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A Wanderer in Holland by E. V. Lucas

E >> E. V. Lucas >> A Wanderer in Holland




In one point only did the exhibition differ from the wax works of
the French and Italian fairs--it was undeviatingly decent. There
were no jokes, and no physiological models. But the Dutch, I should
conjecture, are not morbid. They have their coarse fun, laugh,
and get back to business again. Judged by that new short-cut to
a nation's moral tone, the picture postcard, the Dutch are quite
sound. There is a shop in the high-spirited Nes Straat at Amsterdam
where a certain pictorial ebullience has play, but I saw none other
of the countless be-postcarded windows in all Holland that should
cause a serious blush on any cheek; while the Nes Straat specimens
were fundamentally sound, Rabelaisian rather than Armand-Sylvestrian,
not vicious but merely vulgar.



Chapter XVIII

Arnheim to Bergen-op-Zoom

Arnheim the Joyous--A wood walk--Tesselschade Visscher
and the Chambers of Rhetoric--Epigrams--Poet friends--The
nightingale--An Arnheim adventure--Ten years at one book--Dutch
and Latin--Dutch and French--A French story--Dutch
and English--_The English Schole-Master_--Master
and scholar--A nervous catechism--Avoiding the
birch--A riot of courtesy--A bill of lading--Dutch
proverbs--The Rhine and its mouths--Nymwegen--Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu again--Painted shutters--The
Valkhof--Hertogenbosch--Brothers at Bommel--The hero of
Breda--Two beautiful tombs--Bergen-op-Zoom--Messrs. Grimston
and Red-head--Tholen--The Dutch feminine countenance.

At Arnheim we come to a totally new Holland. The Maliebaan and the
park at Utrecht, with their spacious residences, had prepared us a
little for Arnheim's wooded retirement; but not completely. Rotterdam
is given to shipping; The Hague makes laws and fashions; Leyden
and Utrecht teach; Amsterdam makes money. It is at Arnheim that the
retired merchant and the returned colonist set up their home. It is
the richest residential city in the country. Arnheim the Joyous was
its old name. Arnheim the Comfortable it might now be styled.

It is the least Dutch of Dutch towns: the Rhine brings a bosky beauty
to it, German in character and untamed by Dutch restraining hands. The
Dutch Switzerland the country hereabout is called. Arnheim recalls
Richmond too, for it has a Richmond Hill--a terrace-road above a
shaggy precipice overlooking the river.

I walked in the early morning to Klarenbeck, up and down in a vast
wood, and at a point of vantage called the Steenen Tafel looked down
on the Rhine valley. Nothing could be less like the Holland of the
earlier days of my wanderings--nothing, that is, that was around me,
but with the farther bank of the river the flatness instantly begins
and continues as far as one can see in the north.

It was a very beautiful morning in May, and as I rested now and
then among the resinous pines I was conscious of being traitorous to
England in wandering here at all. No one ought to be out of England
in April and May. At one point I met a squirrel--just such a nimble
short-tempered squirrel as those which scold and hide in the top
branches of the fir trees near my own home in Kent--and my sense of
guilt increased; but when, on my way back, in a garden near Arnheim
I heard a nightingale, the treachery was complete.

And this reminds me that the best poem of the most charming figure in
Dutch literature--Tesselschade Visscher--is about the nightingale. The
story of this poetess and her friends belongs more properly to
Amsterdam, or to Alkmaar, but it may as well be told here while the
Arnheim nightingale--the only nightingale that I heard in Holland--is
plaining and exulting.

Tesselschade was the daughter of the poet and rhetorician Roemer
Visscher. She was born on 25th March, 1594, and earned her curious name
from the circumstance that on the same day her father was wrecked off
Texel. In honour of his rescue he named his daughter Tesselschade,
or Texel wreck, thereby, I think, eternally impairing his right to
be considered a true poet. As a matter of fact he was rather an
epigrammatist than a poet, his ambition being to be known as the
Dutch Martial. Here is a taste of his Martial manner:--


Jan sorrows--sorrows far too much: 'tis true
A sad affliction hath distressed his life;--
Mourns he that death hath ta'en his children two?
O no! he mourns that death hath left his wife.


I have said that Visscher was a rhetorician. The word perhaps needs
a little explanation, for it means more than would appear. In those
days rhetoric was a living cult in the Netherlands: Dutchmen and
Flemings played at rhetoric with some of the enthusiasm that we keep
for cricket and sport. Every town of any importance had its Chamber
of Rhetoric. "These Chambers," says Longfellow in his _Poets and
Poetry of Europe_, "were to Holland, in the fifteenth century, what
the Guilds of the Meistersingers were to Germany, and were numerous
throughout the Netherlands. Brussels could boast of five; Antwerp
of four; Louvain of three; and Ghent, Bruges, Malines, Middelburg,
Gouda, Haarlem, and Amsterdam of at least one. Each Chamber had its
coat of arms and its standard, and the directors bore the title
of Princes and Deans. At times they gave public representations
of poetic dialogues and stage-plays, called _Spelen van Sinne_,
or Moralities. Like the Meistersingers, they gave singular titles
to their songs and metres. A verse was called a _Regel_; a strophe,
a _Clause_; and a burden or refrain, a _Stockregel_. If a half-verse
closed as a strophe, it was a _Steert_, or tail. _Tafel-spelen_,
and _Spelen van Sinne_, were the titles of the dramatic exhibitions;
and the rhymed invitation to these was called a _Charte_, or _Uitroep_
(outcry). _Ketendichten_ (chain-poems) are short poems in which the
last word of each line rhymes with the first of the line following;
_Scaekberd_ (checkerbourd), a poem of sixty-four lines, so rhymed,
that in every direction it forms a strophe of eight lines; and
_Dobbel-steert_ (double-tail), a poem in which a double rhyme closes
each line. [5]

"The example of Flanders was speedily followed by Zeeland and
Holland. In 1430, there was a Chamber at Middelburg; in 1433, at
Vlaardingen; in 1434, at Nieuwkerk; and in 1437, at Gouda. Even
insignificant Dutch villages had their Chambers. Among others, one
was founded in the Lier, in the year 1480. In the remaining provinces
they met with less encouragement. They existed, however, at Utrecht,
Amersfoort, Leeuwarden, and Hasselt. The purity of the language
was completely undermined by the rhyming self-called Rhetoricians,
and their abandoned courses brought poetry itself into disrepute. All
distinction of genders was nearly abandoned; the original abundance of
words ran waste; and that which was left became completely overwhelmed
by a torrent of barbarous terms."

Wagenaer, in his "Description of Amsterdam," gives a copy of a
painter's bill for work done for a rhetorician's performance at
the play-house in the town of Alkmaar, of which the following is
a translation:--


"Imprimis, made for the Clerks a Hell;
Item, the Pavilion of Satan;
Item, two pairs of Devil's-breeches;
Item, a Shield for the Christian Knight;
Item, have painted the Devils whenever they played;
Item, some Arrows and other small matters.
Sum total; worth in all xii. guilders.

"Jaques Mol.

"Paid, October viii., 95 [1495]."


Among the Dutch pictures at the Louvre is an anonymous work
representing the Committee of a Chamber of Rhetoric.

Roemer Visscher, the father of the poetess, was a leading rhetorician
at Amsterdam, and the president of the Eglantine Chamber of the
Brother's Blossoming in Love (as he and his fellow-rhetoricians
called themselves). None the less, he was a sensible and clever man,
and he brought up his three daughters very wisely. He did not make
them blue stockings, but saw that they acquired comely and useful
arts and crafts, and he rendered them unique by teaching them to
swim in the canal that ran through his garden. He also was enabled
to ensure for them the company of the best poetical intellects of
the time--Vondel and Brederoo, Spiegel, Hooft and Huyghens.

Of these the greatest was Joost van den Vondel, a neighbour of
Visscher's in Amsterdam, the author of "Lucifer," a poem from which
it has been suggested that Milton borrowed. Like Izaak Walton Vondel
combined haberdashery with literature. Spiegel was a wealthy patron
of the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine Chamber
with the painfully sentimental name. Constantin Huyghens wrote light
verse with intricate metres, and an occasional epigram. Here is one:--

_On Peter's Poetry_.


When Peter condescends to write,
His verse deserves to see the _light_.
If any further you inquire,
I mean--the candle or the fire.


Also a practical statesman, it was to Huyghens that Holland owes the
beautiful old road from The Hague to Scheveningen in which Jacob Cats
built his house.

Among these friends Anna and Tesselschade grew into cultured
women of quick and sympathetic intellect. Both wrote poetry, but
Tesselschade's is superior to her sister's. Among Anna's early work
were some additions to a new edition of her father's _Zinne-Poppen_,
one of her poems running thus in the translation by Mr, Edmund Gosse
in the very pleasant essay on Tesselschade in his _Studies in the
Literature of Northern Europe_:--


A wife that sings and pipes all day,
And never puts her lute away,
No service to her hand finds she;
Fie, fie! for this is vanity!

But is it not a heavenly sight
To see a woman take delight
With song or string her husband dear,
When daily work is done, to cheer?

Misuse may turn the sweetest sweet
To loathsome wormwood, I repeat;
Yea, wholesome medicine, full of grace,
May prove a poison--out of place.

They who on thoughts eternal rest,
With earthly pleasures may be blest;
Since they know well these shadows gay,
Like wind and smoke, will pass away.


Tesselschade, who was much loved by her poet friends, disappointed
them all by marrying a dull sailor of Alkmaar named Albert
Krombalgh. Settling down at Alkmaar, she continued her intercourse
with her old companions, and some new ones, by letter. Among her new
friends were Barlaeus, or Van Baerle, the first Latinist of the day,
and Jacob Cats. When her married life was cut short some few years
later, Barlaeus proposed to the young widow; but it was in vain,
as she informed him by quoting from Cats these lines:--


When a valved shell of ocean
Breaks one side or loses one,
Though you seek with all devotion
You can ne'er the loss atone,
Never make again the edges
Bite together, tooth for tooth,
And, just so, old love alleges
Nought is like the heart's first troth.


These are Tesselschade's lines upon the nightingale in Mr. Gosse's
happy translation:--


THE WILD SONGSTER.


Praise thou the nightingale,
Who with her joyous tale
Doth make thy heart rejoice,
Whether a singing plume she be, or viewless winged voice;

Whose warblings, sweet and clear,
Ravish the listening ear
With joy, as upward float
The throbbing liquid trills of her enchanted throat;

Whose accents pure and ripe
Sound like an organ pipe,
That holdeth divers songs,
And with one tongue alone sings like a score of tongues.

The rise and fall again
In clear and lovely strain
Of her sweet voice and shrill,
Outclamours with its songs the singing springing rill.

A creature whose great praise
Her rarity displays,
Seeing she only lives
A month in all the year to which her song she gives.

But this thing sets the crown
Upon her high renown,
That such a little bird as she
Can harbour such a strength of clamorous harmony.


Arnheim presents after dinner the usual scene of contented
movement. The people throng the principal streets, and every one seems
happy and placid. The great concert hall, Musis Sacrum, had not yet
begun its season when I was there, and the only spectacle which the
town could muster was an exhibition of strength by two oversized boys,
which I avoided.

At Arnheim, I should relate, an odd thing happened to my
companion. When she was there last, in 1894, she had need to obtain
linseed for a poultice, and visited a chemist for the purpose. He
was an old man, and she found him sitting in the window studying his
English grammar. How long his study had lasted I have no notion, but he
knew less of our tongue than she of his, and to get the linseed was no
easy matter. Ten years passed and recollection of the Arnheim chemist
had clean evaporated; but chancing to look up as we walked through the
town, the sight of the old chemist seated in his shop-window poring
over a book brought the whole incident back to her. We stepped to the
window and stole a glance at the volume: it was an English Grammar. He
had been studying it ever since the night of the linseed poultice.

It was, we felt, an object-lesson to us, who during the same interval
had taken advantage of every opportunity of neglecting the Dutch
tongue.

That tongue, however, is not attractive. Even those who have spoken
it to most purpose do not always admire it. I find that Kasper van
Baerle wrote: "What then do we Netherlanders speak? Words from a
foreign tongue: we are but a collected crowd, of feline origin,
driven by a strange fatality to these mouths of the Rhine. Why,
since the mighty descendants of Romulus here pitched their tents,
choose we not rather the holy language of the Romans!"

We may consider Dutch a harsh tongue, and prefer that all foreigners
should learn English; but our dislike of Dutch is as nothing compared
with Dutch dislike of French as expressed in some verses by Bilderdyk
when the tyranny of Napoleon threatened them:--


Begone, thou bastard-tongue! so base--so broken--
By human jackals and hyenas spoken;
Formed of a race of infidels, and fit
To laugh at truth--and scepticise in wit;
What stammering, snivelling sounds, which scarcely dare,
Bravely through nasal channel meet the ear--
Yet helped by apes' grimaces--and the devil,
Have ruled the world, and ruled the world for evil!


But French is now the second language that is taught in Dutch
schools. German comes first and English third.

The Dutch language often resembles English very closely; sometimes
so closely as to be ridiculous. For example, to an English traveller
who has been manoeuvring in vain for some time in the effort to get
at the value of an article, it comes as a shock comparable only to
being run over by a donkey cart to discover that the Dutch for "What
is the price?" is "Wat is de prijs?"

The best old Dutch phrase-book is _The English Schole-Master_, the
copy of which that lies before me was printed at Amsterdam by John
Houman in the year 1658. I have already quoted a short passage from
it, in Chapter II. This is the full title:--


The English Schole-Master;
or
Certaine rules and helpes, whereby
the natives of the Netherlandes, may
bee, in a short time, taught to
read, understand, and speake
the English tongue.
By the helpe whereof the English also
may be better instructed in the knowledge
of the Dutch tongue, than by any vocabulars,
or other Dutch and English
books, which hitherto they have
had, for that purpose.


There is internal evidence that the book was the work of a Dutchman
rather than an Englishman; for the Dutch is better than the English. I
quote (omitting the Dutch) part of one of the long dialogues between
a master and scholar of which the manual is largely composed. Much
of its interest lies in the continual imminence of the rod and the
skill of the child in saving the situation:--

M. In the meane time let me aske you one thing more. Have you not in
to-day at the holy sermon?

S. I was there.

M. Who are your witnesses?

S. Many of the schoole-fellowes who saw me can witnes it.

M. But some must be produced.

S. I shall produce them when you commaund it.

M. Who did preach?

S. Master N.

M. At what time began he?

S. At seven a clock.

M. Whence did he take his text?

S. Out of the epistle of Paul to the Romanes.

M. In what chapter?

S. In the eighth.

M. Hitherto you have answered well: let us now see what follows. Have
you remembred anything?

S. Nothing that I can repeat.

M. Nothing at al? Bethink (your self) a little, and take heed that
you bee not disturbed, but bee of good courage.

S. Truly master I can remember nothing.

M. What, not one word?

S. None at all.

M. I am ready to strike you: what profit have you then gotten?

S. I know not, otherwise than that perhaps I have in the mean time
abstained from evill.

M. That is some what indeed, if it could but so be that you have kept
your self wholy from evill.

S. I have abstained so much as I was able.

M. Graunt that it bee so, yet you have not pleased God, seeing it is
written, depart from evill and doe good, but tell mee (I pray thee)
for what cause principally did you goe thither?

S. That I might learne something.

M. Why have you not done so?

S. I could not.

M. Could you not, knave? yea you would not, or truly you have not
addicted your self to it.

S. I am compelled to confesse it.

M. What compelleth you?

S. My Conscience, which accuseth me before God.

M. You say well: oh that it were from the heart.

S. Truly I speak it from myne heart.

M. It may bee so: but goe to, what was the cause that you have
remembred nothing?

S. My negligence: for I attended not diligently.

M. What did you then?

S. Sometimes I slept.

M. So you used to doe: but what did you the rest of the time?

S. I thought on a thousand fooleries, as children are wont to doe.

M. Are you so very a child, that you ought not to be attentive to
heare the word of God?

S. If I had bin attentive, I should have profitted something.

M. What have you then meritted?

S. Stripes.

M. You have truly meritted them, and that very many.

S. I ingenuously confess it.

M. But in word only I think.

S. Yea truly from myne heart.

M. Possibly, but in the meane time prepare to receive stripes.

S. O master forgive it, I beseech you, I confes I have sinned, but
not of malice.

M. But such an evill negligence comes very neare wickedness (malice).

S. Truly I strive not against that: but nevertheles I implore your
clemencie through Jesus Christ.

M. What will you then doe, if I shall forgive you?

S. I will doe my dutie henceforth, as I hope.

M. You should have added thereto, by God's helpe: but you care little
for that.

S. Yea master, by God's help, I will hereafter doe my duty.

M. Goe to, I pardon you the fault for your teares: and I forgive it
you on this condition, that you bee myndful of your promise.

S. I thank you most Courteous master.

M. You shall bee in very great favour with mee, if you remember
your promise.

S. The most good and great God graunt that I may.

M. That is my desire, that hee would graunt it.

Here is another dialogue. Whether the riot of courtesy displayed in
it was typical of either England or Holland at that time I cannot say;
but in neither country are we now so solicitous:--

_Salutations at meeting and parting._

Clemens. David.

C. God save you David.

D. And you also Clemens.

C. God save you heartily.

D. And you also, as heartily.

C. How do you?

D. I am well I thank God; at your service: and you Clemens, how is
it with you? well?

C. I am also in health: how doth your father and mother?

D. They are in good health praised be God.

C. How goes it with you my good friend?

D. It goeth well with mee, goes it but so well with you.

C. I wish you good health.

D. I wish the same to you also.

C. I salute you.

D. And I you also.

C. Are you well? are you in good health?

D. I am well, indeed I am in good health, I am healthful, and in
prosperity.

C. That is good. That is well. That is pleasing to me. That maketh
mee glad. I love to hear that. I beseech you to take care of your
health. Preserve your health.

D. I can tarry no longer now. I am in haste to be gone. I must go. I
have need of my time. I cannot abide standing here. Fare you well
God be with you. God keep you still. I wish your health may continue.

C. And you also my loving friend, God protect you. God guide you. God
bee with you. May it please you in my behalf, heartily to salute your
wife and children.

D. I will do your message. But I pray, commend mee also to your father
and mother.

At the end of the book are some forms, in Dutch and English, of
mercantile letters, among them a specimen bill of lading of which I
quote a portion as an example of the gracious way in which business
was done in old and simpler days:--

I, J.P. of Amsterdam, master under God of my ship called the Saint
Peter at this present lying ready in the river of Amsterdam to saile
with the first goode winde which God shall give toward London, where
my right unlading shal be, acknowledge and confes that I have receaved
under the hatches of my foresaid ship of you S.J., merchaunt, to wit:
four pipes of oile, two chests of linnen, sixteen buts of currents,
one bale of canvase, five bals of pepper, thirteen rings of brasse
wyer, fiftie bars of iron, al dry and wel conditioned, marked with
this marke standing before, all which I promise to deliver (if God
give me a prosperous voyage with my said ship) at London aforesaid,
to the worshipful Mr. A.J. to his factour or assignes, paying for
the freight of the foresaid goods 20 fs. by the tun.

Quaintness and humour are not confined to the ancient phrase-books. An
English-Dutch conversational manual from which the languages are still
learned has a specimen "dialogue" in a coach, which is opened by the
gentleman remarking genially and politely to his fellow-passenger,
a lady, "Madame, shall we arrange our legs".

It occurs to me that very little Dutch has found its way into these
pages. Let me therefore give the first stanza of the national song,
"Voor Vaderland en Vorst":--


Wien Neerlandsch bloed in de aderen vloeit,
Van vreemde smetten vrij,
Wiens hart voor land en Koning gloeit,
Verhef den sang als wij:
Hij stel met ons, vereend van zin,
Met onbeklemde borst,
Het godgevallig feestlied in
Voor Vaderland en Vorst.


These are brave words. A very pedestrian translation runs thus:--


Who Ne'erland's blood feel nobly flow,
From foreign tainture free,
Whose hearts for king and country glow,
Come, raise the song as we:
With breasts serene, and spirits gay,
In holy union sing
The soul-inspiring festal lay,
For Fatherland and King.


And now a specimen of really mellifluous Dutch. "How
would you like," is the timely question of a daily paper
this morning, as I finish this chapter, "to be hit by a
'snellpaardelooszoondeerspoorwegpitroolrijtung?' That is what would
happen to you if you were run down by a motor-car in Holland. The name
comes from 'snell,' rapid; 'paardeloos,' horseless; 'zoondeerspoorweg,'
without rails; 'pitroolrijtung,' driven by petroleum. Only a Dutchman
can pronounce it."

Let me spice this chapter by selecting from the pages of proverbs in
Dutch and English a few which seem to me most excellent. No nation
has bad proverbs; the Dutch have some very good ones.

Many cows, much trouble.

Even hares pull a lion by the beard when he is old.

Men can bear all things, except good days.

The best pilots are ashore.

Velvet and silk are strange herbs: they blow the fire out of the
kitchen.

It is easy to make a good fire of another's turf.

It is good cutting large girths of another man's leather.

High trees give more shadow than fruit.

An old hunter delighteth to hear of hunting.

It hath soon rained enough in a wet pool.

God giveth the fowls meat, but they must fly for it.

An idle person is the devil's pillow.

No hen so witty but she layeth one egg lost in the nettles.

It happeneth sometimes that a good seaman falls overboard.

He is wise that is always wise.

When every one sweeps before his own house, then are the streets clean.

It is profitable for a man to end his life, before he die.

Before thou trust a friend eat a peck of salt with him.

It's bad catching hares with drums.

The pastor and sexton seldom agree.

No crown cureth headache.

There is nothing that sooner dryeth up than a tear.

Land purchase and good marriage happen not every day.

When old dogs bark it is time to look out.

Of early breakfast and late marriage men get not lightly the headache.

Ride on, but look about.

Nothing in haste, but to catch fleas.

To return to Arnheim: of the Groote Kerk I remember only the very
delicate colouring of the ceiling, and the monument of Charles van
Egmont, Duke of Guelders. I had grown tired of architecture: it seemed
goodlier to watch the shipping on the river, which at Arnheim may be
called the Rhine without hesitation. All the traffic to Cologne must
pass the town. Hitherto one had had qualms about the use of the word,
having seen the Rhine under various aliases in so many places. The
Maas at Rotterdam is a mouth of the Rhine; but before it can become
the Rhine proper it becomes the Lek, What is called the true mouth of
the Rhine is at Katwyk. At Dordrecht again is another of the Rhine's
mouths, the Waal, which runs into the old Maas and then into the
sea. The Yssel, still another mouth of the Rhine, which I saw at
Kampen on its way into the Zuyder Zee, breaks away from the parent
river just below Arnheim. As a matter of fact all Holland is on the
Rhine, but the word must be used with care.

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