A Wanderer in Holland

by E. V. Lucas

Volendam

To the little fishing village of Volendain, paradise of quaint costumes and gay prettinesses, artists invariably resort. Like much of Monnickendam, and indeed almost all Dutch seaside settlements, the village is, if not below sea-level, almost invisible from the water, on account of an obliterating dyke. At the Helder one can consider the rampart reasonable, but here, where there is no foe but the Zuyder Zee, it may seem fantastic. If we lived there in winter, however, the precaution would soon be justified, for the Zuyder Zee can on occasion roar like a lion. It is odd to reflect that Volendam, Monnickendam and Marken may become ordinary inland hamlets in the midst Page 203of green fields if the great scheme for draining the Zuyder Zee is carried through.

If the people and village of Volendam are to be described in a phrase, they may be called better Markeners in a better Marken. The decoration of the pointed red-roofed houses is similar; there is the same prevailing and very ingratiating passion for blue Delft—and a very beautiful blue too; the clothes of the men and women have a family resemblance. But Volendam is in every way better—although its open drain is a sore trial: it is more human, more natural. The men hold the record for Dutch taciturnity. They also smoke more persistently and wear larger sabots than I saw anywhere else, leaving them outside their doors with a religious exactitude that suggests that the good-wives of Volendam know how to be obeyed. The women discard the Marken ringlets and richness of embroidery, but in the matter of petticoats they approach the Scheveningen and Huizen standards. Their jewellery resolves itself into a coral necklace, while the men wear silver buttons—both coming down from mother to daughter, and father to son.

The fishing fleet of Volendam sails as far as the North Sea, but it is always in Volendam by Saturday morning. Hence if you would see the Volendam fishermen in their greatest strength the time to visit the little town is at the end of the week or on Sunday.

The day for Purmerend is Tuesday, because then the market is held, in the castle plein, among mediæval surroundings. To this market the neighbourhood seems to send its whole population, by road and water, in gay cart and comfortable wherry. According to my unfailing informant in these regions, the Purmerend stadhuis, in order “to aggrandise the cheese market,” was in 1633 “set back a few meters by screwing-force”. Page 204

The excursion to Marken and the excursion to Edam and its neighbourhood take each a day; but between Amsterdam and Zaandam, just off the great North Canal, steamers ply continually, and one may be there in half an hour. The journey must be made, because Zaandam is superficially the gayest town in Holland and the capital of windmill land. In an hour’s drive (obviously no excursion for Don Quixote) one may pass hundreds. These mills do everything except grind corn. For the most part the Dutch mills pump: but they also saw wood, and cut tobacco, and make paper, and indeed perform all the tasks for which in countries less windy and less leisurely steam or water power is employed. The one windmill in Holland which always springs to my mind when the subject is mentioned is, however, not among Zaandam’s legions: it is that solitary and imposing erection which rises from the water in the Coolsingel in Rotterdam. That is my standard Dutch mill. Another which I always recall stands outside Bergen-op-Zoom, on the way to Tholen—all white.

The Dutch mill differs from the English mill in three important respects: it is painted more gaily (although for England white paint is certainly best); it has canvas on its sails; and it is often thatched. Dutch thatching is very smooth and pretty, like an antelope’s skin; and never more so than on the windmills.

Zaandam lies on either side of the river Zaan, here broad and placid and north of the dam more like the Thames at Teddington, say, than any stretch of water in Holland. A single street runs beside the river for about a mile on both banks, the houses being models of smiling neatness, picked out with cheerful green paint. At Zaandam green paint is at its greenest. It is the national Page 205pigment; but nowhere else in Holland have they quite so sure a hand with it. To the critics who lament that there is no good Dutch painting to-day, I would say “Go to Zaandam”. Not only is Zaandam’s green the greenest, but its red roofs are the reddest, in Holland. A single row of trees runs down each of its long streets, and on the other side of each are illimitable fields intersected by ditches which on a cloudless afternoon might be strips of the bluest ribbon.

We sat for an hour in the garden of “De Zon,” a little inn on the west bank half-way between the dam and the bridge. The landlady brought us coffee, and with it letters from other travellers who had liked her garden and had written to tell her so. These she read and purred over, as a good landlady is entitled to do, while we watched the barges float past and disappear as the distant lock opened and swallowed them.

South of the dam the interest is centred in the hut where for a while in 1697 Peter the Great lived to see how the Dutchmen built their ships. The belief that no other motive than the inspection of this very uninteresting cottage could bring a stranger hither is a tenet of faith to which the Zaandamer is bound with shackles of iron. The moment one disembarks the way to Peter’s residence begins to be pointed out. Little boys run before; sturdy men walk beside; old men (one with a wooden leg) struggle behind. It was later that the Czar crossed to England and worked in the same way at Deptford; but no visitor to Deptford to-day is required to see his lodging there.