Groningen to Zutphen
Fresh tea--Dutch meals--The Doelens--Groningen--Roman
Catholic priests--The boys' penance--Luther and
Erasmus--The peat country--Folk lore--Terburg--Thomas à
Kempis--Zwolle--The wild girl--Kampen--A hall of justice
indeed--An ideal holiday-place--The wiseacres--Urk--Sir Philip
Sidney--Zutphen--The scripture class--The wax works--Dutch
public morality.
I remember the Doelen at Groningen for several reasons, all of them
thoroughly material. (Holland is, however, a material country.) First
I would put the very sensible custom of providing every guest who
has ordered tea for breakfast with a little tea caddy. At the foot
of the table is a boiling urn from which one fills one's teapot,
and is thus assured of tea that is fresh. So simple and reasonable a
habit ought to be the rule rather than the exception: but never have
I found it elsewhere. This surely is civilisation, I said.
The Doelen was also the only inn in Holland where an inclusive bottle
of claret was placed before me on the table; and it was the only inn
where I had the opportunity of eating ptarmigan with stewed apricots--a
very happy alliance.
Good however as was the Groningen dinner, it was a Sunday dinner at the
Leeuwarden Doelen which remains in my memory. This also is a friendly
unspoiled northern inn, where the bill of fare is arranged with a
nice thought to the requirements of the Free Frisian. I kept no note
of the meal, but I recollect the occurrence at one stage of plovers'
eggs (which the Dutch eat hot, dropping them into cold water for an
instant to ensure the easy removal of the shell), and at another,
some time later, of duckling with prunes.
The popularity of the name Doelen as a Dutch sign might have a word
of explanation. Doelen means target, or shooting saloon; and shooting
at the mark was a very common and useful recreation with the Dutch
in the sixteenth century. At first the shooting clubs met only to
shoot--as in the case of the arquebusiers in Rembrandt's "Night Watch,"
who are painted leaving their Doelen; later they became more social
and the accessories of sociability were added; and after a while
the accessories of sociability crowded out the shooting altogether,
and nothing but an inn with the name Doelen remained of what began
as a rifle gallery.
At Groningen, which is a large prosperous town, and the birthplace
both of Joseph Israels and H.W. Mesdag, cheese and dairy produce are
left behind. We are now in the grain country. Groningen is larger
than Leeuwarden--it has nearly seventy thousand inhabitants--and its
evening light seemed to me even more beautifully liquid. I sat for a
long time in a cafe overlooking the great square, feeding a very greedy
and impertinent terrier, and alternately watching an endless game of
billiards and the changing hue of the sky as day turned to night and
the clean white stars came out. In Holland one can sit very long in
cafes: I had dined and left a table of forty Dutchmen just settling
down to their wine, at six o'clock, with the whole evening before me.
Groningen takes very good care of itself. It has trams, excellent
shops and buildings, a crowded inland harbour, and a spreading park
where once were its fortifications. The mounds in this park were the
first hills I had seen since Laren. The church in the market square is
immense, with a high tower of bells that kept me awake, but had none of
the soothing charm of Long John at Middelburg, whose praises it will
soon be my privilege to sound. The only rich thing in the whitewashed
vastnesses of the church is the organ, built more than four hundred
years ago by Rudolph Agricola of this province. I did not hear it.
At Groningen Roman Catholic priests become noticeable--so different
in their stylish coats, square hats and canes, from the blue-chinned
kindly slovens that one meets in the Latin countries. (In the train
near Nymwegen, however, where the priests wear beavers, I travelled
with a humorous old voluptuary who took snuff at every station and was
as threadbare as one likes a priest to be.) Looking into the new Roman
Catholic church at Groningen I found a little company of restless boys,
all eyes, from whom at regular intervals were detached a reluctant
and perfunctory couple to do the Stations of the Cross. I came as
something like a godsend to those that remained, who had no one to
supervise them; and feeling it as a mission I stayed resolutely
in the church long after I was tired of it, writing a little and
examining the pictures by Hendriex, a modern painter too much after
the manner of the Christmas supplement--studied the while by this
band of scrutinising penitents. I hope I was as interesting and
beguiling as I tried to be. And all the time, exactly opposite the
Roman Catholic church, was reposing in the library of the University
no less a treasure than the New Testament of Erasmus, with marginal
notes by Martin Luther. There it lay, that afternoon, within call,
while the weary boys pattered from one Station of the Cross to another,
little recking the part played by their country in sapping the power
of the faith they themselves were fostering, and knowing nothing of
the ironical contiguity of Luther's comments.
By leaving Groningen very early in the morning I gained another proof
of the impossibility of rising before the Dutch. In England one can
easily be the first down in any hotel--save for a sleepy boots or
waiter. Not so in Holland. It was so early that I am able to say
nothing of the country between Groningen and Meppel, the capital of
the peat trade, save that it was peaty: heather and fir trees, shallow
lakes and men cutting peat, as far as eye could reach on either side.
Here in the peat country I might quote a very pretty Dutch proverb:
"There is no fuel more entertaining than wet wood and frozen peat:
the wood sings and the peat listens". The Dutch have no lack of folk
lore, but the casual visitor has not the opportunity of collecting very
much. When there is too much salt in the dish they say that the cook is
in love. When a three-cornered piece of peat is observed in the fire,
a visitor is coming. When bread has large holes in it, the baker is
said to have pursued his wife through the loaf. When a wedding morning
is rainy, it is because the bride has forgotten to feed the cat.
I tarried awhile at Zwolle on the Yssel (a branch of the Rhine),
because at Zwolle was born in 1617 Gerard Terburg, one of the greatest
of Dutch painters, of whom I have spoken in the chapter on Amsterdam's
pictures. Of his life we know very little; but he travelled to Spain
(where he was knighted and where he learned not a little of use in
his art), and also certainly to France, and possibly to England. At
Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans Hals' studio,
and then he settled down at Deventer, a few miles south of Zwolle,
married, and became in time Burgomaster of the town. He died at
Deventer in 1681. Zwolle has none of his pictures, and does not
appear to value his memory. Nor does Deventer. How Terburg looked
as Burgomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself
in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It was not often that the great
Dutch painters rose to civic eminence. Rembrandt became a bankrupt,
Frans Hals was on the rates, Jan Steen drank all his earnings. Of all
Terburg's great contemporaries Gerard Dou seems to have had most sense
of prosperity and position; but his interests were wholly in his art.
Terburg is not the only famous name at Zwolle. It was at the monastery
on the Agneteberg, three miles away, that the author of _The Imitation
of Christ_ lived for more than sixty years and wrote his deathless
book.
I roamed through Zwolle's streets for some time. It is a bright town,
with a more European air than many in Holland, agreeable drives and
gardens, where (as at Groningen) were once fortifications, and a very
fine old gateway called the Saxenpoort, with four towers and five
spires and very pretty window shutters in white and blue. The Groote
Kerk is of unusual interest. It is five hundred years old and famous
for its very elaborate pulpit--a little cathedral in itself--and an
organ. Zwolle also has an ancient church which retains its original
religion--the church of Notre Dame, with a crucifix curiously protected
by iron bars. I looked into the stadhuis to see a Gothic council room;
and smoked meditatively among the stalls of a little flower market,
wondering why some of the costumes of Holland are so charming and
others so unpleasing. A few dear old women in lace caps were present,
but there were also younger women who had made their pretty heads
ugly with their decorations.
At Zwolle M. Havard was disappointed to find no wax figure of the
famous wild girl found in the Cranenburg Forest in 1718. She roamed
its recesses almost naked for some time, eluding all capture, but was
at last taken with nets and conveyed to Zwolle. As she could not be
understood, an account of her was circulated widely, and at length
a woman in Antwerp who had lost a daughter in 1702 heard of her,
and on reaching Zwolle immediately recognised her as her child. The
magistrates, accepting the story, handed the girl to her affectionate
parent, who at once set about exhibiting her throughout the country
at a great profit. The story illustrates either the credulity of
magistrates or the practical character of some varieties of maternal
love.
Kampen, nearer the mouth of the Yssel, close to Zwolle, is
exceedingly well worth visiting. The two towns are very different:
Zwolle is patrician, Kampen plebeian; Zwolle suggests wealth and
light-heartedness; at Kampen there is a large fishing population and no
one seems to be wealthy. Indeed, being without municipal rates, it is,
I am told, a refuge of the needy. Any old town that is on a river, and
that river a mouth of the Rhine, is good enough for me; but when it is
also a treasure house of mediæval architecture one's cup is full. And
Kampen has many treasures: beautiful fourteenth-century gateways,
narrow quaint streets, a cheerful isolated campanile, a fine church,
and the greater portion of an odd but wholly delightful stadhuis in
red brick and white stone, with a gay little crooked bell-tower and
statues of great men and great qualities on its facade.
For one possession alone, among many, the stadhuis must be visited--its
halls of justice, veritable paradises of old oak, with a very wonderful
fireplace. The halls are really one, divided by a screen; in one half,
the council room, sat the judges, in the other the advocates, and,
I suppose, the public. The advocates addressed the screen, on the
other side of which sat Fate, in the persons of the municipal fathers,
enthroned in oak seats of unsurpassed gravity and dignity, amid all
the sombre insignia of their office. The chimney-piece is an imposing
monument of abstract Justice--no more elaborate one can exist. Solomon
is there, directing the distribution of the baby; Faith and Truth, Law,
Religion and Charity are there also. Never can a tribunal have had a
more appropriate setting than at Kampen. The Rennes judiciaries should
have sat there, to lend further ironical point to their decision.
The stadhuis has other possessions interesting to anti-quaries:
valuable documents, gold and silver work, the metal and leather squirts
through which boiling oil was projected at the enemies of the town;
while an iron cage for criminals, similar, I imagine, to that in
which Jan of Leyden was exhibited, hangs outside.
Travellers visit Kampen pre-eminently to see the stadhuis chimney-piece
and oak, but the whole town is a museum. I wish now that I had arranged
to be longer there; but unaware of Kampen's charms I allowed but a
short time both for Zwolle and itself. On my next visit to Holland
Kampen shall be my headquarters for some days. Amid the restfulness
of mediævalism, the friendliness of the fishing folk and the breezes
of the Zuyder Zee, one should do well. A boat from Amsterdam to Kampen
sails every morning.
Despite its Judgment Hall and its other merits Kampen is the Dutch
Gotham. Any foolishly naive speech or action is attributed to
Kampen's wise men. In one story the fathers of the town place the
municipal sundial under cover to protect it from the rays of the
sun. In another they meet together to deliberate on the failure of
the water pipes and fire engines during a fire, and pass a rule that
"on the evening preceding a fire" all hydrants and engines must be
overhauled. M. Havard gives also the following instance of Kampen
sagacity. A public functionary was explaining the financial state of
the town. He asserted that one of the principal profits arose from
the tolls exacted on the entrance of goods into the town. "Each
gate," said the ingenious advocate, "has brought in ten million
florins this year; that is to say, with seven gates we have gained
seventy million florins. This is a most important fact. I therefore
propose that the council double the number of gates, and in this way
we shall in future considerably augment our funds." The Irishman who,
when asked to buy a stove that would save half his fuel, replied that
he would have two and save it all, was of the same school of logic.
From Kampen the island of Urk may be visited: but I have not been
there. In 1787, I have read somewhere, the inhabitants of Urk decided
to form a club in which to practise military exercises and the use of
arms. When the club was formed it had but one member. Hence a Dutch
saying--"It is the Urk club".
Nor did I stay at Deventer, but hastened on to Zutphen with my thoughts
straying all the time to the grey walls of Penshurst castle in Kent
and its long galleries filled with memories of Sir Philip Sidney--the
gentle knight who was a boy there, and who died at Arnheim of a
wound which he received in the siege of Zutphen three and a quarter
centuries ago.
At Naarden we have seen how terrible was the destroying power of the
Spaniards. It was at Zutphen that they had first given rein to their
lust for blood. When Zutphen was taken by Don Frederic in 1572, at the
beginning of the war, Motley tells us that "Alva sent orders to his son
to leave _not a single man alive in the city_, and to burn every house
to the ground. The Duke's command was almost literally obeyed. Don
Frederic entered Zutphen, and without a moment's warning put the whole
garrison to the sword. The citizens next fell a defenceless prey; some
being stabbed in the streets, some hanged on the trees which decorated
the city, some stripped stark naked, and turned out into the fields
to freeze to death in the wintry night. As the work of death became
too fatiguing for the butchers, five hundred innocent burghers were
tied two and two, back to back, and drowned like dogs in the river
Yssel. A few stragglers who had contrived to elude pursuit at first,
were afterwards taken from their hiding-places, and hung upon the
_gallows by the feet_, some of which victims suffered four days and
nights of agony before death came to their relief."
On the day that I was in Zutphen it was the quietest town I had
found in all Holland--not excepting Monnickendam between the arrival
of the steam-trams. The clean bright streets were empty and still:
another massacre almost might just have occurred. I had Zutphen to
myself. I could not even find the koster to show me the church;
and it was in trying door after door as I walked round it that I
came upon the only sign of life in the place. For one handle at last
yielding I found myself instantly in a small chapel filled with many
young women engaged in a scripture class. The sudden irruption of an
embarrassed and I imagine somewhat grotesque foreigner seems to have
been exactly what every member of this little congregation was most
desiring, and I never heard a merrier or more spontaneous burst of
laughter. I stood not upon the order of my going.
The church is vast and very quiet and restful, with a large plain
window of green glass that increases its cool freshness; while
the young leaves of a chestnut close to another window add to this
effect. The koster coming at last, I was shown the ancient chained
library in the chapter house, and he enlarged upon the beauties of a
metal font. Wandering out again into this city of silence I found in
the square by the church an exhibition of wax works which was to be
opened at four o'clock. Making a note to return to it at that hour,
I sought the river, where the timber is floated down from the German
forests, and lost myself among peat barges and other craft, and walked
some miles in and about Zutphen, and a little way down a trickling
stream whence the view of the city is very beautiful; and by-and-by
found myself by the church and the wax works again, in a town that
since my absence had quite filled with bustling people--four o'clock
having struck and the Princess of the Day Dream having (I suppose)
been kissed. The change was astonishing.
Wax works always make me uncomfortable, and these were no exception;
but the good folk of Zutphen found them absorbing. The murderers stood
alone, staring with that fixity which only a wax assassin can compass;
but for the most part the figures were arranged in groups with dramatic
intent. Here was a confessional; there a farewell between lovers;
here a wounded Boer meeting his death at the bayonet of an English
dastard; there a Queen Eleanor sucking poison from her husband's
arm. A series of illuminated scenes of rapine and disaster might be
studied through magnifying glasses. The presence of a wax bust of
Zola was due, I imagine, less to his illustrious career than to the
untoward circumstances of his death. The usual Sleeping Beauty heaved
her breast punctually in the centre of the tent.
In one point only did the exhibition differ from the wax works of
the French and Italian fairs--it was undeviatingly decent. There
were no jokes, and no physiological models. But the Dutch, I should
conjecture, are not morbid. They have their coarse fun, laugh,
and get back to business again. Judged by that new short-cut to
a nation's moral tone, the picture postcard, the Dutch are quite
sound. There is a shop in the high-spirited Nes Straat at Amsterdam
where a certain pictorial ebullience has play, but I saw none other
of the countless be-postcarded windows in all Holland that should
cause a serious blush on any cheek; while the Nes Straat specimens
were fundamentally sound, Rabelaisian rather than Armand-Sylvestrian,
not vicious but merely vulgar.