Middelburg
The friendly Zeelanders--A Spanish heritage--Deceptive Dutch
towns--The Abbey Hotel--The Abbey of St. Nicholas--Middelburg's
art--Sentimental songs--The great Tacius--The siege of
Middelburg--A round-faced city--When disfigurement is
beauty--Green paint--Long John--Music in the night--Foolish
Betsy--The Stadhuis--An Admiral and stuffed birds--The law
of the paving-stones--Veere--The prey of the sea--A mammoth
church--Maximilian's cup.
With Middelburg I have associated, for charm, Hoorn; but Middelburg
stands first. It is serener, happier, more human; while the nature of
the Zeelander is to the stranger so much more ingratiating than that
of the North Hollander. The Zeelander--and particularly the Walcheren
islander--has the eccentricity to view the stranger as a natural
object rather than a phenomenon. Flushing being avowedly cosmopolitan
does not count, but at Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, you may,
although the only foreigner there, walk about in the oddest clothes
and receive no embarrassing attentions.
It is not that the good people of Walcheren are quicker to see
where their worldly advantage lies. They are not schemers or
financiers. The reason resides in a native politeness, a heritage,
some have conjectured, from their Spanish forefathers. One sees hints
of Spanish blood also in the exceptional flexibility and good carriage
of the Walcheren women. Whatever the cause of Zeeland's friendliness,
there it is; and in Middelburg the foreigner wanders at ease, almost
as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were in France.
And it is the pleasantest town to wander in, and an astonishingly
large one. A surprising expansiveness, when one begins to explore them,
is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch towns. From the railway, seeing a church
spire and a few roofs, one had expected only a village; and behold
street runs into street until one's legs ache. This is peculiarly
the case with Gorinchem, which is almost invisible from the line;
and it is the case with Middelburg, and Hoorn, and many other towns
that I do not recall at this moment.
My advice to travellers in Walcheren is to stay at Middelburg rather
than at Flushing (they are very nigh each other) and to stay, moreover,
at the Hotel of the Abbey. It is not the best hotel in Holland as
regards appointment and cuisine; but it is certainly one of the
pleasantest in character, and I found none other in so fascinating
a situation. For it occupies one side of the quiet square enclosed
by the walls of the Abbey of St. Nicholas (or Abdij, as the Dutch
oddly call it), and you look from your windows through a grove of
trees to the delicate spires and long low facade of this ancient
House of God, which is now given over to the Governor of Zeeland,
to the library of the Province, and to the Provincial Council, who
meet in fifteenth century chambers and transact their business on
_nouveau art_ furniture.
What the Abbey must have been before it was destroyed by fire we can
only guess; but one thing we know, and that is that among its treasures
were paintings by the great Mabuse (Jan Gossaert), who once roystered
through Middelburg's quiet streets. Another artist of Middelburg was
Adrian van der Venne, who made the quaint drawings for Jacob Cats'
symbols, of which we have seen something in an earlier chapter. But
the city has never been a home of the arts. Beyond a little tapestry,
some of which may be seen in the stadhuis, and some at the Abbey,
it made nothing beautiful. From earliest times the Middelburgers were
merchants--wool merchants and wine merchants principally, but always
tradespeople and always prosperous and contented.
A tentoonstelling (or exhibition) of copper work was in progress when
I was there last summer; but it was not interesting, and I had better
have taken the advice of the Music Hall manager, in whose grounds
it was held, and have saved my money. His attitude to _repoussé_
work was wholly pessimistic, part prejudice against the craft
of the metal-worker in itself, but more resentment that florins
should be diverted into such a channel away from comic singers and
acrobats. Seated at one of the garden tables we discussed Dutch taste
in varieties.
The sentimental song, he told me, is a drug in Holland. Anything
rather than that. No matter how pretty the girl may be, she must
not sing a sentimental song. But if I wished to witness the only
way in which a sentimental song would "go down," I must visit his
performance that evening--reserved seats one, fifty,--and hear the
great Tacius. He drew from his pocket a handbill which was at that
moment being scattered broadcast over Middelburg. It bore the name
of this marvel, this solver of the sentimental riddle, and beneath
it three interrogation marks. The manager winked. "That," he said,
"will excite interest."
We went that evening and heard Tacius--a portly gentleman in a ball
dress and a yellow wig, who after squeaking five-sixths of a love song
in a timid falsetto which might pass for a woman's voice, roared out
the balance like a bull. He brought down the house.
Like most other Dutch towns Middelburg had its period of siege. But
there was this difference, that Middelburg was held by the Spanish and
besieged by the Dutch, whereas the custom was for the besiegers to be
Spanish and the besieged Dutch. Middelburg suffered every privation
common to invested cities, even to the trite consumption of rats
and dogs, cats and mice, Just as destruction seemed inevitable--for
the Spanish commander Mondragon swore to fire it and perish with it
rather than submit--a compromise was arranged, and he surrendered
without dishonour, the terms of the capitulation (which, however,
Spain would not allow him to carry out) being another illustration
of the wisdom and humanity of William the Silent.
Middelburg has never known a day's suffering since her siege. A
local proverb says, "Goed rond, goed Zeeuwsch"--very round, very
Zeelandish--and an old writer--so M. Havard tells us--describes
Middelburg as a "round faced city". If by round we mean not only
circular but also plump and comfortable, we have Middelburg and its
sons and daughters very happily hit off. Structurally the town is
round: the streets curve, the Abbey curves; seen from a balloon or
the summit of the church tower, the plan of the city would reveal
itself a circle. And there is a roundness also in the people. They
smile roundly, they laugh roundly, they live roundly.
The women and girls of Middelburg are more comely and winsome than any
in Holland. Their lace caps are like driven snow, their cheeks shine
like apples. But their way with their arms I cannot commend. The sleeve
of their bodices ends far above the elbow, and is made so tight that
the naked arm below expands on attaining its liberty, and by constant
and intentional friction takes the hue of the tomato. What, however,
is to our eyes only a suggestion of inflammation, is to the Zeelander a
beauty. While our impulse is to recommend cold cream, the young bloods
of Middelburg (I must suppose) are holding their beating hearts. These
are the differences of nations--beyond anything dreamed of in Babel.
The principal work of these ruddy-armed and wide-hipped damsels seems
to be to carry green pails on a blue yoke--and their perfect fitness
in Middelburg's cheerful and serene streets is another instance of
the Dutch cleverness in the use of green paint. These people paint
their houses every year--not in conformity with any written law,
but upon a universal feeling that that is what should be done. To
this very pretty habit is largely due the air of fresh gaiety that
their towns possess. Middelburg is of the gayest. Greenest of all,
as I have said, is perhaps Zaandam. Sometimes they paint too freely,
even the trunks of trees and good honest statuary coming under the
brush. But for the most part they paint well.
It is not alone the cloistral Gothic seclusion in which the Abbey hotel
reposes that commends it to the wise: there is the further allurement
of Long John. Long John, or De Lange Jan, is the soaring tower of the
Abbey church, now the Nieuwe Kerk. So long have his nearly 300 feet
dominated Middelburg--he was first built in the thirteenth century,
and rebuilt in the sixteenth--that he has become more than a structure
of bricks and copper: a thinking entity, a tutelary spirit at once
the pride and the protector of the town. His voice is heard more often
than any belfry beneath whose shadow I have lain. Holland, as we have
seen, is a land of bells and carillons; nowhere in the world are the
feet of Time so dogged; but Long John is the most faithful sleuth of
all. He is almost ahead of his quarry. He seems to know no law; he
set out, I believe, with a commission entitling him to ring his one
and forty bells every seven and a half minutes, or eight times in the
hour; but long since he must have torn up that warranty, for he is
now his own master, breaking out into little sighs of melancholy or
wistful music whenever the mood takes him. I have never heard such
profoundly plaintive airs as his--very beautiful, very grave, very
deliberate. One cannot say more for persistent chimes than this--that
at the Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in the night.
Long John has a companion in Foolish Betsy. Foolish Betsy is the
stadhuis clock, so called (Gekke Betje) from her refusal to keep time
with the giant: another instance of the power which John exerts over
the town, even to the wounding of chivalry. The Nieuwe Kerk would
be nothing without its tower--it is one of the barest and least
interesting churches in a country which has reduced to the finest
point the art of denuding religion of mystery--but the stadhuis
would still be wonderful even without its Betsy, There is nothing
else like it in Holland, nothing anywhere quite so charming in its
shameless happy floridity. I cannot describe it: the building is too
complicated, too ornate; I can only say that it is wholly captivating
and thoroughly out of keeping with the Dutch genius--Spanish influence
again apparent. Beneath the eaves are four and twenty statues of the
Counts of Holland and Zeeland, and the roof is like a mass-meeting
of dormer windows.
In addition to the stadhuis museum, which is dedicated to the history
of Middelburg and Zeeland, the town has also a municipal museum, too
largely given over to shells and stuffed birds, but containing also
such human relics as the wheel on which Admiral de Ruyter as a boy
helped his father to make rope, and also the first microscope and
the first telescope, both the work of Zacharias Jansen, a Zeeland
mathematician. More interesting perhaps are the rooms in the old
Zeeland manner, corresponding to the Hindeloopen rooms which we
have seen at Leeuwarden, but lacking their cheerful richness of
ornamentation. It is certainly a museum that should be visited,
albeit the stuffed birds weigh heavily on the brow.
After all, Middelburg's best museum is itself. Its streets and
houses are a never-ending pleasure. Something gladdens the eye at
every turn--a blue and yellow shutter, a red and black shutter,
a turret, a daring gable, a knot of country people, a fat Zeeland
baby, a milk-can rivalling the sun, an old woman's lace cap, a young
woman's merry mouth. Only in two respects is the town unsatisfactory,
and both are connected with its streets. The liberty given to each
householder to erect an iron fence across the pavement at each limit
of his property makes it necessary to walk in the road, and the _pavé_
of the road is so rough as to cause no slight suffering to any one in
thin boots. M. Havard has an amusing passage on this topic, in which
he says that the ancient fifteenth-century punishment for marital
infidelity, a sin forbidden by the municipal laws no less than by
Heaven, was the supply by the offending man of a certain number of
paving stones. After such an explanation, the genial Frenchman adds,
we must not complain:--
Nos pères ont péchés, nos pères ne sont plus,
Et c'est nous qui portons la peine de leurs crimes.
The island of Walcheren is quickly learned. From Middelburg one
can drive in a day to the chief points of interest--Westcapelle and
Domburg, Veere and Arnemuiden. Of these Veere is the jewel--Veere,
once Middelburg's dreaded rival, and in its possession of a clear
sea-way and harbour her superior, but now forlorn. For in the
seventeenth century Holland's ancient enemy overflowed its barriers,
and the greater part of Veere was blotted out in a night. What remains
is a mere symbol of the past; but there is enough to loiter in with
perfect content, for Veere is unique. Certainly no little town is so
good to approach--with the friendliness of its red roofs before one
all the way, the unearthly hugeness of its church and the magic of
its stadhuis tower against the blue.
The church, which is visible from all parts of the island, is immense,
in itself an indication of what a city Veere must have been. It
rises like a mammoth from the flat. Only the east end is now used for
services; the vast remainder, white and naked, is given up to bats
and the handful of workmen that the slender restoration funds make it
possible to employ. For there is some idea of Veere's church being one
day again in perfect repair; but that day will not be in our time. The
ravages of the sea only emptied it: the sea does not desecrate. It
was Napoleon who disgraced the church by converting it into barracks.
Other relics of Veere's past are the tower at the harbour mouth (its
fellow-tower is beneath the sea) and the beautifully grave Scotch house
on the quay, once the centre of the Scottish wool trade of these parts.
The stadhuis also remains, a dainty distinguished structure which might
be the infant daughter of the stadhuis at Middelburg. Its spire has a
slender aerial grace; on its façade are statues of the Lords of Veere
and their Ladies, Within is a little museum of antiquities, one of
whose most interesting possessions is the entry in the Veere register,
under the date July 2nd, 1608, of the marriage of Hugo Grotius with
Maria Reygersbergh of Veere, whom we have seen at Loevenstein assisting
in her husband's escape from prison. The museum is in the charge of a
blond custodian, a descendant of sea kings, whose pride in the golden
goblet which Maximilian of Burgundy, Veere's first Marquis, gave to
the town in 1551, is almost paternal. He displays it as though it
were a sacred relic, and narrates the story of Veere's indignation
when a millionaire attempted to buy it, so feelingly as to fortify
and complete one's suspicions that money after all is but dross and
the love of it the root of evil.