn, their adopted
town, where it is now supported by bronze figures of its
captors. Hoorn's streets are long and cheerful, with houses graci
ously bending forwards, many of them dignified by black
paint and yet not made too grave by it. This black paint
blending with the many trees on the canal sides has the
same curious chax-m as at Amstex-dam, although there the
blackness is richer and moi-e absolute. Even the Hoorn
warehouses are things of beauty : one in particular, by the
Harbour Tower, with bright green shutters, is indescribably
gay, almost coquettish. Hoorn also has the most satisfying
little houses I saw in Holland — streets of them. And of all
the costumes of Holland I remember most vividly the dead

DARNLEY AND MARY 219
black dress and lace cap of a woman who suddenly turned
a corner here — as if she had walked straight from a picture
by Elias.
The Harbour Tower is pex-haps Hoorn's finest building,
its charm being intensified rather than diminished by the
hideous banacks close by. St. Jan's Gasthuis has a facade
of beautiful gravity, and the gateway of the home for
Ouden Vrouwen is perfect. The museum in the Tribunals-
hof is the most intimate and human collection of curiosities
which I saw in Holland — not a fossil, not a stuffed bird,
in the building. Among the pictures are the usual groups
of soldiers and burgomasters, and the usual fine deter
mined De Ruyter by Bol. We were shown Hoorn's
treasures by a pleasant girl who allowed no shade of tedium
to cross her smiling coux-teous face, although the display
of these ancient pictux-es and implements, ornaments and
domestic articles must have been her daily work for years.
In the top room of all is a curious piece of carved stone
on which may be read these inscriptions : —
This most illustrious Prince,
Henry Lord Darnley, King of Scotland,
Father to our Soveraigne Lord King James.
He died at the age of 21.
The most excellent Princesse Marie, Queen of Scotland,
Mother of our Soveraigne, Lord King James.
She died 1586, and entombed at West Minster.
It would be interesting to know more of this memoxial.
In another room are two carved doors from a house in
Hoorn that had been disfurnished which give one a very
vivid idea of the old good taste of this people and the little
palaces of grave art in which they lived.
Thursday is Hoorn's market day, and it is important to

220 THE LIGHTHOUSE
be there then if one would see the market carts of Nox-th
Holland in abundance. We had particularly good fortune
since our Thursday was not only market day but the
Kex-mis too. I noticed that the principal attraction of the
fair, for boys, was the stalls (unknown at the Kermis both
at Middelburg and Leyden) on which a variety of flat cake
was chopped with a hatchet. The chopper, who I under
stand is entitled only to what he can sever with one blow,
often fails to get any.
Nieuwediep and The Helder, at the extreme north of Hol
land, are one, and interesting only to those to whom naval
works are interesting. For they are the Portsmouth and
Woolwich of the country. My memories of these twin
towns are not too agreeable, for when I was there in 1897
the voyage from Amsterdam by the North Holland canal
had chilled me through and through, and in 1904 it rained
without ceasing. Nieuwediep is all shipping and sailors,
cadet schools and hospitals. The Helder is a dull town,
with the least attractive architecture I had seen, cowering
beneath a huge dyke but for which, one is assured, it would
lie at the bottom of the North Sea. Under rain it is a
drearier town than any I know ; and ordinarily it is bleak
and windy, saved only by its kites, which are flown from
the dyke and sail over the sea at immense heights. Every
boy has a kite — one more link between Holland and China.
I climbed the lighthouse at The Helder just before the
lamp was lit. It was an impressive ceremony. The
captain and his men stood all ready, the captain watching
the sun as it sunk on the horizon. At the instant it dis
appeared he gave the word, and at one stride came the
light. I chanced at the moment to be standing between
the lantern and the sea, and I was asked to move with an
earnestness of entreaty in which the safety of a whole navy

MARKET PLACE WEIGH-HOUSE HOORN

POET AND BARITONE 221
seemed to be involved. The light may be seen forty-eight
miles away. It is fine to think of all the eyes within that
extent of sea, invisible to us, caught almost simultaneously
by this point of flame.
I did not stay at Nieuwediep but at The Helder. Thirty
years ago, however, one could have done nothing so in
artistic, for then, according to M. Havard, the Hotel Ten
Burg at Nieuwediep had for its landlord a poet, and for
its head waiter a baritone, and to stay elsewhere would
have been a crime. Here is M. Havard's description of
these virtuosi : " No one ever sees the landlord the first day
he arrives at the hotel. M. B. R. de Breuk is not acces
sible to ox-dinary mortals. He lives up among the clouds,
and when he condescends to come down to earth he shuts
himself up in his own room, where he indulges in pleasant
intercourse with the Muses.
" I have no objection to confessing that, although I am
a brother in the art, and have stayed several times at his
hotel, I have never once been allowed to catch a glimpse
of his features. The head- waiter, happily, is just the
contrary. It is he who manages the hotel, receives travel
lers, and arranges for their well-being. He is a handsome
fellow, with a fresh complexion, heavy moustache, and one
lock of hair artificially arranged on his forehead. He is
perfectly conscious of his own good looks, and wears rings
on both his hands. Nature has endowed him with a
sonorous baritone voice, the notes of which, whether sharp
or melodious, he is careful in expressing, because he is
charmed with his art, and has an idea that it is fearfully
egotistical to conceal such treasures. One note especially
he never fails to utter distinctly, and that is the last — the
note of payment.
" Sometimes he allows himself to become so absorbed in

HOTEL PORTERS
his art that he forgets the presence in the hotel of tired
travellers, and disturbs their slumbers by loud roulades
and cadences ; or perhaps he is asked to fetch a bottle of
beer, he stops on the way to the cellar to perfect the har
mony of a scale, and does not return till the patience
of the customer is exhausted. But who would have the
heart to complain of such small grievances when the love
of song is stronger than any other ? "
I had no such fortune in Holland. No hotel proprietor
rhymed for me, no waiter sang. My chief friends were
rather the hotel porters, of whom I recall in particular
two — the paternal colossus at the Amstel in Amsterdam,
who mig-ht have sat for the Creator to an old master —
urbane, efficient, a storehouse of good counsel ; and the
plump and wide cynic into whose capable and kindly hands
one falls at the Oude Doelen at The Hague, that shrewd
and humorous reader of men and Americans. I see yet his
expression of pity, not wholly (yet perhaps sufficiently)
softened to polite interest, when consulted as to the best
way in which to visit Alkmaar to see the cheese market.
That any one staying at The Hague — and more, at the
Oude Doelen — should wish to see traffic in cheese at a
provincial town still strikes his wise head as tragic, although
it happens every week. I honour him for it and for the
exquisite tact with which he retains his opinion and allows
you to have yours.
A poet landlord and an operatic head waiter, what are
they when all is said beside a friendly hotel porter ? He
is the Deus ex machina indeed. The praises of the hotel
porter have yet to be sung. 0 Switzerland ! the poet might
begin (not, probably, a landlord poet) O Switzerland — I
give but a bald paraphx-ase of the spixited original — O
Switzerland, thou land of peaks and cow bells, of wild

RADBOD'S DOUBTS 223
strawbenies and nonconformist conventions, of grasshoppers
and climbing dons, thou hast strange limitations ! Thou
canst produce no painter, thou possessest no navy ; but
thou makest the finest hotel porters in the world. Erect,
fair-haired, blue-eyed, tactful and informing, they are the
true friends of the homeless! — And so on for many
strophes. To Texel I did not cross, although it is hard for any one
who has read The Riddle of the Sands to refrain. Had we
been there in the nesting season I might have wandered in
search of the sea birds' and the plovers' eggs, just for old
sake's sake, as I have in the island of Coll, but we were
too late, and The Helder had depressed us. It was off the
Island of Texel on 31st July, 1653, that Admiral Tromp
was killed during his engagement with the English under
Monk. Medemblik, situated on the point of a spur of land
between The Helder and Enkhuisen, was once the residence
of Radbod and the Kings of Frisia. It is now nothing.
One good story at any rate may be recalled there. When
Radbod, King of the Frisians, was driven out of Western
Frisia in 689 by Pepin of Heristal, Duke and Prince of the
Franks (father of Charles Mai-tel and great grandfather of
Charlemagne, who completed the conquest of Frisia), the
defeated king was considered a convert to Christianity, and
the preparations for his baptism were made on a grand
scale. Never a whole-hearted convert, Radbod, even as one
foot was in the water, had a visitation of doubt. Where,
he made bold to ask, were the noble kings his ancestors,
who had not, like himself, been offered this inestimable
privilege of baptism — in heaven or in hell ? The officiating
Bishop replied that they were doubtless in hell. " Then,"
said Radbod, withdrawing his foot, " I think it would be

224 PAUL POTTER
better did I join them there, rather than go alone to
Paradise." Enkhuisen, where one embarks for Friesland, is a Dead
City of the Zuyder Zee, with more signs of dissolution
than most of them. Once she had a population of sixty
thousand ; that number must now be divided by ten.
"Above all things," says M. Havard, the discoverer of
Dead Cities, "avoid a promenade in this deserted town
with an inhabitant familiar with its history, otherwise you
will constantly hear the refrain ; ' Here was formerly the
richest quarter of commerce ; there, where the houses are
falling into total ruin, was the quarter of our aristocracy.'
But more painful still, when we have arrived at what ap
pears the very end of the town, the very last house, we see
at a distance a gate of the city. A hundred years ago
the houses joined this gate. It took us a walk of twenty
minutes across the meadows to arrive at this deserted spot."
I did not explore the town, and therefore I cannot speak
with any authority of its possessions ; but I saw enough
to realise what a past it must have had.
At Enkhuisen was born Paul Potter, who painted the
famous pictux-e of the bull in the Mauritshuis at The Hague.
The year 1625 saw his birth ; and it was only twenty-nine
years later that he died. While admiring Potter's technical
powers, I can imagine few nervous trials more exacting
than having to live with his bull intimately in one's room.
This only serves to show how tempex-amental a matter is
art criticism, for on each occasion that I have been to the
Mauritshuis the bull has had a ring of mute or throbbing
worshippers, while Vermeer's " View of Delft " was without
a devotee. I have seen, however, little scenes of cattle by
Potter which were attractive as well as masterly.
Sir William Temple, in his Observations upon the

A PHILOSOPHER 225
United Provinces gives a very human page to this old
town : " Among the many and various hospitals, that are
in every man's curiosity and talk that travels their country,
I was affected with none more than that of the aged seamen
at Enchuysen, which is contrived, finished, and ordered, as
if it were done with a kind intention of some well-natured
man, that those, who had passed their whole lives in the
hardships and incommodities of the sea, should find a retreat
stored with all the eases and conveniences that old age is
capable of feeling and enj oying. And here I met with the
only rich man that ever I saw in my life : for one of these
old seamen entertaining me a good while with the plain
stories of his fifty years' voyages and adventures, while I was
viewing their hospital, and the church adjoining, I gave
him, at parting, a piece of their coin about the value of a
crown : he took it smiling, and offered it me again ; but,
when I refused it, he asked me, What he should do with
money ? for all, that ever they wanted, was provided for
them at their house. I left him to overcome his modesty
as he could ; but a servant, coming after me, saw him give
it to a little girl that opened the church door, as she passed
by him : which made me reflect upon the fantastic calcula
tion of riches and poverty that is cunent in the world, by
which a man, that wants a million, is a Prince ; he, that
wants but a groat, is a beggar ; and this a poor man, that
wanted nothing at all."
Hoorn's Harbour Tower, as I have said, has a charm
beyond description ; but Enkhuisen's -*— known as the
Dromedary — is unwieldly and plain. It has, however,
this advantage over Hoorn's, its bells are very beauti
ful. One sees the Dromedary for some miles on the
voyage to Stavoren and Friesland.

CHAPTER XV
FRIESLAND: STAVOREN TO LEEUWARDEN
Enkhuisen to Stavoren — Draining the Zuyder Zee — The widow and
the sandbank — Frisian births and courtships — Hindeloopen — Quaint
rooms and houses — A pious pun — Biers for all trades — Sneek — Barge
life — Two giants — Bolsward — The cow — A digression on the weed.
THE traveller from Amsterdam enters Free Frisia at
Stavoren, once the home of kings and now a mere
haven. A little steamer carries the passengers from Enk
huisen, while the cattle trucks and vans of merchandise
cross the Zuyder Zee in a huge railway raft. The steamer
takes an hour or a little longer — time enough to have lunch
on deck if it is fine, and watch Enkhuisen fading into
nothingness and Stavoren rising from the sea.
Before the thirteenth century the Zuyder Zee consisted
only of Lake Flevo, south of Stavoren and Enkhuisen,
so that our passage then would have been made on land.
But in 1282 came a great tempest which di-ove the German
ocean over the north-west shores of Holland, insulating Texel
and pouxing over the low land between Holland axxd Fries
land. The scheme now in contemplation to drain the Zuy
der Zee proposes a dam from Enkhuisen to Piaam, thus re
claiming some 1,350,000 acres for meadow land. Since what
man has done man can do, there is little doubt but that
the Dutch will cany through this great px-oject.
Concerning Stavoren there is now but one thins to say,
(226) ° ^

THE DROMEDARIS TOWER, ENKHUISEN

THE WIDOW'S CORN 227
and no writer on Holland has had the temerity to avoid
saying it. That thing is the story of the widow and the
sandbank. It seems that at Stavoren in its palmy days
was a wealthy widow shipowner, who once gave instructions
to one of her captains, bound for a foreign port, that he
should bring back the most valuable and precious thing to
be found there, in exchange for the outward cargo. The
widow expected I know not what — ivory, perhaps, or pea
cocks, or chrysoprase — and when the captain brought only
grain, she was so incensed that, though the poor of Stavo
ren implored her to give it them, she bade him forthwith
throw it overboard. This he did, and the corn being cursed
there sprang up on that spot a sandbank which gradually
ruined the hax-bour and the town. The bank is called The
Widow's Corn to this day.
It was near Stavoren that M. Havard engaged in a
pleasant and improving conversation with a lock-keeper
who had fought with France, and from him learned some
curious things about Friesland customs. I quote a little :
" When a wife has given birth to a boy and added a son
to Friesland, all her female friends come to see her and
drink in her room the brandewyn, which is handed round
in a special cup or goblet. Each woman brings with her a
large tart, all of which are laid out in the room — sometimes
they number as many as thirty. The more there are and
the finer the cakes the better, because that proves the number
of friends. A few days later the new-born Frieslander is
taken to church, all the girls from twelve years old accom
panying the child and carrying it each in turn. As soon
as they reach the church the child is handed to the father,
who presents it for baptism. Not a girl in the place would
renounce her right to take part in the little procession, for
it is a subject of boasting when she marries to be able to

228 THE FIRE OF LOVE
say, 'I have accompanied this and that child to its bap
tism '. Besides, it is supposed to ensure happiness, and that
she in her turn will have a goodly number of little ones.
"'Well and how about betrothals ? ' ' Ah ! ha! that's
another thing. The girl chooses the lad. You know the
old proverb, ' There are only two things a girl chooses her
self — her potatoes and her lover'. You can well imagine
how such things begin. They see each other at the kermis,
or in the street, or fields. Then one fine day the lad feels
his heart beating louder than usual. In the evening he puts
on his best coat, and goes up to the house where the girl lives.
" The father and mother give him a welcome, which the
girls smile at, and nudge each other. No one refers to
the reason for his visit, though of course it is well known
why he is there. At last, when bedtime comes, the children
retire — even the father and mother go to their room — and
the girl is left alone at the fii-eside with the young man.
" They speak of this and that, and everything, but not a
word of love is uttered. If the girl lets the fire go down,
it is a sign she does not care for the lad, and won't have
him for a husband. If, on the contrary, she heaps fuel on
the fire, he knows that she loves him and means to accept
him for her affianced husband. In the fix-st case, all the
poor lad has to do is to open the door and retire, and
never put his foot in the house again. But, in the other,
he knows it is all right, and from that day forward he is
treated as if he belonged to the family.'
" ' And how long does the engagement last ? '
" ' Oh, about as long as everywhere else — two, three
years, more or less, and that is the happiest time of their
lives. The lad takes his girl about everywhere ; they go
to the kermis, skate, and amuse themselves, and no one
troubles or inquires about them. Even the girl's parents

COWS 229
allow her to go about with her lover without asking any
questions.' "
A Dutch provex-b says, "Take a Brabant sheep, a
Guelderland ox, a Flemish capon and a Frisian cow".
The taking of the Frisian cow cex-tainly presents few diffi
culties, for the surface of Friesland is speckled thickly with
that gentle animal — ample in size and black and white in
hue. The only creatures that one sees from the carriage
windows on the railway journey are cows in the fields and
plovers above them. Now and then a man in his blue
linen coat, now and then a hex-on ; but cows always and
plovers always. Never a bullock. The meadows of
Holland are a female republic. Perkin Middlewick (in
Our Boys) had made so much money out of pork that
whenever he met a pig he was tempted to raise his hat ;
the Dutch, especially of North Holland and Friesland,
should do equal homage to their friend the cow. Edam
acknowledges the obligation in her municipal escutcheon.
Stavoren may be dull and unalluring, but not so Hinde-
loopen, the third station on the x-ailway to Leeuwarden,
where we shall stay. At Hindeloopen the journey should be
broken for two or three hours. Should, nay must. Hinde
loopen (which means stag hunt) has been called the Museum
of Holland. All that is most picturesque in Dutch furni
ture and costume comes from this little town — or professes
to do so, for the manufacture of spurious Hindeloopen
cradles and stoofjes, chairs and cupboards, is probably a
recognised industry.
In the museum at Leeuwarden are two rooms arranged
and furnished exactly in the genuine Hindeloopen manner,
and they are exceedingly charming and gay. The smaller
of the two has the ordinary blue and white Dutch tiles,
with scriptural or other subjects, around the walls to the

230 HINDELOOPEN
height of six feet ; above them are pure white tiles, to the
ceiling, with an occasional delicate blue pattern. The
floor is of red and brown tiles. All the furniture is painted
very gaily upon a cream or white background — with a
gaiety that has a touch of the Orient in it. The bed is
hidden behind painted woodwork in the wall, like a berth,
and is gained by a little flight of movable steps, also
radiant. I never saw so happy a room. On the wall is
a cabinet of curios and silver ornaments.
The larger room is similiar but more costly. On the
wall ai-e fine Delft plates, and seated at the table are wax
Hindeloopeners : a man with a clay pipe and tobacco box,
wearing a long flowered waistcoat, a crossed white neck
cloth and black coat and hat — not unlike a Quaker in
festival attire ; and his neat and very picturesque women
folk are around him. In the cradle, enshrined in ornamen
tations, is a Hindeloopen baby. More old silver and
shining brass here and there, and the same resolute cheer
fulness of colouring everywhere. Some of the houses in
which such rooms were found still stand at Hindeloopen.
The Dutch once liked puns, and perhaps still do so.
Again and again in their old inscriptions one finds experi
ments in the punning art. On the church of Hindeloopen,
for example, are these lines : —
Des heeren woord
Met aandacht hoort
Komt daartoe met hoopen
Als hinden loopen.
The poet must have had a drop of Salvationist blood in
his veins, for only in General Booth's splendid followers do
we look for such spirited invitations. The verses call upon
worshippers to run together like deer to hear the word of
God.

THE SPINNER
NICOLAS MAES
Fro7n the picture i/i the Ryks Museum

BARGE LIFE 231
Within the great church, among other interesting
things, are a large number of biers. These also are deco
rated according to the pretty Hindeloopen usage, one for
the dead of each trade. Order even in death. The Hin
deloopen baker who has breathed his last must be carried
to the grave on the bakers' bier, or the proprieties will
wince. After Hindeloopen the first town of importance on the
way to Leeuwarden is Sneek ; and Sneek is not important.
But Sneek has a water-gate of quaint symmetiical charm,
with two little spires— the least little bit like the infant
child of the Amsterdam Gate at Haax-lem. In common
with so many Frisian towns Sneek has suffered from flood.
A disastrous inundation overwhelmed her on the evening
of All Saints' Day in 1825, when the dykes were broken
and the water rushed in to the height of five feet. Such
must be great times of triumph for the floating popula
tion, who, like the sailor in the old ballad of the sea, may
well pity the unfortunate and insecure dwellers in houses.
What the number of Friesland's floating population is I
do not know ; but it must be very large. Many barges
and tjalcks are both the birthplace and deathplace of their
owners, who know no other home. The cabins are not
less intimately cared for and decorated than the sitting-
rooms of Volendam and Marken.
We saw at Edam certain odd characters formed in
Nature's wayward moods. Sneek also possessed a giant
named Lange Jacob, who was eight feet tall and the
husband of Korte Jannetje (Little Jenny), who was just
half that height. People came from great distances to
see this couple. And at Sneek, in the church of St.
Martin, is buried a giant of more renown and prowess —
Peter van Heemstra, or " Lange Pier " as he was called

232 EAST AND WEST MEET
from his inches, a sea ravener of notable ferocity, whose
two-handed sword is px-eserved at Leeuwarden — although,
as M. Havard says, what useful pui-pose a two-handed sword
can serve to an admiral on a small ship baffles reflection.
Bolsward, Sneek's neighbour, is another amphibious
town, with a very charming stadhuis in red and white,
crowned by an Oriental bell tower completely out of keep
ing with the modem Fxisian who heai-s its voice. This
constant occurrence of Oriental freakishness in the archi
tecture of Dutch towns, in contrast with Dutch occidental
four-square simplicity and plainness of character, is an
effect to which one never quite grows accustomed.
Bolsward's church, which is paved with tomb-stones,
among them some vexy rich ones in high relief — too high
for the comfort of the desecrating foot— has a fine carved
pulpit, some oak stalls of great antiquity and an imposing
bell tower.
It is claimed that the Fxisians were the first Europeans
to smoke pipes. Whether or not that is the case, the
Dutch are now the greatest smokers. Recent statistics
show that whereas the annual consumption of tobacco by
every inhabitant of Gx-eat Britain and h-eland is 134 lb.,
and of Germany 3 lb., that of the Dutch is 7 lb. Putting
the smoking population at 30 per cent, of the total —
allowing thus for women, children and non-smokers — this
means that every Dutch smoker consumes about eight ounces
of tobacco a week, or a little more than an ounce a day.
I excepted women and children, but that is wrong. The
boys smoke too — sometimes pipes, oftenest cigars. At a
music hall at The Hague I watched a contest in generosity
between two friends in a family party as to which should
supply a small boy in sailor suit, evidently the son of the
host, with a cigar. Both won.

PROPHYLACTIC TOBACCO 233
Fell, writing in 1801, says that the Dutch, although
smoke dried, were not then smoking so much as they had
done twenty years before. The Dutchmen, he says, "of
the lower classes of society, and not a few in the higher
walks of life, cany in their pockets the whole apparatus
which is necessary for smoking : — a box of enormous size,
which frequently contains half a pound of tobacco ; a pipe
of clay or ivory, according to the fancy or wealth of the
possessor ; if the latter, instruments to clean it ; a pricker
to l-emove obstructions from the tube of the pipe ; a cover
of brass wire for the bowl, to prevent the ashes or sparks
of the tobacco from flying out ; and sometimes a tinder-
box, or bottle of phosphorus, to procure fix-e, in case none
is at hand.
" The excuse of the Dutch for their lavish attachment
to tobacco, in the most offensive form in which it can be
exhibited, is, that the smoke of this transatlantic weed pre
serves them from many disorders to which they are liable
from the moisture of the atmosphere of their country, and
enables them to bear cold and wet without inconvenience."
Fell supports this curious theory by relating that when,
soaked by a storm, he arrived at an inn at Overschie, the
landlord offered him a pipe of tobacco to prevent any bad
consequences. Fell, however, having none of his friend
Charles Lamb's affection for the friendly traitress, declined
it with asperity.
Ireland has an ingenious theory to account for the
addiction of the Dutch to tobacco. It* is, he says, the
succedaneum to purify the unwholesome exhalations of
the canals. "A Dutchman's taciturnity forbids his com
plaining ; so that all his waking hours are silently employed
in casting forth the filthy puff of the weed, to dispel the
more filthy stench of the canal."

234 CIGARS
Ireland's view was probably an invention ; but this I
know, that the Dutch cigar and the Dutch atmosphere
are singularly well adapted to each other. I brought
home a box of a brand which was agreeable in Holland,
and they were unendurable in the sweet air of Kent.
The cigar is the national medium for consuming tobacco,
cigarettes being practically unknown, and pipes rare in
the streets. My experience of the Dutch cigar is that it
is a very harmless luxury and a very persuasive one. After
a little while it becomes second nature to drop into a
tobacconist's and slip a dozen cigars into one's pocket, at
a cost of a few pence ; and the cigars being there, it is
another case of second nature to smoke them practically
continuously. Of these cigars, which range in price from
one or two cents to a few pence each, there are hundreds
if not thousands of varieties.
The number of tobacconists in Holland must be very
great, and the trade is probably strong enough to resist
effectually the impost on the weed which was recently
threatened by a daring Minister, if ever it is attempted.
The pretty French custom of giving tobacco licences to
the widows of soldiers is not adopted here ; indeed I do
not see that it could be, for the army is only 100,000
strong. In times of stress it might perhaps be advisable
to send the tobacconists out to fight, and keep the soldiers
to mind as many of their shops as could be managed,
shutting up the rest.

CHAPTER XVI
LEEUWARDEN AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
An agricultural centre — A city of prosperity and health — The fair Frisians
— Metal head-dresses — Silver work— The Chancellerie — A paradise
of blue china — Jumping poles — The sea swallow — A Sunday ex
cursion — Dogs for England— The idle busybodies — The stork — A
critical village — The green crop— The dyke — A linguist — Harlingen
— A Dutch picture collector — Franeker — The Planetarium — Dokkum's
bad reputation — A discursive guide-book — Bigamy punished — A hus
band-tamer — Boxum's record— Sjuck's short way — The heroic Bauck
— A load of exorcists — Poor Lysse.
IN an hour or two the train brings us to Leeuwarden,
between flat green meadows unrelieved save for the
frequent isolated homesteads, in which farm house, dairy,
barn, cow stalls and stable are all under one great roof
that starts almost from the ground. On the Essex flats
the homesteads have barns and sheltering trees to keep
them company: here it is one house and a mere hedge
of saplings or none at all. For the rest — cows and plovers,
plovers and cows.
Friesland's capital, Leeuwarden, might be described as an
English market town, such as Horsham in Sussex, scoured
and carried out to its highest power, rather than a small
city. The cattle trade of Friesland has here its head
quarters, and a farmer needing agricultural implements
must fare to Leeuwarden to buy them. The Fx-isian farmer
(235)

236 THE FAIR FRISIANS
certainly does need them, for it is his habit to take thi-ee
cx-ops of short hay off his meadows, rather than one crop
of long hay in the English manner.
Not only cattle but also horses are sold in Leeuwarden
market. The Frisian horse is a noble animal, truly the
friend of man ; and the Frisians are fond of horses and
indulge both in racing and in trotting — or " hardraverij "
as they pleasantly call it. I made a close friend of a Frisian
mare on the steamer from Rotterdam to Dort. At Dort
I had to leave her, for she was bound for Nymwegen. A
most charming creature.
Leeuwarden is large and prospex-ous and healthy. What
one misses in it is any sense of intimate cosiness. One seems
to be nearer the elements, farther from the ingratiating
works of man, than hitherto in any Dutch town. The
strong aii-, the openness of land, the 180 degrees of sky, the
northern sharpness, all are far removed from the solace of
the chimney corner. It is a Spartan people, prefen-ing
hard health to overcoats ; and the streets and houses re
flect this tempex-ament. They are clean and strong and
bare — no huddling or niggling architecture. Everything
also is blight, the effect largely of paint, but there must
be something very antiseptic in this Frisian atmosphere.
The young women of Leeuwarden — the fair Frisians —
are tall and strong and fresh looking ; not exactly beauti
ful but very pleasant. "There go good wives and good
mothers," one says. Their Amazonian air is accentuated
by the casque of gold or silver which fits tightly over their
heads and gleams through its lace covering : perhaps the
most curious head-dress in this country of elaborate head
dresses, and never so curious as when, on Sundays, an
ordinary black bonnet, bristling with feathers and jet, is
mounted on the top of it. That, howevex-, is a refinement

CLARA ALEWIJN
DIRCK SANTVOORT
From the pict7ire in the Ryks Mtissmn

THE CHANCELLERIE 237
px-actised only by the middle-aged and elderly women : the
young women wear either the casque or a hat, never both.
If one climbs the Oldehof and looks down on the city on a
sunny day — as I did — the glint of a metal casque continu
ally catches the eye. These head-dresses are of some value,
and are handed on from mother to daughter for genera
tions. No Dutch woman is ever too poor to lay by a little
j ewellexy ; and many a domestic servant carries, I am told,
twenty pounds worth of goldsmith's work upon her.
Once Leeuwarden was famous for its goldsmiths and
silversmiths, but the intex-est in precious metal work is not
what it was. Many of the little silver ornaments — the
windmills, and houses, and wagons, and boats — which once
decorated Dutch sitting-rooms as a matter of course, and
are now prized by collectors, were made in Leeuwarden.
The city's architectux-al jewel is the Chancellerie, a
very ornate but quite successful building dating from the
sixteenth century : first the x-esidence of the Chancellors,
x-ecently a prison, and now the Record Office of Friesland.
Not until the Middelburg stadhuis shall we see anything
moi-e cheerfully gay and decorative. The little Weigh
House is in its own way vexy charming. But for gravity
one must go to the Oldehof, a sombre tower on the
ramparts of the city. Once the sea washed its very walls.
To the ordinary traveller the most interesting things in
the Leeuwarden museum, which is opposite the Chancel
lerie, are the Hindeloopen rooms which I have described
in the last chapter ; but to the antiquary it offers great
entertainment. Among ancient relics which the spade has
revealed are some very early Frisian tobacco pipes. Among
the pictures, for the most part very poox-, is a dashing
Carolus Duran and a very beautiful little Daubigny.
Affiliated to the museum is one of the best collections

238 THE SEA SWALLOW
of Delft china in Holland — a wonderful banquet of blue.
This alone makes it necessary to visit Leeuwarden.
All about Leeuwarden the boys have jumping poles for
the ditches, and you may see dozens at a time, after school,
leaping backwards and forwards over the streams, like frogs.
Children abound in Friesland : the towns are filled with
boys and girls ; but one sees few babies. In Holland the
very old and the very young are alike invisible.
One of the first things that I noticed at Leeuwarden
was the presence of a new bird. Hitherto I had seen
only the familiar birds that we know at home, except
for a stork here and there and more herons than one
catches sight of in England save in the neighbourhood
of one of our infrequent heronries. But at Leeuwarden
you find, sweeping and plaining over the canals, the beauti
ful tern, otherwise known as the sea swallow, white and
powerful and delicately graceful, and possessed of a double
portion of the melancholy of birds of the sea. Of the
bittern, which is said to boom continually over the Fries
land meres, I caught no glimpse and heard no sound.
From Leeuwarden I rode one Sunday morning by the
steam-tram to St. Jacobie Parochie, a little village in the
extreme north-west, where I proposed to take a walk
upon the great dyke. It was a chilly morning, and I
was glad to be inside the compartment as we rattled along
the road. The only other occupant was a young minister
in a white tie, puffing comfortably at his cigar, which in
the manner of so many Dutchmen he seemed to eat as he
smoked. For a while we were raced — and for a few yards
beaten — by two jolly boys in a barrow drawn by a pair
of gallant dogs who foamed past us ventre a terre with six
inches of flapping tongue.
The introduction into England of dogs as beasts of

OUR THREE NATIONS 239
draught would I suppose never be tolerated. A score of
humanitarian societies would spring into being to prevent
it : possibly with some reason, for one has little faith in
the considerateness of the average English costei-monger or
banow-pusher. And yet the dog-workers of the Nether
lands seem to be cheerful beasts, wearing their yoke very
easily. I have never seen one, either in Holland or
Belgium, obviously distressed or badly treated. Why
the English dog should so often be a complete idler, and
his brother across the sea the useful ally of man, is an
ethnological problem : the reason lying not with the
animals but with the nations. The Flemish and Dutch
people are essentially humble and industrious, without
ambitions beyond their station. The English are a dis
satisfied folk who seldom look upon their present position
as permanent. The English dog is idle because his master,
always hoping for the miracle that shall make him idle
too, does not really set his hand to the day's work and
make others join him ; the Netherlandish dog is busy
because his master does not believe in sloth, and having
no illusions as to his future, knows that only upon a
strenuous i youth and middle age can a comfortable old age
be built. Countries that have not two nations — the idle
and rich and the poor and busy — as we have, are, I think,
greatly to be envied. Life is so much more genuine
there. England indeed has three nations: the workers, the
idle rich who live only for themselves, and the idle rich
or well-to-do who live also for others — in other words
the busybodies. The third nation is the real enemy,
for an altruist who has time on his hands can do enormous
mischief between breakfast and lunch. It is this class
that would at once make it impossible for a strong dog

240 THE STORK AGAIN
to help in drawing a poor man's barrow. The opportunity
would be irresistible to them. The resolutions they would
pass ! The votes of thanks to the lieutenant-colonels in
the chair !
It was on this little journey to St. Jacobie Pax-ochie
that I saw my first stork. Storks' nests there had been
in plenty, but all were empty. But at Wier, close to St.
Jacobie Parochie, was a nest on a pole beside the i-oad,
and on this nest was a stork. The Dutch, I think, have
no more endearing trait than their kindness to this bird.
Once at any rate their solicitude was grotesque, although
serviceable, for Ireland tells of a young stork with a broken
leg for which a wooden leg was substituted. Upon this
jury limb the bird lived happily for thirty years.
The stork alone among Dutch birds is sacred, but he
is not alone in feeling secure. The fowler is no longer a
common object of the country, as he seems to have been
in Albert Cuyp's day, when he returned in the golden
evening laden with game — for Jan Weenix to paint.
St. Jacobie Parochie on a fine Sunday morning is no
place for a sensitive man. The whole of the male popula
tion of the village had assembled by the church — not, I
fancy, with any intention of entering it — and every eye
among them probed me like a corkscx-ew. It is an out of
the wox-ld spot, to which it is possible no foreigner ever
before penetrated, and since their country was a show to
me I had no right to object to serve as a show to them.
But such scrutiny is not comfortable. I hastened to the
sea. One reaches the sea by a path across the fields to an
inner dyke with a high road upon it, and then by another
footpath, or paths, beside green ditches, to the ultimate
dyke which holds Neptune in check. As I walked I was

FROGS AND A LINGUIST 241
continually conscious of heavy splashes just ahead of me,
which for a while I put down to water-x-ats. But chancing
to stand still I was presently aware of the proximity of a
huge green frog, the lax-gest I have ever seen, who sat,
solid as a paper weight, close beside me, with one eye
glittering upon me and the other upon the security of the
watex-, into which he jumped at a movement of my hand.
Walking then mox-e waxily I saw that the banks on either
side were populous with these monsters ; and sometimes it
needed only a flourish of the handkerchief to send a dozen
simultaneously into the ditch. I am glad we have not
such frogs at home. A little frog is an adorable creature,
but a frog half-way to realising his bovine ambition is
a monster.The sea dyke is many feet high. Its lowest visible
stratum is of black stones, beneath the sea-level; then a
stratum of large red bricks ; then turf. The willow
branches are invisible, within. The land hereabout is un
doubtedly some distance below sea-level, but it is impos
sible either here or anywhere in Holland to believe in the
old and venerable story of the dyke plugged by an heroic
thumb to the exclusion of the ocean and the safety of the
nation. As I lay on the bank in the sun, listening to a thousand
larks, with all Friesland on one hand and the pearl grey sea
on the other, a passer-by stopped and asked me a question
which I failed to understand. My reply conveyed my
nationality to him. "Ah," he said, '|Eenglish. Do it
well with you ? " I said that it did excellently well. He
walked on until he met half a dozen other men, some
hundred yards away, when I saw him pointing to me and
telling them of the long conversation he had been enjoying
with me in my own difficult tongue. It was quite clear
16

242 HARLINGEN
from their interest that the others were conscious of the
honour of having a real linguist among them.
Another day I went to Harlingen. I had intended to
reach the town by steam-tram, but the time table was
deceptive and the engine stopped permanently at a station
two or three miles away. Fortunately, however, a curtained
brake was passing, and into this I sprang, joining two
women and a dominie, and together we ambled very de
liberately into the quiet seaport. Harlingen is a double
harbour— inland and maritime. Barges from all parts of
Friesland lie there, transferring their goods a few yards to
the ocean-going ships bound for England and the world,
although Friesland does not now export her produce as once
she did. Thirty years ago much of our butter and beef
and poultry sailed from Harlingen.
The town lies in the savour of the sea. Masts rise above
the houses, ship-chandlers' shops send forth the agreeable
scent of tar and cordage, sailors and stevedores lounge
against posts as only those that follow the sea can do.
I had some beef and bread, in the Dutch midday
manner, in the upper room of an inn overlooking the
harbour, while two shipping-clerks played a dreary game
of billiai-ds. Beyond the dyke lay the empty grey sea,
with Texel or Vlieland a faint dark line on the horizon.
Nothing in the town suggested the twentieth centuxy, or
indeed any century. Time was not.
I wish that Mr. Bos had been living, that I might have
called upon him and seen his pictures, as M. Havard did.
But he is no more, and I found no one to tell me of the
fate of his collection. Possibly it is still to be seen :
certainly other visitors to Harlingen should be more ener
getic than I was, and make sux-e. Here is M. Havard's
account of Mr. Bos and an evening at his house : " Mr. Bos

HARLINGEN

MR. BOS 243
started in life as a farm-boy — then became an assistant in
a shop. Instead of spending his money at the beer-houses
he purchased books. He educated himself, and being pro
vident, steady, industrious, he soon collected sufficient
capital to start in business on his own account, which he
did as a small cheesemonger; but in time his business
prospered, and to such an extent that one day he awoke
to find himself one of the greatest and richest merchants
of Harlingen.
" Many under these circumstances would have considered
rest was not undeserved ; but Mr. Bos thought otherwise.
He became passionately fond of the arts.* Instead of pur
chasing stock he bought pictures, then the books necessary
to understand them, and what with picking up an engraving
here and a painting there he soon became possessed of a most
interesting collection, and of an artistic knowledge sufficient
for all purposes. But to appreciate the virtue (the term
is not too strong) of this aimable man, one should know
the difficulties he had to surmount before gaining his
position. It is no joke when one lives in a town like
Harlingen to act differently from other people. Tongues
are as well hung there as in any small French town.
Instead of encouraging this brave collector, they laughed
at and ridiculed him. His taste for the arts was regarded
as a mania. In fact, he was looked upon as a madman, and
even to this day, notwithstanding his successful career, he is
looked upon as no better than a lunatic. Happily a taste
for art gives one joys that makes the^ remarks of fools
and idiots pass like water off a duck's back.
" When we called on Mr. Bos he was absent ; but as soon
as Madame Bos was made acquainted with our names we
received a most coi-dial reception. She is, however, a most
charming woman, combining both amiability and affability,

244 THE PLANETARIUM
with a venex-able appearance ; and, notwithstanding her im
mense fortune and gold plate, still wears the large Frison cap
of the good old times. She was anxious to do the honours
of the collection in person, and immediately sent for her
son, so that we might receive every information.
" Mr. Bos returned home the same evening, and at once
came on board, and would not leave until we had promised
to spend the evening at his house, which we did in the
Frison fashion — that is to say, that whilst examining the
pictures we were compelled to devour sundry plates of
soeskrahelingen, a kind of pastry eaten with cheese ; also
to empty several bottles of old wine.
" A slight incident that occurred shortly before our de
parture touched me greatly. 'You think, sir,' said Mr.
Bos, ' that because I do not undex-stand French, I have not
read the books you have written on our National Arts.
Pray undeceive yourself, for here is a translation of it.'
The old gentleman then placed before me a complete manu
script translation of the work, which he had had made
specially for himself."
The special lion of Franeker, which I visited on my way
back from Harlingen, is the Planetarium of Eisa Eisinga, a
mathematician and wool-comber, who constructed it alone
in his back parlour between 1774 and 1781. Interest
in planetaria is, I should say, an acquired taste ; but
there can be no doubt as to the industry and ingenuity of
this inventor. The wonders of the celestial law are unfolded
by a very tired young woman, whose attitude to the solar
system is probably similar to that of Miss Jellyby to Africa.
After her lecture one stumbles upstairs to see the clock
work which controls the spheres, and is then free once more.
Franeker is proud also of her tombstones in the great
church, but it is, I fancy, Eisa Eisinga whom she most ad-

DOKKUM'S PUNISHMENT 245
mires. She was once the seat of an honourable University,
which Napoleon suppressed in 1811. Her learning gone,
she remains a very pleasant and clean little town. By
some happy arrangement all the painting seems to be done
at once — so different from London, where a fresh facade
only serves to emphasise a dingy one. But although the
quality of the paint can be commended, the painters of
Franeker are undoubtedly allowed too much liberty. They
should not have been permitted to spread their colour on
the statues of the stadhuis.
The principal street has an avenue of elm trees down its
midst, in the place where a canal would be expected ; but
canals traverse the town too. Upon the deck of a peat
barge I watched a small grave child taking steady and
unsmiling exercise on a rocking horse.
I did not go to Dokkum, which lies at the extreme north
of Friesland. Mr. Doughty, the author of an interesting
book of Dutch travel, called Friesland Meres — he was the
first that ever burst into these silent canals in a Norfolk
wherry — gives Dokkum a very bad character, and so do
other travellers. It seems indeed always to have been an
unruly and inhospitable town. As long ago as 853 it was
resisting the entry of strangers. The strangers were Saint
Boniface and his companion, whom Dokkum straightway
massacred. King Pepin was furious and sent an army on
a punitive mission ; while Heaven supplemented Pepin's
efforts by permanently stigmatising the people of the
town, all the men thenceforward being marked by a white
tuft of hair and all the women by a bald patch.
At Leeuwarden is a patriotic society know as the " Vere-
enigung tot bevordering van vreemdelingenverkeer," whose
ambition, as their title suggests, is to draw strangers to the
town ; and as part of their campaign they have issued a

246 FRISIAN POETRY
little guide to Leeuwarden and its environs, in English. It
is an excellent book. The preface begins thus : —
The travelling-season, which causes thousands of people to leave their
homes and hearths, has come round again. Throughout Europe silk strings
are being prepared to catch human birds of passage with. Is Frisia — Old
Frisia — to lag behind ? Impossible I Natural condition as well as popula
tion and history give to our province a right to claim a little attention and
to be a hostess. We beg to refer to the words of a Frenchman, M. Malte-
Brun (quoted by one of the best Frisian authors), the English translation
of which words runs as follows : " Eighteen centuries saw the river Rhine
change its course, and the Ocean swallow its shores, but the Frisian nation
has remained unchanged, and from an historical point of view deserves
being taken an interest in by the descendants of the Franks as well as of
the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians."
It is not often to a Frenchman that the author of this
guide has to go for his purple patches. He is capable of
producing them himself, and there seems also always to be
a Frisian poet who has said the right thing. Thus (of
Leeuwarden) : "It is sunounded by splendid fertile meadows,
to all of which, though especially to those lying near the
roads to Marssum and Stiens, may be applied the words of
the Frisian poet Dr. E. Halbertsma : —
' Sjen nou dat Idn, hwerjy op geane,
Dat ophelle is ut guile si ;
Hwer binne br&sender Idnsdoutven,
Oerspriede mei sok hearlik fi ?
(' Behold the soil you are walking on,
The soil, snatched from the waves ;
Where are more luxurious meadows,
Where do you find such cattle ? ')
The farmer, living in the midst of this fine natural
scenery, is to be envied indeed : if the struggle for life
does not weigh too heavily upon him, his must be a life
happier than that of thousands of other people. Living
and working with his own family and servants attached to

FAMILY SCENE
JAN STEEN'
From the picture in the Ryks Museum

A VIRAGO 247
him, he made the right choice when he chose to breed his
cattle and improve his grounds to the best of his power.
The parlour-windows look out on the fields : the gay sight
they grant has its effect on the mood of those inside. The
peasant sees and feels the beauty of life, and it makes him
thankful, and gives him courage to struggle and to work on,
where necessity requires it."
I gather from the account of Leeuwarden that the
justices of that city once knew a crime when they saw one
— none quicklier. In 1536, for example, they punished
Jan Koekebakken in a twinkling for the dastardly offence
of marrying a married woman. This was his sentence : —
We command that the said Jan Koekebakken, prisoner, be conducted
by the executioner from the Chancery to Brol-bridge, and that he be put
into the pillory there. He shall remain standing there for two hours,
with a spindle under each arm, and with the letter in which he pledged
faith to the said Aucke Sijbrant hanging from his neck. He shall
remain for ever within the town of Leeuwarden, under penalty of death
if he should leave it.
Done and pronounced at Leeuwarden April 2gth, 1536.
But the best pax-t of the guide-book is its rapid notes
on the villages around Leeuwarden, to so many of which
are curious legends attached. At Marssum, close at hand,
was born the English painter of Roman life, Sir Lawrence
Alma-Tadema. Here also was born the ingenious Eisa
Eisinga, who constructed the Franeker planetarium in the
intervals of wool-combing. At Menaldum lived Mx-s. Van
Camstra van Haarsma, a husband-tamer and eccentric, of
whom a poet wrote : —
She breaks pipe and glass and mug,
When he speaks as suits a man ;
And instead of being cross,
He is gentler than a lamb.
When in fury glow her eyes,
He keeps silent . , . isn't he wise ?

248 PROVERBS AND CHARACTERS
When not hen-pecking her husband this powerful lady was
rearing wild animals or corresponding with the Princess
Cax-oline. At Boxum, was fought, on 17th January, 1586, hard
by the church, the battle of Boxum, between the Span
iards and the Frisians. The Frisians were defeated, and
many of them massacred in the church ; but their effort
was very brave, and " He also has been to Boxum " is
to this day a phrase applied to lads of courage. Another
saying, given to loud speakers, is " He has the voice of the
Vicar of Boxum," whose tones in the pulpit were so dulcet
as to frighten the birds from the roof, and, I hope, sinners
to repentance.
At Jelsum is buried Balthazar Becker, the antagonist of
superstition and author of The Enchanted World. Near
by was Martena Castle, where Alderman Sjuck van Bur-
mania once kept a crowd of assailants at bay by standing
over a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted brand while
he offered them the choice of the explosion or a feast.
Hence the excellent proverb, " You must either fight or
drink, said Sjuck ".
At Berlikum was the castle of Bauck Poppema, a Frisian
lady cast in an iron mould, who during her husband's
absence in 1496 defended the stronghold against assailants
from Groningen. Less successful than Sjuck, after re
pelling them thrice she was overpowered and thx-own into
prison. While there she produced twins, thus proving her
self a woman no less than a warrior. " When the people
of Holland glorify Kenau," says the proverb, " the Frisians
praise their Bauck." Kenau we have met : the heroic
widow of Haarlem who during the siege led a band of three
hundred women and l'epelled the enemy on the walls again
and again.

JUFFER LYSSE 249
Near Roodkerk is a lake called the Boompoel, into which
a coach and four containing six inside passengers, all of
them professional exorcists, disappeared and was never seen
again. The exorcists had come to relieve the village of the
ghost of a miser, and we must presume had failed to quiet
him. Near Bergum, at Buitenrust farm, is the scene of
another tragedy by drowning, for there died Juffer Lysse.
This maiden, disregarding too long her father's dying
injunction to build a chapel, was naturally overturned in
her carriage and drowned. Ever since has the wood been
haunted, while the bind-weed, a haunting flower, is in
these parts known as the Juffer Lysse blom.
From these scraps of old lore — all taken from the little
Leeuwarden guide — it will be seen that Friesland is rich
in romantic traditions and well worthy the attention of
any maker of sagas.

CHAPTER XVII
GRONINGEN TO ZUTPHEN
Fresh tea— Dutch meals — The Doelens — Groningen — Roman Catholic
priests — The boys' penance — Luther and Erasmus — The peat
country — Folk lore — Terburg — Thomas a Kempis — Zwolle — The
wild girl — Kampen — A hall of justice indeed — An ideal holiday-
place — The wiseacres — Urk— Sir Philip Sidney — Zutphen — The
scripture class — The wax works — Dutch public morality.
I REMEMBER the Doelen at Groningen for several
reasons, all of them thoroughly material. (Holland
is, however, a material country.) First I would put the
very sensible custom of providing every guest who has
ordered tea for breakfast with a little tea caddy. At the
foot of the table is a boiling urn from which one fills one's
teapot, and is thus assured of tea that is fresh. So simple
and reasonable a habit ought to be the rule rather than
the exception : but never have I found it elsewhere. This
sux-ely is civilisation, I said.
The Doelen was also the only inn in Holland whex-e an
inclusive bottle of claret was placed before me on the table ;
and it was the only inn where I had the opportunity of eat
ing ptarmigan with stewed apricots — a very happy alliance.
Good however as was the Gx-oningen dinner, it was a
Sunday dinner at the Leeuwarden Doelen which remains
in my memory. This also is a friendly unspoiled northern
inn, where the bill of fare is arranged with a nice thought
(250)

THE DOELENS 251
to the requirements of the Free Frisian. I kept no note
of the meal, but I recollect the occurrence at one stage of
plovers' eggs (which the Dutch eat hot, dropping them into
cold water for an instant to ensure the easy removal of the
shell), and at another, some time later, of duckling with
prunes. The popularity of "the name Doelen as a Dutch sign
might have a word of explanation. Doelen means target,
or shooting saloon ; and shooting at the mark was a very
common and useful recreation with the Dutch in the six
teenth century. At first the shooting clubs met only to
shoots — as in the case of the arquebusiers in Rembrandt's
"Night Watch," who are painted leaving their Doelen; later
they became more social and the accessories of sociability
were added ; and after a while the accessories of sociability
crowded out the shooting altogether, and nothing but an
inn with the name Doelen remained of what began as a
rifle gallery.
At Groningen, which is a large prosperous town, and
the birthplace both of Joseph Israels and H. W. Mesdag,
cheese and dairy produce are left behind. We are now in
the grain country. Groningen is larger than Leeuwarden
— it has nearly seventy thousand inhabitants — and its
evening light seemed to me even mox-e beautifully liquid.
I sat for a long time in a cafe overlooking the great
square, feeding a very greedy and impertinent tenier, and
alternately watching an endless game of billiards and the
changing hue of the sky as day turned to night and the
clean white stars came out. In Holland one can sit very
long in cafes : I had dined and left a table of forty Dutch
men just settling down to their wine, at six o'clock, with
the whole evening before me.
Groningen takes very good care of itself. It has trams,

252 LITTLE ROMANS
excellent shops and buildings, a crowded inland harbour,
and a spreading park where once were its fortifications. The
mounds in this park were the first hills I had seen since
Laren. The church in the market square is immense, with
a high tower of bells that kept me awake, but had none
of the soothing charm of Long John at Middelburg, whose
px-aises it will soon be my privilege to sound. The only
rich thing in the whitewashed vastnesses of the church is
the organ, built more than four hundred years ago by
Rudolph Agricola of this province. I did not hear it.
At Groningen Roman Catholic priests become noticeable
— so different in their stylish coats, square hats and canes,
from the blue-chinned kindly slovens that one meets in the
Latin countries. (In the train near Nymwegen, however,
where the priests wear beavers, I travelled with a humorous
old voluptuary who took snuff at every station and was as
threadbare as one likes a priest to be.) Looking into the
new Roman Catholic church at Groningen I found a little
company of restless boys, all eyes, from whom at regular
intervals were detached a reluctant and perfunctory couple
to do the Stations of the Cross. I came as something like
a godsend to those that remained, who had no one to super
vise them ; and feeling it as a mission I stayed resolutely in
the church long after I was tired of it, wxiting a little and
examining the pictures by Hendriex, a modex-n painter too
much after the manner of the Christmas supplement —
studied the while by this band of scrutinising penitents. I
hope I was as interesting and beguiling as I tried to be.
And all the time, exactly opposite the Roman Catholic
church, was reposing in the library of the University no
less a treasure than the New Testament of Erasmus, with
marginal notes by Martin Luther. Thei-e it lay, that
afternoon, within call, while the weary boys pattex-ed from

PEAT 253
one Station of the Cross to another, little recking the part
played by their country in sapping the power of the faith
they themselves were fostering, and knowing nothing of
the ironical contiguity of Luther's comments.
By leaving Groningen very early in the morning I
gained another proof of the impossibility of rising before
the Dutch. In England one can easily be the first down
in any hotel — -save for a sleepy boots or waiter. Not so in
Holland. It was so early that I am able to say nothing of
the country between Groningen and Meppel, the capital of
the peat trade, save that it was peaty : heather and fir
trees, shallow lakes and men cutting peat, as far as eye
could reach on either side.
Here in the peat country I might quote a very pretty
Dutch proverb : " There is no fuel more entertaining than
wet wood and frozen peat : the wood sings and the peat
listens". The Dutch have no lack of folk lore, but the
casual visitor has not the opportunity of collecting very
much. When there is too much salt in the dish they say
that the cook is in love. When a three-cornered piece of
peat is obsex-ved in the fire, a visitor is coming. When
bread has large holes in it, the baker is said to have pur
sued his wife through the loaf. When a wedding morning
is rainy, it is because the bride has forgotten to feed the
cat. I tanied awhile at Zwolle on the Yssel (a bx-anch of the
Rhine), because at Zwolle was born in 1617 Gerard Terburg,
one of the greatest of Dutch painters, of whom I have spoken
in the chapter on Amsterdam's pictures. Of his life we
know very little ; but he travelled to Spain (where he was
knighted and where he learned not a little of use in his
art), and also certainly to France, and possibly to England.
At Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans

254 ZWOLLE
Hals' studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few
miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgo
master of the town. He died at Deventer in 1681. Zwolle
has none of his pictures, and does not appear to value his
memory. Nor does Deventer. How Terburg looked as
Bux-gomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself
in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It was not often that
the great Dutch painters rose to civic eminence. Rem
brandt became a bankrupt, Frans Hals was on the rates,
Jan Steen drank all his earnings. Of all Terburg's great
contemporaries Gerard Dou seems to have had most sense
of prosperity and position; but his interests were wholly
in his art.
Terburg is not the only famous name at Zwolle. It was
at the monastery on the Agneteberg, three miles away, that
the author of The Imitation of Christ lived for more than
sixty years and wrote his deathless book.
I roamed through Zwolle's streets for some time. It
is a blight town, with a more European air than many
in Holland, agreeable drives and gardens, where (as at
Groningen) were once fortifications, and a very fine old
gateway called the Saxenpoort, with four towel's and five
spires and very pretty window shutters in white and blue.
The Groote Kerk is of unusual interest. It is five hundred
years old and famous for its very elaborate pulpit — a little
cathedral in itself — and an organ. Zwolle also has an
ancient church which retains its original religion — the
church of Notre Dame, with a crucifix curiously protected
by iron bars. I looked into the stadhuis to see a Gothic
council room ; and smoked meditatively among the stalls
of a little flower market, wondering why some of the
costumes of Holland are so charming and others so un-
pleasing. A few dear old women in lace caps were present,

KAMPEN 255
but there were also younger women who had made their
pretty heads ugly with their decorations.
At Zwolle M. Havard was disappointed to find no wax
figure of the famous wild girl found in the Cranenburg
Forest in 1718. She roamed its recesses almost naked for
some time, eluding all capture, but was at last taken with
nets and conveyed to Zwolle. As she could not be under
stood, an account of her was circulated widely, and at
length a woman in Antwerp who had lost a daughter in
1702 heard of her, and on i-eaching Zwolle immediately
x-ecognised her as her child. The magistrates, accepting
the story, handed the girl to her affectionate parent, who
at once set about exhibiting her throughout the country
at a great profit. The story illustrates either the credulity
of magistrates or the practical character of some varieties
of maternal love.
Kampen, nearer the mouth of the Yssel, close to Zwolle,
is exceedingly well worth visiting. The two towns are very
different : Zwolle is patrician, Kampen plebeian ; Zwolle
suggests wealth and light-heartedness ; at Kampen there
is a large fishing population and no one seems to be
wealthy. Indeed, being without municipal rates, it is, I
am told, a refuge of the needy. Any old town that is on
a river, and that river a mouth of the Rhine, is good
enough for me; but when it is also a treasure house of
mediaeval architecture one's cup is full. And Kampen has
many treasures : beautiful fourteenth-century gateways,
narrow quaint streets, a cheerful isolated campanile, a fine
church, and the greater portion of an odd but wholly de
lightful stadhuis in x-ed brick and white stone, with ... gay
little crooked bell-tower and statues of great men and
great qualities on its facade.
For one possession alone, among many, the stadhuis

256 OLD OAK
must be visited — its halls of justice, veritable pai-adises of
old oak, with a very wonderful fireplace. The halls are
really one, divided by a screen ; in one half, the council
room, sat the judges, in the other the advocates, and, I
suppose, the public. The advocates addressed the screen,
on the other side of which sat Fate, in the persons of the
municipal fathers, enthroned in oak seats of unsurpassed
gravity and dignity, amid all the sombre insignia of their
office. The chimney-piece is an imposing monument of ab
stract Justice — no more elaborate one can exist. Solomon
is there, directing the distribution of the baby ; Faith and
Truth, Law, Religion and Charity are there also. Never
can a tribunal have had a more appropriate setting than
at Kampen. The Rennes judiciaries should have sat there,
to lend further ironical point to their decision.
The stadhuis has other possessions interesting to anti
quaries : valuable documents, gold and silver work, the
metal and leather squix-ts through which boiling oil was
projected at the enemies of the town ; while an iron cage
for criminals, similar, I imagine, to that in which Jan of
Leyden was exhibited, hangs outside.
Travellers visit Kampen pre-eminently to see the stadhuis
chimney-piece and oak, but the whole town is a museum.
I wish now that I had ananged to be longer there ; but
unaware of Kampen's charms I allowed but a short time
both for Zwolle and itself. On my next visit to Holland
Kampen shall be my headquarters for some days. Amid the
restfulness of mediaevalism, the friendliness of the fishing
folk and the breezes of the Zuyder Zee, one should do well.
A boat from Amsterdam to Kampen sails every morning.
Despite its Judgment Hall and its other merits Kampen
is the Dutch Gotham. Any foolishly naive speech or
action is attributed to Kampen's wise men. In one story

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 257
the fathers of the town place the municipal sundial under
cover to protect it from the rays of the sun. In another
they meet together to deliberate on the failure of the
water pipes and fire engines during a fire, and pass a rule
that " on the evening preceding a fire " all hydrants and
engines must be overhauled. M. Havard gives also the
following instance of Kampen sagacity. A public func
tionary was explaining the financial state of the town.
He asserted that one of the principal profits arose from
the tolls exacted on the entrance of goods into the town.
" Each gate," said the ingenious advocate, " has brought
in ten million florins this year ; that is to say, with seven
gates we have gained seventy million florins. This is a
most important fact. I therefore propose that the council
double the number of gates, and in this way we shall in
future considex-ably augment our funds." The Irishman
who, when asked to buy a stove that would save half his
fuel, replied that he would have two and save it all, was
of the same school of logic.
From Kampen the island of Urk may be visited : but I
have not been there. In 1787, I have read somewhere,
the inhabitants of Urk decided to form a club in which
to practise military exercises and the use of arms. When
the club was formed it had but one member. Hence a
Dutch saying — "It is the Urk club".
Nor did I stay at Deventer, but hastened on to Zutphen
with my thoughts straying all the time to the grey walls
of Penshurst castle in Kent and its long galleries filled
with memories of Sir Philip Sidney — -the gentle knight
who was a boy there, and who died at Arnheim of a wound
which he received in the siege of Zutphen three and a
quarter centuries ago.
At Naarden we have seen how terrible was the destroy-
*7

258 MORE SPANISH CRUELTY
ing power of the Spaniards. It was at Zutphen that they
had first given rein to their lust for blood. When Zutphen
was taken by Don Frederic in 1572, at the beginning of
the war, Motley tells us that " Alva sent orders to his son to
leave not a single man alive in the city, and to burn every
house to the ground. The Duke's command was almost
literally obeyed. Don Frederic entered Zutphen, and
without a moment's warning put the whole garrison to
the sword. The citizens next fell a defenceless prey ;
some being stabbed in the streets, some hanged on the
trees which decorated the city, some stripped stark naked,
and turned out into the fields to freeze to death in the
wintry night. As the work of death became too fatiguing
for the butchex-s, five hundred innocent burghers were tied
two and two, back to back, and drowned like dogs in the
river Yssel. A few stragglers who had contrived to elude
pursuit at first, were afterwards taken from their hiding-
places, and hung upon the gallows by the feet, some of
which victims suffered four days and nights of agony
before death came to their relief."
On the day that I was in Zutphen it was the quietest
town I had found in all Holland — not excepting Mon
nickendam between the arrival of the steam-trams. The
clean bright streets were empty and still : another massacre
almost might just have occuned. I had Zutphen to myself.
I could not even find the koster to show me the church ;
and it was in trying door after door as I walked round it
that I came upon the only sign of life in the place. For
one handle at last yielding I found myself instantly in a
small chapel filled with many young women engaged in a
scripture class. The sudden irruption of an embarrassed
and I imagine somewhat grotesque foreigner seems to have
been exactly what every member of this little congregation

WAX WORKS 259
was most desiring, and I never heard a menier or more
spontaneous burst of laughter. I stood not upon the order
of my going.
The church is vast and very quiet and restful, with a
large plain window of green glass that increases its cool
freshness; while the young leaves of a chestnut close to
another window add to this effect. The koster coming at
last, I was shown the ancient chained library in the chapter
house, and he enlarged upon the beauties of a metal font.
Wandering out again into this city of silence I found in the
square by the church an exhibition of wax works which was
to be opened at four o'clock. Making a note to return
to it at that hour-, I sought the river, whex-e the timber
is floated down from the German forests, and lost my
self among peat bax-ges and other craft, and walked some
miles in and about Zutphen, and a little way down a
trickling stream whence the view of the city is very beauti
ful ; and by-and-by found myself by the church and the
wax works again, in a town that since my absence had
quite filled with bustling people — four o'clock having
struck and the Princess of the Day Dream having (I sup
pose) been kissed. The change was astonishing.
Wax works always make me uncomfortable, and these
were no exception ; but the good folk of Zutphen found
them absorbing. The murderers stood alone, staring with
that fixity which only a wax assassin can compass; but
for the most part the figures were arranged in groups with
dramatic intent. Here was a confessional ; there a fare
well between lovers ; here a wounded Boer meeting his death
at the bayonet of an English dastard; there a Queen
Eleanor sucking poison from her husband's arm. A series
of illuminated scenes of rapine and disaster might be
studied through magnifying glasses. The presence of a

260 PICTURE POST CARDS
wax bust of Zola was due, I imagine, less to his illustrious
career than to the untoward circumstances of his death.
The usual Sleeping Beauty heaved her breast punctually
in the centre of the tent.
In one point only did the exhibition differ from the wax
woi-ks of the French and Italian fairs — it was undeviatingly
decent. There were no jokes, and no physiological models.
But the Dutch, I should conjecture, are not mox-bid. They
have their coarse fun, laugh, and get back to business
again. Judged by that new short-cut to a nation's moral
tone, the picture postcard, the Dutch are quite sound.
There is a shop in the high-spirited Nes Straat at Amster
dam where a certain pictorial ebullience has play, but I
saw none other of the countless be-postcarded windows in all
Holland that should cause a serious blush on my cheek ;
while the Nes Straat specimens wex-e fundamentally sound,
Rabelaisian rather than Armand-Sylvestrian, not vicious
but merely vulgar-.

CHAPTER XVIII
ARNHEIM TO BERGEN-OP-ZOOM
Arnheim the Joyous — A wood walk — Tesselschade Visscher and the
Chambers of Rhetoric — Epigrams — Poet friends — The nightingale —
An Arnheim adventure — Ten years at one book — Dutch and Latin —
Dutch and French — A French story — Dutch and English — The
English Schole-Master — Master and scholar — A nervous catechism
— Avoiding the birch — A riot of courtesy — A bill of lading — Dutch
proverbs — The Rhine and its mouths — Nymwegen — Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu again — Painted shutters — The Valkhof —
Hertogenbosch — Brothers at Bommel — The hero of Breda — Two
beautiful tombs — Bergen-op-Zoom — Messrs. Grimston and Red
head — Tholen — The Dutch feminine countenance.
AT Arnheim we come to a totally new Holland. The
Maliebaan and the park at Utrecht, with their
spacious residences, had prepared us a little for Arnheim's
wooded retirement ; but not completely. Rotterdam is
given to shipping ; The Hague makes laws and fashions ;
Leyden and Utrecht teach ; Amsterdam makes money. It
is at Arnheim that the retired merchant and the returned
colonist set up their home. It is the richest residential
city in the country. Arnheim the Joyous was its old name.
Arnheim the Comfortable it might now be styled.
It is the least Dutch of Dutch towns : the Rhine brings
a bosky beauty to it, German in character and untamed by
Dutch restraining hands. The Dutch Switzerland the
country hereabout is called. Arnheim recalls Richmond
(261)

262 THE NIGHTINGALE
too, for it has a Richmond Hill — a tenace-road above a
shaggy precipice overlooking the river.
I walked in the early morning to Klarenbeck, up and
down in a vast wood, and at a point of vantage called the
Steenen Tafel looked down on the Rhine valley. Nothing
could be less like the Holland of the earlier days of my
wanderings — nothing, that is, that was around me, but
with the farther bank of the river the flatness instantly
begins and continues as far as one can see in the north.
It was a very beautiful morning in May, and as I rested
now and then among the resinous pines I was conscious of
being traitorous to England in wandering here at all. No
one ought to be out of England in April and May. At
one point I met a squinel — just such a nimble short-
tempered squirrel as those which scold and hide in the top
branches of the fir trees near my own home in Kent — and
my sense of guilt increased ; but when, on my way back,
in a garden near Arnheim I heard a nightingale, the
treachery was complete.
And this reminds me that the best poem of the most
charming figure in Dutch literature — Tesselschade Visscher
— is about the nightingale. The story of this poetess and
her friends belongs more properly to Amsterdam, or to
Alkmaax-, but it may as well be told here while the Arnheim
nightingale — the only nightingale that I heard in Holland
— is plaining and exulting.
Tesselschade was the daughter of the poet and rhetorician
Roemer Visscher. She was born on 25th March, 1594,
and earned her curious name from the circumstance that
on the same day her father was wrecked off Texel. In
honour of his rescue he named his daughter Tesselschade,
or Texel wreck, thereby, I think, eternally impairing his
right to be considered a true poet. As a matter of fact

THE RHETORICIANS
he was rather an epigrammatist than a poet, his ambition
being to be known as the Dutch Martial. Here is a taste
of his Martial manner : —
Jan sorrows — sorrows far too much : 'tis true
A sad affliction hath distressed his life ; —
Mourns he that death hath ta'en his children two ?
O no I he mourns that death hath left his wife.
I have said that Visscher was a rhetorician. The word
perhaps needs a little explanation, for it means more than
would appear. In those days rhetoric was a living cult
in the Netherlands : Dutchmen and Flemings played at
rhetoric with some of the enthusiasm that we keep for
cricket and sport. Every town of any importance had its
Chamber of Rhetoric. "These Chambers," says Long
fellow in his Poets and Poetry of Europe, " were to Holland,
in the fifteenth century, what the Guilds of the Meister-
singers were to Germany, and were numerous throughout
the Netherlands. Brussels could boast of five ; Antwerp
of four ; Louvain of three ; and Ghent, Bruges, Malines,
Middelburg, Gouda, Haarlem, and Amsterdam of at least
one. Each Chamber had its coat of arms and its standard,
and the directors bore the title of Princes and Deans. At
times they gave public representations of poetic dialogues
and stage-plays, called Spelen van Sinne, or Moralities.
Like the Meistersingers, they gave singular titles to their
songs and metres. A verse was called a Kegel ; a strophe,
a Clause ; and a burden or refrain, a Stockregel. If a half-
verse closed as a strophe, it was a Steert, or tail. Tqfel-
spelen, and Spelen van Sinne, were the titles of the dramatic
exhibitions ; and the rhymed invitation to these was called
a Charte, or Uitroep (outcry). Ketendichten (chain-poems)
are short poems in which the last word of each line rhymes
with the first of the line following; Scaekberd (checker-

264 FANTASTIC RHYMING
bourd), a poem of sixty-four lines, so rhymed, that in every
direction it forms a strophe of eight lines ; and Dobbel-steert
(double-tail), a poem in which a double rhyme closes each
line.1 " The example of Flanders was speedily followed by Zee-
land and Holland. In 1430, there was a Chamber at
Middelburg ; in 1433, at Vlaardingen ; in 1434, at Nieuw-
kerk ; and in 1437, at Gouda. Even insignificant Dutch
villages had their Chambers. Among others, one was
founded in the Lier, in the year 1480. In the remaining
provinces they met with less encouragement. They existed,
howevex-, at Utrecht, Amersfoort, Leeuwarden, and Hasselt.
The purity of the language was completely undermined by
the rhyming self-called Rhetoricians, and their abandoned
courses brought poetry itself into disrepute. All distinction
of genders was nearly abandoned ; the original abundance
of words ran waste ; and that which was left became com
pletely overwhelmed by a torrent of barbarous terms."
Wagenaer, in his " Description of Amsterdam," gives
a copy of a painter's bill for work done for a rhetorician's
performance at the play-house in the town of Alkmaar, of
which the following is a translation : —
" Imprimis, made for the Clerks a Hell ;
Item, the Pavilion of Satan ;
Item, two pairs of Devil's-breeches ;
Item, a Shield for the Christian Knight ;
1 " With the Rederijkern," Longfellow adds, " Hood's amusing ' Noc
turnal Sketch ' would have been a Driedobbelsteert, or a poem with three
tails : — Even is come ; and from the dark park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun, one gun !
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain.
Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as with his poetic tongue Young sung."

DUTCH POETS 265
Item, have painted the Devils whenever they played ;
Item, some Arrows and other small matters.
Sum total ; worth in all xii. guilders. " Jaques Mol.
" Paid, October viii., 95 [1495]."
Among the Dutch pictures at the Louvre is an anony
mous work representing the Committee of a Chamber of
Rhetoric. Roemer Visscher, the father of the poetess, was a lead
ing rhetorician at Amsterdam, and the president of the
Eglantine Chamber of the Brother's Blossoming in Love
(as he and his fellow-rhetoricians called themselves) . None
the. less, he was a sensible and clever man, and he brought
up his three daughters very wisely. He did not make
them blue stockings, but saw that they acquired comely
and useful arts and crafts, and he rendered them unique
by teaching them to swim in the canal that ran through
his garden. He also was enabled to ensure for them the
company of the best poetical intellects of the time —
Vondel and Brederoo, Spiegel, Hooft and Huyghens.
Of these the greatest was Joost van den Vondel, a neigh
bour of Visscher's in Amsterdam, the author of " Lucifer,"
a poem from which it has been suggested that Milton
boiTowed. Like Izaak Walton Vondel combined haber
dashery with literature. Spiegel was a wealthy patron of
the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine
Chamber with the painfully sentimental name. Constantin
Huyghens wrote light verse with intricate metres, and an
occasional epigram. Here is one : —
ON PETER'S POETRY.
When Peter condescends to write,
His verse deserves to see the light.
If any further you inquire,
I mean — the candle or the fire.

266 ANNA VISSCHER
Also a practical statesman, it was to Huyghens that
Holland owes the beautiful old road from The Hague to
Scheveningen in which Jacob Cats built his house.
Among these friends Anna and Tesselschade grew into
cultured women of quick and sympathetic intellect. Both
wrote poetry, but Tesselschade's is superior to her sister's.
Among Anna's early work were some additions to a new
edition of her father's Zinne-Poppen, one of her poems
running thus in the translation by Mr. Edmund Gosse
in the very pleasant essay on Tesselschade in his Studies
in the IAterature of Northern Europe : —
A wife that sings and pipes all day,
And never puts her lute away,
No service to her hand finds she ;
Fie, fie I for this is vanity I
But is it not a heavenly sight
To see a woman take delight
With song or string her husband dear,
When daily work is done, to cheer ?
Misuse may turn the sweetest sweet
To loathsome wormwood, I repeat ;
Yea, wholesome medicine, full of grace,
May prove a poison — out of place.
They who on thoughts eternal rest,
With earthly pleasures may be blest ;
Since they know well these shadows gay,
Like wind and smoke, will pass away.
Tesselschade, who was much loved by her poet friends,
disappointed them all by marrying a dull sailor of Alkmaar
named Albert Krombalgh. Settling down at Alkmaar,
she continued her intei-course with her old companions,
and some new ones, by letter. Among her new friends
were Barlaeus, or Van Baerle, the first Latinist of the day,

TESSELSCHADE'S POEM 267
and Jacob Cats. When her married life was cut short
some few years later, Barlaeus proposed to the young
widow ; but it was in vain, as she informed him by quoting
from Cats these lines : —
When a valved shell of ocean
Breaks one side or loses one,
Though you seek with all devotion
You can ne'er the loss atone,
Never make again the edges
Bite together, tooth for tooth,
And, just so, old love alleges
Nought is like the heart's first troth.
These are Tesselschade's lines upon the nightingale in
Mr. Gosse's happy translation : —
THE WILD SONGSTER.
Praise thou the nightingale,
Who with her joyous tale
Doth make thy heart rejoice,
Whether a singing plume she be, or viewless winged voice ;
Whose warblings, sweet and clear,
Ravish the listening ear
With joy, as upward float
The throbbing liquid trills of her enchanted throat ;
Whose accents pure and ripe
Sound like an organ pipe,
That holdeth divers songs,
And with one tongue alone sings like a score of tongues.
The rise and fall again
In clear and lovely strain
Of her sweet voice and shrill,
Outclamours with its songs the singing springing rill.
A creature whose great praise
Her rarity displays,
Seeing she only lives
A month in all the year to which her song she gives.

A PATIENT SCHOLAR
But this thing sets the crown
Upon her high renown,
That such a little bird as she
Can harbour such a strength of clamorous harmony.
Arnheim presents after dinner the usual scene of con
tented movement. The people throng the principal streets,
and every one seems happy and placid. The great concert
hall, Musis Sacrum, had not yet begun its season when
I was there, and the only spectacle which the town could
muster was an exhibition of strength by two oversized boys,
which I avoided.
At Arnheim, I should relate, an odd thing happened to
my companion. When she was there last, in 1894, she
had need to obtain linseed for a poultice, and visited a
chemist for the purpose. He was an old man, and she
found him sitting in the window studying his English
grammar. How long his study had lasted I have no
notion, but he knew less of our tongue than she of his, and
to get the linseed was no easy matter. Ten years passed
and recollection of the Arnheim chemist had clean evapor
ated ; but chancing to look up as we walked through the
town, the sight of the old chemist seated in his shop-window
poring over a book brought the whole incident back to her.
We stepped to the window and stole a glance at the volume :
it was an English Grammar. He had been studying it
ever since the night of the linseed poultice.
It was, we felt, an object-lesson to us, who during the
same interval had taken advantage of every opportunity
of neglecting the Dutch tongue.
That tongue, however, is not attractive. Even those
who have spoken it to most purpose do not always admix-e
it. I find that Kasper van Baerle wrote : " What then do
we Netherlander speak ? Words from a foreign tongue :

BILDERDYK 269
we are but a collected crowd, of feline origin, driven by
a strange fatality to these mouths of the Rhine. Why,
since the mighty descendants of Romulus here pitched their
tents, choose we not rather the holy language of the
Romans ! "
We may consider Dutch a harsh tongue, and prefer
that all foreigners should learn English ; but our dislike of
Dutch is as nothing compared with Dutch dislike of French
as expressed in some verses by Bilderdyk when the tyranny
of Napoleon threatened them : —
Begone, thou bastard-tongue 1 so base — so broken —
By human jackals and hyenas spoken ;
Formed of a race of infidels, and fit
To laugh at truth — and scepticise in wit ;
What stammering, snivelling sounds, which scarcely dare,
Bravely through nasal channel meet the ear —
Yet helped by apes' grimaces — and the devil,
Have ruled the world, and ruled the world for evil I
But French is now the second language that is taught
in Dutch schools. German comes first and English third.
The Dutch language often x-esembles English very
closely; sometimes so closely as to be ridiculous. For
example, to an English traveller who has been manoeuvr
ing in vain for some time in the effort to get at the value
of an ax-ticle, it comes as a shock comparable only to being
run over by a donkey cart to discover that the Dutch for
" What is the price ? " is " Wat is de prijs ? "
The best old Dutch phrase-book is The English Schole-
Master, the copy of which that lies before me was printed
at Amsterdam by John Bouman in the year 1658. I have
already quoted a short passage from it, in Chapter II.
This is the full title :—

270 AN OLD PHRASE-BOOK
The English Schole-Master ;
or
Certaine rules and helpes, whereby
the natives of the Netherlandes, may
bee, in a short time, taught to
read, understand, and speake
the English tongue.
By the helpe whereof the English also
may be better instructed in the knowledge
of the Dutch tongue, than by any voca-
bulars, or other Dutch and English
books, which hitherto they have
had, for that purpose.
There is internal evidence that the book was the work of
a Dutchman rather than an Englishman; for the Dutch
is better than the English. I quote (omitting the Dutch)
part of one of the long dialogues between a master and
scholar of which the manual is largely composed. Much
of its interest lies in the continual imminence of the rod
and the skill of the child in saving the situation : —
M. In the meane time let me aske you one thing more. Have you not
bin to-day at the holy sermon ?
S. I was there.
M. Who are your witnesses ?
S. Many of the schoole-fellowes who saw me can witnes it.
M. But some must be produced.
S. I shall produce them when you commaund it.
M. Who did preach ?
S. Master N.
M. At what time began he ?
S. At seven a clock.
M. Whence did he take his text ?
S. Out of the epistle of Paul to the Romanes.
M. In what chapter ?
S. In the eighth.

SAVING HIS SKIN 271
M. Hitherto you have answered well : let us now see what follows.
Have you remembred anything ?
S. Nothing that I can repeat.
M. Nothing at al ? Bethink (your self) a little, and take heed that you
bee not disturbed, but bee of good courage.
S. Truly master I can remember nothing.
M. What, not one word ?
S. None at all.
M. I am ready to strike you : what profit have you then gotten ?
S. I know not, otherwise than that perhaps I have in the mean time
abstained from evill.
M. That is some what indeed, if it could but so be that you have kept
your self wholy from evill.
S. I have abstained so much as I was able.
M. Graunt that it bee so, yet you have not pleased God, seeing it is
written, depart from evill and doe good, but tell mee (I pray thee) for
what cause principally did you goe thither ?
S. That I might learne something.
M. Why have you not done so ?
S. I could not.
M. Could you not, knave ? yea you would not, or truly you have not
addicted your self to it.
S. I am compelled to confesse it.
M. What compelleth you ?
S. My Conscience, which accuseth me before God.
M. You say well : oh that it were from the heart.
S. Truly I speak it from myne heart.
M. It may bee so : but goe to, what was the cause that you have re
membred nothing ?
S. My negligence : for I attended not diligently.
M. What did you then?
S. Sometimes I slept.
M. So you used to doe : but what did you the rest of the time ?
S. I thought on a thousand fooleries, as children are wont to doe.
M. Are you so very a child, that you ought not to be attentive to
heare the word of God ?
S. If I had bin attentive, I should have profitted something.
M. What have you then meritted ?
S. Stripes.
M. You have truly meritted them, and that very many.
S. I ingenuously confess it.
M. But in word only I think.

272 POLITENESS IN EXCESS
S. Yea truly from myne heart.
M. Possibly, but in the meane time prepare to receive stripes.
S. O master forgive it, I beseech you, I confes I have sinned, but not
of malice. M. But such an evill negligence comes very neare wickedness (malice).
S. Truly I strive not against that : but nevertheles I implore your
clemencie through Jesus Christ.
M. What will you then doe, if I shall forgive you ?
S. I will doe my dutie henceforth, as I hope.
M. You should have added thereto, by God's helpe : but you care
little for that.
S. Yea master, by God's help, I will hereafter doe my duty.
M. Goe to, I pardon you the fault for your teares : and I forgive it you
on this condition, that you bee myndful of your promise.
S. I thank you most Courteous master.
M. You shall bee in very great favour with mee, if you remember your
promise. S. The most good and great God graunt that I may.
M. That is my desire, that hee would graunt it.
Here is another dialogue. Whether the riot of courtesy
displayed in it was typical of either England or Holland
at that time I cannot say ; but in neither country are we
now so solicitous : —
Salutations at meeting and parting.
Clemens. David.
C. God save you David.
D. And you also Clemens.
C. God save you heartily.
D. And you also, as heartily.
C. How do you ?
D. I am well I thank God ; at your service : and you Clemens, how is
it with you ? well ?
C. I am also in health : how doth your father and mother ?
D. They are in good health praised be God.
C. How goes it with you my good friend ?
D. It goeth well with mee, goes it but so well with you.
C. I wish you good health.
D. I wish the same to you also.
C. I salute you.

THE LITTLE PRINCESS
PAULUS MOREELSE
Fr07?i the picture t7i the Ryks Museum

FOR A BILL OF LADING 273
D. And I you also.
C. Are you well ? are you in good health ?
D. I am well, indeed I am in good health, I am .healthful, and in
prosperity. C. That is good. That is well. That is pleasing to me. That maketh
mee glad. I love to hear that. I beseech you to take care of your health.
Preserve your health.
D. I can tarry no longer now. I am in haste to be gone. I must go.
I have need of my time. I cannot abide standing here. Fare you well.
God be with you. God keep you still. I wish your health may continue.
C. And you also my loving friend, God protect you. God guide you.
God bee with you. May it please you in my behalf, heartily to salute
your wife and children.
D. I will do your message. But I pray, commend mee also to your
father and mother.
At the end of the book are some forms, in Dutch and
English, of mercantile letters, among them a specimen bill
of lading of which I quote a portion as an example of the
gracious way in which business was done in old and simplex-
days : —
I, J. P. of Amsterdam, master under God of my ship called the Saint
Peter at this present lying ready in the river of Amsterdam to saile with
the first goode winde which God shall give toward London, where my
right unlading shal be, acknowledge and confes that I have receaved
under the hatches of my foresaid ship of you S. J., merchaunt, to wit:
four pipes of oile, two chests of linnen, sixteen buts of currents, one bale of
canvase, five bals of pepper, thirteen rings of brasse wyer, fiftie bars of
iron, al dry and wel conditioned, marked with this marke standing before,
all which I promise to deliver (if God give me a prosperous voyage with
my said ship) at London aforesaid, to the worshipful Mr. A. J. to his
factour or assignes, paying for the freight of the foresaid goods 20 fs. by
the tun.
Quaintness and humour are not confrhed to the ancient
phrase-books. An English-Dutch conversational manual
from which the languages are still learned has a specimen
" dialogue " in a coach, which is opened by the gentleman
remarking genially and politely to his fellow -passenger,
a lady, "Madame, shall we anange our legs".
18

274 DUTCH
It occurs to me that very little Dutch has found its way
into these pages. Let me therefore give the first stanza of
the national song, " Voor Vaderland en Vorst " : —
Wien Neerlandsch bloed in de aderen vloeit,
Van vreemde smetten vrij,
Wiens hart voor land en Koning gloeit,
Verhef den zang als wij :
Hij stel met ons, vereend van zin,
Met onbeklemde borst,
Het godgevallig feestlied in
Voor Vaderland en Vorst.
These are brave words. A very pedestrian translation runs
thus : — Who Ne'erland's blood feel nobly flow,
From foreign tainture free,
Whose hearts for king and country glow,
Come, raise the song as we :
With breasts serene, and spirits gay,
In holy union sing
The soul-inspiring festal lay,
For Fatherland and King.
And now a specimen of really mellifluous Dutch. " How
would you like,'1 is the timely question of a daily paper
this morning, as I finish this chapter, " to be hit by a ' snell-
paardelooszoondeerspoorwegpitroolrijtung ? ' That is what
would happen to you if you were run down by a motor-car
in Holland. The name comes from ' snell,' rapid ; ' paar-
deloos,' horseless ; 'zoondeerspoorweg,' without rails ; ' pit-
roolrijtung,' driven by petroleum. Only a Dutchman can
pronounce it."
Let me spice this chapter by selecting from the pages of
proverbs in Dutch and English a few which seem to me
most excellent. No nation has bad proverbs ; the Dutch
have some very good ones.

THE WISDOM OF MANY 275
Many cows, much trouble.
Even hares pull a lion by the beard when he is old.
Men can bear all things, except good days.
The best pilots are ashore.
Velvet and silk are strange herbs : they blow the fire out
of the kitchen.
It is easy to make a good fire of another's turf.
It is good cutting large girths of another man's leather.
High trees give more shadow than fruit.
An old hunter delighteth to hear of hunting.
It hath soon rained enough in a wet pool.
God giveth the fowls meat, but they must fly for it.
An idle person is the devil's pillow.
No hen so witty but she layeth one egg lost in the
nettles. It happeneth sometimes that a good seaman falls over
board. He is wise that is always wise.
When every one sweeps before his own house, then are
the streets clean.
It is profitable for a man to end his life, before he die.
Before thou trust a friend eat a peck of salt with him.
It's bad catching hares with drums.
The pastor and sexton seldom agree.
No crown cureth headache.
There is nothing that sooner dryeth up than a tear.
Land purchase and good marriage happen not every
day. When old dogs bark it is time to look out.
Of early breakfast and late marriage men get not lightly
the headache.
Ride on, but look about.
Nothing in haste, but to catch fleas.

276 THE RHINE'S ALIASES
To return to Arnheim : of the Groote Kerk I remember
only the very delicate colouring of the ceiling, and the
monument of Charles van Egmont, Duke of Guelders. I
had grown tired of architecture : it seemed goodlier to
watch the shipping on the river, which at Arnheim may
be called the Rhine without hesitation. All the traffic to
Cologne must pass the town. Hitherto one had had qualms
about the use of the word, having seen the Rhine under
various aliases in so many places. The Maas at Rotter
dam is a mouth of the Rhine ; but before it can become
the Rhine proper it becomes the Lek. What is called the
true mouth of the Rhine is at Katwyk. At Dordrecht again
is another of the Rhine's mouths, the Waal, which runs
into the old Maas and then into the sea. The Yssel, still
another mouth of the Rhine, which I saw at Kampen on
its way into the Zuyder Zee, breaks away from the parent
river just below Arnheim. As a matter of fact all Holland
is on the Rhine, but the word must be used with care.
If one would study Dutch romantic scenery I think
Nymwegen on the whole a better town to stay in than
Arnheim. It is simpler in itself, richer in historic associa
tions, and the country in the immediate east is very well
worth exploring — hill and valley and pine woods, with
quaint villages here and there ; and, for the comfortable,
a favourite hotel at Berg en Daal from which great
stx-etches of the Rhine may be seen.
To see Nymwegen itself to greater advantage, with its
massed houses and towers presenting a solid front, one
must go over the iron bridge to Lent and then look back
across the river. At all times the old town wears from
this point of view an interesting and romantic air, but
never so much as at evening.
Some versions of " Lohengrin " set the story at Nymwegen ;

THE MARKET PLACE, NYMWEGEN

THE DUTCH NOTTINGHAM 277
but the Lohengrin monument is at Kleef, a few miles above
the confluence of the Rhine and the Waal, the river on
which Nymwegen stands.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was at Nymwegen
in 1716, drew an odd comparison between that town and
the English town of Nottingham. If Edinburgh is the
modern Athens there is no reason why Nottingham should
not be the English Nymwegen. Lady Mary writes to her
friend Sarah Chiswell : " If you were with me in this
town, you would be ready to expect to receive visits from
your Nottingham friends. No two places were ever more
resembling ; one has but to give the Maese the name of the
Trent, and there is no distinguishing the prospects — the
houses, like those of Nottingham, built one above another,
and are intermixed in the same manner with trees and
gardens. The tower they call Julius Caesar's has the same
situation with Nottingham Castle ; and I cannot help
fancying I see from it the Trent-field, Adboulton, &c,
places so well known to us. 'Tis true, the fortifications
make a considerable difference. . . ."
Nymwegen reminded me of nothing but itself. It is in
reality two towns: a spacious residential town near the
station, with green squares, and statues, and modern houses
(one of them so modem as to be employing a vacuum cleaner,
which throbbed and panted in the garden as I passed) ; and
the old mediaeval Nymwegen, gathered about one of the
most charming market places in all Holland — a scene for
comic opera. The Dutch way of chequering the shutters
in blue and yellow (as at Middelburg) or in red and black,
or red and white, is here practised to perfection. The
very beautiful weigh-house has red and black shutters ;
the gateway which leads to the church has them too.
Never have I seen a church so hemmed in by sunound-

278 THE VALKHOF
ing buildings. The little houses beset it as the pigmies
beset Antaeus. After some difficulty I found my way in,
and wandered for a while among its white immensities.
It is practically a church within a church, the region of
services being isolated in the midst, in the unlovely Dutch
way, within hideous wooden walls. It is veiy well worth
while to climb the tower and see the great waterways of
this country beneath you. The prospect is mingled wood
and polder: to the east and south-east, shaggy hills; to
the west, the moors of Brabant ; to the north, Arnheim's
dark heights.
Nymwegen has many lions, chief of which perhaps is the
Valkhof, in the grounds above the river — the remains of a
palace of the Carlovingians. It is of immense age, being
at once the oldest building in Holland and the richest
in historic memories. For here lived Charlemagne and
Charles the Bald, Charles the Bold and Maximilian of
Austria. The palace might still be standing were it not
for the destructiveness of the French at the end of the
eighteenth century. A picture by Jan van Goyen in the
stadhuis gives an idea of the Valkhof in his day, before
vandalism had set in.
As some evidence of the town's pride in her association
with these great names the curfew, which is tolled every
evening at eight o'clock, but which I did not hear, is
called Charlemagne's Prayer. The facade of the stadhuis
is further evidence, for it carries the statues of some of the
ancient monarchs who made Nymwegen then- home.
Within the stadhuis is another of the beautiful justice
halls which Holland possesses in such profusion, the most in
teresting of which we saw at Kampen. Kampen's oak seats
are not, however, more beautiful than those of Nyrnweo-en ;
and Kampen has no such clock as stands here, distilling

BOIS LE DUC 279
information, tick by tick, of days, and years, and sun, and
moon, and stars. The stadhuis has also treasures of
tapestry and Spanish leather, and a museum containing a
very fine collection of antiquities, including one of the famous
wooden petticoats of Nymwegen — a painted barrel worn as
a penance by peccant dames.
From Nymwegen the train took me to Hertzogenbosch, or
Bois le Due, the capital of Brabant. It is from Brabant, we
were told by a proverb which I quoted in my first chapter
on Friesland, that one should take a sheep. Great flocks
of sheep may be seen on the Brabant moors, exactly as in
Mauve's pictures. They are kept not for food, for the
Dutch dislike mutton, but for wool.
Bois le Due has the richest example of mediaeval archi
tecture in Holland — the cathedral of St. John, a wonderful
fantasy in stone, rich not only without, but, contrary to
all Dutch precedent, within too ; for we are at last again
among a people who for the most part retain the religion
of Rome. The glass of the cathedral is poor, but there is
a delicate green pattern on the vaulting which is very
charming. The koster is proudest of the pulpit, and of a
figui-e of the Virgin " which is carried in procession through
the town every evening between July 7th and 16th".
But I was not interested so much in particular things as
in the cathedral as a whole. To be in the midst of this
grey Gothic environment was what I desired, and after a
little difficulty I induced the koster to leave me to wander
alone. It was the first church in Holland with the old
authentic thrill.
Bois le Due (as it is more simple to call it) is a gay town
with perhaps the most spirited market place in the country.
The stalls have each an awning, as in the south of Europe,
and the women's heads are garlanded with flowers. I like

280 A WAR STORY
this method of decoration as little as any, but it carries
with it a pleasant sense of festivity.
From Bois le Due one may go due north to Utrecht and
Amsterdam, passing on the way Bommel, with its tall and
impressive tower rising from its midst. Qr one may keep
to the western route and reach Walcheren. That is my
present course, and Bommel may be left with a curious
story of the Spaniards in 1599. " Two brothers who had
never seen, and had always been inquiring for, each other,
met at last by chance at the siege, where they served in
two different companies. The elder, who was called
Hernando Diaz, having heard the other mentioned by the
name of Encisso, which was his mother's surname, and which
he had taken through affection, a thing common in Spain,
put several questions to him concerning a number of family
particulars, and knew at last by the exactness of his answers
that he was the brother he had been so long seeking after ;
upon which both proceeding to a close embrace, a cannon
ball struck off both their heads, without separating their
bodies, which fell clinging together."
Helvoet, on the way to Tilburg, is the scene of an old
but honourable story. Ireland tells us that George the
Second, being detained by contrary winds on his return
from Hanover, reposed at Helvoet until the sea should
subside. While there he one day stopped a pretty Dutch
girl to ask her what she had in her basket. "Eggs,
mynheer." " And what is the price ? " " A ducat a piece,
mynheer." " Are eggs so scarce then in Holland ?" " No,
mynheer, but kings are."
At Tilburg I did not tany, but rode on to Breda (which
is pronounced with all the accent on the second syllable),
and which is famous for a castle (now a military school)
and a tomb. The castle, a very beautiful building, was

THE SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK
ANTON MAUVE

ADRIAN'S STRATEGY 281
built by Count Henry of Nassau. On becoming in due
course the property of William the Silent, it was confiscated
by the Duke of Alva. How it was won back again is a
story worth telling.
The great achievement belonged to a simple boatman
named Adrian. Whether or not he had read or heard of
the Trojan horse is not known, but his scheme was not
wholly different. Briefly he recommended Prince Maurice
to conceal soldiers in his peat boat, under the peats, to
be conveyed as peat into the Spanish ganison. The plan
was approved and Captain Heranguiere was placed in
charge of it.
The boat was laden and Adx-ian poled it into the fortress ;
and all was going well until the coldness of the night
set the soldiers coughing. All were affected, but chiefly
Lieutenant Hells, who, vainly attempting to be silent, at
last implored his comrades to kill him lest he ruin the
enterprise. Adrian, however, prevented this grim necessity
by pumping very hard and thus covering the sound.
It had been ananged that the Prince should be outside
the city at a certain hour. Just before the time Heran
guiere and his men sprang out of their hiding, killed
the garrison, opened the gates, and the castle was won
again. Heranguiere was rewarded by being made governor
of Breda ; Adrian was pensioned, and the boat was taken
from its native elements and exalted into an honoured
position in the castle. When, however, the Spanish general
Spinola recaptured Breda, one of his first duties was to
burn this worthy vessel.
The jewel of Breda, which is a spreading fortified town,
is the tomb of Count Engelbert I. of Nassau, in one of the
chapels of the great church. The count and his lady, both
sculptured in alabaster, lie side by side beneath a canopy

282 CLEANLINESS
of black marble, which is borne by four waniors also of
alabaster. On the canopy are the arms and accoutrements
of the dead Count. The tomb, which was the work of
Vincenz of Bologna in the sixteenth century, is wholly
satisfying in its dignity, austerity and grace.
To the font in Breda cathedral William III. attached
the privilege of London citizenship. Any child christened
there could claim the rights of a Londoner, the origin
of the sanction being the presence of English soldiers
at Breda and their wish that their children should be
English too. Whether or not the Dutch guards who
were helping the English at the end of the seventeenth
century had a similar privilege in London I do not
know. Late one Saturday evening I watched in a milk shop at
Breda a conscientious Dutch woman at work. She had
just finished scrubbing the floor and polishing the brass,
and was now engaged in laying little paths of paper in case
any chance customer should come in over night and soil
the boards before Sunday. I thought as I stood there how
impossible it would be for an English woman tired with
the week to sit up like this to clean a shop against the
next day. Sir William Temple has a pleasant story
illustrating at once the inherent passion for cleanliness in
the Dutch women and also their old masterfulness. It
tells how a magistrate, paying an afternoon call, was re
ceived at the door by a stout North Holland lass who,
lest he should soil the floor, took him bodily in her arms and
carried him to a chair ; sat him in it ; removed his boots ;
put a pair of slippers on his feet ; and then led him to her
mistress's presence.
Bergen-op-Zoom has its place in history ; but it is a dull
town in fact. Nor has it beautiful streets, with the excep-

GRIMSTON AND REDHEAD 283
tion of that which leads to the old Gevangenpoort with its
little painted towers. I must confess that I did not like
Bergen-op-Zoom. It seemed to me curiously inhospitable
and critical ; which was of course a wrong attitude to take
up towards a countryman of Grimston and Redhead. Who
are Grimston and Redhead? I seem to hear the reader
asking. Grimston and Redhead were two members of the
English garrison when the Prince of Parma besieged
Bergen-op-Zoom in 1588, and it was their cunning which
saved the town. Falling intentionally into the Prince's
hands they affected to inform him of the vulnerability of
the defences, and outlined a scheme by which his capture
of a decisive position was practically certain. Having been
entrusted with the conduct of the attack, they led his men,
by preconcerted design, into an ambush, with the result
that the siege was raised.
All being fair in love and war one should, I suppose, be
at the feet of these brave fellows ; but I have no enthusiasm
for that kind of thing. At the same time there is no doubt
that the Dutch ought to, and therefore I am the more dis
tressed by Bergen-op-Zoom's rudeness to our foreign garb.
Bergen had seen battle before the siege, for when it was
held by the Spanish, at the beginning of the war, a naval
engagement was held off it in the Scheldt, between the
Spanish fleet and the Beggars of the Sea, whom we are about
to meet. The victory was to the Beggars. Later, in 1747,
Bergen was besieged again, this time by the French and
much more fiercely than by the Spaniards.,
From Bergen-op-Zoom we went to Tholen, passing the
whitest of windmills on the way. Tholen is an odd little
ancient town gained by a tramway and a ferry. Head
dresses here, as at Bois le Due, are very much over-decorated
with false flowers ; but in a little shop in one of the narrow

284 A DUTCH GIRL
and deserted streets we found some very pretty lace. We
found, also on the edge of the town, a very merry windmill ;
and we had lunch at an inn window which commanded
the harnessing of the many market carts, into every one
of which climbed a stolid farmer and a wife brimming with
gossip. In the returning steam-tram from Tholen to Bergen-op-
Zoom was a Dutch maiden. So typical was she that she
might have been a composite portx-ait of all Dutch girls of
eighteen — smooth fair features, a very clear complexion,
prim clothes. A friend getting in too, she talked; or
rather he talked, and she listened, and agreed or dissented
very quietly, and I had the pleasure of watching how ad
mirably adapted is the Dutch feminine countenance for the
display of the nuances of emotion, the enregistering of
every thought. Expression after expression flitted across
her face and mouth like the alternate shadow and sun in
the Weald on a breezy April day. A French woman's many
vivacious and eloquent expressions seem to come from
within ; but the Dutch present a placid sensitised surface
on which their companions' conversation records the most
delicate tracery. This girl's little reluctant smiles were
very charming, and we were at Bergen-op-Zoom again before
I knew it.

CHAPTER XIX
MIDDELBURG
The friendly Zeelanders — A Spanish heritage — Deceptive Dutch towns
—The Abbey Hotel— The Abbey of St. Nicholas— Middelburg's
art — Sentimental songs — The great Tacius — The siege of Middel
burg — A round-faced city — When disfigurement is beauty — Green
paint — Long John — Music in the night — Foolish Betsy — The Stad
huis— An Admiral and stuffed birds — The law of the paving-stones
— Veere — The prey of the sea — A mammoth church — Maximilian's
cup.
WITH Middelburg I have associated, for charm,
Hoorn ; but Middelburg stands first. It is
serener, happier, more human; while the nature of the
Zeelander is to the stranger so much more ingratiating
than that of the North Hollander. The Zeelander — and
particularly the Walcheren islander — has the eccentricity
to view the stranger as a natural object rather than a
phenomenon. Flushing being avowedly cosmopolitan does
not count, but at Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, you
may, although the only foreigner there, walk about in the
oddest clothes and receive no embanassing attentions.
It is not that the good people of Walcheren are quicker
to see where their worldly advantage lies. They are not
schemers or financiers. The reason resides in a native
politeness, a heritage, some have conjectured, from their
Spanish forefathers. One sees hints of Spanish blood also in
the exceptional flexibility and good carnage of the Wal-
(285)

286 THE ABBEY
cheren women. Whatever the cause of Zeeland's friendli
ness, there it is ; and in Middelbux-g the foreigner wanders at
ease, almost as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were
in France.
And it is the pleasantest town to wander in, and an
astonishingly large one. A surprising expansiveness, when
one begins to explore them, is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch
towns. From the railway, seeing a church spire and a few
roofs, one had expected only a village ; and behold street
runs into street until one's legs ache. This is peculiarly
the case with Gorinchem, which is almost invisible from
the line ; and it is the case with Middelburg, and Hoorn,
and many other towns that I do not recall at this moment.
My advice to travellers in Walcheren is to stay at
Middelburg rather than at Flushing (they are very nigh
each other) and to stay, moreover, at the Hotel of the
Abbey. It is not the best hotel in Holland as regards
appointment and cuisine ; but it is certainly one of the
pleasantest in character, and I found none other in so
fascinating a situation. For it occupies one side of the
quiet square enclosed by the walls of the Abbey of St.
Nicholas (or Abdij, as the Dutch oddly call it), and you
look from your windows through a grove of trees to the
delicate spires and long low facade of this ancient House
of God ; which is now given over to the Governor of Zee-
land, to the library of the Province, and to the Provincial
Council, who meet in fifteenth century chambers and trans
act their business on nouveau art furniture.
What, the Abbey must have been before it was destroyed
by fire we can only guess ; but one thing we know, and
that is that among its treasures were paintings by the
great Mabuse (Jan Gossaert), who once x-oystered through
Middelburg's quiet streets. Another artist of Middelburg

- ' ,._JS(*Sfc- \ .-:¦.':

MIDDELBURG

SENTIMENTAL SONGS 287
was Adrian van der Venne, who made the quaint drawings
for Jacob Cats' symbols, of which we have seen something
in an earlier chapter. But the city has never been a home
of the arts. Beyond a little tapestry, some of which may
be seen in the stadhuis, and some at the Abbey, it made
nothing beautiful. From earliest times the Middelburgers
were merchants — wool merchants and wine merchants
principally, but always tradespeople and always prosper
ous and contented.
A tentoonstelling (or exhibition) of copper work was in
progress when I was there last summer ; but it was not
interesting, and I had better have taken the advice of the
Music Hall manager, in whose grounds it was held, and
have saved my money. His attitude to repousse work was
wholly pessimistic, part prejudice against the craft of the
metal-worker in itself, but more resentment that florins
should be diverted into such a channel away from comic
singers and acrobats. Seated at one of the garden tables
we discussed Dutch taste in varieties.
The sentimental song, he told me, is a drug in Holland.
Anything rather than that. No matter how px-etty the
girl may be, she must not sing a sentimental song. But if
I wished to witness the only way in which a sentimental
song would " go down," I must visit his performance that
evening — reserved seats one, fifty, — and hear the great
Tacius. He drew from his pocket a handbill which was at
that moment being scattered broadcast over Middelburg.
It bore the name of this marvel, this solver* of the senti
mental riddle, and beneath it three interrogation marks.
The manager winked. "That," he said, "will excite
interest." We went that evening and heard Tacius — a portly
gentleman in a ball dress and a yellow wig, who after

288 A ROUND-FACED CITY
squeaking five-sixths of a love song in a timid falsetto
which might pass for a woman's voice, roared out the
balance like a bull. He brought down the house,
Like most other Dutch towns Middelburg had its period
of siege. But there was this difference, that Middelburg
was held by the Spanish and besieged by the Dutch, whereas
the custom was for the besiegers to be Spanish and the
besieged Dutch. Middelburg suffered every privation
common to invested cities, even to the trite consumption
of rats and dogs, cats and mice. Just as destruction
seemed inevitable — for the Spanish commander Mondragon
swore to fire it and perish with it rather than submit — a
compromise was ai-ranged, and he sunendered without
dishonour, the terms of the capitulation (which, however,
Spain would not allow him to cany out) being another
illustration of the wisdom and humanity of William the
Silent. Middelburg has never known a day's suffering since her
siege. A local proverb says, " Goed rond, goed Zeuwsch " —
very round, very Zeelandish — and an old writer — so M.
Havard tells us — describes Middelburg as a " round faced
city ". If by round we mean not only circular but also
plump and comfortable, we have Middelburg and its sons
and daughters very happily hit off. Structurally the town
is round : the streets curve, the Abbey curves ; seen from a
balloon or the summit of the church tower, the plan of the
city would reveal itself a circle. And there is a roundness
also in the people. They smile roundly, they laugh
roundly, they live roundly.
The women and girls of Middelburg are more comely
and winsome than any in Holland. Their lace caps are
like driven snow, their cheeks shine like apples. But their
way with their arms I cannot commend. The sleeve of

MIDDELBURG'S DAUGHTERS 289
their bodices ends far above the elbow, and is made so
tight that the naked arm below expands on attaining its
liberty, and by constant and intentional friction takes the
hue of the tomato. What, howevex-, is to our eyes only a
suggestion of inflammation, is to the Zeelander a beauty.
While our impulse is to recommend cold cream, the young
bloods of Middelburg (I must suppose) are holding their
beating hearts. These are the differences of nations —
beyond anything dreamed of in Babel.
The principal work of these ruddy-armed and wide-
hipped damsels seems to be to cai-ry green pails on a blue
yoke — and their perfect fitness in Middelburg's cheerful
and serene streets is another instance of the Dutch cleverness
in the use of green paint. These people paint their houses
every year — not in conformity with any written law, but
upon a universal feeling that that is what should be done.
To this very pretty habit is largely due the air of fresh
gaiety that their towns possess. Middelburg is of the
gayest. Greenest of all, as I have said, is pei-haps Zaandam.
Sometimes they paint too freely, even the trunks of trees
and good honest statuary coming under the brush. But
for the most part they paint well.
It is not alone the cloistral Gothic seclusion in which the
Abbey hotel reposes that commends it to the wise : there
is the further allurement of Long John. Long John, or
De Lange Jan, is the soaring tower of the Abbey church,
now the Nieuwe Kerk. So long have his neax-ly 300 feet
dominated Middelburg — he was first built in the thirteenth
century, and rebuilt in the sixteenth — that he has become
more than a structure of bricks and copper : a thinking
entity, a tutelary spirit at once the pride and the protector
of the town. His voice is heard more often than any belfry
beneath whose shadow I have lain. Holland, as we have
19

290 LONG JOHN AND FOOLISH BETSY
seen, is a land of bells and carillons ; nowhere in the world
are the feet of Time so dogged ; but Long John is the
most faithful sleuth of all. He is almost ahead of his
quany. He seems to know no law ; h'e set out, I believe,
with a commission entitling him to ring his one and forty
bells every seven and a half minutes, or eight times in the
hour ; but long since he must have torn up that wananty,
for he is now his own master, breaking out into little sighs of
melancholy or wistful music whenever the mood takes him.
I have never heard such profoundly plaintive airs as his —
very beautiful, very grave, very deliberate. One cannot
say more for persistent chimes than this — that at the
Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in the night.
Long John has a companion in Foolish Betsy. Foolish
Betsy is the stadhuis clock, so called (Gekke Betje) from
her l-efusal to keep time with the giant : another instance of
the power which John exerts over the town, even to the
wounding of chivalry. The Nieuwe Kerk would be nothing
without its tower — it is one of the barest and least interest
ing churches in a country which has reduced to the finest
point the art of denuding religion of mystery — but the
stadhuis would still be wonderful even without its Betsy.
There is nothing else like it in Holland, nothing anywhere
quite so charming in its shameless happy floridity. I cannot
describe it : the building is too complicated, too ornate ; I
can only say that it is wholly captivating and thox-oughly
out of keeping with the Dutch genius — Spanish influence
again apparent. Beneath the eaves are four and twenty
statues of the Counts of Holland and Zeeland, and the
roof is like a mass-meeting of dormer windows.
In addition to the stadhuis museum, which is dedi
cated to the history of Middelburg and Zeeland, the town
has also a municipal m "ieum, too largely given over to

HELENE VAN DER SCH^LKE
GERARD TERBURG
From the picture i7i the Ryks Museum

THE PAINFUL STREETS 291
shells and stuffed birds, but containing also such human
relics as the wheel on which Admiral de Ruyter as a boy
helped his father to make rope, and also the first micro
scope and the first telescope, both the work of Zacharias
Jansen, a Zeeland mathematician. More interesting per
haps are the rooms in the old Zeeland manner, cone-
sponding to the Hindeloopen rooms which we have seen at
Leeuwarden, but lacking their cheerful richness of orna
mentation. It is certainly a museum that should be
visited, albeit the stuffed birds weigh heavily on the brow.
After all, Middelburg's best museum is itself. Its streets
and houses are a never-ending pleasure. Something glad-
ens the eye at every turn — a blue and yellow shutter, a
red and black shutter, a turret, a daring gable, a knot of
country people, a fat Zeeland baby, a milk-can rivalling
the sun, an old woman's lace cap, a young woman's meny
mouth. Only in two respects is the town unsatisfactory, and
both are connected with its streets. The liberty given to
each householder to erect an iron fence across the pavement
at each limit of his property makes it necessary to walk in
the road, and the pave of the road is so rough as to caus
no slight suffering to any one in thin boots. M. Havard
has an amusing passage on this topic, in which he says
that the ancient fifteenth- century punishment for marital
infidelity, a sin forbidden by the municipal laws no less
than by Heaven, was the supply by the offending man of
a certain number of paving stones. After such an ex
planation, the genial Frenchman adds, we must not com
plain : — Nos peres ont peches, nos peres ne sont plus,
Et c'est nous qui portons la peine de leurs crimes.
The island of Walcheren is quickly learned. From
Middelburg one can drive in a day to the chief points of

292 VEERE
interest — Westcapelle and Domburg, Veere and Arnemui-
den. Of these Veere is the jewel — Veere, once Middelburg's
dreaded rival, and in its possession of a clear sea-way and
harbour her superior, but now forlorn. For in the seven
teenth century Holland's ancient enemy overflowed its
barriers, and the greater part of Veere was blotted out in
a night. What remains is a mere symbol of the past;
but thex-e is enough to loiter in with perfect content, for
Veere is unique. Certainly no little town is so good to
approach — with the friendliness of its red roofs before one
all the way, the unearthly hugeness of its church and the
magic of its stadhuis tower against the blue.
The church, which is visible from all parts of the island,
is immense, in itself an indication of what a city Veere
must have been. It rises like a mammoth from the flat.
Only the east end is now used for services ; the vast
remainder, white and naked, is given up to bats and the
handful of workmen that the slender restoration funds
make it possible to employ. For there is some idea of
Veere's church being one day again in perfect repair ; but
that day will not be in our time. The ravages of the sea
only emptied it : the sea does not desecrate. It was
Napoleon who disgraced the church by converting it into
banacks. Other relics of Veere's past are the tower at the har
bour mouth (its fellow-tower is beneath the sea) and the
beautifully (grave Scotch house on the quay, once the
centre of the Scottish wool trade of these parts.
The stadhuis also remains, a dainty distinguished
structure which might be the infant daughter of the
stadhuis at Middelburg. Its spire has a slender aerial
grace ; on its facade ax-e statues of the Lords of Veere and
their Ladies. Within is a little museum of antiquities,

MAXIMILIAN'S GOBLET 293
one of whose most interesting possessions is the entry in
the Veere register, under the date July 2nd, 1608, of the
marriage of Hugo Grotius with Maria Reygersbergh of
Veere, whom we have seen at Loevenstein assisting in her
husband's escape from prison. The museum is in the
charge of a blond custodian, a descendant of sea kings,
whose pride in the golden goblet which Maximilian of Bur
gundy, Veere's fix-st Marquis, gave to the town in 1551,
is almost paternal. He displays it as though it were a
sacred relic, and nanates the story of Veere's indignation
when a millionaire attempted to buy it, so feelingly as to
fortify and complete one's suspicions that money after all
is but dross and the love of it the root of evil.

CHAPTER XX
FLUSHING
Middelburg once more — The Flushing baths — Shrimps and chivalry — A
Dutch boy — Charles V. at Souburg — Flushing and the Spanish yoke
— Philip and William the Silent — The capture of Brill — A far-reaching
drunken impulse — Flushing's independence — Admiral de Ruyter —
England's Revenge— The Middelburg kermis — The aristocracy of
avoirdupois — The end.
IT is wiser I think to stay at Middelburg and visit
Flushing from there than to stay at Flushing. One
may go by train or tram. In hot weather the steam-tram
is the better way, for then one can go direct to the baths
and bathe in the stillest arm of the sea that I know. Here
I bathed on the hottest day of last year, 1904, among
meny albeit considerable water nymphs and vivacious men.
These I found afterwards should have dwelt in the water
for ever, for they emerged, dried and dressed, from
the machines, something less than oi-dinary Batavians.
I perhaps carried disillusionment also.
For safe bathing the Flushing baths could not well be
excelled, but I never knew shore so sandy. To rid one's
self of sand is almost an impossibility. With each step it
over-tops one's boots.
Returning to Middelburg from Flushing one evening, in
the steam-tram, we found ourselves in a compartment filled
with happy country people, most of them making for the
(294)

SOUBURG 295
kermis, then in full swing in the Middelburg market place.
A pedlar of shrimps stood by the door retailing little
pennyworths, and nothing would do but the countryman
opposite me must buy some for his sweetheart. When he
had bought them he was for emptying them in her lap, but
I tendered the wrapper of my book just in time : an act of
civility which brought out all his native friendliness. He
offered us shrimps, one by one, first peeling them with kindly
fingers of extraordinary blackness, and we ate enough to
satisfy him that we meant well : and then just as we reached
Middelbux-g, he gave me a cigar and walked all the way to
the Abbey with me, watching me smoke it. It was an
ordeal ; but I hope, for the honour of England, that I
carried it through successfully and convinced him that
an Englishman knows what to do with courtesy when he
finds it.
In the same tram and on the very next seat to us was
the pleasantest little boy that I think I ever saw : a perfect
miniature Dutchman, with wide black trousers terminating
in a point, pearl buttons, a tight black coat, a black hat,
and golden neck links after the Zeeland habit. He was
perhaps four, plump and red and meny, and his mother, who
nursed his baby sister, was immensely proud of him. Some
one pressed a twopenny bit into his hand as he left the car,
and I watched him telling the great news to half a dozen of
the women who were waiting by the side of the road, while
his face shone like the setting sun.
They got off at Souburg, the little village between
Flushing and Middelburg where Charles V. was living in
1556, after his abdication, before he sailed for his last
home. It is odd to have two such associations with
Souburg — the weary emperor putting off the purple, and
the little Dutch boer bursting jollily through black velvet.

296 DECLARATION OF WAR
Flushing played a great part in the great war. It was
from Flushing that Charles V. sailed in ] 556 ; from Flush
ing that Philip II. sailed in 1559 ; neither to return. It was
Flushing that heard Philip's farewell to William of Orange,
which in the light of after events may be called the de
claration of war that was to release the Netherlands from
the tyranny of Spain and Rome. " As Philip was proceed
ing on board the ship which was to bear him for ever from
the Netherlands, his eyes lighted upon the Prince. His
displeasure could no longer be restrained. With angry
face he turned upon him, and bitterly reproached him for
having thwarted all his plans by means of his secret in
trigues. William replied with humility that everything
which had taken place had been done through the regular
and natural movements of the states. Upon this the King,
boiling with rage, seized the Prince by the wrist, and,
shaking it violently, exclaimed in Spanish, ' No los estados,
ma vos, vos, vos ! ' — Not the estates, but you, you, you ! —
repeating thrice the word ' vos,' which is as disrespectful
and uncourteous in Spain as ' toi ' in French."
That was 26th August, 1559. Philip's fleet consisted of
ninety ships, victualled, among other articles, with fifteen
thousand capons, and laden with such spoil as tapestry and
silks, much of which had to be thrown overboard in a storm
to lighten the labouring vessels. It seemed at one time as
if the fleet must founder, but Philip reached Spain in safety,
and hastened to celebrate his escape, and emphasise his
policy of a universal religion, by an extensive auto dafi.
Flushing did not actually begin the war, in 1572, after the
capture of Brill at the mouth of the Maas, by the Water
Beggars under De la Marck, but it was the first town to
respond to that invitation of revolt against Alva and Spain.
The foundations of the Dutch Republic may have been

ALVA'S SPECTACLES 297
laid at Brill, but it was the moral support of Flushing that
established them.
The date of the capture of Brill was April 1st, and
Alva, who was then at Brussels, suffered tortures from the
Belgian wits. The word Brill, by a happy chance, signifies
spectacles, and a couplet was sung to the effect that
On April Fool's Day
Duke Alva's spectacles were stolen away ;
while, says Motley, a caiicature was circulated depicting
Alva's spectacles being removed from his nose by De la
Marck, while the Duke uttered his habitual comment
" 'Tis nothing. 'Tis nothing."
What, however, began as little more than the desperate
deed of some hungry pirates, to satisfy their immediate
needs, was soon turned into a very far-reaching " some
thing," by the action of Flushing, whose burghers, under
the Seigneur de Herpt, on hearing the news of the re-
bellion of Brill, drove the Spanish garrison from the town.
A number of Spanish ships chancing to anive on the same
day, bringing reinforcements, were just in time to find the
town in arms. Had they landed, the whole revolt might
have been quelled, but a drunken loafer of the town, in
return for a pot of beer, offered to fire a gun at the fleet
from the ramparts. He was allowed to do so, and without
a word the fleet fell into a panic and sailed away. The
day was won. It might almost be said that that shot —
that pot of beer — secured the freedom of the Netherlands.
Let this be remembered when John Barleycorn is before
his many judges.
A little later Brill sent help, and Flushing's independ
ence was secure. Motley describes this band of assistants
in a picturesque passage : —

298 PACHECO
" The expedition seemed a fierce but whimsical masquer
ade. Every man in the little fleet was attired in the
gorgeous vestments of the plundered churches, in gold-
embroidered cassocks, glittering mass-garments, or the
more sombre cowls and robes of Capuchin friars. So sped
the early standard bearers of that ferocious liberty which
had sprung from the fires in which all else for which men
cherish their fatherland had been consumed. So swept
that resolute but fantastic band along the placid estuaries
of Zeeland, waking the stagnant waters with their wild
beggar songs and cries of vengeance.
"That vengeance found soon a distinguished object.
Pacheco, the chief engineer of Alva, who had accompanied
the Duke in his march from Italy, who had since earned a
world-wide reputation as the architect of the Antwerp
citadel, had been just despatched in haste to Flushing to
complete the fortress whose construction had been so long
delayed. Too late for his work, too soon for his safety, the
ill-fated engineer had arrived almost at the same moment
with Treslong and his ci-ew. He had stepped on shore,
entirely ignorant of all which had transpired, expecting to
be treated with the respect due to the chief commandant of
the place, and to an officer high in the confidence of the
Governor-general. He found himself sunounded by an
indignant and threatening mob. The unfortunate Italian
understood not a word of the oppx-obrious language ad
dressed to him, but he easily comprehended that the
authority of the Duke was ovex-thrown.
" Observing De Ryk, a distinguished partisan officer and
piivateersman of Amsterdam, whose x-eputation for bravery
and generosity was known to him, he appi-oached him, and
drawing a seal ring from his finger kissed it, and handed it
to the rebel chieftain. By this dumb-show he gave him to

ELIZABETH BAS
REMBRANDT
From the picture 171 the Ryks Museum

AND HIS FATE 299
understand that he relied upon his honor for the treat
ment due to a gentleman. De Ryk understood the appeal,
and would willingly have assured him, at least, a soldier's
death, but he was powerless to do so. He anested him,
that he might be protected from the fuxy of the rabble ;
but Treslong, who now commanded in Flushing, was
especially incensed against the founder of the Antwerp
citadel, and felt a ferocious desire to avenge his brother's
murder upon the body of his destroyer's favourite.
" Pacheco was condemned to be hanged upon the very
day of his anival. Having been brought forth from his
prison, he begged hard but not abjectly fox- his life. He
offered a heavy ransom, but his enemies were greedy for
blood, not for money. It was, however, difficult to find an
executioner. The city hangman was absent, and the pre-
judice of the country and the age against the vile pro
fession had assuredly not been diminished during the five
horrible years of Alva's administration. Even a condemned
murderer, who lay in the town gaol, refused to accept his
life in recompence fox- performing the office. It should
never be said, he observed, that his mother had given birth
to a hangman. When told, however, that the intended
victim was a Spanish officer, the malefactor consented to
the task with alacrity, on condition that he might after
wards kill any man who taunted him with the deed.
" Anived at the foot of the gallows, Pacheco complained
bitterly of the disgraceful death designed for him. He
protested loudly that he came of a house as noble as that
of Egmont or Hoorn, and was entitled to as honourable
an execution as theirs had been. ' The sword ! the sword ! '
he frantically exclaimed, as he struggled with those who
guarded him. His language was not understood, but the
name of Egmont and Hoorn inflamed still more highly the

300 DE RUYTER
rage of the rabble, while his cry for the sword was falsely
interpreted by a rude fellow who had happened to possess
himself of Pacheco's i-apier, at his capture, and who now
paraded himself with it at the gallows foot. ' Never fear
for your sword, Senor,' cried this ruffian ; ' your sword is
safe enough, and in good hands. Up the ladder with you,
Senor ; you have no further use for your sword.' Pacheco,
thus outraged, submitted to his fate. He mounted the
ladder with a steady step, and was hanged between two
other Spanish officers.
" So perished miserably a brave soldier, and one of the
most distinguished engineers of his time ; a man whose
character and accomplishments had certainly merited for
him a better fate. But while we stigmatize as it deserves
the atrocious conduct of a few Netherland pai-tisans, we
should remember who first unchained the demon of inter
national hatred in this unhappy land, nor should it ever be
forgotten that the great leader of the revolt, by word,
proclamation, example, by entreaties, threats, and condign
punishment, constantly rebuked and, to a certain extent, re
strained the sanguinary spirit by which some of his followers
disgraced the noble cause which they had espoused."
Flushing's hero is De Ruyter, whose rope-walk wheel we
saw at Middelburg, and whose truculent lineaments have so
often frowned at us from the walls of picture gallery and
stadhuis throughout the country — almost without excep
tion from the hand of Ferdinand Bol, or a copyist.
Scratch a sea-dog and you find a pirate; De Ruyter,
who stands in stone for all time by Flushing harbour,
lacking the warranty of war would have been a Paul Jones
beyond eulogy. You can see it in his strong brows, his
determined mouth, his every line. It is only two hundred
and thirty seven years, only seven generations, since he was

THE MIDDELBURG KERMIS 301
in the Thames with his fleet, and London was panic-
stricken. No enemy has been there since. The English
had their revenge in 1809, when they bombarded Flushing
and reduced it to only a semblance of what it had been.
Among the beautiful buildings which our cannon balls
destroyed was the ancient stadhuis. Hence it is that
Flushing's stadhuis to-day is a mere recent upstart.
Flushing does little to amuse its visitors after the sun
has left the sea ; and we were vexy glad of the excuse offered
by the Middelburg kermis to return to our inland city
each afternoon. The Middelburg kermis is a particularly
merry one. The stalls and roundabouts fill the market
square before the stadhuis, packed so closely that the re
volving horses nearly carry the poffertje restaurants round
with them. The Dutch roundabouts, by the way, still,
like the English, retain horses : they have not, like the
French, as I noticed at three fairs in and about Paris last
autumn, taken to pigs and rabbits.
I examined the Middelburg kermis very thoroughly.
Few though the exhibits were, they included two fat
women. Their booths stood on opposite sides of the square,
all the fun of the fair between them. In the west was
Mile. Jeanne; in the east the Princess Sexiena. Jeanne
was French, Sexiena came from the Fatherland. Both,
though rivals, used the same poster : a picture of a lady,
enormous, decolletee, highly-coloured, stepping into a fiacre,
to the cochex-'s intense alarm. Before one inspected the
rival giantesses this community of advertisement had seemed
to be a mistake ; after, its absurdity was only too apparent,
for although the Princess was colossal, Mile. Jeanne was
more so. Mile. Jeanne should therefore have employed an
artist to make an independent allurement.
Both also displayed outside the booths a pair of corsets,

302 THE GIANTESSES
but here, I fancy, the advantage was with Mile. Jeanne,
although such were the distractions of the square that
it was difficult to keep relative sizes in mind as one
crossed it.
We visited the Princess first and found her large enough.
She gasped on a dais — it was the hottest week of the year.
She was happy, she said, except in such warmth. She was
not married : Princes had sighed for her in vain. She rode
a bicycle, she assured us, and enjoyment in the incredulity
of her hearers was evidently one of her pleasures. Her
manager listened impatiently, for our conversation in-
tenupted his routine ; he then took his oath that she was
not padded, and bade her exhibit her leg. She did so, and
it was like the mast of a ship.
I dropped five cents into her plate and passed on to Mile.
Jeanne. The Princess had been large enough ; Mile. Jeanne
was larger. She wore her panoply of flesh less like a flower
than did her rival. Her expression was less placid; she
panted distressfully as she fanned her bulk. But in con
versation she relaxed. She too was happy, except in such
heat. She neither rode a bicycle nor walked — save two or
three steps. As her name indicated, she too was unmanied,
although, her manager interjected, few wives could make
a better omelette. But men are cowards, and such for
tresses very formidable.
As we talked, the manager, who had entered the booth
as blase an entrepreneur as the Continent holds, showed
signs of animation. In time he grew almost enthusiastic
and patted Mlie.'s arms with pride. He assisted her to
exhibit her leg quite as though its glories were also his.
The Princess's leg had been like the mast of a ship ; this
was like the trunk of a Burnham beech.
And here, at Flushing, we leave the country. I should

BELGIUM UNATTAINABLE 303
have liked to have steamed down the Scheldt to Antwerp
on one of the ships that continually pass, if only to be
once more among the friendly francs with their notice
able purchasing power, and to saunter again through the
Plantin Museum among the ghosts of old printers, and
to stand for a while in the Museum before Van Eyck's
delicious drawing of Saint Barbara. But it must not be.
This is not a Belgian book, but a Dutch book ; and here
it ends.

INDEX

Aanspreker, The, lo
Aertz, Jan Terween, 36
A Kempis, Thomas, 103, 254
Alkmaar, 206-213, 266
Alva, Duke of, 140, 141, 210, 258, 297
Amsterdam, 153-183, 185, 261
Anabaptists, 113
Antwerp, 303
Arminians, 37
Arnheim, 261-268 B
Baerle, Van, 266, 268
Barbizon Painters, 68, 70-72, 180
Barges, 5, 6, 231
Barneveldt, 38, 72-75
Beckford, William, quoted, 121
Beggars of the Sea, 2g7
Begijnen, The, 164
Belloc, Mr. Hilaire, quoted, 61
Bells, 61, 166, 289
Berchem, Nicolas, 148
Bergen-op-Zoom, 42, 204, 283
Berlikum, 248
Bilderdyk, 269
Binnenhof, The, 72
Biographical Memoirs of Extraordi
nary Painters, 121
Bol, Ferdinand, 13, 35
Bolsward, 232
Bommel, 280
Boompoel, The, 249
Bos, Mr., 242
Bosboom, Johannes, 14, 69
Bosch, The, 80
Boxum, 248
Boymans Museum, 13

Breda, 281
Breitner, G. H., 36, 158
Brill, 297
Broek, 197
Brouwer, Adrian, 70, 148

Canals, 2, 5, 6, 154
Cats, Jacob, 85-go, 267
Chambers of Rhetoric, 263
Charlemagne's Prayer, 278
Charles V., 295
Cheese, 207
Christening Customs, 227
Coen, Jan Pieters, 215
Colloquia Peripatetica, 103
Congress of Dort, 36-37
Corbeille, Mr., quoted, 45
Cornellissen, Jan, 201
Corot, 71, 181
Coryate, Thomas, 84
Cuyp, Albert, 13, 33, 44, 240

Dam, The, 159
Darnley, Lord, 219
Davies quoted, 37, 38, 73, 75, 163
Death, 10
De Bossu, 215
De Hooch, Peter, 12, 179, 182
Dekker, Edward Douwes, 169
Delft, 48-62
De Ruyter, 218, 219, 291, 300
De Sonoy, 215
Deventer, 254
De Witt, Cornelius, 39, 75
 John, 75
Diaz, 71

20

3°5

306

INDEX

Dircksz, Peter, 201
Dirckzoon, Cornelius, 199, 216
Dobson, Mr. Austin, quoted, 86
Doelens, 251
Dogs, 238
Dokkum, 245
Dordrecht, 30-40
Dou, Gerard, 118, 122
Dumas, Alexandre, 39, 250
Dutch Architecture, 45
— Books, 79
— Chemists, 11
— Churches, 44, 134, 164
— Civility, 26, 240
— Cleanliness, 5, 282
" — Courage," 29
— Evening Habits, 79
— Gardening, 129
— Houses, 154, 181, 229
— Inns, 18, 185
— Language, 268, 274
— Love-making, 198, 228
— Manners to strangers, 27, 42, 240
— Morality, 260
— Music Halls, 165
— National Anthem, 27g
"— News," 28
— Painting, 173-175, 181
— Phlegm, igg
— Precision, 63
— Railways, 184
— Religion, 21
— Scenery, 2
— Servants, g
— Steam-trams, g4
— Weddings, 161
— Wives, 162
Dykes, 64, 220, 241

Earle, John, 24
Edam, 200
Eisinga, Eisa, 244, 247
Engelbert I., 281
English Schole-Mastcr, The, 24, 26g
Enkhuisen, 224
Erasmus, n, 103, 135, 252
Evelyn, John, quoted, 102

Fabritius, 58

Fell, R., quoted, 26, 144, 233
Feltham, Owen, 24, 155
Florin, The, 7
Flushing, 2g4
Fodor Museum, 183
Franeker, 244
Frederick, Don, 137, i8g, 2og
Friesland, 229, 235, 245
Frogs, 241

George II., 280
Gerard, Balthazar, 50
Gevangenpoort, The, 78
Giantesses, The, 301
Goldsmith, Oliver, 97-102
Gomarians, 37
Gorinchem, 40-43
Gosse, Mr. Edmund, quoted, 266-
267
Gothamites, 256
Gouda, 18
Goyen, Jan van, log
Grimston and Redhead, 283
Groningen, 251
Grotius, 41, 55, 2g3
Guelder, The (see Florin)
Gutenberg, 136 H
Haarlem, 128-152
Hagthorpe, John, 22
Hague, The, 63-84
Hals, Dirck, 147
— Frans, 145-152, 176
Handel, 144
Haring, John, 215, 217
Harlingen, 242
Hasselaer, Kenau, 143
Havard, Henri, quoted, 59, 171, 221,
224, 227, 242, 257, 291
Heemstra, Van, 231
Helder, The, 220
Heist, Bartholomew van der, 147, 176
Helvoet, 280
Heranguiere, 281
Hertzogenbosch, 279
Heyden, Van der, 43
Hillegom, 128
Hilversum, 10, 186
Hindeloopen, 229

INDEX

307

Hobbema, 13
Hoboken, Mr. Van, 16
Hogarth, 112
Hooch, Peter de (see De Hooch)
Hood, Thomas, 17, 264
Hooft, Peter Cornellissen, 194
Hook of Holland, 1
Hoorn, 213-220
Hortensius, 192
Hotel Porters, 222
Howell, James, 82
Huilebalk, The, 10
Huizen, 188
Huyghens, Constantin, 85, 265

I

Ireland, Samuel, quoted, 26, 60, 120,
166, 178, 233
Israels, Joseph, 14, 145, 251
J
Jan of Leyden, 113-118
Jansen, Zacharias, 291
Jaureguy, 50
Juffer Lysse, 249 K
Kampen, 255
Katwyk, 92
Kermis, The, 104, 301
Kever, Trijntje, 201
Knipperdollinch, ri5
Koster, Laurens, 136

Lange Jacob, 231
Laren, 187
Leeuwarden, 235-249
— Guide-book, 245
Leeuwenhock, Antony van, 57
Lennep, Mr. Van, quoted, 152
Leyden, g4-i27
Lighthouse, The, 220
Lohengrin, 277
Longfellow, H. W., 149, 263
Love-making, 198, 228
Lucas van Leyden, 123
Luther, 135, 252

M
Mabuse, 286
Maes, Nicolas, 34, 178
Mandeville, Bernard, 40
Maris, James, 14, 181
— Matthew, 14, 145, 181
Marken, 195
Marnix, Elizabeth, 57
Marssum, 247
Marvell, Andrew, ig-22
Mary, Queen of Scots, 2ig
Maurice, Prince, 37, 74
Mauritshuis, The, 66-6g
Mauve, Anton, 14, 187, 205
Max Havelaar, 167
Maximilian of Burgundy, 2g3
Medemblik, 223
Mendoza quoted, 193
Mermaid, The, 202
Mesdag, H. W., 14, 70, 251
Mesdag Museum, 70
Metsu, Gabriel, 121
Michel, Georges, 71
Middelburg, 285, 301
Mieris, Franz van, 120
— William van, 120
Monnickendam, 198
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley,
quoted, 8, 277
Motley quoted, 50-54, 124, 137-143,
189, ig4, 209, 215, 216, 258,
2g6, 298
Muiden, 194
Muiderburg, ig4
"Multatuli," 167
Munster, 114
Music Halls, 287

N

Naarden, 188
Nieuwediep, 220
Noordwyk, g3
Nottingham, 277
Nymwegen, 276

Osterlen, the shipowner, 202
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 25

308

INDEX

Pacheco, 298
Paint, Green, 204, 245, 2893
Parma, Prince of, 50
Pearson, Prof. KarL quoted, 113
Peat, 253
Peter the Great, 205
Philip II., 2g6
Phillips, Sir Richard, 28
Planetarium, The, 244
Poffertjes, 105
Poppema, Bauck, 248
Postcards, Picture, 260
Potter, Paul, 66, 224
Printing, 136
Prior, Matthew, 81
Proverbs, 27g
Purmerend, 203

Queen-Mother, 16 R
Radbod, 223
Regent Pieces, 146
Rembrandt, 64, 66, 107, 118, 119,
157, 176-178, 183
Rhine, The, 3, 276
Rotterdam, 1-18
Ruisdael, Jacob van, 149
Ryks Museum, 175-180
Rynsburg, 92

St. Jacobie Parochie, 238, 240
Santvoort, Dirck van, 133
Schalcken, Godfried, ng
Scheffer, Ary, 35
Scheveningen, go-g2
Schouten, Willem, 215
Scorel, Jan van, 14, 46, 147
Sidney, Sir Philip, 257
Sieges, 137, 2og, 283, 288
Six, Jan, 182
Sneek, 231
Souburg, 2g5
Spanish War, 37, 124, 137, i8g, 209,
215, 258, 280, 281, 283, 288,
296

Spinoza, 92
Stadelijks Museum, 181
Stavoren, 226
Steen, Jan, iog-113
Steengracht, Baron, his pictures, 70
Stoofjes, 22
Stork, The, 15, 240
Suasso Rooms, 181
Synod of Dort, 37

Tasman, Abel, 215
Temple, Sir William, 25, 224, 282
Terburg, Gerard, I7g, 253
Texel, 223, 262
Tholen, 204, 284
Through Noord - Holland quoted,
133, 136, 144, 166, 187, 194, 197,
202, 203, 208
Tobacco, 232
Tortures, 78
Trams, 159
Tromp, Admiral, 56
Tulipe Noire, La, 39, I2g
Tulips, 128

U

Urk, 257
Utrecht, 43-47

Veere, 292
Venice, 33, 153
Venne, Van der, 287
Vermeer of Delft, 12, 58, 67-68, 178
Villa Names, 132
Visscher, Anna, 266
— Roemer, 262
— Tesselschade, 262
Volendam, 202
Vondel, 214, 265
Vyver, The, 66 W
Wafelen, 105
Walcheren, 285
Waxworks, 259
Werf, Van der, 124
Whitman, Walt, 4

INDEX

Widow's Corn, The, 227
Wild Girl of Kampen, The, 255
Wilhelmina, Queen, 160
William the Silent, 49-55, 127, 213,
288, 296
Windmills, 204
Wine, 8
Woudrichem, 40

Zaandam, 204
Zaandvoort, 132
Zeeland, 285
Zutphen, 257
Zuyder Zee, ig9, 202, 214, 226
Zwolle, 253

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED

p  111
YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY i

ill'!. I Iii II! Ii ill i ! I i '!! I! 1"-
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1IIIHIIIUIIII ¦ rsi
3 9002 01407 1303