For Hansje and Willem:
When I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine who gave me
my love for books and pictures promised to take me upon a memorable
expedition. I was to go with him to the top of the tower of Old Saint
Lawrence in Rotterdam.
And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint
Peter opened a mysterious door. “Ring the bell,” he said, “when you
come back and want to get out,” and with a great grinding of rusty old
hinges he separated us from the noise of the busy street and locked us
into a world of new and strange experiences.
For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon of
audible silence. When we had climbed the first flight of stairs,
I added another discovery to my limited knowledge of natural
phenomena—that of tangible darkness. A match showed us where the
upward road continued. We went to the next floor and then to the next
and the next until I had lost count and then there came still another
floor, and suddenly we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even
height with the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom.
Covered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols of a
venerable faith which had been discarded by the good people of the city
many years ago. That which had meant life and death to our ancestors
was here reduced to junk and rubbish. The industrious rat had built
his nest among the carved images and the ever watchful spider had
opened up shop between the outspread arms of a kindly saint.
The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous
open windows with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the
roosting place of hundreds of pigeons. The wind blew through the iron
bars and the air was filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was
the noise of the town below us, but a noise which had been purified
and cleansed by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the
clinking of horses’ hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the
hissing sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the work
of man in a thousand different ways—they had all been blended into a
softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the
trembling cooing of the pigeons.
Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the
first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel his way with a
cautious foot) there was a new and even greater wonder, the town-clock.
I saw the heart of time. I could hear the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid
seconds—one—two—three—up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise
when all the wheels seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped
off eternity. Without pause it began again—one—two—three—until
at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels a
thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was the hour of
noon.
On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and their
terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made me turn stiff
with fright when I heard it in the middle of the night telling a story
of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it seemed to reflect upon those
six hundred years during which it had shared the joys and the sorrows
of the good people of Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like
the blue jars in an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little
fellows, who twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the
country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear what the
big world had been doing. But in a corner—all alone and shunned by
the others—a big black bell, silent and stern, the bell of death.
Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and even more
dangerous than those we had climbed before, and suddenly the fresh air
of the wide heavens. We had reached the highest gallery. Above us the
sky. Below us the city—a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily
crawling hither and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular
business, and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the
open country.
It was my first glimpse of the big world.
Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have gone to the top
of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard work, but it repaid in
full the mere physical exertion of climbing a few stairs.
Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the land and the
sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind friend the watchman,
who lived in a small shack, built in a sheltered corner of the gallery.
He looked after the clock and was a father to the bells, and he warned
of fires, but he enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and
thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost fifty
years before and he had rarely read a book, but he had lived on the top
of his tower for so many years that he had absorbed the wisdom of that
wide world which surrounded him on all sides.
History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him. “There,” he
would say, pointing to a bend of the river, “there, my boy, do you
see those trees? That is where the Prince of Orange cut the dikes to
drown the land and save Leyden.” Or he would tell me the tale of the
old Meuse, until the broad river ceased to be a convenient harbour and
became a wonderful highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp
upon that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the sea
might be free to all.
Then there were the little villages, clustering around the protecting
church which once, many years ago, had been the home of their Patron
Saints. In the distance we could see the leaning tower of Delft. Within
sight of its high arches, William the Silent had been murdered and
there Grotius had learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And
still further away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early
home of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of many
an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to know as Erasmus.
Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast,
immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys and houses
and gardens and hospitals and schools and railways, which we called our
home. But the tower showed us the old home in a new light. The confused
commotion of the streets and the market-place, of the factories and
the workshop, became the well-ordered expression of human energy
and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the glorious past, which
surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face the problems of
the future when we had gone back to our daily tasks.
History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst
the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top
of this ancient structure and get the benefit of the full view. There
is no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done.
Here I give you the key that will open the door.
When you return, you too will understand the reason for my enthusiasm.