A BREEZE FROM THE WEST.
They were rather late with their coffee the next morning, and while
they were taking it the bells of Santa Pudentiana, close to them, were
ringing a _morto_――one, two, three, and again one, two, three――with a
mournful persistence.
“It is just what we need,” the Signora said. “Our danger, at this
moment, is that we may be too lightly happy. Those bells mean that a
nun is dead, and that there is to be a High Mass for her in half an
hour or so. Shall we go?”
Marion, who had joined them, and was sitting beside Bianca, said to
her: “We are not afraid of seeing death, are we?”
“But we might be better for being reminded of it,” she said.
The ladies followed the people’s pretty fashion of putting black lace
veils on their heads instead of bonnets, and had the good taste, too,
to exchange their gay morning house-dresses for black ones before
going to the church.
“It is the one thing in which I would have my country-women imitate
the Roman ladies,” Mr. Vane said―― “in their sober costume for the
church.”
The sun was scorching when they went out, and shone so brightly on the
gold ground of the mosaic front of Santa Pudentiana that the figures
there flickered as if painted on flame. But the sunken court had a
hint of coolness, and when they entered the church they were very glad
to have the light wraps the Signora had told them to bring; for the
air was chilly and damp, the floor being a full story below the level
of the modern street, and not a ray of sunshine entering, except what
got in by the cupola. This was enough to light beautifully the mosaics
of the tribune, where it is hard to believe one does not see a
balcony, with the Saviour and the saints looking over, so real are the
forms.
The Mass which they had come to hear was, however, nearly ended,
having begun with a promptitude unusual in Rome. In a few minutes the
priest left the altar, the people went away, and the lights were put
out. Seeing two or three persons enter the sanctuary, and go to look
through an open panel in the side wall, our party followed them, and
found that the panel opened into a chapel, or chamber, beside the
grand altar. This chamber was so draped as to be perfectly dark,
except for the candles that burned at the head and feet of the dead
nun lying there. She lay close to the open panel, and in sight of the
altar where the divine Sacrifice had just been offered for her, if her
eyes could have seen it. It was the emaciated but beautiful form of a
woman of middle age, dressed in her religious costume, with her hands
crossed on her breast, the face composed into an expression of
unspeakable solemnity and peace. Awe-stricken and silent, they stood
and gazed at her. They had come here from charity, indeed, but rather
to temper their too earthly happiness with a merely serious thought,
as one cools a heated wine with ice, making it more delicious so, than
from any profound recognition of the dreadfulness of death and the
perils of life. But these sealed lips spoke volumes to them, and the
dark and silent church, now quite deserted, chilled them like the
valley of the shadow of death through which this soul had
passed――whither? It was a life dedicated to God, and given up assisted
by all the sacred rites of religion; yet that face told them that
death had not been met with any presuming confidence, and that before
the soul of the dying religious the stern simplicity and clearness of
the primitive Christian law had stood untempered by any glozings.
Marion was the first to move. Seeing Bianca look very pale, he drew
her away, and the others followed.
How strange the gay sunny world looked to them when they went out! The
unexpected solemnity of the scene had so drawn their minds from
everything else that they had been chilled and darkened in soul as
well as in body. Yet, though the warmth and light were grateful to
them, they had no wish to cast entirely off that sombre impression,
and would have remained in the church to pray awhile, but for the
imprudence, in a sanitary point of view. Seeing, however, the door of
the little church opposite, the Bambino Gesù, open, they went in there
a few minutes. This church of the Infant Jesus is attached to a
convent of nuns, and a company of young girls were just entering from
the sacristy to make their First Communion, ranging themselves inside
the sanctuary. They were dressed alike in white cashmere robes, and
long silk veils in such narrow stripes of blue and white as to look
like plain blue, fastened with wreaths of red and white roses.
Floating slowly in with folded hands and fair, downcast faces, they
knelt in a double ring about the sanctuary, leaned forward on the
benches set for them, and remained motionless as statues, awaiting the
coming of the Lord for the first time into their innocent hearts, as
yet uncontaminated and untried by the world. At each end of the line a
little boy, dressed as an angel, stood bearing a torch. For a week or
ten days these girls had all been in retreat in the convent,
instructed by the nuns; and when the Mass and their last breakfast
together should be over, they would separate to their own homes, never
to meet again, perhaps. Their parents and friends awaited them now in
the church.
When the household of _Casa Ottant’-otto_ went home, they found a pile
of letters and papers from America awaiting them, which they read and
talked over in pauses of the dinner. There were business
letters――short, if not sweet; long family letters, such as make one
feel at home again, with all their familiar details and touching
reminiscences; there were items of public news, descriptions of
pageants in which the New World had rivalled, or surpassed, the Old;
of fierce storms that had found the western continent a fitting stage
to sweep their tragic skirts across; and of inundations from great
crystalline rivers to which the classic Tiber is a mere muddy sewer.
There was nonchalant mention of immense frauds, of fires that had
devoured whole streets and squares, and reduced scores of persons to
penury in a few hours, and of gigantic schemes for building up or
pulling down. There were accounts of some popular indignation, in
which the people had spoken without riot and been listened to, and of
authority enforced, where law had conquered without bloodshed or
treachery; of public sympathy with great misfortunes where no
calculation of merit or reward cramped the soul of the givers, but the
heart overflowed generously into the hand. In fine, there was a
month’s summary of such events as those with which America, the fresco
painter of the age, sketches her long, bold lines and splashes her
colors on the page of time.
“America for ever!” cried Isabel, swinging a newspaper about with such
enthusiasm that she nearly upset the vinegar and oil bottles at her
elbow. “Do you know, my respected hearers, that at this instant my
country is looking across the ocean at me with a pair of eyes like two
suns. There isn’t another nation on earth that she couldn’t take
between her teeth and shake the life out of. Will you excuse me while
I go into the other room and play and sing just one stanza of the
‘Star-spangled Banner’?”
The Signora, who was breaking lettuce in the snowy folds of a towel,
smiled beamingly on the speaker, at the same time making haste to save
the imperilled cruets. “Season your admiration for a while till I have
made the salad,” she said. “I would rather not have my attention
distracted by patriotic music. Besides, nobody sings at noon. The
birds are taking their nap, and you might wake them. Besides, again, I
want you to save your voice for this evening. Some American people are
coming here, and it might please them to hear the songs of their
country in a strange land.”
The Americans who came that evening belonged to a party which was
making a flying tour of Europe, and two of them were representatives
of two distinct and extreme classes――that which scoffs at everything
foreign, and that which is enchanted with everything foreign. Both
were young, pretty, clever, and fairly educated, had gone through very
nearly the same training, and the one had come out almost, or quite, a
girl of the period, the other a girl of the past. The Signora found
herself obliged, as it were, to use the curb with one hand and the
whip with the other while talking with the two.
“Josephine and I are the best of friends,” said Miss Warder in her
free, rapid way, “and we prove it――I by being patient with her, and
she by trying my patience. The number of times in a day that girl goes
into raptures over things scarcely worth looking at is almost
incredible. I caught her yesterday filling a bottle with Tiber water
to carry home. I believe she thinks that brook is larger than the
Mississippi.”
“So it is, in one sense,” responded Miss Josephine in a soft and
tranquil voice. “If you should see a little river all of tears,
wouldn’t you think it more wonderful than a big river all of water?”
The Signora suggested that both might be excellent in their way.
“Then,” pursued the other, “she looks upon old families as she does
on attar of roses and sandal-wood――a condensation of all that is
exquisite, the rest being the refuse. Tell her that a vulgar soul
often gets itself into a privileged body, and she is shocked at you.
It is all I can do to keep my hands off her when I see her watching
with admiring awe the affected grandeur of these little great people.
For me, I laugh at them.” And she tossed her head with the scornful
laugh of the democrat, at which coronets tremble.
“My dear Miss Warder,” said the Signora in her gentlest manner, “a
great many wise people have looked at these things seriously.”
“Owls!” she pronounced with an air of great satisfaction. “Indeed,”
she owned with a little compunction, “I hope it isn’t very bad of me,
but I can’t be serious at anything I see here. To-day I nearly had a
fit over a fire-engine that passed our place. It was a little sort of
handcart affair with four small wheels, and a box bottom that might
hold half a barrel of water. A bar at each side supported seven
painted tin pails, holding about two quarts each, and there was a
small brass pump in the middle of the carriage. This machine was
wheeled along by five men dressed in gray pantaloons with stripes down
the sides, dark blue jackets, and blue caps with a gilt band. I
presume they all go home and put on that costume after the bell rings,
or whatever alarm they have is given. The arrangement was just about
suited to put out a bundle of matches, only the engine would be too
late. The matches would be burned before it got there. I wish they
could hear our electric fire-alarm once, and see our beautiful engines
come flying out of their houses before the first number was well
struck.”
“I am proud of our fire-engines and companies,” the Signora said; “but
they do not prevent our having conflagrations such as are never known
here. The little thought given to fire-extinguishing here proves the
little danger there is of fires. In judging of what people do it is
always well to take into consideration what is necessary to be done.
One would hardly find fault with the Greenlanders for not having large
ice-houses.”
“Their very _scirocco_ disappointed me,” the young woman went on,
unabashed. “I had the impression that it was a tearing high wind, like
a blast out of a furnace. Instead of that, it is only a warm and
unwholesome breath. How different from our sweet south winds at home!”
“Speaking of winds,” said Miss Josephine, “reminds me of the
trumpet-bands. How wild and stirring they are! They make on me an
impression as of mingled wind and fire.”
The Signora smiled on the gentle enthusiast.
“Then,” pursued Miss Warder, “the pokey, slow ways of these people,
and their ceremonies, and their compliments, and their relics――” She
stopped abruptly here, recollecting that she was in a Catholic
household, and had the grace to blush slightly.
“A little more ceremony and politeness would do our people at home a
great deal of good,” the Signora replied coldly. “As to the relics, it
need not, I should think, surprise even an unbeliever that faith
should preserve her mementos as jealously as art has preserved hers,
and that objects which belonged once to beings who now are the
companions of angels, and see God face to face, should have been held
as precious as those which have nothing but a physical beauty. Or even
if the relic should be of doubtful authenticity still a thing
worthless in itself, but which has been touched by the sincere
veneration of centuries, has a sort of venerableness not to be mocked
at. It is like the iron which has been touched by the lodestone, and
so magnetized, or the dull gray mist kissed by sunbeams till it
becomes beautiful and luminous. I do not know,” she added, smiling,
“but you have all heard the story I am going to tell you apropos of
false relics, but it was new to me when I heard it a few days ago from
a clergyman. Many, many years ago a man who was going to the East was
begged by a pious friend to bring him back a piece of the true cross.
The voyager promised, but forgot his promise till he was near home. He
did not wish to disappoint his friend; though, at the same time, he
had no faith whatever in relics, or, indeed, in anything supernatural.
So, after considering a while, he cut a tiny piece out of the mast of
the ship in which he was returning homeward, enclosed it in a
reliquary, and in due time presented it to his friend, who received it
without a doubt, and, of course, told everybody what a treasure he had
become owner of. The news, after awhile, reached the ears of a man
possessed by a devil, and he immediately begged that the sacred relic
might be brought to deliver him. The bit of the ship’s mast was,
accordingly, brought with all ceremony and reverence, the devil in
possession――who, of course, knew the trick that had been
played――laughing, undoubtedly, at the efforts about to be made to
drive him away. But when the necessary prayers had been said, no
sooner did the supposed relic touch the possessed man than the devil
felt himself thrust violently out and forced to fly. But he cried out
in parting: ‘It is faith that drives me away, and not your chip of the
old mast.’”
“That all answers perfectly, as far as the believers are concerned,”
Mr. Vane said. “But I would like to know what became of that Eastern
traveller.”
“The principal _dénoûment_ so overflowed and hid him out of sight that
I did not ask, or have forgotten,” the Signora said. “Girls, what
should have been done to the man who made the relic? Isabel?”
“He should have been at sea again in that very ship, at the time of
the miraculous cure,” Isabel said. “He should have been standing by
the very mast he had cut the bit out of, and a flash of lightning
should have struck him dead.”
“Oh! no, Bella,” said her sister. “He should have been standing by the
possessed man when he was cured, and should have been stricken with
compunction, and should have confessed, and been forgiven, and been,
for all the rest of his life, a model of faith and reverence.”
“Suppose,” Mr. Vane suggested, “that we should choose a medium between
extreme justice and extreme charity, and say that the devil which left
the possessed man entered immediately into that Eastern traveller, and
tormented him by taking him on constant voyages to Jerusalem, swinging
him to and fro like a pendulum, always in the same ship, till at last,
after many years, his victim was enabled to make an act of perfect
faith in the power and mercy of the God crucified, and so be freed
from his tormentor.”
Meantime, Mr. Coleman approached Miss Warder, timid but admiring, much
as one might approach a beautiful panther, and seated himself on the
edge of a chair near her.
“You like Rome?” he inquired in a conciliating voice, not meaning
anything whatever by the question, except to open a conversation. That
was always the first thing he said to a foreigner.
The bright, laughing eyes of the girl flashed over him in one scathing
glance. “It’s charming!” she said with enthusiasm. “One can ask so
many questions here without being thought inquisitive. To be sure, one
doesn’t always get answers to them. I asked to-day a very accomplished
Monsignore the meaning of the broken arch that one sees over nearly
all the altars, and he couldn’t tell me. May be you can.”
Mr. Coleman believed that it was an architectural corruption that came
in with the decline of art, but could not be positive.
“I wouldn’t mind so much,” she went on, “if only they did not set on
the sides of it a hu――an inhuman being, who would naturally be sure to
slide off if he weren’t nailed on, as, indeed, he is. It makes one
feel uncomfortable!”
The gentleman descended into the depth of his consciousness for some
other subject, and came up with――
“Have you ever been to Bologna, ma’am?”
“No,” she replied; “but I have eaten Bologna sausage.”
There was another silence. The young woman folded her hands, looked
modest, and awaited the next remark. It was rather slow in coming, and
feeble when it came. “There are a great many Americans in Rome this
winter, I believe.”
“Oh!” she said confidentially, “nothing to what there are in the
United States. The country is full of them. They bother the life out
of the foreigners.”
Mr. Coleman contemplated his companion’s serious face for some time
with bewilderment, and at length bethought himself to smile.
“I beg your pardon!” she said, looking at him inquiringly, and with a
mild surprise.
He instantly became crimson.
“I――that is, excuse me! I did not speak,” he stammered.
“Oh! you’re very excusable,” she replied, with an emphasis which gave
an exceedingly doubtful meaning to the words.
In the midst of the dreadful pause that followed a polite voice was
heard at the other side, where a second moth had approached this
flame. It was a young Italian who was learning English with such
enthusiasm that he would almost stop strangers in the street to ask
definitions from them. “Would you have the gentility to do me a favor,
miss?” he asked.
“That depends quite on what the favor may be,” she replied, looking at
him with surprise; for the gravity and ceremoniousness of his demeanor
were such as to imply that a very serious matter was in question. “I’m
sure I shall be very happy to oblige you, if I can.”
“Thanks!” he said, bowing. “I learn now your beautiful and noble
language, the which is also much difficult. To-day of it I have seen a
phrase, the which entangles me. At first I it believed to be a beast.
But in the dictionary I found another signification, but without to be
able to comprehend it. The phrase is ‘Irish bull.’ Will you do me the
favor to explicate me the expression?”
“Irish bull,” Miss Warder said, “means no thoroughfare. The sense goes
into the sentence and sticks there; it never comes out.”
The young man looked deeply interested, but not enlightened. He did
not dare to ask more, for his teacher looked at him with an air of
having made a lucid explanation which any one with common sense should
understand at once.
“It is a very noble language, the English,” he repeated faintly.
“I saw a perfect example of it this morning in a place the other side
of the Corso,” she resumed. “A man with a donkey-cart got out of a
great crowd into a place between two rows of houses, evidently
expecting to find an outlet at the other end. There was none, and the
passage was so narrow that to turn was impossible. Now, imagine that
man with his donkey-cart to be an idea, and the houses to be words,
and you will understand perfectly.”
“Oh! certainly. It is clear!” her pupil replied. “Thanks!” His eyes
twinkled, though his mouth was perfectly grave. “It is, then,
something that diverts. You hear the words spoken, you listen at the
other end for the signification to come out, you hear it moving about
here and there inside, but you never receive it. It is excellent. It
would be a good fortune for the world if the people who speak and
write foolish or wicked thoughts should serve themselves always of
this mode of expression.”
Isabel interrupted this lesson by coming to make some friendly
inquiries of her young country-woman, who, after a short conversation,
gave a slight sketch of her life and adventures, speaking with the
most entire frankness.
Meanwhile, Miss Josephine was talking to the Signora, who was charmed
by her looks and manner, both the essence of soft and graceful beauty.
She was fair, rather small, and plump, with the whiteness of an
infant, and pure golden hair in thick waves fastened back from a low
forehead and the most exquisite of ears with a long spray of myrtle.
Her dress was of the softest gray color, close at the wrists and
throat, where delicate laces turned out like the white edges of a gray
cloud. The only light to this tender picture was the hair, the blue
eyes, and an emerald cross, her only ornament.
“I have been to-day to see the relics of Santa Croce,” she said. “I
coaxed Miss Warder not to go, though the permission included her; for
she is such an unbeliever that she spoils all my pleasure in seeing
such things. I am not formally a Catholic, you know, but I more than
half believe. My heart is all convinced, but my head holds out yet a
little. Perhaps that is because I am not well instructed. Well, I
started early, so as to have a walk alone from St. John Lateran across
to Santa Croce. I loitered along under the trees, perfectly happy,
looking about, telling myself over and over again where I was, and
gathering daisies. I looked at those daisies before I came here this
evening, and every one of them had curled its little petals in, and
gone to sleep, like a company of babies. In the morning they will open
their eyes again. Well, I reached Santa Croce, and stood on the steps
there. Everything was so quiet and beautiful, with nature so sweet,
and art so magnificent. No one was near but two or three soldiers
about the convent door. I knew before that the government had taken
nearly all the convent. After a while I heard a trumpet-call inside,
and presently company after company of soldiers, half a regiment
certainly, came out and marched off to the avenue to drill. They were
dressed in gray linen and white gaiters, and looked like a crowd of
great moth-millers.
“A nice, bright-faced young officer was walking to and fro near me,
and I spoke to him, and asked some questions. He seemed pleased to
talk――I suppose he felt dull there; and when I told him about our
army, and what I had seen during the war, he asked me if I would like
to go in and see their quarters. Of course I said yes. So he led me
in, and over the two stories, and showed me the gardens and courts at
the back, and the splendid view from the south windows. What halls
they were!――long, wide corridors, arched, and bordered with pilasters,
with a grand stairway climbing up from one side. Unless for hospital
or barracks, with long rows of beds at the sides, I cannot imagine
what they were made for, except simply to look at, to walk through,
and to make a great pile on the outside. It seemed building for the
mere sake of building. All the beds had the mattresses folded up, with
gray blankets laid on them, and a little shelf of things over the
head. One room, occupied by two officers, was almost as simple. There
were none of the luxuries we have. Then the view! I fancied I could
see half of Italy spread out before me. ‘But I pity the poor _frati_
who have been turned out,’ I could not help saying to my guide. ’So do
I,’ he answered. The soldiers are not to blame, you know. They must
obey. Then I went out, and the others came, and we went up to the
relic chamber. You go up a good many stairs, and through a chapel hung
round with paintings, and then through low-vaulted stone passages, not
high enough for a tall man to stand up in. I should think that the
shape of the way we went would be like a great letter C. At the last
turn we found ourselves in the little chamber, where the great relics
had been set out on the altar. Behind the altar were the strong doors
of the closets in the wall where these relics are kept. On the wall at
the right of the door was the relic-case of Gregory the Great, about
two feet square, with a glass cover, and filled with an innumerable
collection of tiny relics. But all eyes were turned to the altar.
“The _frate_ who came with us put on a stole, after lighting the
candles; then we all knelt while he said a prayer. And then, one by
one, he brought forward the relics, and showed to each, and gave each
one to kiss and touch their beads or crucifixes to, if they wished. I
looked at them with wonder, and neither believed nor disbelieved. It
is so hard for us Americans, you know, to believe in the antiquity of
things, unless we have material proofs. The bone of the finger of St.
Thomas, the thorn from the crown of thorns, the nail――they were
impressive to me chiefly because saints had believed them authentic,
and centuries of Catholics had venerated them. But when, at last, he
took down the crystal cross from the centre of the altar, my heart
melted. I felt that it was real. I wanted to snatch it, and run away
by myself, and cry over and kiss it. I wished the others would kneel,
but they didn’t. They looked at the relic, and kissed it, and that was
all. Perhaps they were each wishing that some one else would kneel and
set the example. At length, when the last one had kissed it, I dropped
on my knees, and the others did the same, and the _frate_ gave us
benediction with the famous old relic of the true cross that Santa
Helena brought from Jerusalem. Then he put the lights out, and we came
away, and some of them bought fac-similes of the nail and the
inscription of the cross, and we came down all the passages again, and
the painted cardinals on the walls of the upper chapel looked at us as
we passed, to see if we were any better for the privilege we had
received, and so down through the quiet church, and out into the
sunshine again. But that crystal cross, with its three pieces of dark
wood inside, has been before my eyes ever since. It must be real, for
it speaks. When I think of it, I can hear all the centuries weep over
it.”
She stopped, smiling but choked a little.
“Dear child!” said the Signora, and pressed the girl’s hand. “You
should enter the church at once.”
There was no answer in words, but the eyes spoke in an earnest gaze,
half pleading, half inquiring.
“My dear,” her friend pursued hastily, “this is no time for us to talk
over such a subject; but if you would like to speak with me, and if I
can do anything for you, I shall be very happy, and you can come to me
quite freely at any time.”
“I shall come, then, very soon,” the girl replied, and kissed the
Signora’s hand.
She had another pleasant incident of the day to tell; for she had been
with a Catholic friend to see Monsignor Mermillod, who was visiting
Rome, and the celebrated Archbishop of Geneva had spoken some kind
words to her, and allowed her to look at his ring, in which was set a
relic and an exquisite tiny painted miniature of St. Francis of Sales.
“He spoke to us of the mission of women,” she said, “and of what power
women have for good and evil, and his illustration was from Dante, and
Beatrice was woman leading man to Paradise. He spoke so that all my
former life seemed to me trivial, and worse than lost. O dear Signora!
if all men whom we wish to respect would speak so! But it really seems
that to please them, and win an influence over them, to have even
their respect, we must be mean. Such a man as Monsignor Mermillod
requires our noblest qualities, and encourages us to be true. One
doesn’t need to be blatant in order to be kindly noticed by him, nor
to boast in order to be appreciated. He is so noble and clear-sighted,
and his very atmosphere is charity.”
“Yes, he practises what he preaches,” the Signora replied.
When the visitors were gone, the family had a little quiet talk before
separating for the night. The influence of the Signora and of Bianca,
falling on minds already prepared to receive it, had been such that
they took happiness, and all the delights of their daily life, not as
a wine that intoxicates to forgetfulness of duty, but as an incentive
to quicken their sense of duty, and a balm to alleviate the pains to
come in the future. Every new pleasure that the Heavenly Father’s
bounty lavished on them, day after day, was welcomed generously, but
with a tender fear. Amid all this constantly-recurring beauty and
sacredness they walked as among angels, hushing themselves.
A quiet word touched the key, and found all in tune; as, striking but
the rim of a true bell, we hear the chord float softly up from turn to
turn. Tacitly the first hesitating motion to separate was abandoned,
and they drew nearer together instead, and presently made a close
circle around the Signora’s chair.
“It gives the mind a stretch to hear different nations talking
together, by even their feeblest representatives,” Mr. Vane had
observed.
“Yes,” Marion replied, lingering, hat in hand. “It always gives me the
same feeling of space and grandeur that I have at sea, when I watch
the waves meet, as if the East and the West were rushing together to
kiss or to tear each other.”
“I wonder,” said Bianca, “if all our national differences are to be
obliterated in heaven, and if we shall have no more those little
piquant characteristics and discussions which make us like each other
even better here.”
The Signora sank into her armchair, quoting the famous recipe for
cooking a hare: “‘First catch your hare.’ My dear friends, we are not
yet in Paradise, and we have a good battle to fight before we shall
get there, and I move that we look to our armor. At all events, heaven
has been described for us by Him who makes it what it is.”
And then Mr. Vane came and stood at the high back of her chair, and a
little beside her, and Isabel took a footstool at the other side.
Marion and Bianca slipped into the sofa opposite.
“I have been thinking to-day,” she continued, “that, when we go to
hear Mass in the Crypt of St. Peter, as it is not probable we shall
ever meet there, all of us, again in this life, we ought all to think
it a duty to receive Holy Communion, if we can. It seems to me that
the special virtue we are to seek there is a stronger faith. I have
been there before, but it was in the company of strangers. We are a
company of sympathizing friends. I think we should look forward to
that visit as a call to make a profession of faith more resolute, if
possible, than we have yet made.”
A silence followed her little speech, which had struck deeper,
perhaps, than their expectations.
“Has no one anything to say?” she asked smilingly. “This is not a
lecture, but a _conversazione_. Are we always to skim the surface in
our talk?”
“You are quite right, Signora,” Mr. Vane said, “and the same thought
has passed through my own mind. I do not know if I shall be thought
prepared to receive so soon, but will ask. It would be something for
me to remember all my life that I had made my first communion there,
and in company with all my family.”
The daughters were silent, both looking down, touched and awed by
their father’s words. With all their affection and confidence, they
never had known anything of his deeper feelings or more serious
intentions than what their intuitive sympathy had divined. Some things
they tacitly guessed, some he tacitly acknowledged; but for a spoken
confidence, either given or demanded, they had each and all been more
free, sometimes, with strangers. And so accustomed had the girls
become to this real reserve under an appearance of perfect ease that
they listened at first almost with terror to the Signora’s challenge.
“I think the children would be pleased,” Mr. Vane added gently,
understanding their silence.
Then they both looked up with a quick smile and a simultaneous “Oh!
yes, papa,” but said no more.
There was still another thin ice that the Signora had to break. She
understood quite well the disposition and habits of Bianca’s lover,
and wished particularly to bring him in with them on this occasion. A
man of a noble and poetical nature, he was, perhaps, in danger of
resting contented with a religious feeling born of an enthusiastic
appreciation of the beauty of the church, and, while obeying its
express commands in the performance of duty, of waiting for the
command to be given. He watched with delight the steps of the Prince’s
Daughter, his loyal word or blow was always ready for those who
attacked her; but he seemed to prefer to be an admiring spectator
rather than an actor, and to do only so much as would keep him in the
acknowledged number of her followers. The Signora suspected that he
contented himself with an Easter Communion, and that there was many a
night when he lay down to sleep without recommending himself to God,
and many a morning when he rose without giving thanks for another day.
If he looked out at the early dawn with delight in its beauty, he felt
that he had praised God; and if, gazing up into the starry midnight,
he thought of the shadowy earth as a hammock swung by invisible cords
from a thick tree full of golden blossoms, it seemed to him that he
had kissed the hand that rocked him to sleep. Intoxicated by the
beauty of the works of God, he exulted in the freedom from baseness
which the magical draught gave him, and could scarcely believe that in
some unwary hour he might draw in a drop of poison with the honey. He
had been wont to say that the virtue of the long-suffering Job had
been preserved, not so much by shutting his bodily eyes and praying,
as by opening his eyes, and looking about where flood and stream, and
snow and hail and dew taught each its lesson, unmarred by earthly
glosses; that that man was surer to fear God who looked at the
leviathan making the deep boil like a pot, leaving a shining path
behind him over the waters, and saying this is the work of God, than
the man who, when he would raise his soul, left his senses behind, and
strove to climb to a knowledge of the power of God without them.
The Signora knew all this, and admired Marion, winged creature that he
was; but she wished him to practise a little more the plain and simple
duties of religion. She observed that he made no motion to assent to
her proposal, and made haste to take for granted that he would assent,
and spare him a promise.
“Then,” she said, “since we are to have this heavenly audience
together, let us make a small part of the preparation together. How
lovely it would be if we could every night say our prayers together,
or a part of them, at least! We will not have company late, and Marion
lives near us, and can take his little starlit walk half an hour later
without any inconvenience. Let us say certain prayers together
expressly in preparation for this communion. We are five. Each one
shall choose a prayer.”
She scarcely paused, feeling that there was still a shyness to
overcome, and that her proposal had been bold and unusual. The thought
fired instead of checking her.
“However closely we may be bound, however sure in our own minds to
spend many years together,” she added hastily, “we may be scattered
like the dust before another day passes. Till we, as closest and
dearest of friends, have prayed together, we have not well deserved
the power of speech nor the consolations of friendship.”
“I choose the Acts of Faith, Hope, Love, Thanksgiving, and
Contrition,” Mr. Vane said.
“I choose the Salve Regina,” Marion added.
Bianca named the Memorare, and Isabel three Our Fathers, three Hail
Marys, and three Glorias.
“And I choose the prayer to the Five Wounds,” said the Signora. “We
each will say our own prayer, and the others answer Amen. Mr. Vane
shall begin.”
They were astonished, not only into compliance, but into willingness
and pleasure. The Signora’s will and enthusiasm blew away all the
foolish scruples and false delicacy which would have for ever
prevented the others making such a proposition, and the five Catholics
knelt together in the room softly lighted by the night and the
Virgin’s lamp, and said their prayers together.
It was a strange yet sweet experience for all, this first union in
family prayers. Mr. Vane, uttering his prayers with an earnest
gravity, gave the tone to the others; and when Marion called on the
Queen of Heaven to hear their cry, as that of the poor exiled children
of Eve coming up from a valley of tears, the Signora’s proposition
showed no more an extraordinary one, but altogether proper and
necessary.
They rose when all was over, and stood silent a moment. It was a
silence full of peace and of a new sense of union.
Marion was the first to speak. “You have strung us to-night like beads
on a corona, “he said, taking the Signora’s hand. “May the chain
endure for ever!”
They parted very quietly, and for the first time Bianca and Marion
said good-night to each other without appearing to remember that they
were lovers, or remembering it so seriously that no one else was
reminded of it.
The Signora went to her room thankful and contented. In spite of her
courage, what she had done had been very difficult for her, and
nothing but her position toward the others of hostess and _cicerone_
had made it seem proper to her. The ice was broken, however, and
successfully; they had gone together to their Heavenly Father, and
they could never again be strangers to each other nor to him. She was
thankful and contented.
TO BE CONTINUED.
SOME QUAINT OLD CITIES.[195]
The Zuyder-Zee will soon be a thing of the past, and in the meanwhile
it is but little known. M. Henri Havard, known as an art-critic, has
given us a glimpse of it, with its decaying ports, its old-fashioned
population, its wonderful atmospheric “effects”; and his book is,
strange to say, newer to most readers than one treating of the South
Sea Islands or the Japanese Archipelago. Not only is the Zuyder-Zee
comparatively unknown to foreigners, but, according to Havard, “it is
more than probable that not ten people in Holland have made this
voyage, and among writers and artists I do not know a single one.”
The navigation of this sea is difficult and dangerous; narrow channels
run between enormous sandbanks hardly covered with water. Tales of
shipwreck abound in every page of the history of the Zuyder-Zee, and
great carcases of ships, breaking up or rotting away, call to mind its
dangers. There is no regular communication between the various ports,
and M. Havard and his companion, M. Van Heemskerck, had to hire a
vessel, engage a crew, and purchase provisions for the voyage. The
vessel was called a “tjalk,” and drew only three feet of water; her
burden was sixty tons. The crew consisted of the “schipper,” one
sailor or “knecht,” and the wife and child of the former. The
travellers put up partitions forming kitchen, dining-room, and
bed-room, and did the cooking by turns. They started in June, 1873,
leaving Amsterdam in the early morning; and, says the author, after a
minute description of the Preraphaelite country surrounding the
principal sea-port of Holland, “the sun which brightened this
magnificent spectacle rendered the atmosphere clear and of a silvery
transparence; reflected by the water, the effect was splendid.” The
first object of interest which they met with were the sluices at
Schellingwoude. “These blocks of granite, imported from distant
countries, massed one upon the other, form an immovable mountain; the
great gates, which allow five ships to enter abreast, have something
majestic about them which impresses the beholder. I know nothing finer
than these sluices, save, perhaps, those of Trolhätten in Sweden.”
The drowsy, pleasant, monotonous impression of the interminable green
meadows, or _polders_ (reclaimed from the sea), the huge windmills,
the few church-steeples of fantastic shapes and varied colors, the
yellow sand-banks, is minutely described, and then the travellers come
upon the island of Marken, like “a green raft lost in a gray sea.”
Seven villages are built on as many little mounds, with a mound used
as a church-yard. The wealth of Marken is in hay and fish. The meadows
are flooded once a year. Trees never grow on the island, and most of
the houses are raised on piles, and look like “great cages suspended
in the air.” There is a peculiarity about the bed-rooms which remind
us of the cupboard-beds common among the poorer classes in Scotland:
“The ground-floor is one large room divided into as many parts as may
be required by wooden partitions without ceilings; the roof――which is,
of course, leaning at an angle――is hung with nets and fishing
utensils.… The bed is the important article of furniture; this is let
into the wall in a kind of cupboard, into which are thrust the
mattresses and other necessary articles. Two little curtains are drawn
across.… It looks as much as possible like a large drawer. Sometimes
considerable luxury is displayed in the bed; the pillow-cases and the
sheets are embroidered with open-work, which is a special fabrication
of the women at Marken――white and yellow threads crossed, something in
the fashion of guipure.” The walls or partitions are mostly painted
blue, the shelves are heaped with common crockery and Japanese
porcelain, for which there is an extravagant demand all over Holland;
a Friesland cuckoo-clock stands in one corner, a carved oak chest in
another, and on this are tall glasses, bulging mugs of delf, and
miraculously-polished old candlesticks of yellow metal. One of the
chief worthies of Marken, Madame Klok, has the richest collection in
the island: china of all sorts (Dutch and Japanese) and all colors,
pictures, foreign curiosities such as sailors always fill their houses
with, are there in profusion; but what she is most proud of is her
carved oak chests, all of Dutch make, their panels sculptured with
great art, and seeming only just to have left the hands of the artist.
The women of Marken have clung to their distinctive dress, and, partly
on that account, are thought very uncivilized by the young Hollanders,
to whom freedom and Paris fashion have become synonymous terms. This
dress is very peculiar, and Havard says very picturesque. Here is part
of his description:
“The head-dress is composed of an immense cap in the form of
a mitre, white, lined with brown, to show off the lace and
embroidery; it is tied close under the chin, pressing
closely over the ears.… Long ringlets of blonde hair fall
down to the shoulders or back, and the hair of the front is
brought forward and cut square along the forehead a little
above the eyebrows. The gown has a body without sleeves, and
the skirt or petticoat is independent of it, and always of a
different stuff. The body is brown, and generally of cloth
covered with embroidery in colors, in which red
predominates.… This requires years of labor. A _corsage_
well embroidered is handed down from mother to daughter as
an heirloom; the sleeves are in two unequal parts: one, with
vertical lines of black and white, reaches the elbow, and
the other, almost to the wrist, is of dark blue, and is
fastened above the elbow.… The skirt is also divided into
two unequal parts: the upper, which is about eight inches
wide only, is a kind of basque with black lines on a light
ground; the rest of the skirt is dark blue, with a double
band of reddish brown at the bottom.… Such is the female
costume of Marken, … so singular that no other costume is
like it, or even approaches its bizarre appearance.”
These old Dutch settlements all possess many churches, but most of
them disfigured by paint and other monstrosities. The Premonstratensian
monks had a monastery at Marken, having come there from Leeuwarden;
but the old Marienhot, turned to other uses, was pulled down in 1845
on account of its ruinous condition. At Monnikendam, “the town of the
monks,” one of the dead cities――for Marken is only a cluster of
villages――there is what is now called the Great Church, but was
originally the Abbey of St. Nicholas. It has eighty great pillars in
the nave alone, and was built in the fifteenth century, though
according to the style of an earlier day. It is now a “_temple_”
(Calvinist meeting-house); the columns are whitewashed, there is a
modern, bulbous pulpit with green curtains, and the nave is full of
ugly, closed pews in the taste of the eighteenth century.
Havard describes Monnikendam as having a Chinese appearance through
its “green trees, the red and green coloring of the houses and roofs,
and the little gray wooden bridge.” In 1573 it had the honor of taking
a prominent part in the great naval battle of the Zuyder-Zee, when
Cornelius Dirkszoon, a native of Monnikendam, destroyed the Spanish
fleet and took the admiral, Count de Bossu, prisoner. The town kept
the count’s collar of the Golden Fleece as a trophy. Though the monks
have disappeared, the town still preserves its arms――a Franciscan
monk, habited sable (black), holding a mace in his right hand, the
shield being _argent_, or white. The tower of the Great Church is of
enormous height, and Havard, as he looked down on the rich plains
below, wondered at the insensibility of the inhabitants to the
treasures of nature and art within their reach. This deserted
place――where the arrival of two strangers was an event of universal
importance, to be talked of at least a month after they had gone, and
where the old office of town-crier was discharged by a wizened
individual in a black dress-coat, knee-breeches, and three-cornered
hat, whose duty of fixing notices to the doors of such houses as
contained patients attacked by a contagious disease reminds us of the
seventeenth century――was once “a flourishing commercial city, one of
the twenty-nine great towns of Holland, when the Hague was but a
village.”
Between Edam and Hoorn (the latter being the pearl of the dead cities)
the tjalk encountered a terrible storm of wind, which was succeeded by
as wonderful a calm. The author says:
“I turned my head (towards the eastern horizon) and saw one
of the most curious spectacles I ever contemplated in my
life. From the hull of the boat to the top of the mast, from
the zenith to the nadir, all was of the same tint. No waves,
no clouds, no heavens, no sea, no horizon were to be
distinguished――nothing but the same tone of color,
beautifully soft; at a short distance a great black boat,
which seemed to rest on nothing, and to be balanced in
space. The sea and the sky appeared of a pearl-gray color,
like a satin robe; the boat looked like a great blot of ink.
Nothing can give an idea of this strange spectacle; words
cannot describe such a picture. Turner, in his strangest
moods, never produced anything so extraordinary.”
The harbor of Hoorn is now “bordered by masses of verdure,
great trees, and flowers. The place of these charming
plantations and gardens was once occupied by ship-building
yards, from whence sailed annually whole fleets of
newly-constructed ships. Hoorn is really one of the
prettiest towns which can be found, and at the same time the
most curious. It is entirely ancient. All the houses are old
and attractive, covered with sculptures and charming
bas-reliefs――every roof finishing in the form of stairs.
Everywhere wide _auvents_ jutting out over doors and
windows; everywhere carved wood and sculptured stone. The
tone of color of the bricks is warm and agreeable to the
eye, giving these ancient habitations an aspect of gayety
and freshness which contrasts in a singular manner with
their great age and ancient forms.… It seems almost
ridiculous to walk about these streets in our modern
costumes. It almost appears to me that there are certain
towns where only the plumed hat, the great trunk-hose and
boots, with a rapier at our side, are in keeping with the
place; and Hoorn is one of these places.”
The emptiness of the streets, the want of all animation, is the shadow
of the picture, and the author brings to mind the former bustling
prosperity of Hoorn, “filled by an active population, covering the
seas with their fleets and the Indies with their counting-houses.
Every week a thousand wagons entered the markets, bringing in
mountains of cheese from the rich countries around.… Each year there
was a bullock fair, first established in 1389, which drew visitors
from all corners of Europe. Frenchmen, Danes, Frisons, Germans, and
Swedes flocked into the town, and thus augmented its astonishing
prosperity. Hoorn then counted twenty-five thousand inhabitants.” It
had “massive towers and monumental gates,” and bastions and ramparts,
whose place is now occupied by beautiful gardens, shaded by fine
trees, and boasting of the few remaining ruinous towers and gates as
of picturesque adornments――nothing else. The gate at the entrance of
the harbor is of “magnificent proportions and superb in its details.…
Among the sculptures I remarked a cow which a peasant-girl is seen
employed in milking――a homage to the industry of the country which
once enriched the town.” On the top of the other old gate――the
Cowgate――is a group of two cows, and on the side facing the town four
cows are represented standing, while the heraldic lions by their side
support the escutcheon of the town, the arms being a hunting-horn. The
remains of the old commerce of Hoorn may be seen on Thursdays, when a
market is held in the town, and quantities of cheeses still arrive.
“The numbers of people on foot who pour into the town, the
carved and heterogeneously-painted wagons, carts, tilburies,
and all kinds of old-fashioned conveyances passing through
the east gate, almost incline one to believe that the good
old times have once more returned to this city. Farmers and
cattle-dealers and their wives arrive in the carriages, for
the market-day is a holiday; … they sit stolidly in or upon
these antediluvian vehicles. I say stolidly; for I do not
know a better term to express the calm, silent, reflective
look of both husbands and wives.… At ten o’clock the
market-place resembles a park of artillery whence the guns
have been withdrawn. The red cheeses piled up by thousands
represent to the life the cannon-balls rusted by exposure to
the air and rain.”
In the Guildhall is preserved Count Bossu’s silver-gilt drinking-cup;
he was a prisoner in Hoorn for three years after his defeat and
capture by the insurgent Dutch. The churches are inferior to the
dwellings, having been spoilt by whitewash and plaster and absurd
Greek peristyles, perhaps supposed at the Reformation to chase away
the evil spirits of an age of superstition. The result is deplorable,
and has unfortunately outlasted the fanaticism of the moment, which
was responsible for these disfigurements. Although the people of Hoorn
claim that their town was rich and famous at the end of the thirteenth
century, the first authentic documents point to the middle of the
fourteenth as the date of regular municipal incorporation, and the
walls were not built till 1426. Hoorn has produced many distinguished
men――Abel Janzoon Tasman, who discovered Van Dieman’s Land and New
Zealand; Jan Pietersz Kœn, who founded Batavia (Java) in 1619; Wouter
Corneliszoon Schouten, who in 1616 doubled Cape Horn, which he named
after his native town; Jan Albertsz Roodtsens, a portrait-painter
known to art-critics as Rhotius, according to the foolish fancy of the
Renaissance for Latinizing one’s “barbaric” name, and others less well
known――doctors and lawyers with Latinized names, honorably mentioned
as learned men in the archives, and brave seamen, patriotic and
enterprising, the Sea-Beggars of the War of Independence against
Spain, and successful explorers in tropical seas.
Having passed through Enkhuizen, the birthplace of the painter Paul
Potter, Havard goes on to Medemblik, the former capital of West
Friesland, and the seat of King Radbod’s power. Here, like a true
artist, he was struck by a beautiful scene painted by nature, who in
these regions, as everywhere else, has so many changing beauties to
offer, to distract one’s attention from even the most perfect human
works of art. “The town, with its towers and steeples and with its
ancient castle, rose up before us against a background of sky of a
rosy tint, fading into lilac-gray and a variety of tints; the town
itself appearing of a blackish green, while over our heads the sky was
of celestial blue; at the very foot of the town the sea repeated all
these splendid colorings and completed the picture. A painter who
should reproduce this scene without alteration would not be believed;
it would be said he had invented the coloring.” Then follows the same
story of desertion, emptiness, and decay, that mark the “dead cities,”
of which this is perhaps the oldest of all. For the well known
incident of King Radbod (repeated seven centuries later by a cacique
of Mexico), and his choice of eternal torments with his forefathers
rather than heaven with strangers to his blood, we have no room. It
illustrates the clannish qualities of the old Teutonic stock. Crossing
part of the peninsula least tainted by “improvement,” the author, on
his way to Texel, passed through many villages such as we have heard
about, but the accounts of which we have believed to be exaggerated.
But these are not to be found on the beaten track, and he who has seen
the typical Brock has only seen an artificially-preserved specimen,
handy and hackneyed, kept on exhibition with the avowed consciousness
of its attraction to strangers. “Every one has heard of the marvellous
cow-houses, paved with delf-tiles and sanded in different colors,
cleaner even than the rooms, where one must neither cough, smoke, nor
spit; where one must not even walk before putting on a great pair of
_sabots_, or wooden shoes, whitened with chalk――cow-sheds in which the
beautiful white-and-black cows are symmetrically arranged upon a
litter which is constantly changed, and whose tails are tied up to the
ceiling for fear of their becoming soiled. Well, it is in these
hamlets that one meets with all this.… Sometimes at the end of the
stable or cow-shed one sees a parlor with a number of fresh young
girls, with their high caps and golden helmets, working at some fancy
work or knitting all sorts of frivolity; the fact is that many of
these peasants are millionaires living among their cheeses with the
greatest simplicity.”
Of Texel and Oude-Schild the author says:
“When you land, it seems as if you entered a great round
basin lined with a thick carpet of verdure; an endless
prairie with a few trees … all the country surrounded by
high dikes and dunes, which limit the view.… We felt as if
we were in an Eden under the waters, with the heavens open
above――a bizarre sensation difficult to describe, but which
is very strange and original. The dike that protects the
south of the island is almost as grand and important as that
of the Helder.… At the place from whence these works spring
it was necessary to work under water at a depth of above one
hundred feet.… On the North Sea side are moving sands,
which, from their desolate aspect, contrast with the rich
and verdant meadows they guard from the encroachments of the
sea. These dunes are certainly not the least interesting
part of the island; they can be entered only on foot or on
horse-back. The feet of the horse or man who attempts to
cross them sink either to the ankle of the man or the
fetlock of the horse. The green meadow suddenly ceases at
their edge, and an arid solitude, burnt by the sun, extends
beyond our view――we should say a strip of the African desert
rather than of the soft and humid soil of Holland.”
This passage into the North Sea has seen some of the largest flotillas
in the world leave its shelter, and not only great commercial fleets
and war fleets, but hardy expeditions of scientific discovery, such as
that of the first explorers who sought for a Northwest Passage through
the ice of the Pole. Although it failed in this, it discovered Nova
Zembla. Twice did the brave William Barends attempt this journey, and
the second voyage was his last, while his associate, Jacob Van
Heemskerck, returned to Holland to be invested with the command of the
navy in 1607, and to attack, under the guns of Gibraltar, the large
Spanish fleet commanded by Alvarez d’Avila. Like Nelson, he died in
the moment of victory, and fifty years later almost the same fate
befell the indomitable Van Tromp. Space forbids to more than mention
Harlingen, a resuscitated city, which has managed to regain much of
its old prosperity, but is not architecturally very interesting. One
of its claims to present attention is the picture-gallery of a
self-made man and discriminating amateur――M. Bos; and one of its
historical claims dates from 1476, when Menno Simonsz, the founder of
the sect of Mennonites, of whom some thousands lately emigrated to
this country, was born within its territory, in the province of
Witmarsum. From this place the travellers started by canal-boat, or
_treckschuit_, a barge drawn by a trotting horse through a level,
productive country. The boat has a first-class and a second-class
compartment, long seats well cushioned for sleeping, a large table for
meals, and, as there is no vibration, it is the laziest, pleasantest
way of travelling, if one is not in a hurry. The breeding of those
splendid black horses, whose long tails sweep the ground, well known
throughout Europe, is still one of the sources of wealth of this
Frison land, and much of the marvellous wood-carving now stored up in
English collections comes from the Frison villages; but of the old
costume of the women nothing remains but the golden helmet.
Circumstances, however, have preserved the old fashion of skating
races, which take place every winter, and are the occasion of regular
festivals. The youth of a whole neighborhood gathers together, and the
prizes are handed down as heirlooms in the families of the winners. In
old times military manœuvres used to be gone through on skates, and
these “reviews” were well worth seeing. The Frison skate is a straight
iron blade, with which, though you cannot go in any other than a
straight line, you can glide along with much greater speed than with
the ordinary curved one we use. The only skating ground of
Holland――the straight canals――are a sufficient explanation of the
difference.
On Leeuwarden we will not dwell, as it is an inland city and by no
means dead, but must notice a funny item in one of its collections of
curiosities――that is a “landdagemmer,” or small pail that state
members used to carry when going to council, and in which they put
their bread and butter or whatever else they had by way of a luncheon.
From Leeuwarden the traveller carries us with him to Franeker, “well
built, well lighted, and certainly one of the cleanest and best-kept
towns in Friesland,” formerly a famous centre of learning. “Such men
as Adrian Metius, the mathematician; Pierius Winsemius, the historian;
Sixtus Amama, the theologian; Ulric Huberus, the jurist; and George
Kazer, who knew every subtlety of the Greek language, with a mass of
other learned scholars, indoctrinated the youth of that age in the
sciences, theology, law, history, and dead languages. The spirit of
learning became contagious, and the whole city was seized with a
desire to acquire knowledge. The students imbued the citizens with a
love of the sciences, and the inhabitants, not content with imbibing
learning themselves, spread it about on the public walls; and one can
still see on the front of the houses, over the doors, and even on the
walls of the stables, numbers of wise inscriptions, moral precepts,
and virtuous sentences” in Latin, signifying, for instance, “Know
thyself”; “Well, or not at all”; “Nothing is good but what is honest,”
etc. The Guildhall, built in the same style as the Leeuwarden
Chancellerie, but daubed over with paint, contains two or three rooms
with their walls literally hidden by gloomy old portraits, said to be
those of the professors of the old academy. Among them is that of a
woman, Anna Maria Schaarman, called by her contemporaries the modern
Sappho, and who, besides poetry, music, painting, engraving, and
modelling, was a proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Ethiopian.
Her works were published at Leyden in 1648.
Franeker has a unique exhibition in the shape of a _Planetarium_, or a
small blue-room, with a movable ceiling, representing the vault of
heaven, where the planets, in the form of gilded balls, and by means
of a mechanical process, rotate around the sun, which stands in the
middle of the room in a kind of half obscurity. The room itself is
only lighted by one candle. The whole apparatus is shown by a woman,
said to be the grand-daughter of the great mathematician, Eise
Eisinga, who devoted seven years of his life, from 1773 to 1780, to
making this planetarium.
The tjalk, which the travellers had left at Harlingen, now carried
them over to Hindeloopen, a sea-port and ancient city, but not one of
those which have to complain of the whims of fortune; for it never
rose to great importance at any time of its thousand years of
existence. Just outside the harbor “the wind suddenly lulled, and one
of those dead calms peculiar to these curious shores overtook us. The
clouds seemed to stand still in the heavens, the very water lapping
against our bows grew still, and, but for a bird skimming the horizon,
a sea-dog touching the surface of the waves, or some _bruinvisch_
leaping in pure joy under the calm waters, all nature appeared as if
wrapped in a deep sleep.” The town began by being a hamlet in the huge
forest of Kreijl (most of whose area is now the bottom of the
Zuyder-Zee), and its name signifies “the hind’s run,” while a running
hind forms the municipal arms. The harbor, which in 1225, three
hundred years after the origin of the town, was endowed with certain
privileges, was never large enough for heavily-freighted ships; and
though the inhabitants praiseworthily tried to enrich themselves by
forming fishing companies, the boats had to be built in other ports,
and the interest of Hindeloopen in these expeditions had always more
or less of an artificial character. Notwithstanding the real claims of
the town to notice, it has escaped the mention of historians;
Cornelius Kempius ignores it altogether; Guicciardini merely refers to
it; Blaeu the geographer, in spite of his minute exactitude, only
gives it a dozen dry lines; and a later writer, the author of _Les
Délices des Pays-Bas_ (1769), is not more complimentary, though he
allows it some “commercial interest.” It often needs an artist’s eye
to look with favor on these world-forgotten places, and draw out
details which make us wonder how it was possible that they have been
hitherto so persistently overlooked. It is often a greater pleasure,
we confess, to read of such places than of those greater ones, the
pilgrimages of the world, where each successive generation of scholars
and explorers flocks to bring to light some fact or some stone, and
where, when all that is likely to be important has been found, they
still pore devotedly over dust and fragments, eager to tell the world
how the ancients ate or dressed, and how their present descendants
retain or have lost or modified the old manners and customs. Havard,
accordingly, says of Hindeloopen:
“Small as it was, it had its arts, its special costume, a
style of architecture, and a language only spoken within its
walls――which is a fact so singular that it would appear
incredible were it not for traces and incontestable proofs
of their existence.[196] The most remarkable of its
peculiarities was, and is still, the costume worn by the
women.… Not content with having a dress different to other
nations, the inhabitants of Hindeloopen regulated the style
of their costume, and adjusted it according to the age and
position of the woman in its smallest detail. From its very
birth a child is put into the national costume: its little
legs are wrapped in the usual linen, but the upper part of
its body is subjected to the prevailing habit of the
country. Its head is covered with a double cap――one of
linen, the other of silk garnished with the usual kerchief;
above this again is placed another calico kerchief, and on
that again a third of larger dimensions, scarlet in color
and trimmed with lace. The tiny body is cased in a
close-fitting jacket, over which is an embroidered bib, and
the baby’s hands are put into calico mittens.”
Then follows a description of the changes of, or rather additions to,
the costume from the age of eighteen months upwards. The marriageable
girls wore the most complicated, everything, even the “floss-silk
stockings,” being of a certain regulation make, color, and stuff.
Married women wore their hair entirely covered by the headdress of
square pieces of red cloth embroidered in gold, above the cap itself.
Widows wore the same articles, but all black and white; and, besides
this daily costume, there were others worn on festival days, chiefly
distinguished by a cape or overall, with other details yet, belonging
some to Whitsuntide, some to Corpus Christi, and others to betrothed
girls, and relating to circumstances, weddings, and funerals, to the
length of time a woman had been married, and if she was a mother,
etc., etc., in endless and minute array. The town women have already
discarded their costume, but it is still universally worn in the
country round about. The ancient industries of Hindeloopen――alas! very
degenerate nowadays――included a _spécialité_ in furniture. It was of
carved wood painted, and many specimens in Dutch and foreign
collections still exist. Havard says of it:
“Its general forms have a very decided Oriental cast. Its
decorations of carved and gilded palms and love-knots,
relieved by the strangest paintings it is possible to
imagine, have no equal except in Persian art. As a rule, the
colors are loud and gaudy――red or pink, green or blue――but,
strange to say, the whole appears harmonious. It is peculiar
and striking but not disagreeable to the eye. Most of the
single pieces of furniture, such as tables and stands, and
sledges are ornamented with red and blue palms, around which
are interlaced numbers of Cupids of dark rose-color, the
whole on a red ground. Sometimes these constantly-recurring
Cupids (always in dark rose-color) are placed among a bed of
blue flowers against a background of red, lightened here and
there by white dots and touches of gold. But this medley of
discordant colors produces a harmonious and dazzling effect,
which I can only liken to the cashmeres of India. This same
style of ornamentation is adopted in private houses, though
the colors are somewhat modified. Red yields to dark blue,
and flowers, love-knots, and palms are toned down into soft
blue, green, and white, on a background of the finest[197]
shade of indigo. The effect thus produced is very curious. I
cannot say it is fine or pleasant, but it is not
disagreeable to the eye, and certainly possesses the
advantage of not being vulgar or common.”
Stavoren, the former capital of Friesland, is one of the towns whose
traditional annals, like those of Medemblik, reach back into
unhistorical times, and whose founder, Friso, a supposed contemporary
and ally of Alexander the Great, built here a temple to Jupiter, and
adorned his town with walls, palaces, and theatres. The fifth century
of our era is its real earliest date, and then it was only what the
first settlement of a barbaric clan always is――half-camp,
half-village――but it had gained a footing which it never abandoned
since. As the centuries passed, we find this town, at the mouth of the
Flevum, “the capital and royal residence of Friesland,” and with a
“considerable commercial and industrial reputation. Treaties of
alliance and trade were entered into with the Romans, Danes, Germans,
and Franks, who came to Stavoren to barter their goods.… The Flevum
was easy to navigate, thus rendering the port convenient for commerce;
able to hold a large fleet whose intrepid sailors explored distances
in the North inaccessible to the vessels belonging to other nations.
At this epoch the Zuyder-Zee was not in existence, and one could walk
on dry land from Stavoren to Medemblik.… A palace was built at
Stavoren (by Richard I.) which later on became the sumptuous residence
of the kings, his successors,” and Charles, Duke of Brabant, journeyed
to Stavoren with a numerous suite to see and admire its wonderful
splendors. This was burnt in 808, but in 815 a still more splendid
church was built by Bishop Odulphus. It was some Stavoren sailors who
first passed through the Sound and opened the way into the Baltic, and
the King of Denmark rewarded the town by exempting its ships from dues
on entering Dantzic. Treaties with Sweden and Scotland conceded to the
town similar privileges, rendering the merchants of Stavoren able to
enter the lists with those of the richest and most influential towns
in the world. A sixteenth-century chronicler[198]――though we incline
to take the statement as typical of the prosperity of the town rather
than in its literal sense――says “the vestibules of the houses were
gilded, and the pillars of the palaces of massive gold.” This,
however, applies to the thirteenth century, the age of Marco Polo and
general redundancy of imagination, colored by the traditions of the
_Arabian Nights_. But it is true that Stavoren was one of the first
towns forming part of the Hanseatic League, and even in the sixteenth
century she still held the third rank. Her downfall was due as much to
the nature of things as to adverse circumstances. Prosperity spoiled
the haughty town: “Her inhabitants had become so rich and opulent that
they were literally intoxicated with their success, and allowed
themselves to grow insolent, exacting, and supercilious beyond
endurance. They were called the spoiled, luxurious children of
Stavoren――‘_dartele ofte vervende Kinderen van Stavoren_.’ Strangers
ceased to trade with them, preferring the pleasanter manners of the
inhabitants of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bruges. In proportion as trade
declined the spirit of enterprise forsook the population, and the
town, once so rich and flourishing, now found herself reduced from the
first to the tenth rank.” This happened in the fourteenth century, and
by the sixteenth “there were scarcely fifty houses in a state of
preservation in this city, which formerly was the highest and noblest
of all.” Its appearance at the present time is still more sad: “There
are about a hundred houses, half of which are in ruins, but not one
remains to recall in the vaguest manner the ancient glory of its
palaces. It would be difficult to call the place a village even; it is
more like one large cemetery, whose five hundred inhabitants have the
appearance of having returned to earth to mourn over the past and lost
glories of their country and the ancient splendor of their kings.”
Outside the harbor is a large sand-bank, called the “Lady’s Bank,”
which for several centuries has blocked up the entrance so that no
great ships can enter, and tradition has seized upon this to point a
moral eminently appropriate to the former proud merchants of this
hopelessly dead city. It is said, and repeated by Guicciardini, that a
rich widow, “petulant and saucy,” freighted a ship for Dantzic, and
bade the master bring back a cargo of the rarest merchandise he could
find in that town. Finding nothing more in requisition there than
grain, he loaded the ship with wheat and returned. The widow was
indignant at his bringing her such common stuff, and ordered him, if
he had loaded the grain at _backboort_, to throw it into the sea at
_stuerboort_, which was done, whereupon there immediately rose at that
place so great a sand-bank that the harbor was blocked; hence the bank
is still called “_Le Sable_,” or “_Le Banc de la Dame_.”
At Urk, a truly patriarchal fishing village, where “every one, as at
Marken, wears the national costume, from the brat who sucks his thumb
to the old man palsied with age,” and where the inhabitants “consider
themselves related, forming one and the same family,” and are “just as
hospitable and polite as at Marken,” Havard spent a few very pleasant
hours. This place is anterior to the Zuyder-Zee, and was already, in
the ninth century, a fishing settlement on one of the islands in Lake
Flevo. Havard thinks that the women, with their healthy beauty and
graceful but evident strength, are good samples of the race that
inhabited these lands a thousand years ago.