HOLLAND.
I cannot swim. It is a humiliating confession to make at the best of
times, but the admission at the present moment is an absolutely painful
one. I am staying in a place where I am in hourly fear of falling into
the water. My present address is Amsterdam, and no one but a native can
walk about Amsterdam without an uneasy feeling that sooner or later he
will find himself in a canal. There is a canal in front of my door, my
bedroom window at the back of the house opens on to a canal, and there
is a canal round the corner.
To get to the post-office from my hotel you have to cross fourteen
bridges and walk along the side of seven canals. Some of the bridges
suddenly go up in the air just as you are about to step on them. This is
to let the ships through. It is quite right that ships should pass down
the principal streets of Amsterdam, but it is a little annoying to have
to wait for a small fleet to go by when you are in a hurry to get home.
There is, however, this advantage about the bridge going up suddenly on
end ten feet in the air. It makes a wall between you and the water. Now,
when you walk _along_ the canal instead of going over it there is no
wall, and as in the dark the water looks uncommonly like a roadway, and
you see gentlemen and ladies sitting at their doors opposite, you have
to keep on remembering where you are, or else you would go to step in
the middle of the road out of the way of a crowd or a passing vehicle,
and find yourself in an awkward predicament.
A week ago I never thought I should get to Holland. I was afraid I
should have to spend the rest of my days at Bingen on the Rhine, waiting
for a registered letter. Of all the awful things that can happen to a
foreigner in Germany, there is nothing that can compare with the
tortures and anxieties to which he is subjected while waiting for a
registered letter. According to the law of the land, the postman must,
after preliminary inquiries as to your birth, parentage, and habits,
deliver the said letter personally to you in the room in which your
luggage is, and must further take your receipt for the same in ink, and
said receipt must be signed in the presence of the landlord of the hotel
at which you are staying, and the said landlord is also required to
countersign the document.
These stringent regulations are doubtless very wise precautions, and
they can be fulfilled without any great mental or physical suffering,
provided, when you are on a journey, you remain in your hotel all day
long waiting for the postman. Unfortunately I was not able to do so, and
fell a victim to a series of misfortunes probably unprecedented in the
history of registered letter addresses.
On the day that I expected my registered letter I made a little
excursion from Bingen to Wiesbaden, and returned from Wiesbaden at seven
in the evening. As I entered the portals of my hotel the manager, who
speaks German to me, stepped forward and informed me that the postman
had been there ‘mit einem eingeschriebenen Briefe’ for me. The porter,
who is a Swiss, and addresses me in Italian, came up beaming with
smiles, and told me that during my absence there had been ‘una lettera
raccomandata’ for me. The chambermaid met me on the landing (she is from
Alsace, and likes to keep up her French), and whispered confidentially
that the postman had ‘une lettre chargée’ for me; and the head waiter,
who speaks English on principle, even to the Germans, who can’t
understand it, rushed at me when I came downstairs to dinner and
exclaimed, ‘Sare, sare, de postmans, he bin here with wretcheder letter
for you. He come again seven o’clock to-morrow mornings.’
Now, if there is one thing I abhor and abominate on the Continent it is
the custom of the early postman banging at my bedroom door when I am
fast asleep. I wake with a start, and wonder where I am. I travel
rapidly, and so am one day in France, the next in Holland, the next in
Germany, and perhaps the next in Italy. Under these circumstances, when
first you open your eyes in a strange bedroom it takes you a few seconds
to remember where you are and in what language it is necessary to reply
to the person who is rapping, ‘rapping at your chamber door.’ As a rule,
I generally start up, and exclaim, ‘Eh, what is it? Who are you? Come
in! Entrez! Herein! Entrate!’ and wait for the reply.
Although I was hungry, I was careful to eat sparingly at supper in order
to sleep lightly, and I retired to rest early. At six o’clock I rose and
dressed myself carefully, got the ink in a safe place, put a new pen in
the penholder, spread a clean sheet of blotting-paper on the table, and,
assuming a dignified attitude, waited for the postman. He was to come at
seven. At 9.15 I had to leave by the express for Cologne, _en route_ for
Amsterdam. I sat at the table patiently till eight; no postman. Then I
went downstairs, and made inquiries. ‘Ah, the postman--yes,’ exclaimed
the porter; ‘he came with your registered letter at seven; but he said
you might be asleep, so he wouldn’t disturb. He’ll bring it with the
second delivery, at ten.’
The remark that I made to that porter in reply conveyed a mixed feeling
of rage and despair boiled down into a single word of four letters, of
which the last is superfluous. All my preparations were made to depart
from Bingen at 9.15. The postman was then about the town delivering
letters. I sent after him in all directions to bid him return at once
with my registered letter. Alas! my messengers found him not. I left
word that the letter was to be sent on to Poste Restante, Amsterdam, and
I went away without it.
At Amsterdam I went to the post-office and asked for my registered
letter. ‘There is not one for you,’ was the reply. I fancied I had not
given it time perhaps to get there, so I called again the next day. ‘No
letter.’ I handed in my passport to show the name. The clerk looked in
‘S’ again. ‘No letter.’ I was in despair. At last an idea struck me.
‘Look in “G,” if you please,’ I said. The clerk looked in ‘G’ and
produced my registered letter at once--it had been in ‘G’ for three
days.
The gentleman who attends to my correspondence during my absence has a
playful habit of running the initials of my front names right into the
initial of my surname, and hence the mistake at the post-office. After
all I got my registered letter, but it was a week’s hard work to obtain
it. My earnest advice to travellers on the Continent is ‘never have a
registered letter'; it may detain you in one place for months. If you
have notes sent to you, let them be cut in half, and sent in separate
envelopes to two addresses--one set of halves to your hotel, and the
other to the Poste Restante. Only those who have experience of
registered letters on the Continent and postal eccentricities abroad
will appreciate the value of my little bit of advice.
Holland is to me one of the most interesting countries in Europe. Apart
from the excitement of having to do a bit of Blondin, with the edge of a
canal for your tight-rope, at intervals of a few minutes all day long,
the Dutch themselves furnish you with never-ending study. I love to see
the little Dutch boy of six smoking his clay-pipe or his cigar as he
clings to his mamma’s skirts. There is something at once novel and
startling in finding a Dutch cheese and a penny bun placed in front of
every guest at the breakfast-table. In a land where a public company is
a Maatschappij and nearly every house of restauration announces that the
thirsty traveller can there obtain ‘tapperij, slitterij, and slemp,’
there is always something to amuse you. I had a wild desire to order
‘slitterij and slemp,’ but I couldn’t make up my mind to try and
pronounce them, and I didn’t know what I should get.
Then, again, the names of the streets and the names over the shop-doors
are eminently calculated to tie your eye up in a knot. You get puzzled
when you turn down Wijk 1 and come to Wijk 2, and cross a canal and find
yourself in Wijk 24, and you find some difficulty in telling the waiter
that you want your ‘otbijt’ (breakfast), and your politeness is sorely
tried by having to say ‘Als’ t’v beleft’ whenever you want to say ‘If
you please.’ To come suddenly upon a dog-show and find it called a
Rashondententoonstelling, and upon an announcement which reads
‘Rijnspoorwegmaalschappij aan den daartoe aangewesen vertegenwoordiger’
is calculated to stagger one; but, apart from a language which is trying
alike to the eye and the tongue, Holland is a delightful place, and the
Dutch are a splendid people.
There is a tremendous lot of the English character about the Dutch.
Hoogstraat, Rotterdam, on Sunday night might be High Street, Islington,
at the same time. The boys yell, the girls scream and rush about, and a
dense black crowd surges and shoves up and down and sings and walks
arm-in-arm a dozen wide, and generally comports itself with high spirits
and low habits. A Dutch crowd is English in its rough unconcern for the
delicate shades of etiquette. But individually the Dutch are kind,
hospitable, and most courteous to strangers. The key to the Dutch
character is given in one of their popular ballads;
‘Wij leven vrij, vij leven blij
Op Neerlands dierbren grond;
Ontworsteld aan de slavernij,
Zijn wij door eendragt groot en vrij;
Hier duldt de grond geen dwinglandij
Waar vrijheld eeuwen stond.’
Roughly translated, this is what the above means:
‘We live blithe, we live free,
On Netherland’s dear shore;
Delivered from slavery,
We are through concord free and great;
The land suffers no tyranny
Where freedom has subsisted for ages.’
And your Dutchman does as he jolly well likes wherever he goes, and he
doesn’t care a Rotter, an Amster, or a Schie for anybody.
The Hague! The largest village in the world, the residence of the Court
of Holland. It looks quiet as we steam into the station, but the omnibus
is soon filled. I arrive at the hotel I have chosen. The landlord bows
to the ground; my portmanteau is taken in, and then I am offered a table
in the reading-room to sleep upon. ‘No!’ I exclaim, ‘I require a
bedroom.’ The landlord is desolated; but there is not a bedroom in the
hotel. I will go to another. The landlord is desolated again; but all
the hotels are full. Do I not know that the great Medical Congress
commences to-day, that the town is crammed, and that rooms have been
bespoken a month beforehand? I accept the Congress and the situation,
and I pass the night on a sofa in the reading-room surrounded by the
principal journals of the world.
Before I retired to rest, pillowing my head upon _L’Étoile Belge_ and
using as sheets and blanket and counterpane the _Times_, the _New York
Herald_, the _Neue Freie Presse_, the _Gil Bias_, and the _Kolnische
Zeitung_, I took a stroll through the town. You might have walked on the
people’s heads, as the saying is, though it seems to me the people might
always urge very reasonable objections to your doing so. I didn’t go
very far, because I hate crowds, and because to-morrow I am going to do
the Hague ‘thoroughly’ in six hours and a half. But I got as far as a
very nice square, covered with trees, very Dutch and very pretty. ‘I
will sit down on this nice seat,’ I said to myself, ‘and revel in being
so far away from the ordinary routine of English life.’ At that moment a
man came up, and thrust a bill into my hand, and on it I read: ‘Heden
Avona, Grand Café Chantant. Voor het eerst optreden van de beroemden Mis
Maud Haigh en Ada Blanche, het grootste succes van de London Musicall.’
I have made up my mind to go to Scheveningen, the Dutch Brighton, and
loll by the sea and watch the Mynheers and their good vrows bathe, and
young Holland build castles on the sand. I get as far as the
starting-place of the steam tramway, when a huge flaring bill dazzles
me, half blinds me, and brings me to attention sharper than the voice
of my officer ever did when I was in the rifle-corps. (That was years
ago, when I was a good citizen and wanted to defend my country. My
uniform was pepper-and-salt cloth, with scarlet facings, and I am told
that I looked very well in it when I had it all on; but that I generally
managed to go about with a collar, or a cap, or a pair of boots, or
something that was not in keeping with a strictly military get-up. I
remember once going out in a hurry with my uniform on, and in a fit of
absence of mind putting on a tall chimneypot hat. I met the Duke of
Cambridge at the corner of the street, and I shall never forget his face
as long as I live. But this is a digression.)
The bill which brought me up to attention so smartly informs me in huge
letters that ‘Donderdag 21 Augustus,’ at ‘Zeebad Scheveningen,’ there
will be a ‘Groot Zomer-Feest.’ No wonder I start. This very day that I
have made up my mind to escape the Congress at the Hague, it is the
great summer fête of the season at Scheveningen.
I had a delightful week in Holland. Once again I explored the beauties
of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Scheveningen, and the Hague, and my great
regret was that I had not time to accept an invitation given me to visit
the pauper colonies of Frederiksoord, Wilhelminaoord, and Wilhelmsoord,
where the Dutch have made a most successful attempt to solve one of the
great questions of the day. There is very little mendicancy in Holland,
and pauperism is dealt with in a rational manner. At these colonies each
adult, if able-bodied and willing to work, is provided with a few acres
of land, a cow, a pig, and a few sheep, and the majority of the pauper
colonists are made (after the first outlay) self-supporting for the rest
of their days. There is strict discipline, of course, and the places
are never allowed to be tempting homes for the vagabond. At Veenhuisen
there are also colonies which are more penal in their character. These
are for the idle and disorderly and for beggars.
I wonder that the pauper colonies of Holland and the Dutch system of
dealing with vagrancy have not attracted more attention, seeing how
burning is the question in this country, ‘What shall we do with our
poor?’ The subject is well worth study, and an English delegate or two
sent to the pauper colonies might return with some valuable information.
The Dutch, like the English, do not possess the genius of outdoor
refreshment. The cafés and beer-houses are mostly under cover, and in
all but the larger establishments you sit close, and are not
over-burthened with light; but the Dutch enjoy themselves, and cling to
old customs and old costumes with a conservatism which is part and
parcel of the national character. They have had to fight the ocean for
every inch of Holland, and they are a brave and a grand people who have
triumphed over difficulties which might have caused Hercules to throw up
the sponge. Such a people does not wear its heart on its sleeve and
frivol and indulge in outward show.
The only thing that can be urged against the Dutch is the excessive
cleanliness of the Dutch housewife. She scrubs and cleans and polishes
every day and all day. The streets are generally impassable on Saturday
afternoon, because every window is being washed with water ejected from
an enormous squirt. An army of buckets lines the footpath, an army of
housemaids is kneeling scrubbing at the steps for dear life, auxiliaries
are polishing up door-handles, and everywhere you hear the swish of the
water and the rasp of the besom. You think this cleanliness is charming
at first. After about a week of it, when your shins are black and blue
from falling over buckets and you have rheumatism all over you from
wading knee-deep through rivers of water in the narrow streets, you
think you can do with a little less of it.