facade, a crooked beam projects, fitted with a pulley and a piece of
cord to raise and lower buckets or baskets. In others, a stag's,
sheep's, or goat's head looks down from a little round window. Under
this head there is a line of whitewashed stones or a wooden beam which
cuts the facade in two. Below the beam there are two large windows,
shaded by awnings like canopies, under which hang little green
curtains, over the upper panes of the window. Under the green curtain
are two white curtains, draped back to reveal a swinging bird-cage or
a hanging basket full of flowers. Below this flower-basket screening
the lower window-panes there is a frame with a very fine wire netting,
which prevents pedestrians from looking into the rooms. Behind the
wire netting, in the divisions between the netting and the framework
of the window, there are tables ornamented with china, glass, flowers,
statuettes and other trifles. On the stone sills of windows which open
into the street there is a row of little flower-pots. In the middle or
at one side of the window-sill there is a curved iron hook which
supports two movable mirrors joined like the backs of a book,
surmounted by a third movable glass, so arranged that from within the
house one can see everything that happens in the street without one's
self being seen. In some houses a lantern projects between the
windows. Below the windows is the house-door or shop-door. If it be a
shop-door, there will be carved above it either a negro's head with
the mouth wide open or the smirking face of a Turk. Sometimes the sign
is an elephant, a goose, a horse's head, a bull, a serpent, a
half-moon, a windmill, and sometimes an outstretched arm holding some
article that is for sale in the shop. If it be a house-door--in which
case it is always kept closed--it bears a brass plate on which is
written the name of the tenant, another plate with an opening for
letters, and a third plate on the wall holding the bell-handle. The
plates, nails, and locks are all kept shining like gold. Before the
door there is frequently a little wooden bridge--for in many houses
the ground floor is made lower than the street--and in front of the
bridge are two small stone pillars surmounted by two balls; below
these stand other pillars united by iron chains made of large links in
the shape of crosses, stars, and polygons. In the space between the
street and the house are pots of flowers. On the window-seats of the
basement, hidden in the hollow, are more flowers and curtains. In the
less frequented streets there are bird-cages on either side of the
windows, boxes full of growing plants, clothes and linen hung out to
dry. Indeed, innumerable articles of varied colors dangle and swing
about, so that it all seems like a great fair.
But without quitting the old town one need only walk toward its
outskirts in order to see novel sights at every step.
In passing through certain of the straight, narrow streets one
suddenly sees before him, as it were, a curtain that has fallen and
cut off the view. It is immediately withdrawn, and one perceives that
it is the sail of a ship passing down one of the canals. At the foot
of other streets a network of ropes seems to be stretched between the
two end houses to stop the passage. This is the rigging of a ship that
is anchored at one of the docks. On other streets there are
drawbridges surmounted by long parallel boards, presenting a fantastic
appearance, as though they were gigantic swings for the amusement of
the light-hearted people living in these peculiar houses. Other
streets have at the foot windmills as high as a steeple and black as
an ancient tower, turning and twisting their arms like large wheels
revolving over the roofs of the neighboring houses. Everywhere, in
short, among the houses, over the roofs, in the midst of the distant
trees, we see the masts of ships, pennons, sails, and what not, to
remind us that we are surrounded by water, and that the city is built
in the very middle of the port.
In the mean time, the shops have opened and the streets have become
animated.
There is a great stir of people, who are busy, but not hurried: this
absence of hurry distinguishes the streets of Rotterdam from those of
certain parts of London, which, from the color of the houses and the
serious faces of the citizens, remind many travellers of the Dutch
city. Faces white and pale--faces the color of Parmesan cheese--faces
encircled by hair flaxen, golden, red, and yellowish--large shaven
faces with beards below the chin--eyes so light that one has to look
closely to see the pupil--sturdy women, plump, pink-cheeked, and
placid, wearing white caps and earrings shaped like corkscrews,--such
are the first things one observes in the crowd.
But my curiosity for the present was not aroused by the people. I
crossed Hoog-Straat and found myself in new Rotterdam.
One cannot decide whether it is a city or a harbor, whether there is
more land than water, or whether the ships are more numerous than the
houses.
The town is divided by long, wide canals into many islands, which are
united by drawbridges, turning bridges, and stone bridges. From both
sides of each canal extend two streets, with rows of trees on the side
next to the water and lines of houses on the opposite side. Each of
these canals forms a port where the water is deep enough to float the
largest vessels, and every one of them is full of shipping throughout
its length, a narrow space being kept clear in the middle which serves
as a thoroughfare for the vessels. It seems like a great fleet
imprisoned in a town.
I arrived at the hour of greatest activity, and took my stand on the
highest bridge of the principal crossway.
Thence I could see four canals, four forests of ships, flanked on
either side by eight rows of trees.
The streets were encumbered with people and merchandise. Droves of
cattle passed over the bridges, which were being raised and swung to
let the ships pass. The moment they closed or lowered again fresh
crowds of people, carriages, and carts passed over them. Ships as
fresh and shining as the models in a museum passed in and out of the
canals, carrying on their decks the wives and children of the sailors,
while smaller boats glided rapidly from ship to ship. Customers
thronged the shops. Servants were washing the walls and windows. This
busy scene with all its movement was made yet more cheerful by its
reflection in the water,--by the green of the trees, the red of the
houses, by the high windmills, whose black tops and white wings were
outlined against the blue sky, and still more by an air of repose and
simplicity never seen in any other northern town.
I examined a Dutch ship attentively.
Almost all of the vessels which are crowded in the canals of Rotterdam
sail only on the Rhine and in Holland. They have only one mast, and
are broad and strongly built. They are painted in various colors like
toy boats. The planks of the hull are generally of a bright grass
green, ornamented at the edge by a white or bright-red stripe, or by
several stripes which look like broad bands of different colored
ribbons. The poop is usually gilded. The decks and the masts are
varnished and polished like the daintiest drawing-room floor. The
hatches, the buckets, the barrels, the sailyards and the small planks
are all painted red, and striped with white or blue. The cabin in
which the families of the sailors live is also colored like a Chinese
joss-house; its windows are scrupulously clean, and are hung with
white embroidered curtains tied with pink ribbons. In all their spare
moments the sailors, the women, and the children are washing,
brushing, and scrubbing everything with the greatest care; and when
their vessel makes its exit from the port, all bright and pompous like
a triumphal car, they stand proudly erect on the poop and search for a
mute compliment in the eyes of the people who are gathered along the
canal.
Passing from canal to canal, from bridge to bridge, I arrived at the
dyke of the Boompjes, in front of the Meuse, where is centred the
whole life of this great commercial town. To the left extends a long
line of gay little steamers, which leave every hour of the day for
Dordrecht, Arnhem, Gouda, Schiedam, Briel, and Zealand. They are
continually filling the air with the lively sound of their bells and
with clouds of white smoke. To the right are the larger vessels that
run between the different European ports, and among them are to be
seen the beautiful three-masted ships that sail to and from the East
Indies, with their names, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Samarang, written on
them in letters of gold, bringing to the imagination those far-off
ports and savage nations like the echo of far-off voices. In front,
the Meuse is crowded by numbers of boats and barges, while its
opposite bank is covered with a forest of beech trees, windmills, and
workshop chimneys. Above this scene is a restless sky, with flashes of
light mingling with ominous darkness, with scudding clouds and
changing forms, which seemed to be trying to reproduce the busy
activity of the earth.
Rotterdam, with the exception of Amsterdam, is the most important
commercial city in Holland. It was a flourishing commercial town as
early as the thirteenth century. Ludovico Guicciardini, in his work on
the Netherlands which I have already mentioned, tells, in proof of the
riches of the town, that in the sixteenth century within a year it
rebuilt nine hundred houses which had been destroyed by fire.
Bentivoglio, in his history of the war of Flanders, calls it "the
greatest and the most important commercial town that Holland
possesses." But its greatest prosperity dates only from 1830; that is
to say, after the separation of Holland from Belgium, which brought to
Rotterdam all that prosperity of which it deprived her rival, Antwerp.
Her situation is most advantageous. By means of the Meuse she
communicates with the sea, and this river can carry the largest
merchantmen into her ports in a few hours; through the same river she
communicates with the Rhine, which brings her whole forests from the
mountains of Switzerland and Bavaria--an immense quantity of timber,
which in Holland is changed into ships, dykes, and villages. More than
eighty splendid ships come and go between Rotterdam and India in the
space of nine months. From every port merchandise pours in with such
abundance that it has to be divided among the neighboring towns.
Meanwhile, Rotterdam increases in size: the citizens are now
constructing vast new store-houses, and are now working on a huge
bridge which will span the Meuse and cross the entire town, thus
extending the railway, which now stops on the left bank of the river,
as far as the gate of Delft, where it will join the railway of the
Hague.
In short, Rotterdam has a more brilliant future than Amsterdam, and
for a long time has been feared as a rival by her elder sister. She
does not possess the great riches of the capital, but she is more
industrious in using what wealth she has; she risks, dares, and
undertakes, after the manner of a young and adventurous city.
Amsterdam, like a wealthy merchant who has grown cautious after a life
of daring speculations, has begun to doze and to rest on her laurels.
To briefly characterize the three Dutch cities, it may be said that
one makes a fortune at Rotterdam, one consolidates it in Amsterdam,
and one spends it at the Hague.
One understands from this why Rotterdam is rather looked down upon by
the other two cities, and is regarded as a _parvenu_. But there is yet
another reason for this: Rotterdam is a merchant city pure and simple,
and is exclusively occupied with her own affairs. She has but a small
aristocracy, which is neither wealthy nor proud. Amsterdam, on the
contrary, holds the flower of the old merchant princes. Amsterdam has
great picture-galleries,--she fosters the arts and literature; she
unites, in short, distinction and wealth. Notwithstanding their
peculiar advantages, these sister cities are mutually jealous; they
antagonize and fret each other: what one does the other must do; what
the government grants to one, the other insists upon having. At the
present moment (_in 1874_), they are opening to the sea two canals
which may not prove serviceable; but that is of no consequence: the
government, like an indulgent father, must satisfy both his elder and
his younger daughter.
After I had seen the port, I went along the Boompjes dyke, on which
stands an uninterrupted line of large new houses built in the Parisian
and London style--houses which the inhabitants greatly admire, but
which the stranger regards with disappointment or neglects altogether;
I turned back, re-entered the city, and went from canal to canal, from
bridge to bridge, until I reached the angle formed by the union of
Hoog-Straat with one of the two long canals which enclose the town
toward the east.
This is the poorest part of the town.
I went down the first street I came to, and took several turns in that
quarter to observe how the lower classes of the Dutch live. The streets
were extremely narrow, and the houses were smaller and more crooked than
those in any other part of the city; one could reach many of the roofs
with one's hand. The windows were little more than a span from the ground;
the doors were so low that one was obliged to stoop to enter them. But
nevertheless there was not the least sign of poverty. Even there the
windows were provided with looking-glasses--spies, as the Dutch call
them; on the window-sills there were pots of flowers protected by green
railings; there were white curtains,--the doors were painted green or
blue, and stood wide open, so that one could see the bedrooms, the
kitchens, all the recesses of the houses. The rooms were like little
boxes; everything was heaped up as in an old-clothes shop, but the copper
vessels, the stoves, the furniture, were all as clean and bright as those
in a gentleman's house. As I passed along these streets, I did not see a
bit of dirt anywhere,--I met with no bad smells, nor did I see a rag, or
a hand extended for alms; one breathes cleanliness and well-being, and
thinks with shame of the squalid quarters in which the lower classes swarm
in our cities, and not in ours only, for Paris too has its Rue Mouffetard.
Turning back to my hotel, I passed through the square of the great new
market. It is placed in the centre of the city, and is not less
strange than all that surrounds it.
It is an open square suspended over the water, being at the same time
a square and a bridge. The bridge is very wide and unites the
principal dyke--the Hoog-Straat--with a section of the town surrounded
by canals. This aerial square is enclosed on three sides by venerable
buildings, between which runs a street long, narrow, and dark,
entirely filled by a canal, and reminding one of a highway in Venice.
On the fourth side is a sort of dock formed by the widest canal in the
city, which leads directly to the Meuse. In this square, surrounded by
carts and stalls, in the midst of heaps of vegetables, oranges and
earthenware, encircled by a crowd of hucksters and peddlers, enclosed
by a railing covered with matting and rags, stands the statue of
Desiderius Erasmus, the first literary celebrity of Rotterdam.
This Gerrit Gerritz--for, like all the great writers of his time, he
assumed the Latin name--this Gerrit Gerritz belonged by his education,
by his literary attainments, and by his convictions to the circle of
the Italian humanists and literati. An elegant, learned, and
indefatigable writer on literature and science, he filled all Europe
with his fame between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; he was
overwhelmed with favor by the popes, sought after and feted by
princes. Of his innumerable works, all of which were written in Latin,
the "Praise of Folly," dedicated to Sir Thomas More, is still read.
The bronze statue, erected in 1622, represents Erasmus dressed in a
fur cloak and cap. The figure is slightly bent forward as if he were
walking, and he holds in his hand a large open book, from which he is
reading. There is a double inscription on the pedestal in Latin and
Dutch, which calls him _vir saeculi sui primarius et civis omnium
praestantissimus_. Notwithstanding this pompous eulogy, poor Erasmus,
stood in the centre of the market-place like a municipal guard,
excites our compassion. There is not, I believe, on the face of the
earth another statue of a scholar that is so neglected by those who
pass it, so despised by those who surround it, and so pitied by those
who look at it. However, who knows but that Erasmus, subtle professor
that he was and will ever be, is contented with his corner, if indeed,
as tradition tells, it be not far from his house? In a little street
near the square, in the wall of a small house which is now used as a
tavern, there is to be seen in a niche a bronze statuette of the great
writer, and under it runs the inscription: _Haec est parva domus magnus
qua natus Erasmus_. Eight out of ten of the inhabitants of Rotterdam
have probably never seen nor read it.
In an angle of the same square is a small house called "The House of
Fear," where upon the wall is a picture whose subject I have
forgotten. According to the tradition it is called "The House of
Fear," because the most prominent people of the city took shelter in
it when Rotterdam was sacked by the Spaniards, and were imprisoned in
it three days without food. This is not the only record of the
Spaniards to be found in Rotterdam. Many buildings, erected during the
time of their dominion suggest the style of architecture then
fashionable in Spain, and many still bear Spanish inscriptions. In the
cities of Holland inscriptions on the houses are very common. The
buildings, like old wine, glory in their antiquity and declare the
date of their construction in large letters on the facades.
In the market square I had every opportunity of observing the
earrings of the women, which deserve to be minutely described.
At Rotterdam, I saw only the earrings which are worn in South Holland,
but even in this province alone the variety is very great. However,
they are all alike in this respect,--instead of hanging from the ears,
they are attached to a gold, silver, or gilded copper semicircle,
which girds the head like a half diadem, its extremities resting on
the temples. The commonest earrings are in the form of a spiral with
five or six circles; they are often very wide, and are attached to the
two ends of the semicircle. They project in front of the face like the
frames of a pair of spectacles. Many of the women wear another pair of
ordinary earrings attached to the spirals. These are very large and
reach almost to the bosom, dangling in front of the cheeks like the
head-gear of Italian oxen. Some women wear golden circles which gird
the forehead also, and are chased and ornamented in relief with
leaves, studs, and buttons. They nearly all dress their hair smooth
and tight, and wear white caps embroidered and trimmed with lace.
These fit the head closely like a night-cap, and cover the neck and
shoulders, descending in the form of a veil, which is also embroidered
and trimmed with lace. These flowing veils, resembling those of the
Arabs, and the peculiar and enormous earrings, give these women an
appearance partly regal and partly barbarous. If they were not so fair
as they are, one would take them for women of some savage land who
had still preserved the ornaments of their native dress. I am not
surprised that some travellers, seeing these earrings for the first
time, have thought that they were at once an ornament and an
instrument, and have asked their use. One might suppose that they are
made thus for another purpose than that of beautifying the
wearer--that they may serve as a defence to female modesty. For if any
impertinent person should attempt to salute a cheek so guarded, he
would encounter these obstacles and be kept at bay some distance from
the coveted object. These earrings, which are worn chiefly by the
peasant-women, are nearly all made of gold, and because of the size of
the spirals and of the other accessories they cost a large sum. But I
saw signs of even greater riches amongst the Dutch peasantry during my
country rambles.
Near the market square stands the cathedral, which was founded toward
the end of the fifteenth century at the time of the decadence of
Gothic architecture. It was then a Catholic church consecrated to St.
Lawrence; now it is the first Protestant church in the city.
Protestantism, with religious vandalism, entered the ancient church
with a pickaxe and a whitewash brush, and with bigoted fanaticism
broke, scraped, rasped, plastered, and destroyed all that was
beautiful and splendid, and reduced it to a bare, white, cold edifice,
such as ought to have been devoted to the Goddess of _Ennui_ in the
time of the _False and Lying Gods_. In the cathedral there is an
immense organ with nearly five thousand pipes, which gives, besides
other sounds, the effect of the echo. There are also the tombs of a
few admirals, decorated with long epitaphs in Dutch and Latin. Besides
these I saw nothing but a great many benches, some boys with their
hats on, a group of women who were chattering loudly, and an old man
with a cigar in his mouth. This was the first Protestant church I had
entered, and I must confess I felt a disagreeable sensation, partly of
sadness, partly of scandal. I compared the dismantled appearance of
this church with the magnificent cathedrals of Italy and Spain, where
a soft and mysterious light shines from the walls, and where one meets
the loving looks of angels and saints through the clouds of incense
directing one's gaze toward heaven; where one sees so many pictures of
innocence that calm one, so many images of pain that help one to
suffer, that inspire one with resignation, peace, and the sweetness of
pardon; where the poor, without food or shelter, spurned from the rich
man's gate, may pray amid marble and gold, as if in a palace,--where,
surrounded by a pomp and splendor that do not humiliate, but rather
honor and comfort their misery, they are not despised;--those
cathedrals, finally, where as children we knelt beside our mothers,
and felt for the first time a sweet assurance that we should some day
live afresh in those deep azure spaces that we saw painted in the
dome suspended above us. Comparing this church with those cathedrals,
I perceived that I was more of a Catholic than I had believed myself
to be, and I felt the truth of those words of Castelar: "Well, yes, I
am a free-thinker, but if some day I were to return to a religion, I
would return to the splendid one of my fathers, and not to this
squalid and nude doctrine that saddens my eyes and my heart."
[Illustration: Interior of the Church of St. Lawrence, Rotterdam.]
From the top of the tower one gets a bird's-eye view of the whole city
of Rotterdam with its steep little red roofs, its wide canals, its
ships standing out against the houses, and all around the city a
boundless plain of vivid green traversed by canals, fringed with
trees, dotted with windmills and villages hidden in masses of verdure
and showing only the points of their steeples. At that moment the sky
was clear, and it was possible to see the gleaming waters of the Meuse
from Bois-le-Duc almost to its mouth. I distinguished the steeples of
Dordrecht, Leyden, Delft, the Hague, and Gouda; but nowhere, either
near or far off, was there a hill, a rise in the ground, or a curve to
break the straight even line of the horizon. It was like a sea, green
and motionless, on which the steeples were the masts of anchored
ships. The eye wandered over that vast plain with a sense of repose,
and for the first time I experienced that indefinable feeling which
the Dutch landscape inspires. It is a feeling neither of sadness, of
pleasure, nor of weariness, yet it embraces them all, and holds one
for a long time motionless, without knowing at first what one is
looking at or of what one is thinking. I was suddenly aroused by
strange music; at first I could not tell whence it came. Bells were
ringing a lively chime with silvery notes, now breaking slowly on the
ear, as if they could scarcely detach themselves from each other; now
blending in groups, in strange flourishes; now trilling, and swelling
sonorously. The music was merry and fantastic, although of a somewhat
primitive character, it is true, like the many-colored town over which
it poured its notes like a flight of birds; indeed, it seemed to
harmonize so well with the character of the city that it appeared to
be its natural voice, an echo of the quaint life of the people,
reminding me of the sea, the solitude, and the cottages, and at the
same time it amused me and touched my heart. All at once the music
stopped and the hour struck. At the same moment other steeples flung
on the air other chimes, of which only the highest notes reached me,
and when their chimes were ended they likewise struck the hour. This
aerial concert, as I was told when its mechanism was explained to me,
is repeated at every hour in the day and night by all the steeples of
Holland, and the chimes are national airs, psalms, Italian and German
melodies. Thus in Holland the hour sings, as though to draw the mind
from contemplating the flight of time, and it sings of country, of
religion, and of love, with a harmony surpassing all the sounds of
earth.
Now, to continue in order my story of what I saw and did, I must
conduct my readers to a coffee-house and beg them to sit beside me at
my first Dutch dinner.