Historic Leyden
Leyden, July 31.
We came to Leyden to spend the night, and have stayed three days. This was partly because it is necessary to sometimes rest your neck and feet, and partly because the Hotel Levedag is one of those delightful places where the beds are soft, the eats good and the help around the hotel does its best to make you comfortable. Leyden itself is worth while, but ordinarily it would be disposed of in two walks and a carriage-ride. It is a college town, and this is vacation; so everybody in the place has had the time to wait on wandering Americans and make the process of extracting their money as sweet and as long drawn out as possible.
Leyden is a good deal like Lawrence, Kansas. It is full of historic spots, and is very quiet in the summer-time. In Leyden they refer to the siege by the Spaniards in 1573 just as the Lawrence people speak of theQuantrill raid. The Dutch were in their war for independence, and the Duke of Alva’s army besieged Leyden. They began in October, and as the town was well fortified it resisted bravely. Early in the year the neighboring town of Haarlem had surrendered and the Spaniards had tied the citizens back to back and chucked them into the river. The Leydenites preferred to die fighting rather than surrender and die. They had just about come to starvation in March of the next year, when they decided to break down the dikes and let the sea take the country. The sea brought in a relief fleet sent by William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and the Spaniards retreated before the water. Then the wind changed, drove back the waves, and William fixed the dikes. This siege of Leyden was really one of the great events in history, and the story goes that out of gratitude to the people of the town William offered to exempt them from taxes for a term of years or to establish a University in their city. Leyden took the University, which is hard to believe of the Dutch, unless they were farseeing enough to know that the students would bea never-ending source of income and that the taxes would come back. The university thus established by William of Orange in 1575 has been one of the best of the educational institutions in Europe, and has produced many great scholars. It now has 1700 students and a strong faculty. Some of the boys must be making up flunks by attending summer school, for last night at an hour when all good Dutchmen should be in bed, the sweet strains came through the odor of the canal, same old tune but Dutch words: “I don’t care what becomes of me, while I am singing this sweet melody, yip de yaddy aye yea, aye yea, yip-de yaddy, aye yea.”
NO PLACE FOR A MAN FROM KANSAS
NO PLACE FOR A MAN FROM KANSAS
The river Rhine filters through Leyden and to the sea. It never would get there, for Leyden is several feet below the sea-level, but by the use of big locks the Dutch raise the river to the proper height and pour it in. These are the dikes the Dutch opened to drive out the Spaniards. It is so easy I wonder they did not do it earlier. At any rate, the Spaniards never got much of a hold in this part of Holland again. The sandhills along the beach make an ideal bathing-place. I took a canal-boat and in three hours time covered the six miles from Leyden to Katryk. The Dutch ladies and gentlemen were playing in the water and on the sand, and it was no place for a man from Kansas. I have no criticism of these big bathing-beaches and we have some in our own fair land where the scenery is just as startling. But the Dutch ladies consider a skirt which does not touch the ground the same as immodest. And no Dutch gentleman will appear in public without his vest as well as his coat. On the beach the reaction is great, so great that I don’t blame the Spaniards for running away.
It was in Leyden that the congregation of Puritans resided which sent the delegation of Pilgrim Fathers across the Atlantic in 1620. In St. Peter’s church John Robinson, the pastor, lies buried, and there he is said to have preached. A tablet tells of the house across the way which occupies the site of the little church in which Robinson held forth for years. The present house was not built until 1683, but that is close enough to make it interesting. The Puritans had several congregations in Leyden, but the Robinson church is the only one that made history. When the civil war broke out in England and Cromwell was leading the cause of liberty, all of the Puritans in Leyden who had not gone to America and who could raise the fare, returned to England and disappeared from the Dutch records. They were fine people in many ways, but the Dutch did not try to get them to stay. They dearly loved to argue, and when it was necessary to promote religious freedom by punching the heads of those who did not believe as they did, the Puritans were there with the punch.
Rembrandt, the great Dutch painter, was born in Leyden, in 1606. A stable now marks the spot where he first saw the light. It is a little difficult to get up a thrill in a livery stable, but we did our best. Rembrandt’s father was a miller, and operated one of these big Dutch windmills. When Rembrandt was about 25 years old he married and moved to Amsterdam, but he did not settle down.While he became popular and made a good deal of money, he was no manager and he spent like a true sport. When his wife died he went broke, and lived the last years of his life in a modest way. About 550 paintings are now known and attributed to him, together with about 250 etchings and more than a thousand drawings. His portrayals of expression and of lights and shadows are the great points of excellence in his work, but he was a master of every detail of the art. His pictures command more money than those of any other artist, and to my notion he is the greatest of all the great painters. Most of the other old fellows have left but few masterpieces, while Rembrandt never did anything but great work. The Dutch worship God, Rembrandt and William of Orange, and I never can tell which comes first with them.
There is a hill in Leyden, eighty feet high and several hundred yards around the base. It is well covered with trees, and was topped with a fort in the good old days. Unfortunately, the buildings around it—for it is in the middle of town—keep it from being seenat a distance. People come from far and near to see the hill. It is as much of a novelty in this part of Holland as a Niagara would be in Kansas.
The public market is a feature in every Dutch town, as it is in most European countries. A large square is devoted to the purpose, and here the fish, the vegetables and everything from livestock to second-hand books is offered for sale. The square and the sidewalks are covered with the market displays, the farmers, the fishermen, the buyers, and the curious. There is only one small newspaper in this city of 60,000 inhabitants, but I suppose everybody hears the news at the market. It is better than a show, or an art gallery, or a cathedral, to see the dickering, hear the talk and watch the people. The housewives or their representatives are there with baskets and comments, and the men of the town have some excuse to be around. Peasant costumes, peculiar headdresses, large fat ladies, wooden shoes, and all the odd and picturesque things that you can put into a landscape surrounded by quaintbuildings and a canal, are mixed in confusion and yet in order. The colors which the painters put into their Holland pictures are present, and the sturdy, thrifty, trafficking Dutch people are there with the petticoats or the tobacco-smoke, which their sex calls for under such circumstances. Here in Leyden, where a house less than a hundred years old is a curiosity and where Dutch traditions are held as sacred, we have enjoyed the wonderful nature-picture of this moving market. And I might add that we have contributed greatly to the hilarity of the occasion by our own peculiar appearance and ways—peculiar from the view-point of the other fellow.