Letter XXVIII.A Journey through The Netherlands.Arnheim, Guelderland,August19, 1848.After writing my last I was early asleep, that I might set out early the next morning in the diligence for Brussels. This I did, and passing through Compeigne, where Joan of Arc was made prisoner—a town lying in the midst of extensive forests, with here and there a noble group of trees; and through Noyon, where Calvin was born, and in the old Gothic church of which he doubtless worshiped; and through Cambray, where Fenelon lived; and through fields of grain and poppy and clover, where women were at work, reaping the wheat, or mowing and stacking the ripe poppies, or digging with spades in their wet clothes, for it had rained every day but one during the thirteen we were in France, we arrived in the afternoon of the second day at the French frontier. From this a railway took us in a few hours to Brussels. Imagine a rather clean-looking city, of large light-colored buildings mostly covered with stucco, situated on an irregular declivity, with a shady park in the highest part surrounded by palaces, and a little lower down a fine old Gothic cathedral, and still lower down, the old Town Hall, also of Gothic architecture, and scarcely less venerable, standing in a noble paved square, around which are white and stately edifices, built in the era of the Spanish dominion;—imagine handsome shops and a good-looking people, with a liberal sprinkling of priests, in their long-skirted garments, and throw in the usual proportion of dirt and misery, and mendicancy, in the corners and by-places, and you have Brussels before you.It still rained, but we got a tilbury and drove out to see the battle-ground of Waterloo. It was a dreary drive beside the wood of Soignes and through a part of it,—that melancholy-looking forest of tall-stemmed beeches—beech, beech, nothing but beech—and through the Walloon villages—Waterloo is one of them—and through fields where wet women were at work, and over roads where dirty children by dozens were dabbling like ducks in the puddles. At last we stopped at the village of Mont St. Jean, whence we walked through the slippery mud to the mound erected in the midst of the battle-field, and climbed to its top, overlooking a country of gentle declivities and hollows. Here the various positions of the French and allied armies during the battle which decided the fate of an empire, were pointed out to us by a young Walloon who sold wine and drams in a shed beside the monument. The two races which make up the population of Belgium are still remarkably distinct, notwithstanding the centuries which have elapsed since they occupied the same country together. The Flemings of Teutonic origin, keep their blue eyes and fair hair, and their ancient language—the same nearly as the Dutch of the sixteenth century. The Walloons, a Celtic race, or Celtic mixed with Roman, are still known by their dark hair and black eyes, and speak a dialect derived from the Latin, resembling that of some of the French provinces. Both languages are uncultivated, and the French has been adopted as the language of commerce and literature in Belgium.If you would see a city wholly Flemish in its character, you should visit Antwerp, to which the railway takes you in an hour and a half. The population here is almost without Walloon intermixture, and there is little to remind you of what you have seen in France, except the French books in the booksellers' windows. The arts themselves have a character of their own which never came across the Alps. The churches, the interior of which is always carefully kept fresh with paint and gilding, are crowded with statues in wood, carved with wonderful skill and spirit by Flemish artists, in centuries gone by—oaken saints looking down from pedestals, and Adam and Eve in the remorse of their first transgression supporting, by the help of the tree of knowledge and the serpent, a curiously wrought pulpit. The walls are hung with pictures by the Flemish masters, wherever space can be found for them. In the Cathedral, is the Descent from the Cross, by Rubens, which proves, what one might almost doubt who had only seen his pictures in the Louvre, that he was a true artist and a man of genius in the noblest sense of the term.We passed two nights in Antwerp, and then went down the Scheldt in a steamer, which, in ten hours, brought us to Rotterdam, sometimes crossing an arm of the sea, and sometimes threading a broad canal. The houses on each side of these channels, after we entered Holland, were for the most part freshly painted; the flat plains on each side protected by embankments, and streaked by long wide ditches full of water, and rows of pollard willows. Windmills by scores, some grinding corn, but most of them pumping water out of the meadows and pouring it into the channel, stood on the bank and were swinging their long arms madly in a high wind.On arriving at Rotterdam, you perceive at once that you are in Holland. The city has as many canals as streets, the canals are generally overhung with rows of elms, and the streets kept scrupulously clean with the water of the canals, which is salt. Every morning there is a vigorous splashing and mopping performed before every door by plump servant girls, in white caps and thick wooden shoes. Our hotel stood fronting a broad sheet of water like the lagoons at Venice, where a solid and straight stone wharf was shaded with a row of elms, and before our door lay several huge vessels fastened to the wharf, which looked as if they were sent thither to enjoy a vacation, for they were neither loading nor unloading, nor did any person appear to be busy about them. Rotterdam was at that time in the midst of a fair which filled the open squares and the wider streets of the city with booths, and attracted crowds of people from the country. There were damsels from North Holland, fair as snow, and some of them pretty, in long-eared lace caps, with their plump arms bare; and there were maidens from another province, the name of which I did not learn, equally good-looking, with arms as bare, and faces in white muslin caps drawn to a point on each cheek. Olycoeks were frying, and waffles baking in temporary kitchens on each side of the streets.The country about Rotterdam is little better than a marsh. The soil serves only for pasture, and the fields are still covered with "yellow blossoms," as in the time of Goldsmith, and still tufted with willows. I saw houses in the city standing in pools of dull blue water, reached by a bridge from the street: I suppose, however, there might be gardens behind them. Many of the houses decline very much from the perpendicular; they are, however, apparently well-built and are spacious. We made no long stay in Rotterdam, but after looking at its bronze statue of Erasmus, and its cathedral, which is not remarkable in any other respect than that it is a Gothic building of brick, stone being scarce in Holland, we took the stage-coach for the Hague the next day.Green meadows spotted with buttercups and dandelions, flat and low, lower than the canals with which the country is intersected, and which bring in between them, at high tide, the waters of the distant sea, stretched on every side. They were striped with long lines of water which is constantly pumped out by the windmills, and sent with the ebb tide through the canals to the ocean. Herds of cattle were feeding among the bright verdure. From time to time, we passed some pleasant country-seat, the walls bright with paint, and the grounds surrounded by a ditch, call it a moat if you please, the surface of which was green with duck-weed. But within this watery inclosure, were little artificial elevations covered with a closely-shaven turf, and plantations of shrubbery, and in the more extensive and ostentatious of them, were what might be called groves and forests. Before one of these houses was a fountain with figures, mouths of lions and other animals, gushing profusely with water, which must have been pumped up for the purpose, into a reservoir, by one of the windmills.Passing through Schiedam, still famous for its gin, and Delft, once famous for its crockery, we reached in a couple of hours the Hague, the cleanest of cities, paved with yellow brick, and as full of canals as Rotterdam. I called on an old acquaintance, who received me with a warm embrace and a kiss on each cheek. He was in his morning-gown, which he immediately exchanged for an elegant frock coat of the latest Parisian cut, and took us to see Baron Vorstolk's collection of pictures, which contains some beautiful things by the Flemish artists, and next, to the public collection called the Museum. From this we drove to the Chateau du Bois, a residence of the Dutch Stadtholders two hundred years ago, when Holland was a republic, and a powerful and formidable one. It is pleasantly situated in the edge of a wood, which is said to be part of an original forest of the country. I could believe this, for here the soil rises above the marshy level of Holland, and trees of various kinds grow irregularly intermingled, as in the natural woods of our own country. The Chateau du Bois is principally remarkable for a large room with a dome, the interior of which is covered with large paintings by Rubens, Jordaens, and other artists.Our friend took leave of us, and we drove out to Scheveling, where Charles II. embarked for England, when he returned to take possession of his throne. Here dwell a people who supply the fish-market of the Hague, speak among themselves a dialect which is not understood elsewhere in Holland, and wear the same costume which they wore centuries ago. We passed several of the women going to market or returning, with large baskets on their heads, placed on the crown of a broad-brimmed straw bonnet, tied at the sides under the chin, and strapping creatures they were, striding along in their striped black and white petticoats. In the streets of Scheveling, I saw the tallest woman I think I ever met with, a very giantess, considerably more than six feet high, straddling about the street of the little village, and scouring and scrubbing the pavement with great energy. Close at hand was the shore; a strong west wind was driving the surges of the North Sea against it. A hundred fishing vessels rocking in the surf, moored and lashed together with ropes, formed a line along the beach; the men of Scheveling, in knit woollen caps, short blue jackets, and short trowsers of prodigious width, were walking about on the shore, but the wind was too high and the sea too wild for them to venture out. Along this coast, the North Sea has heaped a high range of sand-hills, which protect the low lands within from its own inundations; but to the north and south the shore is guarded by embankments, raised by the hand of man with great cost, and watched and kept in constant repair.We left the Hague, and taking the railway, in a little more than two hours were at Amsterdam, a great commercial city in decay, where nearly half of the inhabitants live on the charity of the rest. The next morning was Sunday, and taking advantage of an interval of fair weather, for it still continued to rain every day, I went to the Oudekerk, or Old Church, as the ancient Cathedral is called, which might have been an impressive building in its original construction, but is now spoiled by cross-beams, paint, galleries, partitions, pews, and every sort of architectural enormity. But there is a noble organ, with a massive and lofty front of white marble richly sculptured, occupying the west end of the chancel. I listened to a sermon in Dutch, the delivery of which, owing partly to the disagreeable voice of the speaker and partly no doubt to my ignorance of the language, seemed to me a kind of barking. The men all wore their hats during the service, but half the women were without bonnets. When the sermon and prayer were over, the rich tones of the organ broke forth and flooded the place with melody.Every body visits Broek, near Amsterdam, the pride of Dutch villages, and to Broek I went accordingly. It stands like the rest, among dykes and canals, but consists altogether of the habitations of persons in comfortable circumstances, and is remarkable, as you know, for its scrupulous cleanliness. The common streets and footways, are kept in the same order as the private garden-walks. They are paved with yellow bricks, and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared as if just washed and mopped. I have never seen any collection of human habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses. Saardam, where Peter the Great began his apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a shelf within the wall, from which a door opens into the room. I should have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another. They were dairy houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into butter. The lower story of the dwelling, paved with bricks, is used in winter as a stable for the cattle; in the summer, it is carefully cleansed and painted, so that not a trace of its former use remains, and it then becomes both the dairy and the abode of the family. The story above is as neat as the hands of Dutch housewives can make it; the parlor, the dining-room, the little boxes in the wall which hold the beds, are resplendent with cleanliness.In going from Amsterdam by railway to Utrecht, we perceived the canals by which the plains were intersected became fewer and fewer, and finally we began to see crops of grain and potatoes, a sign that we had emerged from the marshes. We stopped to take a brief survey of Utrecht. A part of its old cathedral has been converted into a beautiful Gothic church, the rest having been levelled many years ago by a whirlwind. But what I found most remarkable in the city was its public walks. The old walls by which Utrecht was once inclosed having been thrown down, the rubbish has formed hillocks and slopes which almost surround the entire city and border one of its principal canals. On these hillocks and slopes, trees and shrubs have been planted, and walks laid out through the green turf, until it has become one of the most varied and charming pleasure-grounds I ever saw—swelling into little eminences, sinking into little valleys, descending in some places smoothly to the water, and in others impending over it. We fell in with a music-master, of whom we asked a question or two. He happened to know a little German, by the help of which he pieced out his Dutch so as to make it tolerably intelligible to me. He insisted upon showing us every thing remarkable in Utrecht, and finally walked us tired.The same evening the diligence brought us to Arnheim, a neat-looking town with about eighteen hundred inhabitants, in the province of Guelderland, where the region retains not a trace of the peculiarities of Holland. The country west of the town rises into commanding eminences, overlooking the noble Rhine, and I feel already that I am in Germany, though I have yet to cross the frontier.
After writing my last I was early asleep, that I might set out early the next morning in the diligence for Brussels. This I did, and passing through Compeigne, where Joan of Arc was made prisoner—a town lying in the midst of extensive forests, with here and there a noble group of trees; and through Noyon, where Calvin was born, and in the old Gothic church of which he doubtless worshiped; and through Cambray, where Fenelon lived; and through fields of grain and poppy and clover, where women were at work, reaping the wheat, or mowing and stacking the ripe poppies, or digging with spades in their wet clothes, for it had rained every day but one during the thirteen we were in France, we arrived in the afternoon of the second day at the French frontier. From this a railway took us in a few hours to Brussels. Imagine a rather clean-looking city, of large light-colored buildings mostly covered with stucco, situated on an irregular declivity, with a shady park in the highest part surrounded by palaces, and a little lower down a fine old Gothic cathedral, and still lower down, the old Town Hall, also of Gothic architecture, and scarcely less venerable, standing in a noble paved square, around which are white and stately edifices, built in the era of the Spanish dominion;—imagine handsome shops and a good-looking people, with a liberal sprinkling of priests, in their long-skirted garments, and throw in the usual proportion of dirt and misery, and mendicancy, in the corners and by-places, and you have Brussels before you.
It still rained, but we got a tilbury and drove out to see the battle-ground of Waterloo. It was a dreary drive beside the wood of Soignes and through a part of it,—that melancholy-looking forest of tall-stemmed beeches—beech, beech, nothing but beech—and through the Walloon villages—Waterloo is one of them—and through fields where wet women were at work, and over roads where dirty children by dozens were dabbling like ducks in the puddles. At last we stopped at the village of Mont St. Jean, whence we walked through the slippery mud to the mound erected in the midst of the battle-field, and climbed to its top, overlooking a country of gentle declivities and hollows. Here the various positions of the French and allied armies during the battle which decided the fate of an empire, were pointed out to us by a young Walloon who sold wine and drams in a shed beside the monument. The two races which make up the population of Belgium are still remarkably distinct, notwithstanding the centuries which have elapsed since they occupied the same country together. The Flemings of Teutonic origin, keep their blue eyes and fair hair, and their ancient language—the same nearly as the Dutch of the sixteenth century. The Walloons, a Celtic race, or Celtic mixed with Roman, are still known by their dark hair and black eyes, and speak a dialect derived from the Latin, resembling that of some of the French provinces. Both languages are uncultivated, and the French has been adopted as the language of commerce and literature in Belgium.
If you would see a city wholly Flemish in its character, you should visit Antwerp, to which the railway takes you in an hour and a half. The population here is almost without Walloon intermixture, and there is little to remind you of what you have seen in France, except the French books in the booksellers' windows. The arts themselves have a character of their own which never came across the Alps. The churches, the interior of which is always carefully kept fresh with paint and gilding, are crowded with statues in wood, carved with wonderful skill and spirit by Flemish artists, in centuries gone by—oaken saints looking down from pedestals, and Adam and Eve in the remorse of their first transgression supporting, by the help of the tree of knowledge and the serpent, a curiously wrought pulpit. The walls are hung with pictures by the Flemish masters, wherever space can be found for them. In the Cathedral, is the Descent from the Cross, by Rubens, which proves, what one might almost doubt who had only seen his pictures in the Louvre, that he was a true artist and a man of genius in the noblest sense of the term.
We passed two nights in Antwerp, and then went down the Scheldt in a steamer, which, in ten hours, brought us to Rotterdam, sometimes crossing an arm of the sea, and sometimes threading a broad canal. The houses on each side of these channels, after we entered Holland, were for the most part freshly painted; the flat plains on each side protected by embankments, and streaked by long wide ditches full of water, and rows of pollard willows. Windmills by scores, some grinding corn, but most of them pumping water out of the meadows and pouring it into the channel, stood on the bank and were swinging their long arms madly in a high wind.
On arriving at Rotterdam, you perceive at once that you are in Holland. The city has as many canals as streets, the canals are generally overhung with rows of elms, and the streets kept scrupulously clean with the water of the canals, which is salt. Every morning there is a vigorous splashing and mopping performed before every door by plump servant girls, in white caps and thick wooden shoes. Our hotel stood fronting a broad sheet of water like the lagoons at Venice, where a solid and straight stone wharf was shaded with a row of elms, and before our door lay several huge vessels fastened to the wharf, which looked as if they were sent thither to enjoy a vacation, for they were neither loading nor unloading, nor did any person appear to be busy about them. Rotterdam was at that time in the midst of a fair which filled the open squares and the wider streets of the city with booths, and attracted crowds of people from the country. There were damsels from North Holland, fair as snow, and some of them pretty, in long-eared lace caps, with their plump arms bare; and there were maidens from another province, the name of which I did not learn, equally good-looking, with arms as bare, and faces in white muslin caps drawn to a point on each cheek. Olycoeks were frying, and waffles baking in temporary kitchens on each side of the streets.
The country about Rotterdam is little better than a marsh. The soil serves only for pasture, and the fields are still covered with "yellow blossoms," as in the time of Goldsmith, and still tufted with willows. I saw houses in the city standing in pools of dull blue water, reached by a bridge from the street: I suppose, however, there might be gardens behind them. Many of the houses decline very much from the perpendicular; they are, however, apparently well-built and are spacious. We made no long stay in Rotterdam, but after looking at its bronze statue of Erasmus, and its cathedral, which is not remarkable in any other respect than that it is a Gothic building of brick, stone being scarce in Holland, we took the stage-coach for the Hague the next day.
Green meadows spotted with buttercups and dandelions, flat and low, lower than the canals with which the country is intersected, and which bring in between them, at high tide, the waters of the distant sea, stretched on every side. They were striped with long lines of water which is constantly pumped out by the windmills, and sent with the ebb tide through the canals to the ocean. Herds of cattle were feeding among the bright verdure. From time to time, we passed some pleasant country-seat, the walls bright with paint, and the grounds surrounded by a ditch, call it a moat if you please, the surface of which was green with duck-weed. But within this watery inclosure, were little artificial elevations covered with a closely-shaven turf, and plantations of shrubbery, and in the more extensive and ostentatious of them, were what might be called groves and forests. Before one of these houses was a fountain with figures, mouths of lions and other animals, gushing profusely with water, which must have been pumped up for the purpose, into a reservoir, by one of the windmills.
Passing through Schiedam, still famous for its gin, and Delft, once famous for its crockery, we reached in a couple of hours the Hague, the cleanest of cities, paved with yellow brick, and as full of canals as Rotterdam. I called on an old acquaintance, who received me with a warm embrace and a kiss on each cheek. He was in his morning-gown, which he immediately exchanged for an elegant frock coat of the latest Parisian cut, and took us to see Baron Vorstolk's collection of pictures, which contains some beautiful things by the Flemish artists, and next, to the public collection called the Museum. From this we drove to the Chateau du Bois, a residence of the Dutch Stadtholders two hundred years ago, when Holland was a republic, and a powerful and formidable one. It is pleasantly situated in the edge of a wood, which is said to be part of an original forest of the country. I could believe this, for here the soil rises above the marshy level of Holland, and trees of various kinds grow irregularly intermingled, as in the natural woods of our own country. The Chateau du Bois is principally remarkable for a large room with a dome, the interior of which is covered with large paintings by Rubens, Jordaens, and other artists.
Our friend took leave of us, and we drove out to Scheveling, where Charles II. embarked for England, when he returned to take possession of his throne. Here dwell a people who supply the fish-market of the Hague, speak among themselves a dialect which is not understood elsewhere in Holland, and wear the same costume which they wore centuries ago. We passed several of the women going to market or returning, with large baskets on their heads, placed on the crown of a broad-brimmed straw bonnet, tied at the sides under the chin, and strapping creatures they were, striding along in their striped black and white petticoats. In the streets of Scheveling, I saw the tallest woman I think I ever met with, a very giantess, considerably more than six feet high, straddling about the street of the little village, and scouring and scrubbing the pavement with great energy. Close at hand was the shore; a strong west wind was driving the surges of the North Sea against it. A hundred fishing vessels rocking in the surf, moored and lashed together with ropes, formed a line along the beach; the men of Scheveling, in knit woollen caps, short blue jackets, and short trowsers of prodigious width, were walking about on the shore, but the wind was too high and the sea too wild for them to venture out. Along this coast, the North Sea has heaped a high range of sand-hills, which protect the low lands within from its own inundations; but to the north and south the shore is guarded by embankments, raised by the hand of man with great cost, and watched and kept in constant repair.
We left the Hague, and taking the railway, in a little more than two hours were at Amsterdam, a great commercial city in decay, where nearly half of the inhabitants live on the charity of the rest. The next morning was Sunday, and taking advantage of an interval of fair weather, for it still continued to rain every day, I went to the Oudekerk, or Old Church, as the ancient Cathedral is called, which might have been an impressive building in its original construction, but is now spoiled by cross-beams, paint, galleries, partitions, pews, and every sort of architectural enormity. But there is a noble organ, with a massive and lofty front of white marble richly sculptured, occupying the west end of the chancel. I listened to a sermon in Dutch, the delivery of which, owing partly to the disagreeable voice of the speaker and partly no doubt to my ignorance of the language, seemed to me a kind of barking. The men all wore their hats during the service, but half the women were without bonnets. When the sermon and prayer were over, the rich tones of the organ broke forth and flooded the place with melody.
Every body visits Broek, near Amsterdam, the pride of Dutch villages, and to Broek I went accordingly. It stands like the rest, among dykes and canals, but consists altogether of the habitations of persons in comfortable circumstances, and is remarkable, as you know, for its scrupulous cleanliness. The common streets and footways, are kept in the same order as the private garden-walks. They are paved with yellow bricks, and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared as if just washed and mopped. I have never seen any collection of human habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses. Saardam, where Peter the Great began his apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a shelf within the wall, from which a door opens into the room. I should have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another. They were dairy houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into butter. The lower story of the dwelling, paved with bricks, is used in winter as a stable for the cattle; in the summer, it is carefully cleansed and painted, so that not a trace of its former use remains, and it then becomes both the dairy and the abode of the family. The story above is as neat as the hands of Dutch housewives can make it; the parlor, the dining-room, the little boxes in the wall which hold the beds, are resplendent with cleanliness.
In going from Amsterdam by railway to Utrecht, we perceived the canals by which the plains were intersected became fewer and fewer, and finally we began to see crops of grain and potatoes, a sign that we had emerged from the marshes. We stopped to take a brief survey of Utrecht. A part of its old cathedral has been converted into a beautiful Gothic church, the rest having been levelled many years ago by a whirlwind. But what I found most remarkable in the city was its public walks. The old walls by which Utrecht was once inclosed having been thrown down, the rubbish has formed hillocks and slopes which almost surround the entire city and border one of its principal canals. On these hillocks and slopes, trees and shrubs have been planted, and walks laid out through the green turf, until it has become one of the most varied and charming pleasure-grounds I ever saw—swelling into little eminences, sinking into little valleys, descending in some places smoothly to the water, and in others impending over it. We fell in with a music-master, of whom we asked a question or two. He happened to know a little German, by the help of which he pieced out his Dutch so as to make it tolerably intelligible to me. He insisted upon showing us every thing remarkable in Utrecht, and finally walked us tired.
The same evening the diligence brought us to Arnheim, a neat-looking town with about eighteen hundred inhabitants, in the province of Guelderland, where the region retains not a trace of the peculiarities of Holland. The country west of the town rises into commanding eminences, overlooking the noble Rhine, and I feel already that I am in Germany, though I have yet to cross the frontier.