One of the most romantic of these legends is the “Golden Spinning-Wheel.” A king loses his way while hunting and stops for a drink at a peasant’s cottage. There he finds a marvelously beautiful girl, to whom he eagerly offers himself in marriage. This girl is an orphan, with a stepmother and stepsister who are cruel and jealous. Under pretense of accompanying her to the king’s castle they lure her into a black forest and slay her, taking great pains to conceal her identity by removing and carrying with them her eyes, hands, and feet. They then proceed to the castle and the wicked daughter successfully impersonates the good one, whom she closely resembles. Seven days of wedding festivities ensue, at the end of which the king is called away to the wars. In the mean while a mysterious hermit—a heavenly messenger in disguise—takes up the dead body in the forest, dispatches his lad to the castle and secures the eyes, hands, and feet by bartering for them a golden spinning-wheel, a golden distaff, and a magic whirl. Thus equipped, he miraculously restores the girl to life and limb. When the king returns from the wars he invites his false bride to spin for him with her new golden wheel, and forthwith the magic instrument sings aloud the whole miserable story. The furious king rushes to the forest, finds his real sweetheart, and installs her in his castle, while the murderers are mutilated as she had been, and cast to the wild wolves.
It may be thought that I have gone somewhat out of my allotted way in taking such notice as I have of the superstitions, customs, and music passion of the Bohemians, but I cannot believe that a satisfactory idea of Prague can be had in this, or any other hour, without some conception of the fundamental traits that so powerfully sway this people. For the real significance of the city lies deeper than its surface-showing of wooded hillsides sown with quaint buildings and a broad blue river rushing under many bridges; it is its peculiar raciness of the soil that underlies the Czech’s mad devotion to his capital. Expressing, as only Prague does, so much that is dear and beautiful to him, it centres in itself the most burning and passionate interests of the race. Without some knowledge of this desperate attachment one would fail utterly to grasp the force and truth of such a fine observation as Mr. Arthur Symons has made on the devotion of the Bohemian to this city: “He sees it, as a man sees the woman he loves, with her first beauty; and he loves it, as a man loves a woman, more for what she has suffered.”
SCHEVENINGEN
5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.
Nurtured in the salt sadness of the sea, Scheveningen is a Whistler nocturne. Its prevailing and distinctive tones are neutral and elusive. There are, of course, days when the sun is as clear and powerful here as elsewhere, but more often it is obscured; then the sky becomes pearly, the sea opalescent, the shore drab and dun. Presently a thin fog drifts in, or vapors steal over the trees from the inland marshes, and all tints are rapidly neutralized into a common dimness of that vague and sentimental mistland so dear to the heart of the painter. This is the characteristic suspended color note of the average day at Scheveningen. It harmonizes to perfection with the sentiment of the environment and invests the region with a marvelous charm—peculiar, distinctive, and of the finest dignity.
The power of Scheveningen’s attraction, the force of its appeal, lies largely in its grim aloofness and self-sufficiency. It is unsympathetic, discouraging. It consistently dominates its visitors, and, indeed, with an easy insolence and indifference. Wealth and fashion may abide with it for a few days, under tolerance, but the impression of the temporary and migratory character of their sojourn is always present. Undistracted, the fierce and gaunt sea assails the stark and surly shore, and the grim fishermen stand by and have their toll of both. Of the presence of the strangers they are all but unaware. In a brief day the incongruous invaders will have gone, but this relentless warfare will continue unabated. All the way from Helder to the Hook glistening seas will hiss over the flat beaches, snarling and biting at the shoulders of the dunes. All through the long, bitter winter, without an instant’s intermission, the struggle will go on. It is, consequently, of the very heart of the charm of the place that one has the feeling of intruding on battle; of tolerated propinquity to Titanic contenders.
Loafing at Scheveningen is the apotheosis of idleness. The strong wind stimulates, the broad beaches delight, the solemn sea inspires. To this must be added the sense of strong contrasts. It emphasizes the impression of having dropped, for a time, out of the familiar monotony of Life’s treadmill; of being away from home; of both resting and recreating. It is present to the eyes in the eloquent disproportion between the vast Kurhaus and the diminutive homes of the villagers; in the incongruity of Parisian finery invading the savage haunts of the gull and the curlew. In the novel and bizarre activities of the fisher-folk, as in their theatrical surroundings as well, one finds just the right touch of the picturesque and the unfamiliar to complete the full realization of dolce far niente.
Of the fabled monsters of the wild North Sea the imaginative man will believe he sees one certain survivor in that languid sea-serpent of a pier—the “Jetée Königin Wilhelmina”—that stretches its delicate length a quarter mile over the waves from off the drab sand dunes of Scheveningen. Its pavilion-crowned head snuggles flatly on the water. In the afternoon and evening, when its orchestra is playing, one fancies the monster is actually singing. At five o’clock, precisely, we have its last drowsy utterance as it drops off into a three-hours’ nap—quite as Fafner, in the opera, yawns at Alberich and mutters “lasst mich schlafen!” It must be admitted it is a highly pleasing song he sings,—a Waldteufel waltz, more than likely,—and we come in time to recognize in it the closing number of the matinée musicale. And then, like Jonah’s captor, he wearies of his living contents; and we see them emerge by hundreds, scathless and unafraid, gay with parasols and immaculate of raiment, and pick their way leisurely along his back until they have rejoined their friends in the voluble company that crowds the cafés of the Kurhaus. In a moment more the abandoned monster is fast asleep; which, by a familiar association of ideas, is a sign to the multitudes on the beaches that surf-bathing ends in just one hour.
Forthwith, there is a great bustling all along the shore side of the broad boulevard they call the “Standweg.” Bathers pick themselves up regretfully from sunbaths in the soft, powdery sand and trot down for a final dip in the surf, and those already in hasten to convert pleasure into work with increased energy and enthusiasm. To all such the implacable watchman shall come within the hour and beckon them out with stern and remorseless gestures, and the curious little wagons they call bath-cars will engulf each in turn and trundle them up out of the water, while the nervous old women who look after the bathing-suits will hover about with anxious eyes and lay violent hands on the dripping and discarded garments.