Rotterdam
To Rotterdam by water—To Rotterdam by rail—Holland’s monotony of scenery—Holland in England—Rotterdam’s few merits—The life of the river—The Rhine—Walt Whitman—Crowded canals—Barge life—The Dutch high-ways—A perfect holiday—The canal’s influence on the national character—The florin and the franc—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—The old and the poor—Holland’s health—Funeral customs—The chemists’ shops—Erasmus of Rotterdam—Latinised names—Peter de Hooch—True aristocracy—The Boymans treasures—Modern Dutch art—Matthew Maris—The Rotterdam Zoo—The herons—The stork’s mission—The ourang-outang—An eighteenth-century miser—A successful merchant—The Queen-Mother—Tom Hood in Rotterdam—Gouda.
It was once possible to sail all the way to Rotterdam by either of the two lines of steamships from England—the Great Eastern, viâ Harwich, and the Batavier, direct from London. But that is possible now only by the Batavier, passengers by the better-known Harwich route being landed now and henceforward at the Hook at five A.M. I am sorry for this, because after a rough passage it was very pleasant to glide in the early morning steadily up the Maas and gradually acquire a sense of Dutch quietude and greyness. No longer, however, can this be done, as the Batavier boats reach Rotterdam at night; and one therefore misses the river, with the little Page 2villages on its banks, each with a tiny canal-harbour of its own; the groups of trees in the early mist; the gulls and herons; and the increasing traffic as one drew nearer Schiedam and at last reached that forest of masts which is known as Rotterdam.
But now that the only road to Rotterdam by daylight is the road of iron all that is past, and yet there is some compensation, for short as the journey is one may in its progress ground oneself very thoroughly in the characteristic scenery of Holland. No one who looks steadily out of the windows between the Hook and Rotterdam has much to learn thereafter. Only changing skies and atmospheric effects can provide him with novelty, for most of Holland is like that. He has the formula. Nor is it necessarily new to him if he knows England well, North Holland being merely the Norfolk Broads, the Essex marshlands about Burnham-on-Crouch, extended. Only in its peculiarity of light and in its towns has Holland anything that we have not at home.
England has even its canal life too, if one cared to investigate it; the Broads are populous with wherries and barges; cheese is manufactured in England in a score of districts; cows range our meadows as they range the meadows of the Dutch. We go to Holland to see the towns, the pictures and the people. We go also because so many of us are so constituted that we never use our eyes until we are on foreign soil. It is as though a Cook’s ticket performed an operation for cataract.
Girl’s Head
Jan Vermeer of Delft
From the picture in the Mauritshuis
But because one can learn the character of Dutch scenery so quickly—on a single railway journey—I do not wish to suggest that henceforward it becomes monotonous and trite. One may learn the character of a friend very quickly, and yet wish to be in his company continually. Holland is one of the most delightful countries to move Page 3about in: everything that happens in it is of interest. I have never quite lost the sense of excitement in crossing a canal in the train and getting a momentary glimpse of its receding straightness, perhaps broken by a brown sail. In a country where, between the towns, so little happens, even the slightest things make a heightened appeal to the observer; while one’s eyes are continually kept bright and one’s mind stimulated by the ever-present freshness and clearness of the land and its air.