able-bodied male in the kingdom acquires the cigar habit as early in
life as his physical condition permits, and I have yet to see the adult
Dutchman who doesn’t use tobacco in some form. Holland, by virtue of
her colonial holdings in Sumatra and the Straits Settlements, is the
paradise of smokers, and tobacco stores in every town, be it large
or small, are as thick as saloons in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. If
you pay more than the equal value of two American cents for a cigar
in Holland you are branded as a foreigner or an extravagant roué. Of
course foreigners who unfurl their native colors full in the face of
the tobacconist are expected to and do pay more, but a cigar equal in
flavor and composition to the best of our ten cent brands can be bought
in Holland for five Dutch cents, and often less, if you go about it in
the proper manner. The age at which boys learn to smoke in Holland has
never been correctly computed, but in the country I have seen lads of
five or six serenely eliminating all possible chance of being rewarded
the oft-referred-to gold watch at the age of twenty-one, and handling
their cigars with as much real enjoyment as their paternal grandparent.
Perhaps at this point it might be opportune to tell the story of
old Herr van Klaes of this same town of Rotterdam, who consumed a
five-ounce package of tobacco daily and died in action at the age
of ninety-eight with his pipe actually in his mouth. In his will he
expressed the wish that every smoker in the kingdom be invited to his
funeral “by letter, circular, and advertisement,” and all who took
advantage of the invitation should be presented with ten pounds of
tobacco and two pipes, the name of van Klaes, his crest, and the date
of his demise to be engraved upon the latter. Every poor man in the
neighborhood who accompanied the bier was to receive a large package of
smoking mixture on each anniversary of the death of his champion. The
will stipulated further that all who wished to partake of its benefits
must smoke “without interruption during the entire ceremony.” The body
was to be placed in a coffin lined with the wood of his old cigar
boxes, and at the foot should be placed a package of French tobacco
and one of the Dutch blend. At his side in the coffin was to be laid
his favorite pipe and a box of matches, “For,” he said, “one never
knows what may happen.” And all persons in the funeral procession were
requested to sprinkle the ashes of their pipes upon the bier as they
passed it while taking their departure from the grounds.
It is said the funeral of Herr van Klaes at least enjoyed the
distinction of being the largest seen in Rotterdam in many a day. It
must have been a busy time for the _aanspreker_. Indeed, it must have
taken the concentrated efforts of all the _aansprekers_ in Holland to
help advertise the funeral. But here a few lines as to the solution of
the word “_aanspreker_.”
The Dutch _aanspreker_ is he of the mourning robes whose duty it is to
go about from house to house, wherever even the flimsiest ties, whether
social or business, exist, and announce the saddening news of a death;
or it is he of the more gaudy apparel who gives the gladsome tidings of
a birth in the family--and the degree of his mournfulness or jocundity
in appearance bespeaks the mournfulness or jocundity of his employers.
In earlier times the services of the _aanspreker_ were augmented by
those of the _huilebalk_, a kind of a professional mourner, who, in the
case of a death, accompanied the _aanspreker_ on his rounds and wept
more or less fluently after the completion of each doleful message. His
coat was long-tailed and his hat wide-brimmed and the extent of his
sorrow in each case depended wholly upon the receipts for his services;
the more money, the more tears. Both must have been depressing
professions at best, but this manner of announcing the news constituted
an essential factor of every funeral. The _aanspreker_ is often seen
to-day, but the _huilebalk_ has wept himself out of existence, probably
on account of a simple dearth of apprentices.
The patron saint, almost, of Rotterdam is Gherardt Gherardts, better
known by the more poetic name of Erasmus Desiderius--meaning “beloved
and long desired”--scholar, critic, philosopher, intellectual
fly-by-night, born in Rotterdam in 1466. A bronze statue of him by
Hendrik de Keyser decorates the Groote Markt of his birthplace. Known
best by his immortal satire, “The Praise of Folly,” and for his being,
in 1516, the first to be so bold as to amend the text of the Greek
New Testament, Erasmus was undoubtedly the “intellectual dictator of
his age.” He entered the order of the Brethren of the Common Life,
first at ’S Hertogenbosch and later at Delft, and the year America was
discovered saw him acting as secretary to the Bishop of Cambrai. He
studied in Paris, in Orleans, in Oxford, in Rome, and then returned to
England to accept a professorship at the University of Cambridge. He
died in Basle in 1536.
Rotterdam cannot be said to be noted for its cleanliness; in fact,
it crowds Amsterdam for first place as the dirtiest city in Holland.
But still Rotterdam as well as Amsterdam has its beauty spots. Some
of the residence streets in the newer part of the city are veritable
gardens in themselves. The Parklaan, with the Park at one end and
the Grooteveerhaven, the latter crowded with private motor boats and
yachts that gleam in their innocence of dirt, at the other, is lined
with beautiful homes. It and the Mauritsweg and the Eendragtsweg are
tree studded and kept swept and sprinkled quite as thoroughly and
as frequently as any of the streets in The Hague. The canal that
borders these two latter streets is banked with lawns and crossed here
and there by artistic rustic bridges, for in Rotterdam, as in the
German municipalities, they pay more attention to the details of city
beautification than do we in America. The community at large seems to
take a personal interest in such affairs. Can you imagine the linemen
for a telegraph company or an electric light corporation coming along
the streets of a German city, exercising the right of eminent domain by
ripping up the pavements of the property holders and digging holes big
enough to bury a horse, in which to plant the unsightly wooden poles
that seem to them, on account of their comparative cheapness, the only
known method of carrying wires? The Germans wouldn’t stand it for a
minute. They use steel wire carriers over there--a more businesslike
looking trestle work in the shape of an elongated truncated pyramid,
set slightly _above_ the ground on a concrete foundation. And I noticed
that these “trestle” telegraph poles in Rotterdam, when the conditions
permitted, were planted in the center of a little bed of geraniums,
while some even had vines climbing upon them.
The Dutch, too, are sticklers for coziness and they try to make their
living quarters as habitable as possible. In the congested harbors of
Rotterdam, where, sometimes, you can step from one side of the stream
to the other upon the flat decks of the swarms of canal boats, it
is doubtful if you will see an uncurtained cabin window, and pots of
flowers will be displayed in most of them. The train shed of the Beurs
railway station in the heart of the city has an outside cornice of
flower boxes filled with pink geraniums. But then, you will remember
about the Dutch locomotives--which accounts for much.
As you enter Rotterdam or Amsterdam on the railway you pass row
after row of what we please to call tenement houses. Even these are
not devoid of a cozy, homelike aspect that our tenements and even
reasonably inexpensive apartment houses know not. Each apartment
can boast of a balcony in the rear that is partitioned off from its
neighbors. In many cases these balconies are shaded with awnings from
the glare of the sun and decorated with flowerpots in profusion. This
serves the city dweller in lieu of a garden, and here he eats his meals
and spends his evenings after work. In the daytime the family use the
balcony as an improvised sewing room. Many of the back yards of the
smaller houses consist of a tree lined canal over which the family
looks from the seclusion of a flower girdled, awning covered veranda.
The Dutch not only keep themselves cozy but they take a tender sort of
interest in the well-being of their birds and dumb animals. True, they
train their dogs to help their masters pull the milk carts or vegetable
wagons, but the dogs look husky and well fed and seem to take pride in
their accomplishment. A spare-ribbed stray canine prowling around the
neighborhood is an unknown quantity in Holland.
In the center of some of Rotterdam’s canals which are barred to traffic
and made, instead, to assist in the beautification of the city, you
will see little wicker duck nests, like empty market baskets turned
on their sides. They rest on piles driven into the bottom of the
canal, and the entrance to each is approached from the water by means
of a wooden incline about the size of a shingle. This is not only a
convenience for the ducks but features as an artistic break in the
monotony, I might say, of the canal.
And these are but a few of the reasons why a visit to Rotterdam,
although barren of the types and characteristics that Holland is noted
for, is well worth the trouble; if only to study the city and its
inhabitants from a psychological point of view it is well worth while.
V
DELFT AND HER TRAGEDY
Nineteen minutes in the train from Rotterdam, and you are in
Delft--such are the distances between towns in South Holland.
The population of Delft amounts, numerically, to some 32,000, but
this is an item that is farthest from your thoughts. It is one of the
quietest, quaintest cities in the Netherlands. Up and down its narrow,
lime shaded canals the boatmen of Delft pole their barges laboriously,
yet noiselessly, walking along the decks from stem to stern against
their padded means of propulsion and literally pushing their craft
out from under them. In the spring these watery highways are covered
with a fragrant layer of fallen blossoms; in the fall, with leaves of
variegated colors. The houses that stand behind the trees have been
well built and are well preserved, adding to the place an impression of
comfortable solidity.
My first visit to Holland brought me to Delft from “The Hook” at a very
early hour in the morning, when the housemaids were about to commence
the first concentrated assault of the day upon their pavements,
doorsteps, front doors, and the brass-work pertaining thereto in the
shape of knobs and knockers. “Scrub” seemed to be the housemaids’
slogan, and they were certainly living up to it. Pail after pail of
water was hoisted from the canals and splashed over everything in
reach, until it flowed across the streets and pavements, and fell back
whence it came originally. If I had appeared upon the scene a little
later I might have concluded that a cloud-burst had struck the town.
And all this brackish water, that, in the canals, comes within an ace
of being absolutely stagnant, being poured so recklessly over the town,
gave to it a kind of antique odor, anything but pleasant to inhale. It
gave every evidence that that same water had been hoisted, put to its
task, and allowed to drip back into the canals again since medieval
times.
This was on a week day. A subsequent visit to Delft took me there on
Sunday.
Now, for some reason, psychological or otherwise, the housemaids of
Delft don’t seem to take the same interest in the scrupulousness of
their doorsteps on a Sunday that they do on a week day. Sunday is the
day that everybody in Delft dons his or her best bib and tucker and
goes to church, or leans over the railings of the canal bridges and
chats with a friend, or walks about the town under the shade of its
trees, contemplating, perhaps, upon the exigencies of life. And a
housemaid is but human.
[Illustration: The East Gate of Delft, one of the quaintest and
quietest cities of the Netherlands]
To come upon Delft, therefore, during this weekly interruption
in the perennial polishing of the town, whatever the reason for it,
offers the traveler a different and vastly more agreeable impression.
He will see Delft and her people at their best, the latter more
congenially courteous, the former more serenely stolid. Instead of the
boatmen being continually in the act of disturbing the bottoms of the
canals with their poles, so that the housemaids can skim off the most
graveolent of it with which to scour and rinse their pavements, they
assume for the day the rôle of flower sellers. Boats bearing fragrant
burdens of potted plants of every variety, and cut flowers as well, as
if to try to make amends for the mal-odor of the previous week, will be
drawn as close to the sidewalks as the banks of the canals permit, in
order to tempt the frailty of the Delft housewife--if an inherent love
of flowers may be termed as such--on her way home from church.
Delft is old and she show’s symptoms of the fact in spots. Down at the
southern end of the city, near the Rotterdam gate, stands a venerable
building, once one of the numerous warehouses scattered over the
country belonging to the Dutch East India Company--that most famous and
wealthiest of all Dutch trading concerns, founded in 1602, when the
power and wealth of the Republic had attained their high-water marks
under the stadtholdership of Maurice, one of the sons of the ill-fated
Prince William of Orange. The place has long since been put to use
as a military storehouse. Directly opposite is the ominous-looking
city arsenal, bearing above its arched entrance a massive copy of the
arms of the old Dutch Republic, carved in stone. Another of the old
buildings is the Gemeelandshuis van Delftland, showing in sandstone a
rich Gothic façade of the beginning of the sixteenth century.
With us, Delft’s principal claim to notoriety lies in the manufacture
of its faience, commonly called “Delft ware,” in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Its composition and design at first copied from
the Chinese and Japanese porcelain, this faience became celebrated
throughout the world. Dutch designs were soon substituted for the
Oriental, and the industry prospered proportionately. Later it lapsed
into decay and the true process has been revived in Delft only within
comparatively recent years. A large plant for its manufacture now
operates on the Oosteinde, not far from the New Church.
But in the heart of the Hollander, Delft will ever be revered as
the scene of the tragedy that cut short the life and terminated the
praiseworthy deeds of that eminent founder of Dutch liberty, “William
the Silent,” Prince of Orange, the George Washington of the Netherlands.
Born of noble German parentage at Dillenburg in the Duchy of Nassau
in 1533, William, curiously enough, became the favorite of Philip II
of Spain, who appointed him, in 1559, when but twenty-six years of
age, _stadtholder_ or governor of the provinces of Zeeland, Holland,
Friesland, and Utrecht. Two years later William found himself in bad
odor with Granvella, the Bishop of Arras, whom Philip had appointed as
counselor to his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, the then regent of the
Netherlands. William finally effected the enforced relinquishment of
this post by the Bishop in 1564.
The subsequent unrest in the Netherlands, provoked mainly by the
atrocities of Spanish soldiery, led to the sanguinary assignment of
Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, to command an army of
10,000 picked men, mustered from Lombardy, Sardinia, Sicily, and
Naples, to quell the possible insurrection. This move was bitterly
resented, not only by her subjects, but was opposed, although without
success, by Margaret of Parma herself; for the name of Alva was as
odious to her as it was to them.
A man of brilliant military attainments and the most experienced
general in Europe at the time, but bubbling over with avarice and
revengefulness, cruel and overbearing, Alva accepted the assignment
with alacrity. “I have tamed people of iron in my day,” he was reported
to have said contemptuously; “shall I not easily crush these men of
butter?”
When Alva, with his army, entered the Netherlands and took it
upon himself, after much intrigue and conniving, to supersede the
half-sister of his sovereign as governor of the province, the Prince
of Orange retired to Dillenburg. Continued oppressions by the Spaniards
later called him to arms with the French Huguenots as allies, and he
set out betimes upon an unsuccessful campaign to liberate the southern
provinces from their yoke of Spanish tyranny. Since that time he
was ever an active revolutionist. In 1571 he championed the “Water
Beggars,” by which name those insurgents who assisted their compatriots
by sea were known, and one year later, having been invited by the
provinces of Zeeland and Holland to command their troops against the
Spaniards, he captured Middelburg, and later came to the successful
rescue of the besieged town of Leyden. Soon after the formation of
the famous defensive league known as the “Utrecht Union,” William was
condemned to exile by Philip. The fact that the States-General defied
the sovereign’s authority in this matter was the percussion cap that
exploded the general uprising and the throwing off of Dutch allegiance
to Spain in 1581.
“Uneasy lies the head that wears”--the helmet of revolt, and from the
time of his first attempt to achieve the success of his ambitious
project, the life of no medieval ruler was ever more in jeopardy than
was that of William of Orange. Within a period of two years five
separate and distinct attempts to take his life had been perpetrated,
and a sixth, albeit an abhorrently successful one, was about to
follow--all of which were undoubtedly at the initial instigation of the
Duke of Alva.
Just across the canal from the Old Church at Delft still stands the
house of William the Silent, now known as the Prinsenhof, where the
tragedy took place. It is a low, two-story building with a red-tiled
roof, formerly a cloister, but fitted up in 1575 as the residence of
the Princes of Orange. Here came William, in the summer of 1584, to
join his fourth wife, Louisa de Coligny, at the christening of their
son, born in Delft the previous winter, who later became the celebrated
governor, Frederic William. The door marked _Gymnasium Publicum_,
opposite the tower of the church, leads through a courtyard to the
staircase where the murder was committed; and in a dark corner of the
wall at the foot of the steps the custodian will show you a hole made
by one of the bullets that killed the Prince. The dining-room beyond,
from which William had come to his death, is now a museum containing
reminiscences of him.
The Czolgosz of the occasion, the perpetrator of the dastardly act,
was Bathazar Gérard, alias Francis Guion, the self-alleged son of a
martyred Calvinist, a religious fanatic who had long cherished an
insane desire to murder Orange.
“The organization of Bathazar Gérard,” says Motley, “would furnish
a subject for profound study, both for the physiologist and the
metaphysician. Neither wholly a fanatic nor entirely a ruffian, he
combined the most dangerous elements of both characters. In his puny
body and mean exterior were inclosed considerable mental powers and
accomplishments, a daring ambition, and a courage almost superhuman.
Yet those qualities led him only to form upon the threshold of life a
deliberate determination to achieve greatness by the assassin’s trade.”
After long and exasperating delays, Gérard had finally succeeded, on
account of his ambitions, in nursing himself into the good graces of
Alexander of Parma, the Spanish governor of the Netherlands at that
time. On the other hand, “Parma had long been looking for a good man to
murder Orange, feeling--as Philip, Granvelle, and all former governors
of the Netherlands had felt--that this was the only means of saving
the royal authority in any part of the provinces. Many unsatisfactory
assassins had presented themselves from time to time, and Alexander
had paid money in hand to various individuals--Italians, Spaniards,
Lorrainers, Scotchmen, Englishmen, who had generally spent the sums
received without attempting the job. Others were supposed to be
still engaged in the enterprise, and at that moment there were four
persons--each unknown to the others, and of different nations--in the
city of Delft, seeking to compass the death of William the Silent.”
Upon the death, at this time, of the French Duke of Anjou, Gérard was
recommended to Parma by various parties as a capable messenger “to
carry this important intelligence to the Prince of Orange.” Concerning
the outcome of this mission, I can do no better than to quote John
Lothrop Motley from his “The Rise of the Dutch Republic,” as I have
done elsewhere in this chapter:
“The dispatches having been intrusted to him” (Gérard), “he traveled
post-haste to Delft, and to his astonishment the letters had hardly
been delivered before he was summoned in person to the chamber of the
Prince. Here was an opportunity such as he had never dared to hope
for. The arch-enemy to the Church and to the human race” (that is, the
Prince, so called), “whose death would confer upon his destroyer wealth
and nobility in this world, besides a crown of glory in the next, lay
unarmed, alone, in bed, before the man who had thirsted seven long
years for his blood.
“Bathazar could scarcely control his emotions sufficiently to answer
the questions which the Prince addressed to him concerning the death
of Anjou; but Orange, deeply engaged with the dispatches, and with the
reflections which their deeply important contents suggested, did not
observe the countenance of the humble Calvinist exile, who had been
recently recommended to his patronage by Villers. Gérard had, moreover,
made no preparation for an interview so entirely unexpected, had come
unarmed, and had formed no plan for escape. He was obliged to forego
his prey when most within his reach, and after communicating all the
information which the Prince required, he was dismissed from the
chamber.
“It was Sunday morning, and the bells were tolling for church. Upon
leaving the house he loitered about the courtyard, furtively examining
the premises, so that a sergeant of halberdiers asked him why he
was waiting there. Bathazar meekly replied that he was desirous of
attending divine worship in the church opposite, but added, pointing
to his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without at least a pair
of new shoes and stockings, he was unfit to join the congregation.
Insignificant as ever, the small, pious, dusty stranger excited no
suspicion in the mind of the good-natured sergeant. He forthwith spoke
of the wants of Gérard to an officer, by whom they were communicated to
Orange himself, and the Prince instantly ordered a sum of money to be
given him. Thus Bathazar obtained from William’s charity what Parma’s
thrift had denied--a fund for carrying out his purpose!
[Illustration: The Prinsenhof in Delft, revered by every Hollander as
the scene where “William the Silent,” the George Washington of the
Netherlands, was murdered]
“Next morning, with the money thus procured, he purchased a pair of
pistols or small carabines from a soldier, chaffering long about the
price because the vender could not supply a particular kind of chopped
bullets or slugs which he desired. Before the sunset of the following
day that soldier had stabbed himself to the heart, and died despairing,
on hearing for what purpose the pistols had been bought.