A Wanderer in Holland

by E. V. Lucas

At Groningen Roman Catholic priests become noticeable—so different in their stylish coats, square hats and canes, from the blue-chinned kindly slovens that one meets in the Latin countries. (In the train near Nymwegen, however, where the priests wear beavers, I travelled with a humorous old voluptuary who took snuff at every station and was as threadbare as one likes a priest to be.) Looking into the new Roman Catholic church at Groningen I found a little company of restless boys, all eyes, from whom at regular intervals were detached a reluctant and perfunctory couple to do the Stations of the Cross. I came as something like a godsend to those that remained, who had no one to supervise them; and feeling it as a mission I stayed resolutely in the church long after I was tired of it, writing a little and examining the pictures by Hendriex, a modern painter too much after the manner of the Christmas supplement—studied the while by this band of scrutinising penitents. I hope I was as interesting and beguiling as I tried to be. And all the time, exactly opposite the Roman Catholic church, was reposing in the library of the University no less a treasure than the New Testament of Erasmus, with marginal notes by Martin Luther. There it lay, that afternoon, within call, while the weary boys pattered from Page 253one Station of the Cross to another, little recking the part played by their country in sapping the power of the faith they themselves were fostering, and knowing nothing of the ironical contiguity of Luther’s comments.

By leaving Groningen very early in the morning I gained another proof of the impossibility of rising before the Dutch. In England one can easily be the first down in any hotel—save for a sleepy boots or waiter. Not so in Holland. It was so early that I am able to say nothing of the country between Groningen and Meppel, the capital of the peat trade, save that it was peaty: heather and fir trees, shallow lakes and men cutting peat, as far as eye could reach on either side.

Here in the peat country I might quote a very pretty Dutch proverb: “There is no fuel more entertaining than wet wood and frozen peat: the wood sings and the peat listens”. The Dutch have no lack of folk lore, but the casual visitor has not the opportunity of collecting very much. When there is too much salt in the dish they say that the cook is in love. When a three-cornered piece of peat is observed in the fire, a visitor is coming. When bread has large holes in it, the baker is said to have pursued his wife through the loaf. When a wedding morning is rainy, it is because the bride has forgotten to feed the cat.

I tarried awhile at Zwolle on the Yssel (a branch of the Rhine), because at Zwolle was born in 1617 Gerard Terburg, one of the greatest of Dutch painters, of whom I have spoken in the chapter on Amsterdam’s pictures. Of his life we know very little; but he travelled to Spain (where he was knighted and where he learned not a little of use in his art), and also certainly to France, and possibly to England. At Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans Page 254Hals’ studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgomaster of the town. He died at Deventer in 1681. Zwolle has none of his pictures, and does not appear to value his memory. Nor does Deventer. How Terburg looked as Burgomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It was not often that the great Dutch painters rose to civic eminence. Rembrandt became a bankrupt, Frans Hals was on the rates, Jan Steen drank all his earnings. Of all Terburg’s great contemporaries Gerard Dou seems to have had most sense of prosperity and position; but his interests were wholly in his art.

Terburg is not the only famous name at Zwolle. It was at the monastery on the Agneteberg, three miles away, that the author of The Imitation of Christ lived for more than sixty years and wrote his deathless book.

I roamed through Zwolle’s streets for some time. It is a bright town, with a more European air than many in Holland, agreeable drives and gardens, where (as at Groningen) were once fortifications, and a very fine old gateway called the Saxenpoort, with four towers and five spires and very pretty window shutters in white and blue. The Groote Kerk is of unusual interest. It is five hundred years old and famous for its very elaborate pulpit—a little cathedral in itself—and an organ. Zwolle also has an ancient church which retains its original religion—the church of Notre Dame, with a crucifix curiously protected by iron bars. I looked into the stadhuis to see a Gothic council room; and smoked meditatively among the stalls of a little flower market, wondering why some of the costumes of Holland are so charming and others so unpleasing. A few dear old women in lace caps were present, Page 255but there were also younger women who had made their pretty heads ugly with their decorations.

At Zwolle M. Havard was disappointed to find no wax figure of the famous wild girl found in the Cranenburg Forest in 1718. She roamed its recesses almost naked for some time, eluding all capture, but was at last taken with nets and conveyed to Zwolle. As she could not be understood, an account of her was circulated widely, and at length a woman in Antwerp who had lost a daughter in 1702 heard of her, and on reaching Zwolle immediately recognised her as her child. The magistrates, accepting the story, handed the girl to her affectionate parent, who at once set about exhibiting her throughout the country at a great profit. The story illustrates either the credulity of magistrates or the practical character of some varieties of maternal love.

Kampen, nearer the mouth of the Yssel, close to Zwolle, is exceedingly well worth visiting. The two towns are very different: Zwolle is patrician, Kampen plebeian; Zwolle suggests wealth and light-heartedness; at Kampen there is a large fishing population and no one seems to be wealthy. Indeed, being without municipal rates, it is, I am told, a refuge of the needy. Any old town that is on a river, and that river a mouth of the Rhine, is good enough for me; but when it is also a treasure house of mediæval architecture one’s cup is full. And Kampen has many treasures: beautiful fourteenth-century gateways, narrow quaint streets, a cheerful isolated campanile, a fine church, and the greater portion of an odd but wholly delightful stadhuis in red brick and white stone, with a gay little crooked bell-tower and statues of great men and great qualities on its facade.

For one possession alone, among many, the stadhuis Page 256must be visited—its halls of justice, veritable paradises of old oak, with a very wonderful fireplace. The halls are really one, divided by a screen; in one half, the council room, sat the judges, in the other the advocates, and, I suppose, the public. The advocates addressed the screen, on the other side of which sat Fate, in the persons of the municipal fathers, enthroned in oak seats of unsurpassed gravity and dignity, amid all the sombre insignia of their office. The chimney-piece is an imposing monument of abstract Justice—no more elaborate one can exist. Solomon is there, directing the distribution of the baby; Faith and Truth, Law, Religion and Charity are there also. Never can a tribunal have had a more appropriate setting than at Kampen. The Rennes judiciaries should have sat there, to lend further ironical point to their decision.

The stadhuis has other possessions interesting to anti-quaries: valuable documents, gold and silver work, the metal and leather squirts through which boiling oil was projected at the enemies of the town; while an iron cage for criminals, similar, I imagine, to that in which Jan of Leyden was exhibited, hangs outside.