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A Wanderer in Holland
By
E.V. Lucas
With Twenty Illustrations in Colour By
Herbert Marshall
And Thirty-Four Illustrations After Old Dutch Masters
Contents
Preface
I Rotterdam
II The Dutch in English Literature
III Dordrecht and Utrecht
IV Delft
V The Hague
VI Scheveningen and Katwyk
VII Leyden
VIII Leyden's Painters, a Fanatic and a Hero
IX Haarlem
X Amsterdam
XI Amsterdam's Pictures
XII Around Amsterdam; South and South-East
XIII Around Amsterdam: North
XIV Alkmaar and Hoorn, The Helder and Enkhuisen
XV Friesland: Stavoren to Leeuwarden
XVI Friesland (continued): Leeuwarden and Neighbourhood
XVII Groningen to Zutphen
XVIII Arnheim to Bergen-op-Zoom
XIX Middelburg
XX Flushing
List of Illustrations
In Colour
Sunrise on the Maas
Rotterdam
Gouda
The Great Church, Dort
Utrecht
On the Beach, Scheveningen
Leyden
The Turf Market, Haarlem
St. Nicolas Church, Amsterdam
Canal in the Jews' Quarter, Amsterdam
Volendam
Cheese Market, Alkmaar
The Harbour Tower, Hoorn
Market Place, Weigh-house, Hoorn
The Dromedaris Tower, Enkhuisen
Harlingen
Kampen
Arnheim
The Market Place, Nymwegen
Middelburg
In Monotone
Girl's Head. Jan Vermeer of Delft (Mauritshuis)
The Store Cupboard. Peter de Hooch (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Portrait of a Youth. Jan van Scorel (Boymans Museum,
Rotterdam)
The Sick Woman. Jan Steen (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Anxious Family. Josef Israels
View of Dort. Albert Cuyp (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Never-Ending Prayer. Nicholas Maes (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
A Lady. Paulus Moreelse (Ryks)
Pilgrims to Jerusalem. Jan van Scorel
(Kunstliefde Museum, Utrecht)
View of Delft. Jan Vermeer (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The School of Anatomy. Rembrandt (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
A Young Woman. Rembrandt (Mauritshuis)
The Steen Family. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Menagerie. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Portrait of G. Bicker, Landrichter of Muiden. Van der Heist
(Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Syndics. Rembrandt (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Oyster Feast. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Young Housekeeper. Gerard Dou (Mauritshuis)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Breakfast. Gabriel Metsu (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Groote Kerk. Johannes Bosboom (Boymans Museum, Rotterdam)
The Painter and His Wife (?). Frans Hals (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Group of Arquebusiers. Frans Hals (Haarlem)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Cat's Dancing Lesson. Jan Steen (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The "Night Watch". Rembrandt (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Reader. Jan Vermeer (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Milking Time. Anton Mauve
Paternal Advice. Gerard Terburg (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Spinner. Nicholas Maes (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Clara Alewijn. Dirck Santvoort (Ryks)
Family Scene. Jan Steen (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Little Princess. Paulus Moreelse (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
The Shepherd and His Flock. Anton Mauve
Helene van der Schalke. Gerard Terburg (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Elizabeth Bas. Rembrandt (Ryks)
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl
Preface
It would be useless to pretend that this book is authoritatively
informing. It is a series of personal impressions of the Dutch country
and the Dutch people, gathered during three visits, together with an
accretion of matter, more or less pertinent, drawn from many sources,
old and new, to which I hope I have given unity. For trustworthy
information upon the more serious side of Dutch life and character I
would recommend Mr. Meldrum's _Holland and the Hollanders_. My thanks
are due to my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Emil Lüden, for saving me from
many errors by reading this work in MS.
E.V.L.
A WANDERER IN HOLLAND
Chapter I
Rotterdam
To Rotterdam by water--To Rotterdam by rail--Holland's
monotony of scenery--Holland in England--Rotterdam's few
merits--The life of the river--The Rhine--Walt Whitman--Crowded
canals--Barge life--The Dutch high-ways--A perfect holiday--The
canal's influence on the national character--The florin
and the franc--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--The old and the
poor--Holland's health--Funeral customs--The chemists'
shops--Erasmus of Rotterdam--Latinised names--Peter de
Hooch--True aristocracy--The Boymans treasures--Modern
Dutch art--Matthew Maris--The Rotterdam Zoo--The herons--The
stork's mission--The ourang-outang--An eighteenth-century
miser--A successful merchant--The Queen-Mother--Tom Hood
in Rotterdam--Gouda.
It was once possible to sail all the way to Rotterdam by either of
the two lines of steamships from England--the Great Eastern, _viâ_
Harwich, and the Batavier, direct from London. But that is possible
now only by the Batavier, passengers by the better-known Harwich
route being landed now and henceforward at the Hook at five A.M. I am
sorry for this, because after a rough passage it was very pleasant
to glide in the early morning steadily up the Maas and gradually
acquire a sense of Dutch quietude and greyness. No longer, however,
can this be done, as the Batavier boats reach Rotterdam at night;
and one therefore misses the river, with the little villages on its
banks, each with a tiny canal-harbour of its own; the groups of trees
in the early mist; the gulls and herons; and the increasing traffic
as one drew nearer Schiedam and at last reached that forest of masts
which is known as Rotterdam.
But now that the only road to Rotterdam by daylight is the road
of iron all that is past, and yet there is some compensation, for
short as the journey is one may in its progress ground oneself very
thoroughly in the characteristic scenery of Holland. No one who looks
steadily out of the windows between the Hook and Rotterdam has much
to learn thereafter. Only changing skies and atmospheric effects can
provide him with novelty, for most of Holland is like that. He has the
formula. Nor is it necessarily new to him if he knows England well,
North Holland being merely the Norfolk Broads, the Essex marshlands
about Burnham-on-Crouch, extended. Only in its peculiarity of light
and in its towns has Holland anything that we have not at home.
England has even its canal life too, if one cared to investigate
it; the Broads are populous with wherries and barges; cheese is
manufactured in England in a score of districts; cows range our
meadows as they range the meadows of the Dutch. We go to Holland to
see the towns, the pictures and the people. We go also because so
many of us are so constituted that we never use our eyes until we
are on foreign soil. It is as though a Cook's ticket performed an
operation for cataract.
But because one can learn the character of Dutch scenery so quickly--on
a single railway journey--I do not wish to suggest that henceforward it
becomes monotonous and trite. One may learn the character of a friend
very quickly, and yet wish to be in his company continually. Holland
is one of the most delightful countries to move about in: everything
that happens in it is of interest. I have never quite lost the
sense of excitement in crossing a canal in the train and getting a
momentary glimpse of its receding straightness, perhaps broken by a
brown sail. In a country where, between the towns, so little happens,
even the slightest things make a heightened appeal to the observer;
while one's eyes are continually kept bright and one's mind stimulated
by the ever-present freshness and clearness of the land and its air.
Rotterdam, it should be said at once, is not a pleasant city. It
must be approached as a centre of commerce and maritime industry,
or not at all; if you do not like sailor men and sailor ways, noisy
streets and hurrying people, leave Rotterdam behind, and let the
train carry you to The Hague. It is not even particularly Dutch: it
is cosmopolitan. The Dutch are quieter than this, and cleaner. And
yet Rotterdam is unique--its church of St. Lawrence has a grey and
sombre tower which has no equal in the country; there is a windmill
on the Cool Singel which is essentially Holland; the Boymans Museum
has a few admirable pictures; there is a curiously fascinating stork
in the Zoological Gardens; and the river is a scene of romantic energy
by day and night. I think you must go to Rotterdam, though it be only
for a few hours.
At Rotterdam we see what the Londoner misses by having a river that
is navigable in the larger sense only below his city. To see shipping
at home we must make our tortuous way to the Pool; Rotterdam has the
Pool in her midst. Great ships pass up and down all day. The Thames,
once its bustling mercantile life is cut short by London Bridge,
dwindles to a stream of pleasure; the Maas becomes the Rhine.
Walt Whitman is the only writer who has done justice to a great
harbour, and he only by that sheer force of enumeration which in this
connection rather stands for than is poetry. As a matter of fact it
is the reader of such an inventory as we find in "Crossing Brooklyn
Ferry" that is the poet: Whitman is only the machinery. Whitman gives
the suggestion and the reader's own memory or imagination does the
rest. Many of the lines might as easily have been written of Rotterdam
as of Brooklyn:--
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their
pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of
the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of
the granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd
on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighbouring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys
burning high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and
yellow light over the tops of the houses, and down into the clefts
of streets.
There is of course nothing odd in the description of one harbour
fitting another, for harbours have no one nationality but all. Whitman
was not otherwise very strong upon Holland. He writes in "Salut au
Monde" of "the sail and steamships of the world" which in his mind's
eye he beholds as they
Wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, The Hague, Copenhagen.
It is not easy for one of the "sail or steamships of the world" to
wait steamed up at The Hague; because The Hague has no harbour except
for small craft and barges. Shall we assume, with great charity,
that Walt feared that the word Rotterdam might impair his rhythm?
Not only big shipping: I think one may see barges and canal boats in
greater variety at Rotterdam than anywhere else. One curious thing
to be noticed as they lie at rest in the canals is the absence of
men. A woman is always there; her husband only rarely. The only
visible captain is the fussy, shrewish little dog which, suspicious
of the whole world, patrols the boat from stem to stern, and warns
you that it is against the law even to look at his property. I hope
his bite is not equal to his bark.
Every barge has its name. What the popular style was seven years
ago, when I was here last, I cannot remember; but to-day it is
"Wilhelmina". English suburban villas have not a greater variety of
fantastic names than the canal craft of Holland; nor, with all our
monopoly of the word "home," does the English suburban villa suggest
more compact cosiness than one catches gleams of through their cabin
windows or down their companions.
Spring cleaning goes on here, as in the Dutch houses, all the year
round, and the domiciliary part of the vessels is spotless. Every
bulwark has a washing tray that can be fixed or detached in a
moment. "It's a fine day, let us kill something," says the Englishman;
"Here's an odd moment, let us wash something," says the Dutch vrouw.
In some of the Rotterdam canals the barges are so packed that they
lie touching each other, with their burgees flying all in the same
direction, as the vanes of St. Sepulchre's in Holborn cannot do. How
they ever get disentangled again and proceed on their free way to
their distant homes is a mystery. But in the shipping world incredible
things can happen at night.
One does not, perhaps, in Rotterdam realise all at once that every drop
of water in these city-bound canals is related to every other drop of
water in the other canals of Holland, however distant. From any one
canal you can reach in time every other. The canal is really much more
the high road of the country than the road itself. The barge is the
Pickford van of Holland. Here we see some of the secret of the Dutch
deliberateness. A country which must wait for its goods until a barge
brings them has every opportunity of acquiring philosophic phlegm.
After a while one gets accustomed to the ever-present canal and the odd
spectacle (to us) of masts in the streets and sails in the fields. All
the Dutch towns are amphibious, but some are more watery than others.
The Dutch do not use their wealth of water as we should. They do not
swim in it, they do not race on it, they do not row for pleasure at
all. Water is their servant, never a light-hearted companion.
I can think of no more reposeful holiday than to step on board one of
these barges wedged together in a Rotterdam canal, and never lifting
a finger to alter the natural course of events--to accelerate or
divert--be earned by it to, say, Harlingen, in Friesland: between the
meadows; under the noses of the great black and white cows; past herons
fishing in the rushes; through little villages with dazzling milk-cans
being scoured on the banks, and the good-wives washing, and saturnine
smokers in black velvet slippers passing the time of day; through
big towns, by rows of sombre houses seen through a delicate screen of
leaves; under low bridges crowded with children; through narrow locks;
ever moving, moving, slowly and surely, sometimes sailing, sometimes
quanting, sometimes being towed, with the wide Dutch sky overhead,
and the plovers crying in it, and the clean west wind driving the
windmills, and everything just as it was in Rembrandt's day and just
as it will be five hundred years hence.
Holland when all is said is a country of canals. It may have cities
and pictures, windmills and cows, quaint buildings, and quainter
costumes, but it is a country of canals before all. The canals set
the tune. The canals keep it deliberate and wise.
One can be in Rotterdam, or in whatever town one's travels really
begin, but a very short time without discovering that the Dutch
unit--the florin--is a very unsatisfactory servant. The dearness
of Holland strikes one continually, but it does so with peculiar
force if one has crossed the frontier from Belgium, where the unit
is a franc. It is too much to say that a sovereign in Holland is
worth only twelve shillings: the case is not quite so extreme as
that; but a sovereign in Belgium is, for all practical purposes,
worth twenty-five shillings, and the contrast after reaching Dutch
soil is very striking. One has to recollect that the spidery letter
"f," which in those friendly little restaurants in the Rue Hareng at
Brussels had stood for a franc, now symbolises that far more serious
item the florin; and f. 1.50, which used to be a trifle of one and
threepence, is now half a crown.
Even in our own country, where we know something about the cost of
things, we are continually conscious of the fallacy embodied in the
statement that a sovereign is equal to twenty shillings. We know that
in theory that is so; but we know also that it is so only as long as
the sovereign remains unchanged. Change it and it is worth next to
nothing--half a sovereign and a little loose silver. But in Holland
the disparity is even more pathetic. To change a sovereign there
strikes one as the most ridiculous business transaction of one's life.
Certain things in Holland are dear beyond all understanding. At The
Hague, for example, we drank Eau d'Evian, a very popular bottled water
for which in any French restaurant one expects to pay a few pence;
and when the bill arrived this simple fluid cut such a dashing figure
in it that at first I could not recognise it at all. When I put the
matter to the landlord, he explained that the duty made it impossible
for him to charge less than f. 1.50 (or half a crown) a bottle;
but I am told that his excuse was too fanciful. None the less, half
a crown was the charge, and apparently no one objects to pay it. The
Dutch, on pleasure or eating bent, are prepared to pay anything. One
would expect to get a reasonable claret for such a figure; but not
in Holland. Wine is good there, but it is not cheap. Only in one
hotel--and that in the unspoiled north, at Groningen--did I see wine
placed automatically upon the table, as in France.
Rotterdam must have changed for the worse under modern conditions;
for it is no longer as it was in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's day. From
Rotterdam in 1716 she sent the Countess of Mar a pretty account of
the city: "All the streets are paved with broad stones, and before
the meanest artificers' doors seats of various coloured marbles,
and so neatly kept that, I will assure you, I walked all over the
town yesterday, _incognita_, in my slippers, without receiving one
spot of dirt; and you may see the Dutch maids washing the pavement of
the street with more application than ours do our bed-chambers. The
town seems so full of people, with such busy faces, all in motion,
that I can hardly fancy that it is not some celebrated fair; but I
see it is every day the same.
"The shops and warehouses are of a surprising neatness and
magnificence, filled with an incredible quantity of fine merchandise,
and so much cheaper than what we see in England, I have much ado
to persuade myself I am still so near it. Here is neither dirt nor
beggary to be seen. One is not shocked with those loathsome cripples,
so common in London, nor teased with the importunities of idle fellows
and wenches, that choose to be nasty and lazy. The common servants
and the little shopwomen here are more nicely clean than most of our
ladies; and the great variety of neat dresses (every woman dressing
her head after her own fashion) is an additional pleasure in seeing
the town."
The claims of business have now thrust aside many of the little
refinements described by Lady Mary, her description of which has but
to be transferred to some of the smaller Dutch towns to be however
in the main still accurate. But what she says of the Dutch servants
is true everywhere to this minute. There are none more fresh and
capable; none who carry their lot with more quiet dignity. Not the
least part of the very warm hospitality which is offered in Dutch
houses is played by the friendliness of the servants.
Every one in Holland seems to have enough; no one too
much. Great wealth there may be among the merchants, but it is not
ostentatious. Holland still seems to have no poor in the extreme sense
of the word, no rags. Doubtless the labourers that one sees are working
at a low rate, but they are probably living comfortably at a lower,
and are not to be pitied except by those who still cherish the illusion
that riches mean happiness. The dirt and poverty that exist in every
English town and village are very uncommon. Nor does one see maimed,
infirm or very old people, except now and then--so rarely as at once
to be reminded of their rarity.
One is struck, even in Rotterdam, which is a peculiarly strenuous
town, by the ruddy health of the people in the streets. In England,
as one walks about, one sees too often the shadow of Death on this
face and that; but in Holland it is difficult to believe in his power,
the people have so prosperous, so permanent, an air.
That the Dutch die there is no doubt, for a funeral is an almost
daily object, and the aanspreker is continually hurrying by; but
where are the dead? The cemeteries are minute, and the churches have
no churchyards. Of Death, however, when he comes the nation is very
proud. The mourning customs are severe and enduring. No expense is
spared in spreading the interesting tidings. It is for this purpose
that the aanspreker flourishes in his importance and pomp. Draped
heavily in black, from house to house he moves, wherever the slightest
ties of personal or business acquaintanceship exist, and announces
his news. A lady of Hilversum tells me that she was once formally the
recipient of the message, "Please, ma'am, the baker's compliments,
and he's dead," the time and place of the interment following. I said
draped in black, but the aanspreker is not so monotonous an official as
that. He has his subtleties, his nuances. If the deceased is a child,
he adds a white rosette; if a bachelor or a maid, he intimates the
fact by degrees of trimming.
The aanspreker was once occasionally assisted by the huilebalk, but I
am afraid his day is over. The huilebalk accompanied the aansprekers
from house to house and wept on the completion of their sad message. He
wore a wide-awake hat with a very large brim and a long-tailed coat. If
properly paid, says my informant, real tears coursed down his cheeks;
in any case his presence was a luxury possible only to the rich.
The aanspreker is called in also at the other end of life. Assuming
a more jocund air, he trips from house to house announcing little
strangers.
That the Dutch are a healthy people one might gather also from the
character of their druggists. In this country, even in very remote
towns, one may reveal one's symptoms to a chemist or his assistant
feeling certain that he will know more or less what to prescribe. But
in Holland the chemists are often young women, who preside over shops
in which one cannot repose any confidence. One likes a chemist's shop
at least to look as if it contained reasonable remedies. These do
not. Either our shops contain too many drugs or these too few. The
chemist's sign, a large comic head with its mouth wide open (known
as the gaper), is also subversive of confidence. A chemist's shop is
no place for jokes. In Holland one must in short do as the Dutch do,
and remain well.
Rotterdam's first claim to consideration, apart from its commercial
importance, is that it gave birth to Erasmus, a bronze statue
of whom stands in the Groote Market, looking down on the stalls
of fruit. Erasmus of Rotterdam--it sounds like a contradiction
in terms. Gherardt Gherardts of Rotterdam is a not dishonourable
cacophany--and that was the reformer's true name; but the fashion
of the time led scholars to adopt a Hellenised, or Latinised,
style. Erasmus Desiderius, his new name, means Beloved and long
desired. Grotius, Barlaeus, Vossius, Arminius, all sacrificed local
colour to smooth syllables. We should be very grateful that the fashion
did not spread also to the painters. What a loss it would be had the
magnificent rugged name of Rembrandt van Rhyn been exchanged for a
smooth emasculated Latinism.
Rotterdam had another illustrious son whose work as little suggests
his birthplace--the exquisite painter Peter de Hooch. According to the
authorities he modelled his style upon Rembrandt and Fabritius, but the
influence of Rembrandt is concealed from the superficial observer. De
Hooch, whose pictures are very scarce, worked chiefly at Delft and
Haarlem, and it was at Haarlem that he died in 1681. If one were put
to it to find a new standard of aristocracy superior to accidents
of blood or rank one might do worse than demand as the ultimate test
the possession of either a Vermeer of Delft or a Peter de Hooch.
One only of Peter de Hooch's pictures is reproduced in this book--"The
Store Cupboard". This is partly because there are, I think, better
paintings of his in London than at Amsterdam. At least it seems to
me that his picture in our National Gallery of the waiting maid is
finer than anything by De Hooch in Holland. But in no other work
of his that I know is his simple charm so apparent as in "The Store
Cupboard". This is surely the Christmas supplement carried out to its
highest power--and by its inventor. The thousands of domestic scenes
which have proceeded from this one canvas make the memory reel; and
yet nothing has staled the prototype. It remains a sweet and genuine
and radiant thing. De Hooch had two fetishes--a rich crimson dress
or jacket and an open door. His compatriot Vermeer, whom he sometimes
resembles, was similarly addicted to a note of blue.
No one has managed direct sunlight so well as De Hooch. The light in
his rooms is the light of day. One can almost understand how Rembrandt
and Gerard Dou got their concentrated effects of illumination; but
how this omnipresent radiance streamed from De Hooch's palette is one
of the mysteries. It is as though he did not paint light but found
light on his canvas and painted everything else in its midst.
Rotterdam has some excellent pictures in its Boymans Museum; but they
are, I fancy, overlooked by many visitors. It seems no city in which to
see pictures. It is a city for anything rather than art--a mercantile
centre, a hive of bees, a shipping port of intense activity. And
yet perhaps the quietest little Albert Cuyp in Holland is here, "De
Oude Oostpoort te Rotterdam," a small evening scene, without cattle,
suffused in a golden glow. But all the Cuyps, and there are six,
are good--all inhabited by their own light.
Among the other Boymans treasures which I find I have marked (not
necessarily because they are good--for I am no judge--but because
I liked them) are Ferdinand Bols fine free portrait of Dirck van
der Waeijen, a boy in a yellow coat; Erckhart's "Boaz and Ruth," a
small sombre canvas with a suggestion of Velasquez in it; Hobbema's
"Boomrijk Landschap," one of the few paintings of this artist that
Holland possesses. The English, I might remark, always appreciative
judges of Dutch art, have been particularly assiduous in the pursuit of
Hobbema, with the result that his best work is in our country. Holland
has nothing of his to compare with the "Avenue at Middelharnis,"
one of the gems of our National Gallery. And his feathery trees may
be studied at the Wallace Collection in great comfort.
Other fine landscapes in the Boymans Museum are three by Johan
van Kessel, who was a pupil of Hobbema, one by Jan van der Meer,
one by Koninck, and, by Jacob van Ruisdael, a corafield in the sun
and an Amsterdam canal with white sails upon it. The most notable
head is that by Karel Fabritius; Hendrick Pot's "Het Lokstertje"
is interesting for its large free manner and signs of the influence
of Hals; and Emmanuel de Witte's Amsterdam fishmarket is curiously
modern. But the figure picture which most attracted me was "Portret
van een jongeling," by Jan van Scorel, of whom we shall learn more at
Utrecht. This little portrait, which I reproduce on the opposite page,
is wholly charming and vivid.
The Boymans Museum contains also modern Dutch paintings. Wherever
modern Dutch paintings are to be seen, I look first for the delicate
art of Matthew Maris, and next for Anton Mauve. Here there is no
Matthew Maris, and but one James Maris. There is one Mauve. The modern
Dutch painter for the most part paints the same picture so often. But
Matthew Maris is full of surprises. If a new picture by any of his
contemporaries stood with its face to the wall one would know what
to expect. From Israels, a fisherman's wife; from Mesdag, a grey
stretch of sea; from Bosboom, a superb church interior; from Mauve,
a peasant with sheep or a peasant with a cow; from Weissenbruch, a
stream and a willow; from Breitner, an Amsterdam street; from James
Maris a masterly scene of boats and wet sky. Usually one would have
guessed aright. But with Matthew Maris is no certainty. It may be a
little dainty girl lying on her side and watching butterflies; it may
be a sombre hillside at Montmartre; it may be a girl cooking; it may
be scaffolding in Amsterdam, or a mere at evening, or a baby's head,
or a village street. He has many moods, and he is always distinguished
and subtle.
Rotterdam has a zoological garden which, although inferior to ours,
is far better than that at Amsterdam, while it converts The Hague's Zoo
into a travesty. Last spring the lions were in splendid condition. They
are well housed, but fewer distractions are provided for them than
in Regent's Park. I found myself fascinated by the herons, who were
continually soaring out over the neighbouring houses and returning
like darkening clouds. In England, although the heron is a native, we
rarely seem to see him; while to study him is extremely difficult. In
Holland he is ubiquitous: both wild and tame.
More interesting still was the stork, whose nest is set high on
a pinnacle of the buffalo house. He was building in the leisurely
style of the British working man. He would negligently descend from
the heavens with a stick. This he would lay on the fabric and then
carefully perform his toilet, looking round and down all the time
to see that every one else was busy. Whenever his eye lighted upon
a toddling child or a perambulator it visibly brightened. "My true
work!" he seemed to say; "this nest building is a mere by-path of
industry." After prinking and overlooking, and congratulating himself
thus, for a few minutes, he would stroll off, over the housetops,
for another stick. He was the unquestionable King of the Garden.
Why are there no heronries in the English public parks? And why is
there no stork? The Dutch have a proverb, "Where the stork abides
no mother dies in childbed". Still more, why are there no storks in
France? The author of _Fécondité_ should have imported them.
No Zoo, however well managed, can keep an ourang-outang long, and
therefore one should always study that uncomfortably human creature
whenever the opportunity occurs. I had great fortune at Rotterdam,
for I chanced to be in the ourang-outang's house when his keeper
came in. Entering the enclosure, he romped with him in a score of
diverting ways. They embraced each other, fed each other, teased
each other. The humanness of the creature was frightful. Perhaps our
likeness to ourang-outangs (except for our ridiculously short arms,
inadequate lower jaws and lack of hair) made him similarly uneasy.
Rotterdam, I have read somewhere, was famous at the end of the
eighteenth century for a miser, the richest man in the city. He always
did his own marketing, and once changed his butcher because he weighed
the paper with the meat He bought his milk in farthingsworths, half
of which had to be delivered at his front door and half at the back,
"to gain the little advantage of extra measure". Different travellers
note different things, and William Chambers, the publisher, in his
_Tour in Holland_ in 1839, selected for special notice another type
of Rotterdam resident: "One of the most remarkable men of this [the
merchant] class is Mr. Van Hoboken of Rhoon and Pendrecht, who lives
on one of the havens. This individual began life as a merchant's
porter, and has in process of time attained the highest rank among
the Dutch mercantile aristocracy. He is at present the principal owner
of twenty large ships in the East India trade, each, I was informed,
worth about fourteen thousand pounds, besides a large landed estate,
and much floating wealth of different descriptions. His establishment
is of vast extent, and contains departments for the building of ships
and manufacture of all their necessary equipments. This gentleman,
until lately, was in the habit of giving a splendid fête once a year
to his family and friends, at which was exhibited with modest pride
the porter's truck which he drew at the outset of his career. One
seldom hears of British merchants thus keeping alive the remembrance
of early meanness of circumstances."
At one of Rotterdam's stations I saw the Queen-Mother, a
smiling, maternal lady in a lavender silk dress, carrying a large
bouquet, and saying pretty things to a deputation drawn up on the
platform. Rotterdam had put out its best bunting, and laid six inches
of sand on its roads, to do honour to this kindly royalty. The band
played the tender national anthem, which is always so unlike what one
expects it to be, as her train steamed away, and then all the grave
bearded gentlemen in uniforms and frock coats who had attended her
drove in their open carriages back to the town. Not even the presence
of the mounted guard made it more formal than a family party. Everybody
seemed on the best of friendly terms of equality with everybody else.
Tom Hood, who had it in him to be so good a poet, but living in a
country where art and literature do not count, was permitted to coarsen
his delicate genius in the hunt for bread, wrote one of his comic
poems on Rotterdam. In it are many happy touches of description:--
Before me lie dark waters
In broad canals and deep,
Whereon the silver moonbeams
Sleep, restless in their sleep;
A sort of vulgar Venice
Reminds me where I am;
Yes, yes, you are in England,
And I'm at Rotterdam.
Tall houses with quaint gables,
Where frequent windows shine,
And quays that lead to bridges,
And trees in formal line,
And masts of spicy vessels
From western Surinam,
All tell me you're in England,
But I'm in Rotterdam.
With headquarters at Rotterdam one may make certain small journeys
into the neighbourhood--to Dordrecht by river, to Delft by canal,
to Gouda by canal; or one may take longer voyages, even to Cologne if
one wishes. But I do not recommend it as a city to linger in. Better
than Rotterdam's large hotels are, I think, the smaller, humbler
and more Dutch inns of the less commercial towns. This indeed is the
case all over Holland: the plain Dutch inn of the neighbouring small
town is pleasanter than the large hotels of the city; and, as I have
remarked in the chapter on Amsterdam, the distances are so short,
and the trains so numerous, that one suffers no inconvenience from
staying in the smaller places.
Gouda (pronounced Howda) it is well to visit from Rotterdam, for it
has not enough to repay a sojourn in its midst. It has a Groote Kerk
and a pretty isolated white stadhuis. But Gouda's fame rests on its
stained glass--gigantic representations of myth, history and scripture,
chiefly by the brothers Crabeth. The windows are interesting rather
than beautiful. They lack the richness and mystery which one likes
to find in old stained glass, and the church itself is bare and cold
and unfriendly. Hemmed in by all this coloured glass, so able and
so direct, one sighs for a momentary glimpse of the rose window at
Chartres, or even of the too heavily kaleidoscopic patterns of Brussels
Cathedral. No matter, the Gouda windows in their way are very fine,
and in the sixth, depicting the story of Judith and Holofernes, there
is a very fascinating little Düreresque tower on a rock under siege.
If one is taking Gouda on the way from Rotterdam to Amsterdam,
the surrounding country should not be neglected from the carriage
windows. Holland is rarely so luxuriant as here, and so peacefully
beautiful.