A Wanderer in Holland Part 16

The Dutch once liked puns, and perhaps still do so. Again and again in their old inscriptions one finds experiments 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 wors.h.i.+ppers to run together like deer to hear the word of G.o.d.

Within the great church, among other interesting things, are a large number of biers. These also are decorated according to the pretty Hindeloopen usage, one for the dead of each trade. Order even in death. The Hindeloopen 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 symmetrical charm, with two little spires--the least little bit like the infant child of the Amsterdam Gate at Haarlem. 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 d.y.k.es were broken and the water rushed in to the height of five feet. Such must be great times of triumph for the floating population, 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 from his inches, a sea ravener of notable ferocity, whose two-handed sword is preserved at Leeuwarden--although, as M. Havard says, what useful purpose a two-handed sword can serve to an admiral on a small s.h.i.+p 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 keeping with the modern Frisian who hears its voice. This constant occurrence of Oriental freakishness in the architecture 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 very 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 Frisians 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 Great Britain and Ireland is 1.34 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.

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 cla.s.ses of society, and not a few in the higher walks of life, carry 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 p.r.i.c.ker to remove obstructions from the tube of the pipe; a cover of bra.s.s wire for the bowl, to prevent the ashes or sparks of the tobacco from flying out; and sometimes a tinderbox, or bottle of phosphorus, to procure fire, 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 preserves 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 ca.n.a.ls. "A Dutchman's taciturnity forbids his complaining; 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 ca.n.a.l."

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 excursion--Dogs for England--The idle busybodies--The stork--A critical village--The green crop--The d.y.k.e--A linguist--Harlingen--A Dutch picture collector--Franeker--The Planetarium--Dokk.u.m's bad reputation--A discursive guide-book--Bigamy punished--A husband-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 Ess.e.x 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 Suss.e.x, scoured and carried out to its highest power, rather than a small city. The cattle trade of Friesland has here its headquarters, and a farmer needing agricultural implements must fare to Leeuwarden to buy them. The Frisian farmer certainly does need them, for it is his habit to take three crops 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 n.o.ble 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 prosperous 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 air, 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, preferring hard health to overcoats; and the streets and houses reflect this temperament. They are clean and strong and bare--no huddling or niggling architecture. Everything also is bright, 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 beautiful 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, however, is a refinement practised 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 continually catches the eye. These head-dresses are of some value, and are handed on from mother to daughter for generations. No Dutch woman is ever too poor to lay by a little jewellery; 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 interest 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 architectural jewel is the Chancellerie, a very ornate but quite successful building dating from the sixteenth century: first the residence of the Chancellors, recently a prison, and now the Record Office of Friesland. Not until the Middelburg stadhuis shall we see anything more cheerfully gay and decorative. The little Weigh House is in its own way very 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 Chancellerie, 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 poor, is a das.h.i.+ng Carolus Duran and a very beautiful little Daubigny.

Affiliated to the museum is one of the best collections 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 ca.n.a.ls, the beautiful 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 Friesland 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 d.y.k.e. 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 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 costermonger or barrow-pusher. And yet the dog-workers of the Netherlands 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 dissatisfied 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 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 cla.s.s that would at once make it impossible for a strong dog to help in drawing a poor man's barrow. The opportunity would be irresistible to them. The resolutions they would pa.s.s! The votes of thanks to the lieutenant-colonels in the chair!

It was on this little journey to St. Jacobie Parochie 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 road, 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 subst.i.tuted. 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 population of the village had a.s.sembled by the church--not, I fancy, with any intention of entering it--and every eye among them probed me like a corkscrew. It is an out of the world 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 d.y.k.e with a high road upon it, and then by another footpath, or paths, beside green ditches, to the ultimate d.y.k.e which holds Neptune in check. As I walked I was continually conscious of heavy splashes just ahead of me, which for a while I put down to water-rats. But chancing to stand still I was presently aware of the proximity of a huge green frog, the largest 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 water, into which he jumped at a movement of my hand. Walking then more warily 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 d.y.k.e 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 undoubtedly some distance below sea-level, but it is impossible either here or anywhere in Holland to believe in the old and venerable story of the d.y.k.e 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 pa.s.ser-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 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 pa.s.sing, and into this I sprang, joining two women and a dominie, and together we ambled very deliberately 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 s.h.i.+ps bound for England and the world, although Friesland does not now export her produce as once she did. Thirty years ago much of our b.u.t.ter and beef and poultry sailed from Harlingen.

The town lies in the savour of the sea. Masts rise above the houses, s.h.i.+p-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 s.h.i.+pping-clerks played a dreary game of billiards. Beyond the d.y.k.e lay the empty grey sea, with Texel or Vlieland a faint dark line on the horizon. Nothing in the town suggested the twentieth century, 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 energetic than I was, and make sure. Here is M. Havard's account of Mr. Bos and an evening at his house: "Mr. Bos started in life as a farm-boy--then became an a.s.sistant in a shop. Instead of spending his money at the beer-houses he purchased books. He educated himself, and being provident, 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 circ.u.mstances would have considered rest was not undeserved; but Mr. Bos thought otherwise. He became pa.s.sionately fond of the arts. Instead of purchasing 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 pa.s.s 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 cordial reception. She is, however, a most charming woman, combining both amiability and affability, with a venerable appearance; and, notwithstanding her immense 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 fas.h.i.+on--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 departure touched me greatly. 'You think, sir,' said Mr. Bos, 'that because I do not understand 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 ma.n.u.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 att.i.tude 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.