Windmills and Wooden Shoes

by Blair Jaekel

The landscape of Walcheren seems set as if for a theatrical performance. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. Left, a tree-encircled, thatch roofed farmhouse, built as an addition to the barn in the back, so as to save a wall; right, a line of willows, all twins, that fringe a road along the top of a dike; up stage, a windmill of methodical movements, and, perhaps, a sailboat passing slowly along a narrow canal—too narrow and too high above the eye for the audience to obtain a glimpse of any water at all—giving the effect of a mirage; down stage, a black and white cow. Of course it will be a black and white cow, because, figuratively, you might count the red cows in Holland on your fingers. And such a scene is not typical of the Island of Walcheren alone, but of the Netherlands in general. Any other type of scenery might become wearisome, but possibly the brevity of the train ride or the substitution of a boat or steam tram trip between one point of interest and another has a lot to do with relieving the monotony.

Of all Zeeland, the particular costume of that province can be observed to the best advantage on the island of Walcheren. A milkmaid of Middelburg, for example, is a joy to look upon. Her spotless white cap bristles at the temples with kurkenkrullen like the antennæ of a prehistoric beetle. Her skirts are ankle-high and padded generously at the hips. If she be naturally rotund and the skirts need no padding, circumstantial evidence of the fact is sufficient to stamp her the belle of the community. The sleeves of her bodice are very short and very tight, pinching the arms above the elbows so that they might be mistaken for a pair of aggravated cases of inflammatory rheumatism. Of course the sun in all its glory strikes the backs of these arms, for she always walks with them akimbo, the better to balance the pails which dangle one from each end of a wooden yoke, enameled a vivid robin’s egg blue. But the redder the arms from the rays of the sun and the tighter the pinch of the sleeves, the flatter the chest and the broader the hips, the sooner will she cease to be a mere milkmaid through the medium of a simple marriage ceremony in the village kerk.

The only discordant note in the otherwise harmonious landscape on the road to Veere may be said to be a flitting one. It assumes the distended shape of a buxom village maiden in the full provincial costume—padded skirts and all—astride a bicycle, spinning townward or homeward over the bricks. For the bicycle, be it known, is the natural—and it has therefore become the national—means of locomotion in Holland. Everybody rides bicycles; and since the only hills are the approaches to the dikes or across the humpbacked span of a canal drawbridge, their invention has been no less a boon to the populace at large than it has been a bane to the sight-seer. In The Hague, for example, they have become a veritable pest, and to be constantly dodging them in the streets keeps a person very much on the jump.

By and by you will rattle into Veere. You can tell it is Veere by its church, for Veere’s church is something to remember. It is by far the biggest thing on the island of Walcheren. It is the first building of historical or architectural importance that you will pass on entering the town from Middelburg, and its immensity, so foreign to the Veere of to-day, may be able to convey to you some remote idea of what Veere used to be before the sea leaked in over the cofferdam and blotted out most of the place between suns.

This picturesque tower at Westkapelle belonged originally to a fifteenth-century church that was burned in 1831. It is now used as a lighthouse

Built in 1348, this church weathered even the terrible encroachment of the sea; but along came Napoleon in 1812. Napoleon, being accustomed to move, lock, stock and barrel, into the most sumptuous quarters of every town he visited, took a particular liking to Veere’s church and promptly made a barracks of it. There is no more complete method of demolishing the interior of a building than to turn it into a barracks, especially a Napoleonic barracks, and since the Little Corsican’s unwelcome visit to Veere the old church has remained ravaged, mildewed, and decayed. In a corner of the east end, however, the people of Veere still gather for spiritual worship. Twelve years ago they started to restore the church, but if the receipt of funds is not a little more prompt in the future they may some day have to restore the restorations.

Several quaint old houses of the sixteenth century; an impressive tower at the mouth of the harbor, whose mate lies buried under the sea; and the Town Hall, containing an unimportant museum save for a few royal documents and a richly enameled goblet, presented to the town in 1551 by Maximilian of Burgundy, the first marquis of Veere—these and the church are the sole relics of Veere’s previous prosperity not claimed by the ocean.

A rapid succession of long, shady, hedge-fringed avenues lead from Veere to Domburg, the curious little bathing resort on the northwest coast of the island. Approximately halfway, at West Hove, there stands a famous old castle, once the residence of the Abbots of Middelburg, which remains in such a perfect state of preservation—although modernized, of course, to a certain degree—that in the summer it is used as a sanatorium for the poor children of the Flushing and Middelburg districts. Just across the road an attractive modern building, more like a country home in design, does duty as a full-fledged hospital.

The town of Domburg gives not the least evidence of being situated on the seaside, as do the most of our Atlantic Coast resorts by their bleakness, but seems rather an inland village, thickly sprinkled with and all but completely surrounded by trees. At its back and just a few steps behind the sand dunes, lies the sea, while a stretch of well formed, sandy beach, which entices to Domburg each summer a goodly number of Dutch people and the few foreigners who know of its charms, slopes away beyond the dunes.