In that short walk through the streets of Delft I met some gloomy figures like those I had noticed at Rotterdam, without being able to determine whether they were priests, magistrates, or gravediggers, for in their dress and appearance they bore a certain resemblance to all three. They wore three-cornered hats, with long black veils which reached to the waist, swallow-tailed black coats, short black breeches, black stockings, black cloaks, buckled shoes, and white cravats and gloves, and they held in their hands sheets of paper bordered with black. My companion explained to me that they were called aanspreckers, an untranslatable Dutch word, and that their duty was to bear the information of deaths to the relatives and friends of the defunct and to make the announcement through the streets. Their dress differs in some particulars in the various provinces and also according to the religious faith of the deceased. In some towns they wear immense hats à la Don Basilio. They are generally very neat, and are sometimes dressed with a care that contrasts strangely with their business as messengers of death, or, as a traveller defines them, living funeral letters.
We noticed one of these men who had stopped in front of a house, and my companion drew my attention to the fact that the shutters were partly closed, and observed that there must be some one dead there. I asked who it was. "I do not know," he replied, "but, to judge from the shutters, it cannot be any near relative to the master of the house." As this method of arguing seemed rather strange to me, he explained that in Holland when any one dies in a family they shut the windows and one, two, or three of the divisions of the folding shutters accordingly as the relationship is near or distant. Each section of shutter denotes a degree of relationship. For a father or mother they close all but one, for a cousin they close one only, for a brother two, and so on. It appears that the custom is very old, and it still continues, because in that country no custom is discontinued for caprice; nothing is changed unless the alteration becomes a matter of serious importance, and unless the Hollanders have been more than persuaded that such a change is for the better.
I should like to have seen at Delft the house where was the tavern of the artist Steen, where he probably passed those famous debauches which have given rise to so many questions among his biographers. But my host told me that nothing was known about it. However, apropos of painters, he gave me the pleasing information that I was in the part of Holland, bounded by Delft, the Hague, the sea, the town of Alkmaar, the Gulf of Amsterdam, and the ancient Lake of Haarlem, which might be called the fatherland of Dutch painting, both because the greatest painters were born there, and because it presented such singularly picturesque effects that the artists loved and studied it devotedly. I was therefore in the bosom of Holland, and when I left Delft, I was going into its very heart.
Before leaving I again glanced hastily over the military arsenal, which occupies a large building, and which originally served as a warehouse to the East India Company. It is in communication with an artillery workshop and a great powder-magazine outside of the town. At Delft there still remains the great polytechnic school for engineers, the real military academy of Holland, for from it come forth the officers of the army that defends the country from the sea, and these young warriors of the dykes and locks, about three hundred in number, are they who give life to the peaceful town of Grotius.
As I was stepping into the vessel which was to bear me to the Hague, my Dutch friend described the last of those students' festivals at Delft which are celebrated once in five years. It was one of those pageants peculiar to Holland, a sort of historical masquerade like a reflection of the magnificence of the past, serving to remind the people of the traditions, the personages, and illustrious events of earlier times. A great cavalcade represented the entrance into Arnheim, in 1492, of Charles of Egmont, Duke of Gelderland, Count of Zutphen. He belonged to that family of Egmont which in the person of the noble and unfortunate Count Lamoral gave the first great martyr of Dutch liberty to the axe of the Duke of Alva. Two hundred students on richly caparisoned horses, clothed in armor, decorated with mantles embroidered with coats of arms, with waving plumes and large swords proudly brandished, formed the retinue of the Duke of Gelderland. Then came halberdiers, archers, and foot-soldiers dressed in the pompous fashion of the fifteenth century; bands played, the city blazed with lights, and through its streets flowed an immense crowd, which had come from every part of Holland to enjoy this splendid vision of a distant age.
THE HAGUE.
THE boat that was to carry me to the Hague was moored near a bridge, in a little basin formed by the canal which leads from Delft to the Hague, and shaded by trees on the bank like a garden lake.
The boats that carry passengers from town to town are called in Dutch trekschuiten. The trekschuit is the traditional boat, as emblematic of Holland as is the gondola of Venice. Esquiros defined it as "the genius of ancient Holland floating on the waters;" and, in fact, any one who has not travelled in a trekschuit is not acquainted with Dutch life under its most original and poetic aspect.
It is a large boat, almost entirely covered with a cabin shaped like a stage-coach and divided into two compartments—the division near the prow being for second-class passengers, and that near the poop for first-class. An iron pole with a ring at the end is fastened to the prow, through which a long rope is passed; this is tied at one end near the rudder and at the other end is fastened a tow-horse, which is ridden by a boatman. The windows of the cabin have white curtains; the walls and doors are painted. In the compartment for first-class passengers there are cushioned seats, a little table with books, a cupboard, a mirror; everything is neat and bright. In putting down my valise I allowed some ashes from my cigar to fall under the table; a minute later, when I returned, these had disappeared.