Bentivoglio has said, is to be at a feast or at some repast. But they
are not epicures; they are voracious: they prefer quantity to quality.
Even in ancient times they were famous among their neighbors, not only
for the roughness of their habits, but for the simplicity of their
diet. They were called eaters of milk and cheese. They usually eat
five times a day. When they rise they take tea, coffee, milk, bread,
cheese, butter; shortly before noon comes a good breakfast; before
dinner they partake of some light nourishment, such as a glass of wine
and biscuits; then follows a heavy dinner; and late in the evening, to
use their own words, some trifle, so as not to go to bed with an empty
stomach. They eat in company on many occasions. I do not mean on the
occasions of christenings or marriages, as in other countries, but,
for example, at funerals. It is the custom that the friends and
relatives who have accompanied the funeral procession shall go home
with the family of the deceased, where they are then invited to eat
and drink, and they generally do great honor to their hosts. If there
were no other witnesses, the Dutch paintings are there to testify to
the great part eating has always played in the life of this people.
Besides the infinite number of domestic subjects, in which we might
say that dishes and bottles are the protagonists, nearly all the large
pictures representing historical personages, burgomasters, and
national guard, show them seated at table in the act of eating,
carving, or pouring out wine. Even their hero, William the Silent, the
incarnation of New Holland, shared this national love of the table. He
had the first cook of his time, who was so great an artist that the
German princes sent beginners to perfect themselves at his school, and
Philip II., in one of those periods of apparent reconciliation with
his mortal enemy, begged for him as a present.
But, as I said, the principal characteristic of the Dutch kitchen is
abundance, not delicacy. The French, who are _bon-vivants_, find much
to criticise. I remember a writer of certain _Memoires sur la
Hollande_ who inveighs with lyrical fervor against the Dutch cuisine,
saying, "What style of eating is this? They mix soup and beer, meat
and comfits, and devour quantities of meat without bread." Other
writers of books about Holland have spoken of their dinners in that
country as if they were domestic misfortunes. It is superfluous to say
that all these statements are exaggerations. Even a fastidious palate
can in a very short time accustom itself to the Dutch style of
cooking. The substantial part of the dinner is always a dish of meat,
with which four or five side dishes of salt meat and vegetables are
served. These every one mixes according to his taste and eats with the
principal dish. The meats are excellent, the vegetables, which are
cooked in a thousand different ways, are even better. Those which they
cook in an especially worthy manner are potatoes and cabbages, and
their way of making omelets is admirable. I do not speak of game,
fish, milk-foods, and butter, because their praises need not be
repeated, and I am silent for fear of being too enthusiastic about
that celebrated cheese into which, when once one has plunged one's
knife, one continues with a sort of increasing fury, thrusting and
gashing and abandoning one's self to every style of slashing and
gouging until the rind is empty, and desire still hovers over the
ruins.
A stranger who dines for the first time in a Dutch restaurant sees a
number of strange things. In the first place, the plates are very
large and heavy, in proportion to the national appetite; in many
places the napkins are of very thin white paper, folded at three
corners, and ornamented with a printed border of flowers, with a
little landscape in the corner, and the name of the restaurant, or
_Bon appetit_, printed on them in large blue letters. The stranger, to
be sure of having something he can eat, orders roast beef, and they
bring him half a dozen great slices as large as a cabbage leaf; or a
steak, and they bring him a lump of very rare meat which would suffice
for a family; or fish, and they set before him an animal as long as
the table; and each of these dishes is accompanied by a mountain of
mashed potatoes and a pot of strong mustard. They give him a slice of
bread a little larger than a dollar and as thin as a wafer. This is
not pleasant for us Italians, who eat bread like beggars, so that in a
Dutch restaurant, to the great surprise of the waiters, we are obliged
to ask for more bread every moment. On any one of these three dishes
and a glass of Bavarian or Amsterdam beer a man may venture to say he
has dined. Any one who has a lean pocket-book need not dream of wine
in Holland, for it is frightfully dear; but, as the people's purses
there are generally well filled, nearly all the Dutch, from the middle
class up, drink wine, and there are few other countries where there is
so great an abundance and variety of foreign wines, particularly of
those from French and Rhenish vineyards.
Those who like liqueurs after dinner are well served in Holland. There
is no need to mention that the Dutch liqueurs are famous the world
over. The most famous of them all is "Schiedam," an extract of
juniper-berries that takes its name from the little town of Schiedam,
only a few miles from Rotterdam, where there are more than two hundred
distilleries. To give an idea of the quantity made, it is sufficient
to say that thirty thousand pigs are fed annually on the dregs of the
distilled material. The first time one tastes this renowned Schiedam
he swears he will never take another drop of it if he lives to be a
hundred years old; but, as the French proverb says, "Who has drunk
will drink again," and one begins to try it with a great deal of
sugar,--then with a little less,--then with none at all, until,
_horribile dictu_! under the excuse of the damp and the fog one tosses
down two small glasses with the freedom of a sailor. Next on the list
comes Curacoa, a fine feminine liqueur, not nearly so strong as
Schiedam, but much stronger than that nauseating sweetened stuff that
is sold in other countries under the recommendation of its name. After
Curacoa there are many others liqueurs, of every gradation of strength
and flavor, with which an expert winebibber can indulge in every style
of intoxication, slight, heavy, noisy, or stupid, and whereby he can
dispose his brain to see the world in the manner most pleasing to his
humor, much as one would do with an optical instrument by changing the
color of the lens.
The first time one dines in Holland a curious surprise awaits one when
the bill is paid. I had eaten a dinner which would have been scanty
for a Batavian, but was ample for an Italian, and, knowing how very
dear everything is in Holland, I was waiting for one of those bills to
which Theophile Gautier says the only reasonable answer is a
pistol-shot. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when the waiter
said I was to pay _forty sous_, and, as all kinds of money circulate
in the large Dutch cities, I put on the table forty sous in silver
francs, and waited to give my friend time to correct me if he had made
a mistake. But he looked at the money without giving any sign of
correcting himself, and said with the greatest gravity, "Forty sous
more." Springing from my chair, I demanded an explanation. The
explanation, alas! was simple. The monetary unit in Holland is the
florin, which is equal to two francs four centimes in our money, so
that the Dutch centime and sou are worth more than double the Italian
centime and sou; hence the mistake and its correction.
Rotterdam at night presents to the stranger an unexpected appearance.
In other northern towns at a certain hour the life is gathered within
doors; in Rotterdam at the corresponding hour it overflows into the
street. A dense crowd passes through the Hoog-Straat until late at
night. The shops are open, for then the servants make their purchases
and the coffee-houses are crowded. The Dutch coffee-houses are of a
peculiar shape. They usually consist of one long saloon, divided in
the middle by a green curtain, which is drawn at night, like the
curtain of a theatre, hiding all the back part of the room. This part
only is lighted. The front part, separated from the street by a large
window, remains in the dark, so that from the outside one can see
only dim forms and the glowing ends of cigars, which look like
fire-flies, and among these shadowy forms appears the uncertain
profile of some woman, to whom light would be unwelcome.
After the coffee-houses, the tobacco-shops attract the attention, not
only in Rotterdam, but in all other Dutch cities. There is one at
almost every step, and they are beyond comparison the finest in
Europe, not excepting even the great Havana tobacco-stores in Madrid.
The cigars are kept in wooden boxes, on each of which is a printed
portrait of the king or queen or of some illustrious Dutch citizen.
These boxes are arranged in the high shop-windows in a thousand
architectural styles,--in towers, steeples, temples, winding
staircases, beginning on the floor and reaching almost to the ceiling.
In these shops, which are resplendent with lights like the stores of
Paris, one may find cigars of every shape and flavor. The courteous
tobacconist puts one's purchase into a special tissue-paper envelope
after he has cut off the end of one of the cigars with a machine made
for the purpose.
The Dutch shops are brilliantly illuminated, and, although in
themselves they do not differ materially from stores of other large
European cities, they present at night a very unusual appearance,
because of the contrast between the ground floor and the upper part of
the house. Below, all is glass, light, color, and splendor; above,
the gloomy facades with their steep sharp lines, steps, and curves.
The upper part of the house is plain, dark, and silent--in a word,
ancient Holland; the ground floor is the new life--fashion, luxury,
and elegance. Moreover, the houses are all very narrow, so the shops
occupy the whole ground floor, and are generally so close together
that they touch each other. Consequently at night, in streets like
Hoog-Straat, one sees very little wall below the second floor. The
houses seem to rest on glass, and in the distance the windows become
blended into two long flaming stripes like gleaming hedges, flooding
the streets with light, so that one could find a pin in them.
As one walks along the streets of Rotterdam in the evening, one sees
that it is a city overflowing with life and in the process of
expansion--a city, so to speak, in the flush of youth, in the time of
growth, which, from year to year, outgrows its streets and houses, as
a boy outgrows his clothes. Its one hundred and fourteen thousand
inhabitants will be two hundred thousand at no distant time. The
smaller streets swarm with children; indeed, they are filled to
overflowing with them, so that it gladdens one's eyes and heart. An
air of happiness breathes through the streets of Rotterdam. The white
and ruddy faces of the servants, whose spotless caps are popping out
everywhere, the serene faces of the tradespeople, who slowly sip their
great mugs of beer, the peasants with their large golden earrings,
the cleanliness, the flowers in the windows, the quiet hard-working
crowd,--all give to Rotterdam an appearance of health and peaceful
content which brings the _Te beata_ to our lips, not with a cry of
enthusiasm, but with a smile of sympathy.
Re-entering the hotel, I saw an entire French family in a corridor
gazing in admiration at the nails on a door which shone like so many
silver buttons.
In the morning, as soon as I arose, I went to my window, which was on
the second floor, and on looking at the roofs of the opposite houses,
I confessed with surprise that Bismarck was excusable for believing he
saw phantoms on the roofs at Rotterdam. Out of the chimney-pots of all
the ancient houses rise curved or straight tubes, one above the other,
crossing and recrossing like open arms, or forks, or immense horns, in
such impossible positions that it seems as though they must understand
each other and be speaking a mysterious language from house to house,
and that at night they must move about with some purpose.
I walked down Hoog-Straat. It was Sunday and few shops were open. The
Dutch told me that some years ago even those few would have been
closed: the observance of the Sabbath, which used to be very strict,
is becoming slack. I saw the signs of holiday chiefly in the people's
clothes, in the dress of the men particularly. The men, especially
those of the lower classes (and this I observed in other towns also),
have a decided taste for black clothes, which they wear proudly on
Sundays--black cravats, black breeches, and certain black over-coats
that reach almost to their knees. This costume, together with their
leisurely gait and solemn faces, gives them the air of village syndics
going to assist at an official _Te Deum_.
But what most surprised me was to see at that hour almost every one I
met, gentry and peasantry, men and boys, with cigars in their mouths.
This unfortunate habit of "_dreaming awake_," as Emile Girardin called
it when he made war on smokers, occupies such a large part of the life
of the Dutch people that it is necessary to say a few words about it.
The Dutch probably smoke more than any other northern nation. The
humidity of the climate makes it almost a necessity, and the cheapness of
tobacco puts it in everybody's power to satisfy this desire. To show how
inveterate is this habit, it will suffice to say that the boatmen of the
_trekschuit_ (the stage-coach of the canals) measure distance by smoke.
From here to such and such a town they say it is so many pipes, not so
many miles. When you enter a house, the host, after the usual greetings,
gives you a cigar; when you leave he gives you another, sometimes he
fills your pocket. In the streets one sees men lighting fresh cigars with
the stumps they have just smoked, with a hurried air, without stopping
for a moment, as if it were equally disagreeable to them to lose a
moment of time and a mouthful of smoke. A great many men go to bed with
their cigars in their mouths, light them if they awake in the night, and
relight them in the morning before leaving their beds. "The Dutchman is a
living alembic," writes Diderot; and it does really seem as though
smoking is to him one of the necessary functions of life. Many say that
much smoking clouds the brain. But, notwithstanding, if there is a people
whose intelligence is clear and precise in the highest degree, that
people is the Dutch. Moreover, smoking is no excuse for idleness among
the Hollanders,--they do not smoke "to dream awake." Every one does his
work while puffing white clouds of smoke from his mouth as if he were the
chimney of a factory, and, instead of the cigar being a distraction, it
is a stimulus and a help to labor. "Smoke is our second breath," said a
Dutchman to me, and another defined the cigar as "the sixth finger of our
hand."
Apropos of tobacco, I must tell of the life and death of a famous
Dutch smoker, but I am rather afraid my Dutch friends who told me the
story will shrug their shoulders, for they lamented that strangers who
write on Holland pass over important things which do honor to the
country, and mention only trifles such as this. However, this is such
a remarkable trifle that I cannot resist the temptation of putting it
down.
Once upon a time there was a wealthy gentleman who lived in the
suburbs of Rotterdam. His name was Van Klaes, but he was nicknamed
Papa Big Pipe, for he was a fat old fellow and a great smoker. He was
a man of simple habits and kindly heart, who, as the story runs, had
made a great fortune in India by honest trade. On his return from
India he built himself a beautiful mansion near Rotterdam, and in this
home he collected and arranged in order every imaginable kind of pipe.
There were pipes of every country and of every period, from those used
by ancient barbarians to smoke hemp, to the splendid meerschaum and
amber pipes ornamented with carved figures and bands of gold like
those seen in the finest stores of Paris. The museum was open to
visitors, to each of whom, after he had aired his knowledge on the
subject of pipe-collecting, Mr Van Klaes gave a pouch filled with
tobacco and cigars, and a catalogue of the museum in a velvet cover.
Every day Mr Van Klaes smoked a hundred and fifty grammes of tobacco,
and he died at the ripe old age of ninety-eight years; consequently,
if we assume that he began to smoke when he was eighteen years old, he
consumed in the course of his life four thousand three hundred and
eighty-three kilogrammes. If this quantity of tobacco could be laid
down in a continuous black line, it would extend twenty French
leagues. But, in spite of all this, Mr Van Klaes showed that in death
he was a far greater smoker than he had been in life. Tradition has
preserved all the particulars of his end. He was approaching his
ninety-eighth birthday when it was suddenly borne in upon him that the
end of his life was at hand. He summoned his notary, who was also a
notable smoker, and, "Notary," said he with no unnecessary words,
"fill my pipe and yours; I am going to die." The notary filled and
lighted the pipes, and Mr Van Klaes dictated that will which has
become celebrated all over Holland.
[Illustration: On the Meuse, near Rotterdam.]
After he had bequeathed the greater part of his fortune to relatives,
friends, and charities, he added the following clauses:
"I wish every smoker in the kingdom to be invited to my funeral in
every way possible, by letter, circular, and advertisement. Every
smoker who takes advantage of the invitation shall receive as a
present ten pounds of tobacco, and two pipes on which shall be
engraved my name, my crest, and the date of my death. The poor of the
neighborhood who accompany my bier shall receive every year on the
anniversary of my death a large package of tobacco. I make the
condition that all those who assist at my funeral, if they wish to
partake of the benefits of my will, must smoke without interruption
during the entire ceremony. My body shall be placed in a coffin lined
throughout with the wood of my old Havana cigar-boxes. At the foot of
the coffin shall be placed a box of the French tobacco called
_caporal_ and a package of our old Dutch tobacco. At my side place my
favorite pipe and a box of matches, ... for one never knows what may
happen. When the bier rests in the vault, all the persons in the
funeral procession are requested to cast upon it the ashes of their
pipes as they pass it on their departure from the grounds."
The last wishes of Mr Van Klaes were faithfully fulfilled; the funeral
went off splendidly, veiled in a thick cloud of smoke. The cook of the
deceased, Gertrude by name, to whom in a codicil her master had left a
considerable fortune on condition that she should overcome her
aversion to tobacco, walked in the funeral procession with a cigarette
in her mouth. The poor blessed the memory of the charitable gentleman,
and all the country resounded with his praises as it now rings with
his fame.
As I walked along one of the canals I saw under different conditions
one of those sudden changes in the weather such as I had witnessed on
the previous day. In a moment the sun disappeared, the infinite
variety of cheerful colors was obscured, and a chilling wind began to
blow. Then the subdued gayety which existed a few moments before gave
place everywhere to a strange trepidation. The leaves of the trees
rustled, the flags on the ships fluttered, the boats moored to the
palisades tossed to and fro; the waters were troubled, a thousand
articles suspended from the houses dangled about,--the arms of the
windmills spun rapidly around; it seemed as though a shiver of winter
passed through everything, and that the city was apprehensive of a
mysterious danger. In a few moments the sun shone out, and with it
returned color, peace, and cheerfulness. This scene made me reflect
that Holland is not really as sombre a country as many believe; it is
rather very sombre one moment, and very cheerful the next, according
to the weather. In everything it is a country of contrasts. Beneath a
most capricious sky lives the least capricious people in the world,
and yet this orderly and methodical nation possesses the tipsiest,
most disordered architecture that eye can see.
Before entering the museum at Rotterdam, I think it will be opportune
to make some observations on Dutch painting, naturally not for those
"who know," understand, but for those who have forgotten.
Dutch art possesses one quality that renders it particularly attractive
to us Italians: it is that branch of the world's art which differs most
from the Italian school,--it is the antithesis, or, to use a phrase that
enraged Leopardi, "the opposite pole in art." The Italian and the Dutch
are the two most original schools of painting, or, as some say, the only
two schools that can honestly lay claim to originality. The others are
only daughters or younger sisters, which bear a certain resemblance to
their elders. So Holland even in its art offers us that which we most
desire in travel and description--novelty.
Dutch art was born with the independence and freedom of Holland. So
long as the northern and southern provinces of the Netherlands were
united under Spanish dominion and the Catholic faith, they had only
one school of painting. The Dutch artists painted like the Belgians;
they studied in Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Heemskerk imitated
Michelangelo; Bloemaert copied Correggio; De Moor followed Titian; to
mention a few instances. They were pedantic disciples who united with
all the affectations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness,
and the outcome was a bastard style inferior to the earlier
schools--childish, stiff, and crude in color, with no sense of light
and shade. But, at any rate, it was not a slavish imitation; it was a
faint prelude to real Dutch art.
With the war of independence came liberty, reform, and art. The
artistic and religious traditions fell together. The nude, the nymphs,
the madonnas, the saints, allegory, mythology, the ideal,--the whole
ancient edifice was in ruins. The new life which animated Holland was
revealed and developed in a new way. The little country, which had
suddenly become so glorious and formidable, felt that it must tell its
greatness. Its faculties, which had been strengthened and stimulated
in the grand enterprise of creating a native land, a real world,--now
that this enterprise was achieved, expanded, and created an imaginary
world. The conditions of the people were favorable to a revival of
art. They had overcome the supreme perils which threatened them:
security, prosperity, a splendid future, were theirs: their heroes had
done their part; the time had come for artists. After so many
sacrifices and disasters Holland came forth victorious from the
strife, turned her face upon her people, and smiled, and that smile
was Art.
We could picture to ourselves what this art was even if no example of
it remained. A peaceable, industrious, practical people, who, to use
the words of a great German poet, were continually brought back to
dull realities by the conditions of a vulgar bourgeois life; who
cultivated their reason at the expense of their imagination, living in
consequence on manifest ideas rather than beautiful images; who fled
from the abstract, whose thoughts never rose beyond nature, with which
they waged continual warfare--a people that saw only what exists, that
enjoyed only what it possessed, whose happiness consisted in wealthy
ease and an honest indulgence of the senses, although without violent
passions or inordinate desires;--such a people would naturally be
phlegmatic in their art,--they would love a style that pleased but did
not arouse them, that spoke to the senses rather than to the
imagination--a school of art placid, precise, full of repose, and
thoroughly material like their life--an art, in a word, realistic and
self-satisfied, in which they could see themselves reflected as they
were and as they were content to remain.