A Wanderer in Holland Part 17

Franeker is proud also of her tombstones in the great church, but it is, I fancy, Eisa Eisinga whom she most admires. 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 princ.i.p.al street has an avenue of elm trees down its midst, in the place where a ca.n.a.l would be expected; but ca.n.a.ls 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 Dokk.u.m, 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 ca.n.a.ls in a Norfolk wherry--gives Dokk.u.m 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 Dokk.u.m straightway ma.s.sacred. 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 known as the "Vereenigung tot bevordering van vreemdelingenverkeer," whose ambition, as their t.i.tle suggests, is to draw strangers to the town; and as part of their campaign they have issued a 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 pa.s.sage with. Is Frisia--Old Frisia--to lag behind? Impossible! Natural condition as well as population 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 surrounded 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 lan, hwer jy op geane, Dat oph.e.l.le is ut gulle se; Hwer binne brusender lansdouwen, Oerspriede mei sok hearlik fe?'

('Behold the soil you are walking on, The soil, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 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 p.r.o.nounced at Leeuwarden April 29th, 1536.

But the best part 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 Mrs. Van Camstra van Haarsma, a husband-tamer and eccentric, of whom a poet wrote:--

She breaks pipe and gla.s.s 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?

When not hen-pecking her husband this powerful lady was rearing wild animals or corresponding with the Princess Caroline.

At Boxum, was fought, on 17th January, 1586, hard by the church, the battle of Boxum, between the Spaniards and the Frisians. The Frisians were defeated, and many of them ma.s.sacred 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 superst.i.tion and author of _The Enchanted World_. Near by was Martena Castle, where Alderman Sjuck van Burmania once kept a crowd of a.s.sailants 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 Berlik.u.m 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 a.s.sailants from Groningen. Less successful than Sjuck, after repelling them thrice she was overpowered and thrown into prison. While there she produced twins, thus proving herself 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 repelled the enemy on the walls again and again.

Near Roodkerk is a lake called the Boompoel, into which a coach and four containing six inside pa.s.sengers, 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 cla.s.s--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 a.s.sured 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 surely is civilisation, I said.

The Doelen was also the only inn in Holland where an inclusive bottle of claret was placed before me on the table; and it was the only inn where I had the opportunity of eating ptarmigan with stewed apricots--a very happy alliance.

Good however as was the Groningen 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 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 sh.e.l.l), 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 sixteenth century. At first the shooting clubs met only to shoot--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 more beautifully liquid. I sat for a long time in a cafe overlooking the great square, feeding a very greedy and impertinent terrier, 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 Dutchmen 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, 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 praises 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 G.o.dsend to those that remained, who had no one to supervise them; and feeling it as a mission I stayed resolutely in the church long after I was tired of it, writing a little and examining the pictures by Hendriex, a modern 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. There it lay, that afternoon, within call, while the weary boys pattered from 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 observed in the fire, a visitor is coming. When bread has large holes in it, the baker is said to have pursued his wife through the loaf. When a wedding morning is rainy, it is because the bride has forgotten to feed the cat.

I tarried awhile at Zwolle on the Yssel (a branch 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 Hals' studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgomaster 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 Burgomaster 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. Rembrandt 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 bright 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 towers 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 unpleasing. A few dear old women in lace caps were present, 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 understood, 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 reaching Zwolle immediately recognised 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 fis.h.i.+ng population and no one seems to be wealthy. Indeed, being without munic.i.p.al 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 delightful stadhuis in red brick and white stone, with a gay little crooked bell-tower and statues of great men and great qualities on its facade.

For one possession alone, among many, the stadhuis must be visited--its halls of justice, veritable paradises 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 munic.i.p.al fathers, enthroned in oak seats of unsurpa.s.sed gravity and dignity, amid all the sombre insignia of their office. The chimney-piece is an imposing monument of abstract 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 doc.u.ments, gold and silver work, the metal and leather squirts 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 arranged 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 the fathers of the town place the munic.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s 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 functionary was explaining the financial state of the town. He a.s.serted that one of the princ.i.p.al 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 considerably 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 destroying power of the Spaniards. It was at Zutphen that they had first given rein to their l.u.s.t 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 butchers, 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."