To Texel I did not cross, although it is hard for any one who has read The Riddle of the Sands to refrain. Had we been there in the nesting season I might have wandered in search of the sea birds’ and the plovers’ eggs, just for old sake’s sake, as I have in the island of Coll, but we were too late, and The Helder had depressed us. It was off the Island of Texel on 31st July, 1653, that Admiral Tromp was killed during his engagement with the English under Monk.
Medemblik, situated on the point of a spur of land between The Helder and Enkhuisen, was once the residence of Radbod and the Kings of Frisia. It is now nothing. One good story at any rate may be recalled there. When Radbod, King of the Frisians, was driven out of Western Frisia in 689 by Pepin of Heristal, Duke and Prince of the Franks (father of Charles Martel and great grandfather of Charlemagne, who completed the conquest of Frisia), the defeated king was considered a convert to Christianity, and the preparations for his baptism were made on a grand scale. Never a whole-hearted convert, Radbod, even as one foot was in the water, had a visitation of doubt. Where, he made bold to ask, were the noble kings his ancestors, who had not, like himself, been offered this inestimable privilege of baptism—in heaven or in hell? The officiating Bishop replied that they were doubtless in hell. “Then,” said Radbod, withdrawing his foot, “I think it would be Page 224better did I join them there, rather than go alone to Paradise.”
Enkhuisen, where one embarks for Friesland, is a Dead City of the Zuyder Zee, with more signs of dissolution than most of them. Once she had a population of sixty thousand; that number must now be divided by ten.
“Above all things,” says M. Havard, the discoverer of Dead Cities, “avoid a promenade in this deserted town with an inhabitant familiar with its history, otherwise you will constantly hear the refrain; ‘Here was formerly the richest quarter of commerce; there, where the houses are falling into total ruin, was the quarter of our aristocracy,’ But more painful still, when we have arrived at what appears the very end of the town, the very last house, we see at a distance a gate of the city. A hundred years ago the houses joined this gate. It took us a walk of twenty minutes across the meadows to arrive at this deserted spot.” I did not explore the town, and therefore I cannot speak with any authority of its possessions; but I saw enough to realise what a past it must have had.
At Enkhuisen was born Paul Potter, who painted the famous picture of the bull in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. The year 1625 saw his birth; and it was only twenty-nine years later that he died. While admiring Potter’s technical powers, I can imagine few nervous trials more exacting than having to live with his bull intimately in one’s room. This only serves to show how temperamental a matter is art criticism, for on each occasion that I have been to the Mauritshuis the bull has had a ring of mute or throbbing worshippers, while Vermeer’s “[View of Delft]” was without a devotee. I have seen, however, little scenes of cattle by Potter which were attractive as well as masterly.
Sir William Temple, in his Observations upon the Page 225United Provinces gives a very human page to this old town: “Among the many and various hospitals, that are in every man’s curiosity and talk that travels their country, I was affected with none more than that of the aged seamen at Enchuysen, which is contrived, finished, and ordered, as if it were done with a kind intention of some well-natured man, that those, who had passed their whole lives in the hardships and incommodities of the sea, should find a retreat stored with all the eases and conveniences that old age is capable of feeling and enjoying. And here I met with the only rich man that ever I saw in my life: for one of these old seamen entertaining me a good while with the plain stories of his fifty years’ voyages and adventures, while I was viewing their hospital, and the church adjoining, I gave him, at parting, a piece of their coin about the value of a crown: he took it smiling, and offered it me again; but, when I refused it, he asked me, What he should do with money? for all, that ever they wanted, was provided for them at their house. I left him to overcome his modesty as he could; but a servant, coming after me, saw him give it to a little girl that opened the church door, as she passed by him: which made me reflect upon the fantastic calculation of riches and poverty that is current in the world, by which a man, that wants a million, is a Prince; he, that wants but a groat, is a beggar; and this a poor man, that wanted nothing at all.”
Hoorn’s Harbour Tower, as I have said, has a charm beyond description; but Enkhuisen’s—known as the Dromedary—is unwieldly and plain. It has, however, this advantage over Hoorn’s, its bells are very beautiful. One sees the Dromedary for some miles on the voyage to Stavoren and Friesland. Page 226