Next day, I take leave of my room in the hotel, with its odd French-shaped beds, closed in by heavy green stuff curtains, and great projecting chimney-piece. In my bill, the charge for bed tacitly includes that for breakfast; these two items being, seemingly, considered by the Dutch all one thing. Cheese appears to be invariably eaten by the natives with their morning coffee, which is kept hot by a little spirit-lamp under the coffee-pot.
After this, I stopped at Shravenhagen (the Hague), to see Paul Potter’s Bull. On the Sunday, attended a Calvinistic place of worship, where I was horrified to behold the irreverent way in which the male part of the congregation, who looked not unlike your unpleasant political dissenter at a church-rate meeting, gossiped with their hats on their heads until the entrance of the clergyman.
Next day, I found myself at Rotterdam. The steamer for London managed, near Helvoetsluys, to break the floats of her paddle-wheel; the engine could not be worked; and as there was a heavy sea and strong wind blowing on-shore, we should soon have been there, had not another steamer come to our assistance, and towed us back into a place of safety. After repairing damages, we proceeded on our voyage, and eventually arrived unharmed in London.
CHAPTER V.
Oxford in the Long Vacation—The rats make such a strife—A case for Lesbia—Interview between a hermit and a novice—The ruling passion—Blighted hopes—Norwegian windows—Tortoise-shell soup—After dinner—Christiansand again—Ferry on the Torrisdal river—Plain records of English travellers—Salmonia—The bridal crown—A bridal procession—Hymen, O Hymenæe!—A ripe Ogress—The head cook at a Norwegian marriage—God-fearing people—To Sætersdal—Neck or nothing—Lilies and lilies—The Dutch myrtle.
I was sitting in my rooms, about the end of the month of July, 1857, having been dragged perforce, by various necessary avocations, into the solitude of the Oxford Long Vacation; not a soul in this college, or, in short, in any college. “A decided case of ‘Last Rose of Summer,’” mused I. “Those rats or mice, too, in the cupboard, what a clattering and squeaking they keep up, lamenting, probably, the death of one of their companions in the trap this morning; but, nevertheless, they are not a bit intimidated, for it is hunger that makes them valiant.” The proverb, “Hungry as a church mouse,” fits a college mouse in Long Vacation exactly. The supplies are entirely stopped with the departure of the men: no remnants of cold chicken, or bread-and-butter, no candles. It is not surprising, then, they have all found me out.
I positively go to bed in fear and trembling, lest they should make a nocturnal attack.
Each hole and cranny they explore,