The Dutch are now wholly practical. Their reputation as gardeners has become a commercial one, resting upon Page 130the fortunate discovery that the tulip and the hyacinth thrive in the sandy soil about Haarlem. For flowers as flowers they seem to me to care little or nothing. Their cottages have no pretty confusion of blossoms as in our villages. You never see the cottager at work among his roses; once his necessary labours are over, he smokes and talks to his neighbours: to grow flowers for æsthetic reasons were too ornamental, too unproductive a hobby. Æsthetically the Dutch are dead, or are alive only in the matter of green paint, which they use with such charming effect on their houses, their mills and their boats. What is pretty is old—as indeed is the case in our own country, if we except gardens. Modern Dutch architecture is without attraction, modern Delft porcelain a thing to cry over.
If any one would know how an old formal Dutch garden looked, there is a model one at the back of the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam. But the art is no more practised. A few circular beds in the lawn, surrounded by high wire netting—that is for the most part the modern notion of gardening. In an interesting report of a visit paid to the Netherlands and France in 1817 by the secretary of the Caledonia Horticultural Society and some congenial companions, may be read excellent descriptions of old Dutch gardening, which even then was a thing of the past. Here is the account of a typical formal garden, near Utrecht: “The large divisions of the garden are made by tall and thick hedges of beech, hornbeam, and oak, variously shaped, having been tied to frames and thus trained, with the aid of the shears, to the desired form. The smaller divisions are made by hedges of yew and box, which in thickness and density resemble walls of brick. Grottoes and fountains are some of the principal ornaments. The grottoes are Page 131adorned with masses of calcareous stuff, corals and shells, some of them apparently from the East Indies, others natives of our own seas. The principal grotto is large, and studded with thousands of crystals and shells. We were told that its construction was the labour of twelve years. The fountains are of various devices, and though old, some of them were still capable of being put in action. Frogs and lizards placed at the edgings of the walks, and spouting water to the risk of passengers, were not quite so agreeable; and other figures were still in worse taste.
“There is a long berceau walk of beech, with numerous windows or openings in the leafy side wall, and many statues and busts, chiefly of Italian marble, some of them of exquisite workmanship. Several large urns and vases certainly do honour to the sculptor. The subjects of the bas-relief ornaments are the histories of Saul and David, and of Esther and Ahasuerus.”
I saw no old Dutch garden in Holland which seemed to me so attractive as that at Levens in Westmorland.
It is important at Haarlem to take a drive over the dunes—the billowy, grassy sand hills which stretch between the city and the sea. If it is in April one can begin the drive by passing among every variety of tulip and hyacinth, through air made sweet and heavy by these flowers. Just outside Haarlem the road passes the tiniest deer park that ever I saw—with a great house, great trees, a lawn and a handful of deer all packed as close as they can be. Now and then one sees a stork’s nest high on a pole before a house.
On leaving the green and luxuriant flat country a climbing pavé road winds in and out among the pines on the edge of the dunes; past little villas, belonging chiefly to Amsterdam business men, each surrounded by a naked Page 132garden with the merest suggestion of a boundary. For the Dutch do not like walls or hedges. This level open land having no natural secrecy, it seems as if its inhabitants had decided there should be no artificial secrecy either. When they sit in their gardens they like to be seen. An Englishman’s first care when he plans a country estate is not to be overlooked; a Dutchman would cut down every tree that intervened between his garden chair and the high road.
Fun has often been made of the names which the Dutch merchants give to their country houses, but they seem to me often to be chosen with more thought than those of similar villas in our country. Here are a few specimens: Buiten Gedachten (Beyond Expectation), Ons Genoegen (Our Contentment), Lust en Rust (Pleasure and Rest), Niet Zoo Quaalyk (Not so Bad), Myn Genegenhied is Voldaan (My Desire is Satisfied), Mijn Lust en Leven (My Pleasure and Life), Vriendschap en Gezelschap (Friendship and Sociability), Vreugde bij Vrede (Joy with Peace), Groot Genoeg (Large Enough), Buiten Zorg (Without Care). These names at any rate convey sentiments which we may take to express their owners’ true feelings in their owners’ own language; and as such I prefer them to the “Chatsworths” and “Belle-vues,” “Cedars” and “Towers,” with which the suburbs of London teem. In a small inland street in Brighton the other day I noticed a “Wave Crest”.
The dunes extend for miles: an empty wilderness of sand with the grey North Sea beyond. From the high points one sees inland not only Haarlem, just below, but the domes and spires of Amsterdam beyond.
The Groote Kerk