In the early part of last year I was awaiting in Rotterdam the arrival
of a friend from England;** and as some untoward circumstances had
occurred to detain him beyond the appointed time, I had abundant
opportunity to domesticate in the family of mine host of the Boar’s
Head. Do not suppose from the fact of my being thus _enfoncé_ that
I shall gratify either your gossiping disposition or your love of
personalities by any little detail of family failings from which the
houses of the great are not always free. No: though the literary world
does not want for instances of this practice, I shall abstain, and
confine myself merely to such a delineation of the outward man as may
serve to make you acquainted with him.
* This account of his wanderings in Germany was written by
Lever in 1829-30. The original MS. of ‘The Log-Book’ was
recently presented to the Royal Irish Academy by Mr C.
Litton Falkner. The principal portion of the Log was printed
at intervals in ‘The Dublin Literary Gazette’ during the
year 1830.--E. D.
** John Maxwell, a companion of Lever, to whom many
references are made in the course of his correspondence with
Alexander Spencer.--E. D.
Mine host was the most famous gastronome of the Low Countries, and at
the two _table d’hôtes_ at which he daily presided, never was known to
neglect the order and procession of the various courses of soup, fish,
game, and sauerkraut--of all and each of which he largely partook.
Would that George Cruikshank could have seen him with that breastplate
of a napkin--which, _more majorum_, was suspended from his
neck--whilst his hand grasped a knife whose proportions would cast into
insignificance the inoffensive weapon of our Horse Guards! His head,
too, was a perfect study. _Giove!_ what depressions where there should
have been bumps. And then his eye, alternately opening and closing,
seemed as if it were to relieve guard upon the drowsiness of his
features.
He spoke but seldom, and, despite my various efforts to draw him into
culinary discussion (having had some intention of publishing these
“Conversations”), he was ever on his guard, and only once, when----
But I grow personal, and shall return to myself. So effectually did the
society of this sage, the air of the place, and above all the statue of
Erasmus which looked so peacefully on me from the market-place opposite
the inn, conspire to tranquillise my mind, that in the course of a few
weeks I had become as thoroughly a Dutchman as if I had never meditated
an excursion beyond The Hague in a _trek-schuit_.
Dinner over, I was to be seen lolling under the trees on the Boomjes,*
with my tobacco-bag at my buttonhole and my meerschaum in my hand,
calmly contemplating the boats as they passed and repassed along the
canal.
* The Regent Street of Rotterdam.
In this country such a scene would have been all bustle, confusion, and
excitement: there it was quite the reverse,--scarcely a ripple on the
surface of the water indicated the track of the vessel as she slowly
held her course. How often have I watched them nearing a bridge, which,
as the boat approached, slowly rose and permitted her to pass, whilst
from the window of the low toll-house a long pole is projected with a
leathern purse at its extremity, into which the ancient mariner at the
helm bestows his tribute money and holds on his way, still smoking! But
now comes the tug-of-war; it is, indeed, the only moment of bustle I
have ever witnessed in Holland. How is the bridge to get down? Dutch
mechanics have provided for its elevation, but not for its descent; and
it is in this emergency that the national character shines forth,--and
the same spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation which enabled them
to steal a kingdom from the ocean becomes non-triumphant. Man by man
they are seen toiling up the steep ascent, and, creaking under many a
fat burgomaster, the bridge slowly descends and rests again upon its
foundation. Doubtless, like the ancients, they chose to perpetuate
customs which teach that laudable dependence of man upon, his
fellows--the strongest link which binds us in society--rather than mar
this mutual good feeling by mechanical invention.
Day after day passed in this manner, and probably you will say how
stupid, how tiresome, all this must have been: so it would, doubtless,
to one less gifted with the organ of assimilation or who has not, like
me, endured the tedium of a soiree at Lady ------‘s.
At length my friend arrived, and after a few days spent in excursions
to The Hague and the Palace in the wood, we set off in order to reach
Cologne in time for the musical festival.
We left Rotterdam at night on the steamboat, and the following morning
found us slowly stemming the current of the rapid Rhine, whose broad
surface and unwooded banks gave an air of bleakness and desolation which
more than once drove me from the deck to the warm stove of the cabin,
crowded as the cabin was with smoking and singing Hollanders on the way
to the Festival. Once I ascended the rigging to get a more extended view
of the surrounding country: I might as well have remained below. A vast
flat track of land, intersected by canals and studded with an occasional
solitary windmill, was all the eye could compass, and then it was that
I felt the full force of Goldsmith’s _mot_ that “Holland looks like a
country swimming for its life.” Nothing breaks the dull monotony of a
voyage on the lower Rhine except the sight of some vast raft of timber,
peopled by its myriads of inhabitants, dropping down the current.
We passed several towns: but variety of Dutch city, Dutch lady, and
Dutch ship, is only a slight deviation from an established scale of
proportions.
Of my fellow-travellers I can tell you nothing. I had no means of
cultivating their acquaintance; they spoke French (and doubtless
they had a right to do so) after a manner of their own, but were as
unintelligible to me as Kant’s metaphysics or Mr Montague’s directions
for dancing the new galopades.
As an illustration of the peculiarity of pronunciation, they tell of
a Fleming commencing, I believe, one of Beaumarchais’ plays with the
line--
“Hélas! je ne sais pas quel cours je dois prendre”;