Leeuwarden and Neighbourhood
An agricultural centre--A city of prosperity and health--The
fair Frisians--Metal head-dresses--Silver work--The
Chancellerie--A paradise of blue china--Jumping poles--The
sea swallow--A Sunday excursion--Dogs for England--The
idle busybodies--The stork--A critical village--The green
crop--The dyke--A linguist--Harlingen--A Dutch picture
collector--Franeker--The Planetarium--Dokkum's bad
reputation--A discursive guide-book--Bigamy punished--A
husband-tamer--Boxum's record--Sjuck's short way--The heroic
Bauck--A load of exorcists--Poor Lysse.
In an hour or two the train brings us to Leeuwarden, between flat
green meadows unrelieved save for the frequent isolated homesteads,
in which farm house, dairy, barn, cow stalls and stable are all under
one great roof that starts almost from the ground. On the Essex flats
the homesteads have barns and sheltering trees to keep them company:
here it is one house and a mere hedge of saplings or none at all. For
the rest--cows and plovers, plovers and cows.
Friesland's capital, Leeuwarden, might be described as an English
market town, such as Horsham in Sussex, scoured and carried out to its
highest power, rather than a small city. The cattle trade of Friesland
has here its headquarters, and a farmer needing agricultural implements
must fare to Leeuwarden to buy them. The Frisian farmer certainly does
need them, for it is his habit to take three crops of short hay off
his meadows, rather than one crop of long hay in the English manner.
Not only cattle but also horses are sold in Leeuwarden market. The
Frisian horse is a noble animal, truly the friend of man; and
the Frisians are fond of horses and indulge both in racing and in
trotting--or "hardraverij" as they pleasantly call it. I made a close
friend of a Frisian mare on the steamer from Rotterdam to Dort. At
Dort I had to leave her, for she was bound for Nymwegen. A most
charming creature.
Leeuwarden is large and prosperous and healthy. What one misses in it
is any sense of intimate cosiness. One seems to be nearer the elements,
farther from the ingratiating works of man, than hitherto in any Dutch
town. The strong air, the openness of land, the 180 degrees of sky, the
northern sharpness, all are far removed from the solace of the chimney
corner. It is a Spartan people, preferring hard health to overcoats;
and the streets and houses reflect this temperament. They are clean and
strong and bare--no huddling or niggling architecture. Everything also
is bright, the effect largely of paint, but there must be something
very antiseptic in this Frisian atmosphere.
The young women of Leeuwarden--the fair Frisians--are tall and strong
and fresh looking; not exactly beautiful but very pleasant. "There
go good wives and good mothers," one says. Their Amazonian air is
accentuated by the casque of gold or silver which fits tightly over
their heads and gleams through its lace covering: perhaps the most
curious head-dress in this country of elaborate head-dresses, and never
so curious as when, on Sundays, an ordinary black bonnet, bristling
with feathers and jet, is mounted on the top of it. That, however,
is a refinement practised only by the middle-aged and elderly women:
the young women wear either the casque or a hat, never both. If one
climbs the Oldehof and looks down on the city on a sunny day--as I
did--the glint of a metal casque continually catches the eye. These
head-dresses are of some value, and are handed on from mother to
daughter for generations. No Dutch woman is ever too poor to lay by
a little jewellery; and many a domestic servant carries, I am told,
twenty pounds worth of goldsmith's work upon her.
Once Leeuwarden was famous for its goldsmiths and silversmiths,
but the interest in precious metal work is not what it was. Many of
the little silver ornaments--the windmills, and houses, and wagons,
and boats--which once decorated Dutch sitting-rooms as a matter of
course, and are now prized by collectors, were made in Leeuwarden.
The city's architectural jewel is the Chancellerie, a very ornate
but quite successful building dating from the sixteenth century:
first the residence of the Chancellors, recently a prison, and now
the Record Office of Friesland. Not until the Middelburg stadhuis
shall we see anything more cheerfully gay and decorative. The little
Weigh House is in its own way very charming. But for gravity one must
go to the Oldehof, a sombre tower on the ramparts of the city. Once
the sea washed its very walls.
To the ordinary traveller the most interesting things in the Leeuwarden
museum, which is opposite the Chancellerie, are the Hindeloopen rooms
which I have described in the last chapter; but to the antiquary it
offers great entertainment. Among ancient relics which the spade
has revealed are some very early Frisian tobacco pipes. Among the
pictures, for the most part very poor, is a dashing Carolus Duran
and a very beautiful little Daubigny.
Affiliated to the museum is one of the best collections of Delft
china in Holland--a wonderful banquet of blue. This alone makes it
necessary to visit Leeuwarden.
All about Leeuwarden the boys have jumping poles for the ditches,
and you may see dozens at a time, after school, leaping backwards and
forwards over the streams, like frogs. Children abound in Friesland:
the towns are filled with boys and girls; but one sees few babies. In
Holland the very old and the very young are alike invisible.
One of the first things that I noticed at Leeuwarden was the presence
of a new bird. Hitherto I had seen only the familiar birds that we
know at home, except for a stork here and there and more herons than
one catches sight of in England save in the neighbourhood of one of
our infrequent heronries. But at Leeuwarden you find, sweeping and
plaining over the canals, the beautiful tern, otherwise known as the
sea swallow, white and powerful and delicately graceful, and possessed
of a double portion of the melancholy of birds of the sea. Of the
bittern, which is said to boom continually over the Friesland meres,
I caught no glimpse and heard no sound.
From Leeuwarden I rode one Sunday morning by the steam-tram to
St. Jacobie Parochie, a little village in the extreme north-west,
where I proposed to take a walk upon the great dyke. It was a chilly
morning, and I was glad to be inside the compartment as we rattled
along the road. The only other occupant was a young minister in a
white tie, puffing comfortably at his cigar, which in the manner of
so many Dutchmen he seemed to eat as he smoked. For a while we were
raced--and for a few yards beaten--by two jolly boys in a barrow
drawn by a pair of gallant dogs who foamed past us _ventre à terre_
with six inches of flapping tongue.
The introduction into England of dogs as beasts of draught would
I suppose never be tolerated. A score of humanitarian societies
would spring into being to prevent it: possibly with some reason,
for one has little faith in the considerateness of the average
English costermonger or barrow-pusher. And yet the dog-workers of
the Netherlands seem to be cheerful beasts, wearing their yoke very
easily. I have never seen one, either in Holland or Belgium, obviously
distressed or badly treated. Why the English dog should so often be a
complete idler, and his brother across the sea the useful ally of man,
is an ethnological problem: the reason lying not with the animals but
with the nations. The Flemish and Dutch people are essentially humble
and industrious, without ambitions beyond their station. The English
are a dissatisfied folk who seldom look upon their present position as
permanent. The English dog is idle because his master, always hoping
for the miracle that shall make him idle too, does not really set his
hand to the day's work and make others join him; the Netherlandish
dog is busy because his master does not believe in sloth, and having
no illusions as to his future, knows that only upon a strenuous youth
and middle age can a comfortable old age be built. Countries that have
not two nations--the idle and rich and the poor and busy--as we have,
are, I think, greatly to be envied. Life is so much more genuine there.
England indeed has three nations: the workers, the idle rich who
live only for themselves, and the idle rich or well-to-do who live
also for others--in other words the busybodies. The third nation
is the real enemy, for an altruist who has time on his hands can
do enormous mischief between breakfast and lunch. It is this class
that would at once make it impossible for a strong dog to help in
drawing a poor man's barrow. The opportunity would be irresistible
to them. The resolutions they would pass! The votes of thanks to the
lieutenant-colonels in the chair!
It was on this little journey to St. Jacobie Parochie that I saw
my first stork. Storks' nests there had been in plenty, but all were
empty. But at Wier, close to St. Jacobie Parochie, was a nest on a pole
beside the road, and on this nest was a stork. The Dutch, I think,
have no more endearing trait than their kindness to this bird. Once
at any rate their solicitude was grotesque, although serviceable, for
Ireland tells of a young stork with a broken leg for which a wooden
leg was substituted. Upon this jury limb the bird lived happily for
thirty years.
The stork alone among Dutch birds is sacred, but he is not alone in
feeling secure. The fowler is no longer a common object of the country,
as he seems to have been in Albert Cuyp's day, when he returned in
the golden evening laden with game--for Jan Weenix to paint.
St. Jacobie Parochie on a fine Sunday morning is no place for a
sensitive man. The whole of the male population of the village had
assembled by the church--not, I fancy, with any intention of entering
it--and every eye among them probed me like a corkscrew. It is an
out of the world spot, to which it is possible no foreigner ever
before penetrated, and since their country was a show to me I had no
right to object to serve as a show to them. But such scrutiny is not
comfortable. I hastened to the sea.
One reaches the sea by a path across the fields to an inner dyke with a
high road upon it, and then by another footpath, or paths, beside green
ditches, to the ultimate dyke which holds Neptune in check. As I walked
I was continually conscious of heavy splashes just ahead of me, which
for a while I put down to water-rats. But chancing to stand still I
was presently aware of the proximity of a huge green frog, the largest
I have ever seen, who sat, solid as a paper weight, close beside me,
with one eye glittering upon me and the other upon the security of
the water, into which he jumped at a movement of my hand. Walking
then more warily I saw that the banks on either side were populous
with these monsters; and sometimes it needed only a flourish of the
handkerchief to send a dozen simultaneously into the ditch. I am glad
we have not such frogs at home. A little frog is an adorable creature,
but a frog half-way to realising his bovine ambition is a monster.
The sea dyke is many feet high. Its lowest visible stratum is of
black stones, beneath the sea-level; then a stratum of large red
bricks; then turf. The willow branches are invisible, within. The
land hereabout is undoubtedly some distance below sea-level, but it
is impossible either here or anywhere in Holland to believe in the
old and venerable story of the dyke plugged by an heroic thumb to
the exclusion of the ocean and the safety of the nation.
As I lay on the bank in the sun, listening to a thousand larks,
with all Friesland on one hand and the pearl grey sea on the other,
a passer-by stopped and asked me a question which I failed to
understand. My reply conveyed my nationality to him. "Ah," he said,
"Eenglish. Do it well with you?" I said that it did excellently
well. He walked on until he met half a dozen other men, some hundred
yards away, when I saw him pointing to me and telling them of the
long conversation he had been enjoying with me in my own difficult
tongue. It was quite clear from their interest that the others were
conscious of the honour of having a real linguist among them.
Another day I went to Harlingen. I had intended to reach the town by
steam-tram, but the time table was deceptive and the engine stopped
permanently at a station two or three miles away. Fortunately, however,
a curtained brake was passing, and into this I sprang, joining
two women and a dominie, and together we ambled very deliberately
into the quiet seaport. Harlingen is a double harbour--inland and
maritime. Barges from all parts of Friesland lie there, transferring
their goods a few yards to the ocean-going ships bound for England
and the world, although Friesland does not now export her produce
as once she did. Thirty years ago much of our butter and beef and
poultry sailed from Harlingen.
The town lies in the savour of the sea. Masts rise above the houses,
ship-chandlers' shops send forth the agreeable scent of tar and
cordage, sailors and stevedores lounge against posts as only those
that follow the sea can do. I had some beef and bread, in the Dutch
midday manner, in the upper room of an inn overlooking the harbour,
while two shipping-clerks played a dreary game of billiards. Beyond the
dyke lay the empty grey sea, with Texel or Vlieland a faint dark line
on the horizon. Nothing in the town suggested the twentieth century,
or indeed any century. Time was not.
I wish that Mr. Bos had been living, that I might have called upon
him and seen his pictures, as M. Havard did. But he is no more, and
I found no one to tell me of the fate of his collection. Possibly it
is still to be seen: certainly other visitors to Harlingen should be
more energetic than I was, and make sure. Here is M. Havard's account
of Mr. Bos and an evening at his house: "Mr. Bos started in life as
a farm-boy--then became an assistant in a shop. Instead of spending
his money at the beer-houses he purchased books. He educated himself,
and being provident, steady, industrious, he soon collected sufficient
capital to start in business on his own account, which he did as a
small cheesemonger; but in time his business prospered, and to such
an extent that one day he awoke to find himself one of the greatest
and richest merchants of Harlingen.
"Many under these circumstances would have considered rest was not
undeserved; but Mr. Bos thought otherwise. He became passionately fond
of the arts. Instead of purchasing stock he bought pictures, then
the books necessary to understand them, and what with picking up an
engraving here and a painting there he soon became possessed of a most
interesting collection, and of an artistic knowledge sufficient for all
purposes. But to appreciate the virtue (the term is not too strong) of
this aimable man, one should know the difficulties he had to surmount
before gaining his position. It is no joke when one lives in a town
like Harlingen to act differently from other people. Tongues are as
well hung there as in any small French town. Instead of encouraging
this brave collector, they laughed at and ridiculed him. His taste
for the arts was regarded as a mania. In fact, he was looked upon as a
madman, and even to this day, notwithstanding his successful career,
he is looked upon as no better than a lunatic. Happily a taste for
art gives one joys that makes the remarks of fools and idiots pass
like water off a duck's back.
"When we called on Mr. Bos he was absent; but as soon as Madame
Bos was made acquainted with our names we received a most cordial
reception. She is, however, a most charming woman, combining
both amiability and affability, with a venerable appearance; and,
notwithstanding her immense fortune and gold plate, still wears the
large Frison cap of the good old times. She was anxious to do the
honours of the collection in person, and immediately sent for her son,
so that we might receive every information.
"Mr. Bos returned home the same evening, and at once came on board,
and would not leave until we had promised to spend the evening at
his house, which we did in the Frison fashion--that is to say, that
whilst examining the pictures we were compelled to devour sundry
plates of _soeskrahelingen_, a kind of pastry eaten with cheese;
also to empty several bottles of old wine.
"A slight incident that occurred shortly before our departure touched
me greatly. 'You think, sir,' said Mr. Bos, 'that because I do not
understand French, I have not read the books you have written on our
National Arts. Pray undeceive yourself, for here is a translation of
it,' The old gentleman then placed before me a complete manuscript
translation of the work, which he had had made specially for himself."
The special lion of Franeker, which I visited on my way back from
Harlingen, is the Planetarium of Eisa Eisinga, a mathematician and
wool-comber, who constructed it alone in his back parlour between 1774
and 1781. Interest in planetaria is, I should say, an acquired taste;
but there can be no doubt as to the industry and ingenuity of this
inventor. The wonders of the celestial law are unfolded by a very
tired young woman, whose attitude to the solar system is probably
similar to that of Miss Jellyby to Africa. After her lecture one
stumbles upstairs to see the clock-work which controls the spheres,
and is then free once more.
Franeker is proud also of her tombstones in the great church, but
it is, I fancy, Eisa Eisinga whom she most admires. She was once
the seat of an honourable University, which Napoleon suppressed in
1811. Her learning gone, she remains a very pleasant and clean little
town. By some happy arrangement all the painting seems to be done at
once--so different from London, where a fresh façade only serves to
emphasise a dingy one. But although the quality of the paint can be
commended, the painters of Franeker are undoubtedly allowed too much
liberty. They should not have been permitted to spread their colour
on the statues of the stadhuis.
The principal street has an avenue of elm trees down its midst,
in the place where a canal would be expected; but canals traverse
the town too. Upon the deck of a peat barge I watched a small grave
child taking steady and unsmiling exercise on a rocking horse.
I did not go to Dokkum, which lies at the extreme north of
Friesland. Mr. Doughty, the author of an interesting book of Dutch
travel, called _Friesland Meres_--he was the first that ever burst
into these silent canals in a Norfolk wherry--gives Dokkum a very
bad character, and so do other travellers. It seems indeed always to
have been an unruly and inhospitable town. As long ago as 853 it was
resisting the entry of strangers. The strangers were Saint Boniface
and his companion, whom Dokkum straightway massacred. King Pepin
was furious and sent an army on a punitive mission; while Heaven
supplemented Pepin's efforts by permanently stigmatising the people
of the town, all the men thenceforward being marked by a white tuft
of hair and all the women by a bald patch.
At Leeuwarden is a patriotic society known as the "Vereenigung tot
bevordering van vreemdelingenverkeer," whose ambition, as their
title suggests, is to draw strangers to the town; and as part of
their campaign they have issued a little guide to Leeuwarden and its
environs, in English. It is an excellent book. The preface begins
thus:--
The travelling-season, which causes thousands of people to leave
their homes and hearths, has come round again. Throughout Europe silk
strings are being prepared to catch human birds of passage with. Is
Frisia--Old Frisia--to lag behind? Impossible! Natural condition
as well as population and history give to our province a right to
claim a little attention and to be a hostess. We beg to refer to
the words of a Frenchman, M. Malte-Brun (quoted by one of the best
Frisian authors), the English translation of which words runs as
follows: "Eighteen centuries saw the river Rhine change its course,
and the Ocean swallow its shores, but the Frisian nation has remained
unchanged, and from an historical point of view deserves being taken
an interest in by the descendants of the Franks as well as of the
Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians."
It is not often to a Frenchman that the author of this guide has to
go for his purple patches. He is capable of producing them himself,
and there seems also always to be a Frisian poet who has said the
right thing. Thus (of Leeuwarden): "It is surrounded by splendid
fertile meadows, to all of which, though especially to those lying
near the roads to Marssum and Stiens, may be applied the words of
the Frisian poet Dr. E. Halbertsma:--
'Sjen nou dat lân, hwer jy op geane,
Dat ophelle is út gulle sé;
Hwer binne brûsender lânsdouwen,
Oerspriede mei sok hearlik fé?'
('Behold the soil you are walking on,
The soil, snatched from the waves;
Where are more luxurious meadows,
Where do you find such cattle?')
The farmer, living in the midst of this fine natural scenery, is to
be envied indeed: if the struggle for life does not weigh too heavily
upon him, his must be a life happier than that of thousands of other
people. Living and working with his own family and servants attached
to him, he made the right choice when he chose to breed his cattle
and improve his grounds to the best of his power. The parlour-windows
look out on the fields: the gay sight they grant has its effect on the
mood of those inside. The peasant sees and feels the beauty of life,
and it makes him thankful, and gives him courage to struggle and to
work on, where necessity requires it."
I gather from the account of Leeuwarden that the justices of that
city once knew a crime when they saw one--none quicklier. In 1536,
for example, they punished Jan Koekebakken in a twinkling for the
dastardly offence of marrying a married woman. This was his sentence:--
We command that the said Jan Koekebakken, prisoner, be conducted
by the executioner from the Chancery to Brol-bridge, and that he be
put into the pillory there. He shall remain standing there for two
hours with a spindle under each arm, and with the letter in which he
pledged faith to the said Aucke Sijbrant hanging from his neck. He
shall remain for ever within the town of Leeuwarden, under penalty
of death if he should leave it.
Done and pronounced at Leeuwarden April 29th, 1536.
But the best part of the guide-book is its rapid notes on the villages
around Leeuwarden, to so many of which are curious legends attached. At
Marssum, close at hand, was born the English painter of Roman life,
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Here also was born the ingenious Eisa
Eisinga, who constructed the Franeker planetarium in the intervals
of wool-combing. At Menaldum lived Mrs. Van Camstra van Haarsma,
a husband-tamer and eccentric, of whom a poet wrote:--
She breaks pipe and glass and mug,
When he speaks as suits a man;
And instead of being cross,
He is gentler than a lamb.
When in fury glow her eyes,
He keeps silent ... isn't he wise?
When not hen-pecking her husband this powerful lady was rearing wild
animals or corresponding with the Princess Caroline.
At Boxum, was fought, on 17th January, 1586, hard by the church,
the battle of Boxum, between the Spaniards and the Frisians. The
Frisians were defeated, and many of them massacred in the church;
but their effort was very brave, and "He also has been to Boxum"
is to this day a phrase applied to lads of courage. Another saying,
given to loud speakers, is "He has the voice of the Vicar of Boxum,"
whose tones in the pulpit were so dulcet as to frighten the birds
from the roof, and, I hope, sinners to repentance.
At Jelsum is buried Balthazar Becker, the antagonist of superstition
and author of _The Enchanted World_. Near by was Martena Castle,
where Alderman Sjuck van Burmania once kept a crowd of assailants
at bay by standing over a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted brand
while he offered them the choice of the explosion or a feast. Hence
the excellent proverb, "You must either fight or drink, said Sjuck".
At Berlikum was the castle of Bauck Poppema, a Frisian lady cast in
an iron mould, who during her husband's absence in 1496 defended the
stronghold against assailants from Groningen. Less successful than
Sjuck, after repelling them thrice she was overpowered and thrown into
prison. While there she produced twins, thus proving herself a woman
no less than a warrior. "When the people of Holland glorify Kenau,"
says the proverb, "the Frisians praise their Bauck." Kenau we have met:
the heroic widow of Haarlem who during the siege led a band of three
hundred women and repelled the enemy on the walls again and again.
Near Roodkerk is a lake called the Boompoel, into which a coach
and four containing six inside passengers, all of them professional
exorcists, disappeared and was never seen again. The exorcists had come
to relieve the village of the ghost of a miser, and we must presume had
failed to quiet him. Near Bergum, at Buitenrust farm, is the scene of
another tragedy by drowning, for there died Juffer Lysse. This maiden,
disregarding too long her father's dying injunction to build a chapel,
was naturally overturned in her carriage and drowned. Ever since
has the wood been haunted, while the bind-weed, a haunting flower,
is in these parts known as the Juffer Lysse blom.
From these scraps of old lore--all taken from the little Leeuwarden
guide--it will be seen that Friesland is rich in romantic traditions
and well worthy the attention of any maker of sagas.