EVERY tourist knows that Holland is one of the historic cradles of political freedom, and also a chain of cities which are in effect museums of invaluable art. The voyager in a little ship may learn that in addition to all this Holland is the home of a vast number of plain persons who are under the necessity of keeping themselves alive seven days a week, and whose experiments in the adventure of living have an interest quite equal to the interest of ancient art. To judge that adventure in its final aspect, one should see Holland on a Sunday, and not the Holland of the cities, but of the little towns.
We came one Sunday morning to a place called Zieriksee, on an island to the north of the East Schelde. Who has heard of Zieriksee? Nevertheless, Zieriksee exists, and seven thousand people prosecute the adventure therein without the aid of museums and tourists. At first, from the mouth of its private canal, it seems to be a huge, gray tower surrounded by tiniest doll’s-houses with vermilion roofs; and as you approach, the tower waxes, until the stones of it appear sufficient to build the whole borough; then it wanes, and is lost in the town, as all towers ultimately are. The cobbled quay and streets were empty as we moored. And in an instant a great crowd sprang up out of the earth,—men and boys and girls, but few women,—staring, glaring, giggling, gabbling, pushing. Their inquisitiveness had no shame, no urbanity. Their cackle deafened. They worried the Velsa like starving wolves worrying a deer. The Velsa was a godsend, unhoped for in the enormous and cruel tedium which they had created for themselves. To escape them we forced our way ashore, and trod the clean, deathlike, feet-torturing streets. One shop was open; we entered it, and were supplied with cigarettes by two polite and gracious very old women who knew no English. On emerging from this paganism, we met a long, slow-slouching, gloomy procession of sardonic human beings,—not a pretty woman among them, not a garment that was comely or unclean or unrespectable, not a smile,—the great, faithful congregation marching out of the great church. Here was the life of leisure in Holland as distinguished from the week-day life of industry. It was a tragic spectacle. When we returned to the yacht, the other congregation was still around it. And it was still there, just as noisy and boorish, when we left several hours later. And it would still have been there if we had remained till midnight. The phenomenon of that crowd, wistful in its touching desire for distraction, was a serious criticism of the leaders of men in Holland. As we slid away, we could see the crowd rapidly dissolving into the horror of its original ennui. I asked the cook, a cockney, what he thought of Zieriksee.
His face lightened to a cheerful smile.
“Rather a nice sort of place, sir. More like England.”
The same afternoon we worked up the Schelde in a dead calm to Zijpe. The rain had pretermitted for the first time, and the sun was hot. Zijpe is a village, a haven, a dike, and a junction of train and steamer. The village lies about a mile inland. The haven was pretty full of barges laid up for Sunday. On the slopes of the haven, near the railway-station and the landing-stage, a multitude of at least a thousand people were strolling to and fro or sitting on the wet grass, all in their formidable Sabbath best. We joined them, in order, if possible, to learn the cause of the concourse; but the mystery remained for one hour and a half in the eventless expanse of the hot afternoon, when the train came in over the flat, green leagues of landscape. We then understood. The whole of Zijpe had turned out to see the afternoon train come in! It was a simple modest Dutch local train, making a deal of noise and dust, and bearing perhaps a score of passengers. But it marked the grand climacteric of leisured existence at Zijpe. We set off to the village, and discovered a village deserted, and a fair-ground, with all its booths and circuses swathed up in gray sheeting. Scarcely a soul! The spirit of romance had pricked them all to the railway-station to see the train come in!
Making a large circuit, we reached again the river and the dike, and learned what a dike is in Holland. From the top of it we could look down the chimneys of houses on the landward side. The population was now on the dike, promenading in magnificent solemnity and self-control. Everybody gravely saluted us in passing. We gravely saluted everybody, and had not a moment to ourselves for miles.
“Over there,” said the skipper afterward, pointing vaguely to the southeast over the Schelde, “they ’re Roman Catholics. There ’s a lot of Spaniards left in Holland.” By Spaniards he meant Dutchmen with some Spanish blood.