It has been asserted by some travellers, that the Dutch treasure this spot more from national pride than feeling, and that they are more disposed to preserve than to enjoy it. To this remark I have only to offer, that I saw a considerable number of equestrian and pedestrian groups, who appeared to relish its shaded roads, and sequestered walks with great delight. The royal residence is to the right at the end of the wood. Upon my asking a Dutchman which path led to the “house in the wood,” the only appellation by which, in the time of the Stadtholder, it was known, he sharply replied, “I presume you mean the palace in the wood.” This building is merely fit for the residence of a country gentleman, and has nothing princely about it, except the centry boxes at the foot of the flight of stairs ascending to the grand entrance: two tall and not very perpendicular poles, from the tops of which is stretched a cord, suspending in the centre a large lamp, stand on each side of the house in front of the palace; on the left are the coach-houses and stablings, which are perfectly plain, and are just separated from the court road by a small stunted plantation: there was a very handsome carriage of the king’s in the coach-house, without arms or cyphers, of a pale blue colour, which, with silver lace, is the colour of the new royal livery. The carriage had every appearance of having been built in England. Excepting this, I never before saw a carriage, unless appropriated for state occasions, belonging to any crowned head on the continent, that an Englishman of taste and opulence would be satisfied with. Even the carriages of Napoleon, built in a city so celebrated for its taste in design, and beauty of workmanship, as Paris, are clumsy and unpleasant to the eye. Although it was Sunday, the sound of workmen, actively engaged in modernizing the palace after the Parisian taste, issued from almost every window. Some Dutchmen who were contemplating the front of the house, shook their heads at this encroachment of the sabbath. In consequence of the internal arrangement not being finished, strangers were not admitted. The walks on the outside of the gardens are formal and insipid; the gardens themselves are handsomely disposed, and kept in great order, and the whole of the premises is insulated by stagnant canals crossed with draw-bridges.
In this palace, amongst many other precious works of art, was the celebrated picture of King William the Third, who appointed the famous Godfrey Scalken, when he was in London, to paint his portrait by candlelight: the painter placed a taper in the hands of his majesty, to hold it in a situation most favourable to the designs of the artist, during which the tallow melted and dropped on the fingers of the monarch, who endured it with great composure, for fear of embarrassing the painter, who very tranquilly continued his work, without offering to pause for a minute: it is not much to the credit of the prince of the country to record, that this blunt enthusiasm for his art lost poor Scalken the favour of the court, and of persons of fashion, and he retired to the Hague, where he had a prodigious demand for his small paintings.
The furniture of this, which, as well as of the other palaces, was superb, but old fashioned, was sold by the French, upon the pretence that their arms were directed against the Prince of Orange personally. In this palace the Stadtholder and his family used to indulge his subjects in that ridiculous custom of eating before them on certain days; a custom which was a fit appendage to another, that of keeping dwarfs and fools about the royal person. How this stupid usage came to be adopted at first I know not, for one would naturally think that the situation least calculated to inspire awe and veneration, those great supports of royalty, amongst subjects towards their rulers, would be that in which a mere animal appetite is gratified. In England such splendid folly has been long discontinued.
The plain manner in which the Prince of Orange and his family resided at this palace, is thus described by the late ingenious Mr. Ireland. “The reception we met with as strangers, was highly flattering. It was the character of Englishmen that was our passport. Expressing our wish to see the prince, the court being then full, we were addressed by a gentleman (whom we afterwards found to be Lord Athlone) through whose politeness we gained admission, and were with great affability noticed by the prince. He is short in stature, with much elegance and familiarity in his manner, not unlike our royal family. The princess and her daughter, who is about eighteen, appeared in the room: their dresses were very plain, and they had no other mark of superiority than a train-bearer. So little ceremony is observed in the exterior of the house, that just without the door of the apartment, where the prince was giving audience (which was open), a woman was on her knees scrubbing the staircase.”
Upon my return to my hotel at one o’clock, the dinner hour, I found a very agreeable party, composed of foreigners from different countries, and an excellent table d’hote: over the chimney-piece was a good equestrian portrait of the famous Duke of Cumberland, who lodged at this house occasionally during the campaigns of 1747. After dinner, in company with a very amiable gentleman-like Englishman, whom I met at the table d’hote, I set off in one of the carriages, many of which are always ready to convey passengers, for about the value of six-pence English, for Scheveling, a village which every traveller should visit, on account of the beauty of the avenue leading to it, which is nearly two miles, perfectly straight, and thickly planted with beech, limes, and oaks; at the end of which superb vista the church of Scheveling appears. On the sandy ground on each side of this avenue are several birch thickets, and it abounds with the aiera canescens, hippophae rhamnoides, a singular dwarf variety of ligustrum vulgare (Privet), the true arundo epigejos of Linnæus (that is, calamagrostis), and a number of heath plants, mixed with others usually found in marshes. Scarcely is there so small a spot, where Flora presents such opposite variety, and which the fluctuating moisture of the soil can alone account for. Among the rarer species are convallaria multiflora, and polygonatum, with gentiana cruciata, which is not a native of England.
The Dutch value this beautiful avenue as much as they do their Wood, and great care is taken to preserve it from violation. At the entrance, in a most romantic spot, is the turnpike-gate, where all passengers, except the fishermen of Scheveling, pay a fraction of a farthing for permission to enter; and here are stuck up orders, threatening with punishment those who may attempt to injure in the smallest degree this consecrated forest. At short intervals, cautionary inscriptions are placed in conspicuous situations, to warn mischievous “apple munching urchins” from cutting the smallest twig.
Constantine Huygens, brother of the celebrated mathematician and mechanist of that name, had the honor of designing this avenue, in which there are many stately trees, upwards of a century and a half old: a terrible storm which took place a few years since, laid about fifty of these noble objects low, to the great grief and consternation of the country. Here, and perhaps here only, throughout Holland, the traveller may be gratified by the sounds of a running brook. The foot paths on each side were crowded with pedestrians of both sexes, in their holiday clothes; and the slanting rays of a brilliant sun flashing through openings in the branches of the limes, beech trees, and oaks, upon a crowd of merry faces, jolting in the most whimsical carts and waggons, to their favourite spot of carousal, had a very pleasing and picturesque effect.
The village is very neat and pretty; at the end of the vista, large sand-hills rising near the base of the church, preclude the sight of the ocean, which, when they are surmounted, opens upon the view with uncommon majesty. The beach, which we saw in high perfection on account of its being low water, is very firm to the tread, and forms a beautiful walk of nearly six miles in extent. The ocean was like a mirror, and fishing vessels were reclining on the sand in the most picturesque forms, just surrounded with water; their owners, with their wives and children, were parading up and down in their sabbath suits, and the whole sand for a mile was a fine marine mall, covered with groupes who appeared as capable of appreciating the beauty of the scene, as the worshippers of the Steyne at Brighton, or of the Parade at Bath. The Dutch are said to have an antipathy to sea-air; but this I found not to be generally true: certain it is, that they are not fond of sea-bathing, otherwise this beach would be crowded with bathing, and the country above it with lodging-houses.
Water is no novelty to a Dutchman, and he prefers, and there seems some sense in his preference, his neat, commodious country-house, and his gardens, and all the comforts of life about him, to the pleasure of bathing and contemplating a waste of waters from the windows of a cheerless inn or lodging-house. An English frigate, which lay off at a considerable distance, excited a good deal of attention, and added to the beauty of the scene. Upon quitting the beach we entered an inn which overlooked the sand and was a place of great resort, every room of which was crowded and filled with tobacco smoke. The state of Mr. Fox’s health formed the leading feature of the political discourse. “Herr Fock,” as he was called, was frequently repeated at every table. Opposite to where we sat a young Dutch couple were making violent love; they kissed, devoured dry salted fish, and drank punch with an enthusiasm, which presented to our imagination the warmest association of Cupid and the jolly god. John Van Goyen, who died in 1656, and was so justly celebrated for the transparency of his colouring of water, made this spot the frequent subject of his charming pencil. Dutch tradition dwells with delight upon a cock and a bull story respecting the celebrated flying chariot which used to sail upon those lands, and on the surrounding country. It was said to have been made by Stevinus, for Prince Maurice: it is thus described and commented upon in a curious old description of Holland: “The form of it was simple and plain: it resembled a boat moved upon four wheels of an equal bigness, had two sails, was steered by a rudder placed between the two hindmost wheels, and was stopt either by letting down the sails, or turning it from the wind. This noble machine has been celebrated by many great authors, as one of the most ingenious inventions later ages have produced. Bishop Wilkins, in his Treatise of Mechanical Motions, mentions several great men who described and admired it. Grotius mentions an elegant figure of it in copper, done by Geyneus; and Herodius, in one of his large maps of Asia, gives another sketch of the like chariots used in China.” Incredible as this story appears, one would be disposed to think, that a man of Grotius’s celebrity for learning and truth, would scarcely have eulogized the invention, had he doubted its existence. Upon a level, hard, straight road, uninterrupted by trees and buildings, such a piece of ingenuity might perhaps prove successful as a mechanical experiment, but utterly impossible ever to be made serviceable.