la Plage on the Kurhaus terrace, all this bustle and late afternoon
animation is bound to prove decidedly diverting. The broad, paved
plazas that lie like carpets between him and the dunes are steadily
filling with a considerable proportion of the thirty thousand
Hollanders and Germans who summer here, and acquaintances are
exchanging civilities and joining and taking leave of little groups
in a way to make the general picture a brilliant, restless, and
bewildering interweaving of color. As the open-air tables are filling,
the activity of the waiters approaches hysteria, and the verandas
and saloons of the ponderous Kurhaus begin to hum with the advent
of the evening guests. Copies of “Le Courrier de Schéveningue” pass
from hand to hand as the curious scan the lists of the latest arrivals
or look over the various musical programmes of the evening. Out on
the terraces, the ornate little newspaper kiosks attract groups of
loiterers and gradually take on the character of social centres, and
as these companies increase, one thinks of stock exchanges and the
rallying about the trading standards. The matinée at the Seinpost
concludes and out troops its audience to swell the human high tide.
Bright bits of color are afforded by the blue uniforms and yellow
facings of Holland infantrymen dotted here and there in the press. It
is odd to see the usually arid and monotonous dunes grow brilliant with
an artificial blossoming of fashionable millinery, where by nature
there is nothing better than a scraggy growth of stringy heather, a
little rosemary and broom, or the dry stem of the “miller.”
It is at this hour, when “the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,”
that the stolid natives array themselves and sally forth, like Delft
tiles come to life, to the amused amazement of the visitors. Your
Scheveningen man is wont to go about his duties, during the day,
flopping vigorously in vivid red knickerbockers, voluminous as sails
and quite as crudely patched; but when he makes a point of toilet he
appears in gray homespun, the knickerbockers cut from the same pattern
as the red ones, but there is a jacket closed up to the chin with two
rows of large buttons, a red handkerchief twisted about the neck, a
small cap with a glazed peak, and, of course, the wooden _klompen_.
Such a display richly deserves attention, but what can the poor man
expect when his wife appears in her full regalia! She, too, is shod
with _klompen_,—though you have to take that on faith in view of the
dozen or two of petticoats that balloon above them,—and her waist
is a gay butterfly of variegated embroidery, while her headgear is
about the most incredible thing conceivable. You might, at a distance,
mistake them for bishops with their mitres tilted back at a rakish
angle. Nor is it always of the one pattern. Usually it is a sort of
long white cap of linen, embroidered at the edges; and the wearer adds
a touch of coquetry in the shape of a long curl hanging at either side.
But not infrequently you see a formidable contrivance of vastly more
consequence; it consists, first, of a skullcap of polished gold or
silver, technically known as a _hoofdijzer_, pierced at the top for
ventilation and cut to leave room for the exposure of the forehead, and
over this is drawn an elaborate cape of lace, with gold ornaments of
spirals and squares dangling over the ears. This triumph of millinery
never fails to elicit cries of delight from feminine visitors, or to
set mere man to chuckling. It is most likely to form a part of the
impressive gear of the nurses from the provinces, who have more money
for such uses than the wives of the fishermen; and the things that are
told to newcomers as to the significance of this or that ornament is
the boldest advantage ever taken of innocent credulity. They undertook
to tell me that you could distinguish between married, single, and
engaged women by glancing at the ornaments—I wonder if you can! It is
said that parents present their daughters with this headdress on the
day of their confirmation; and that it is a fine sight to behold the
array of them at kermesstime with their wearers, six or eight abreast,
arm in arm, rushing down the streets in the odd dances peculiar to
those festivals, droning monotonous tunes.
To my way of thinking the unflagging industry of the Scheveningen women
is a matter of quite as much note. One seldom sees them without their
knitting, even when they are recreating, and as they stroll along,
laughing and chatting together, their fingers, all unnoticed by them,
are flashing with extraordinary speed like things of an independent
volition. Many of the women wear no sleeves and take great pride in
their strong, round arms; and this, I am told, is the case even in
winter when they are cracked and purple from exposure to the cold.
The faces of the elder fisher-folk are studies in wrinkles. Their
eyes are brave and quizzical, but with a certain settled hardness,
not perhaps to be unlooked-for in men and women who come of a stock
that for five hundred years has forced even the savage North Sea to
yield them a livelihood. They show next to nothing of humor, but
rather a stern and weary hopelessness. Strong faces are these, hard,
weather-beaten faces, but eloquent of tenacity and desperate courage.
They have been called “the most poetic and original of all Hollanders.”
They are grave, dignified, and self-reliant; and as they pass you by
they show their invariable courtesy in a bow and a quiet “Goe ’n Dag.”
One has only to see them to feel the propriety and justification of the
boast in their national song:—
“Wilhelmus van Nassouwe,
Ben ick van Duijtschen Bloedt!”
Fishermen naturally suggest ships, and if you glance down the beach
you will usually see several of them drawn up to the edge of the
water, with the red, white, and blue of Holland at the masthead.
During the mid-summer season the fishing-fleet is away on the cruise
for red herring off the coasts of Scotland, but there are always a
few that could not get away, and so we have the famous Scheveningen
_bom_ on its native strand. How the artists have delighted in these
lumbering, flat-bottomed tubs, ponderous of mast and weathered of
sail! Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, and the rest have familiarized
the world with this fantastic and picturesque craft. Who would buy a
painting of Scheveningen unless it showed a _bom_ or two hauled up on
the beach? And that is precisely the _raison d’ être_ of the _bom_—it
can be hauled up on the beach. Otherwise, what should a Scheveningen
fisherman do with a boat, having no deep-water harbor at hand nor
anchorage facility? There have, through the centuries, been many other
styles of Dutch fishing-boats,—busses, loggers, hookers, sloops,
pinken, etc.,—and at times, when the forehanded Hollanders have made
away with the lion’s share of the foreign catch, outsiders have lost
patience and classed them all as “Dutch toads”; but there have been
no _boms_ but Scheveningen _boms_. Nowadays they have had to build
them larger and they do not beach so easily, and it is probably only a
matter of time when steam vessels will supplant them altogether; but
when that evil hour strikes the chiefest picturesque glory of this
little village will have forever departed.
There used to be vast excitement, in the old days, over the first
herring catch of the season, and it was always hurried ashore and
conveyed to the king’s table with no end of flourish and punctilio.
Over at Vlaardingen they used to post a watchman on the church tower,
and when he made out the first boat coming in he would hoist a blue
flag and all the people trooped joyfully down to the wharves shouting
a song called “De Nieuwe Haring.” Scheveningen, indeed, still presents
one of its most picturesque scenes when the returning fishermen arrive
and their catch is auctioned off, down the beach near the lighthouse,
with much more of gusto and excitement than you would imagine these
phlegmatic people could muster. The shrewd Scheveningen fishermen have
learned how to eke out the bare three hundred florins they realize from
a year’s fishing by turning new tricks in the way of rope-spinning,
sail-making, ship-building, and curing and smoking the herring. The
fish go into this latter process as “steur haring” and emerge as
“bokking”—if that means anything to anybody!
The long-beaked curlew that flashes overhead with hoarse, raucous news
of the sea looks down at this hour on pleasant and curious sights as he
wings his swift circle above the Scheveningen neighborhood. The placid
village of twisted alleys, of innumerable “Tabak te Koop” signs, of
queer little gabled houses and unpainted fishermen’s huts, has emptied
its good folk into its narrow main street which, fickle of name,
starts out as Keizer-Straat, almost immediately becomes Willem-Straat,
and within a moment is the Oud-Weg. Here one sees in actual life the
fascinating things he has marveled over in the canvases of Teniers,
Jan Steen, and Gerard Dou,—good Dutch _vrows_ supper-marketing. There
they go, ballooning along, bargaining and bustling from shop to shop,
storing capacious hampers with game and cheeses, and every grim line in
their faces shouts a challenge to the shopmen to best them by so much
as a _stuiver_ if they can. From time to time, quaint little children
like sturdy Dutch toys escape from the press and clatter off home, with
an air of vast responsibility, hugging in both arms a brown loaf of
bread a yard long. How it recalls the bright pages of “Hans Brinker”;
and as you catch a glimpse of the broad canal down the street it is
natural enough to speculate upon the probability of Gretel’s winning
another pair of silver skates before you get back to Scheveningen next
summer.
In the meadows back of the village women in blue shawls are drying
and mending fishing-nets, nor do they so much as raise their heads
as the yellow, double-decked tramway car rumbles past on its trip to
The Hague. If all seats are occupied the car will display a large
sign marked “Vol,” and rattle along oblivious to appeals from any and
all who ask to get on. It is but three scant miles to the beautiful
capital of Holland and the tramway makes it in ten minutes—a notable
concession by leisurely Holland to the time-saving spirit of the age,
in view of other days when they devoted a half-hour to making the same
journey by canal barge. The broad, smooth highway that the yellow
car follows is, as every one knows, one of the favorite roads of
Europe. As the curlew looks down, between five and six o’clock of any
bright summer afternoon, he is sure to find it thronged with handsome
equipages and to see gay companies in each little wayside inn that
peeps out from the deep shade of the noble trees. The desired touch
of the foreign and unusual is supplied to the visitor in the scores
of heavy carts drawn by frisking, barking dogs; in the ever-present
windmills beating the air with long, awkward arms; and in dozens of
storks that cock their wise heads over the edges of their nests and
regard the passing show with philosophic amusement, patient as the old
apple-women of Amsterdam.
The Scheveningen _Bosch_ is one of the most delightful woods
imaginable. It is national property, and no private park could be more
beautifully kept up. A ball would roll with perfect smoothness down its
driveways of crushed gravel, and even Ireland would be taxed to equal
the vivid greenness of its lawns. This whole fair forest is studded
with villas of the aristocracy and even of royalty. Their wide verandas
and orchards and flowery lawns move the most contented to envy a
Hollander the comfort he takes in his _zomerhuis_. To know the _Bosch_
rightly it must be walked through; and the more leisurely and the
oftener, the better. It is not only a lovely woodland set with charming
homes, but everything a fine forest should be. The green and coppery
beeches, the hardy oaks and elms, and the living embroidery of bright
flowers perfume the air with delicate odors; and the wind in the lofty
tops makes sweet and haunting music. Deep down in the clear mirror of
the canals, splotches of broad leaf shadows lazily float and dapple
like drowsy fishes. Through the deep foliage you catch occasional
glimpses of open, sunny meadows, with cows contentedly grazing; and you
come to revel in every vague and tranquil sensation.
In the midst of this beautiful forest, two centuries and a half
ago, the best-beloved and most widely read of Holland’s poets—the
venerable Jacob Cats—composed his madrigals and moral fables, and so
passed the last eight years of his eventful career. Rembrandt loved and
painted him, and a monument stands to his memory in his native town of
Brouwershaven. They say his books are in every peasants’ hut and his
verses in every peasant’s heart. His cottage was at Zorgvliet, a few
steps from Scheveningen, near where the Queen Mother now has her summer
home, and there in the garden of the Café de la Promenade they will
show you the old stone table at which he wrote, with the hole he cut in
it for his inkstand.
Wild game throng the wooded inner dunes. Partridges, hares, and rabbits
abound in the underbrush, and the polder meadows yield the finest grade
of mallard ducks. The pines and firs are resonant with the calls of
cuckoos, pheasants, and nightingales. Farmers clear patches of ground
to serve as finch flats, which they call _vinkie baans_; and there, in
the autumn, they snare chaffinches which they sell for a cent apiece,
to be used as a garnishment in serving other game.
As you look out across the Scheveningen dunes and watch the day
declining, stirring thoughts come trooping to mind of the gallant
scenes these bleak shores have witnessed. Off yonder, two centuries
and a half ago, fell the brave Tromp, hero of thirty-three sea fights.
On the bridge of his lofty-sterned Brederode he died, as every true
warrior longs to die, in the foremost thick of the fray. “I am done;
but keep up a good heart,” were his last words as they carried him into
his cabin. Next day they brought his body to these shores and bore it
away to lie in the old gray church at Delft beside the revered William
the Silent. “The bravest are the tenderest,” and his war-hardened
sailors were not ashamed to weep as heartily for him as the little
children, fifty years before, had wept in the streets for the great
William. Half a dozen years later a shouting multitude thronged this
beach and waved a _bon voyage_ to Charles II of England as he sailed
homeward to his recovered throne, to restore a licentious court and
renew such royal revels as had already cost England a revolution.
Another dozen years roll around, and Scheveningen looks on while the
fleets of France and England are battered to wreckage by the cannon
of Holland’s pet hero, the intrepid De Ruyter. A century or so more,
and once again this village is the storm centre of Holland’s hopes and
fears as William Frederick I eludes the pursuing French troops and a
little Scheveningen fishing-smack bears the whole royal family away
in safety to Germany. And when he came back in triumph, twenty years
later, it was at Scheveningen that he landed, and at the very spot
where yonder gray obelisk now stands in commemoration.
And now through chilly mists the sun, a vast bloated orange, settles
down into the glowing wastes of the desolate North Sea. The roaring
surf spreads glittering carpets far up the beach. It has suddenly
become a region of placid power and glory, something quite other than
the fabled home of monsters and terrors, of tempest and shipwreck.
That vessel in the offing, with the black hull and the crimson sails,
may be the very Flying Dutchman’s own; but still you would like to
be on it and so much nearer the sinking sun. The sky is astounding;
like a glorified Holland! There you see cloud-islands more wonderful
than Walcheren; gray wastes that beggar the Zuyder Zee; sky dunes that
stretch beyond Helder or the Hook; meadows more gorgeous than the tulip
fields of Haarlem; celestial flora more pure and palpitating than any
fairest, faintest bloom in any rarest, dimmest glade throughout the
whole woodland of The Hague. It is Holland _in excelsis_.
[Illustration]
BERLIN
6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.
While the sun is still sinking behind the Potsdam hills that victorious
old Fighting Fritz loved so well, and the hero himself, astride his
bronze charger, in cloak and cocked hat in the statue group on the
Linden, seems riding slowly home to his neighboring palace with the
lengthening shadows, the vast industrial army of the German capital
issues in myriad units from its individual barracks and debouches
on the spacious squares and broad avenues in quest of the evening’s
diversions. It is the lull hour. The long, hard day’s work over,
the amusements of the night are shortly to begin. In this pleasant
interval the bustling, aggressive city seems pervaded with a spirit
of relaxation, and no more opportune moment presents for catching the
Berliner off his guard and really seeing him as his intimates know him.
This man, it should be borne in mind, is a type unto himself. The
light-hearted Rhinelander, the solemn Bavarian, and the plodding,
self-reliant Saxon are only half-brothers to the energetic, systematic,
masterful Prussian whose most boisterous and irrepressible development
is the Berliner. He plays as hard as he works, yielding to none in
the thoroughness of either. He has a strong individuality, but with
something of coarseness in feeling. He is enormously self-assertive,
indefatigable, and patient, but scratch through his veneer of culture
and you find a basis that is rude and often boorish. His optimism is
sublime and his spirits correspondingly high. At work he is engrossed
and determined, but when it is laid aside for the day he enters as
eagerly upon his pastimes; and it is then one finds him witty and merry
to a degree, but, at times, with the loudness and ostentation of a
mischievous, unruly schoolboy. He is the sort of man that has a great
time in zoölogical gardens, and goes picnicking in his best clothes.
Intellectually, he is still as Buckle described him in the “History
of Civilization in Europe,” the foremost man in the world when he is
a scholar and the most ordinary in the main. Europeans dub him “a
practical hedonist”; in America we should refer to him as “rough and
ready.”
As soon as supper is over these joyous and virile people display their
primitive scorn of roofs and flock into the open for fun and frolic;
yet supper, itself, has been one of Gargantuan proportions at which
an observer, recalling Rabelais, might well have trembled for palmers
in the cabbage. From the four quarters they gather in force to hang
about the fountains in the roomy squares or loaf on the Linden benches
until the call of the concert-hall or the comfortable, tree-shaded
beer-garden allures to those bibulous indulgences that old Tacitus,
eighteen centuries ago, noted as peculiarly their own. For silent
now are the forges and furnaces of Spandau, the clothing _Fabriks_
of the northeast suburbs, the factories of the east end, and all the
skilled industries of the south. The artist colony of Moabit may no
longer complain of drilling regiments, and the mammoth business blocks
they call _Höfe_ have swelled the throng of clerks on Friedrich and
Leipziger Strassen. All have supped; and merchant and laborer fare
forth _en famille_ to take the evening air.
With what heartiness and placidity does this multitude enjoy its ease!
It is a trick your highstrung peoples beyond the borders can never
get the hang of. It calms one merely to look on at the contentment
and satisfaction with which they stroll slowly and merrily along,
chattering animatedly in their deep guttural speech, and greeting
friends with punctilious bows and infinite hat-raisings. With every
other word they “bend their backs and they bow their heads,” like the
celebrated character of “Dorothy.” There is an agreeable absence of
rush and hurry. Ponderous and massive, but with an erectness bred of
military training, they wear their sombre, loose-fitting clothes with
palpable relish, for comfort and inconspicuousness are virtues of price
with the Teuton. The stately _gnädige Frau_ treads heavily in rustling
silk, the mincing _Fräulein_ favors ribbons and flounces, and _mein
Sohn_ is dapper in a tight suit, lavender gloves, and the indispensable
little cane. Chaperons, of course, abound; for if a young man were
to walk abroad alone with an unmarried girl in Berlin he would be
consigning her at once to a plane with the painted _nymphe de pavé_.
The surroundings are animated. Motor-cars roll sedately along with the
least din possible and with scrupulous regard for speed limits, and a
prodigious assortment of cheap and comfortable _Droschke_ cabs hovers
expectantly about with their drivers decked out in long coats and
patent-leather hats. From time to time an officer in brilliant uniform
or a diplomat in severe black, with a row of orders across his breast,
posts past hurriedly to dine out in formal state; and with knowledge of
the terrifying discomfort of a German social function comes confidence
that most of them look from their smart broughams with profound envy at
the jovial, care-free crowds that are so boisterously happy along the
way.
The visitor, who is struggling with an uncomfortable suspicion that he
may be missing something in the other two rings of the circus, might do
well to climb the Kreuzberg and take the whole show in like a map. He
has probably already learned that although the city lies prostrate on a
level sandy plain as guiltless of a hill as a billiard table, yet the
indomitable Berliner has repaired this oversight of nature by himself
building a fine little mountain at a convenient spot due south. That
is one of the advantages in rearing your own hills—you can have them
where you want them.
In the sullen red of the dying day one beholds from the battlements of
the Kreuzberg’s Gothic tower a monster plain, twenty-five miles in an
irregular circle, smothered in house-tops, and barred and seamed with
an intricate entanglement of carefully made streets. He sees parks and
squares in surprising profusion, and an abundance of foliage in spite
of the sand; and there is a sluggish river winding a serpentine course,
a _Ringbahn_ encircling the suburbs, an elevated road that dives
underground and becomes a subway, and surface lines without number. One
could fancy a great cross in the centre of the city, whose upright is
the long Friedrichstrasse and whose broad crosspiece is the splendid
Unter den Linden. The last rays of the sun gild the roofs and spires
of each of the “town districts,” which the Prussian Diet has recently
merged into a Greater Berlin of four million souls—Wilmersdorf,
whose “millionaire peasants” became rich overnight by selling their
lands to speculators; Charlottenburg the Pampered, that has increased
tenfold in thirty years; Rixdorf the Prosperous; and Schöneberg the
Renowned—which is well worth a sentimental journey to the graves of
the Brothers Grimm under the cypresses of St. Matthew’s Cemetery, if
only out of gratitude for the familiar versions of “Cinderella,” “Tom
Thumb,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and so many others of our childhood’s
companions. The sunset glory falls where glory is due—on a region at
our feet of ancient martial fame; the little village that the Knights
Templar held for centuries, and the broad Tempelhofer Feld,—Prussian
drill-ground for two hundred years,—whither all Berliners turn
holiday-faces when the Kaiser reviews the Guards in spring and autumn,
and journey cockishly homeward when the show is over, “snapping their
fingers at the foeman’s taunts.”
In every section that the Kreuzberg looks down upon, and still farther
away under the fading western skies, pleasant signs of recreation
abound. The Linden overflows, the lesser streets are swollen streams,
and every open square is a ruffled lake of leisurely humanity. A
strong tide of loiterers sets through the most popular of Berlin’s
breathing-places—the stately Tiergarten—and ripples there about the
bases of statues and monuments, the marble settles of the Sieges-Allée,
and the sculptured benches of the _Anlagen_ of the Brandenburg Gate.
There is the usual deep eddy before the graceful statue of the adored
Queen Louise, which is half-buried in flowers by a grateful people
every March 10. The bridle-paths teem with lines of aristocratic
riders, with possibly the Kaiser himself among them. Indeed, no other
part of the city may compare with the Tiergarten at this hour, so
beautiful is it in turf and tree and so delightful in heavy fragrance.
No wonder that Berliners have so long regarded it as the best last
glimpse of life—to fight duels in by dawn in other days, and to take
their own lives in now.
[Illustration: BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN]