Holland, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

Rotterdam at night presents to the stranger an unexpected appearance. In other northern towns at a certain hour the life is gathered within doors; in Rotterdam at the corresponding hour it overflows into the street. A dense crowd passes through the Hoog-Straat until late at night. The shops are open, for then the servants make their purchases and the coffee-houses are crowded. The Dutch coffee-houses are of a peculiar shape. They usually consist of one long saloon, divided in the middle by a green curtain, which is drawn at night, like the curtain of a theatre, hiding all the back part of the room. This part only is lighted. The front part, separated from the street by a large window, remains in the dark, so that from the outside one can see only dim forms and the glowing ends of cigars, which look like fire-flies, and among these shadowy forms appears the uncertain profile of some woman, to whom light would be unwelcome.

After the coffee-houses, the tobacco-shops attract the attention, not only in Rotterdam, but in all other Dutch cities. There is one at almost every step, and they are beyond comparison the finest in Europe, not excepting even the great Havana tobacco-stores in Madrid. The cigars are kept in wooden boxes, on each of which is a printed portrait of the king or queen or of some illustrious Dutch citizen. These boxes are arranged in the high shop-windows in a thousand architectural styles,—in towers, steeples, temples, winding staircases, beginning on the floor and reaching almost to the ceiling. In these shops, which are resplendent with lights like the stores of Paris, one may find cigars of every shape and flavor. The courteous tobacconist puts one's purchase into a special tissue-paper envelope after he has cut off the end of one of the cigars with a machine made for the purpose.

The Dutch shops are brilliantly illuminated, and, although in themselves they do not differ materially from stores of other large European cities, they present at night a very unusual appearance, because of the contrast between the ground floor and the upper part of the house. Below, all is glass, light, color, and splendor; above, the gloomy façades with their steep sharp lines, steps, and curves. The upper part of the house is plain, dark, and silent—in a word, ancient Holland; the ground floor is the new life—fashion, luxury, and elegance. Moreover, the houses are all very narrow, so the shops occupy the whole ground floor, and are generally so close together that they touch each other. Consequently at night, in streets like Hoog-Straat, one sees very little wall below the second floor. The houses seem to rest on glass, and in the distance the windows become blended into two long flaming stripes like gleaming hedges, flooding the streets with light, so that one could find a pin in them.

As one walks along the streets of Rotterdam in the evening, one sees that it is a city overflowing with life and in the process of expansion—a city, so to speak, in the flush of youth, in the time of growth, which, from year to year, outgrows its streets and houses, as a boy outgrows his clothes. Its one hundred and fourteen thousand inhabitants will be two hundred thousand at no distant time. The smaller streets swarm with children; indeed, they are filled to overflowing with them, so that it gladdens one's eyes and heart. An air of happiness breathes through the streets of Rotterdam. The white and ruddy faces of the servants, whose spotless caps are popping out everywhere, the serene faces of the tradespeople, who slowly sip their great mugs of beer, the peasants with their large golden earrings, the cleanliness, the flowers in the windows, the quiet hard-working crowd,—all give to Rotterdam an appearance of health and peaceful content which brings the Te beata to our lips, not with a cry of enthusiasm, but with a smile of sympathy.

Re-entering the hotel, I saw an entire French family in a corridor gazing in admiration at the nails on a door which shone like so many silver buttons.

In the morning, as soon as I arose, I went to my window, which was on the second floor, and on looking at the roofs of the opposite houses, I confessed with surprise that Bismarck was excusable for believing he saw phantoms on the roofs at Rotterdam. Out of the chimney-pots of all the ancient houses rise curved or straight tubes, one above the other, crossing and recrossing like open arms, or forks, or immense horns, in such impossible positions that it seems as though they must understand each other and be speaking a mysterious language from house to house, and that at night they must move about with some purpose.

I walked down Hoog-Straat. It was Sunday and few shops were open. The Dutch told me that some years ago even those few would have been closed: the observance of the Sabbath, which used to be very strict, is becoming slack. I saw the signs of holiday chiefly in the people's clothes, in the dress of the men particularly. The men, especially those of the lower classes (and this I observed in other towns also), have a decided taste for black clothes, which they wear proudly on Sundays—black cravats, black breeches, and certain black over-coats that reach almost to their knees. This costume, together with their leisurely gait and solemn faces, gives them the air of village syndics going to assist at an official Te Deum.

But what most surprised me was to see at that hour almost every one I met, gentry and peasantry, men and boys, with cigars in their mouths. This unfortunate habit of "dreaming awake," as Émile Girardin called it when he made war on smokers, occupies such a large part of the life of the Dutch people that it is necessary to say a few words about it.

The Dutch probably smoke more than any other northern nation. The humidity of the climate makes it almost a necessity, and the cheapness of tobacco puts it in everybody's power to satisfy this desire. To show how inveterate is this habit, it will suffice to say that the boatmen of the trekschuit (the stage-coach of the canals) measure distance by smoke. From here to such and such a town they say it is so many pipes, not so many miles. When you enter a house, the host, after the usual greetings, gives you a cigar; when you leave he gives you another, sometimes he fills your pocket. In the streets one sees men lighting fresh cigars with the stumps they have just smoked, with a hurried air, without stopping for a moment, as if it were equally disagreeable to them to lose a moment of time and a mouthful of smoke. A great many men go to bed with their cigars in their mouths, light them if they awake in the night, and relight them in the morning before leaving their beds. "The Dutchman is a living alembic," writes Diderot; and it does really seem as though smoking is to him one of the necessary functions of life. Many say that much smoking clouds the brain. But, notwithstanding, if there is a people whose intelligence is clear and precise in the highest degree, that people is the Dutch. Moreover, smoking is no excuse for idleness among the Hollanders,—they do not smoke "to dream awake." Every one does his work while puffing white clouds of smoke from his mouth as if he were the chimney of a factory, and, instead of the cigar being a distraction, it is a stimulus and a help to labor. "Smoke is our second breath," said a Dutchman to me, and another defined the cigar as "the sixth finger of our hand."

Apropos of tobacco, I must tell of the life and death of a famous Dutch smoker, but I am rather afraid my Dutch friends who told me the story will shrug their shoulders, for they lamented that strangers who write on Holland pass over important things which do honor to the country, and mention only trifles such as this. However, this is such a remarkable trifle that I cannot resist the temptation of putting it down.