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A Wanderer in Holland by E. V. Lucas

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




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 passage on this topic, in which
he says that the ancient fifteenth-century punishment for marital
infidelity, a sin forbidden by the municipal 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 assisting
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

Flushing

Middelburg once more--The Flushing baths--Shrimps and
chivalry--A Dutch boy--Charles V. at Souburg--Flushing
and the Spanish yoke--Philip and William the Silent--The
capture of Brill--A far-reaching drunken impulse--Flushing'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 Flushing from
there than to stay at Flushing. 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 Flushing baths could not well be excelled, but
I never knew shore 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 Flushing 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 buttons,
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 Flushing 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
associations with Souburg--the weary emperor putting off the purple,
and the little Dutch boer bursting jollily through black velvet.

Flushing played a great part in the great war. It was from Flushing
that Charles V. sailed in 1556; from Flushing that Philip II. sailed in
1559; neither to return. It was Flushing that heard Philip's farewell
to William of Orange, which in the light of after events may be called
the declaration of war that was to release the Netherlands from the
tyranny of Spain and Rome. "As Philip was proceeding on board the ship
which was to bear him for ever from the Netherlands, his eyes lighted
upon the Prince. His displeasure could no longer be restrained. With
angry face he turned upon him, and bitterly reproached him for having
thwarted all his plans by means of his secret intrigues. William
replied with humility that everything which had taken place had been
done through the regular and natural movements of the states. Upon
this the King, boiling with rage, seized the Prince by the wrist,
and, shaking it violently, exclaimed in Spanish, 'No los estados,
ma vos, vos, vos!'--Not the estates, but you, you, you!--repeating
thrice the word 'vos,' which is as disrespectful and uncourteous in
Spain as 'toi' in French."

That was 26th August, 1559. Philip's fleet consisted of ninety ships,
victualled, among other articles, with fifteen thousand capons, and
laden with such spoil as tapestry and silks, much of which had to
be thrown overboard in a storm to lighten the labouring vessels. It
seemed at one time as if the fleet must founder, but Philip reached
Spain in safety, and hastened to celebrate his escape, and emphasise
his policy of a universal religion, by an extensive _auto da fe_.

Flushing did not actually begin the war, in 1572, after the capture
of Brill at the mouth of the Maas, by the Water Beggars under De la
Marck, but it was the first town to respond to that invitation of
revolt against Alva and Spain. The foundations of the Dutch Republic
may have been laid at Brill, but it was the moral support of Flushing
that established them.

The date of the capture of Brill was April 1st, and Alva, who was then
at Brussels, suffered tortures from the Belgian wits. The word Brill,
by a happy chance, signifies spectacles, and a couplet was sung to
the effect that


On April Fool's Day
Duke Alva's spectacles were stolen away;


while, says Motley, a caricature was circulated depicting Alva's
spectacles being removed from his nose by De la Marck, while the Duke
uttered his habitual comment "'Tis nothing. 'Tis nothing."

What, however, began as little more than the desperate deed of some
hungry pirates, to satisfy their immediate needs, was soon turned
into a very far-reaching "something," by the action of Flushing,
whose burghers, under the Seigneur de Herpt, on hearing the news of
the rebellion of Brill, drove the Spanish garrison from the town. A
number of Spanish ships chancing to arrive on the same day, bringing
reinforcements, were just in time to find the town in arms. Had they
landed, the whole revolt might have been quelled, but a drunken loafer
of the town, in return for a pot of beer, offered to fire a gun at the
fleet from the ramparts. He was allowed to do so, and without a word
the fleet fell into a panic and sailed away. The day was won. It might
almost be said that that shot--that pot of beer--secured the freedom
of the Netherlands. Let this be remembered when John Barleycorn is
before his many judges.

A little later Brill sent help, and Flushing's independence was
secure. Motley describes this band of assistants in a picturesque
passage:--

"The expedition seemed a fierce but whimsical masquerade. Every man in
the little fleet was attired in the gorgeous vestments of the plundered
churches, in gold-embroidered cassocks, glittering mass-garments, or
the more sombre cowls and robes of Capuchin friars. So sped the early
standard bearers of that ferocious liberty which had sprung from the
fires in which all else for which men cherish their fatherland had
been consumed. So swept that resolute but fantastic band along the
placid estuaries of Zeeland, waking the stagnant waters with their
wild beggar songs and cries of vengeance.

"That vengeance found soon a distinguished object. Pacheco, the
chief engineer of Alva, who had accompanied the Duke in his march
from Italy, who had since earned a world-wide reputation as the
architect of the Antwerp citadel, had been just despatched in haste
to Flushing to complete the fortress whose construction had been
so long delayed. Too late for his work, too soon for his safety,
the ill-fated engineer had arrived almost at the same moment with
Treslong and his crew. He had stepped on shore, entirely ignorant of
all which had transpired, expecting to be treated with the respect
due to the chief commandant of the place, and to an officer high in
the confidence of the Governor-general. He found himself surrounded by
an indignant and threatening mob. The unfortunate Italian understood
not a word of the opprobrious language addressed to him, but he easily
comprehended that the authority of the Duke was overthrown.

"Observing De Ryk, a distinguished partisan officer and privateersman
of Amsterdam, whose reputation for bravery and generosity was known
to him, he approached him, and drawing a seal ring from his finger
kissed it, and handed it to the rebel chieftain. By this dumb-show
he gave him to understand that he relied upon his honor for the
treatment due to a gentleman. De Ryk understood the appeal, and would
willingly have assured him, at least, a soldier's death, but he was
powerless to do so. He arrested him, that he might be protected from
the fury of the rabble; but Treslong, who now commanded in Flushing,
was especially incensed against the founder of the Antwerp citadel,
and felt a ferocious desire to avenge his brother's murder upon the
body of his destroyer's favourite.

"Pacheco was condemned to be hanged upon the very day of his
arrival. Having been brought forth from his prison, he begged
hard but not abjectly for his life. He offered a heavy ransom, but
his enemies were greedy for blood, not for money. It was, however,
difficult to find an executioner. The city hangman was absent, and the
prejudice of the country and the age against the vile profession had
assuredly not been diminished during the five horrible years of Alva's
administration. Even a condemned murderer, who lay in the town gaol,
refused to accept his life in recompence for performing the office. It
should never be said, he observed, that his mother had given birth
to a hangman. When told, however, that the intended victim was a
Spanish officer, the malefactor consented to the task with alacrity,
on condition that he might afterwards kill any man who taunted him
with the deed.

"Arrived at the foot of the gallows, Pacheco complained bitterly of
the disgraceful death designed for him. He protested loudly that he
came of a house as noble as that of Egmont or Hoorn, and was entitled
to as honourable an execution as theirs had been. 'The sword! the
sword!' he frantically exclaimed, as he struggled with those who
guarded him. His language was not understood, but the name of Egmont
and Hoorn inflamed still more highly the rage of the rabble, while
his cry for the sword was falsely interpreted by a rude fellow who had
happened to possess himself of Pacheco's rapier, at his capture, and
who now paraded himself with it at the gallows foot. 'Never fear for
your sword, Senor,' cried this ruffian; 'your sword is safe enough,
and in good hands. Up the ladder with you, Senor; you have no further
use for your sword.' Pacheco, thus outraged, submitted to his fate. He
mounted the ladder with a steady step, and was hanged between two
other Spanish officers.

"So perished miserably a brave soldier, and one of the most
distinguished engineers of his time; a man whose character and
accomplishments had certainly merited for him a better fate. But
while we stigmatize as it deserves the atrocious conduct of a few
Netherland partisans, we should remember who first unchained the demon
of international hatred in this unhappy land, nor should it ever be
forgotten that the great leader of the revolt, by word, proclamation,
example, by entreaties, threats, and condign punishment, constantly
rebuked and, to a certain extent, restrained the sanguinary spirit
by which some of his followers disgraced the noble cause which they
had espoused."

Flushing's hero is De Ruyter, whose rope-walk wheel we saw at
Middelburg, and whose truculent lineaments have so often frowned at
us from the walls of picture gallery and stadhuis throughout the
country--almost without exception from the hand of Ferdinand Bol,
or a copyist.

Scratch a sea-dog and you find a pirate; De Ruyter, who stands in stone
for all time by Flushing harbour, lacking the warranty of war would
have been a Paul Jones beyond eulogy. You can see it in his strong
brows, his determined mouth, his every line. It is only two hundred
and thirty-seven years, only seven generations, since he was in the
Thames with his fleet, and London was panic-stricken. No enemy has
been there since. The English had their revenge in 1809, when they
bombarded Flushing and reduced it to only a semblance of what it had
been. Among the beautiful buildings which our cannon balls destroyed
was the ancient stadhuis. Hence it is that Flushing's stadhuis to-day
is a mere recent upstart.

Flushing does little to amuse its visitors after the sun has left the
sea; and we were very glad of the excuse offered by the Middelburg
kermis to return to our inland city each afternoon. The Middelburg
kermis is a particularly merry one. The stalls and roundabouts fill
the market square before the stadhuis, packed so closely that the
revolving horses nearly carry the poffertje restaurants round with
them. The Dutch roundabouts, by the way, still, like the English,
retain horses: they have not, like the French, as I noticed at three
fairs in and about Paris last autumn, taken to pigs and rabbits.

I examined the Middelburg kermis very thoroughly. Few though the
exhibits were, they included two fat women. Their booths stood on
opposite sides of the square, all the fun of the fair between them. In
the west was Mile. Jeanne; in the east the Princess Sexiena. Jeanne
was French, Sexiena came from the Fatherland. Both, though rivals,
used the same poster: a picture of a lady, enormous, decolletee,
highly-coloured, stepping into a fiacre, to the cocher's intense
alarm. Before one inspected the rival giantesses this community of
advertisement had seemed to be a mistake; after, its absurdity was only
too apparent, for although the Princess was colossal, Mile. Jeanae
was more so. Mile. Jeanne should therefore have employed an artist
to make an independent allurement.

Both also displayed outside the booths a pair of corsets, but here,
I fancy, the advantage was with Mlle. Jeanne, although such were the
distractions of the square that it was difficult to keep relative
sizes in mind as one crossed it.

We visited the Princess first and found her large enough. She gasped on
a dais--it was the hottest week of the year. She was happy, she said,
except in such warmth. She was not married: Princes had sighed for
her in vain. She rode a bicycle, she assured us, and enjoyment in the
incredulity of her hearers was evidently one of her pleasures. Her
manager listened impatiently, for our conversation interrupted his
routine; he then took his oath that she was not padded, and bade her
exhibit her leg. She did so, and it was like the mast of a ship.

I dropped five cents into her plate and passed on to Mlle. Jeanne. The
Princess had been large enough; Mlle. Jeanne was larger. She wore
her panoply of flesh less like a flower than did her rival. Her
expression was less placid; she panted distressfully as she fanned
her bulk. But in conversation she relaxed. She too was happy, except
in such heat. She neither rode a bicycle nor walked--save two or
three steps. As her name indicated, she too was unmarried, although,
her manager interjected, few wives could make a better omelette. But
men are cowards, and such fortresses very formidable.

As we talked, the manager, who had entered the booth as blase an
entrepreneur as the Continent holds, showed signs of animation. In
time he grew almost enthusiastic and patted Mlle.'s arms with pride. He
assisted her to exhibit her leg quite as though its glories were also
his. The Princess's leg had been like the mast of a ship; this was
like the trunk of a Burnham beech.

And here, at Flushing, we leave the country. I should have liked to
have steamed down the Scheldt to Antwerp on one of the ships that
continually pass, if only to be once more among the friendly francs
with their noticeable purchasing power, and to saunter again through
the Plantin Museum among the ghosts of old printers, and to stand for
a while in the Museum before Van Eyck's delicious drawing of Saint
Barbara. But it must not be. This is not a Belgian book, but a Dutch
book; and here it ends.




NOTES


[1] The whole dress worn by the Prince on this tragical occasion is
still to be seen at The Hague in the National Museum.--_Motley_.

[2] The house now called the Prinsen Hof (but used as a barrack)
still presents nearly the same appearance as it did in 1584.--_Motley_.

[3] Mendoza's estimate of the entire population as numbering only
fourteen thousand before the siege is evidently erroneous. It was
probably nearer fifty thousand.--_Motley_.

[4] Since writing the above passage I am reminded by a correspondent
that Louis XIV. described the Dutch as a nation of shopkeepers and
Napoleon merely borrowed and adapted the phrase.

[5] "With the Rederijkern," Longfellow adds, "Hood's amusing 'Nocturnal
Sketch' would have been a Driedobbelsteert, or a poem with three
tails;--


Even is come; and from the dark park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun, one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain.
Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as with his poetic tongue Young sung."

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