Amsterdam
The Venice of the North--The beauty of gravity--No place for
George Dyer--The Keizersgracht--Kalverstraat and Warmoes
Straat--The Ghetto--Pile-driving--Erasmus's sarcasm--The
new Bourse--Learning the city--Tramway perplexities--The
unnecessary guide--The Royal Palace--The New Church--Stained
glass--The Old Church--The five carpets--Wedding customs--Dutch
wives to-day and in the past--The Begijnenhof--The new
religion and the old--The Burgerweesmeisjes--The Eight
Orange Blossoms--Dutch music halls--A Dutch Hamlet--The fish
market--Rembrandt's grave--A nation of shopkeepers--_Max
Havelaar_--Mr. Drystubble's device--Lothario and Betsy--The
English in Holland and the Dutch in England--Athleticism--A
people on skates--The chaperon's perplexity--Love on the level.
Amsterdam is notable for two possessions above others: its old
canals and its old pictures. Truly has it been called the Venice
of the North; but very different is its sombre quietude from the
sunny Italian city among the waters. There is a beauty of gaiety
and a beauty of gravity; and Amsterdam in its older parts--on the
Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht--has the beauty of gravity. In
Venice the canal is of course also the street: gondolas and barcas
are continually gliding hither and thither; but in the Keizersgracht
and the Heerengracht the water is little used. One day, however,
I watched a costermonger steering a boat-load of flowers under a
bridge, and no words of mine can describe the loveliness of their
reflection. I remember the incident particularly because flowers are
not much carried in Holland, and it is very pleasant to have this
impression of them--this note of happy gaiety in so dark a setting.
An unprotected roadway runs on either side of the water, which makes
the houses beside these canals no place for Charles Lamb's friend,
George Dyer, to visit in. Accidents are not numerous, but a company
exists in Amsterdam whose business it is to rescue such odd dippers
as horses and carriages by means of elaborate machinery devised for
the purpose. Only travellers born under a luckier star than I are
privileged to witness such sport.
In the main Amsterdam is a city of trade, of hurrying business men,
of ceaseless clanging tramcars and crowded streets; but on the
Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht you are always certain to find
the old essential Dutch gravity and peace. No tide moves the sullen
waters of these canals, which are lined with trees that in spring
form before the narrow, dark, discreet houses the most delicate green
tracery imaginable; and in summer screen them altogether. These houses
are for the most part black and brown, with white window frames,
and they rise to a great height, culminating in that curious stepped
gable (with a crane and pulley in it) which is, to many eyes, the
symbol of the city. I know no houses that so keep their secrets. In
every one, I doubt not, is furniture worthy of the exterior: old
paintings of Dutch gentlemen and gentlewomen, a landscape or two,
a girl with a lute and a few tavern scenes; old silver windmills; and
plate upon plate of serene blue Delft. (You may see what I mean in the
Suasso rooms at the Stedelijk Museum.) I have walked and idled in the
Keizersgracht at all times of the day, but have never seen any real
signs of life. Mats have been banged on its doorsteps by clean Dutch
maidservants armed with wicker beaters; milk has been brought in huge
cans of brass and copper shining like the sun; but of its life proper
the gracht has given no sign. Its true life is houseridden, behind
those spotless and very beautiful lace curtains, and there it remains.
One of the wittiest of the old writers on Holland (of whom I said
something in the second chapter), Owen Feltham the moralist, describes
in his _Brief Character of the Low Countries_ an Amsterdam house of
the middle of the seventeenth century. Thus:--
When you are entered the house, the first thing you encounter is a
Looking-glasse. No question but a true Embleme of politick hospitality;
for though it reflect yourself in your own figure, 'tis yet no longer
than while you are there before it. When you are gone once, it flatters
the next commer, without the least remembrance that you ere were there.
The next are the vessels of the house marshalled about the room like
watchmen. All as neat as if you were in a Citizen's Wife's Cabinet;
for unless it be themselves, they let none of God's creatures lose
any thing of their native beauty.
Their houses, especially in their Cities, are the best eye-beauties
of their Country. For cost and sight they far exceed our English,
but they want their magnificence. Their lining is yet more rich
than their outside; not in hangings, but pictures, which even the
poorest are there furnisht with. Not a cobler but has his toyes for
ornament. Were the knacks of all their houses set together, there
would not be such another _Bartholmew_-Faire in _Europe_....
Their beds are no other than land-cabines, high enough to need a ladder
or stairs. Up once, you are walled in with Wainscot, and that is good
discretion to avoid the trouble of making your will every night;
for once falling out else would break your neck perfectly. But if
you die in it, this comfort you shall leave your friends, that you
dy'd in clean linnen.
Whatsoever their estates be, their houses must be fair. Therefore from
_Amsterdam_ they have banisht seacoale, lest it soyl their buildings,
of which the statelier sort are sometimes sententious, and in the
front carry some conceit of the Owner. As to give you a taste in these.
Christus Adjutor Meus;
Hoc abdicato Perenne Quero;
Hic Medio tuitus Itur.
Every door seems studded with Diamonds. The nails and hinges hold a
constant brightnesse, as if rust there was not a quality incident to
Iron. Their houses they keep cleaner than their bodies; their bodies
than their souls. Goe to one, you shall find the Andirons shut up in
net-work. At a second, the Warming-pan muffled in Italian Cutworke. At
a third the Sconce clad in Cambrick.
The absence of any lively traffic on the canals, as in Venice, has this
compensation, that the surface is left untroubled the more minutely
to mirror the houses and trees, and, at night, the tramcars on the
bridges. The lights of these cars form the most vivid reflections
that I can recollect. But the quiet reproduction of the stately black
façades is the more beautiful thing. An added dignity and repose are
noticeable. I said just now that one desired to learn the secret of
the calm life of these ancient grachts. But the secret of the actual
houses of fact is as nothing compared with the secret of those other
houses, more sombre, more mysterious, more reserved, that one sees in
the water. To penetrate their impressive doors were an achievement,
a distinction, indeed! With such a purpose suicide would lose half
its terrors.
For the greatest contrast to these black canals, you must seek the
Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat. Kalverstraat, running south from the
Dam, is by day filled with shoppers and by night with gossipers. No
street in the world can be more consistently busy. Damrak is of course
always a scene of life, but Damrak is a thoroughfare--its population
moving continually either to or from the station. But those who use
the Kalverstraat may be said almost to live in it. To be there is
an end in itself. Warmoes Straat, parallel with Damrak on the other
side of the Bourse, behind the Bible Hotel, is famous for its gigantic
restaurant--the hugest in Europe, I believe--the Krasnapolsky, a palace
of bewildering mirrors, and for concert halls and other accessories
of the gayer life. But this book is no place in which to enlarge upon
the natural history of Warmoes Straat and its southern continuation,
the Nes.
For the principal cafés, as distinguished from restaurants, you must
seek the Rembrandt's Plein, in the midst of which stands the master's
statue. The pavement of this plein on Sunday evening in summer is
almost impassable for the tables and chairs that spread over it and
the crowds overflowing from Kalverstraat.
But there is still to be mentioned a district of Amsterdam which
from the evening of Friday until the evening of Saturday is more
populous even than Kalverstraat. This is the Jews' quarter, which
has, I should imagine, more parents and children to the square foot
than any residential region in Europe. I struggled through it at
sundown one fine Saturday--to say I walked through it would be too
misleading--and the impression I gathered of seething vivacity is
still with me. These people surely will inherit the earth.
Spinoza was a child of this Ghetto: his birthplace at 41 Waterloo
Plein is still shown; and Rembrandt lived at No. 4 Jodenbree Straat
for sixteen years.
A large number of the Amsterdam Jews are diamond cutters and
polishers. You may see in certain cafés dealers in these stones turning
over priceless little heaps of them with the long little finger-nail
which they preserve as a scoop.
Amsterdam may be a city builded on the sand; but none the less will it
endure. Indeed the sand saves it; for it is in the sand that the wooden
piles on which every house rests find their footing, squelching through
the black mud to this comparative solidity. Some of the piles are as
long as 52 ft., and watching them being driven in, it is impossible to
believe that stability can ever be attained, every blow of the monkey
accounting for so very many inches. When one watches pile-driving in
England it is difficult to see the effect of each blow; but during
the five or fewer minutes that I spent one day on Damrak observing
the preparation for the foundations of a new house, the pile must have
gone in nearly a foot each time, and it was very near the end of its
journey too. In course of years the black brackish mud petrifies not
only the piles but the wooden girders that are laid upon them.
Pile-driving on an extensive scale can be a very picturesque
sight. Breitner has painted several pile-driving scenes, one of which
hangs in the Stedelijk Museum at Amsterdam.
Statistics are always impressive. I have seen somewhere the number
of piles which support the new Bourse and the Central Station; but
I cannot now find them. The Royal Palace stands on 13,659. Erasmus
of Rotterdam made merry quite in the manner of an English humorist
over Amsterdam's wooden foundations. He twitted the inhabitants with
living on the tops of trees, like rooks. But as I lay awake from
daybreak to a civilised hour for two mornings in the Hotel Weimar at
Rotterdam--prevented from sleeping by the pile-driving for the hotel
extension--I thought of the apologue of the pot and the kettle.
I referred just now to the new Bourse. When I was at Amsterdam in 1897,
the water beside Damrak extended much farther towards the Dam than it
does now. Where now is the new Bourse was then shipping. But the new
Bourse looks stable enough to-day. As to its architectural charms,
opinions differ. My own feeling is that it is not a style that will
wear well. For a permanent public building something more classic is
probably desirable; and at Amsterdam, that city of sombre colouring,
I would have had darker hues than the red and yellow that have been
employed. The site of the old Bourse is now an open space.
It is stated that the kindly custom of allowing the children of
Amsterdam the run of the Bourse as a playground for a week every year
is some compensation for the suppression of the Kermis, but another
story makes the sanction a perpetual reward for an heroic deed against
the Spaniards performed by a child in 1622.
My advice to any one visiting Amsterdam is first to study a map of the
city--Bædeker gives a very useful one--and thus to begin with a general
idea of the lie of the land and the water. With this knowledge, and
the assistance of the trams, it should not appear a very bewildering
place. The Dam is its heart: a fact the acquisition of which will
help very sensibly. All roads in Amsterdam lead to the Dam, and all
lead from it. The Dam gives the city its name--Amstel dam, the dam
which stops the river Amstel on its course to the Zuyder Zee. It also
gives English and American visitors opportunities for facetiousness
which I tingle to recall. Every tram sooner or later reaches the Dam:
that is another simplifying piece of information. The course of each
tram may not be very easily acquired, but with a common destination
like this you cannot be carried very far wrong.
One soon learns that the trams stop only at fixed points, and waits
accordingly. The next lesson, which is not quite so simple, is that
some of these points belong exclusively to trams going one way and
some exclusively to trams going the other. If there is one thing
calculated to reduce a perplexed foreigner in Amsterdam to rage and
despair, it is, after a tiring day among pictures, to hail a half
empty tram at a fixed point, with _Tram-halte_ written on it, and
be treated to a pitying smile from the driver as it rushes by. Upon
such mortifications is education based; for one then looks again more
narrowly at the sign and sees that underneath it is a little arrow
pointing in the opposite direction to which one wished to go. One
then walks on to the next point, at which the arrow will be pointing
homewards, and waits there. Sometimes--O happy moment--a double arrow
is found, facing both ways.
It is on the Dam that guides will come and pester you. The guide
carries an umbrella and offers to show Amsterdam in such a way as to
save you much money. He is quite useless, and the quickest means of
getting free is to say that you have come to the city for no other
purpose than to pay extravagantly for everything. So stupendous an
idea checks even his importunity for a moment, and while he still
reels you can escape. The guides outside the Ryks Museum who offer to
point out the beauties of the pictures are less persistent. It would
seem as if they were aware of the unsoundness of their case. There
is no need to reply to these at all.
On the Dam also is the Royal Palace, which once was the stadhuis,
but in 1808 (when Amsterdam was the third city of the French Empire)
was offered to Louis Napoleon for a residence. Queen Wilhelmina
occasionaly stays there, but The Hague holds her true home. The
apartments are florid and not very interesting; but if the ascent of
the tower is permitted one should certainly make it. It is interesting
to have Amsterdam at one's feet. Only thus can its peculiar position
and shape be understood: its old part an almost perfect semicircle,
with canal-arcs within arcs, and its northern shore washed by the Y.
Also on the Dam is the New Church, which is to be seen more for the
tomb of De Ruyter than for any architectural graces. The old sea dog,
whose dark and determined features confront one in Bol's canvases
again and again in Holland, reposes in full dress on a cannon amid
symbols of his victories. Close by, in the Royal Palace, are some of
the flags which he wrested from the English. Other admirals also lie
there, the Dutch naval commander never having wanted for honour in
his own country.
The New Church, where the monarchs of Holland are crowned, has a very
large new stained-glass window representing the coronation of Queen
Wilhemina--one of the most satisfying new windows that I know, but
quite lacking in any religious suggestion. That poet who considered
a church the best retreat, because it is good to contemplate God
through stained glass, would have fared badly in Holland.
The New Church is new only by comparison with the Old. It was built
in 1410, rebuilt in 1452 and 1645. Amsterdam's Old Church, on the
other side of Warmoes Straat, dates from 1300. The visitor to the
New Church is handed a brief historical leaflet in exchange for his
twenty-five cents, and is left to his own devices; but the Old Church
has a koster who takes a pride in showing his lions and who deprecates
gifts of money. An elderly, clean-shaved man with a humorous mouth,
he might be taken for Holland's leading comedian. Instead, he displays
ecclesiastical treasures, of which in 1904 there were fewer than usual,
two of the three fine old windows representing the life of the Virgin
being under repair behind a screen. The tombs and monuments are not
interesting--admirals of the second rank and such small fry.
It is in the Old Church that most of the weddings of Amsterdam are
celebrated. Thursday is the day, for then the fees are practically
nothing; on other days to be married is an expense. The koster
deplores the modern materialism which leads so many young men to be
satisfied with the civil function; but the little enclosure, like a
small arena, in which the church blesses unions, had to me a hardly
less business-like appearance than a registry office. The comedian
overflows with details. For the covering of the floor, he explains,
there are five distinct carpets, ranging in price from five guelders
to twenty-five for the hire, according to the means or ostentation
of the party. Thursdays are no holiday for the church officials, one
couple being hardly united before the horses of the next are pawing
the paving stones at the door.
I saw on one Thursday three bridal parties in as many minutes. The
happy bride sat on the back seat of the brougham, immediately before
her being two mirrors in the shape of a heart supporting a bouquet of
white flowers. Contemplating this simple imagery she rattles to the
ecclesiastical arena and the sanctities of the five, ten, fifteen,
twenty or twenty-five guelder carpet. After, a banquet and jokes.
This is the second banquet, for when the precise preliminaries of a
Dutch engagement are settled a betrothal feast is held. Friends are
bidden to the wedding by the receipt of a box of sweets and a bottle
of wine known as "Bride's tears". For the wedding day itself there is
a particular brand of wine which contains little grains of gold. The
Dutch also have special cake and wine for the celebration of births.
The position of the Dutch wife is now very much that of the wife
in England; but in Holland's great days she ruled. Something of
her quality is to be seen in the stories of Barneveldt's widow
and Grotius's wife, and the heroism and address of the widow Kenau
Hasselaer during the siege of Haarlem. Davies has an interesting page
or two on this subject: "To be master of his own house is an idea
which seems never to have occurred to the mind of a genuine Dutchman;
nor did he often commence any undertaking, whether public or private,
without first consulting the partner of his cares; and it is even said,
that some of the statesmen most distinguished for their influence in
the affairs of their own country and Europe in general, were accustomed
to receive instructions at home to which they ventured not to go
counter. But the dominion of these lordly dames, all despotic though it
were, was ever exerted for the benefit of those who obeyed. It was the
earnest and undaunted spirit of their women, which encouraged the Dutch
to dare, and their calm fortitude to endure, the toils, privations, and
sufferings of the first years of the war of independence against Spain;
it was their activity and thrift in the management of their private
incomes, that supplied them with the means of defraying an amount
of national expenditure wholly unexampled in history; and to their
influence is to be ascribed above all, the decorum of manners, and the
purity of morals, for which the society of Holland has at all times
been remarkable. But though they preserved their virtue and modesty
uncontaminated amid the general corruption, they were no longer able
to maintain their sway. The habit which the Dutch youth had acquired,
among other foreign customs, of seeking amusement abroad, rendered
them less dependent for happiness on the comforts of a married life;
while, accustomed to the more dazzling allurements of the women of
France and Italy, they were apt to overlook or despise the quiet and
unobtrusive beauties of those of their own country. Whether they did
not better consult their own dignity in emancipating themselves from
this subjection may be a question; but the fact, that the decline of
the republic and of the female sex went hand in hand, is indubitable."
To return to Amsterdam's sights, the church which I remember with most
pleasure is the English Reformed Church, which many visitors never
succeed in finding at all, but to which I was taken by a Dutch lady who
knew my tastes. You seek the Spui, where the electric trams start for
Haarlem, and enter a very small doorway on the north side. It seems
to lead to a private house, but instead you find yourself in a very
beautiful little enclosure of old and quaint buildings, exquisitely
kept, each with a screen of pollarded chestnuts before it; in the midst
of which is a toy white church with a gay little spire that might have
wandered out of a fairy tale. The enclosure is called The Begijnenhof,
or Court of the Begijnen, a little sisterhood named after St. Begga,
daughter of Pipinus, Duke of Brabant,--a saint who lived at the end
of the seventh century and whose day in the Roman Catholic Calendar
is December 17.
The church was originally the church of these nuns, but when the old
religion was overthrown in Amsterdam, in 1578, it was taken from them,
although they were allowed--as happily they still are--to retain
possession of the court around it.
In 1607 the church passed into the possession of a settlement of
Scotch weavers who had been invited to Amsterdam by the merchants,
and who had made it a condition of acceptance that they should have a
conventicle of their own. It is now a resort of English church-going
visitors on Sunday.
Most of Holland's churches--as of England's--once belonged to Rome, and
it is impossible to forget their ancient ownership; but I remember no
other case where the new religion is practised, as in the Begijnenhof,
in the heart of the enemy's camp. In the very midst of the homes
of the quiet sweet Begijnen sisters are the voices of the usurping
Reformers heard in prayer and praise.
One little concession, however, was made by the appropriators of
the chapel. Until as recently as 1865 a special part of the building
the original Roman consecration of which had not been nullified was
retained by the sisterhood in which to bury their dead. The ceremony
was very impressive. Twelve of the nuns carried their dead companion
three times round the court before entering the church. But all that is
over, and now they must seek burial elsewhere, without their borders.
One may leave the Begijnenhof by the other passage into Kalverstraat,
and walking up that busy street towards the Dam, turn down the
St. Lucien Steeg, on the left, to another of Amsterdam's homes of
ancient peace--the municipal orphanage, which was once the Convent
of St. Lucien. The Dutch are exceedingly kind to their poor, and the
orphanages and almshouses (Oudemannen and Oudevrouwen houses as they
are called) are very numerous. The Municipal Orphanage of Amsterdam is
among the most interesting; and it is to this refuge that the girls
and boys belong whom one sees so often in the streets of the city in
curious parti-coloured costume--red and black vertically divided. The
Amsterdamsche burgerweesmeisjes, as the girls are called, make in
procession a very pretty and impressive sight--with their white
tippets and caps above their dresses of black and red.
This reminds me that one of the most agreeable performances that
I saw in any of the Dutch music halls (which are not good, and
which are rendered very tedious to English people by reason of the
interminable interval called the Pause in the middle of the evening),
was a series of folk songs and dances by eight girls known as the
Orange Blossoms, dressed in different traditional costumes of the
north and south--Friesland, Marken, and Zeeland. They were quite
charming. They sang and danced very prettily, as housewives, as fisher
girls, but particularly as Amsterdamsche burgerweesmeisjes.
In the music halls both at Amsterdam and Rotterdam I listened to comic
singers inexorably endowed with too many songs apiece; but I saw also
some of those amazing feats of acrobatic skill and exhibitions of clean
strength which alone should cause people to encourage these places
of entertainment, where the standard of excellence in such displays
is now so high. I did not go to the theatre in Holland. My Dutch was
too elementary for that. My predecessor Ireland, however, did so,
and saw an amusing piece of literalness introduced into _Hamlet_. In
the impassioned scene, he tells us, between the prince and his mother,
"when the hero starts at the imagined appearance of his father, his
wig, by means of a concealed spring, jumped from 'the seat of his
distracted brain,' and left poor Hamlet as bare as a Dutch willow
in winter."
The Oude Kerk has very beautiful bells, but Amsterdam is no place in
which to hear such sweet sounds. The little towns for bells. Near the
church is the New Market, with the very charming old weigh-house with
little extinguisher spires called the St. Anthonysveeg. Here the fish
market is held; and the fish market of a city like Amsterdam should
certainly be visited. The Old Market is on the western side of the
Dam, under the western church. "It is said," remarks the author of
_Through Noord-Holland_, "that Rembrandt has been buried in this
church, though his grave has never been found."
Napoleon's sarcasm upon the English--that they were a nation of
shopkeepers--never seemed to me very shrewd: but in Holland one
realises that if any nation is to be thus signally stigmatised it
is not the English. As a matter of fact we are very indifferent
shopkeepers. We lack several of the needful qualities: we lack
foresight, the sense of order and organised industry, and the strength
of mind to resist the temptations following upon a great coup. A
nation of shopkeepers would not go back on the shop so completely as
we do. No nation that is essentially snobbish can be accurately summed
up as a nation of shopkeepers. The French for all their distracting
gifts of art and mockery are better shopkeepers than we, largely
because they are more sensibly contented. They take short views and
live each day more fully. But the Dutch are better still; the Dutch
are truly a nation of shopkeepers. [4]
If one would see the Amsterdam merchant as the satirist sees him,
the _locus classicus_ is Multatuli's famous novel _Max Havelaar_,
where he stands delightfully nude in the person of Mr. Drystubble,
head of the firm of Last and Co., Coffee-brokers, No. 37 Laurier
Canal. _Max Havelaar_ was published in the early sixties to draw
attention to certain scandals in Dutch colonial administration, and it
has lived on, and will live, by reason of a curious blend of vivacity
and intensity. Here is a little piece of Mr. Drystubble's mind:--
Business is slack on the Coffee Exchange. The Spring Auction will
make it right again. Don't suppose, however, that we have nothing
to do. At Busselinck and Waterman's trade is slacker still. It is
a strange world this: one gets a deal of experience by frequenting
the Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried--I
mean Busselinck and Waterman--to do me out of the custom of Ludwig
Stern. As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange,
I will tell you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg,
who always employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that
out--I mean that bungling business of Busselinck and Waterman. They
had offered to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They
are low fellows--nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop
them. Any one in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern,
"that we too would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for
consideration on account of the long services of Last and Co."
I have calculated that our firm, during the last fifty years,
has gained four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion
dates from the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled
Colonial produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won't
reduce the brokerage.
I went to the Polen coffee-house, ordered pen and paper, and wrote:--
"That because of the many honoured commissions received from North
Germany, our business transactions had been extended"--(it is
the simple truth)--"and that this necessitated an augmentation of
our staff"--(it is the truth: no more than yesterday evening our
bookkeeper was in the office after eleven o'clock to look for his
spectacles);--"that, above all things, we were in want of respectable,
educated young men to conduct the German correspondence. That,
certainly, there were many young Germans in Amsterdam, who possessed
the requisite qualifications, but that a respectable firm"--(it is
the very truth),--"seeing the frivolity and immorality of young men,
and the daily increasing number of adventurers, and with an eye to
the necessity of making correctness of conduct go hand in hand with
correctness in the execution of orders"--(it is the truth, I observe,
and nothing but the truth),--"that such a firm--I mean Last and Co.,
coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal--could not be anxious enough in
engaging new hands."
All that is the simple truth, reader. Do you know that the young
German who always stood at the Exchange, near the seventeenth pillar,
has eloped with the daughter of Busselinck and Waterman? Our Mary,
like her, will be thirteen years old in September.
"That I had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler"--(Saffeler travels
for Stern)--"that the honoured head of the firm, Ludwig Stern, had
a son, Mr. Ernest Stern, who wished for employment for some time in
a Dutch house.
"That I, mindful of this"--(here I referred again to the immorality
of _employés_, and also the history of that daughter of Busselinck
and Waterman; it won't do any harm to tell it)--"that I, mindful of
this, wished, with all my heart, to offer Mr. Ernest Stern the German
correspondence of our firm."
From delicacy I avoided all allusion to honorarium or salary; yet
I said:--
"That if Mr. Ernest Stern would like to stay with us, at 37 Laurier
Canal, my wife would care for him as a mother, and have his linen
mended in the house"--(that is the very truth, for Mary sews and
knits very well),--and in conclusion I said, "that we were a religious
family."
The last sentence may do good, for the Sterns are Lutherans. I posted
that letter. You understand that old Mr. Stern could not very well give
his custom to Busselinck and Waterman, if his son were in our office.
When _Max Havelaar_ gets to Java the narrative is less satisfactory,
so tangential does it become, but there are enough passages in the
manner of that which I have quoted to keep one happy, and to show how
entertaining a satirist of his own countrymen at home "Multatuli"
(whose real name was Edward Douwes Dekker) might have been had he
been possessed by no grievance.
The book, which is very well worth reading, belongs to the literature
of humanity and protest. Its author had to suffer much acrimonious
attack, and was probably called a Little Hollander, but the fragment
from an unpublished play which he placed as a motto to his book shows
him to have lacked no satirical power to meet the enemy:--
_Officer_.--My Lord, this is the man who murdered Betsy.
_Judge_.--He must hang for it. How did he do it?
_Officer_.--He cut up her body in little pieces, and salted them.
_Judge_.--He is a great criminal. He must hang for it.
_Lothario_.--My Lord, I did not murder Betsy: I fed and clothed and
cherished her. I can call witnesses who will prove me to be a good man,
and no murderer.
_Judge_.--You must hang. You blacken your crime by your
self-sufficiency. It ill becomes one who ... is accused of anything
to set up for a good man.
_Lothario_,--But, my Lord, ... there are witnesses to prove it;
and as I am now accused of murder....
_Judge_.--You must hang for it. You cut up Betsy--you salted the
pieces--and you are satisfied with your conduct--three capital
counts--who are you, my good woman?
_Woman_.--I am Betsy.
_Lothario_.--Thank God! You see, my Lord, that I did not murder her.
_Judge_.--Humph!--ay--what!--What about the salting?
_Betsy_.--No, my Lord, he did not salt me:--on the contrary, he did
many things for me ... he is a worthy man!
_Lothario_.--You hear, my Lord, she says I am an honest man!
_Judge_.--Humph!--the third count remains. Officer, remove the
prisoner, he must hang for it; he is guilty of self-conceit.
Shopkeeping--to return to Amsterdam--is the Dutch people's life. An
idle rich class they may have, but it does not assert itself. It is
hidden away at The Hague or at Arnheim. In Amsterdam every one is busy
in one trade or another. There is no Pall Mall, no Rotten Row. There
is no Bond Street or Rue de la Paix, for this is a country where
money tries to procure money's worth, a country of essentials. Nor
has Holland a Lord's or an Oval, Epsom Downs or Hurlingham.
Perhaps the quickest way to visualise the differences of nations
is to imagine them exchanging countries. If the English were to
move to Holland the whole face of the land would immediately be
changed. In summer the flat meadows near the towns, now given up to
cows and plovers, would be dotted with cricketers; in winter with
football-players. Outriggers and canoes, punts and house-boats, would
break out on the canals. In the villages such strange phenomena as
idle gentlemen in knickerbockers and idle ladies with parasols would
suddenly appear.
To continue the list of changes (but not for too long) the trains
would begin to be late; from the waiting-rooms all free newspapers
would be stolen; churches would be made more comfortable; hundreds
of newspapers would exist where now only a handful are sufficient;
the hour of breakfast would be later; business would begin later;
drunken men would be seen in the streets, dirt in the cottages.
If the Dutch came to England the converse would happen. The athletic
grounds would become pasture land; the dirt of our slums and the
gentry of our villages would alike vanish; Westminster Abbey would
be whitewashed; and ... But I have said enough.
It must not be thought that the Dutch play no games. As a matter
of fact they were playing golf, as old pictures tell, before it had
found its way to England at all; and there are now many golf clubs in
Holland. The Dutch are excellent also at lawn tennis; and I saw the
youth of Franeker very busy in a curious variety of rounders. There
are horse-racing meetings and trotting competitions too. But the
nation is not naturally athletic or sporting. It does not even walk
except on business.
In winter, however, the Dutch are completely transformed. No sooner
does the ice bear than the whole people begin to glide, and swirl,
and live their lives to the poetry of motion. The canals then
become the real streets of Amsterdam. A Dutch lady--a mother and
a grandmother--threw up her hands as she told me about the skating
parties to the Zuyder Zee. The skate, it seems, is as much the enemy
of the chaperon as the bicycle, although its reign is briefer. Upon
this subject I am personally ignorant, but I take that gesture of
alarm as final.
And yet M. Havard, who had a Frenchman's eye and therefore knew,
says that if Etna in full eruption were taken to Holland, at the end
of the week it would have ceased even to smoke, so destructive to
enthusiasm is the well-disciplined nature of the Dutch woman.
M. Havard referred rather to the women of the open country than the
dwellers in the town. I can understand the rural coolness, for Holland
is a land without mystery. Everything is plain and bare: a man in a
balloon would know the amours of the whole populace. What chance has
Cupid when there are no groves? But let Holland be afforested and her
daughters would keep Etna burning warmly enough; for I am persuaded
that it is not that they are cold but that the physical development
of the country is against them.