Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. I

by Charles James Lever

Mine host was the most famous gastronome of the Low Countries, and at the two table d’hôtes at which he daily presided, never was known to neglect the order and procession of the various courses of soup, fish, game, and sauerkraut—of all and each of which he largely partook.

Would that George Cruikshank could have seen him with that breastplate of a napkin—which, more majorum, was suspended from his neck—whilst his hand grasped a knife whose proportions would cast into insignificance the inoffensive weapon of our Horse Guards! His head, too, was a perfect study. Giove! what depressions where there should have been bumps. And then his eye, alternately opening and closing, seemed as if it were to relieve guard upon the drowsiness of his features.

He spoke but seldom, and, despite my various efforts to draw him into culinary discussion (having had some intention of publishing these “Conversations”), he was ever on his guard, and only once, when—— But I grow personal, and shall return to myself. So effectually did the society of this sage, the air of the place, and above all the statue of Erasmus which looked so peacefully on me from the market-place opposite the inn, conspire to tranquillise my mind, that in the course of a few weeks I had become as thoroughly a Dutchman as if I had never meditated an excursion beyond The Hague in a trek-schuit.

Dinner over, I was to be seen lolling under the trees on the Boomjes,* with my tobacco-bag at my buttonhole and my meerschaum in my hand, calmly contemplating the boats as they passed and repassed along the canal.

* The Regent Street of Rotterdam.

In this country such a scene would have been all bustle, confusion, and excitement: there it was quite the reverse,—scarcely a ripple on the surface of the water indicated the track of the vessel as she slowly held her course. How often have I watched them nearing a bridge, which, as the boat approached, slowly rose and permitted her to pass, whilst from the window of the low toll-house a long pole is projected with a leathern purse at its extremity, into which the ancient mariner at the helm bestows his tribute money and holds on his way, still smoking! But now comes the tug-of-war; it is, indeed, the only moment of bustle I have ever witnessed in Holland. How is the bridge to get down? Dutch mechanics have provided for its elevation, but not for its descent; and it is in this emergency that the national character shines forth,—and the same spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation which enabled them to steal a kingdom from the ocean becomes non-triumphant. Man by man they are seen toiling up the steep ascent, and, creaking under many a fat burgomaster, the bridge slowly descends and rests again upon its foundation. Doubtless, like the ancients, they chose to perpetuate customs which teach that laudable dependence of man upon, his fellows—the strongest link which binds us in society—rather than mar this mutual good feeling by mechanical invention.

Day after day passed in this manner, and probably you will say how stupid, how tiresome, all this must have been: so it would, doubtless, to one less gifted with the organ of assimilation or who has not, like me, endured the tedium of a soiree at Lady ———‘s.

At length my friend arrived, and after a few days spent in excursions to The Hague and the Palace in the wood, we set off in order to reach Cologne in time for the musical festival.

We left Rotterdam at night on the steamboat, and the following morning found us slowly stemming the current of the rapid Rhine, whose broad surface and unwooded banks gave an air of bleakness and desolation which more than once drove me from the deck to the warm stove of the cabin, crowded as the cabin was with smoking and singing Hollanders on the way to the Festival. Once I ascended the rigging to get a more extended view of the surrounding country: I might as well have remained below. A vast flat track of land, intersected by canals and studded with an occasional solitary windmill, was all the eye could compass, and then it was that I felt the full force of Goldsmith’s mot that “Holland looks like a country swimming for its life.” Nothing breaks the dull monotony of a voyage on the lower Rhine except the sight of some vast raft of timber, peopled by its myriads of inhabitants, dropping down the current.

We passed several towns: but variety of Dutch city, Dutch lady, and Dutch ship, is only a slight deviation from an established scale of proportions.