A Wanderer in Holland Part 22

From Bois le Duc one may go due north to Utrecht and Amsterdam, pa.s.sing on the way Bommel, with its tall and impressive tower rising from its midst. Or one may keep to the western route and reach Walcheren. That is my present course, and Bommel may be left with a curious story of the Spaniards in 1599. "Two brothers who had never seen, and had always been inquiring for, each other, met at last by chance at the siege, where they served in two different companies. The elder, who was called Hernando Diaz, having heard the other mentioned by the name of Encisso, which was his mother's surname, and which he had taken through affection, a thing common in Spain, put several questions to him concerning a number of family particulars, and knew at last by the exactness of his answers that he was the brother he had been so long seeking after; upon which both proceeding to a close embrace, a cannon ball struck off both their heads, without separating their bodies, which fell clinging together."

Helvoet, on the way to Tilburg, is the scene of an old but honourable story. Ireland tells us that George the Second, being detained by contrary winds on his return from Hanover, reposed at Helvoet until the sea should subside. While there he one day stopped a pretty Dutch girl to ask her what she had in her basket. "Eggs, mynheer." "And what is the price?" "A ducat a piece, mynheer." "Are eggs so scarce then in Holland?" "No. mynheer, but kings are."

At Tilburg I did not tarry, but rode on to Breda (which is p.r.o.nounced with all the accent on the second syllable) and which is famous for a castle (now a military school) and a tomb. The castle, a very beautiful building, was built by Count Henry of Na.s.sau. On becoming in due course the property of William the Silent, it was confiscated by the Duke of Alva. How it was won back again is a story worth telling.

The great achievement belonged to a simple boatman named Adrian. Whether or not he had read or heard of the Trojan horse is not known, but his scheme was not wholly different. Briefly he recommended Prince Maurice to conceal soldiers in his peat boat, under the peats, to be conveyed as peat into the Spanish garrison. The plan was approved and Captain Heranguiere was placed in charge of it.

The boat was laden and Adrian poled it into the fortress; and all was going well until the coldness of the night set the soldiers coughing. All were affected, but chiefly Lieutenant h.e.l.ls, who, vainly attempting to be silent, at last implored his comrades to kill him lest he ruin the enterprise. Adrian, however, prevented this grim necessity by pumping very hard and thus covering the sound.

It had been arranged that the Prince should be outside the city at a certain hour. Just before the time Heranguiere and his men sprang out of their hiding, killed the garrison, opened the gates, and the castle was won again, Heranguiere was rewarded by being made governor of Breda; Adrian was pensioned, and the boat was taken from its native elements and exalted into an honoured position in the castle. When, however, the Spanish general Spinola recaptured Breda, one of his first duties was to burn this worthy vessel.

The jewel of Breda, which is a spreading fortified town, is the tomb of Count Engelbert I. of Na.s.sau, in one of the chapels of the great church. The count and his lady, both sculptured in alabaster, lie side by side beneath a canopy of black marble, which is borne by four warriors also of alabaster. On the canopy are the arms and accoutrements of the dead Count. The tomb, which was the work of Vincenz of Bologna in the sixteenth century, is wholly satisfying in its dignity, austerity and grace.

To the font in Breda cathedral William III. attached the privilege of London citizens.h.i.+p. Any child christened there could claim the rights of a Londoner, the origin of the sanction being the presence of English soldiers at Breda and their wish that their children should be English too. Whether or not the Dutch guards who were helping the English at the end of the seventeenth century had a similar privilege in London I do not know.

Late one Sat.u.r.day evening I watched in a milk shop at Breda a conscientious Dutch woman at work. She had just finished scrubbing the floor and polis.h.i.+ng the bra.s.s, and was now engaged in laying little paths of paper in case any chance customer should come in over night and soil the boards before Sunday. I thought as I stood there how impossible it would be for an English woman tired with the week to sit up like this to clean a shop against the next day. Sir William Temple has a pleasant story ill.u.s.trating at once the inherent pa.s.sion for cleanliness in the Dutch women and also their old masterfulness. It tells how a magistrate, paying an afternoon call, was received at the door by a stout North Holland la.s.s who, lest he should soil the floor, took him bodily in her arms and carried him to a chair; sat him in it; removed his boots; put a pair of slippers on his feet; and then led him to her mistress's presence.

Bergen-op-Zoom has its place in history; but it is a dull town in fact. Nor has it beautiful streets, with the exception of that which leads to the old Gevangenpoort with its little painted towers. I must confess that I did not like Bergen-op-Zoom. It seemed to me curiously inhospitable and critical; which was of course a wrong att.i.tude to take up towards a countryman of Grimston and Redhead; Who are Grimston and Redhead? I seem to hear the reader asking. Grimston and Redhead were two members of the English garrison when the Prince of Parma besieged Bergen-op-Zoom in 1588, and it was their cunning which saved the town. Falling intentionally into the Prince's hands they affected to inform him of the vulnerability of the defences, and outlined a scheme by which his capture of a decisive position was practically certain. Having been entrusted with the conduct of the attack, they led his men, by preconcerted design, into an ambush, with the result that the siege was raised.

All being fair in love and war one should, I suppose, be at the feet of these brave fellows; but I have no enthusiasm for that kind of thing. At the same time there is no doubt that the Dutch ought to, and therefore I am the more distressed by Bergen-op-Zoom's rudeness to our foreign garb.

Bergen had seen battle before the siege, for when it was held by the Spanish, at the beginning of the war, a naval engagement was held off it in the Scheldt, between the Spanish fleet and the Beggars of the Sea, whom we are about to meet. The victory was to the Beggars. Later, in 1747, Bergen was besieged again, this time by the French and much more fiercely than by the Spaniards.

From Bergen-op-Zoom we went to Tholen, pa.s.sing the whitest of windmills on the way. Tholen is an odd little ancient town gained by a tramway and a ferry. Head-dresses here, as at Bois le Duc, are very much over-decorated with false flowers; but in a little shop in one of the narrow and deserted streets we found some very pretty lace. We found, also on the edge of the town, a very merry windmill; and we had lunch at an inn window which commanded the harnessing of the many market carts, into every one of which climbed a stolid farmer and a wife br.i.m.m.i.n.g with gossip.

In the returning steam-tram from Tholen to Bergen-op-Zoom was a Dutch maiden. So typical was she that she might have been a composite portrait of all Dutch girls of eighteen--smooth fair features, a very clear complexion, prim clothes. A friend getting in too, she talked; or rather he talked, and she listened, and agreed or dissented very quietly, and I had the pleasure of watching how admirably adapted is the Dutch feminine countenance for the display of the nuances of emotion, the enregistering of every thought. Expression after expression flitted across her face and mouth like the alternate shadow and sun in the Weald on a breezy April day. A French woman's many vivacious and eloquent expressions seem to come from within; but the Dutch present a placid sensitised surface on which their companions'

conversation records the most delicate tracery. This girl's little reluctant smiles were very charming, and we were at Bergen-op-Zoom again before I knew it.

Chapter XIX

Middelburg

The friendly Zeelanders--A Spanish heritage--Deceptive Dutch towns--The Abbey Hotel--The Abbey of St. Nicholas--Middelburg's art--Sentimental songs--The great Tacius--The siege of Middelburg--A round-faced city--When disfigurement is beauty--Green paint--Long John--Music in the night--Foolish Betsy--The Stadhuis--An Admiral and stuffed birds--The law of the paving-stones--Veere--The prey of the sea--A mammoth church--Maximilian's cup.

With Middelburg I have a.s.sociated, for charm, Hoorn; but Middelburg stands first. It is serener, happier, more human; while the nature of the Zeelander is to the stranger so much more ingratiating than that of the North Hollander. The Zeelander--and particularly the Walcheren islander--has the eccentricity to view the stranger as a natural object rather than a phenomenon. Flus.h.i.+ng being avowedly cosmopolitan does not count, but at Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, you may, although the only foreigner there, walk about in the oddest clothes and receive no embarra.s.sing attentions.

It is not that the good people of Walcheren are quicker to see where their worldly advantage lies. They are not schemers or financiers. The reason resides in a native politeness, a heritage, some have conjectured, from their Spanish forefathers. One sees hints of Spanish blood also in the exceptional flexibility and good carriage of the Walcheren women. Whatever the cause of Zeeland's friendliness, there it is; and in Middelburg the foreigner wanders at ease, almost as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were in France.

And it is the pleasantest town to wander in, and an astonis.h.i.+ngly large one. A surprising expansiveness, when one begins to explore them, is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch towns. From the railway, seeing a church spire and a few roofs, one had expected only a village; and behold street runs into street until one's legs ache. This is peculiarly the case with Gorinchem, which is almost invisible from the line; and it is the case with Middelburg, and Hoorn, and many other towns that I do not recall at this moment.

My advice to travellers in Walcheren is to stay at Middelburg rather than at Flus.h.i.+ng (they are very nigh each other) and to stay, moreover, at the Hotel of the Abbey. It is not the best hotel in Holland as regards appointment and cuisine; but it is certainly one of the pleasantest in character, and I found none other in so fascinating a situation. For it occupies one side of the quiet square enclosed by the walls of the Abbey of St. Nicholas (or Abdij, as the Dutch oddly call it), and you look from your windows through a grove of trees to the delicate spires and long low facade of this ancient House of G.o.d, which is now given over to the Governor of Zeeland, to the library of the Province, and to the Provincial Council, who meet in fifteenth century chambers and transact their business on _nouveau art_ furniture.

What the Abbey must have been before it was destroyed by fire we can only guess; but one thing we know, and that is that among its treasures were paintings by the great Mabuse (Jan Gossaert), who once roystered through Middelburg's quiet streets. Another artist of Middelburg was Adrian van der Venne, who made the quaint drawings for Jacob Cats'

symbols, of which we have seen something in an earlier chapter. But the city has never been a home of the arts. Beyond a little tapestry, some of which may be seen in the stadhuis, and some at the Abbey, it made nothing beautiful. From earliest times the Middelburgers were merchants--wool merchants and wine merchants princ.i.p.ally, but always tradespeople and always prosperous and contented.

A tentoonstelling (or exhibition) of copper work was in progress when I was there last summer; but it was not interesting, and I had better have taken the advice of the Music Hall manager, in whose grounds it was held, and have saved my money. His att.i.tude to _repousse_ work was wholly pessimistic, part prejudice against the craft of the metal-worker in itself, but more resentment that florins should be diverted into such a channel away from comic singers and acrobats. Seated at one of the garden tables we discussed Dutch taste in varieties.

The sentimental song, he told me, is a drug in Holland. Anything rather than that. No matter how pretty the girl may be, she must not sing a sentimental song. But if I wished to witness the only way in which a sentimental song would "go down," I must visit his performance that evening--reserved seats one, fifty,--and hear the great Tacius. He drew from his pocket a handbill which was at that moment being scattered broadcast over Middelburg. It bore the name of this marvel, this solver of the sentimental riddle, and beneath it three interrogation marks. The manager winked. "That," he said, "will excite interest."

We went that evening and heard Tacius--a portly gentleman in a ball dress and a yellow wig, who after squeaking five-sixths of a love song in a timid falsetto which might pa.s.s for a woman's voice, roared out the balance like a bull. He brought down the house.

Like most other Dutch towns Middelburg had its period of siege. But there was this difference, that Middelburg was held by the Spanish and besieged by the Dutch, whereas the custom was for the besiegers to be Spanish and the besieged Dutch. Middelburg suffered every privation common to invested cities, even to the trite consumption of rats and dogs, cats and mice, Just as destruction seemed inevitable--for the Spanish commander Mondragon swore to fire it and perish with it rather than submit--a compromise was arranged, and he surrendered without dishonour, the terms of the capitulation (which, however, Spain would not allow him to carry out) being another ill.u.s.tration of the wisdom and humanity of William the Silent.

Middelburg has never known a day's suffering since her siege. A local proverb says, "Goed rond, goed Zeeuwsch"--very round, very Zeelandish--and an old writer--so M. Havard tells us--describes Middelburg as a "round faced city". If by round we mean not only circular but also plump and comfortable, we have Middelburg and its sons and daughters very happily hit off. Structurally the town is round: the streets curve, the Abbey curves; seen from a balloon or the summit of the church tower, the plan of the city would reveal itself a circle. And there is a roundness also in the people. They smile roundly, they laugh roundly, they live roundly.

The women and girls of Middelburg are more comely and winsome than any in Holland. Their lace caps are like driven snow, their cheeks s.h.i.+ne like apples. But their way with their arms I cannot commend. The sleeve of their bodices ends far above the elbow, and is made so tight that the naked arm below expands on attaining its liberty, and by constant and intentional friction takes the hue of the tomato. What, however, is to our eyes only a suggestion of inflammation, is to the Zeelander a beauty. While our impulse is to recommend cold cream, the young bloods of Middelburg (I must suppose) are holding their beating hearts. These are the differences of nations--beyond anything dreamed of in Babel.

The princ.i.p.al work of these ruddy-armed and wide-hipped damsels seems to be to carry green pails on a blue yoke--and their perfect fitness in Middelburg's cheerful and serene streets is another instance of the Dutch cleverness in the use of green paint. These people paint their houses every year--not in conformity with any written law, but upon a universal feeling that that is what should be done. To this very pretty habit is largely due the air of fresh gaiety that their towns possess. Middelburg is of the gayest. Greenest of all, as I have said, is perhaps Zaandam. Sometimes they paint too freely, even the trunks of trees and good honest statuary coming under the brush. But for the most part they paint well.

It is not alone the cloistral Gothic seclusion in which the Abbey hotel reposes that commends it to the wise: there is the further allurement of Long John. Long John, or De Lange Jan, is the soaring tower of the Abbey church, now the Nieuwe Kerk. So long have his nearly 300 feet dominated Middelburg--he was first built in the thirteenth century, and rebuilt in the sixteenth--that he has become more than a structure of bricks and copper: a thinking ent.i.ty, a tutelary spirit at once the pride and the protector of the town. His voice is heard more often than any belfry beneath whose shadow I have lain. Holland, as we have seen, is a land of bells and carillons; nowhere in the world are the feet of Time so dogged; but Long John is the most faithful sleuth of all. He is almost ahead of his quarry. He seems to know no law; he set out, I believe, with a commission ent.i.tling him to ring his one and forty bells every seven and a half minutes, or eight times in the hour; but long since he must have torn up that warranty, for he is now his own master, breaking out into little sighs of melancholy or wistful music whenever the mood takes him. I have never heard such profoundly plaintive airs as his--very beautiful, very grave, very deliberate. One cannot say more for persistent chimes than this--that at the Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in the night.

Long John has a companion in Foolish Betsy. Foolish Betsy is the stadhuis clock, so called (Gekke Betje) from her refusal to keep time with the giant: another instance of the power which John exerts over the town, even to the wounding of chivalry. The Nieuwe Kerk would be nothing without its tower--it is one of the barest and least interesting churches in a country which has reduced to the finest point the art of denuding religion of mystery--but the stadhuis would still be wonderful even without its Betsy, There is nothing else like it in Holland, nothing anywhere quite so charming in its shameless happy floridity. I cannot describe it: the building is too complicated, too ornate; I can only say that it is wholly captivating and thoroughly out of keeping with the Dutch genius--Spanish influence again apparent. Beneath the eaves are four and twenty statues of the Counts of Holland and Zeeland, and the roof is like a ma.s.s-meeting of dormer windows.

In addition to the stadhuis museum, which is dedicated to the history of Middelburg and Zeeland, the town has also a munic.i.p.al museum, too largely given over to sh.e.l.ls and stuffed birds, but containing also such human relics as the wheel on which Admiral de Ruyter as a boy helped his father to make rope, and also the first microscope and the first telescope, both the work of Zacharias Jansen, a Zeeland mathematician. More interesting perhaps are the rooms in the old Zeeland manner, corresponding to the Hindeloopen rooms which we have seen at Leeuwarden, but lacking their cheerful richness of ornamentation. It is certainly a museum that should be visited, albeit the stuffed birds weigh heavily on the brow.

After all, Middelburg's best museum is itself. Its streets and houses are a never-ending pleasure. Something gladdens the eye at every turn--a blue and yellow shutter, a red and black shutter, a turret, a daring gable, a knot of country people, a fat Zeeland baby, a milk-can rivalling the sun, an old woman's lace cap, a young woman's merry mouth. Only in two respects is the town unsatisfactory, and both are connected with its streets. The liberty given to each householder to erect an iron fence across the pavement at each limit of his property makes it necessary to walk in the road, and the _pave_ of the road is so rough as to cause no slight suffering to any one in thin boots. M. Havard has an amusing pa.s.sage on this topic, in which he says that the ancient fifteenth-century punishment for marital infidelity, a sin forbidden by the munic.i.p.al laws no less than by Heaven, was the supply by the offending man of a certain number of paving stones. After such an explanation, the genial Frenchman adds, we must not complain:--

Nos peres ont peches, nos peres ne sont plus, Et c'est nous qui portons la peine de leurs crimes.

The island of Walcheren is quickly learned. From Middelburg one can drive in a day to the chief points of interest--Westcapelle and Domburg, Veere and Arnemuiden. Of these Veere is the jewel--Veere, once Middelburg's dreaded rival, and in its possession of a clear sea-way and harbour her superior, but now forlorn. For in the seventeenth century Holland's ancient enemy overflowed its barriers, and the greater part of Veere was blotted out in a night. What remains is a mere symbol of the past; but there is enough to loiter in with perfect content, for Veere is unique. Certainly no little town is so good to approach--with the friendliness of its red roofs before one all the way, the unearthly hugeness of its church and the magic of its stadhuis tower against the blue.

The church, which is visible from all parts of the island, is immense, in itself an indication of what a city Veere must have been. It rises like a mammoth from the flat. Only the east end is now used for services; the vast remainder, white and naked, is given up to bats and the handful of workmen that the slender restoration funds make it possible to employ. For there is some idea of Veere's church being one day again in perfect repair; but that day will not be in our time. The ravages of the sea only emptied it: the sea does not desecrate. It was Napoleon who disgraced the church by converting it into barracks.

Other relics of Veere's past are the tower at the harbour mouth (its fellow-tower is beneath the sea) and the beautifully grave Scotch house on the quay, once the centre of the Scottish wool trade of these parts.

The stadhuis also remains, a dainty distinguished structure which might be the infant daughter of the stadhuis at Middelburg. Its spire has a slender aerial grace; on its facade are statues of the Lords of Veere and their Ladies, Within is a little museum of antiquities, one of whose most interesting possessions is the entry in the Veere register, under the date July 2nd, 1608, of the marriage of Hugo Grotius with Maria Reygersbergh of Veere, whom we have seen at Loevenstein a.s.sisting in her husband's escape from prison. The museum is in the charge of a blond custodian, a descendant of sea kings, whose pride in the golden goblet which Maximilian of Burgundy, Veere's first Marquis, gave to the town in 1551, is almost paternal. He displays it as though it were a sacred relic, and narrates the story of Veere's indignation when a millionaire attempted to buy it, so feelingly as to fortify and complete one's suspicions that money after all is but dross and the love of it the root of evil.

Chapter XX

Flus.h.i.+ng

Middelburg once more--The Flus.h.i.+ng baths--Shrimps and chivalry--A Dutch boy--Charles V. at Souburg--Flus.h.i.+ng and the Spanish yoke--Philip and William the Silent--The capture of Brill--A far-reaching drunken impulse--Flus.h.i.+ng's independence--Admiral de Ruyter--England's Revenge--The Middelburg kermis--The aristocracy of avoirdupois--The end.

It is wiser I think to stay at Middelburg and visit Flus.h.i.+ng from there than to stay at Flus.h.i.+ng. One may go by train or tram. In hot weather the steam-tram is the better way, for then one can go direct to the baths and bathe in the stillest arm of the sea that I know. Here I bathed on the hottest day of last year, 1904, among merry albeit considerable water nymphs and vivacious men. These I found afterwards should have dwelt in the water for ever, for they emerged, dried and dressed, from the machines, something less than ordinary Batavians. I perhaps carried disillusionment also.

For safe bathing the Flus.h.i.+ng baths could not well be excelled, but I never knew sh.o.r.e so sandy. To rid one's self of sand is almost an impossibility. With each step it over-tops one's boots.

Returning to Middelburg from Flus.h.i.+ng one evening, in the steam-tram, we found ourselves in a compartment filled with happy country people, most of them making for the kermis, then in full swing in the Middelburg market place. A pedlar of shrimps stood by the door retailing little pennyworths, and nothing would do but the countryman opposite me must buy some for his sweetheart. When he had bought them he was for emptying them in her lap, but I tendered the wrapper of my book just in time: an act of civility which brought out all his native friendliness. He offered us shrimps, one by one, first peeling them with kindly fingers of extraordinary blackness, and we ate enough to satisfy him that we meant well: and then just as we reached Middelburg, he gave me a cigar and walked all the way to the Abbey with me, watching me smoke it. It was an ordeal; but I hope, for the honour of England, that I carried it through successfully and convinced him that an Englishman knows what to do with courtesy when he finds it.

In the same tram and on the very next seat to us was the pleasantest little boy that I think I ever saw: a perfect miniature Dutchman, with wide black trousers terminating in a point, pearl b.u.t.tons, a tight black coat, a black hat, and golden neck links after the Zeeland habit. He was perhaps four, plump and red and merry, and his mother, who nursed his baby sister, was immensely proud of him. Some one pressed a twopenny bit into his hand as he left the car, and I watched him telling the great news to half a dozen of the women who were waiting by the side of the road, while his face shone like the setting sun.

They got off at Souburg, the little village between Flus.h.i.+ng and Middelburg where Charles V. was living in 1556, after his abdication, before he sailed for his last home. It is odd to have two such a.s.sociations with Souburg--the weary emperor putting off the purple, and the little Dutch boer bursting jollily through black velvet.