One boards a little Dutch steamer at the Tower Stairs, a steamer that seems in the greatest hurry to be off, but never is, though everyone and everything, including the steam escape, are very busy till it finally shrieks itself under the Tower Bridge and so down the river. These steamers are sometimes slightingly referred to as cargo boats, and certainly the bulbs, in their clean white packing cases, come to England that way; and when they are not coming, Dutch cheeses in quantity and other things take their place. But the passenger accommodation has much to recommend it. I remember a large deck cabin, much larger and lighter than a good deal of the first-class accommodation on the great Indian and Australian liners. I remember sheets of stout Low Country linen, reminiscent in their scent of woodruff of the Spanish mahogany dower chests where housewives lay up their gear with the aromatic herb. I remember a snug place with a swinging lamp and lockers, more suggestive of the cabin of the “Schooner Hesperus,” when “the skipper had taken his little daughter to bear him company,” than the saloon of a cross-Channel steamer. It is true the food is Dutch, but if, as not infrequently happens, one is sole passenger, one has it when and where one pleases, which is a compensation. It is true, too, there is no stewardess, and not often anyone who speaks much English on board, and that the journey takes rather long, but these are trifles.
By choosing the right tide, one drops down the river in the afternoon, in itself an interesting and instructive thing; spends the night at sea, which if one has to go to sea seems the best time to spend there; and, if it is summer, sees the piers of Ymuenden when sea and sky look like the two halves of a pink pearl in the dawn. After Ymuenden one is in the Great Canal of Amsterdam, and it is a bad sailor who can then find reason to object to the motion or vibration. The latter appears principally to be connected with the steam whistle, which gives notice of approach to railway bridges, and the former to be rather conspicuous by its absence. Children driving goats to pasture and early astir pedestrians seem as if they could easily outdistance the very steady and matronly pace of the little steamer. But it is quite suitable, everything else on the water moves at the same pace, which agreeably allows of greeting and conversation with occasional sister craft, even allows of learning what they have for breakfast on board. And no doubt it is necessary,—the banks which shut the canal from the land, usually lying below the water-level, are very soft; even as it is, dredgers, those most fascinating craft of childhood, are eternally at work.
It appears to be the cautious custom of the country not to open the swing railway bridges within twenty minutes of the scheduled time of a train’s coming. As the trains do not invariably keep time, there are occasionally long waits for the steamers, which, being privately owned, wait the good pleasure of the State-owned railways. But it does not very much matter, there is the better chance to look around and see the country, which is so very flat here that there is a great deal of it to be seen; and so wide and peaceful that it puts to rest the sense of hurry. One who goes to the bulb gardens does well to put that sense to rest, for, seen hastily, run through in a few hours or a day at most, they produce little but an impression of sheets of gorgeous colour, which might possibly have been more beautiful had they been otherwise arranged. Time is wanted to see them, the leisureliness which regards them as gardens rather than as so many acres of scarlet, blue, or white, and the opportunity of knowing a few of the flowers individually. It is for this reason, among others, and as a suitable preparation to the leisurely observation, that a man does well to go to the gardens the way the bulbs come; and does well to possess his soul in patience, while the Dutch captain attends the pleasure of the man who minds the bridge, and while the steamer creeps up to Amsterdam.
The national virtue of Holland, the Holland one sees from the canal, is industry; not energy exactly, certainly not ‘hustle’ or any kindred thing, but industry, coupled with a neatness which keeps even the ditches tidy, and does not allow of that inalienable right of the English rural dweller, the garden rubbish-heap. The Dutch strike one as more industrious than anything else in the world, unless perhaps ants, to a community of which, it must be admitted, they bear some resemblance. The national ideal, at least in the bulb district, is cleanliness. About the highest praise to be bestowed on anything is that it is clean. A fine tulip bulb in its shining yellow-brown skin is extolled as “so clean”; the curious sandy soil in which the bulbs grow is spoken of with pride as always clean; the great compliment to be paid to a bulb barn is that it is clean. Possibly one of the advantages of the growers’ work is that it is clean.
It is, I believe, customary to speak of Amsterdam as the Venice of the North. For one who has not seen Venice it is impossible to draw a comparison, but it seems difficult to imagine much resemblance between them—beyond the fact that both possess canals and houses and history. Amsterdam somehow reminds one of Dickens’ novels, it is immensely interesting, rather crowded, real, busy, homely, and genuine; not suggestive of devastating passions or high romance exactly, but very comfortable and wholesome. One would expect it to dine early, to attend to business, and have a substantial supper. This is not meant to imply that everyone in Amsterdam does these things, only that that is the general impression produced by the town. One can perfectly understand Amsterdam being the diamond mart of the world; but one cannot imagine an Amsterdamer ruining himself to buy a parure for some fair woman’s caprice; or an Amsterdamess jeopardising her immortal soul to secure some special jewel. One no more expects it than one expects the Jews, who are the art dealers and bijou connoisseurs of the world, to be the producers of these same articles. Not that one thinks the less of them on that account. Artists and romancists and subjects of the grand passion, though no doubt adding to the joy of nations, make indifferent folk to live with; the sturdy man of business and the shrewd and kindly citizen might be a deal better for everyday use—and most lives consist principally of such usings. In Amsterdam one can perfectly understand the famous struggle with Spain and some of the difficulties of the Boer War. But one cannot help feeling that, just as the French Revolution and the ’45 are not in the nature of the people, neither are the ways and doings of Renaissance Italy.
From Amsterdam one goes by train to Haarlem, capital of the bulb country; and if one holds any hearsay opinions as to the unexcitable nature of the Dutch people, one corrects them on the way. Phlegmatic in big matters they may be, but in small ones—No. It is only necessary to observe them seeing each other off at the railway station or starting one of their not too expeditious trains to realise that. The excitement of getting the people in, of arranging seats when in, closing windows and placing the inordinate quantity of packages everyone seems to carry, is astonishing to the Englishman. So too, rather, is the amount of help and service required by the exceedingly capable Holland women. A Holland lady never seems to think of opening a carriage door for herself; one imagines she would almost sooner go past the desired station than do so, though such a catastrophe could not well happen, for, in good time, she uplifts her voice and excitedly calls upon all and sundry to let her out, if no one has, unasked, come to do it. She never attempts to board the train without at least one assistant; if she be stout, two. In the latter case it is not altogether unnecessary, for the steps are steep, the door narrow, and the stations, like others on the Continent, guiltless of platforms; the difficulties of getting a really fat and baggage-laden lady in are considerable. Inside the train she is very helpless about her belongings and prepared to cast herself upon the kindness of any or all men; outside Mevrouw is as capable as any woman in the world. The peculiarity probably arises from the fact that Holland, in some respects, is still rather mid-Victorian; the women, at all events, cling to the ideal of feminine helplessness in public places which was counted becoming in that era.
Haarlem, it is said, is behind the rest of Holland; with what truth I do not know, I know no other part half so well. It is a town not quite like any other, so quiet and bright, so small scale busy with its own concerns, so essentially cosy. There is there a feeling of attending to your own business, and the price of meat mattering more than the Messina earthquake (as, indeed, it is conceivable it may to a good many people); and also a feeling of comfort and the settled home life; the hearth swept and the children coming down to tea. The whole town is intersected by canals, the which, always busy and doing away with a good deal of road traffic, may help to produce the quiet, bright, yet active feeling. The houses, many of them, are right on to the street, with windows low, so that one can hardly help seeing in and having a momentary and intimate glimpse of the lives of the inhabitants. This may help to give the comfortable homely feeling—it is hard to say, really impossible to say, what produces and wherein lies the spirit and atmosphere of a town.
The “BERCEAU,” HET LOO
At Haarlem station it is customary for those who have come in the bulb flowering time of April and May to hire a carriage and go the route prescribed by the driver; thus, without leaving their seats, seeing the gardens, and carrying away the impression of a patchwork quilt of flowers. An arrangement of foursquare bits of colour, separated from each other by as yet scantily-leafed hedges, and, here and there, intersected by pieces of ground resting from bulb culture, and either bare or green with vegetables, which, from sheer exhaustion, if not contrariness, the eye is inclined to prefer to the gorgeous flower patches. But that is not the way to see the bulb gardens. It is better, for one who has leisure, to go first in early summer, when the great mass of flowers is over, and only the later and fewer bulbs are in bloom; when there is opportunity to know them as individuals, and appreciate the exquisite contrast of iris colours and green hedges, and to see to full advantage ranunculus, and the early blooming gladioli, and the hundred varieties of the lily tribe. To see them, as the unaccustomed eye cannot see them when it first meets flowers in sheets, field after field of colour. In June, then, come to Haarlem; there take a tram, and do not forget that the chances are some one in the vehicle will understand English very well indeed. And when the tram has come as near as may be to the destination, walk the rest of the way to the house of the grower. To see the bulb flowers without the grower is not to see them. On arrival at the house there is usually a meal first. It is always mid-day “coffee-drinking” in my memories, and there is never much talk of the flowers at it; questions, rather, about people in England and Holland, and perhaps about fashions and food, and the length of the winter, and the health of Mevrouw. After that there is a rest, during which Mevrouw offers cordials and home-made liquors of a most excellent order, and den Heer finishes important letters. After that, walk forth to the flowers.