A Wanderer in Holland

by E. V. Lucas

Thursday is Hoorn’s market day, and it is important to Page 220be there then if one would see the market carts of North Holland in abundance. We had particularly good fortune since our Thursday was not only market day but the Kermis too. I noticed that the principal attraction of the fair, for boys, was the stalls (unknown at the Kermis both at Middelburg and Leyden) on which a variety of flat cake was chopped with a hatchet. The chopper, who I understand is entitled only to what he can sever with one blow, often fails to get any.

Nieuwediep and The Helder, at the extreme north of Holland, are one, and interesting only to those to whom naval works are interesting. For they are the Portsmouth and Woolwich of the country. My memories of these twin towns are not too agreeable, for when I was there in 1897 the voyage from Amsterdam by the North Holland canal had chilled me through and through, and in 1904 it rained without ceasing. Nieuwediep is all shipping and sailors, cadet schools and hospitals. The Helder is a dull town, with the least attractive architecture I had seen, cowering beneath a huge dyke but for which, one is assured, it would lie at the bottom of the North Sea. Under rain it is a drearier town than any I know; and ordinarily it is bleak and windy, saved only by its kites, which are flown from the dyke and sail over the sea at immense heights. Every boy has a kite—one more link between Holland and China.

Market Place Weigh-House, Hoorn

I climbed the lighthouse at The Helder just before the lamp was lit. It was an impressive ceremony. The captain and his men stood all ready, the captain watching the sun as it sunk on the horizon. At the instant it disappeared he gave the word, and at one stride came the light. I chanced at the moment to be standing between the lantern and the sea, and I was asked to move with an earnestness of entreaty in which the safety of a whole navy Page 221seemed to be involved. The light may be seen forty-eight miles away. It is fine to think of all the eyes within that extent of sea, invisible to us, caught almost simultaneously by this point of flame.

I did not stay at Nieuwediep but at The Helder. Thirty years ago, however, one could have done nothing so inartistic, for then, according to M. Havard, the Hotel Ten Burg at Nieuwediep had for its landlord a poet, and for its head waiter a baritone, and to stay elsewhere would have been a crime. Here is M. Havard’s description of these virtuosi: “No one ever sees the landlord the first day he arrives at the hotel. M.B.R. de Breuk is not accessible to ordinary mortals. He lives up among the clouds, and when he condescends to come down to earth he shuts himself up in his own room, where he indulges in pleasant intercourse with the Muses.

“I have no objection to confessing that, although I am a brother in the art, and have stayed several times at his hotel, I have never once been allowed to catch a glimpse of his features. The head-waiter, happily, is just the contrary. It is he who manages the hotel, receives travellers, and arranges for their well-being. He is a handsome fellow, with a fresh complexion, heavy moustache, and one lock of hair artificially arranged on his forehead. He is perfectly conscious of his own good looks, and wears rings on both his hands. Nature has endowed him with a sonorous baritone voice, the notes of which, whether sharp or melodious, he is careful in expressing, because he is charmed with his art, and has an idea that it is fearfully egotistical to conceal such treasures. One note especially he never fails to utter distinctly, and that is the last—the note of payment.

“Sometimes he allows himself to become so absorbed in Page 222his art that he forgets the presence in the hotel of tired travellers, and disturbs their slumbers by loud roulades and cadences; or perhaps he is asked to fetch a bottle of beer, he stops on the way to the cellar to perfect the harmony of a scale, and does not return till the patience of the customer is exhausted. But who would have the heart to complain of such small grievances when the love of song is stronger than any other?”

I had no such fortune in Holland. No hotel proprietor rhymed for me, no waiter sang. My chief friends were rather the hotel porters, of whom I recall in particular two—the paternal colossus at the Amstel in Amsterdam, who might have sat for the Creator to an old master—urbane, efficient, a storehouse of good counsel; and the plump and wide cynic into whose capable and kindly hands one falls at the Oude Doelen at The Hague, that shrewd and humorous reader of men and Americans. I see yet his expression of pity, not wholly (yet perhaps sufficiently) softened to polite interest, when consulted as to the best way in which to visit Alkmaar to see the cheese market. That any one staying at The Hague—and more, at the Oude Doelen—should wish to see traffic in cheese at a provincial town still strikes his wise head as tragic, although it happens every week. I honour him for it and for the exquisite tact with which he retains his opinion and allows you to have yours.

A poet landlord and an operatic head waiter, what are they when all is said beside a friendly hotel porter? He is the Deus ex machinâ indeed. The praises of the hotel porter have yet to be sung. O Switzerland! the poet might begin (not, probably, a landlord poet) O Switzerland—I give but a bald paraphrase of the spirited original—O Switzerland, thou land of peaks and cow bells, of wild Page 223strawberries and nonconformist conventions, of grasshoppers and climbing dons, thou hast strange limitations! Thou canst produce no painter, thou possessest no navy; but thou makest the finest hotel porters in the world. Erect, fair-haired, blue-eyed, tactful and informing, they are the true friends of the homeless!—And so on for many strophes.