A Wanderer in Holland

by E. V. Lucas

Whatsoever their estates be, their houses must be fair. Therefore from Amsterdam they have banisht seacoale, lest it soyl their buildings, of which the statelier sort are sometimes sententious, and in the front carry some conceit of the Owner. As to give you a taste in these.

Christus Adjutor Meus;
Hoc abdicato Perenne Quero;
Hic Medio tuitus Itur.

Every door seems studded with Diamonds. The nails and hinges hold a constant brightnesse, as if rust there was not a quality incident to Iron. Their houses they keep cleaner than their bodies; their bodies than their souls. Goe to one, you shall find the Andirons shut up in net-work. At a second, the Warming-pan muffled in Italian Cutworke. At a third the Sconce clad in Cambrick.

The absence of any lively traffic on the canals, as in Venice, has this compensation, that the surface is left untroubled the more minutely to mirror the houses and trees, and, at night, the tramcars on the bridges. The lights of these cars form the most vivid reflections that I can recollect. But the quiet reproduction of the stately black façades is the more beautiful thing. An added dignity and repose are noticeable. I said just now that one desired to learn the secret of the calm life of these ancient grachts. But the secret of the actual houses of fact is as nothing compared with the secret of those other houses, more sombre, more mysterious, more reserved, that one sees in the water. To penetrate their impressive doors were an achievement, a distinction, indeed! With such a purpose suicide would lose half its terrors.

For the greatest contrast to these black canals, you must seek the Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat. Kalverstraat, running south from the Dam, is by day filled with shoppers and by night with gossipers. No street in the world can be more consistently busy. Damrak is of course always a scene of life, but Damrak is a thoroughfare—its population moving continually either to or from the station. But those who use the Kalverstraat may be said almost to live in it. To be there is an end in itself. Warmoes Straat, parallel with Damrak on the other side of the Bourse, behind the Bible Hotel, is famous for its gigantic restaurant—the hugest in Europe, I believe—the Krasnapolsky, a palace of bewildering mirrors, and for concert halls and Page 157other accessories of the gayer life. But this book is no place in which to enlarge upon the natural history of Warmoes Straat and its southern continuation, the Nes.

For the principal cafés, as distinguished from restaurants, you must seek the Rembrandt’s Plein, in the midst of which stands the master’s statue. The pavement of this plein on Sunday evening in summer is almost impassable for the tables and chairs that spread over it and the crowds overflowing from Kalverstraat.

But there is still to be mentioned a district of Amsterdam which from the evening of Friday until the evening of Saturday is more populous even than Kalverstraat. This is the Jews’ quarter, which has, I should imagine, more parents and children to the square foot than any residential region in Europe. I struggled through it at sundown one fine Saturday—to say I walked through it would be too misleading—and the impression I gathered of seething vivacity is still with me. These people surely will inherit the earth.

Spinoza was a child of this Ghetto: his birthplace at 41 Waterloo Plein is still shown; and Rembrandt lived at No. 4 Jodenbree Straat for sixteen years.

A large number of the Amsterdam Jews are diamond cutters and polishers. You may see in certain cafés dealers in these stones turning over priceless little heaps of them with the long little finger-nail which they preserve as a scoop.

Amsterdam may be a city builded on the sand; but none the less will it endure. Indeed the sand saves it; for it is in the sand that the wooden piles on which every house rests find their footing, squelching through the black mud to this comparative solidity. Some of the piles are as long as 52 ft., and watching them being driven in, it is impossible Page 158to believe that stability can ever be attained, every blow of the monkey accounting for so very many inches. When one watches pile-driving in England it is difficult to see the effect of each blow; but during the five or fewer minutes that I spent one day on Damrak observing the preparation for the foundations of a new house, the pile must have gone in nearly a foot each time, and it was very near the end of its journey too. In course of years the black brackish mud petrifies not only the piles but the wooden girders that are laid upon them.