Transcriber's Notes.
The few instances of inconsistent hyphenation have been retained.
Page 100 — Changed Lubeck to Lübeck.
SKETCHES
IN
HOLLAND AND SCANDINAVIA
BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
AUTHOR OF "CITIES OF ITALY," "WANDERINGS IN SPAIN," ETC.
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1885
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE.
The slight sketches in this volume are only the result of ordinary
tours in the countries they attempt to describe. Yet the days they
recall were so delightful, and their memory—especially of the tour
in Norway—is so indescribably sunny, that I cannot help hoping their
publication may lead others to enjoy what is at once so pleasant and so
easy of attainment.
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
HOLMHURST: _November 1884_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
IN HOLLAND 1
IN DENMARK 59
IN SWEDEN 83
IN NORWAY 105
_IN HOLLAND._
At Roosendal, about an hour's railway journey from Antwerp, the
boundary between Belgium and Holland is crossed, and a branch line
diverges to Breda.
Somehow, like most travellers, we could not help expecting to see some
marked change on reaching a new country, and in Holland one could not
repress the expectation of beginning at once to see the pictures of
Teniers and Gerard Dou in real life. We were certainly disappointed at
first. Open heaths were succeeded by woods of stunted firs, and then by
fields with thick hedges of beech or alder, till the towers of Breda
came in sight. Here a commonplace omnibus took us to the comfortable
inn of Zum Kroon, and we were shown into bedrooms reached by an open
wooden staircase from the courtyard, and quickly joined the table
d'hôte, at which the magnates of the town were seated with napkins well
tucked up under their chins, talking, with full mouths, in Dutch, of
which to our unaccustomed ears the words seemed all in one string.
Most excellent was the dinner—roast meat and pears, quantities of
delicious vegetables cooked in different ways, piles of ripe mulberries
and cake, and across the little garden, with its statues and bright
flower-beds, we could see the red sails of the barges going up and down
the canals.
As soon as dinner was over, we sallied forth to see the town, which
impressed us more than any Dutch city did afterwards, perhaps because
it was the first we saw. The winding streets—one of them ending in a
high windmill—are lined with houses wonderfully varied in outline,
and of every shade of delicate colour, yellow, grey, or brown, though
the windows always have white frames and bars. Passing through a low
archway under one of the houses, we found ourselves, when we least
expected it, in the public garden, a kind of wood where the trees have
killed all the grass, surrounded by canals, beyond one of which is a
great square château built by William III. of England, encircled by the
Merk, and enclosing an arcaded court. There was an older château of
1350 at Breda, but we failed to find it.
[Illustration: THE MARKET-PLACE AT BREDA.]
In stately splendour, from the old houses of the market-place, rises
the noble Hervormde Kerk (Protestant Church), with a lofty octagon
tower, and a most characteristic bulbous Dutch spire. Here, as we
wanted to see the interior, we first were puzzled by our ignorance of
Dutch, finding, as everywhere in the smaller towns, that the natives
knew no language but their own. But two old women in high caps and
gold earrings observed our puzzledom from a window and pointed to a
man and a key—we nodded; the man pointed to himself, a door, and
a key—we nodded; and we were soon inside the building. It was our
first introduction to Dutch Calvinism and iconoclasm, and piteous
indeed was it to see so magnificent a church thickly covered with
whitewash, and the quantity of statues which it contains of deceased
Dukes and Duchesses of Nassau bereft of their legs and petticoats.
Only, in a grand side chapel on the left of the choir, the noble tomb
of Engelbrecht II. of Nassau, general under the Emperor Maximilian
(1505), remains intact. The guide lights matches to shine through the
transparent alabaster of the figures; that of the Duke represents
Death, that of the Duchess Sleep, as they lie beneath a stone slab
which bears the armour of Engelbrecht, and is supported by figures
of Cæsar, Hannibal, Regulus, and Philip of Macedon; that of Cæsar is
sublime. The tomb of Sir Francis Vere in Westminster Abbey is of the
same design, and is supposed to be copied from this famous monument.
Outside the chapel is the tomb of Engelbrecht V. of Nassau, with all
his family kneeling, in quaint headdresses. The other sights of the
church are the brass font in the Baptistery, and a noble brass in the
choir of William de Gaellen, Dean of the Chapter, 1539. It will be
observed that here, and almost everywhere else in Holland, the names
of saints which used to be attached to the churches have disappeared;
the buildings are generally known as the old church, or new church, or
great church.
After a delicious breakfast of coffee and thick cream, with rusks,
scones, and different kinds of cheese, always an indispensable in Dutch
breakfasts, we took to the railway again and crossed Zealand, which
chiefly consists of four islands, Noordt Beveland, Zuid Beveland,
Schouwen, and Walcheren, and is less visited by the rest of the
Netherlanders than any other part of the country. The land is all
cut up into vast polders, as the huge meadows are called, which are
recovered from the sea and protected by embankments. Here, if human
care was withdrawn for six months, the whole country would be under the
sea again. A corps of engineers called 'waterstaat' are continually
employed to watch the waters, and to keep in constant repair the dykes,
which are formed of clay at the bottom, as that is more waterproof
than anything else, and thatched with willows, which are here grown
extensively for the purpose. If the sea passes a dyke, ruin is
imminent, an alarm bell rings, and the whole population rush to the
rescue. The moment one dyke is even menaced, the people begin to build
another inside it, and then rely upon the double defence, whilst they
fortify the old one. But all their care has not preserved the islands
of Zealand. Three centuries ago, Schouwen was entirely submerged, and
every living creature was drowned. Soon after, Noordt Beveland was
submerged, and remained for several years entirely under water, only
the points of the church spires being visible. Zuid Beveland had been
submerged in the fourteenth century. Walcheren was submerged as late as
1808, and Tholen even in 1825. It has been aptly asserted that the sea
to the inhabitants of Holland is what Vesuvius is to Torre del Greco.
How well its French name of Pays-Bas suits the country! De Amicis says
that the Dutch have three enemies—the sea, the lakes, and the rivers;
they repel the sea, they dry the lakes, and they imprison the rivers;
but with the sea it is a combat which never ceases.
[Illustration: BERGEN-OP-ZOOM.]
The story of the famous siege of 1749 made us linger at Bergen-op-Zoom,
a clean, dull little town with bright white houses surrounding an
irregular market-place, and surmounted by the heavy tower of the Church
of S. Gertrude. In the Stadhuis is a fine carved stone chimney-piece;
but there is little worth seeing, and we were soon speeding across
the rich pastures of Zuid Beveland, and passing its capital of Goes,
prettily situated amongst cherry orchards, the beautiful cruciform
church with a low central spire rising above the trees on its ramparts.
Every now and then the train seems scarcely out of the water, which
covers a vast surface of the pink-green flats, and recalls the
description in Hudibras of—
A country that draws fifty feet of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature,
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drown a province, does but spring a leak.
The peasant women at the stations are a perpetual amusement, for there
is far more costume here than in most parts of Holland, and peculiar
square handsome gold ornaments, something like closed golden books, are
universally worn on each side of the face.
So, crossing a broad salt canal into the island of Walcheren, we
reached Middleburg, a handsome town which was covered with water to the
house tops when the island was submerged. It was the birthplace of
Zach Janssen and Hans Lipperhey, the inventors of the telescope, _c._
1610. In the market-place is a most beautiful Gothic townhall, built
by the architect Keldermans, early in the sixteenth century. We asked
a well dressed boy how we could get into it, and he, without further
troubling himself, pointed the way with his finger. The building
contains a quaint old hall called the Vierschaar, and a so-called
museum, but there is little enough to see. As we came out the boy met
us. 'You must give me something: I pointed out the entrance of the
Stadhuis to you.' In Holland we have always found that no one, rich or
poor, does a kindness or even a civility for nothing!
The crowd in the market-place was so great that it was impossible to
sketch the Stadhuis as we should have wished, but the people themselves
were delightfully picturesque. The women entirely conceal their hair
under their white caps, but have golden corkscrews sticking out on
either side the face, like weapons of defence, from which the golden
slabs we have observed before were pendant. The Nieuwe Kerk is of
little interest, though it contains the tomb of William of Holland, who
was elected Emperor of Germany in 1250, and we wandered on through the
quiet streets, till a Gothic arch in an ancient wall looked tempting.
Passing through it we found ourselves in the enclosure of the old
abbey, shaded by a grove of trees, and surrounded by ancient buildings,
part of which are appropriated as the Hotel Abdij, where we arrived
utterly famished, and found a table d'hôte at 2.30 P.M. unspeakably
reviving.
Any one who sees Holland thoroughly ought also to visit Zieriksee, the
capital of the island of Schouwen; but the water locomotion thither is
so difficult and tedious that we preferred keeping to the railways,
which took us back in the dark over the country we had already
traversed, and a little more, to Dortrecht, where there is a convenient
tramway to take travellers from the station into the town. Here, at the
Hôtel de Fries, we found comfortable bedrooms, with boarded floors and
box-beds like those in Northumbrian cottages, and we had supper in the
public room, separated into two parts by a daïs for strangers, whence
we looked down into the humbler division, which recalled many homely
scenes of Ostade and Teniers in its painted wooden ceiling, its bright,
polished furniture, its cat and dog and quantity of birds and flowers,
its groups of boors at round tables drinking out of tankards, and the
landlady and her daughter in their gleaming gold ornaments, sitting
knitting, with the waiter standing behind them amusing himself by the
general conversation.
Our morning at Dortrecht was very delightful, and it is a thoroughly
charming place. Passing under a dark archway in a picturesque building
of Charles V. opposite the hotel, we found ourselves at once on the
edge of an immense expanse of shimmering river, with long rich polders
beyond, between which the wide flood breaks into three different
branches. Red and white sails flit down them. Here and there rise a
line of pollard willows or clipped elms, and now and then a church
spire. On the nearest shore an ancient windmill, coloured in delicate
tints of grey and yellow, surmounts a group of white buildings. On the
left is a broad esplanade of brick, lined with ancient houses, and a
canal with a bridge, the long arms of which are ready to open at a
touch and give a passage to the great yellow-masted barges, which are
already half intercepting the bright red house-fronts ornamented with
stone, which belong to some public buildings facing the end of the
canal. With what a confusion of merchandise are the boats laden, and
how gay is the colouring, between the old weedy posts to which they are
moored!
It was from hence that Isabella of France, with Sir John de Hainault
and many other faithful knights, set out on their expedition against
Edward II. and the government of the Spencers.
From the busy port, where nevertheless they are dredging, we cross
another bridge and find ourselves in a quietude like that of a
cathedral close in England. On one side is a wide pool half covered
with floating timber, and, in the other half, reflecting like a mirror
the houses on the opposite shore, with their bright gardens of lilies
and hollyhocks, and trees of mountain ash, which bend their masses
of scarlet berries to the still water. Between the houses are glints
of blue river and of inevitable windmills on the opposite shore. And
all this we observe standing in the shadow of a huge church, the
Groote Kerk, with a nave of the fourteenth century, and a choir of
the fifteenth, and a gigantic brick tower, in which three long Gothic
arches, between octagonal tourelles, enclose several tiers of windows.
At the top is a great clock, and below the church a grove of elms,
through which fitful sunlight falls on the grass and the dead red of
the brick pavement (so grateful to feet sore with the sharp stones of
other Dutch cities), where groups of fishermen are collecting in their
blue shirts and white trousers.
[Illustration: GROOTE KERK, DORTRECHT.]
There is little to see inside this or any other church in Holland;
travellers will rather seek for the memorials, at the Kloveniers
Doelen, of the famous Synod of Dort, which was held 1618-19, in the
hope of effecting a compromise between the Gomarists, or disciples of
Calvin, and the Arminians who followed Zwingli, and who had recently
obtained the name of Remonstrants from the 'remonstrance' which they
had addressed eight years before in defence of their doctrines. The
Calvinists held that the greater part of mankind was excluded from
grace, which the Arminians denied; but at the Synod of Dort the
Calvinists proclaimed themselves as infallible as the Pope, and their
resolutions became the law of the Dutch reformed Church. The Arminians
were forthwith outlawed; a hundred ministers who refused to subscribe
to the dictates of the Synod were banished; Hugo Grotius and Rombout
Hoogerbeets were imprisoned for life at Loevestein; the body of the
secretary Ledenberg, who committed suicide in prison, was hung; and Van
Olden Barneveldt, the friend of William the Silent, was beheaded in his
seventy-second year.
[Illustration: CANAL AT DORTRECHT.]
There is nothing in the quiet streets of Dortrecht to remind one that
it was once one of the most important commercial cities of Holland,
taking precedence even of Rotterdam, Delft, Leyden, and Amsterdam. It
also possessed a privilege called the Staple of Dort, by which all the
carriers on the Maas and Rhine were forced to unload their merchandise
here, and pay all duties imposed, only using the boats or porters of
the place in their work, and so bringing a great revenue to the town.
More than those in any of the other towns of Holland do the little
water streets of Dortrecht recall Venice, the houses rising abruptly
from the canals; only the luminous atmosphere and the shimmering water
changing colour like a chameleon, are wanting.
Through the street of wine—Wijnstraat—built over storehouses used for
the staple, we went to the Museum to see the pictures. There were two
schools of Dortrecht. Jacob Geritse Cuyp (1575), Albert Cuyp (1605),
Ferdinand Bol (1611), Nicolas Maas (1632), and Schalken (1643) belonged
to the former; Arend de Gelder, Arnold Houbraken, Dirk Stoop, and Ary
Scheffer are of the latter. Sunshine and glow were the characteristics
of the first school, greyness and sobriety of the second. But there
are few good pictures at Dort now, and some of the best works of
Cuyp are to be found in our National Gallery, executed at his native
place and portraying the great brick tower of the church in the golden
haze of evening, seen across rich pastures, where the cows are lying
deep in the meadow grass. The works of Ary Scheffer are now the most
interesting pictures in the Dortrecht Gallery. Of the subject 'Christus
Consolator' there are two representations. In the more striking of
these the pale Christ is seated amongst the sick, sorrowful, blind,
maimed, and enslaved, who are all stretching out their hands to Him.
Beneath is the tomb which the artist executed for his mother, Cornelia
Scheffer, whose touching figure is represented lying with outstretched
hands, in the utmost abandonment of repose.
An excursion should be made from Dortrecht to the castle of Loevestein
on the Rhine, where Grotius, imprisoned in 1619, was concealed by his
wife in the chest which brought in his books and linen. It was conveyed
safely out of the castle by her courageous maid Elsje van Houwening,
and was taken at first to the house of Jacob Daatselaer, a supposed
friend of Grotius, who refused to render any assistance. But his wife
consented to open the chest, and the philosopher, disguised as a mason,
escaped to Brabant.
It is much best to visit Rotterdam as an excursion from Dortrecht. We
thought it the most odious place we ever were in—immense, filthy, and
not very picturesque. Its handsomest feature is the vast quay called
the Boompjes, on the Maas. Here and there a great windmill reminds you
unmistakably of where you are, and the land streets are intersected
everywhere by water streets, the carriages being constantly stopped
to let ships pass through the bridges. In the Groote Markt stands a
bronze statue of Desiderius Erasmus—'Vir saeculi sui primarius, et
civis omnium praestantissimus,' which is the work of Hendrik de Keyser
(1662), and in the Wijde Kerkstraat is the house where he was born,
inscribed 'Haec est parva domus, magnus qua natus Erasmus, 1467,' but
it is now a tavern. The great church of S. Lawrence—Groote Kerk—built
in 1477-87, contains the tombs of a number of Dutch admirals, and has
a grand pavement of monumental slabs, but is otherwise frightful. The
portion used for service is said to be 'so conveniently constructed
that the zealous Christians of Rotterdam prefer sleeping through a
sermon there, to any other church in the city.' Part of the rest is
used as a cart-house, the largest chapel is a commodious carpenter's
shop, and the aisles round the part which is still a church, where
there has been an attempt at restoration in painting the roof yellow
and putting up some hideous yellow seats, are a playground for the
children of the town, who are freely admitted in their perambulators,
though for strangers there is a separate fee for each part of the
edifice they enter.
We went to see the pictures in the Museum bequeathed to the town by
Jacob Otto Boyman, but did not admire them much. It takes time to
accustom one's mind to Dutch art, and the endless representations
of family life, with domestic furniture, pots and pans, &c., or of
the simple local landscapes—clipped avenues, sandy roads, dykes,
and cottages, or even of the cows, and pigs, and poultry, which seem
wonderfully executed, but, where one has too much of the originals,
scarcely worth the immense amount of time and labour bestowed upon
them. The calm seas of Van de Welde and Van der Capelle only afford
a certain amount of relief. The scenes of village life are seldom
pleasing, often coarse, and never have anything elevating to offer or
ennobling to recall. We thought that the real charm of the Dutch school
to outsiders consists in the immense power and variety of its portraits.
Hating Rotterdam, we thankfully felt ourselves speeding over the flat,
rich lands to Gouda, where we found an agricultural fête going on,
banners half way down the houses, and a triumphal arch as the entrance
to the square, formed of spades, rakes, and forks, with a plough at
the top, and decorated with corn, potatoes, turnips, and carrots, and
cornucopias pouring out flowers at the sides. In the square—a great
cheese market, for the Gouda cheese is esteemed the best in Holland—is
a Gothic Stadhuis, and beyond it, the Groote Kerk of 1552, of which the
bare interior is enlivened by the stained windows executed by Wonter
and Dirk Crabeth in 1555-57. We were the better able to understand
the design of these noble windows because the cartoon for each was
spread upon the pavement in front of it; but one could not help one's
attention being unpleasantly distracted by the number of men of the
burgher class, smoking and with their hats on, who were allowed to use
the church as a promenade. Gouda also made an unpleasant impression
upon us, because, expensive as we found every hotel in Holland, we were
nowhere so outrageously cheated as here.
[Illustration: THE VIJVER.]
It is a brief journey to the Hague—La Haye, Gravenhage—most
delightful of little capitals, with its comfortable hotels and pleasant
surroundings. The town is still so small that it seems to merit the
name of 'the largest village in Europe,' which was given to it because
the jealousy of other towns prevented its having any vote in the States
General till the time of Louis Bonaparte, who gave it the privileges
of a city. It is said that the Hague, more than any other place, may
recall what Versailles was just before the great revolution. It has
thoroughly the aspect of a little royal city. Without any of the crowd
and bustle of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, it is not dead like the smaller
towns of Holland; indeed, it even seems to have a quiet gaiety, without
dissipation, of its own. All around are parks and gardens, whence wide
streets lead speedily through the new town of the rich bourgeoisie
to the old central town of stadholders, where a beautiful lake, the
Vijver, or fish-pond, comes as a surprise, with the eccentric old
palace of the Binnenhof rising straight out of its waters. We had been
told it was picturesque, but were prepared for nothing so charming
as the variety of steep roofs and towers, the clear reflections, the
tufted islet, and the beautiful colouring of the whole scene of the
Vijver. Skirting the lake, we entered the precincts of the palace
through the picturesque Gudevangen Poort, where Cornelius de Witte,
Burgomaster of Dort, was imprisoned in 1672, on a false accusation of
having suborned the surgeon William Tichelaur to murder the Prince of
Orange. He was dragged out hence and torn to pieces by the people,
together with his brother Jean de Witte, Grand Pensioner, whose house
remains hard by in the Kneuterdijk.
The court of the Binnenhof is exceedingly handsome, and contains the
ancient Gothic Hall of the Knights, where Johann van Olden Barneveld,
Grand Pensioner, or Prime Minister, was condemned to death 'for having
conspired to dismember the States of the Netherlands, and greatly
troubled God's Church,' and in the front of which (May 24, 1619) he was
beheaded.
[Illustration: HALL OF THE KNIGHTS, THE HAGUE.]
Close to the north-east gate of the Binnenhof is the handsome house
called Mauritshuis, containing the inestimable Picture Gallery of the
Hague, which will bear many visits, and has the great charm of not
being huge beyond the powers of endurance. On the ground floor are
chiefly portraits, amongst which a simple dignified priest by Philippe
de Champaigne, with a far-away expression, will certainly arrest
attention. Deeply interesting is the portrait by Ravesteyn of William
the Silent, in his ruff and steel armour embossed with gold—a deeply
lined face, with a slight peaked beard. His widow, Louise de Coligny,
is also represented. There is a fine portrait by Schalcken of our
William the Third. Noble likenesses of Sir George Sheffield and his
wife Anna Wake, by Vandyke, are a pleasing contrast to the many works
of Rubens. There are deeply interesting portraits by Albert Dürer and
Holbein.
On the first floor we must sit down before the great picture which
Rembrandt painted in his twenty-sixth year (1632) of the School of
Anatomy. Here the shrewd professor, Nicholaus Tulp, with a face
brimming with knowledge and intelligence, is expounding the anatomy of
a corpse to a number of members of the guild of surgeons, some of whom
are full of eager interest and inquiry, whilst others are inattentive:
the dead figure is greatly foreshortened and not repulsive. In another
room, a fine work of Thomas de Keyser represents the Four Burgomasters
of Amsterdam hearing of the arrival of Marie de Medicis. A beautiful
work of Adrian van Ostade is full of light and character—but only
represents a stolid boor drinking to the health of a fiddler, while a
child plays with a dog in the background.
A group of admirers will always be found round 'the Immortal Bull' of
Paul Potter, which was considered the fourth picture in importance
in the Louvre, when the spoils of Europe were collected at Paris.
De Amicis says, 'It lives, it breathes; with his bull Paul Potter
has written the true Idyl of Holland.' It is, however—being really
a group of cattle—not a pleasing, though a life-like picture. Much
more attractive is the exquisite 'Presentation' of Rembrandt (1631),
in which Joseph and Mary, simple peasants, present the Holy Child to
Simeon, a glorious old man in a jewelled robe, who invokes a blessing
upon the infant, while other priests look on with interest. A wonderful
ray of light, falling upon the principal group, illuminates the whole
temple. Perhaps the most beautiful work in the whole gallery is the
Young Housekeeper of Gerard Dou. A lovely young woman sits at work by
an open window looking into a street. By her side is the baby asleep
in its cradle, over which the maid is leaning. The light falls on the
chandelier and all the household belongings of a well-to-do citizen: in
all there is the same marvellous finish; it is said that the handle of
the broom took three days to paint.
There is not much to discover in the streets of the Hague. In the great
square called the Plein is the statue of William the Silent, with his
finger raised, erected in 1848 'by the grateful people to the father of
their fatherland.' In the fish-market, tame storks are kept, for the
same reason that bears are kept at Berne, because storks are the arms
of the town. But the chief attraction of the place lies in its lovely
walks amid the noble beeches and oaks of the Bosch, beyond which on the
left is Huis ten Bosch, the Petit Trianon of the Hague, the favourite
palace of Queen Sophie, who held her literary court and died there.
It is a quiet country house, looking out upon flats, with dykes and a
windmill. All travellers seem to visit it,—which must be a ceaseless
surprise to the extortionate custode to whom they have to pay a gulden
a head, and who will hurry them rapidly through some commonplace rooms
in which there is nothing really worth seeing. One room is covered with
paintings of the Rubens school, amid which, high in the dome, is a
portrait of the Princess Amalia of Solms, who built the house in 1647.
[Illustration: SCHEVENINGEN.]
A tram takes people for twopence halfpenny to Scheveningen through the
park, a thick wood with charming forest scenery. As the trees become
more scattered, the roar of the North Sea is heard upon the shore.
Above the sands, on the dunes or sand-hills, which extend from the
Helder to Dunkirk, is a broad terrace, lined on one side by a row of
wooden pavilions with flags and porticoes, and below it are long lines
of tents, necessary in the intense glare, while, nearer the waves, are
thousands of beehive-like refuges, with a single figure seated in each.
The flat monotonous shore would soon pall upon one, yet through the
whole summer it is an extraordinary lively scene. The placid happiness
of Dutch family life has here taken possession. On Sunday afternoons,
especially, the sands seem as crowded with human existence as they are
represented in the picture of Lingelbach, which we have seen in the
Mauritshuis, portraying the vast multitude assembled here to witness
the embarkation of Charles II. for England.
An excursion must be made to Delft, only twenty minutes distant from
the Hague by rail. Pepys calls it 'a most sweet town, with bridges and
a river in every street,' and that is a tolerably accurate description.
It seems thinly inhabited, and the Dutch themselves look upon it as a
place where one will die of _ennui_. It has scarcely changed with two
hundred years. The view of Delft by Van der Meer in the Museum at the
Hague might have been painted yesterday. All the trees are clipped,
for in artificial Holland every work of Nature is artificialised. At
certain seasons, numbers of storks may be seen upon the chimney-tops,
for Delft is supposed to be the stork town _par excellence_. Near
the shady canal Oude Delft is a low building, once the Convent of S.
Agata, with an ornamented door surmounted by a relief, leading into a
courtyard. It is a common barrack now, for Holland, which has no local
histories, has no regard whatever for its historic associations or
monuments. Yet this is the greatest shrine of Dutch history, for it is
here that William the Silent died.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO S. AGATA, DELFT.]
Philip II. had promised 25,000 crowns of gold to any one who would
murder the Prince of Orange. An attempt had already been made, but had
failed, and William refused to take any measures for self-protection,
saying, 'It is useless: my years are in the hands of God: if there is
a wretch who has no fear of death, my life is in his hand, however I
may guard it.' At length, a young man of seven-and-twenty appeared
at Delft, who gave himself out to be one Guyon, a Protestant, son of
Pierre Guyon, executed at Besançon for having embraced Calvinism, and
declared that he was exiled for his religion. Really he was Balthazar
Gerard, a bigoted Catholic, but his conduct in Holland soon procured
him the reputation of an evangelical saint. The Prince took him into
his service and sent him to accompany a mission from the States of
Holland to the Court of France, whence he returned to bring the news
of the death of the Duke of Anjou to William. At that time the Prince
was living with his court in the convent of S. Agata, where he received
Balthazar alone in his chamber. The moment was opportune, but the
would-be assassin had no arms ready. William gave him a small sum of
money and bade him hold himself in readiness to be sent back to France.
With the money Balthazar bought two pistols from a soldier (who
afterwards killed himself when he heard the use which was made of the
purchase). On the next day, June 10, 1584, Balthazar returned to the
convent as William was descending the staircase to dinner, with his
fourth wife, Louise de Coligny (daughter of the Admiral who fell in the
massacre of S. Bartholomew), on his arm. He presented his passport and
begged the Prince to sign it, but was told to return later. At dinner
the Princess asked William who was the young man who had spoken to him,
for his expression was the most terrible she had ever seen. The Prince
laughed, said it was Guyon, and was as gay as usual. Dinner being over,
the family party were about to remount the staircase. The assassin was
waiting in a dark corner at the foot of the stairs, and as William
passed he discharged a pistol with three balls and fled. The Prince
staggered, saying, 'I am wounded; God have mercy upon me and my poor
people.' His sister Catherine van Schwartzbourg asked, 'Do you trust in
Jesus Christ?' He said, 'Yes,' with a feeble voice, sat down upon the
stairs, and died.
Balthazar reached the rampart of the town in safety, hoping to swim
to the other side of the moat, where a horse awaited him. But he had
dropped his hat and his second pistol in his flight, and so he was
traced and seized before he could leap from the wall. Amid horrible
tortures, he not only confessed, but continued to triumph in his crime.
His judges believed him to be possessed of the devil. The next day he
was executed. His right hand was burnt off in a tube of red-hot iron:
the flesh of his arms and legs was torn off with red-hot pincers; but
he never made a cry. It was not till his breast was cut open, and his
heart torn out and flung in his face, that he expired. His head was
then fixed on a pike, and his body cut into four quarters, exposed on
the four gates of the town.
Close to the Prinsenhof is the Oude Kerk with a leaning tower. It
is arranged like a very ugly theatre inside, but contains, with
other tombs of celebrities, the monument of Admiral van Tromp,
1650—'Martinus Harberti Trompius'—whose effigy lies upon his back,
with swollen feet. It was this Van Tromp who defeated the English
fleet under Blake, and perished, as represented on the monument, in an
engagement off Scheveningen. It was he who, after his victory over the
English, caused a broom to be hoisted at his mast-head to typify that
he had swept the Channel clear of his enemies.
The Nieuwe Kerk in the Groote Markt (1412-76) contains the magnificent
monument of William the Silent by Hendrik de Keyser and A. Quellin
(1621). Black marble columns support a white canopy over the white
sleeping figure of the Prince, who is represented in his little black
silk cap, as he is familiar to us in his pictures. In the recesses of
the tomb—'_somptueux et tourmenté_,' as Montégut calls it—are statues
of Liberty, Justice, Prudence, and Religion. At the feet of William
lies his favourite dog, which saved his life from midnight assassins at
Malines, by awakening him. At the head of the tomb is another figure of
William, of bronze, seated. In the same church is a monument to Hugo
Grotius—'prodigium Europae'—the greatest lawyer of the seventeenth
century, presented to Henri IV. by Barneveld as 'La merveille de la
Hollande.'
On leaving the Hague a few hours should be given to the dull university
town of Leyden, unless it has been seen as an afternoon excursion from
the capital. This melancholy and mildewed little town, mouldering
from a century of stagnation, the birthplace of Rembrandt, surrounds
the central tower of its Burg—standing in the grounds of an inn,
which exacts payment from those who visit it. Close by is the huge
church of S. Pancras—Houglansche Kerk—of the fifteenth century,
containing the tomb of Van der Werff, burgomaster during the famous
siege, who answered the starving people, when they came demanding
bread or surrender, that he had 'sworn to defend the city, and, with
God's help, he meant to keep his oath, but that if his body would
help them to prolong the defence, they might take it and share it
amongst those who were most hungry.' A covered bridge over a canal
leads to the Bredenstrasse, where there is a picturesque grey stone
Stadhuis of the sixteenth century. It contains the principal work of
Cornelius Engelbrechtsen of Leyden (1468-1533), one of the earliest
of Dutch painters—an altarpiece representing the Crucifixion, with
the Sacrifice of Abraham and Worship of the Brazen Serpent in the side
panels, as symbols of the Atonement: on the pedestal is a naked body,
out of which springs a tree—the tree of life—and beside it kneel the
donors. The neighbouring church of S. Peter (1315) contains the tomb
of Boerhaave, the physician, whose lectures in the University were
attended by Peter the Great, and for whom a Chinese mandarin found
'à l'illustre M. Boerhaave, médecin, en Europe,' quite sufficient
direction. Boerhaave was the doctor who said that the poor were his
best patients, for God paid for them.
The streets are grass-grown, the houses damp, the canals green with
weed. The University has fallen into decadence since others were
established at Utrecht, Groningen, and Amsterdam; but Leyden is still
the most flourishing of the four. When William of Orange offered the
citizens freedom from taxes, as a reward for their endurance of the
famous siege, they thanked him, but said they would rather have a
university. Grotius and Cartesius (Descartes), Arminius and Gomar,
were amongst its professors, and the University possesses an admirable
botanical museum and a famous collection of Japanese curiosities.
The Rhine cuts up the town of Leyden into endless islands, connected by
a hundred and fifty bridges. On a quiet canal near the Beesten Markt
is the Museum, which contains the 'Last Judgment' of Lucas van Leyden
(1494-1533), a scholar of Engelbrechtsen, and one of the patriarchs of
Dutch painting.
A few minutes bring us from Leyden to Haarlem by the railway. It
crosses an isthmus between the sea and a lake which covered the whole
country between Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam till 1839, when it
became troublesome, and the States-General forthwith, after the fashion
of Holland, voted its destruction. Enormous engines were at once
employed to drain it by pumping the water into canals, which carried it
to the sea, and the country was the richer by a new province.
[Illustration: MARKET-PLACE, HAARLEM.]
Haarlem, on the river Spaarne, stands out distinct in recollection from
all other Dutch towns, for it has the most picturesque market-place
in Holland—the Groote Markt—surrounded by quaint houses of varied
outline, amidst which rises the Groote Kerk of S. Bavo, a noble
cruciform fifteenth-century building. The interior, however, is as
bare and hideous as all other Dutch churches. It contains a monument
to the architect Conrad, designer of the famous locks of Katwijk,
'the defender of Holland against the fury of the sea and the power of
tempests.' Behind the choir is the tomb of the poet Bilderdijk, who
only died in 1831, and near this the grave of Laurenz Janzoom—the
Coster or Sacristan—who is asserted in his native town, but never
believed outside it, to have been the real inventor of printing, as he
is said to have cut out letters in wood, and taken impressions from
them in ink, as early as 1423. His partisans also maintain that whilst
he was attending a midnight mass, praying for patience to endure the
ill-treatment of his enemies, all his implements were stolen, and
that when he found this out on his return he died of grief. It is
further declared that the robber was Faust of Mayence, the brother
of Gutenberg, and that it was thus that the honour of the invention
passed from Holland to Germany, where Gutenberg produced his invention
of movable type twelve years later. There is a statue of the Coster in
front of the church, and, on its north side, his house is preserved and
adorned with his bust.
Amongst a crowd of natives with their hats on, talking in church
as in the market-place, we waited to hear the famous organ of
Christian Muller (1735-38), and grievously were we disappointed
with its discordant noises. All the men smoked in church, and this
we saw repeatedly; but it would be difficult to say where we ever
saw a Dutchman with a pipe out of his mouth. Every man seemed to be
systematically smoking away the few wits he possessed.
Opposite the Groote Kerk is the Stadhuis, an old palace of the Counts
of Holland remodelled. It contains a delightful little gallery of
the works of Franz Hals, which at once transports the spectator into
the Holland of two hundred years ago—such is the marvellous variety
of life and vigour impressed into its endless figures of stalwart
officers and handsome young archers pledging each other at banquet
tables and seeming to welcome the visitor with jovial smiles as he
enters the chamber, or of serene old ladies, 'regents' of hospitals,
seated at their council boards. The immense power of the artist is
shown in nothing so much as in the hands, often gloved, dashed in
with instantaneous power, yet always having the effect of the most
consummate finish at a distance. Behind one of the pictures is the
entrance to the famous 'secret-room of Haarlem,' seldom seen, but
containing an inestimable collection of historic relics of the time of
the famous siege of Leyden.
April and May are the best months for visiting Haarlem, which is the
bulb nursery garden of the world. 'Oignons à fleurs' are advertised for
sale everywhere. Tulips are more cultivated than any other flowers,
as ministering most to the national craving for colour; but times are
changed since a single bulb of the tulip 'L'Amiral Liefkenshoch' sold
for 4,500 florins, one of 'Viceroy' for 4,200, and one of 'Semper
Augustus' for 13,000.
Now we entered Amsterdam, to which we had looked forward as the climax
of our tour, having read of it and pondered upon it as 'the Venice of
the north;' but our expectations were raised much too high. Anything
more unlike Venice it would be difficult to imagine: and there is a
terrible want of variety and colour; many of the smaller towns of
Holland are far more interesting and infinitely more picturesque.
[Illustration: MILL NEAR AMSTERDAM.]
A castle was built at Amsterdam in 1204, but the town only became
important in the sixteenth century, since which it has been the most
commercial of ancient European cities. It is situated upon the influx
of the Amstel to the Y, as the arm of the Zuider Zee which forms the
harbour is called, and it occupies a huge semicircle, its walls being
enclosed by the broad moat, six and a half miles long, which is known
as Buitensingel. The greater part of the houses are built on piles,
causing Erasmus to say that the inhabitants lived on trees like rooks.
In the centre of the town is the great square called Dam, one side of
which is occupied by the handsome Royal Palace—Het Palais—built by J.
van Kampen in 1648. The Nieuwe Kerk (1408-1470) contains a number of
monuments to admirals, including those of Van Ruiter—'immensi tremor
oceani'—who commanded at the battle of Solbay, and Van Speyk, who blew
himself up with his ship in 1831, rather than yield to the Belgians. In
the Oude Kerk of 1300 there are more tombs of admirals. Hard by, in the
Nieuwe Markt, is the picturesque cluster of fifteenth-century towers
called S. Anthonieswaag, once a city gate and now a weighing-house.
But the great attraction of Amsterdam is the Picture Gallery of the
Trippenhuis, called the Rijks Museum, and it deserves many visits.
Amongst the portraits in the first room we were especially attracted
by that of William the Silent in his skull-cap, by Miereveld, but
all the House of Orange are represented here from the first to the
last. We also see all the worthies of the nation—Ruyter, Van Tromp
and his wife, Grotius and his wife, Johann and Cornelis de Witt,
Johann van Oldenharneveldt, and his wife Maria of Utrecht, a peaceful
old lady in a ruff and brown dress edged with fur, by Moreelse. The
two great pictures of the gallery hang opposite each other. That by
Bartholomew van der Helst, the most famous of Dutch portrait-painters,
represents the Banquet of the Musqueteers, who thus celebrated the
Peace of Westphalia, June 18, 1648. It contains twenty-five life-size
portraits, is the best work of the master, and was pronounced by Sir
Joshua Reynolds to be the 'first picture of portraits in the world.'
The canvas is a mirror faithfully representing a scene of actual life.
In the centre sits the jovial, rollicking Captain de Wits with his
legs crossed. The delicate imitation of reality is equally shown in
the Rhenish wine-glasses, and in the ham to which one of the guests is
helping himself.
The rival picture is the 'Night Watch' of Rembrandt (1642),
representing Captain Frans Banning Kok of Purmerland and his lieutenant
Willem van Ruytenberg of Vlaardingen, emerging from their watch-house
on the Singel. A joyous troop pursue their leader, who is in a black
dress. A strange light comes upon the scene, who can tell whence? Half
society has always said that this picture was the marvel of the world,
half that it is unworthy of its artist; but no one has ever been quite
indifferent to it.
Of the other pictures we must at least notice, by Nicholas Maas, a
thoughtful girl leaning on a cushion out of a window with apricots
beneath; and by Jan Steen, 'The Parrot Cage,' a simple scene of tavern
life, in which the waiting-maid calls to the parrot hanging aloft, who
looks knowingly out of the cage, whilst all the other persons present
go on with their different employments. In the 'Eve of S. Nicholas,'
another work of the same artist, a naughty boy finds a birch-rod in
his shoe, and a good little girl, laden with gifts, is being praised
by her mother, whilst other children are looking up the chimney by
which the discriminating fairy Befana is supposed to have taken her
departure. There are many beautiful works of Ruysdael, most at home
amongst waterfalls; a noble Vandyke of 'William II.' as a boy, with
his little bride, Mary Stuart, Charles I.'s daughter, in a brocaded
silver dress; and the famous Terburg called 'Paternal Advice' (known
in England by its replica at Bridgewater House), in which a daughter
in white satin is receiving a lecture from her father, her back turned
to the spectator, and her annoyance, or repentance, only exhibited in
her shoulders. Another famous work of Terburg is 'The Letter,' which is
being brought in by a trumpeter to an officer seated in his uniform,
with his young wife kneeling at his side. Of Gerard Dou Amsterdam
possesses the wonderful 'Evening School,' with four luminous candles,
and some thoroughly Dutch children. A girl is laboriously following
with her finger the instructions received, and a boy is diligently
writing on a slate. The girl who stands behind, instructing him, is
holding a candle which throws a second light upon his back, that upon
the table falling on his features; indeed the painting is often known
as the 'Picture of the Four Candles.'
Through the labyrinthine quays we found our way to the Westerhoof to
take the afternoon steamer to Purmerende for an excursion to Broek,
'the cleanest village in the world.' Crossing the broad Amstel, the
vessel soon enters a canal, which sometimes lies at a great depth,
nothing being visible but the tops of masts and points of steeples; and
which then, after passing locks, becomes level with the tops of the
trees and the roofs of the houses. We left the steamer at T Schouw,
and entered, on a side canal, one of the trekschuiten, which, until
the time of railroads, were the usual means of travel—a long narrow
cabin, encircled by seats, forms the whole vessel, and is drawn by a
horse ridden by a boy (het-jagerte)—a most agreeable easy means of
locomotion, for movement is absolutely imperceptible.
No place was ever more exaggerated than Broek. There is really very
little remarkable in it, except even a greater sense of dampness and
ooziness than in the other Dutch villages. It was autumn, and there
seemed no particular attempt to remove the decaying vegetation or trim
the little gardens, or to sweep up the dead leaves upon the pathways,
yet there used to be a law that no animal was to enter Broek for fear
of its being polluted. A brick path winds amongst the low wooden
cottages, painted blue, green, and white, and ends at the church, with
its miniature tombstones.
The most interesting excursion to be made from Amsterdam is that
to the Island of Marken in the Zuider Zee—a huge meadow, where the
peasant women pass their whole lives without ever seeing anything
beyond their island, whilst their husbands, who with very few
exceptions are fishermen, see nothing beyond the fisher-towns of the
Zuider Zee. There are very picturesque costumes here, the men wearing
red woollen shirts, brown vests, wooden shoes, fur caps, and gold
buttons to their collars and knickerbockers; the women, embroidered
stomachers, which are handed down for generations, and enormous white
caps, lined with brown to show off the lace, and with a chintz cover
for week days, and their own hair flowing below the cap over their
shoulders and backs.