Chapter X: A Breeze From the West (2)

In the Guildhall is preserved Count Bossu’s silver-gilt drinking-cup; he was a prisoner in Hoorn for three years after his defeat and capture by the insurgent Dutch. The churches are inferior to the dwellings, having been spoilt by whitewash and plaster and absurd Greek peristyles, perhaps supposed at the Reformation to chase away the evil spirits of an age of superstition. The result is deplorable, and has unfortunately outlasted the fanaticism of the moment, which was responsible for these disfigurements. Although the people of Hoorn claim that their town was rich and famous at the end of the thirteenth century, the first authentic documents point to the middle of the fourteenth as the date of regular municipal incorporation, and the walls were not built till 1426. Hoorn has produced many distinguished men――Abel Janzoon Tasman, who discovered Van Dieman’s Land and New Zealand; Jan Pietersz Kœn, who founded Batavia (Java) in 1619; Wouter Corneliszoon Schouten, who in 1616 doubled Cape Horn, which he named after his native town; Jan Albertsz Roodtsens, a portrait-painter known to art-critics as Rhotius, according to the foolish fancy of the Renaissance for Latinizing one’s “barbaric” name, and others less well known――doctors and lawyers with Latinized names, honorably mentioned as learned men in the archives, and brave seamen, patriotic and enterprising, the Sea-Beggars of the War of Independence against Spain, and successful explorers in tropical seas.

Having passed through Enkhuizen, the birthplace of the painter Paul Potter, Havard goes on to Medemblik, the former capital of West Friesland, and the seat of King Radbod’s power. Here, like a true artist, he was struck by a beautiful scene painted by nature, who in these regions, as everywhere else, has so many changing beauties to offer, to distract one’s attention from even the most perfect human works of art. “The town, with its towers and steeples and with its ancient castle, rose up before us against a background of sky of a rosy tint, fading into lilac-gray and a variety of tints; the town itself appearing of a blackish green, while over our heads the sky was of celestial blue; at the very foot of the town the sea repeated all these splendid colorings and completed the picture. A painter who should reproduce this scene without alteration would not be believed; it would be said he had invented the coloring.” Then follows the same story of desertion, emptiness, and decay, that mark the “dead cities,” of which this is perhaps the oldest of all. For the well known incident of King Radbod (repeated seven centuries later by a cacique of Mexico), and his choice of eternal torments with his forefathers rather than heaven with strangers to his blood, we have no room. It illustrates the clannish qualities of the old Teutonic stock. Crossing part of the peninsula least tainted by “improvement,” the author, on his way to Texel, passed through many villages such as we have heard about, but the accounts of which we have believed to be exaggerated. But these are not to be found on the beaten track, and he who has seen the typical Brock has only seen an artificially-preserved specimen, handy and hackneyed, kept on exhibition with the avowed consciousness of its attraction to strangers. “Every one has heard of the marvellous cow-houses, paved with delf-tiles and sanded in different colors, cleaner even than the rooms, where one must neither cough, smoke, nor spit; where one must not even walk before putting on a great pair of _sabots_, or wooden shoes, whitened with chalk――cow-sheds in which the beautiful white-and-black cows are symmetrically arranged upon a litter which is constantly changed, and whose tails are tied up to the ceiling for fear of their becoming soiled. Well, it is in these hamlets that one meets with all this.… Sometimes at the end of the stable or cow-shed one sees a parlor with a number of fresh young girls, with their high caps and golden helmets, working at some fancy work or knitting all sorts of frivolity; the fact is that many of these peasants are millionaires living among their cheeses with the greatest simplicity.”

Of Texel and Oude-Schild the author says:

“When you land, it seems as if you entered a great round
basin lined with a thick carpet of verdure; an endless
prairie with a few trees … all the country surrounded by
high dikes and dunes, which limit the view.… We felt as if
we were in an Eden under the waters, with the heavens open
above――a bizarre sensation difficult to describe, but which
is very strange and original. The dike that protects the
south of the island is almost as grand and important as that
of the Helder.… At the place from whence these works spring
it was necessary to work under water at a depth of above one
hundred feet.… On the North Sea side are moving sands,
which, from their desolate aspect, contrast with the rich
and verdant meadows they guard from the encroachments of the
sea. These dunes are certainly not the least interesting
part of the island; they can be entered only on foot or on
horse-back. The feet of the horse or man who attempts to
cross them sink either to the ankle of the man or the
fetlock of the horse. The green meadow suddenly ceases at
their edge, and an arid solitude, burnt by the sun, extends
beyond our view――we should say a strip of the African desert
rather than of the soft and humid soil of Holland.”

This passage into the North Sea has seen some of the largest flotillas in the world leave its shelter, and not only great commercial fleets and war fleets, but hardy expeditions of scientific discovery, such as that of the first explorers who sought for a Northwest Passage through the ice of the Pole. Although it failed in this, it discovered Nova Zembla. Twice did the brave William Barends attempt this journey, and the second voyage was his last, while his associate, Jacob Van Heemskerck, returned to Holland to be invested with the command of the navy in 1607, and to attack, under the guns of Gibraltar, the large Spanish fleet commanded by Alvarez d’Avila. Like Nelson, he died in the moment of victory, and fifty years later almost the same fate befell the indomitable Van Tromp. Space forbids to more than mention Harlingen, a resuscitated city, which has managed to regain much of its old prosperity, but is not architecturally very interesting. One of its claims to present attention is the picture-gallery of a self-made man and discriminating amateur――M. Bos; and one of its historical claims dates from 1476, when Menno Simonsz, the founder of the sect of Mennonites, of whom some thousands lately emigrated to this country, was born within its territory, in the province of Witmarsum. From this place the travellers started by canal-boat, or _treckschuit_, a barge drawn by a trotting horse through a level, productive country. The boat has a first-class and a second-class compartment, long seats well cushioned for sleeping, a large table for meals, and, as there is no vibration, it is the laziest, pleasantest way of travelling, if one is not in a hurry. The breeding of those splendid black horses, whose long tails sweep the ground, well known throughout Europe, is still one of the sources of wealth of this Frison land, and much of the marvellous wood-carving now stored up in English collections comes from the Frison villages; but of the old costume of the women nothing remains but the golden helmet. Circumstances, however, have preserved the old fashion of skating races, which take place every winter, and are the occasion of regular festivals. The youth of a whole neighborhood gathers together, and the prizes are handed down as heirlooms in the families of the winners. In old times military manœuvres used to be gone through on skates, and these “reviews” were well worth seeing. The Frison skate is a straight iron blade, with which, though you cannot go in any other than a straight line, you can glide along with much greater speed than with the ordinary curved one we use. The only skating ground of Holland――the straight canals――are a sufficient explanation of the difference.

On Leeuwarden we will not dwell, as it is an inland city and by no means dead, but must notice a funny item in one of its collections of curiosities――that is a “landdagemmer,” or small pail that state members used to carry when going to council, and in which they put their bread and butter or whatever else they had by way of a luncheon.

From Leeuwarden the traveller carries us with him to Franeker, “well built, well lighted, and certainly one of the cleanest and best-kept towns in Friesland,” formerly a famous centre of learning. “Such men as Adrian Metius, the mathematician; Pierius Winsemius, the historian; Sixtus Amama, the theologian; Ulric Huberus, the jurist; and George Kazer, who knew every subtlety of the Greek language, with a mass of other learned scholars, indoctrinated the youth of that age in the sciences, theology, law, history, and dead languages. The spirit of learning became contagious, and the whole city was seized with a desire to acquire knowledge. The students imbued the citizens with a love of the sciences, and the inhabitants, not content with imbibing learning themselves, spread it about on the public walls; and one can still see on the front of the houses, over the doors, and even on the walls of the stables, numbers of wise inscriptions, moral precepts, and virtuous sentences” in Latin, signifying, for instance, “Know thyself”; “Well, or not at all”; “Nothing is good but what is honest,” etc. The Guildhall, built in the same style as the Leeuwarden Chancellerie, but daubed over with paint, contains two or three rooms with their walls literally hidden by gloomy old portraits, said to be those of the professors of the old academy. Among them is that of a woman, Anna Maria Schaarman, called by her contemporaries the modern Sappho, and who, besides poetry, music, painting, engraving, and modelling, was a proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Ethiopian. Her works were published at Leyden in 1648.

Franeker has a unique exhibition in the shape of a _Planetarium_, or a small blue-room, with a movable ceiling, representing the vault of heaven, where the planets, in the form of gilded balls, and by means of a mechanical process, rotate around the sun, which stands in the middle of the room in a kind of half obscurity. The room itself is only lighted by one candle. The whole apparatus is shown by a woman, said to be the grand-daughter of the great mathematician, Eise Eisinga, who devoted seven years of his life, from 1773 to 1780, to making this planetarium.

The tjalk, which the travellers had left at Harlingen, now carried them over to Hindeloopen, a sea-port and ancient city, but not one of those which have to complain of the whims of fortune; for it never rose to great importance at any time of its thousand years of existence. Just outside the harbor “the wind suddenly lulled, and one of those dead calms peculiar to these curious shores overtook us. The clouds seemed to stand still in the heavens, the very water lapping against our bows grew still, and, but for a bird skimming the horizon, a sea-dog touching the surface of the waves, or some _bruinvisch_ leaping in pure joy under the calm waters, all nature appeared as if wrapped in a deep sleep.” The town began by being a hamlet in the huge forest of Kreijl (most of whose area is now the bottom of the Zuyder-Zee), and its name signifies “the hind’s run,” while a running hind forms the municipal arms. The harbor, which in 1225, three hundred years after the origin of the town, was endowed with certain privileges, was never large enough for heavily-freighted ships; and though the inhabitants praiseworthily tried to enrich themselves by forming fishing companies, the boats had to be built in other ports, and the interest of Hindeloopen in these expeditions had always more or less of an artificial character. Notwithstanding the real claims of the town to notice, it has escaped the mention of historians; Cornelius Kempius ignores it altogether; Guicciardini merely refers to it; Blaeu the geographer, in spite of his minute exactitude, only gives it a dozen dry lines; and a later writer, the author of _Les Délices des Pays-Bas_ (1769), is not more complimentary, though he allows it some “commercial interest.” It often needs an artist’s eye to look with favor on these world-forgotten places, and draw out details which make us wonder how it was possible that they have been hitherto so persistently overlooked. It is often a greater pleasure, we confess, to read of such places than of those greater ones, the pilgrimages of the world, where each successive generation of scholars and explorers flocks to bring to light some fact or some stone, and where, when all that is likely to be important has been found, they still pore devotedly over dust and fragments, eager to tell the world how the ancients ate or dressed, and how their present descendants retain or have lost or modified the old manners and customs. Havard, accordingly, says of Hindeloopen:

“Small as it was, it had its arts, its special costume, a
style of architecture, and a language only spoken within its
walls――which is a fact so singular that it would appear
incredible were it not for traces and incontestable proofs
of their existence.[196] The most remarkable of its
peculiarities was, and is still, the costume worn by the
women.… Not content with having a dress different to other
nations, the inhabitants of Hindeloopen regulated the style
of their costume, and adjusted it according to the age and
position of the woman in its smallest detail. From its very
birth a child is put into the national costume: its little
legs are wrapped in the usual linen, but the upper part of
its body is subjected to the prevailing habit of the
country. Its head is covered with a double cap――one of
linen, the other of silk garnished with the usual kerchief;
above this again is placed another calico kerchief, and on
that again a third of larger dimensions, scarlet in color
and trimmed with lace. The tiny body is cased in a
close-fitting jacket, over which is an embroidered bib, and
the baby’s hands are put into calico mittens.”

Then follows a description of the changes of, or rather additions to, the costume from the age of eighteen months upwards. The marriageable girls wore the most complicated, everything, even the “floss-silk stockings,” being of a certain regulation make, color, and stuff. Married women wore their hair entirely covered by the headdress of square pieces of red cloth embroidered in gold, above the cap itself. Widows wore the same articles, but all black and white; and, besides this daily costume, there were others worn on festival days, chiefly distinguished by a cape or overall, with other details yet, belonging some to Whitsuntide, some to Corpus Christi, and others to betrothed girls, and relating to circumstances, weddings, and funerals, to the length of time a woman had been married, and if she was a mother, etc., etc., in endless and minute array. The town women have already discarded their costume, but it is still universally worn in the country round about. The ancient industries of Hindeloopen――alas! very degenerate nowadays――included a _spécialité_ in furniture. It was of carved wood painted, and many specimens in Dutch and foreign collections still exist. Havard says of it:

“Its general forms have a very decided Oriental cast. Its
decorations of carved and gilded palms and love-knots,
relieved by the strangest paintings it is possible to
imagine, have no equal except in Persian art. As a rule, the
colors are loud and gaudy――red or pink, green or blue――but,
strange to say, the whole appears harmonious. It is peculiar
and striking but not disagreeable to the eye. Most of the
single pieces of furniture, such as tables and stands, and
sledges are ornamented with red and blue palms, around which
are interlaced numbers of Cupids of dark rose-color, the
whole on a red ground. Sometimes these constantly-recurring
Cupids (always in dark rose-color) are placed among a bed of
blue flowers against a background of red, lightened here and
there by white dots and touches of gold. But this medley of
discordant colors produces a harmonious and dazzling effect,
which I can only liken to the cashmeres of India. This same
style of ornamentation is adopted in private houses, though
the colors are somewhat modified. Red yields to dark blue,
and flowers, love-knots, and palms are toned down into soft
blue, green, and white, on a background of the finest[197]
shade of indigo. The effect thus produced is very curious. I
cannot say it is fine or pleasant, but it is not
disagreeable to the eye, and certainly possesses the
advantage of not being vulgar or common.”

Stavoren, the former capital of Friesland, is one of the towns whose traditional annals, like those of Medemblik, reach back into unhistorical times, and whose founder, Friso, a supposed contemporary and ally of Alexander the Great, built here a temple to Jupiter, and adorned his town with walls, palaces, and theatres. The fifth century of our era is its real earliest date, and then it was only what the first settlement of a barbaric clan always is――half-camp, half-village――but it had gained a footing which it never abandoned since. As the centuries passed, we find this town, at the mouth of the Flevum, “the capital and royal residence of Friesland,” and with a “considerable commercial and industrial reputation. Treaties of alliance and trade were entered into with the Romans, Danes, Germans, and Franks, who came to Stavoren to barter their goods.… The Flevum was easy to navigate, thus rendering the port convenient for commerce; able to hold a large fleet whose intrepid sailors explored distances in the North inaccessible to the vessels belonging to other nations. At this epoch the Zuyder-Zee was not in existence, and one could walk on dry land from Stavoren to Medemblik.… A palace was built at Stavoren (by Richard I.) which later on became the sumptuous residence of the kings, his successors,” and Charles, Duke of Brabant, journeyed to Stavoren with a numerous suite to see and admire its wonderful splendors. This was burnt in 808, but in 815 a still more splendid church was built by Bishop Odulphus. It was some Stavoren sailors who first passed through the Sound and opened the way into the Baltic, and the King of Denmark rewarded the town by exempting its ships from dues on entering Dantzic. Treaties with Sweden and Scotland conceded to the town similar privileges, rendering the merchants of Stavoren able to enter the lists with those of the richest and most influential towns in the world. A sixteenth-century chronicler[198]――though we incline to take the statement as typical of the prosperity of the town rather than in its literal sense――says “the vestibules of the houses were gilded, and the pillars of the palaces of massive gold.” This, however, applies to the thirteenth century, the age of Marco Polo and general redundancy of imagination, colored by the traditions of the _Arabian Nights_. But it is true that Stavoren was one of the first towns forming part of the Hanseatic League, and even in the sixteenth century she still held the third rank. Her downfall was due as much to the nature of things as to adverse circumstances. Prosperity spoiled the haughty town: “Her inhabitants had become so rich and opulent that they were literally intoxicated with their success, and allowed themselves to grow insolent, exacting, and supercilious beyond endurance. They were called the spoiled, luxurious children of Stavoren――‘_dartele ofte vervende Kinderen van Stavoren_.’ Strangers ceased to trade with them, preferring the pleasanter manners of the inhabitants of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bruges. In proportion as trade declined the spirit of enterprise forsook the population, and the town, once so rich and flourishing, now found herself reduced from the first to the tenth rank.” This happened in the fourteenth century, and by the sixteenth “there were scarcely fifty houses in a state of preservation in this city, which formerly was the highest and noblest of all.” Its appearance at the present time is still more sad: “There are about a hundred houses, half of which are in ruins, but not one remains to recall in the vaguest manner the ancient glory of its palaces. It would be difficult to call the place a village even; it is more like one large cemetery, whose five hundred inhabitants have the appearance of having returned to earth to mourn over the past and lost glories of their country and the ancient splendor of their kings.” Outside the harbor is a large sand-bank, called the “Lady’s Bank,” which for several centuries has blocked up the entrance so that no great ships can enter, and tradition has seized upon this to point a moral eminently appropriate to the former proud merchants of this hopelessly dead city. It is said, and repeated by Guicciardini, that a rich widow, “petulant and saucy,” freighted a ship for Dantzic, and bade the master bring back a cargo of the rarest merchandise he could find in that town. Finding nothing more in requisition there than grain, he loaded the ship with wheat and returned. The widow was indignant at his bringing her such common stuff, and ordered him, if he had loaded the grain at _backboort_, to throw it into the sea at _stuerboort_, which was done, whereupon there immediately rose at that place so great a sand-bank that the harbor was blocked; hence the bank is still called “_Le Sable_,” or “_Le Banc de la Dame_.”

At Urk, a truly patriarchal fishing village, where “every one, as at Marken, wears the national costume, from the brat who sucks his thumb to the old man palsied with age,” and where the inhabitants “consider themselves related, forming one and the same family,” and are “just as hospitable and polite as at Marken,” Havard spent a few very pleasant hours. This place is anterior to the Zuyder-Zee, and was already, in the ninth century, a fishing settlement on one of the islands in Lake Flevo. Havard thinks that the women, with their healthy beauty and graceful but evident strength, are good samples of the race that inhabited these lands a thousand years ago.

On entering the mouth of the Yssel the travellers left the tjalk and went across country to Kampen, admiring on their road the beautiful fields with the cows almost hidden in the long grass, the farms on little hillocks looking like miniature fortified castles, and the other farms surrounded by tall trees, where all is of a blue color, from the small milk-pails to the wheelbarrow, and the ladder leading to the loft. Kampen dates only from the thirteenth century, but it grew rapidly, and two hundred years later became an Imperial town, governed itself, and had the right of coining money. At the Reformation there was no breaking of images or destruction of works of art, neither was there any outbreak against the religious orders. Large, massive towers with pointed roofs overhang the quay and flank an enormous wall, through which an arched doorway leads into the town. The Celle-broeders-Poort dates from the sixteenth century, and is built of brick and stone, with octagonal towers, oriel windows, and carved buttresses, besides a gallery projecting over the door. This gate was named after the convent of Brothers of the Common Life, formerly situated in the street leading to the Poort. The order has been made famous by the author of the _Imitation_. It was one of the most popular in the Low Country, and was founded at Deventer by Gerhard Groot, a young and luxurious ecclesiastic, whose life reminds one of De Rancé, and who, giving up his preferments, retired to his own house, where he lived with a few other men in apostolical simplicity. The services of his followers were invaluable during the plague, or Black Pest, in the fourteenth century. His successor was Florent Radewyns, a learned priest, also in high ecclesiastical favor, but who gave up his canon’s stall at Utrecht to embrace the life of a Brother of the Common Life. This institute is not unlike the original one of St. Francis of Assisi, founded in Italy a hundred years earlier; only these brothers lived by the work of their hands, mostly as copyists, and as revisers of the manuscripts scattered over the town, comparing them with the originals and rectifying the mistakes of inexperienced or careless copyists. Pope Gregory XI. sanctioned the regulations of the order in 1376, and in 1431, 1439, and 1462 Eugenius IV. and Pius II. confirmed the privileges of the rapidly-growing community, which counted convents by the score all over Holland. About this time they opened schools for the young, and “their instruction was everywhere courted, and their virtues, as well as their great talents, made them welcome even in the most distant countries. Their colleges were dedicated either to St. Jerome or St. Gregory, and multiplied with astonishing rapidity.… In their convent (at Brussels) they had a printing-office.” Their devotion to the poor and uneducated, and their endeavors to counteract the progress of the Reformation by expounding to the people the authorized version of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and also uniting their hearers in prayers and offices in Dutch, Flemish, and other vernacular, were misrepresented by their enemies, and twisted into evidence of their heretical leanings.

Kampen was rich in religious orders; there were the Minorites (Franciscans), whose church was built in the fourteenth century, and is still the most ancient monument in the town, but is now used as a school; the Recollects, the Carthusians, the Alexians, besides six convents for women. The church of St. Nicholas, with its double aisles and its grand simplicity, its beautiful antique pulpit and Renaissance panelling in the choir, is well worth a visit, were it not for the detestable impression likely to be made on the visitor by the excesses in plaster and paint that disfigure the building. Notre Dame, a church almost as large and as old, has been restored, and its sombre, simple, and grand decoration, its panelling in imitation of the Gothic, and its careful imitation of the spirit of ancient ornamentation make it a more satisfactory object of pilgrimage. But the pearl of Kampen is the _Stadhuis_, or Guildhall――or rather what remains of it; for part of it was destroyed by fire in 1543. The façade is very much like the Chancellerie at Leeuwarden, and the niches still contain their original statuettes of the sixteenth century. “This corner of the townhall is a real delight to behold, and to come upon a relic of this sort, religiously preserved from ancient times, is a great source of joy to an artist.” But the special attractions are in the interior, especially in “two rooms, unique in their way, … decorated with carved wainscoting, which have remained intact from the early part of the seventeenth century, when they were used as the council-chamber and judgment-hall.… The walls are furnished with flags, standards, halberds, pikes, … and above the door I noticed some formidable-looking syringes in polished leather, shining like gold, which were used in former times to squirt boiling oil on those of the assailants who approached too close. A magnificent balustrade, crowned by an open gallery with columns supporting arched openings, separates this hall from the other, through which the persuasive eloquence of the advocates penetrated the council-chamber.… Running round the chamber is a huge carved bench, divided into stalls by jutting pedestals which support a pillar of Ionic base and Composite capital. An entablature also running the round of the room, projecting above the pillars, but receding over the stalls, completes this kind of high barrier between the councillors, and adds considerably to the majestic elegance which charms and impresses one. At the end of the hall there is a fine chimney-piece, comprising four divisions. To mention its date, 1543, is quite enough to give an idea of the beauty of its workmanship and the elegance of its curves.” Among its curiosities are some fine silver goblets given to the town, and some pieces of gold-plate belonging to the old guilds, as well as the _box of beans_, which served to determine the election of the municipality. It is a small _bonbonnière_ holding twenty-four beans, six silver-gilt and eighteen of polished silver. “When it was a question of deciding which of the members of the council should be chosen for the administration, the beans were put in a hat, and each drew out one by chance, and those who drew forth the silver-gilt beans immediately entered on their new functions. This custom was not confined especially to Kampen, as it was formerly in vogue in the province of Groningen.”

Zwolle (not a sea city) is a very old town, but has a modern life tacked on to it, and few of its public buildings, churches included, are worth commenting upon at length, though its history is interesting and stirring. It was the birth-place and home of Thomas à Kempis, known in his own day as Hamerken, but the convent where he lived has unfortunately disappeared.

Harderwyk, on the Zuyder-Zee, or the “Shepherd’s Refuge,” was founded at the time of the disastrous flood which made the present sea. Some shepherds collected there from the flooded meadows, and were joined by a few fishermen. A hundred years after its incorporation as a town, it was already prosperous enough to be named in the Hanseatic Union by the side of Amsterdam, Kampen, and Deventer; but it can boast of a better claim to notice than its material prosperity alone, for it had a famous academy, founded in 1372, and specially devoted to theology and what was then known of physical sciences. Except during an interval of half a century, after an inundation that devastated and unpeopled the little city, this school existed uninterruptedly till the French occupation, a little less than a hundred years ago, and among its native scholars, many of whom are honorably known in the history of science, it reckons the botanist Boerhaave. Linnæus spent a short time there in study and research, and the town is not a little proud of having been sought out by distant scholars as a centre of the natural science of that day. Both these famous men have a memorial in Harderwyk, the former a bronze statue, and the latter a bust in the public gardens. One of the few interesting remains of the old town is the square tower of Notre Dame, where fires were burnt, by way of a beacon, to guide fishermen and sailors out at night, and indicate the position of Harderwyk. “The sea,” says Havard, “is very wayward in these parts. Formerly it was at some little distance from the town, but gradually it advanced, and ended by washing its walls; now, however, it has in some measure receded.… When the tide is low, fishermen often discover under the sand roads washed up by the waves, paved with stones and bricks, which prove that at some distant period streets existed where now the sea rules.” At present Harderwyk is the depot of the troops intended for the Indian and colonial army of Holland, and is, in consequence, rather a gay little place.

The charming, antique, and formerly turbulent town of Amersfoort, the birth-place of the heroic Jan van Olden Barneveldt, truly the “father of his country,” was the last comparatively forgotten place where our author passed before he got back to the beaten track of travel, through Utrecht down the Dutch Rhine to Amsterdam. Of this hardy, learned, and brave people of the Netherlands he says but too truly that they are unknown outside their own frontiers. “Nobody outside” (of course he speaks of popular, world-wide reputation; for they are known in scientific and literary circles) “knows that among the Dutch are to be found honesty, cordiality, and sincere friendship; they do not know that the language of Holland is rich and poetic; that the Netherlanders have exceptionally fine institutions, sincere patriotism, and absolute devotion to their country.” He complains, however, that the country or its representative, the government, does not sufficiently encourage native artists, authors, and _savants_, and forces her statesmen to “submit to paltry coteries.” He also says that the decay of trade in the “dead cities” is partly attributable to the supineness of the inhabitants themselves, though that certainly does not tally with their enterprising spirit of old, and adds that Amsterdam, when threatened with the same danger――the moving sands and the encroaching waters, which have turned the harbors of the once wealthy Hanseatic cities into deserts――did not “sleep,” but “with all their ancient energy, not fearing to expend their wealth,” the inhabitants “cut through the whole length of the peninsula of Noord Holland, and created a canal 40 miles long and 120 feet wide, wide enough for two frigates to pass one another”; and when that was found insufficient for their commerce, “they again cut through the width of the peninsula, as they had cut through its length, giving to ships of the heaviest tonnage two roads to their magnificent port. This was how the sons of old Batavia fought against the elements――nothing stopped them; and we see that the generations which succeed them are animated by the same spirit, the same firm will, the same calm energy, never to be beaten by difficulties.” And now the last news of importance from the same spot is that of the projected draining of the Zuyder-Zee, which is a plan of gigantic magnitude, the cost being estimated at £16,000,000 sterling――_i.e._, not far from $100,000,000――but the allotted time scarcely more than two years. The Dutch is a race tenacious of vitality and power, and its future in its colonial empire, which it is now thoroughly and scientifically surveying, bids fair to rival its past. Even these “dead cities,” when they cease to be fishing hamlets and relic-museums, and, by the draining of the inland sea, have to turn for their support to new industries, have a chance of revival. The last marvellous Dutch work――the completion of the North Sea Canal――is a proof that the old energy is yet there, and that great things may yet be expected, nautically, scientifically, commercially, and even agriculturally, of the sturdy old stock of the “Sea Beggars.”

[195] _The Dead Cities of the Zuyder-Zee_: A voyage to the
picturesque side of Holland. By Henri Havard. Translated by
Annie Wood. London: Bentley & Son.

[196] The author has unfortunately omitted to give some of
these proofs, and we have only his word for this assertion.

[197] Probably _lightest_.

[198] Cornelius Kempius.

THE GREAT STRIKE AT ERRICKDALE.

Errickdale is famous for its coal-pits. It has dozens of them. All night long their fires glow red through the darkness, and all day the sound of pick and hammer, and the creak of rusty iron chains dragging heavily-loaded cars up the slope of the mines into the light, and the cry of the miners, and the tramp of their hob-nailed shoes as they come and go, fill the place with noisy life. It is a lonely place otherwise, close to the sea-coast. A ponderous stone wharf juts far out into the water, and a tramway runs down to it for the use of the cars which take the coal to the vessels that are constantly loading.

The village of Errickdale, at the time of our story, consisted of the black buildings connected with the mines, the rows of tumble-down tenements where the miners lived, and one spacious, rambling, old-fashioned dwelling, built a century previous by the first owner and opener of the mines, and preserved intact ever since, in its antique and solid elegance, by each new owner of the place. Eight months of the year it was closed, with the exception of a few rooms occupied by the agent, the old housekeeper, and two servants; one other apartment being always kept in readiness to receive the master whenever, for any reason, he chose to make his appearance.

But for four months, from June to October, the whole house was thrown open and filled with a brilliant company, who spent the summer days in merry idleness, and made Errickdale a scene of delight. Beautiful it was always, in spite of its loneliness――a loneliness so extreme that not another town or village, or house or hut, was to be met with for a dozen miles around it, except Teal, lying hidden from sight behind the hills, and five good miles away at that, and the lighthouse which rose up eerily on the summit of the dangerous, ugly rock-ledge in the centre of Errick Bay. That bay gave ample opportunity for sailing, rowing, bathing, fishing; the beach was firm and good for those who cared to walk; the rocks were bold and tempting for those who cared to climb. In the fields the wild pink roses bloomed, and strawberries, raspberries, baked-apple berries, and blueberries followed one upon the other in superabundance. The heaps of coal-dust, the begrimed men, the care-worn women and dirty children, the comfortless dwellings, marred very much the beauty of the place; but what would be the place without them? The guests who came there soon forgot such trifles as the days sped by in merry-making; and in the city of Malton a summer at Errickdale was spoken of as a season of unrivalled pleasure.

It was in Malton that John Rossetti, the present owner of Errick mines, had his palace-like city home. There he had collected such treasures as few men could boast, even in that city, famed for its eager pursuit of the beautiful and the costly; and all of them he lavished upon the only being who made life dear to him――the daughter whom his idolized young wife had left to him when, at the child’s birth, she died.

It is a marvel that Eleanora Rossetti grew up as amiable and gentle as she was; for she scarcely knew what it meant to have a wish thwarted or the merest whim of her fancy ungratified. Delicate and fair like some sheltered plant, she won love and tenderness wherever she went, and it seemed to her only as the air she breathed――she knew nothing else. That she should yield her will to another’s never entered her mind; that she was to do anything for others was an idea quite unknown to her. Life was hers to enjoy; hearts were hers to command; let her do what she would, no one wished to hinder her. She saw the beggars in the streets of Malton, she saw the poorly-clad people in Errickdale, but they never weighed upon her heart in the least. They must be very lazy or very shiftless, she thought――if she ever thought of them at all.

With the approaching winter of her eighteenth birthday――the winter of that great strike at Errickdale which was to set the country ringing――there came many prophecies of want and famine, but Eleanora did not heed them. She had a little dinner-party one evening. They were sitting around the table loaded with costly silver and delicately-painted china and rare viands. “Papa,” cried Eleanora from the head of the board, where she presided in girlish state, her clear voice ringing down to him like a flute and attracting every one’s attention――“papa, I mean to keep my eighteenth birthday by a masque-ball at Errickdale.” And then, glancing along each file of delighted and expectant guests with her brightest smile, “You are all invited at once,” she said, “without further ceremony. The night of the 20th of January, remember. How I hope there will be snow underfoot and stars overhead and a biting frost! There will be bed and board for all, though some of the beds may have to be on the floor; and sleighs or carriages will be waiting at Teal station. Oh! how delightful it will be!”

Nobody waited to see if permission would be granted her. Eleanora Rossetti always had her way. At once a Babel of voices arose.

“We will make summer of winter,” Eleanora said. “The whole conservatory shall be sent down. It shall be a ball of the old _régime_; and mind, all of you, no one shall be admitted who does not come dressed as a courtier of some sort to grace my palace halls. I shall never be eighteen again, and I mean to celebrate it royally.”

“She looks like a princess this moment,” said a youth on her right, loudly enough for her to hear, and to make her blush with pleasure; and like a princess she looked indeed, slender and tall and stately, in her heavy purple robe, with ermine and rare laces at the neck and wrists, and diamonds in her ears that sparkled no more brightly than her eyes.

Down in Errickdale that night a northeast gale was blowing, the waves were dashing their spray high up over the wharf and against the cliffs, and the rain drove in slant sheets across the bay, where the red eye of the lighthouse glared steadily.

In a cottage of three rooms, apart from the tenements, yet little better than they, another John is sitting. John O’Rourke this, an Irishman, come eighteen years since from the old country; and with him sits his only daughter, who will be eighteen in February. Bridget O’Rourke has no need to fear the verdict if she is compared with the heiress of Errickdale; she is full as tall and stately, and her dark, severe beauty would be noticeable anywhere. But there is no sparkle in her eyes, that are heavy with unshed tears, and no smile is on her lips.

These people are not poor, as Errickdale counts poverty. It is much, very much, to have a house to yourself, even though it be of three rooms only, and floor and walls are bare. It is much to wear whole clothes, though the dress is cotton print and the coat is fustian. It is much to have plenty of bread and cheese and a bit of cold meat on your table, and to have a decent table to sit at. Errickdale counts these things luxuries. John O’Rourke is a sort of factotum for the agent, and, next to him, has higher wages than any other man on the place; but, for all that, his brow is lowering to-night, and as he sits in moody silence his fingers work and his hands are clenched, as though he were longing for a fight with some one.

“You’re not eating, Bridget, my girl,” he said at last, draining the last drop of his cup of tea. “You’re not as hungry as I.”

She pushed her plate away. “I can’t eat, father,” she said. “Down in the hollow Smith’s wife and babes are crying with hunger, and over at Rutherford’s the girls haven’t a shoe to their feet in this bitter weather.”

“And so you must go hungry too, girl?” he asked.

“I can’t eat,” she said again. “It chokes me. Why should I have good things, and they go starving? I wish I was starving with them!”

“Tut, tut, girl! What help would that be? And what’s Smith, anyhow, and Smith’s boys, but Orangemen, that hoot at ye Sundays, and laugh at your going ten miles, all, as they say, to worship images?”

Bridget smiled faintly. This righteous John O’Rourke was no very fervent Catholic in his deeds, whatever his words might go to prove. It was seldom that he found himself able to foot those good ten miles with her, though she did it regularly, in spite of ridicule and difficulty.

“Orangemen or not,” she answered, “they’re flesh and blood like me. God made ’em. If I try to eat, I think I see them with nothing, and I long to give all I have to them.”

“I tell ye,” O’Rourke exclaimed, “times are bad enough now, but they’ll be worse soon, if master don’t take heed. There’ll be a strike in Errickdale before the winter’s out.”

“O father! no. I hope not. Nothing like that would ever move the master. He’s that set in his own way, he would only hold out stronger against ’em――he would.”

“I think so myself, girl――I think so myself. I’ve known him well these eighteen years; he’s firm as rock. But the men don’t credit it. They are murmuring low now, but it will be loud shouting before we know it. Bridget, I’ll to Malton and see the master myself, come morning.”

“Yes, father,” said Bridget; “and I’ll go with you and speak with Miss Eleanora.”

A few hours later, the city lady and the Irish girl stood face to face in Eleanora’s boudoir. There was a startled look in Eleanora’s eyes. What strange story is this which Bridget tells her? There must be some mistake about it.

“They are very poor in Errickdale,” Bridget said slowly, keeping down the quiver from her voice and the tears from her eye. “House after house they have nothing but potatoes or mush to eat, and nothing but rags to wear. I don’t think it’s the master’s fault maybe. Sometimes I fear the agent is not all he should be, miss.”

As if John Rossetti did not know the character of the man whom he had left in power among his miners! Alas for Bridget! and alas for Errickdale!

“But do _you_ suffer, Bridget?” and Eleanora looked at her compassionately, and then with deep admiration. She had let her talk, had let her stay, where carelessly she would have sent off any other, because it was such a delight to her to see that face in its grave and regular beauty, and to hear the rich voice with its sorrowful cadence like the minor note of an organ chant. Even had she been of like station and wealth with herself, Eleanora would have felt no pangs of jealous fear; for her own beauty and that of Bridget were of too perfect and delicious a contrast for that, and her trained artistic taste was considering it with pleasure all the while that their talk went on.

“Not that way,” Bridget answered her. “I’ve food and clothes a plenty myself. But it’s as if the hunger and want were tugging at my heart instead of my body, by day and by night. The lean faces and the wailing come between me and all else. Miss Eleanora, I wish you could once see them――only once.”

“What’s this! Bridget O’Rourke here too? A well-planned plot, truly.” And John Rossetti strode into the room as though on the point of turning the girl out from it, only his daughter, coming to meet him, stepped unwittingly between.

“Yes, papa,” she said, “it’s Bridget, come to the city, I suppose, for the first time in her life. And, papa, she tells such a sad story about Errickdale. Will you please send them some money at once?”

“Not a penny,” her father answered. “Not one penny of mine or yours shall they have. These people think to force me to their will by a strike! They shall learn what manner of master they have. Do they not know that Errick mines might lie idle a year, and I hold my head above water bravely? And do they dream there are no men willing and glad to be hired for the price they cavil at? Let them strike when they please. That is the only message John O’Rourke has to carry home with him for his pains, and all that you shall have either, Bridget. Take it and be gone.”

“Oh! no, Bridget, not yet,” Eleanora cried. “I am not ready. Papa, what can you be thinking of――sending her away when I am not ready to have her go? Let us consider for a minute, papa. She is so troubled”; and, indeed, Bridget’s face was livid in its distress, and when she strove to speak her voice died away in a moan. “How much do the people want, papa?”

He laughed grimly. “I shall grant them nothing,” he said. “However, since you are curious, they do not want as much as your ball will cost me, my love. How would you like to give that up for them?”

“My ball! Of course not. What a ridiculous idea! All Malton knows of it by this time, and twenty people are invited already, and I have sent for my dressmaker. Of course I could not give that up for anything! But you were only jesting, papa dear. I know you could not mean it. Bridget, papa knows best, you may be sure. I never trouble my head about business. But I will tell you what you shall do. I am going to have a masque-ball at Errickdale in January――such grand doings as were never known there before――and you shall come to it! You shall be where you can see the splendid court-dresses and the flowers and the feast, and hear the music――the very best music that Malton can furnish. So don’t worry any more, Bridget, and you shall surely be there.”

Bridget looked slowly round the room, full of warmth and light, and comfort and beauty. From the picture-frames haggard eyes seemed to stare at her; in the corners, and half hidden by the velvet hangings, figures wasted by want seemed to stretch their bony fingers towards her; through the canary’s song and the splash of the scented fountain voices weak with fasting seemed to call on her for aid. But it had become impossible for her to utter another word in their behalf. A plan, a hope, flashed through her mind.

“Yes, Miss Eleanora,” she said, “I will come to your ball.” And waiting for no more words, she went away.

“She is worrying her life out,” Eleanora said pityingly. “I don’t believe she eats properly.” And taking more trouble for a poor person than she had ever done before, she wrote to the housekeeper at Errickdale to send Bridget O’Rourke every day substantial and tempting food enough for an entire meal. Then she dismissed the whole matter; or rather the dressmaker was announced, and the important question as to whether her balldress should be of velvet or satin drove all minor subjects, such as hunger and cold and nakedness, from her mind.

Meanwhile, Bridget strove to calm her father’s wrath, which he poured forth volubly as the train carried them home; and when he was still, she thought out to its full scope the plan which had occurred to her. She would go to the ball, and, when the guests were assembled, she would step forth from her hiding-place, and stand before them all, and plead the people’s cause. But the more she thought of it the more her heart misgave her. Why should she hope they would heed her then rather than to-day? Would not the master only be the more incensed against his miners, because of the shame to which he would be exposed? Yes, she felt sure that this would be the result. And then the long, long days and weeks which must elapse before the chance would come at all! How could she endure it? She put that sudden hope and plan away. Instead of it, she prayed again and again with smothered sobs: “O Christ! who for love of us died for us, save thy people now.”

But she walked the long walk home from Teal station without fatigue, and came into Errickdale strong and well, to meet the woes she yearned to heal. The children had learned to understand her pity for them. They welcomed her return with cries for food; she gave them what she could, and lay down supperless herself that night to rest. After that, each day brought her a full meal from the great house, but she never tasted of it; there were those who needed it more, she said.

Once, on her way to a poor family with a basket of these provisions, the smell of the well-cooked food produced such a violent craving that it seemed to her for a moment that she should go mad. With a great effort she controlled herself and stood still. “Christ,” she prayed, “have mercy! Shall I eat dainties while the children starve?”

The craving did not cease, but strength to resist it came. She entered the wretched room to which she was bound, and fed the inmates who crowded around her; then she hurried home. In the cupboard were a few crusts and a bone already well picked. How sweetly they tasted! And while she feasted on them a woman crawled feebly in. “I’ve fasted long,” she said, and quietly Bridget gave her all she had.