[1] “With the Rederijkern,” Longfellow adds, “Hood’s amusing ‘Nocturnal Sketch’ would have been a Driedobbelsteert, or a poem with three tails;—
Even is come; and from the dark park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun, one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain.
Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as with his poetic tongue Young sung.”
Chapter XIX
Middelburg
The friendly Zeelanders—A Spanish heritage—Deceptive Dutch towns—The Abbey Hotel—The Abbey of St. Nicholas—Middelburg’s art—Sentimental songs—The great Tacius—The siege of Middelburg—A round-faced city—When disfigurement is beauty—Green paint—Long John—Music in the night—Foolish Betsy—The Stadhuis—An Admiral and stuffed birds—The law of the paving-stones—Veere—The prey of the sea—A mammoth church—Maximilian’s cup.
With Middelburg I have associated, for charm, Hoorn; but Middelburg stands first. It is serener, happier, more human; while the nature of the Zeelander is to the stranger so much more ingratiating than that of the North Hollander. The Zeelander—and particularly the Walcheren islander—has the eccentricity to view the stranger as a natural object rather than a phenomenon. Flushing being avowedly cosmopolitan does not count, but at Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, you may, although the only foreigner there, walk about in the oddest clothes and receive no embarrassing attentions.
It is not that the good people of Walcheren are quicker to see where their worldly advantage lies. They are not schemers or financiers. The reason resides in a native politeness, a heritage, some have conjectured, from their Spanish forefathers. One sees hints of Spanish blood also in the exceptional flexibility and good carriage of the Walcheren Page 286women. Whatever the cause of Zeeland’s friendliness, there it is; and in Middelburg the foreigner wanders at ease, almost as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were in France.
And it is the pleasantest town to wander in, and an astonishingly large one. A surprising expansiveness, when one begins to explore them, is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch towns. From the railway, seeing a church spire and a few roofs, one had expected only a village; and behold street runs into street until one’s legs ache. This is peculiarly the case with Gorinchem, which is almost invisible from the line; and it is the case with Middelburg, and Hoorn, and many other towns that I do not recall at this moment.