for our companion, took us to the Helder, and we awoke next morning
at the pleasant little inn of Du Burg upon a view of boats and nets
and the low-lying Island of Texel in the distance. The boats and the
fishermen are extremely picturesque, but there is nothing else to
see, after the visitor has examined the huge granite Helder Dyke, the
artificial fortification of north Holland, which contends successfully
to preserve the land against the sea. There is an admirably managed
Naval Institute here. It was by an expedition from the Helder that
Nova Zembla was discovered, and it was near this that Admirals Ruyter
and Tromp repulsed the English fleet. Texel, which lies opposite the
Helder, is the first of a chain of islands—Vlieland, Terschelling, and
Ameland, which protect the entrance of the Zuider Zee.
[Illustration: APPROACH TO ALKMAAR.]
The country near the Helder is bare and desolate in the extreme. It is
all peat, and the rest of Holland uses it as a fuel mine. It was here
that the genius of Ruysdael was often able to make a single tree, or
even a bush rising out of the flat by a stagnant pool, both interesting
and charming to the spectator. We crossed the levels to Alkmaar, which
struck us as being altogether the prettiest place in the country and
as possessing all those attributes of cleanliness which are usually
given to Broek. The streets, formed of bricks fitted close together,
are absolutely spotless, and every house front shines fresh from
the mop or the syringe. Yet excessive cleanliness has not destroyed
the picturesqueness of the place. The fifteenth-century church of
S. Lawrence, of exquisitely graceful exterior, rises in the centre
of the town, and, in spite of being hideously defaced inside, has a
fine vaulted roof, a coloured screen, and, in the chancel, a curious
tomb to Florens V., Count of Holland, 1296, though only his heart is
buried there. Near the excellent Hôtel du Burg is a most bewitching
almshouse, with an old tourelle and screen, and a lovely garden in a
court surrounded by clipped lime-trees. And more charming still is
an old weigh-house of 1582, for the cheese, the great manufacture of
the district, for which there is a famous market every Friday, where
capital costumes may be seen. The rich and gaily painted façade of the
old building, reflected in a clear canal, is a perfect marvel of beauty
and colour; and artists should stay here to paint—not the view given
here, but another which we discovered too late—more in front, with
gable-ended houses leading up to the principal building, and all its
glowing colours repeated in the water.
[Illustration: THE WEIGH-HOUSE, ALKMAAR.]
It is three hours' drive from Alkmaar to Hoorn, a charming old town
with bastions, gardens, and semi-ruined gates. On the West Poort a
relief commemorates the filial devotion of a poor boy, who arrived here
in 1579, laboriously dragging his old mother in a sledge, when all were
flying from the Spaniards. Opposite the weighing-house for the cheeses
is the State College, which bears a shield with the arms of England,
sustained by two negroes. It commemorates the fact that when Van Tromp
defeated the English squadron, his ships came from Hoorn and on board
were two negroes, who took from the English flagship the shield which
it was then the custom to fix to the stern of a vessel, and brought it
back here as a trophy. Hoorn was one of the first places in Holland to
embrace the reformed religion, which spread from hence all over the
country, but now not above half the inhabitants are Calvinists.
In returning from Alkmaar we stopped to see Zaandam, quite in the
centre of the land of windmills, of which we counted eighty as visible
from the station alone. They are of every shade of colour, and are
mounted on poles, on towers, on farm buildings, and made picturesque
by every conceivable variety of prop, balcony, gallery, and insertion.
Zaandam is a very pretty village on the Zaan which flows into the
Y, with gaily painted houses, and gay little gardens, and perpetual
movement to and from its landing-stage. Turning south from thence, a
little entry on the right leads down some steps and over a bridge to
some cottages on the bank of a ditch, and inside the last of these is
the tiny venerable hovel where Peter the Great stayed in 1697 as Peter
Michaeloff. It retains its tiled roof and contains some old chairs and
a box-bed, but unfortunately Peter was only here a week.
[Illustration: MILL AT ZAANDAM.]
[Illustration: PAUSHUIZEN, UTRECHT.]
The evening of leaving Zaandam we spent at Utrecht, of which the
name is so well known from the peace which terminated the war of the
Spanish succession, April 11, 1715. The town, long the seat of an
ecclesiastical court, was also the great centre of the Jansenists,
dissenters from Roman Catholicism under Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres,
condemned by Alexander VII. in 1656, at the instigation of the
Jesuits. The doctrines of Jansenius still linger in its gloomy houses.
Every appointment of a bishop is still announced to the Sovereign
Pontiff, who as regularly responds by a bull of excommunication, which
is read aloud in the cathedral, and then immediately put away and
forgotten. Solemn and sad, but pre-eminently respectable, Utrecht has
more the aspect of a decayed German city than a Dutch town, and so
has its Cathedral of S. Martin (1254-67), which, though the finest
Gothic building in Holland, is only a magnificent fragment, with a
detached tower (1321-82) 338 feet high. The interior as usual is ruined
by Calvinism and yellow paint. It contains the tomb of Admiral van
Gent, who fell in the battle of Solbay. The nave, which fell in 1674,
has never been rebuilt. The S. Pieterskerk (1039) and S. Janskerk
offer nothing remarkable, but on a neighbouring canal is the quaint
Paushuizen, or Pope's house, which was built by Pope Adrian VI. (Adrian
Floriszoom) in 1517. Near this is the pretty little Archiepiscopal
Museum, full of mediæval relics.
The interesting Moravian establishment of Zeist may be visited from
Utrecht.
From Utrecht we travelled over sandy flats to Kampen, near the
mouth of the wide river Yssel, with three picturesque gates—Haghen
Poort, Cellebroeders Poort, and Broeders Poort; and a town hall of
the sixteenth century. Here, as frequently elsewhere in Holland, we
suffered from arriving famished at midday. All the inns were equally
inhospitable: 'The table d'hôte is at 4 P.M.: we _cannot_ and _will
not_ be bothered with cooking before that, and there is nothing cold
in the house.' 'But you have surely bread and cheese?' 'Certainly
not—_nothing_.'
[Illustration: CELLEBROEDERS POORT, KAMPEN.]
At Zwolle, however, we found the Kroon an excellent hotel with an
obliging landlord; and Zwolle, the native place of Terburg (1608), is a
charming old town with a girdle of gardens, a fine church (externally),
and a noble brick gateway called the Sassenpoort.
[Illustration: SASSENPOORT, AT ZWOLLE.]
It was more the desire of seeing something of the whole country than
anything else, and a certain degree of misplaced confidence in the
pleasant volumes of Harvard, which took us up from Zwolle, through
Friesland, the cow-paradise, to Leeuwarden, its ancient capital. Sad
and gloomy as most other towns of Holland are, Leeuwarden is sadder and
gloomier still. Its streets are wide and not otherwise than handsome,
but they are almost deserted, and there are no objects of interest
to see unless a leaning tower can be called so, with a top, like that
at Pisa, inclined the other way, to keep it from toppling over. An
hour's walk from the town there is said to be a fine still-inhabited
castle, and, if time had allowed, respect for S. Boniface would have
taken us to Murmerwoude, where he was martyred (June 8, 853), with his
fifty-three companions. King Pepin raised a hermitage on the spot, and
an ancient brick chapel still exists there.
Here and elsewhere in Friesland nothing is so worthy of notice as the
helmets—the golden helmets of the women—costing something equivalent
to 25_l._ or 30_l._, handed down as heirlooms, fitting close to the
head, and not allowing a particle of hair to be visible.
In the late evening we went on to Groningen, a university town with
a good hotel (Seven Provincen), an enormous square, and a noble tall
Gothic tower of 1627, whence the watchman still sounds his bugle. Not
far off is Midwolde, where the village church has fine tombs of Charles
Jerome, Baron d'Inhausen and his wife, Anna von Ewsum.
As late as the sixteenth century this province was for the most part
uninhabited—savage and sandy, and overrun by wolves. But three hundred
years of hard work has transformed it into a fertile country, watered
by canals, and sprinkled with country houses. Agriculturally it is one
of the richest provinces of the kingdom. This is mostly due to its
possessing a race of peasant-farmers who never shrink from personal
hard work, and who will continue to direct the plough whilst they
send their sons to the university to study as lawyers, doctors, or
churchmen. These peasant farmers or boers possess the _beklemregt_, or
right of hiring land on an annual rent, which the landlord can never
increase. A peasant can bequeath his right to his heirs, whether direct
or collateral. To the land, this system is an indescribable advantage,
the cultivators doing their utmost to bring their lands to perfection,
because they are certain that no one can take away the advantage from
themselves or their descendants.
On leaving Groningen we traversed the grey, monotonous, desolate
district of the Drenthe, sprinkled over at intervals by the curious
ancient groups of stones called Hunnebedden, or beds of death (Hun
meaning death), beneath which urns of clay containing human ashes have
been found. From Deventer (where there is an old weigh-house, and a
cathedral of S. Lievin with a crypt and nave of 1334), time did not
allow us to make an excursion to the great royal palace of Het Loo,
the favourite residence of the sovereigns. The descriptions in Harvard
rather made us linger unnecessarily at Zutphen, a dull town, with a
brick Groote Kerk (S. Walpurgis) which has little remaining of its
original twelfth-century date, and a rather picturesque 'bit' on the
walls, where the 'Waterpoort' crosses the river like a bridge.
At Arnhem, the Roman Arenacum, once the residence of the Dukes of
Gueldres, and still the capital of Guelderland, we seemed to have left
all the characteristics of Holland behind. Numerous modern villas,
which might have been built for Cheltenham or Leamington, cover the
wooded hills above the Rhine. In the Groote Kerk (1452) is a curious
monument of Charles van Egmont, Duc de Gueldres, 1538, but there is
nothing else to remark upon. We intended to have made an excursion
hence to Cleves, but desperately wet weather set in, and, as Dutch rain
often lasts for weeks together when it once begins, we were glad to
hurry England-wards, only regretting that we could not halt at Nymegen,
a most picturesque place, where Charlemagne lived in the old palace of
the Valckhof (or Waalhof, residence on the Waal), of which a fragment
still exists, with an old baptistery, a Stadhuis of 1534, and a Groote
Kerk containing a noble monument to Catherine de Bourbon (1469), wife
of Duke Adolph of Gueldres.
We left Holland feeling that we should urge our friends by all means to
see the pictures at Rotterdam, the Hague, and Amsterdam, but to look
for all other characteristics of the Netherlands in such places as
Breda, Dortrecht, Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Zwolle.
_IN DENMARK._
Formerly the terrors of a sea-voyage from Kiel deterred many travellers
from thinking of a tour in Denmark or Sweden, but now a succession of
railways makes everything easy, and while nothing can be imagined more
invigorating or pleasant, there is probably no pleasure more economical
than a summer in Scandinavia. Those who are worn with a London season
will feel as if every breath in the crystal air of Denmark endued them
with fresh health and strength, and then, after they have seen its old
palaces and its beech woods and its Thorwaldsen sculptures, a voyage of
ten minutes will carry them over the narrow Sound to the soft beauties
of genial Sweden and the wild splendours of Norway.
Either Hamburg or Lübeck must be the starting-point for the overland
route to Denmark, and the old free city of Lübeck, though quite a small
place, is one of the most remarkable towns in Germany. We arrived
there one hot summer afternoon, after a weary journey over the arid
sandy plains which separate it from Berlin, and suddenly seemed to
be transported into a land of verdure. Lilacs and roses bloomed
everywhere; a wood lined the bank of the limpid river Trave, and in its
waters—beyond the old wooden bridge—were reflected all the tallest
steeples, often strangely out of the perpendicular, of many-towered
Lübeck. A wonderful gate of red brick and golden-hued terra-cotta
is the entrance from the station, and in the market-place are the
quaintest turrets, towers, tourelles, but all ending in spires. The
lofty houses, so full of rich colour, throw cool shade on the streets
on the hottest summer day; and we enjoyed a Sunday in the excellent
hotel, with wooden galleries opening towards a splashing fountain in a
quiet square, where a fat constable busied himself in keeping everybody
from fulfilling any avocation whatever whilst service was being
performed in the churches, but let them do exactly as they pleased as
soon as it was over.
It must, at best, be a weary journey across West Holstein, through
a succession of arid flats varied by stagnant swamps. We spent the
weary hours in studying Dunham's 'History of Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway,' which cannot be sufficiently recommended to all Scandinavian
travellers. The glowing accounts in the English guide books of a lake
and an old castle beguiled us into spending a night at Sleswig, but it
turned out that the lake had disappeared before the memory of man, and
that the castle was a white modern barrack. The colourless town and its
long sleepy suburb, moored as if upon a raft in the marshes, straggle
along the edge of a waveless fiord. At the end is the rugged cathedral
like a barn, with a belfry like a dovecot, and inside it a curious
altarpiece by Hans Brüggemann, pupil of Albert Dürer, and the noble
monument of Frederick I., the first Lutheran King of Denmark; while
richly carved doors at the sides of the church admit one to see how
the grandmother of the Princess of Wales and various other potentates
lie—Danish fashion—in gorgeous exposed coffins without any tombs
at all. Everywhere roses grow in the streets, trained upon the house
walls; and, up the pavement, crowds of the children were hurrying in
the early morning, carrying in their hands the shoes they were going
to wear when they were in school. In the evenings these children will
not venture outside the town, for over the marshes they say that the
wild huntsman rides, followed by his demon hounds and blowing his magic
horn. It is the spirit of Duke Abel the fratricide, who, in the fens,
murdered his brother Eric VI. of Denmark, and who was afterwards lost
there himself, falling from his horse, and being dragged down by the
weight of his armour. To give rest to his wandering spirit, the clergy
dug up his body and despatched it to Bremen, but there his vampire gave
the canons no peace, so they sent the corpse back again, and now it
lies once more in the marshes of Gottorp.
Most unutterably hideous is the country through which the railway
now travels, wearisome levels only broken here and there by mounds,
probably sepulchral. A straight line with tiny hillocks at intervals
would do for a sketch of the whole of Sleswig and the greater part of
Funen and Zealand. In times of early Danish history it was a frequent
punishment to bury criminals alive in these dismal peat mosses. Twelve
hours of changelessly flat scenery bring travellers from Hamburg to
Frederikshaven, where we embark upon the Little Belt, the luggage-vans
of the train being shunted on board the steamer. Immediately opposite
lie the sandy shores of Funen, and in a few minutes we are there.
Then four hours of ugly scenery take us across the island. It is only
necessary to look out at the little town of Odense, called after the
old hero-god, which was the birth-place of Hans Christian Andersen in
1805. The cathedral of Odense contains the shrine of the sainted King
Canute IV. (1080-86), who was murdered while kneeling before the altar,
owing to indignation at the severe taxation to which the love of Church
endowment had incited him.
Nyborg, where we meet the sea again, will recall to lovers of old
ballads the story of the innocent young knight Folker Lowmanson, and
his cruel death here in a barrel of spikes, from the jealousy of
Waldemar IV. for his beautiful queen Helwig, and how, to know his fate—
With anxious heart did Denmark's Queen
To Nyborg urge her horse,
And at the gate his bier she met,
And on it Folker's corse.
Such honour shown to son of knight
I never yet could hear;
The Queen of Denmark walked on foot
Herself before his bier.
In tears then Helwig mounted horse
And silent homeward rode,
For in her heart a life-long grief
Had taken its abode.
At Nyborg we embark on a miserable steamer for the passage of the
Great Belt. It lasts an hour and a half, and is often most wretched.
On landing at Korsor travellers are hurried into the train which is
waiting for the vessel.
Now the country improves a little. Here and there we pass through
great beech woods. Down the green glades of one of them a glimpse is
caught of the college of Sorö. It occupies the site of a monastery
founded by Asker Ryg, a chieftain who, when he departed on a journey
of warfare, vowed that if the child to which his wife, Inge, was about
to give birth proved to be a girl, he would give his new building a
spire, but a tower if it were a boy. On his return he saw two towers
rising in the distance. Inge had given birth to twin sons, who lived
to become Asbiorn Snare, celebrated in the ballad of 'Fair Christal,'
and Absalon, the warrior Bishop of Roeskilde—'first captain by sea and
land.' Absalon is buried here in the church of Sorö, which contains the
tomb of King Olaf, the shortlived son of the famous Queen Margaret;
of her cruel father, Waldemar Atterdag, whose last words expressed
regret that he had not suffocated his daughter in her cradle; and of
her grandfather, Christopher II., with his wife, Euphemia of Pomerania.
Soon we pass Ringsted, which is scarcely worth stopping at, though
its church contains the fine brass of King Erik Menred (1319) and his
queen, Ingeborga, and though twenty kings and queens were entombed
there before Roeskilde became the royal place of sepulture. Amongst
them lies the popular Queen Dagmar, first wife of Waldemar II., still
celebrated in ballad literature, for there is scarcely a Dane who is
ignorant of the touching story of 'Queen Dagmar's Death,' which begins
Queen Dagmar is lying at Ribé sick,
At Ringsted is made her grave,
and which contains her last touching request to her husband, and her
simple confession of the only 'sin' she could remember—
Had I on a Sunday not laced my sleeves,
Or border upon them sewn,
No pangs had I felt by day or night,
Or torture of hell-fire known.
Tradition tells us that the dismal town of Ringsted was founded by King
Ring, a warrior who, when he was seriously wounded in battle, placed
the bodies of his slain heroes and that of his queen, Alpol, on board a
ship laden with pitch, and going out to the open sea, set the vessel on
fire, and then fell upon his sword.
In the twilight we pass Roeskilde, and at 10-1/2 P.M. long rows of
street lamps reflected in canals show that we have reached Copenhagen.
To those whose travels have chiefly led them southwards there is a
great pleasure in the first awaking in Copenhagen. Everything is
new—the associations, the characteristics, the history; even the
very names on the omnibuses are suggestive of the sagas and romances
of the North; and though the summer sun is hot, the atmosphere is as
clear as that of a tramontana day in an Italian winter, and the air is
indescribably elastic. The comfortable Hôtel d'Angleterre stands in
the Kongens Nytorv, a modern square, with trees surrounding a statue
in the centre, but there are glimpses of picturesque shipping down the
side streets, and hard by is a spire quite ideally Danish, formed by
three marvellous dragons with their tails twisted together in the air.
Tradition declares that it was moved bodily from Calmar, in the south
of Sweden. It rises now from a beautiful building of brick erected in
1624 by Christian IV., brother-in-law of James I. of England, and used
as the Exchange.
Not far off is the principal palace—Christiansborg Slot, often
rebuilt, and very white and ugly. It was partially destroyed by fire in
1884. Besides the royal residence, its vast courts contain the Chambers
of Parliament, the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery chiefly filled
with the works of native artists, amongst which those of Marstrand and
Bloch are very striking and well worthy of attention.
[Illustration: THE DRAGON TOWER, COPENHAGEN.]
A queer building in the shadow of the palace, which attracts notice by
its frescoed walls, is the Thorwaldsen Museum, the shrine where Denmark
has reverentially collected all the works and memorials of her greatest
artist—Bertel Thorwaldsen. Though his family is said to have descended
from the Danish king Harold Stildetand, he was born (in 1770) the son
of one Gottschalk, who, half workman, half artist, was employed in
carving figures for the bows of vessels. From his earliest childhood
little Bertel accompanied his father to the wharfs and assisted him in
his work, in which he showed such intelligence that in his eleventh
year he was allowed to enter the Free School of Art. Here he soon made
wonderful progress in sculpture, but could so little be persuaded to
attend to other studies that he reached the age of eighteen scarcely
able to read. In his twenty-third year he obtained the great gold
medal, to which a travelling stipend is attached, and thus he was
enabled to go to Rome, where, encouraged at first by the patronage of
Thomas Hope, the English banker, he soon reached the highest pitch of
celebrity. Denmark became proud of her son, so that his visits to his
native town in 1819 and 1837 were like triumphal progresses, all the
city going forth to meet him, and lodging him splendidly at the public
cost; but his heart always clung to the Eternal City, which continued
to be the scene of his labours. Of his many works perhaps his noble
lion at Lucerne is the best known. He never married, though he was long
attached to a member of the old Scottish house of Mackenzie, and he
died on a visit to Copenhagen in 1844.
In accordance with Thorwaldsen's own wish, he rests in the centre of
his works. His grave has no tombstone, but is covered with green ivy.
All around the little court which contains it are halls and galleries
filled with the marvellously varied productions of his genius, arranged
in the order of their execution—casts of all his absent sculptures
and many most grand originals. Especially beautiful are the statue
of Mercury, modelled from a Roman boy, of which the original is in
the possession of Lord Ashburton, and the exquisite reliefs of the
Ages of Love, and of Day and Night, the two latter resulting from
the inspiration of a single afternoon. But all seem to culminate in
the great Hall of Christ, for though the statues here are only cast
from those in the Vor Frue Kirche, they are far better seen in the
well-lighted chamber than in the church. The colossal figures of the
apostles lead up to the Saviour in sublime benediction; perhaps the
statues of Simon Zelotes and the pilgrim S. James are the noblest
amongst them. In the last room are gathered all the little personal
memorials of Thorwaldsen—his books, pictures, and furniture.
[Illustration: The Rosenborg Palace, Copenhagen.]