HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.
IN DUTCH LAND.
Amsterdam, Holland, July 31, 1905.
The kingdom of Holland is a little bit of a country, but it has exerted a great influence in history. In size it is 12,650 square miles, not as large as the Seventh congressional district of Kansas, but it has over 5,000,000 inhabitants and is busy from one end to the other. The greater part lies below the level of the sea, which borders it on the west and has been literally reclaimed from the water by the energy and work of the people. The Hollanders are the Dutch, and they have a saying: “God made the sea, but we made the land.” The water is held back by immense dikes, and here in Amsterdam I look toward the sea and the great lot of shipping along the quay is higher than the tops of many of the houses; that is, the water is higher than the roofs in the town. The industry which has thus driven back and held back the sea has made little Holland a wealthy nation and Dutch capital has not only built up business at home, but it has gone into the farthermost parts of the earth, even to Missouri and Arkansas, constructed railroads, started factories and earned dividends or gone into the hands of receivers in large amounts. The country is covered with canals about as Kansas is with section-line roads. These canals are used for commerce, carrying freight cheaply, and for drainage, irrigation, and in place of fences. Every farm has its little canal leading to a main canal as a farmer’s road in Kansas goes out to the main traveled road. The farmer brings his stuff to town in a canal-boat, and a farm-wagon is almost as rare a sight in Holland as a canal-boat is in Kansas. In wet seasons the canals are used as drains and in dry seasons as irrigating-ditches. Canals are built above the level of the land, so that irrigation is easy, and for drainage the water is collected in ditches and pumped up into the canals. All of these facts I had read about, as has everyone else, but to actually see such a country was like a dream come true.
There is more sky in Holland than anywhere else. The land is flatter than a Kansas prairie. The scenery would be absolutely nothing if it were not for the works of man upon the surface. There are no hills in Holland, no rushing streams, no picturesque bits of nature. Some of the land looks lower than the rest, but none looks higher, and the water from the big rivers that enter Holland on the east simply oozes through the soil and canals, without a perceptible current and really without river-beds or water-courses. The Rhine spreads out until it is fifty miles wide, but it is no longer a river,—merely a network of canals which it supplies with water, and its old channels are now made by dikes and drainage into farms and town-sites. The landscape thus becomes a flat, fertile country, mostly farmed in grass and pastured with cattle and sheep, a lace-work of canals in shiny streaks running in every direction, narrow red brick houses with white trimmings, and windmills which tower above everything else and stand like giant sentinels over the low and level country. These windmills are big, fifty to a hundred feet high, the lower part usually used as dwellings, constructed as strongly and stoutly as government buildings, and with four immense arms or sails which convert the Dutch zephyrs into horsepower. The windmills are used for grinding grain, sawing lumber and in all kinds of manufacturing, as well as to pump water from the low ground to the canals and into the sea. A Kansas windmill compared to a Dutch windmill would be like a straw beside an oak tree.
Very often in Europe I have been compelled to draw on my imagination to make the actual facts come within speaking distance of what had been written or promised about a country. Not so in Holland. Everything I have ever read about dikes, canals and windmills is true, and nothing you have been able to imagine is beyond the real existing condition and appearance.
Yes, there is one thing, and I wonder if other people would feel the same way. In the pictures and on the china the windmills, the cows and even the people have always been blue. Of course I knew better, but when I found that a Holland landscape was not blue and white, I felt as if I had been deceived. The sky is blue, but the windmills are browned with exposure, the cows are black-and-white, and the people are not any more blue in Holland than they are in Newton.
The ride from Cologne, Germany, to Amsterdam, down the valley of the Rhine, which is no longer picturesque or lined with castles and legends, gave me my introduction to Holland. Most of it is the kind of country in which a traveler can enjoy reading a good book. After the first enthusiastic demonstration over windmills,—and they are more numerous than telegraph posts along the Santa Fe,—and the excitement of watching canal-boats having died out, Holland is not a country that causes thrills. There is a strange effect created on seeing a canal-boat in a canal a little distance off. You see a sailboat or a steamboat apparently sailing right through a pasture. You can’t see the water, and the effect is as if ships were really gliding over the grass and fields.
The canals are generally at least fifty feet wide and at least six feet deep. There are many good-sized boats. The power used is of different kinds: steam, sails, horses, men, women. Steamboats are numerous. Sails are used on nearly all, at least to help. Very often a man is hitched to a rope and sometimes a woman, with a regular harness so that the pull comes on the breast and shoulders. Dogs are not used to haul canal-boats, but they are the usual motive-power in the towns for small delivery-wagons, milk-wagons and the like.
CANALLING IN HOLLAND—THE EXTENSION OF WOMAN’S SPHERE.
The people of Holland, especially outside the cities, stick to their old peculiar costumes better than do the people of any other country in Europe that I have seen. The originals of the quaint Dutch pictures are here and numerous. The women wear the foolish bonnets, funny short full skirts, woolen stockings and wooden shoes, and the men the odd hats, clothes that bag between the hips and knees, and the wooden shoes that turn up like sled-runners. The wooden shoes are not worn in the house, but shaken off as the person enters and a pair of cloth shoes substituted. I suppose that is a ground rule made by the Dutch housewives, whose propensity for scrubbing and cleanliness is well known. But in spite of the deserved reputation, I do not think that Holland is as clean a country as it is advertised. The canals are close to being stagnant water, and as all the dirt and sewage goes into them there is an odor about Holland that comes near the smell you get from old cheese. Especially in the towns and cities where the canals form the principal streets, I can’t escape the idea that they are a good deal like open sewers. The water is changed by pumping, but not often, and after it stands a while over the stuff thrown in one would think from the noticeable odor that it would breed sickness. They say it is not very bad, but it would cause a big kick in America—the newspapers would go after the city council a plenty for permitting such a nuisance.
A good deal has been said and written in the United States of recent years in regard to the “emancipation of women.” The extension of civil and legal rights to persons of the female sex has been properly the subject of general congratulation. The club movement has done a great work in forcing a recognition of the work of women equally with the work of men. Prior to coming to Europe I had supposed that the women of the United States had made more progress along these lines than those of any other country. But I was mistaken. The women of Europe are far ahead of the women of America in the equality of the sexes. A women in continental Europe not only has the right to go out in the field and labor, but she can work on the roads, and she can engage in any business that a man can. In Italy I saw women harnessed alongside of dogs and in Holland I find them harnessed to canal-boats, the same as men. If there is any kind of work in Europe that a man can do in which women cannot and do not engage I have not discovered it, except the occupation of wearing military uniforms. The mercantile and shopkeeping business is almost entirely given over to women, and the right to carry trunks, shine shoes, sell papers and act as porters is not denied them. The men seem to be perfectly willing to let the women do the work, and the emancipation seems to have been accomplished without trouble of any kind.
The Dutch language is more like the English than like the German, with which it is classed. With my little knowledge of German I can read the Dutch signs and make a stagger at the newspapers, for there is more English than German in the written words. But the Dutch as a spoken language is like neither the German nor English. When two Dutchmen have a social, quiet chat it sounds like a buzz-saw. I can usually make a Dutchman understand me, but when it comes to my grasping the meaning of his talk I had as soon try to interpret the remarks of a file. It is ridiculous the way you have to change language every few hours’ ride in Europe. But I quit trying when I came to the Dutch. They will have to talk English or make signs in order to get my money; and again I am brought to the conclusion that no matter what is the language of the country, “money talks.”
THE DAM DUTCH TOWNS.
The Hague, Holland, Aug. 2, 1905.
Before leaving Amsterdam we took a trip through several little Dutch villages and to the island of Maarken, where the fisher-people continue to wear their eighteenth-century costumes in the progressive, stylish twentieth century. As a very pleasing incident of this journey we happened to reach Maarken at the same time with Queen Wilhelmina, so we not only got to see a live queen but in the excitement in the village escaped the attention usually given to American tourists by a thrifty people who have curios to sell. Queen Wilhelmina was a disappointment. I had been prepared to see a charming girlish sovereign, and I guess I was looking for something like a bright American girl with her hair hanging down her back. The queen is only 24 years old, but she looks 30. She wore a cheap-looking white suit which probably cost 30 cents a yard, American money. Her face was faded and so was her hat. She has large feet, wears coarse shoes, and her stockings wrinkled around the ankle like a fisherwoman’s. The stolidity of the Dutch was too much for me. The queen walked through the village, and while everybody turned out to see her there was not a cheer. When she passed the little group of a half-dozen Americans we took off our hats and gave a loud hurrah, just to show our friendship. She didn’t smile or look around, and we felt as cheap as she looked. In appearance she is sad and uninteresting. In America a governor or a president would have smiled and spoken cheerfully. But the queen of Holland does not have to run for reëlection, and I suppose that has a salutary effect on American statesmen. I will confess right now that my observations of European nobility have been made at a distance. I have not been mingling with the dukes and counts, but have received most of my impressions from the hotel clerks, the hackmen, the store-keepers and the workingmen. They are always glad to talk or make signs to Americans, and I have not met one laboring man who did not say he wanted to come to America. In the smoking-rooms and around the hotels I have talked some with the so-called “upper classes.” They don’t like America or England. I think the rulers of continental Europe and all the lords and valets are afraid America and England are going to combine with Japan and rule the world. The leading newspapers are full of that kind of talk, and while it is laughable to find that they think the American people are planning an invasion of Europe, it has a satisfactory side in the fact that it shows they think we could do it if we tried. The ruling classes are hostile politically to America. On the other hand, the working people are very friendly. The kings and nobles know that their jobs would not last long under American ideas. And the workingmen think that America means a chance to earn more than a mere living. Both classes have instinctively taken a position on the American question, and I don’t blame them.
Amsterdam is the biggest city in Holland and is the capital, but the queen and court reside at The Hague. Amsterdam is rich in commerce, but is beneath the level of the sea, rather unsightly, and perhaps unhealthy. The Hague is about as high as the sea-level and is on real land, not the drained and reclaimed sort. It has some beautiful streets and thousands of acres of woods which are kept in comparatively original condition and used for parks and drives. The two cities are only an hour’s ride apart, and The Hague is becoming the residence city for wealthy Dutchmen. Amsterdam is one of the financial centers of the world. The Hague is one of the political centers of the world. On account of its size Holland is not considered dangerous, and therefore presents a convenient meeting-place for international conferences. We visited the palace known as “The House in the Woods,” where the peace conference was held in 1899, on the suggestion of the czar of Russia, and in which twenty-six governments were represented. The actual result was not much, but an international court at The Hague was provided to which nations can submit disputed questions if they wish, and probably after the Japs get through with the czar so he can call another peace conference, further steps will be taken to prevent or mitigate the horrors of war. Andrew Carnegie, the same gentleman who put up the money for the Hutchinson public library, has promised $1,500,000 to erect an international court-house at The Hague which will be a suitable place for what might be called an international supreme court. One great weight which every European power has holding down its progress is the necessity of maintaining a large standing army and thus withdrawing from active production a big per cent. of its workers. The governments of Europe know this and talk of “disarming,” but each one is afraid the others won’t do it. And I also have a guess coming that some of the kings and queens would worry a little over the future of their jobs if they did not have the big armies at their command.
The Dutch are a hard-working lot. They get up earlier than the people of any other country I have seen in Europe. And as the entire family works, from the grandmother to the dog, they accumulate wealth as a nation and as individuals. The ordinary dwelling is part of the store, the shop, the barn or the windmill, so that the women-folks can do their part of the labor and not lose much time going back and forth. Whenever the women are not attending to the farm or the shop they are scrubbing. The smell of good strong soap is one of the real Dutch landmarks as much as a windmill or a canal.
From Amsterdam we went to Edam and Monnikendam and Volendam and Zaandam, and from here we go to Rotterdam and through several other dams. The affix “dam” means bridge or embankment, and in a country of canals it is not surprising that nearly all the names of towns end with dam, Amsterdam being on the bank of the Amsel river, and so on. When I was a boy I heard the story of the teacher who was having her class give sentences containing the words they were learning to spell. One day they came to the word “cofferdam,” and the teacher asked the bright boy of the class to frame a sentence illustrating the use of the word. He wrote on the blackboard: “Our old cow thought some sawdust was bran, and if she don’t look out she will cofferdam head off.” The word “dam” is not a cuss-word in Dutch. If it were, all the dam towns would be printed with a dash for the last syllable.
The history of Holland has about as much trouble in it as that of any country. It was not much of a nation during the dark and medieval ages, as there was no such state, but a number of petty vassal lords and bishops. About 1500 a Holland count got the title of Prince of Orange by marrying a French heiress. The principal ruler in Holland was the count of Burgundy, but the Dutch cities developed along business lines and were to a certain extent independent of kings and emperors, although nominally a part of the German empire. In the sixteenth century Philip of Spain inherited the sovereignty of the country, and by his bigoted and cruel rule started a civil war in 1568 which lasted eighty years and ended in the independence of Holland. During that war the Dutch had to have a leader, and so they elected William, prince of Orange, as stadtholder, or governor. Under his management the war was fought successfully, and when he was assassinated his son was elected stadtholder. The Dutch were divided into two parties, the Democratic and Aristocratic, and when Spain was defeated there was trouble between them. The so-called Dutch Republic was only an aristocracy, the privilege of participating in the government being restricted to a privileged class of small nobles and wealthy families. The office of stadtholder was elective, but generally went to the Oranges. Holland by its wise statesmanship and a strong navy was a world-power for a while, and in alliance with England and Sweden generally defeated the French and Spanish, and when there was war with England the Dutchmen held their own. Finally William III. of Orange became king of England, and the Dutch Republic lost its prestige. In the eighteenth century it was a tail to the English kite, and in 1806 Napoleon made his brother king of Holland and five years later annexed the country to France. After Napoleon’s defeat the European powers created the kingdom of Holland, joined Belgium to it, and made William of Orange king of the united country. The Belgians broke away in 1830, and since that time Holland has been a monarchy, although the power is with the people.
I was much struck with the apparent lack of loyalty to the queen. In England everybody is loyal to King Edward because he not only represents the sovereignty of the nation, but he stands for the English constitution, rights of parliament and the people, and the king is the result of centuries of English thought and political action. But the Dutch have been without a king most of their history and they don’t feel the reverence for the crown that the English do. Wilhelmina is not very popular, and her husband, who is a second-rate German prince that never mixes with the people and is said to be mean to his wife, is not liked at all. The Dutch cities have practical self-government, and it would not be surprising if after the death of Wilhelmina or in the event of some political upheaval the Dutch Republic would be revived on a broader basis than before.
Rotterdam, Holland, Aug. 3, 1905.
To-day we came to Delft, where the Delft china does not come from any more, and from there to Rotterdam in a canal-boat. Riding in a canal-boat is a very pleasant way of traveling. If you want to get off, the boat simply runs up close to the bank and you make it with a jump—one jump is better than two. You glide along through the pastures and back yards and see the women scrubbing, the men smoking and the dogs pulling the carts. When you come to a low bridge everybody lies down flat until the boat is beyond it. Our canal-boat was propelled by steam, and we went flying along at the rate of five or six miles an hour, but still with plenty of time to inspect the country and visit with the people on the other boats if we could only have talked their language. As a cure for nervousness or as an antidote for being in a hurry I recommend a trip on a canal-boat.
Delft is a quaint old town, with old churches and clean canals. Two hundred years ago the manufacture of porcelain made the town famous, but for a hundred years the business was suspended and now most of the Delft china is made in New Jersey. Recently a factory has been started and real Delft ware can be obtained, but the American kind is just as good.
The canal-boat brought us through the town of Schiedam, where the celebrated Dutch “schnapps” is made. They tell me schnapps is closely related to that brand of American whisky which will make a man climb a tree. There are 200 distilleries in Schiedam. The Dutch are given to strong drinks rather than beer. The result is that the Dutch get wildly and meanly drunk, whereas the Germans merely get fat.
Near Rotterdam we canalled by Delfthaven. This is the place from which the Pilgrims sailed for North America in 1620. They stopped en route in England, but their original start was from here. They had come to Holland from England in order to secure freedom of worship, but they were still Englishmen and did not want to become Dutch. So they secured a promise that they would not be disturbed in the New World, and left their Holland home. If they had stayed in Delfthaven there would have been no New England, no Bunker Hill, no United States. But they did not stay.
THE KINGDOM OF BELGIUM.
Brussels, Belgium, Aug. 5, 1905.
I do not suppose other people are as ignorant as I was, but I will admit that in my mind I have always lumped off Holland and Belgium together as two countries with the same kind of people, the same language, the same habits and generally the same government. This is a great mistake. Holland and Belgium are about as unlike as the United States and Mexico. Holland is Dutch, with a language related to the German and English, and with Teutonic characteristics. Belgium is allied to France, the people speaking French or a kind of French, and with traits of character like the Parisians. Holland and Belgium have never agreed well politically and have never lived together harmoniously. When the allies had defeated Napoleon they created the kingdom of Holland and Belgium and tried to tie the two together. The combination lasted just fifteen years, and in 1830 the Belgians revolted, declared their independence and fought successfully to make it good. This year they are celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Belgian independence. Two hundred years ago the king of Spain was sovereign over both countries. Holland threw off the yoke and did business on its own account, while Belgium failed and remained the property of Spain or Austria down to the time of Napoleon. The Hollanders drink “schnapps” and the Belgians drink wine. The Hollanders are Protestant in religion and the Belgians are Catholics. Except for the fact that they are side by side along the North sea and are flat and low, the two countries differ in about everything possible.
The largest city in Belgium is Antwerp, located on the Scheldt river a little way from the sea, and with one of the largest and best harbors of Europe. During the Middle Ages Antwerp was a great commercial city, monopolizing much of the trade with the Orient, and being known everywhere for its wealth and business. In the eighteenth century, under Spanish and Austrian rule, the city lost its standing and went down to about 40,000 population. During the nineteenth century it had a boom; now there are 355,000 inhabitants and Antwerp looks like a great American city,—with many wide avenues, beautiful buildings, and handsome stores. Aside from the fact that the streets are often narrow, a modern city in Europe looks better than one of the same size and standing in America. The Europeans have better ideas of architecture, put up their buildings more substantially and with more regard to their appearance, and have less of the cheap and shoddy construction than we do. I suppose we have as good architects in America as in Belgium, but I know of no city in our country where the business blocks are so elegant or so well built. Our folks build in a hurry. Over here they build for centuries, because they have already had centuries and know that is the way to do. I haven’t seen a frame house except in Switzerland. When people build with stone they are apt to put the work there to stay. And these modern European cities, by which I mean cities which have kept pace with the world’s growth and are not simply living on history and tourists, have many large squares with monuments and fountains, parks with gardens and boulevards with drives,—all over the city, not simply where the rich folks live as in some American cities. I reckon I am as conceited about my country as anybody, but I get it taken out of me every now and then, and modern city-building is one of the places. It would pay our town-builders to take a little more time and do better, more substantial and more tasteful work.
Brussels is the capital of Belgium. If all the suburbs were taken in as in Chicago and New York, it would have a half-million people. It has the reputation of being one of the handsomest cities of Europe, and is called “the second Paris.” It has many wide avenues, beautiful shops, and the people, like those of Paris, are great on having a good time. Nearly every other store in Brussels is a lace store, and most of the rest are jewelry stores. There are said to be 150,000 women in Brussels and vicinity making lace for sale, and they are paid by the shops for which they work about 20 cents a day. The country round about is fertile, but the farming is more what we would call market gardening. The picturesque costumes have disappeared, and the Belgians dress and act more like French and Americans than any other European people I have seen. Their farm labor is still crude. There is no machinery, and there need be none so long as labor is cheap. The dogs pull the carts to town with the truck for market and the working-people live on fish and vegetables because they are used to it and because meat is away beyond their means.
To-day I went to the battlefield of Waterloo. It has always been a matter of regret to me that Napoleon did not win that fight. The big powers of Europe had combined and forced his abdication. They sent Napoleon to Elba and were quarreling over a division of the spoils when he escaped and returned to France. The people received him with joy and his old soldiers rallied to his standards. The allies ran hither and thither and were scared almost to death—all but the English, who never know when to quit. Wellington with about 70,000 soldiers was near Brussels and Napoleon rushed his army of the same size to meet him. If Napoleon had defeated Wellington the backbone of the alliance against him would have been broken and the map of Europe would have been very different from what it is. The battlefield is comparatively small. The two armies had a front of about two miles and were less than a mile apart. In those days a cannon could not shoot a mile and a musket not more than 150 yards. After the first firing the guns had to be reloaded, so as a matter of fact there would be a few volleys and then the opposing armies would clinch and go at it with bayonets, clubbed muskets, and swords. That was the way at Waterloo. Napoleon made the attack and Wellington’s army had the help of stone walls and position. In a space of about forty acres around one farmhouse there were 6,000 killed and wounded. Both sides fought like the devil, or rather like devils, and took few prisoners. The English allies held their ground all day, beating back the frequent and ferocious French charges. In the evening the Prussian army under Blucher came slowly up at one side and the outnumbered Frenchmen had to retreat. It was all over with Napoleon, for his army was dead or missing; so he again gave up, and this time his enemies were careful to put him at St. Helena where he could not get away.
A great monument was erected on the battlefield by the victorious nations. It is a mound of earth 150 feet high, pyramid-shaped, and a half-mile around the base. On top of the mound is a figure of a colossal lion. The mound is the highest point for many miles, and from its top the entire battlefield is easily seen. It is a very impressive sight. When the great mound was constructed the earth was carried in baskets by women who were paid 8 cents a day. That kind of a price for labor makes a steam shovel sick. The people who live around the battlefield have a rich tourist crop. Although they are Belgians I think some of them are descendants of Napoleon’s soldiers, judging from the way they charge. Just about the time the visitor gets excited or interested in the historic spots, he is reminded that there is “something for the guide,” or that he can buy maps, picture cards, bullets, buttons from Napoleon’s coat, or get a drink of water from the well in which the bodies of 150 French soldiers were thrown.
Belgium is one of the busiest countries in Europe, but labor is really not better paid than elsewhere. A laboring man gets 30 cents a day, skilled laborers up to a dollar. A woman works at lace-making for 20 cents a day, or a woman will come at 7 o’clock in the morning and work until 8 o’clock in the evening, a Belgian working-day, for 20 cents. The cost of good, decent living is not much if any less than in Kansas, but of course people who earn only 20 or 30 cents a day don’t live well. Their home is with the cow or the dog or with people just as poor, and a beefsteak would probably give them the gout. I have seen similar conditions in the slums of American cities, and once, when the tariff bars were thrown down and our factories put to competition with Belgian and other European factories where labor is paid as I have stated, there was a temporary paralysis of labor attended by suffering and want. But these are the normal conditions in Belgium and in Europe at a time which is considered one of general prosperity. I wonder how it must be with hard times. The “bugaboo” of “competition with pauper labor” is not a political imagination, but would be a sad reality if the American people should vote for a change in the tariff policy. I have learned this lesson from the mouths and faces of the workingmen of Europe.
Of course there are American-made goods that come into Europe. They are all here because the Europeans have nothing near as good. The American typewriter, the sewing-machine, the Wernicke office supplies and the American shoe are always advertised boldly and freely. Other American wares are sold without the American label because of some prejudice, especially in England. In order to show my patriotism I started lifting my hat every time I saw the sign or advertisement of American goods. At first I enjoyed the novelty, but as I learned to look for the marks I soon had my hat off most of the time. I didn’t mind honoring any American article, but it grew wearisome to have my hand bobbing up to my hat whenever I turned around, especially as Carter’s liver pills and Quaker oats have just covered Europe with their posters and their catch-lines. When the American does start to do business in Europe he does it right, and is not afraid to put his name on any place the police will let him. And it is comforting to a pilgrim in a strange land to see in big letters on street cars and fences the names that decorated the old walls and billboards at home.
EUROPEAN ART AND GRUB.
Bruges, Belgium, Aug. 8, 1905.
In this quaint old town we are spending the last day of our stay on the continent of Europe. To-morrow we sail from Ostend to Dover, and the prospect of a return to a land where the English language is spoken is next to getting home.
Of all the cities of the Netherlands, Bruges has best held on to the ancient appearance and ways. The fact may be explained by the figures. During the boom in Belgium a few centuries ago, Bruges had a population of 200,000, while now there are only 54,000. There was no necessity to tear down the old buildings to make room for modern structures or provide wide boulevards and promenades. Consequently the old buildings stand, only modified in appearance by the wear and tear of weather and years. The sole business of the town as near as I could see is lace-making, and as the women do that there is little left for the men, except to drive cabs and hold the offices. We walked down a little narrow street, perhaps twelve feet wide, lined from one end to the other on this pleasant day with women sitting on stools making lace. The advent of a few Americans almost caused a riot in the desire to see and be seen, and the little street seemed to swarm with women and with children. Working over the pillow these women make lace to be sold at 15 or 20 cents for their day’s labor. Girls hardly into their teens and grandmothers up in the 80’s were laboring side by side. One old lady with whom we had a most delightful visit, although neither could understand the other’s language, and from whom Mrs. Morgan bought some of the handiwork, is 86 years old, and yet she cheerfully and ably manipulates the hand-shuttles that make the lace as if she were not half that age. There is a special provision of Providence that nearly always applies. These women of all ages who have to make lace or starve, work in abominable light and yet have excellent eyesight and never wear spectacles or glasses. In America, where the lace is bought and where such work is a delicate, eye-trying task, the women have trouble with their eyesight and must have artificial help to see the lace that the Belgian women make. The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb.
Bruges is also the depository of the earliest specimens of Dutch and Flemish art, for here nearly 500 years ago lived Jan Van Eyck, and he and his brother were the pioneers in the style of painting which is generally known as “Dutch.” They were followed a few years later by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, De Crayer, Jordaens, and their crowd, who went to Italy and learned a good deal, but who were really followers of the Van Eycks. I have spent some time in the art galleries at Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp and Brussels, and have picked up a smattering of knowledge of Dutch and Flemish art which I would like to unload. The “whole shooting-match,” as the Germans would say, is generally called Dutch, but there is a perceptible difference between the work in Holland and Belgium, although the artists lived so close together that they naturally formed one great school. Peter Paul Rubens, who generally gets first place, was a Belgian, although he was born out of that country when his parents were politically exiled. He lived at Antwerp and was brought up in a Jesuit school in a Catholic country. Rembrandt was a Dutchman, born at Leyden, Holland, and a politician as well as an artist in a Protestant country. If one will reflect upon the religious situation in Europe in the early seventeenth century, he will see that no matter if both used the same colors and the same rules for drawing, they were bound to treat different subjects, or have different conceptions of the same subject. Van Dyck, the third of the celebrated trio, was born in Antwerp, but went to London, and there did most of his work in portrait-painting, his specialty, because he was better paid by Englishmen. The Catholic Rubens and his followers painted for the churches and cathedrals, and for a Catholic constituency, and usually portrayed religious subjects, while Rembrandt and his pupils painted for the Dutch burghers, and their best pictures are of men, grouped in military companies or trade guilds. Rubens is more ideal and spiritual, Rembrandt more material and human. Therefore it is that people who like one often do not appreciate the other. I really like the Dutch art better than the Italian, although it is a good deal like a boy trying to decide whether he will have cherry pie or custard pie, and wanting both. The influence of environment and education is clearly seen in the fat Madonnas and the pictures of public-houses and drinking-bouts which are favorite subjects. The Dutch artists also lean to “realism,” and about nine times in ten a picture of the realist school is unpleasant and therefore to my mind inartistic. For example, one of Rubens’s great masterpieces represents the martyrdom of a saint who had his tongue torn out, and in the picture the executioner is handing the red, bleeding tongue to a dog. Another picture shows an execution, the axeman holding up the head, and the body with the stump of a neck the main feature of the foreground. Some people like this sort of thing, but I don’t. For a hundred years after Rubens and Rembrandt, the Netherlands produced no art, at the time the countries themselves were demoralized and the prey of the larger powers. Recently Dutch art has revived in the portraying of Dutch landscapes, windmills, canals and such, and to my mind it is the pleasantest and most effective art now alive in Europe, away ahead of the Italians, who persist in imitating the old masters and tackling subjects which have been thoroughly covered so much that there is hardly a chance for a new impression.
Every town of any size in Belgium and Holland has a public art gallery, and the people ought to be artists merely from association. But as a matter of fact three-fourths of the visitors to the galleries when I was there were Americans and English.
Speaking of art reminds me of hotels. Before leaving Europe I want to pay a tribute to the hotel-keepers of the continent. I must have been wrongly impressed by what I had read and heard, for I had looked forward with dread to the queer ways and the strange dishes I was to go against on the trip. As a matter of fact the hotels in Europe are better and cheaper than those of America. The management is more courteous, the service better, and the eating far surpasses the equivalent in the United States. The “tipping system” is not bad at all and the effort of the landlord to get at your money is concealed by a show of cordiality and hospitality which I have never experienced in a strange hostelry in my own country. I am overcharged and worked ten times more in Kansas City, Chicago and New York than in Rome, Cologne, Brussels, or any other European city.
When a traveler arrives at a continental hotel he is greeted at the entrance by the hall porter or clerk, and instead of being bulldozed over a counter by a gentleman with a diamond stud into paying twice the ordinary price for a room, he is quietly and pleasantly told what rooms are vacant, what are their rates, and allowed to make a selection. He does not have to tip a porter or a bell-boy for every little favor. From the proprietor to the “boots” everyone in the hotel is at your service and nothing to pay—not then. Of course you expect to do the right thing when you leave, but for the time this cordial service seems to be spontaneous and animated with a sincere desire for your comfort. In Germany the proprietor of the hotel keeps up the pretense that you are his guest, and every day he inquires after your welfare. In the German restaurants the proprietor walks around and speaks pleasantly to everyone and you feel that he is really glad to see you without associating that sensation with the payment of the bill. Everything and everybody in the hotel is at your service. There is always a reading-room with newspapers, often American papers, smoking-rooms, lounging-rooms, and comfortable parlors where it is a pleasure to spend the time. In nearly every hotel there is a free library, mostly books of the country, but always some in English. At the Parker House in Boston, my last stopping-place in America, I had been surprised and delighted to find a well-selected library for the use of the guests of the hotel. I supposed that was a Boston innovation and was prepared to brag about it, but I have found a similar library in nearly every hotel at which I have stayed in Europe. An American hotel does not give half the space to the general use and comfort of guests that a European hotel does, and what it does offer is usually only a big office and stiff parlors in which people stay only when they can find nowhere else to go.
European cooking is far ahead of American cooking. A cook in this country is not an accident, not a man or woman who is cooking until a better job offers. A cook is something between a professional man and a skilled mechanic, and young men learn the business as thoroughly as they do engineering or banking. Labor is cheap, so that in the kitchen as well as in the front rooms there is always plenty of service, and it is by people who are brought up to it and not by boys or men who are down on their luck. I expected to be “fussy” over the cooking and cookery, but I have hardly had a poor meal in Europe and not a bad one at all. There is not much difference in the stuff used or in the way of serving, but the work is better done, and all the good American dishes like beefsteak and eggs are found in Europe looking as natural as life. The Europeans do more with mutton, veal and fish and less with beef than our cooks, and the small farms raise vegetables that are delicious.
When one leaves the hotel the proprietor or manager always comes to see him off and say good-by. There isn’t such a crowd of servants waiting for tips as is generally alleged. Your porter, who has polished your shoes and carried your baggage, is on hand, and the chambermaid casually meets you on the stairs. The head waiter expects a tip and so does the hall porter, and there are usually a couple of other attendants ready to receive, but not obnoxiously so. I learned that the best way to do was to be as polite as the Europeans. A few minutes before time to leave I would say good-by to the head waiter, the smoking-room attendant, and any other who had rendered special service, giving each a small tip which he always took with many expressions of good-will and appreciation. That prevented any assemblage at the door when we left, and the last good-bys and tips were only expected by the man who brought the baggage and the hall porter who put us in the carriage and gave me full information as regards the coming journey and the next stop.
The rates at European hotels are much less than in ours. The prices for rooms are about half what they would be in America for similar accommodations in the same-sized places. The restaurant prices are a little less than ours. I should say that in Europe you pay about $2 to $3 a day for what would cost $3 to $4 in America. In small hotels and boarding-houses the same ratio is maintained, and there is no doubt in my mind that “room and board” on a European trip for an American is little more than half what it would be for a European in America. In these prices I include tips. The ordinary American will greatly enjoy life on the continent, provided, of course, he does not always eat at the “table d’hôte,” or regular meal-table, which is monotonous everywhere. And also he must not want a room with a bath, or an elevator. Very few buildings in Europe have elevators, and the natives do not use them. It is an inconvenience to walk up two or three flights of stairs to your room, but in the hotels that do not have “lifts” you must remember that is the way the nobility and everybody does in Europe, and quit kicking. You can get a bath in the bathroom or you can scrub yourself with the contents of the washbowl, after you have had some experience. That is the custom of the country, and the thing to do is not to be telling about the rooms with baths in America, but accept the situation, look pleasant, and you will get along all right. It is the same way in Europe that it is everywhere else in this vale of tears: if you look for trouble you easily find it, and if you are constantly talking and thinking of the conveniences which American customs have provided and which are not used in Europe, you can make yourself miserable and unpopular. But if you accept the ways of the country, enjoy the novelties even if they seem old-fashioned and strange, you will have a grand old time and will make yourself solid with the people.
In Europe the name “United States” is rarely used. We are “Americans.” The people of Canada are Canadians and the people of the United States have the sole use of the title of Americans. They consider us the whole thing, and we always admit it without argument. There is a general impression in the Old World that all Americans are rich. There is a general impression that sometime we will fight the rest of the world, and I think there is an impression that we will lick. So far as I can see, Americans are treated about as well as dukes, and the ways of traveling are greased for them by everybody along the line. (Grease to be paid for, of course.) In two months’ travel on the continent, usually not knowing the language, we have never missed a train or connection, been mistreated or imposed upon, allowed to suffer inconvenience or annoyance. That is a record it would be hard to equal in America.