A Wanderer in Holland

by E. V. Lucas

Monnickendam affords our first sight of what are called very misleadingly the “Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee,” meaning merely towns which once were larger and busier. Monnickendam was sufficiently important to fit out a fleet against the Spanish in 1573, under Cornelius Dirckszoon (whose tomb we saw at Delft) and capture Bossu in the battle of Hoorn.

To-day Monnickendam suggests nothing so little as a naval engagement. People live there, it is true, but one sees very few of them. Only in an old English market town on a hot day—such a town as Petworth, for example, in Sussex—do you get such desertion and quiet and imperturbability. Monnickendam has, however, a treasure that few English towns can boast—its charming little stadhuis tower, one of the prettiest in Holland, with a happy peal of bells, and mechanical horses in action once an hour; while the tram line running right down the main street periodically awakens the populace.

When last I visited Monnickendam it was by steam-tram; and at a little half-way station, where it is necessary to wait for another tram, our engine driver, stoker and guard were elaborately photographed by an artist who seemed to be there for no other purpose. He placed his tripod on the platform; grouped the officials; gave them—and incidentally a score of heads protruding from the carriages—a sufficient exposure, and was preparing another plate when an incoming tram dashed up so unexpectedly as to cause him to jump, and, in jumping, to overturn his tripod and precipitate the camera under the carriage wheels. Now Page 200here was a tragedy worthy of serious treatment. A Frenchman would have danced with rage; an Englishman would have wanted to know whose fault it was and have threatened reprisals. But the Dutchman merely looked a little pained, a little surprised, and in a minute or two was preparing a friendly group of the officials of the tram which had caused the accident. I do not put the incident forward as typical; but certainly one may travel far in Holland without seeing exhibitions of temper. I mentioned the nation’s equability to the young Dutchman in the canal boat between Rotterdam and Delft. “Ah!” he said, “you should go to Brabant. They fight enough there!” I did go to Brabant, but I saw no anger or quarrelsomeness; yet I suppose he had his reasons.

The steam-tram to Monnickendam runs on to Edam, whence one may command both Volegdam and Purmerend. Edam is famous for its cheese, but the traveller in Holland as a rule reserves for Alkmaar cheese market his interest in this industry; and we will do the same. Broadly speaking Edam sends forth the red cheeses, Alkmaar the yellow; but no hard and fast line can be drawn. Were it not for its cheese market Edam would be as “dead” as Monnickendam, but cheese saves it. It was once a power and the water-gate of Amsterdam, at a time when the only way to the Dutch capital was by the Zuyder Zee and the Y. Edam is at the mouth of the Y, its name really being Ydam. The size of its Groote Kerk indicates something of this past importance, for it is immense: a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, cold and drear enough, but a little humanised by some coloured glass from Gouda, often in very bad condition. In the days when this church was built Edam had twenty-five thousand inhabitants: now there are only five thousand. Page 201

It is difficult to lose the feeling of disproportion between the size of the Dutch churches and that of the villages and congregations. The villages are so small, the churches so vast. It is as though the churches were built to compensate for the absence of hills. From any one spire in Holland one must be able to see almost all the others.

The stained glass in Edam’s great church has reference rather to Holland’s temporal prosperity than to religion. More interesting is the room over the southern door, which was used first for a prison, and later for a school, the library of which still may be seen. Edam possesses in addition to the immense church of St. Nicholas a little church of the Virgin, with a spire full of bells, badly out of the perpendicular. The town has also some interesting old houses, one or two of great beauty, and many enriched by quaint bas-reliefs.

The stadhuis is comparatively modern and not externally attractive. Within, however, Edam does honour to three fantastic figures who once were to be seen in her streets—Peter Dircksz, Jan Cornellissen and Trijntje Kever, portraits of whom grace the town hall. Their claims to fame are certainly genuine, although unexpected. Peter’s idiosyncrasy was a beard which had to be looped up to prevent it trailing in the mud; Jan, at the age of forty-two, when the artist set to work upon him, weighed thirty-two stones and six pounds; while Trijntje was a maiden nine feet tall and otherwise ample. Peter and Trijntje were, I believe, true children of Edam, but Jan was a mere import, having conveyed his bulk thither from Friesland. Like our own Daniel Lambert, he kept an inn. One of Trijntje’s shoes is also preserved—liker to a boat than anything else.

I have by no means exhausted Edam’s roll of honour. Page 202Shipowner Osterlen must be added—a burgher, who, in 1682, when his portrait was painted, could point (and in the canvas does point, with no uncertain finger,) to ninety-two ships of which he was the possessor. And a legend of Edam tells how once in 1403, when the country was inundated by the sea, some girls taking fresh water to the cows saw and captured a mermaid. Her (like the lady in Mr. Wells’s story) they dressed and civilised, and taught to sow and spin, but could never make talk. Possibly it is this mermaid who, caught in a fisherman’s net, is represented in bas-relief (as the fish that pleases all tastes) on one of the facades of Edam, with accompanying verses which must not be translated, embodying comments upon the nature of the haul by various typical and very plain-spoken members of society—a soldier and a schoolmaster, a monk and a fowler, for example.

Edam has yet another hero. On the Dam bridge are iron-backed benches which never grow rusty. “One owes this particularity,” says Through Noord-Holland, “to the invention of an Edamer about 1569, who also took his secret with him into the grave.”