Windmills and Wooden Shoes

by Blair Jaekel

The Mauritshuis also contains masterpieces by Holbein, Jan Steen, Rubens, Van Dyke, Terburg, Vermeer, and other famous Dutch artists, together with a Madonna by Murillo and some interesting royal portraits by Velasquez.

Backing upon the Mauritshuis is the picturesque Vyver, a broad sheet of water punctured here and there by the divings of ducks and swans. Near the center of its south side it reflects the walls and towers of the ancient Binnenhof, while on its north it is lined with many rows of trees.

Not far from where the lofty spire of iron openwork of the Groote Kerk—the scene of the wedding ceremony of Wilhelmina and Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on February 7, 1901—serves as a conspicuous landmark for strangers in the city, and facing a continuation of the busy Hoogstraat, rises the unimposing royal palace, from the front windows of which the Queen may look out upon an equestrian statue of the father of her country, William the Silent. It is a palace that gives the impression of having been built for comfort rather than ostentation, and when the Queen is not in residence you may obtain tickets of permission to be taken through by a servant, from a little tobacco store near by.

None of the rooms of the palace is particularly striking as to decorations and furniture, save one, and that is about the most remarkable apartment of any palace on the continent. Floor, walls, and ceiling, it is one solid mass of the most exquisitely carved teakwood, given by the colony of Java as a wedding present to the Queen. You will wonder little that it took upwards of thirty-five men seven years to complete the job. There are gold and inlaid pieces of wonderful workmanship in the cabinets that border the walls—presents from the Javanese to the little Juliana—which add to the whole impression of unalloyed richness welded together in perfect taste, without so much as giving the hint of a “gingerbread” effect. In beautiful gardens at the rear of the palace the Queen walks every morning with Juliana after déjeuner at eleven.

Farther along to the northwest is the fashionable residence section of The Hague, with the Willem’s Park as its principal focus. In the center of this park, in an open space called the “Plein 1813,” rises a handsome national monument, unveiled in 1869 to commemorate the restoration of Dutch independence by the expulsion of the French in 1813 and the return of the pristine exile, Prince William Frederic of Orange, who landed at Scheveningen and ascended the throne of Holland as king. Not far from here and still to the northwest, is the finest modern picture gallery in Holland, the Mesdag Museum, presented to the State by the modern Dutch artist, H. W. Mesdag, and his wife, in 1903.

The shopping district of The Hague comprises the Hoogstraat and its immediate vicinity, the Spuistraat and the Wegenstraat. The narrow Spuistraat is always the most congested. Like the Hoogstraat in Rotterdam and the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam, it is so thickly patronized from four-thirty, say, until dark that vehicular traffic through it is self-suspended for the sake of saving time; even the pitiless Hague bicyclist is compelled to dismount and push his wheel through it. At this late hour of the day the cafés are given over to the cordially inclined and the coffee drinkers, who fill their favorite rendezvous to the bursting point. As in Berlin, the Zoological Garden at The Hague, with its café-concerts, is also a much frequented spot for recreation, but, unlike the Berlin garden, the less said about its zoology the better.

The beautiful old forest called the Bosch, lying just to the east of The Hague, intersected with disused and, therefore, rather stagnant canals, is the Versailles of Holland, and the “House in the Wood” is its Trianon. But the Bosch is much more accessible to The Hague than Versailles is to Paris, for an electric car will take you there from the plein in fifteen or twenty minutes.

Erected in 1645 by Prince Frederic Henry of Orange for his consort, the Princess Amalia of Solms, “The House in the Wood” latterly became famous as the seat of the international peace conference which the representatives of twenty-six different world powers held here in 1899. The conference convened in the so styled “Orange Room,” an octagonal hall lighted with a cupola, its walls and ceiling embellished with allegorical scenes from the life of Prince Frederic, done in oils by Dutch and Flemish artists. It is by far the most important apartment in the palace. The other rooms contain some wonderful Japanese embroideries, cabinets of elaborately and minutely carved ivories, rice paper tapestries, porcelains, and other exquisite objects of Oriental handcraft. It was here that the American historian, John Lothrop Motley, wrote a greater part of his “The Rise of the Dutch Republic” and a portrait of him hangs upon the wall of one of the rooms.

A short distance to the north of the forest will be erected the much talked of Peace Palace for the International Court of Arbitration, toward the cost of which Mr. Carnegie has promised to contribute a million and a half.