the sea-coast, where they were opening the new Rotterdam canal. At
Naaldwijk, thanks to the politeness of an inspector of schools who was
with me, I gratified my desire to see an elementary school, and I will
state at once that my great expectations were more than realized. The
house, built expressly for the school, was a separate building one
story in height. We first went into a little vestibule, where there
were a number of wooden shoes, which the inspector told me belonged to
the pupils, who place them there on their entrance into school and put
them on again when they go out. In school the boys wear only stockings
which are very thick, consequently their feet do not suffer from cold,
especially as the rooms are as hot as if they were a minister's
cabinet. On our entrance the pupils stood up and the master advanced
toward the inspector. Even that poor village master spoke French, and
so we were able to enter into conversation. There were in the school
about forty pupils, both boys and girls, who sat on opposite sides of
the room; all were fair and fat, with plump, good-natured faces; they
had the precocious air of little men and women, which I could not
observe without laughing. The building was divided into five rooms,
each separated from the other by a large glass partition, which
enclosed all the space like a wall, so that if a master were absent
from one class the teacher of the next class could overlook the pupils
of his colleague without leaving his post. All the rooms are large and
have high windows which reach from the floor to the ceiling, so that
it is almost as light inside as it is outside. The benches, walls,
floors, windows, and stoves were as clean as if they had been in a
ball-room. Having a lively recollection of certain unpleasant places
in the schools I attended as a boy, I asked to see the closets, and
found them such as few of the best hotels can boast. Afterward on the
school-room walls I saw a great many things that I remember to have
wished for when I sat at the desks, such as small pictures of
landscapes or figures, to which the master referred in his stories and
instruction, so that they should be stamped the better on the memory;
representations of common objects and animals; geographical maps
purposely made with large names and painted in bright colors;
proverbs, grammatical rules, and precepts very plainly printed. Only
one thing seemed to me lacking--personal cleanliness.
I will not repeat what many have written and some Dutchmen affirm,
that in Holland cleanliness of the skin is generally neglected--that
the women are dirty, and that the legs of the tables are cleaner than
those of the citizens. But it is certain the cleanliness of inanimate
objects is infinitely greater than personal cleanliness, and the
deficiency in the last respect is made more apparent by excellence in
the first. In an Italian school perhaps those boys might have seemed
clean, but, comparing them with the marvellous purity of their
surroundings, and reflecting that they were the children of the very
women who take half a day to wash the doors and shutters, they seemed
to me, and in fact were, rather dirty. In some schools in Switzerland
there are lavatories where the boys are obliged to wash upon entering
and leaving the school. I should have been pleased to see such
lavatories in the Dutch schools too; then all would have been perfect.
I said "that poor master," but I found out afterward that he had a salary
of more than two thousand two hundred francs and an apartment in a nice
house in the village. In Holland the masters of elementary schools--the
principals, that is, for there are assistant masters--never receive less
than eight hundred francs a year. This the minimum that the commune can
legally give. No commune keeps to this sum, and some masters have the same
salaries as our university professors. It is true that it costs more to
live in Holland than in Italy, but it is also true that the salaries which
seem large to us are there considered small, and yet they propose to
increase them. It must also be considered that, owing to the difference of
national character, the Dutch masters are not obliged to expend as much of
their breath, their patience, and good-humor as are our Italian masters,
which is a consideration if it be true that health counts for something.
From Naaldwijk we went toward the coast. On the road my courteous
companion explained to me clearly the point which the question of
instruction has reached in Holland. In Latin countries persons when
questioned by a stranger answer him with a view toward airing their
knowledge and showing their conversational powers. In Holland they try
rather to make you understand the subject, and if you do not comprehend
directly, they impress it upon you until it is fixed in your mind as
clearly and as well as it is in their own.
The question of instruction, in Holland as in most countries, is a
religious question, which in its turn is the most serious, indeed the only
great, question that now agitates the country.
Of the three and a half millions of inhabitants in Holland, a third, as I
have remarked, are Catholics, about a hundred thousand are Jews, and the
rest are Protestants. The Catholics, who chiefly inhabit the southern
provinces of Limbourg and Brabant, are not divided politically as they
are in other countries, but form one solid clerical legion,--Papists,
Ultramontanists, the most faithful legion of Rome, as the Dutch
themselves say--who buy the very straw that the pontiff is supposed to
sleep on, and who thunder Italy from the pulpit and the press. This
Catholic party, which would have no great strength of itself, gains a
certain advantage from the fact that the Protestants are divided into a
great many religious sects. There are orthodox Calvinists; Protestants
who believe in the revelation, but do not accept certain doctrines of the
Church; others who deny the divinity of Christ, without, however,
separating themselves from the Protestant Church; others, again, who
believe in God, but do not believe in any Church; others--and amongst
these are many of the cleverest men--who openly profess atheism. In
consequence of this state of things, the Catholic party has a natural
ally in the Calvinists, who as fervent believers and inflexible
conservers of the religion of their fathers, are much less widely
separated from the Catholics than from a large party of those of their
own co-religionists. These form, in a certain sense, the clerical wing of
Protestantism. Hence in the Netherlands there are Catholics and
Calvinists on one side, and on the other a liberal party, while between
the two there hovers a vacillating legion that does not allow either side
to gain an absolute supremacy. The chief point of contention between the
extreme sections is the question of primary instruction, and this reduces
itself, on the part of the Catholics and Calvinists, to insistence that
so-called mixed schools, in which no special religious instruction is
given (so that Catholics and Protestants of all doctrines may support
them), shall be superseded by others in which dogmatic instruction is to
be given, and that these shall be also supported by the commune under the
direction of the state. It is easy to foresee the grave consequences that
such a division in the popular educational system would produce--the
germs of discord and religious animosity that would be sown, the trouble
that would in time arise from separating young people into groups
professing different faiths. Up to the present time the principle of
mixed schools has prevailed, but the victories of the Liberals have been
costly. The Catholics and the Calvinists successively obtained various
concessions, and are prepared to obtain yet others. The Catholic party
is, in a word, more powerful than the Calvinist party: the one, united
and aggressive, gains ground day by day, and it is not unlikely that it
will succeed in gaining a victory which, though not lasting, will provoke
a violent reaction in the country. Things have come to such a pass that
in that very Holland which fought for eighty years against Catholic
despotism there are now serious reasons to fear the outbreak of a
religious war.
[Illustration: Fisherman's Children, Scheveningen.]
Notwithstanding this state of things, which to the present time has
prevented the institution of obligatory instruction demanded by the
Liberals, and keeps a great number of Catholic children away from the
schools, the education of the lower classes in Holland is in a
condition that any European state might envy. In proportion, Holland
contains less people who do not know their alphabet than does
Prussia. "Of all Europe," as a Dutch writer has said with just pride,
although he judges his country severely on other points, "Holland is
the land where all such knowledge as is indispensable to civilized man
is most widely diffused." I was once greatly surprised, on asking a
Dutchman if there were any women-servants who could not read, to hear
myself answered, "Well, yes. I remember twenty years ago that my
mother had a servant who did not know her alphabet, and we thought it
a very strange thing." It is a great satisfaction to a stranger who
does not know the language to be sure that if he shows a name on his
guide-book to the first street-urchin he meets, the boy will
understand it and will try to direct him by gestures.
Talking of Catholics and Calvinists, we arrived at the dunes, and,
although we were near the coast, we could not see the ocean. "Holland
is a strange country," I said to my friend, "in which everything plays
at hide and seek. The facades hide the roofs, the trees hide the
houses, the city hides the ships, the banks hide the canals, the mist
hides the fields, the dunes hide the sea." "And some day," answered my
friend, "the sea will hide everything and all will be ended."
We crossed the downs and advanced toward the coast, where the
preparatory works for the opening of the Rotterdam Canal were in
progress.
Two dykes, one more than a thousand two hundred meters in length, the
other more than two thousand meters long, separated from each other by
the space of a kilometer, project into the sea at right angles to the
coast. These two dykes, which are built to protect vessels entering
the canal, are formed by several rows of enormous palisades made of
huge blocks of granite, of fagots, stones, and earth; they are as wide
as ten men drawn up in a line. The ocean, which continually washes
against them, and at high tide overflows them in many parts, has
covered everything,--stones, beams, and fagots, with a stratum of
shells as black as ebony, which from a distance seems like a velvet
coverlet, giving to these two gigantic bulwarks a severe and
magnificent appearance, as if they were a warlike banner unfolded by
Holland to celebrate her victory over the waves. At that moment the
tide was coming in, and the battle round the extreme end of the dykes
was at its height. With what rage did the livid waves avenge
themselves for the scorn of those two huge horns of granite that
Holland has plunged into the bosom of her enemy! The palisades and the
rock foundations were lashed, gnawed, and buffeted on every side;
disdainful waters dashed over them and spat upon them with a drizzling
rain that hid them like a cloud of dust; then again the waves would
flow back like furious writhing serpents. Even the sections far from
the struggle were sprinkled by unexpected showers of spray, the
advance guard of that endless army, and meanwhile the water kept
rising and advancing, forcing the foremost workmen to retire step by
step.
On the longest dyke, not very far from shore, they were planting some
piles. Workmen with great labor were raising blocks of granite by
means of derricks, and others, in groups of ten or fifteen, were
removing old beams to make room for new ones. It was glorious to see
the fury of the waves lashing the sides of the dyke, and the impassive
calm of the workmen, who seemed almost to despise the sea. It crossed
my mind that they must be saying in their hearts, as the sailor said
to the monster of the Comprachicos in Victor Hugo's romance: "Roar on,
old fellow!" A wind which chilled us to the bone blew the long, fair
curls of the good Dutchmen into their eyes, and every now and then
threw the spray at their feet or on their clothes--vain provocations
to which they did not deign to reply even by a frown.
I saw a pile driven into the dyke. It was the trunk of a great tree
pointed at one end and supported by two parallel beams, between which
a steam-engine drove an enormous iron hammer up and down. The pile had
to be driven through several very thick strata of fagots and stones;
yet at every blow from the heavy hammer it sunk into the ground,
breaking, tearing, and splintering, while it entered the dyke more
than a hand's length, as if it were merely a mud hole. Nevertheless,
what with adjusting and driving the pile, the operation lasted almost
an hour. I thought of the thousands that had been driven, of the
thousands still to be driven, of the interminable dykes that defend
Holland, of the infinite number that have been overturned and rebuilt
and for the first time my mind conceived the grandeur of the
undertaking, and a feeling of dismay crept over me as I stood
motionless and speechless.
Meanwhile, the waters had risen almost to the level of the dyke, with
a sound of panting and breathlessness like tired-out voices that
seemed to murmur secrets of distant seas and unknown shores; the wind
blew colder, it was growing dark, and I felt a restless desire to
withdraw from those front bastions into the interior of the fortress.
I pulled the coat-tail of my companion, who had been standing for an
hour on a boulder, and we returned to the shore and drank a glass of
delicious Schiedam at one of those shops which are called in Dutch
"Come and ask," where they sell wines, salt meats, cigars, shoes,
butter, clothes, biscuits--in fact, a little of everything. Then we
started on the road back to the Hague.
My next excursion was the most adventurous that I made in Holland. A
very dear friend of mine who lived at the Hague invited me to go and
dine with him at the house of one of his relatives who had shown a
courteous desire to make my acquaintance. I asked where his relative
lived; and he answered, "Far from the Hague." I asked in what
direction, but he would not tell me; he told me to meet him at the
railway-station the next day, and left me. On the next morning we met
at the station: my friend bought tickets for Leyden. When we arrived
at Leyden we alighted, but, instead of entering the town, we took a
road across country. I besought my companion to reveal the secret to
me. He answered that he could not do so, and as I knew that when a
Dutchman does not mean to tell you anything, no power on earth will
make him do it, I resigned myself. It was a disagreeable day in
February; there was no snow, but a strong cold wind was blowing which
soon made our faces purple. As it was Sunday, the country was
deserted. We went on and on, passing windmills, canals, meadows,
houses half hidden by trees, with very high roofs of stubble mixed
with moss. Finally we arrived at a village. The Dutch villages are
closed by a palisade: we passed through the gate, but not a living
soul was to be seen; the doors were shut, the window curtains were
drawn, and not a voice, nor a footstep, nor a breath was heard. We
crossed the village, and paused in front of a church which was all
covered with ivy like a summer-house; looking through an aperture in
the door, we saw a Protestant clergyman with a white cravat preaching
to some peasants whose faces were striped with gold, green, and
purple, the reflection of the stained-glass windows. We passed
through a clean street paved with bricks, and saw stakes put for the
storks' nests, posts planted by the peasants for the cows to rub
against, fences painted sky blue, small houses with many-colored tiles
forming letters and words, ponds full of boats, bridges, kiosks for
unknown uses, little churches with great gilded cocks on the top of
their steeples; and not a living soul near or far: still we went on.
The sky cleared a little, then darkened again; here the sunshine
gleamed on a canal, there it made a house sparkle or gilded a distant
steeple. Then again it hid itself, reappeared, and so on with a
thousand coquetries, while on the horizon there appeared oblique lines
denoting rain. We began to meet countrywomen with circles of gold
round their heads, on which veils were fastened, the whole surmounted
by hats; these were trimmed with bunches of flowers and wide
fluttering ribbons. We also met some country carriages of the antique
Louis XV. style, with a gilded box ornamented with carved work and
mirrors, peasants with thick black clothes and large wooden shoes,
children with stockings of every color in the rainbow. We arrived at
another village, which was clean, shining, and brightly colored, with
its streets paved with bricks and its windows adorned with curtains
and flowers. Here we took a carriage and went on our way. A fine icy
rain which penetrated to our bones began to fall as soon as we
started. Muffled up in the wet frozen covers, we reached the bank of
a large canal. A man came out of a cottage, led the horse on to a
barge, and landed us safe and sound on the opposite bank. The carriage
turned down a wide street, and we found ourselves on the bed of the
ancient Sea of Haarlem. Our horse trotted along where the fish once
swam through the water; our coachman smoked where at one time the
smoke of naval battles had rolled; we saw glimpses of canals, of
villages, of cultivated fields, of a new world of which only thirty
years ago there had not been a trace. After we had driven about a mile
the rain stopped, and it began to snow as I had never seen it snow
before: it was a real whirlwind of heavy, thick snow, which the strong
wind blew into our faces. We unfolded the waterproof covering, opened
our umbrellas, tucked ourselves in, and bundled ourselves up, but the
wind broke through all our defences and the snow sifted over us,
enveloping us in white and covering our heads and feet with ice. After
a long turn we left the lake; the snow ceased, we arrived at another
village of toy houses, where we left our carriage and proceeded on
foot. We went on and on, seeing bridges, windmills, closed cottages,
lonely streets, wide meadows, but no human beings. We crossed another
branch of the Rhine, and arrived at another village barricaded and
silent; we continued on our way, occasionally seeing some face looking
at us from behind the windows. We then left the village and found
ourselves opposite the dunes. The sky looked threatening, and I became
alarmed.
"Where are we going?" I demanded of my friend.
"Where fortune takes us," he replied.
We proceeded through the dunes, along narrow, winding, sandy roads,
seeing no sign of habitation anywhere; we went up hill and down dale;
the wind drove the sand into our faces; at every step our feet sank in
it, and the country grew more and more desolate, gloomy, and foreboding.
"But who is your relative?" I said to my companion. "Where does he
live? what is his business? There is some witchcraft about this; he
cannot be a man like other men: tell me where you are leading me."
My friend did not answer: he stopped and stared in front of him. I
stared too, and far away saw something that looked like a house, alone
in the midst of the desert, almost hidden by a rise in the ground. We
hastened on; the house seemed to appear and disappear like a shadow.
Round about we saw stakes which looked like gibbets. My friend tried
to persuade me that they were only stakes for storks' nests. We were
about a hundred feet away from the house. Along a wall we saw a wooden
pipe which seemed bathed in blood, but my friend assured me it was
only red paint. It was a little house enclosed by a paling; the doors
and windows were shut.
"Don't go in," I said. "There is yet time. There is something uncanny
in that house; take care what you are doing. Look up; I have never
seen such a black sky."
My friend did not hear me; he pressed on courageously, and I followed.
Instead of going toward the door, he took a short cut. Behind us we heard
a ferocious barking of dogs. We broke into a run, crossed a thicket of
underbrush, jumped over a low wall, and knocked at a little door.
"There is yet time!" I exclaimed.
"It is too late," answered my friend.
The door opened, but nobody was to be seen. We mounted a winding
staircase and entered a room. Oh pleasant surprise! The hermit, the
sorcerer, was a merry, courteous young man, and the diabolical house
was a villa full of comfort and warmth, sparkling with light, the
dwelling of a sybarite--a real fairy palace to which our host retired
some months in the year to study and to make experiments on the
fertilization of the dunes. How delightful it was to look at the cold
desert without through a window draped with curtains and decorated
with flower-pots! We went into the dining-room and sat down at a table
glittering with silver and glass, in the midst of which, surrounded by
gilded and blazoned bottles, was a hot dinner fit for a prince. The
snow was beating against the windows, the sea was moaning, the wind
blew furiously round the house, which seemed like a ship in a terrible
storm. We drank to the fertilization of the dunes, to the victors of
Achen, to the prosperity of the colonies, to the memory of Nino Bixio,
to the elves. Nevertheless, I was still a little uneasy. Our host when
he needed the servant touched a hidden spring; to tell the coachman to
get the carriage ready he spoke some words into a hole in the wall;
and these tricks did not please me.
"Tell me," I said, "tell me that this house really exists; promise me
that it is not all a joke and that it will not disappear, leaving
nothing but a hole in the ground and a smell of sulphur in the air.
Assure me that you say your prayers every evening."
I cannot describe the laughter, the merriment, the absurd speeches that
succeeded each other until the middle of the night, accompanied by the
clinking of glasses and the roaring of the tempest. At last the moment of
departure arrived: we went down and were rolled away in a roomy carriage
which dashed rapidly across the desert. The ground was covered with snow,
the dunes were outlined in white on the dark sky, the carriage glided
noiselessly in the midst of strange indistinct forms, which succeeded each
other rapidly in the light of the lantern and seemed to melt into each
other. In that vast solitude a dead silence reigned which robbed us of
speech. After a time we began to see dwellings and arrived at a village.
We crossed two or three deserted streets, with snow-covered houses on
either side, with a few lighted windows showing human shadows. At last we
came to a railway-station, and reached the Hague in a few minutes,
although we had been deluded to think we had taken a long journey and
crossed an imaginary country. Must I tell the truth? If I were asked to
swear at the moment I am writing that the house in the midst of the dunes
was a reality, I should request ten minutes for reflection. It is true
that the master was polite enough to come and bid me good-bye at the
station the day I left the Hague, and that when I saw him clearly by
daylight he did not seem to have anything strange about him; but we all
know the various forms, the simulations, the thousand arts which a certain
gentleman and his servants assume.
At last I saw a Dutch winter, not as I had hoped to see it on leaving
Italy, for it was very mild; but still Holland was presented to me as
we are in the habit of picturing it to ourselves in the south of
Europe.