A Wanderer in Holland Part 4

One may stand to-day exactly where the Prince stood when he was shot. The mark of a bullet in the wall is still shown. The dining-room, from which he had come, now contains a collection of relics of his great career.

Let us return to the New Church, past the statue of Grotius in the great square, in order to look again at that philosopher's memorial. Grotius, who was born at Delft, was extraordinarily precocious. He went to Leyden University and studied under Scaliger when he was eleven; at sixteen he was practising as a lawyer at The Hague. This is D. Goslings' translation of the inscription on his tomb:--

_Sacred to Hugo Grotius_

The Wonder of Europe, the sole astonishment of the learned world, the splendid work of nature surpa.s.sing itself, the summit of genius, the image of virtue, the ornament raised above mankind, to whom the defended honour of true religion gave cedars from the top of Lebanon, whom Mars adorned with laurels and Pallas with olive branches, when he had published the right of war and peace: whom the Thames and the Seine regarded as the wonder of the Dutch, and whom the court of Sweden took in its service: Here lies _Grotius_. Shun this tomb, ye who do not burn with love of the Muses and your country.

Grotius can hardly have burned with love of the sense of justice of his own country, for reasons with which we are familiar. His sentence of life-long imprisonment, pa.s.sed by Prince Maurice of Orange, who lies hard by in the same church, was pa.s.sed in 1618. His escape in the chest (like General Monk in _Twenty Years After_) was his last deed on Dutch soil. Thenceforward he lived in Paris and Sweden, England and Germany, writing his _De Jure Belli et Pacis_ and other works. He died in 1645, when Holland claimed him again, as Oxford has claimed Sh.e.l.ley.

The princ.i.p.al tomb in the Old Church of Delft is that of Admiral Tromp, the Dutch Nelson. While quite a child he was at sea with his father off the coast of Guinea when an English cruiser captured the vessel and made him a cabin boy. Tromp, if he felt any resentment, certainly lived to pay it back, for he was our victor in thirty-three naval engagements, the last being the final struggle in the English-Dutch war, when he defeated Monk off Texel in the summer of 1653, and was killed by a bullet in his heart. The battle is depicted in bas-relief on the tomb, but the eye searches the marble in vain for any reminder of the broom which the admiral is said to have lashed to his masthead as a sign to the English that it was his habit to sweep their seas. The story may be a myth, but the Dutch sculptor who omitted to remember it and believe in it is no friend of mine.

This is D. Goslings' translation of Tromp's epitaph:--

_For an Eternal Memorial_

You, who love the Dutch, virtue and true labour, read and mourn.

The ornament of the Dutch people, the formidable in battle, lies low, he who never lay down in his life, and taught by his example that a commander should die standing, he, the love of his fellow-citizens, the terror of his enemies, the wonder of the ocean.

_Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp_, a name comprehending more praise than this stone can contain, a stone truly too narrow for him, for whom East and West were a school, the sea the occasion of triumph, the whole world the scene of his glory, he, a certain ruin to pirates, the successful protector of commerce; useful through his familiarity, not low; after having ruled the sailors and the soldiers, a rough sort of people, in a fatherly and efficaciously benignant manner; after fifty battles in which he was commander or in which he played a great part; after incredible victories, after the highest honours though below his merits, he at last in the war against the English, nearly victor but certainly not beaten, on the 10th of August, 1653, of the Christian era, at the age of fifty-six years, has ceased to live and to conquer.

The fathers of the United Netherlands have erected this memorial in honour of this highly meritorious hero.

There lie in Delft's Old Church also Pieter Pieterzoon Hein, Lieut.-Admiral of Holland; and Elizabeth van Marnix, wife of the governor of Bergen-op-Zoom, whose epitaph runs thus:--

Here am I lying, I _Elizabeth_, born of an ill.u.s.trious and ancient family, wife to Morgan, I, daughter of Marnix, a name not unknown in the world, which, in spite of time, will always remain. There is virtue enough in having pleased one husband, which his so precious love testifies.

The tomb of Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the microscope, is also to be seen in the church. "As everybody, O Wanderer," the epitaph concludes, "has respect for old age and wonderful parts, tread this spot with respect; here grey science lies buried with Leeuwenhoek."

Each of the little guide-books, which are given to every purchaser of a ticket to enter the churches, is prefaced by four "Remarks,"

of which I quote the third and fourth:--

3. Visitors are requested not to bestow gifts on the s.e.xton or his a.s.sistants, as the former would lose his situation, if he accepted; he is responsible for his a.s.sistants.

4. The s.e.xton or his a.s.sistants will treat the visitors with the greatest politeness.

I am not certain about the truth of either of these clauses, particularly the last. Let me explain.

The s.e.xton of the Old Church hurried me past these tombs with some impatience. I should naturally have taken my time, but his att.i.tude of haste made it imperative to do so. s.e.xtons must not be in a hurry. After a while I found out why he chafed: he wanted to smoke. He fumbled his pipe and sc.r.a.ped his boots upon the stones. I studied the monuments with a scrutiny that grew more and more minute and elaborate; and soon his matches were in his hand. I wanted to tell him that if I were the only obstacle he might smoke to his heart's content, but it seemed to be more amusing to watch and wait. My return to the tomb of the ingenious constructor of the microscope settled the question. Probably no one had ever spent more than half a minute on poor Leeuwenhoek before; and when I turned round again the pipe was alight. The s.e.xton also was a changed man: before, he had been taciturn, contemptuous; now he was communicative, gay. He told me that the organist was blind--but none the less a fine player; he led me briskly to the carved pulpit and pointed out, with some exaltation, the figure of Satan with his legs bound. The cincture seemed to give him a sense of security.

In several ways he made it impossible for me to avoid disregarding Clause 3 in the little guide-books; but I feel quite sure that he has not in consequence lost his situation.

Delft's greatest painter was Johannes Vermeer, known as Vermeer of Delft, of whom I shall have much to say both at the Hague and Amsterdam. He was born at Delft in 1632, he died there in 1675; and of him but little more is known. It has been said that he studied under Karel Fabritius (also of Delft), but if this is so the term of pupil-age must have been very brief, for Fabritius did not reach Delft (from Rembrandt's studio) until 1652, when Vermeer was twenty, and he was killed in an explosion in 1654. One sees the influence of Fabritius, if at all, most strongly in the beautiful early picture at The Hague, in the grave, grand manner, of Diana? but the influence of Italy is even more noticeable. Fabritius's "Siskin" is hung beneath the new Girl's Head by Vermeer (opposite page 2 of this book), but they have nothing in common. To see how Vermeer derived from Rembrandt via Fabritius one must look at the fine head by Fabritius in the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam, so long attributed to Rembrandt, but possessing a certain radiance foreign to him.

How many pictures Vermeer painted between 1653, when he was admitted to the Delft Guild as a master, and 1675, when he died, cannot now be said; but it is reasonable to allot to each of those twenty-three years at least five works. As the known pictures of Vermeer are very few--fewer than forty, I believe--some great discoveries may be in store for the diligent, or, more probably, the lucky.

I have read somewhere--but cannot find the reference again--of a s.h.i.+p that left Holland for Russia in the seventeenth century, carrying a number of paintings by the best artists of that day--particularly, if I remember, Gerard Dou. The vessel foundered and all were lost. It is possible that Vermeer may have been largely represented.

Only comparatively lately has fame come to him, his first prophet being the French critic Th.o.r.e (who wrote as "W. Burger"), and his second Mr. Henri Havard, the author of very pleasant books on Holland from which I shall occasionally quote. Both these enthusiasts wrote before the picture opposite page 2 was exhibited, or their ecstasies might have been even more intense.

In the Senate House at Delft in 1641 John Evelyn the diarist saw "a mighty vessel of wood, not unlike a b.u.t.ter-churn, which the adventurous woman that hath two husbands at one time is to wear on her shoulders, her head peeping out at the top only, and so led about the town, as a penance". I did not see this; but the punishment was not peculiar to Delft. At Nymwegen these wooden petticoats were famous too.

Nor did I visit the porcelain factory, having very little interest in its modern products. But the old Delft ware no one can admire more than I do. A history of Delft written by Dirk van Bleyswijck and published in 1667, tells us that the rise of the porcelain industry followed the decline of brewing. The author gives with tears a list of scores of breweries that ceased to exist between 1600 and 1640. All had signs, among them being:--

The Popinjay.

The Great Bell.

The White Lily.

The Three Herrings.

The Double Battle-axe.

The Three Acorns.

The Black Unicorn.

The Three Lilies.

The Curry-Comb.

The Three Hammers.

The Double Halberd.

I would rather have explored any of those breweries than the modern Delft factory.

Ireland, by the way, mentions a whimsical sign-board which he saw somewhere in Holland, but which I regret to say I did not find. "It was a tree bearing fruit, and the branches filled with little, naked urchins, seemingly just ripened into life, and crying for succour: beneath, a woman holds up her ap.r.o.n, looking wistfully at the children, as if intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch inscription prefixed to her name:--

'Vang my, ik zal zoet zyn,'

that is, 'Catch me, I'll be a sweet boy'. This new mode of procreation, so truly whimsical, pleased me," Ireland adds, "not a little."

Let me close this chapter by quoting from an essay by my friend, Mr. Belloc, a lyrical description of the Old Church's wonderful wealth of bells: "Thirdly, the very structure of the thing is bells. Here the bells are more even than the soul of a Christian spire; they are its body, too, its whole self. An army of them fills up all the s.p.a.ce between the delicate supports and framework of the upper parts. For I know not how many feet, in order, diminis.h.i.+ng in actual size and in the perspective also of that triumphant elevation, stand ranks on ranks of bells from the solemn to the wild, from the large to the small, a hundred, or two hundred or a thousand. There is here the prodigality of Brabant and Hainaut and the Batavian blood, a generosity and a productivity in bells without stint, the man who designed it saying: 'Since we are to have bells, let us have bells; not measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells, but careless bells, self-answering mult.i.tudinous bells; bells without fear, bells excessive and bells innumerable; bells worthy of the ecstacies that are best thrown out and published in the clas.h.i.+ng of bells. For bells are single, like real pleasures, and we will combine such a great number that they may be like the happy and complex life of a man. In a word, let us be n.o.ble and scatter our bells and reap a harvest till our town is famous in its bells,' So now all the spire is more than clothed with them; they are more than stuff or ornament: they are an outer and yet sensitive armour, all of bells.

"Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number only, but also in their use--for they are not reserved in any way, out ring tunes and add harmonies at every half and a quarter and at all the hours both by night and by day. Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession of noise through this; they are far too high and melodious, and (what is more) too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of Delft to be more than a perpetual and half-forgotten impression of continual music; they render its air sacred and fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence as to leave one--when one has pa.s.sed from their influence--asking what balm that was which soothed all the harshness of sound about one."

Chapter V

The Hague

Dutch precision--Shaping hands--Nature under control--Willow _v_. Neptune--The lost star--S'Gravenhage--The Mauritshuis--Rembrandt--The "School of Anatomy"--Jan Vermeer of Delft--The frontispiece--Other pictures--The Munic.i.p.al Museum--Baron Steengracht's collection--The Mesdag treasures--French romantics at The Hague--The Binnenhof--John van Olden Barneveldt--Man's cruelty to man--The churches--The fish market and first taste of Scheveningen--A crowded street--Holland's reading--The Bosch--The club--The House in the Wood--Mr. "Secretary" Prior--Old marvels--Howell the receptive and Coryate the credulous.

Although often akin to the English, the Dutch character differs from it very noticeably in the matter of precision. The Englishman has little precision; the Dutchman has too much. He bends everything to it. He has at its dictates divided his whole country into parellelograms. Even the rushes in his swamps are governed by the same law. The carelessness of nature is offensive to him; he moulds and trains on every hand, as one may see on the railway journey to The Hague. Trees he endures only so long as they are obedient and equidistant: he likes them in avenues or straight lines; if they grow otherwise they must be pollarded. It is true that he has not touched the Bosch, at The Hague; but since his hands perforce have been kept off its trees, he has run scores of formal straight well-gravelled paths beneath their branches.

This pa.s.sion for interference grew perhaps from exultation upon successful dealings with the sea. A man who by his own efforts can live in security below sea-level, and graze cattle luxuriantly where sand and pebbles and salt once made a desert, has perhaps the right to feel that everything in nature would be the better for a little manipulation. Eyes accustomed to the careless profusion that one may see even on a short railway journey in England are shocked to find nature so tractable both in land and water.

The Dutchman's pruning, however, is not done solely for the satisfaction of exerting control. These millions of pollarded willows which one sees from the line have a deeper significance than might ever be guessed at: it is they that are keeping out Holland's ancient enemy, the sea. In other words, a great part of the basis of the strength of the d.y.k.es is imparted by interwoven willow boughs, which are constantly being renewed under the vigilant eyes of the d.y.k.e inspectors. For the rest, the inveterate tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of trees must be a comparatively modern custom, for many of the old landscapes depict careless foliage--Koninck's particularly. And look, for instance, at that wonderful picture--perhaps the finest landscape in Dutch art--Rembrandt's etching "The Three Trees". There is nothing in North Holland to-day as unstudied as that. I doubt if you could now find three trees of such individuality and courage.

When I was first at The Hague, seven years ago, I stayed not, as on my last visit, at the Oude Doelen, which is the most comfortable hotel in Holland, but at a more retired hostelry. It was s.p.a.cious and antiquated, with large empty rooms, and cool pa.s.sages, and an air of decay over all. Servants one never saw, nor any waiter proper; one's every need was carried out by a very small and very enthusiastic boy. "Is the hroom good, sare?" he asked, as he flung open the door of the bedroom with a superb flourish. "Is the sham good, sare?" he asked as he laid a pot of preserve on the table. He was the landlady's son or grandson, and a better boy never lived, but his part, for all his spirit and good humour, was a tragic one. For the greatest misfortune that can come upon an hotel-keeper had crushed this house: Baedeker had excised their star!