Until the child attains the age of thirty years he or she is subservient to parental authority and must even obtain, up until that age, parental permission to marry—and the matter of marriage in Holland is by no means the least interesting of the customs of the country. Courtship is a protracted affair and follows the engagement indefinitely. Two weeks prior to the date of the wedding the legal declaration of the betrothal takes place, consisting of the “signing on” of both parties involved. The bride, with apt acknowledgment that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, at once proceeds to render herself immune from the usual deluge of cut glass and pie knives by compiling a list of acceptable wedding presents for the consultation of her relatives and friends, so that they may select such gifts as are suited both to her needs and their pocketbooks.
Of the civil marriage ceremonies there are three classes, not at all determined by the social positions of the contracting parties, but by the time required to tie the knot and the corresponding fee imposed. A first-class marriage may be performed on any day of the week, but the second and third-class marriages are conducted upon certain days, the different members of the City Council officiating by turns. Each of the second-class ceremonies is performed separately and the ritual repeated for each couple. A number of third-class marriages, however, may be conducted at one and the same time, and practically at club rates. The ceremony in this case is not altogether an impressive one but it serves its purpose at a cheaper price and is more quickly over with. The methods of procedure are somewhat as follows:
Brides and bridegrooms to be, friends, relatives, and witnesses are ushered into a large room in the city hall. The member of Council in charge takes his position upon the dais, and the clerk calls the names of the contracting parties. They arise to acknowledge their identities, which are duly vouched for by the various witnesses in each case. The officer then proceeds to expatiate upon the duties of man and wife and upon the holy bonds of matrimony, directing his awesome remarks to the standing couples. In closing, he puts forth the question as to whether each, in spite of all he has said, will take the other for better or for worse, abide by the laws, and love and cherish each other until death doth part, so help them. A loud and enthusiastic chorus in the affirmative is followed by a banging of the table right soundly with the official gavel, and the whole company is forthwith pronounced man and wife. Of course it is assumed by the conspirators which maiden the functionary has pronounced the wife of which young man; at all events, there is nothing on record about the wrong husband decamping with the wrong wife. Order comes out of apparent chaos and, as the story books read, they all live happily ever after.
The civil ceremony is all that is required by law, but, possibly to moisten the already well executed knot in the tie that binds, many couples later undergo the religious ceremony in the church. The familiar wedding ring figures in neither the religious nor the civil ceremony. Each member of an engaged couple presents the other with a plain gold ring at the time of “plighting their troth,” as we observe in the novels, which is worn upon the third finger of the left hand until after the marriage, when it becomes a wedding ring and is transferred to the right hand.
Until the advent of the little Princess Juliana Holland realized her danger of being ultimately absorbed by Germany. A German Prince had married the sovereign of the Dutch nation, and German journals were not reticent in suggesting that, in the event of Queen Wilhelmina leaving no direct issue, the succession should revert to the family of the Prince Consort. Moreover, Germany had ever been jealous of Holland’s possession of the mouth of the greatest of German rivers—the Rhine, of which she sought the control from its source to the sea. Germany also had an eye upon Holland’s possessions for her own colonization—possessions that give this little country second place among the colonial powers of the world and which, in the Far East alone, aggregate in acreage fourteen times her own area. But the birth of Juliana precluded all immediate possibility of German usurpation, and the Hollanders didn’t convalesce from the effects of the joyous news for a whole week.
The Dutch are an intensely patriotic people and have made heroic sacrifices to maintain the independence now assured them by the powers of the world—and the birth of Juliana. They are phlegmatic rather than impetuous; stoical rather than demonstrative; impassive rather than excitable. By virtue of their country’s unique maritime position it has bred the naval heroes, navigators, discoverers, and engineers whose names will remain synonymous for indomitable pluck so long as there exists a history of unequal fighting. By reason of the wealth derived from the foreign trade that these men made possible it has fostered conspicuous groups of artists and scholars and scientists who in their times were the leaders of their guilds.
The Dutch build good roads and beautiful ones. On the left is one of the long shady avenues leading from Veere to Domburg; on the right a typical brick-paved highway
It is with keen appreciation of the characteristics of the Hollander which enable him to offer to the traveling world so delightful a handmade territory, that I turn to the pages of “The Traveler” by Oliver Goldsmith and quote a short summary of Holland from the pen of one who traveled and observed, and who, by his enviable powers of description, analysis, and condensation, could epitomize a volume of significance in a single word of syncope.
“To men of other minds my fancy flies,