Leyden
Steam-trams--Holland for the people--Quiet Leyden--The
Meermansburg--Leyden's museums--The call of the
open--Oliver Goldsmith--A view of the Dutch--"Polite
Learning"--"The Traveller"--James Howell--John Evelyn and the
Burgundian Jew--_Colloquia Peripatetica_--St. Peter's and
St. Pancras's--The Kermis--Drinking in Holland--Poffertjes
and Wafelen--America's master.
We travelled to Leyden from The Hague by the steam-tram, through
cheerful domestic surroundings, past little Englishy cottages and
gardens. It was Sunday morning, and the villagers of Voorburg and
Voorschoten and the other little places _en route_ were idle and gay.
In England light railways are a rarity; Holland is covered with
a net-work of them. The little trains rush along the roads all
over the country, while the roadside willows rock in their eddying
wake. To stand on the steam-tram footboard is one very good way to
see Holland. In England of course we can never have such conveniences,
England being a free country in which individual rights come first. But
Holland exists for the State, and such an idea as the depreciation or
ruin of property by running a tram line over it has never suggested
itself. It is true that when the new electric tramway between Amsterdam
and Haarlem was projected, the comic papers came to the defence of
outraged Nature; but they did not really mean it, as the æsthetic
minority in England would have meant it.
The steam-tram journeys are always interesting; and my advice to a
traveller in Holland is to make as much use of them as he can. This
is quite simple as their time-tables are included in the official
Reisgids. I like them at all times; but best perhaps when one has
to wait in the heart of some quiet village for the other tram to
come up. There is something very soothing and attractive in these
sudden cessations of noise and movement in the midst of a totally
strange community.
Leyden is a paradise of clean, quiet streets--a city of professors,
students and soldiers. It has, I think, the prettiest red roofs in
any considerable Dutch town: not prettier than Veere's, but Veere
is now only a village. Philosophers surely live here: book-worms to
whom yesterday, to-day and to-morrow are one. The sense of commercial
enterprise dies away: whatever they are at Amsterdam, the Dutch at
Leyden cease to be a nation of shopkeepers.
It was holiday time when I was there last, and the town was
comparatively empty. No songs floated through the windows of the
clubs. In talk with a stranger at one of the cafés, I learned that
the Dutch student works harder in the holidays than in term. In term
he is a social and imbibing creature; but when the vacation comes and
he returns to a home to which most of the allurements which an English
boy would value are wanting, he applies himself to his books. I give
the statement as I heard it.
One of the pleasantest buildings in Leyden is the Meermansburg--a
spreading almshouse in the Oude Vest, surrounding a square garden
with a massive pump in the midst. A few pictures are shown in the
Governors' room over the entrance, but greater interest attaches
to the little domiciles for the pensioners of the Meerman trust. A
friendly concierge with a wooden leg showed us one of these compact
houses--a sitting-room with a bed-cupboard in one wall, and below it
a little larder, like the cabin of a ship. At the back a tiny range,
and above, a garret. One could be very comfortable in such quarters.
Leyden has other _hofjes_, as these homes of rest are called, into
one of which, gay with geraniums, I peeped--a little court of clean
cottages seen through the doorway like a Peter de Hooch.
I did not, I fear, do my duty by Leyden's many museums. The sun shone;
the boats swam continually down the Old Rhine and the New; and the sea
at Katwyk and Noordwyk sent a call across the intervening meadows. Some
day perhaps I shall find myself at Leyden again, when the sky is grey
and the thirst for information is more strongly upon me. Ethnography,
comparative anatomy, physiology--there is nothing that may not be
learned in the Leyden museums; but such learning is not peculiarly
Dutch, nor are the treasures of these museums peculiarly Dutch, and I
felt that I might with a clear conscience leave them to others. Have
we not Bloomsbury?
I did, however, climb the Burg, which is a circular fortress on a
mound between the two rivers, so cleverly hidden away among houses
that it was long ere I could find it. It is gained through an ancient
courtyard full of horses and carriages--like a scene in Dumas. From
the Burg one ought to have a fine view, but Leyden's roofs are too
near. And in the Natural History Museum I walked through miles of
birds stuffed, and birds articulated, until I felt that I could give
a year's income to be on terms again with a living blackbird--even
one of those that eat our Kentish strawberries at sunrise.
I did not penetrate to the interior of the University, having none to
guide me, but I was pleased to remember that Oliver Goldsmith had been
a student there not so very long ago. Indeed, as I walked about the
town, I thought much of Goldsmith as he was in 1755, aged twenty-seven,
with all his books to write, wandering through the same streets,
looking upon the same houses and canals, in the interval of acquiring
his mysterious medical degree (ultimately conferred at Louwain). His
ingenious project, it will be remembered--by those whose memories
(like my own) cling to that order of information, to the exclusion
of everything useful and improving--Goldsmith's delightful plan for
subsistence in Holland was to teach the English language to the Dutch,
and in return receive enough money to keep him at the University of
Leyden and enable him to hear the great Professor Albinus. It was
not until he reached Holland that those adorable Irish brains of
his realised that he who teaches English to a Dutchman must first
know Dutch.
Goldsmith, who spent his life in doing characteristic things--few
men have done more--when once he had determined to go to Holland,
took a passage in a vessel bound for Bordeaux. At Newcastle-on-Tyne,
however, on going ashore to be merry, he was arrested as a Jacobite
and thrown into prison for a fortnight. The result was that the ship
sailed without him. It was just as well for him and for us, for it
sank at the mouth of the Garonne. In 1755, however, he was in Leyden,
although by what route, circuitous or direct, he reached that city
we do not know.
He lost little time in giving his Uncle Contarine an account of his
impressions of Holland and its people. Here is a portion of a long
letter: "The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from
him of former times: he in everything imitates a Frenchman, but
in his easy disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite
company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly
what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are
the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest
figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked
narrow hat laced with black ribbon; no coat, but seven waistcoats,
and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his
arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company,
or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his
appetite! Why she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace:
and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.
"A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his
tobacco. You must know, sir, every women carries in her hand a
stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her
petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I
take it that this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy
healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his superfluous
moisture, while the woman, deprived of this amusement, overflows with
such viscidities as tint the complexion, and give that paleness of
visage which low fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch
woman and Scotch will bear an opposition. The one is pale and fat, the
other lean and ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after
a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a stride. I shall not
endeavour to deprive either country of its share of beauty; but must
say, that of all objects on this earth, an English farmer's daughter is
most charming. Every woman there is a complete beauty, while the higher
class of women want many of the requisites to make them even tolerable.
"Their pleasures here are very dull though very various. You may
smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian comedy, as good an
amusement as either of the former. This entertainment always brings
in Harlequin, who is generally a magician, and in consequence of his
diabolical art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons
of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in a roar of
laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the glass
from which another was drinking. 'Twas not his face they laughed at,
for that was masked. They must have seen something vastly queer in the
wooden sword, that neither I, nor you, sir, were you there, could see.
"In winter, when their canals are frozen, every house is forsaken,
and all people are on the ice; sleds drawn by horses, and skating,
are at that time the reigning amusements. They have boats here that
slide on the ice, and are driven by the winds. When they spread all
their sails they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their
motion is so rapid the eye can scarcely accompany them. Their ordinary
manner of travelling is very cheap and very convenient: they sail
in covered boats drawn by horses; and in these you are sure to meet
people of all nations. Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and
the English play at cards. Any man who likes company may have them to
his taste. For my part I generally detached myself from all society,
and was wholly taken up in observing the face of the country. Nothing
can equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eye, fine houses, elegant
gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, presented themselves; but when
you enter their towns you are charmed beyond description. No misery
is to be seen here; every one is usefully employed.
"Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast. There hills and
rocks intercept every prospect: here 'tis all a continued plain. There
you might see a well-dressed duchess issuing from a dirty close;
and here a dirty Dutchman inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be
compared to a tulip planted in dung; but I never see a Dutchman in
his own house but I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated
to an ox. Physic is by no means here taught so well as in Edinburgh:
and in all Leyden there are but four British students, owing to all
necessaries being so extremely dear and the professors so very lazy
(the chemical professor excepted) that we don't much care to come
hither."
When the time came to make the "Inquiry into the State of Polite
Learning" Leyden had to suffer. Goldsmith laid about him with no gentle
hand. "Holland, at first view, appears to have some pretensions to
polite learning. It may be regarded as the great emporium, not less
of literature than of every other commodity. Here, though destitute of
what may be properly called a language of their own, all the languages
are understood, cultivated and spoken. All useful inventions in arts,
and new discoveries in science, are published here almost as soon
as at the places which first produced them. Its individuals have the
same faults, however, with the Germans, of making more use of their
memory than their judgment. The chief employment of their literati is
to criticise, or answer, the new performances which appear elsewhere.
"A dearth of wit in France or England naturally produces a scarcity
in Holland. What Ovid says of Echo may be applied here,
----'nec reticere loquenti,
Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit'----
they wait till something new comes out from others; examine its merits
and reject it, or make it reverberate through the rest of Europe.
"After all, I know not whether they should be allowed any national
character for polite learning. All their taste is derived to them
from neighbouring nations, and that in a language not their own. They
somewhat resemble their brokers, who trade for immense sums without
having any capital."
Goldsmith did not finish there. His observations on the Continent
served him, with a frugality that he did not otherwise practise,
at least thrice. He used them in the "Inquiry into Polite Learning,"
he used them in the story of the Philosophic Vagabond in the _Vicar
of Wakefield_, and still again in "The Traveller". This is the summary
of Holland in that poem:--
To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow;
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign.
Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil
Impels the native to repeated toil,
Industrious habits in each bosom reign,
And industry begets a love of gain.
Hence all the good from opulence that springs,
With all those ills superfluous treasure brings,
Are here display'd. Their much-lov'd wealth imparts
Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts:
But view them closer, craft and fraud appear,
Even liberty itself is barter'd here.
At gold's superior charms all freedom flies,
The needy sell it, and the rich man buys;
A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves,
Here wretches seek dishonourable graves,
And calmly bent, to servitude conform,
Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm.
It was with his good Uncle Contarine's money that Goldsmith
travelled to Leyden. The time came to leave, and Oliver was again
without resources. He borrowed a sufficient sum from Dr. Ellis, a
fellow-countryman living there, and prepared for his departure. But on
his way from the doctor's he had to pass a florist's, in whose window
there chanced to be exhibited the very variety of flower which Uncle
Contarine had so often praised and expressed a desire to possess. Given
the man and the moment, what can you expect? Goldsmith, chief among
those blessed natures who never interrupt a generous impulse, plunged
into the florist's house and despatched a costly bundle of bulbs to
Ireland. The next day he left Leyden with a guinea in his pocket,
no clothes but those he stood in, and a flute in his hand. For the
rest you must see the story of the Philosophic Vagabond.
Evelyn records an amusing experience at Leyden in August, 1641:
"I was brought acquainted with a Burgundian Jew, who had married
an apostate Kentish woman. I asked him divers questions; he told
me, amongst other things, that the World should never end, that our
souls transmigrated, and that even those of the most holy persons did
penance in the bodies of brutes after death, and so he interpreted
the banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar; that all the Jews
should rise again, and be led to Jerusalem; that the Romans only were
the occasion of our Saviour's death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks
do) to be a great prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me several
books of their devotion, which he had translated into English for the
instruction of his wife; he told me that when the Messiah came, all the
ships, barks, and vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain
strange whirlwinds, be loosed from their anchors, and transported in
a moment to all the desolate ports and havens throughout the world,
wherever the dispersion was, to convey their brethren and tribes to the
Holy City; with other such-like stuff. He was a merry drunken fellow,
but would by no means handle any money (for something I purchased of
him), it being Saturday; but desired me to leave it in the window,
meaning to receive it on Sunday morning."
In an old book-shop at Leyden I bought from an odd lot of English
books, chiefly minor fiction for travellers, the _Colloquia
Peripatetica_ of John Duncan, LL.D., Professor of Hebrew in the
New College, Edinburgh. "I'm first a Christian, next a Catholic,
then a Calvinist, fourth a Pædo-baptist, and fifth a Presbyterian. I
cannot reverse the order," is one of his emphatic utterances. Here
are others, not unconnected with the country we are travelling in:
"Poor Erasmus truckled all his life for a hat. If he could only have
been made a cardinal! You see the longing for it in his very features,
and can't help regarding him with mingled respect and pity." Of
Thomas à Kempis, the recluse of Deventer: "A fine fellow, but hazy,
and weak betimes. He and his school tend (as some one has well said)
to make humility and humiliation change places." Finally, of the Bible:
"The three best translations of the Bible, in my opinion, are, in order
of merit, the English, the Dutch, and Diodati's Italian version. As
to Luther, he is admirable in rendering the prophets. He says either
just what the prophets _did say_, or that which you see at once they
_might have said_."
Leyden has two vast churches, St. Peter's and St. Pancras's. Both
are immense and unadorned, I think that St. Pancras's is the lightest
church I was ever in. St. Peter's ought to be filled with memorials of
the town's illustrious sons, but it has few. As I have said elsewhere,
I asked in vain for the grave of Jan Steen, who was buried here.
It was at Leyden that I saw my first Kermis, or fair, seven years ago,
and ate my first poffertjes and wafelen. Writing as a foreigner, in no
way concerned with the matter, I may express regret that the Kermis
is not what it was in Holland. Possibly were one living in Holland,
one would at once join the anti-Kermis party; but I hope not. In
Amsterdam the anti-Kermis party has succeeded, and though one may
still in that city at certain seasons eat wafelen and poffertjes,
the old glories have departed, just as they have departed from so
many English towns which once broke loose for a few nights every
year. Even Barnet Fair is not what it was.
Noise seems to be the principal objection. Personally, I never saw
any drunkenness; and there is so little real revelry that one turns
one's back on the naphtha lamps in this town and that, in Leyden and
the Hoorn, Apeldoorn and Middelburg, with the sad conviction that the
times are out of joint, and that Teniers and Ostade and Brouwer, were
they reborn to-day, would probably either have to take to painting
Christmas supplements or earn their living at a reputable trade. It
is not that the Dutch no longer drink, but that they now do it with
more privacy.
The travelling temples reserved for the honour of poffertjes and
wafelen are the most noticeable features of any Kermis. They are
divided, quite like restaurants, into little cubicles for separate
parties. Flowers and ferns make them gay; the waiters may even wear
evening dress, but this is a refinement which would have annoyed Jan
Steen; on the tables is white American cloth; and curtains of coloured
material and muslin, with bright ribbons, add to the vivacity of the
occasion. To eat poffertjes and wafelen is no light matter: one must
regard it as a ritual.
Poffertjes come first--these are little round pancakey blobs, twisted
and covered with butter and sugar. Then the wafelen, which are
oblong wafers stamped in a mould and also buttered and sugared. You
eat twenty-four poffertjes and two wafelen: that is, at the first
onset. Afterwards, as many more as you wish. Lager beer is drunk with
them. Some prefer Frambozen lemonade.
To eat them is a duty; to see them cooked is a joy. I have watched
the cooks almost for hours. The poffertjes are made by hundreds at
once, in a tray indented with little hollows over a fire. The cook
is continually busy in twisting the little dabs of paste into the
hollows and removing those that are ready. The wafelen are baked in
iron moulds (there is one in Jan Steen's "Oyster Feast") laid on
a rack in the fire. The cook has eight moulds in working order at
once. When the eighth is filled from the pail of batter at his side,
the first is done; and so on, ceaselessly, all day and half the night,
like a natural law.
A woman stands by to spread butter and sugar, and the plate is whisked
away in a moment. The Americans boast of their quick lunches; but I
am convinced that they borrowed celerity in cooking and serving from
some Knickerbocker deviser of poffertjes and wafelen in the early
days of New York. I wonder that Washington Irving omitted to say so.