In the gallery at Rotterdam there is a beautiful head by Rembrandt; a scene of brigands by Wouverman, a great painter of horses and battles; a landscape by Van Goyen, the painter of dead shores and leaden skies; a marine painting by Bakhuisen, the painter of storms; a painting by Berghem, the painter of smiling landscapes; one by Everdingen, the painter of waterfalls and forests; and other paintings belonging to the Italian and Flemish schools.
On leaving the museum I met a company of soldiers, the first Dutch soldiers I had seen. Their uniform was dark colored, without any showy ornaments, and they were all fair from first to last, and wore their hair long, and almost all of them had a peaceful, happy look, which seemed in strange contrast with the arms they bore. Rotterdam, a city of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, has a garrison of three hundred soldiers! And it is said that Rotterdam has the name of being the most turbulent and unruly city in Holland! In fact, some time ago there was a popular demonstration against the municipality, which had no consequences but a few broken windows. But in a country like this, which runs by clockwork, it must have seemed, and did truly seem, a great event; the cavalry was sent from the Hague, the country was in commotion. One must not think, however, that this people is all sugar; the citizens of Rotterdam confess that "the holy rabble," as Carducci calls it, is stoutly licentious, as is the case in other towns of worse reputation; the lack of police is rather an incentive to license than a proof, as some might think, of public discipline.
Rotterdam, as I have already said, is a city neither artistic nor literary; on the contrary, it is one of the few Dutch cities that have not given birth to some great painter—an unproductiveness shared by the whole of Zealand. Erasmus, however, is not its only man of letters. In a little park that extends to the right of the town on the bank of the Meuse there is a marble statue raised by the inhabitants of Rotterdam to honor the poet Tollens, who was born at the end of last century and died a few years ago. This Tollens, whom some dare to call the Béranger of Holland, was (and in this alone he resembles Béranger) one of the most popular poets of the country—one of those poets of which there were so many in Holland, simple, moral, and fall of common sense, having, in fact, more good sense than inspiration; who treated poetry as if it were a business; who never wrote anything that could displease their prudent relatives and judicious friends; who sang of their good God and their good king, and expressed the tranquil and practical character of the people, always taking care to say things that were exact rather than great, and, above all, cultivating poetry in old age, and like prudent fathers of families not stealing a moment from the pursuit of their business. Like many other Dutch poets (who, however, had more genius and different natures), he had another profession besides that of an author. Vondel, for instance, was a hatmaker; Hooft was the governor of Muyden; Van Lennep was a fiscal lawyer; Gravenswaert was a state counsellor; Bogaers, an advocate; Beets, a shepherd; so Tollens also, besides being a man of letters, was an apothecary at Rotterdam, and passed every day, even in his old age, in his drug-store. He had a family and loved his children tenderly—so at least one would conclude from the different pieces of poetry he wrote on the appearance of their first, second, and third teeth. He wrote ballads and odes on familiar and patriotic subjects. Among these is the national hymn of Holland, a mediocre production which the people sing about the streets and the boys chant at school. There is a little poem, perhaps the best of his works, on the expedition which the Dutch sent to the Polar Sea toward the end of the sixteenth century. The people learn his poetry by heart, adore him, and prefer him as their most faithful interpreter and most affectionate friend. But, for all this, Tollens is not considered in Holland as a first-class poet, many do not even rank him in the second class, while not a few disdainfully refuse to give him the sacred laurels.
After all, if Rotterdam is not a centre of literature and art, she has as compensation an extraordinary number of philanthropic institutions, splendid clubs, and all the comforts and diversions of a city of wealth and refinement.
The observations that I have had occasion to make on the character and life of the inhabitants will be more to the purpose at the Hague. I will only mention that in Rotterdam, as in other Dutch cities, no one, in speaking of their country's affairs, showed the least national vanity. The expressions, "Isn't it beautiful?" "What do you think of that?"—which one hears every moment in other countries, are never heard in Holland, even when the inhabitants are speaking of things that are universally admired. Every time that I told a citizen of Rotterdam that I liked the town he made a gesture of surprise. In speaking of their commerce and institutions they never let a vain expression escape them, nor even a boastful or complacent word. They always speak of what they are going to do, and never of what they have done. One of the first questions put to me when I named my country was, "What about its finances?" As to their own country, I observed that they know all that it is useful to know, and very little that it is simply a pleasure to know. A hundred things, a hundred parts of the city, which I had observed when I had been twenty-four hours at Rotterdam, many of the citizens had never seen; which proves that they are not in the habit of rambling about and looking at everything.
When I took my leave my acquaintances filled my pockets with cigars, counselled me to eat good nourishing dinners, and gave me advice on the subject of economical travelling. They parted from me quietly. There was no clamorous "What a pity you are going!" "Write soon!" "Come back quickly!" "Don't forget us!" which rang in my ears on leaving Spain. Here there was nothing but a hearty shake of the hand, a look, and a simple good-bye.
On the morning when I left Rotterdam I saw in the streets through which I passed to get to the Delft railway-station a novel spectacle, purely Dutch—the cleaning of the houses, which takes place twice a week in the early morning hours. All the servants in the city, dressed in flowered lilac-colored wrappers, white caps, white aprons, white stockings, and white wooden shoes, and with their sleeves turned up, were busily washing the doors, the walls, and the windows. Some sat courageously on the window-sills while they washed the panes of the windows with sponges, turning their backs to the street with half their bodies outside; others were kneeling on the pavement cleaning the stones with rough cloths; others were standing in the middle of the street armed with syringes, squirts, and pumps, with long rubber tubes, like those used for watering gardens, and were sending against the second-floor windows streams of water which were pouring down again into the street; others were mopping the windows with sponges and rags tied to the tops of long bamboo canes; others were burnishing the door-knobs, rings, and door-plates; some were cleaning the staircases, some the furniture, which they had carried out of the houses. The pavements were blocked with buckets and pitchers, with jugs, watering-pots, and benches; water ran down the walls and down the street; jets of water were gushing out everywhere. It is a curious thing that while labor in Holland is so slow and easy in all its forms, this work presented an appearance altogether different. All those girls with glowing faces were bustling indoors and hurrying out again, rushing up stairs and down, tucking up their sleeves hastily, assuming bold acrobatic attitudes and undergoing dangerous contortions. They took no notice of those who passed by except when with jealous eyes it was necessary to keep the profane race away from the pavement and walls. In short, it was a furious rivalry of cleanliness, a sort of general ablution of the city, which had about it something childish and festive, and which made one fancy that it was some rite of an eccentric religion which ordered its followers to cleanse the town from a mysterious infection sent by malicious spirits.