Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) by Various
V >>
Various >> Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10)
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
12
Of the older portion of the city, the most considerable part is
the Binnenhof, a group of old buildings of different styles of
architecture, which looks on two sides upon vast squares, and on the
third over a great marsh. In the midst of this group of palaces,
towers, and monumental doors, of a medieval and sinister aspect, there
is a spacious court, which is entered by three bridges and three
gates. In one of these buildings resided the Stadtholders, and it is
now the seat of the Second Chamber of the States General; opposite is
the First Chamber, with the ministries and various other offices of
public administration. The Minister of the Interior has his office in
a little low black tower of the most lugubrious aspect, that hangs
directly over the waters of the marsh.
The Binnenhof, the square to the west, called the Bintenhof, and
another square beyond the marsh, called the Plaats, into which you
enter by an old gate that once formed part of a prison, were the
theaters of the most sanguinary events in the history of Holland.
In the Binnenhof was decapitated the venerated Van Olden Barneveldt,
the second founder of the republic, the most illustrious victim of
that ever-recurring struggle between the burgher aristocracy and the
Statholderate, between the republican and the monarchical principle,
which worked so miserably in Holland. The scaffold was erected in
front of the edifice where the States General sat. Opposite is the
tower from which it is said that Maurice of Orange, himself unseen,
beheld the last moments of his enemy.
The finest ornament of the Hague is its forest; a true wonder of
Holland, and one of the most magnificent promenades in the world. It
is a wood of alder-trees, oaks, and the largest beeches that are to be
found in Europe, on the eastern side of the city, a few paces from
the last fringe of houses, and measuring about one French league in
circuit; a truly delightful oasis in the midst of the melancholy Dutch
plains. As you enter it, little Swiss chalets find kiosks, scattered
here and there among the first trees, seem to have strayed and lost
themselves in an endless and solitary forest. The trees are as thickly
set as a cane-brake, and the alleys vanish in dark perspective.
There are lakes and canals almost hidden under the verdure of their
banks; rustic bridges, deserted paths, dim recesses, darkness cool
and deep, in which one breathes the air of virgin nature, and feels
oneself far from the noises of the world. This wood, like that of
Haarlem, is said to be the remains of an immense forest that covered,
in ancient times, almost all the coast, and is respected by the Dutch
people as a monument of their national history.
HAARLEM[A]
[Footnote A: From "Holland of To-day."]
BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE
A few minutes bring us from Leyden to Haarlem by the railway. It
crosses an isthmus between the sea and a lake which covered the whole
country between Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam till 1839, when it
became troublesome, and the States-General forthwith, after the
fashion of Holland, voted its destruction. Enormous engines were at
once employed to drain it by pumping the water into canals, which
carried it to the sea, and the country was the richer by a new
province.
Haarlem, on the river Spaarne, stands out distinct in recollection
from all other Dutch towns, for it has the most picturesque
market-place in Holland--the Groote Markt--surrounded by quaint houses
of varied outline, amid which rises the Groote Kerk of S. Bavo, a
noble cruciform fifteenth-century building. The interior, however,
is as bare and hideous as all other Dutch churches. It contains a
monument to the architect Conrad, designer of the famous locks of
Katwijk, "the defender of Holland against the fury of the sea and
the power of tempests." Behind the choir is the tomb of the poet
Bilderijk, who only died in 1831, and near this the grave of Laurenz
Janzoom--the Coster or Sacristan--who is asserted in his native town,
but never believed outside it, to have been the real inventor of
printing, as he is said to have cut out letters in wood, and taken
impressions from them in ink, as early as 1423. His partizans also
maintain that while he was attending a midnight mass, praying
for patience to endure the ill-treatment of his enemies, all his
implements were stolen, and that when he found this out on his return
he died of grief.
It is further declared that the robber was Faust of Mayence, the
partner of Gutenburg, and that it was thus that the honor of the
invention passed from Holland to Germany where Gutenberg produced his
invention of movable type twelve years later. There is a statue of the
Coster in front of the church, and, on its north side, his house is
preserved and adorned with his bust.
Among a crowd of natives with their hats on, talking in church as in
the market-place, we waited to hear the famous organ of Christian
Muller (1735-38), and grievously were we disappointed with its
discordant noises. All the men smoked in church, and this we saw
repeatedly; but it would be difficult to say where we ever saw
a Dutchman with a pipe out of his mouth. Every man seemed to be
systematically smoking away the few wits he possest.
Opposite the Groote Kerk is the Stadhuis, an old palace of the Counts
of Holland remodeled. It contains a delightful little gallery of the
works of Franz Hals, which at once transports the spectator into the
Holland of two hundred years ago--such is the marvelous variety of
life and vigor imprest into its endless figures of stalwart officers
and handsome young archers pledging each other at banquet tables and
seeming to welcome the visitor with jovial smiles as he enters the
chamber, or of serene old ladies, "regents" of hospitals, seated at
their council boards. The immense power of the artist is shown
in nothing so much as in the hands, often gloved, dashed in with
instantaneous power, yet always having the effect of the most
consummate finish at a distance. Behind one of the pictures is the
entrance to the famous "secret-room of Haarlem," seldom seen, but
containing an inestimable collection of historic relics of the time of
the famous siege of Leyden.
April and May are the best months for visiting Haarlem, which is the
bulb nursery garden of the world. "Oignons a fleurs" are advertised
for sale everywhere. Tulips are more cultivated than any other flower,
as ministering most of the national craving for color; but times are
changed since a single bulb of the tulip "L'Amiral Liefkenshoch" sold
for 4,500 florins, one of "Viceroy" for 4,200, and one of "Semper
Augustus" for 13,000.
SCHEVENINGEN[A]
[Footnote A: From "Holland of To-Day." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the author and of the publishers, Moffat, Yard &
Co. Copyright, 1909.]
BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS
Let us go down to the North Sea and see how the Dutch people enjoy
themselves in the summer. Of course the largest of the watering-places
in the Netherlands is Scheveningen, and it has a splendid bathing
beach which makes it an attractive resort for fashionable Germans and
Hollanders, and for summer travelers from all over the world. At the
top of the long dyke is a row of hotels and restaurants, and when
one reaches this point after passing through the lovely old wood of
stately trees one is ushered into the twentieth century, for here all
is fashion and gay life, yet with a character all its own.
Along the edge of the beach are the bathing machines in scores, and
behind them are long lines of covered wicker chairs of peculiar form,
each with its foot-stool, where one may sit, shaded, from the sun and
sheltered from the wind, and read, chat or doze by the hour. Bath
women are seen quaintly clad with their baskets of bathing dresses and
labeled with the signs bearing their names, such as Trintje or Netje;
everywhere there are sightseers, pedlers calling their wares, children
digging in the sand, strolling players performing and the sound of
bands of music in the distance. So there is no lack of amusement here
during the season.
The spacious Kurhaus with its verandas and Kursaal, which is large
enough to accommodate 2,500 people, is in the center of the dike.
There are concerts every evening, and altho the town is filled with
hotels, during the months of June, July, August, and September they
are quite monopolized by the Hollanders and the prices are very high.
The magnificent pier is 450 yards long. The charges for bathing are
very moderate, varying from twenty cents for a small bathing box to
fifty cents for a large one, including the towels. Bathing costumes
range from five to twenty-five cents. The tickets are numbered, and as
soon as a machine is vacant a number is called by the "bath man" and
the holder of the corresponding number claims the machine. The basket
chairs cost for the whole day twenty cents, Dutch money. One may
obtain a subscription to the "Kurhaus" at a surprisingly reasonable
rate for the day, week or season. There is a daily orchestra; ballet
and operatic concerts once a week; dramatic performances and frequent
hops throughout the season.
There is a local saying that when good Dutchmen die they go to
Scheveningen, and this is certainly their heaven. To stand on the pier
on a fine day during the season looking down on these long lines of
wicker chairs, turned seaward, is an astonishing sight. They are
shaped somewhat like huge snail-shells, and around these the children
delight to dig in the sand, throwing up miniature dunes around
one. Perhaps no seashore in the world has been painted so much as
Scheveningen. Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, to name only a few of the
artists, have found here themes for many paintings, and the scene is
a wonderful one when the homing fleet of "Boms," as the fishing-boats
are called, appears in the offing to be welcomed by the fisherwomen.
There are other smaller watering-places on the coast, but Scheveningen
is unique.
In the little fishing town itself, the scene on the return of the men
is very interesting. Women and children are busily hurrying about from
house to house, and everywhere in the little streets are strange signs
chalked up on the shutters, such as "water en vuur te koop," that is
water and fire for sale; and here are neatly painted buckets of iron,
each having a kettle of boiling water over it and a lump of burning
turf at the bottom. Fish is being cleaned and the gin shops are well
patronized, for it seems a common habit in this moist northern climate
frequently to take "Een sneeuw-balletje" of gin and sugar, which does
not taste at all badly, be it said. All sorts of strange-looking
people are met in the little narrow street, and all doing
strange-looking things, but with the air of its being in no wise
unusual with them. All in all, Scheveningen is an entertaining spot in
which to linger.
DELFT[A]
[Footnote A: From "Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia."]
BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE
An excursion must be made to Delft, only twenty minutes distant from
The Hague by rail. Pepys calls it "a most sweet town, with bridges
and a river in every street," and that is a tolerably accurate
description. It seems thinly inhabited, and the Dutch themselves
look upon it as a place where one will die of ennui. It has scarcely
changed with two hundred years. The view of Delft by Van der Meer in
the Museum at The Hague might have been painted yesterday. All the
trees are dipt, for in artificial Holland every work of Nature is
artificialized. At certain seasons, numbers of storks may be seen
upon the chimney-tops, for Delft is supposed to be the stork town par
excellence. Near the shady canal Oude Delft is a low building, once
the Convent of St. Agata, with an ornamental door surmounted by a
relief, leading into a courtyard. It is a common barrack now, for
Holland, which has no local histories, has no regard whatever for its
historic associations or monuments. Yet this is the greatest shrine of
Dutch history, for it is here that William the Silent died.
Philip II. had promised 25,000 crowns of gold to any one who would
murder the Prince of Orange. An attempt had already been made, but had
failed, and William refused to take any measures for self-protection,
saying, "It is useless: my years are in the hands of God; if there is
a wretch who has no fear of death, my life is in his hand, however I
may guard it."
At length, a young man of seven-and-twenty appeared at Delft, who
gave himself out to be one Guyon, a Protestant, son of Pierre Guyon,
executed at Besancon for having embraced Calvinism, and declared that
he was exiled for his religion. Really he was Balthazar Gerard, a
bigoted Catholic, but his conduct in Holland soon procured him the
reputation of an evangelical saint.
The Prince took him into his service and sent him to accompany a
mission from the States of Holland to the Court of France, whence
he returned to bring the news of the death of the Duke of Anjou to
William. At that time the Prince was living with his court in the
convent of St. Agata, where he received Balthazar alone in his
chamber. The moment was opportune, but the would-be assassin had no
arms ready. William gave him a small sum of money and bade him hold
himself in readiness to be sent back to France.
With the money Balthazar bought two pistols from a soldier (who
afterward killed himself when he heard the use which was made of the
purchase). On the next day, June 10, 1584, Balthazar returned to the
convent as William was descending the staircase to dinner, with his
fourth wife, Louise de Coligny (daughter of the Admiral who fell
in the massacre of St. Bartholomew), on his arm. He presented his
passport and begged the Prince to sign it, but was told to return
later. At dinner the Princess asked William who was the young man who
had spoken to him, for his expression was the most terrible she had
ever seen.
The Prince laughed, said it was Guyon, and was as gay as usual. Dinner
being over, the family party were about to remount the staircase. The
assassin was waiting in a dark corner at the foot of the stairs, and
as William passed he discharged a pistol with three balls and fled.
The Prince staggered, saying, "I am wounded; God have mercy upon me
and my poor people." His sister Catherine van Schwartz-bourg asked,
"Do you trust in Jesus Christ?" He said, "Yes," with a feeble voice,
sat down upon the stairs, and died.
Balthazar reached the rampart of the town in safety, hoping to swim
to the other side of the moat, where a horse awaited him. But he had
dropt his hat and his second pistol in his flight, and so he was
traced and seized before he could leap from the wall.
Amid horrible tortures, he not only confest, but continued to triumph
in his crime. His judges believed him to be possest of the devil. The
next day he was executed. His right hand was burned off in a tube of
red-hot iron; the flesh of his arms and legs was torn off with red-hot
pincers; but he never made a cry. It was not till his breast was cut
open, and his heart torn out and flung in his face, that he expired.
His head was then fixt on a pike, and his body, cut into four
quarters, exposed on the four gates of the town.
Close to the Prinsenhof is the Oude Kerk with a leaning tower. It is
arranged like a very ugly theater inside, but contains, with
other tombs of celebrities, the monument of Admiral van Tromp,
1650--"Martinus Harberti Trompius"--whose effigy lies upon his back,
with swollen feet. It was this Van Tromp who defeated the English
fleet under Blake, and perished, as represented on the monument, in an
engagement off Scheveningen. It was he who, after his victory over the
English, caused a broom to be hoisted at his mast-head to typify that
he had swept the Channel clear of his enemies.
LEYDEN[A]
[Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline
Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the
publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.]
BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS
Leyden, the antique Athens of the north, the Saragossa of the Low
Countries, the oldest and most illustrious of the daughters of
Holland, is one of those cities which make you thoughtful upon first
entering them, and are remembered for a long time afterward with a
certain impression of sadness.
I had hardly arrived when the chill of a dead city seemed to fall upon
me. The old Rhine, which crosses Leyden, dividing it into many islets
joined together by one hundred and fifty stone bridges, forms wide
canals and basins which contain no ship or boat, and the city seems
rather invaded by the waters than merely crossed by them. The
principal streets are very broad and flanked by rows of old
blockhouses with the usual pointed gables, and the few people seen in
the streets and squares are like the survivors of a city depopulated
by the plague.
In the smaller streets you walk upon long tracts of grass, between
houses with closed doors and windows, in a silence as profound as
that of those fabled cities where all the inhabitants are sunk in a
supernatural sleep. You pass over bridges overgrown with weeds, and
long canals covered with a green carpet, through small squares that
seem like convent courtyards; and then, suddenly, you reach a broad
thoroughfare, like the streets of Paris; from which you again
penetrate into a labyrinth of narrow alleys. From bridge to bridge,
from canal to canal, from island to island, you wander for hours
seeking for the life and movement of the ancient Leyden, and finding
only solitude, silence, and the waters which reflect the melancholy
majesty of the fallen city.
In 1573 the Spaniards, led by Valdez, laid siege to Leyden. In the
city there were only some volunteer soldiers. The military command was
given to Van der Voes, a valiant man, and a Latin poet of some
renown. Van der Werf was burgomaster. In brief time the besiegers
had constructed more than sixty forts in all the places where it was
possible to penetrate into the city by sea or land, and Leyden was
completely isolated. But the people of Leyden did not lose heart.
William of Orange had sent them word to hold out for three months,
within which time he would succor them, for on the fate of Leyden
depended that of Holland; and the men of Leyden had promised to resist
to the last extremity....
The Prince of Orange received the news of the safety of the city at
Delft, in church, where he was present at divine service. He sent the
message at once to the preacher, and the latter announced it to the
congregation, who received it with shouts of joy. Altho only just
recovered from his illness, and the epidemic still raging at Leyden,
William would see at once his dear and valorous city. He went there;
his entry was a triumph; his majestic and serene aspect put new heart
into the people; his words made them forget all they had suffered. To
reward Leyden for her heroic defense, he left her her choice between
exemption from certain imposts or the foundation of a university.
Leyden chose the university.
How this university answered to the hopes of Leyden, it is superfluous
to say. Everybody knows how the States of Holland with their liberal
offers drew learned men from every country; how philosophy, driven
out of France, took refuge there; how Leyden was for a long time the
securest citadel for all men who were struggling for the triumph
of human reason; how it became at length the most famous school in
Europe. The actual university is in an ancient convent. One can not
enter without a sentiment of profound respect the great hall of the
Academic Senate, where are seen the portraits of all the professors
who have succeeded each other from the foundation of the university up
to the present day.
DORTRECHT[A]
[Footnote A: From "Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia."]
BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE
Our morning at Dortrecht was very delightful, and it is a thoroughly
charming place. Passing under a dark archway in a picturesque building
of Charles V., opposite the hotel, we found ourselves at once on
the edge of an immense expanse of shimmering river, with long, rich
meadows beyond, between which the wide flood breaks into three
different branches. Red and white sails flit down them. Here and there
rises a line of pollard willows or clipt elms, and now and then a
church spire. On the nearest shore an ancient windmill, colored
in delicate tints of gray and yellow, surmounts a group of white
buildings.
On the left is a broad esplanade of brick, lined with ancient houses,
and a canal with a bridge, the long arms of which are ready to open at
a touch and give a passage to the great yellow-masted barges, which
are already half intercepting the bright red house-fronts ornamented
with stone, which belong to some public buildings facing the end of
the canal. With what a confusion of merchandise are the boats laden,
and how gay is the coloring, between the old weedy posts to which they
are moored!
It was from hence that Isabella of France, with Sir John de Hainault
and many other faithful knights set on their expedition against Edward
II. and the government of the Spencers.
From the busy port, where nevertheless they are dredging, we cross
another bridge and find ourselves in a quietude like that of a
cathedral close in England. On one side is a wide pool half covered
with floating timber, and, in the other half, reflecting like a mirror
the houses on the opposite shore, with their bright gardens of lilies
and hollyhocks, and trees of mountain ash, which bend their masses of
scarlet berries to the still water. Between the houses are glints of
blue river and of inevitable windmills on the opposite shore. And all
this we observe standing in the shadow of a huge church, the Groote
Kerk, with a nave of the fourteenth century, and a choir of the
fifteenth and a gigantic trick tower, in which three long Gothic
arches, between octagonal tourelles, enclose several tiers of windows.
At the top is a great clock, and below the church a grove of elms,
through which fitful sunlight falls on the grass and the dead red of
the brick pavement (so grateful to feet sore with the sharp stones of
other Dutch cities), where groups of fishermen are collecting in their
blue shirts and white trousers.
There is little to see inside this or any other church in Holland;
travelers will rather seek for the memorials at the Kloveniers Doelen,
of the famous Synod of Dort, which was held 1618-19, in the hope of
effecting a compromise between the Gomarists, or disciples of Calvin,
and the Arminians who followed Zwingli, and who had recently obtained
the name of Remonstrants from the "remonstrance" which they had
addrest eight years before in defense of their doctrines. The
Calvinists held that the greater part of mankind was excluded from
grace, which the Arminians denied; but at the Synod of Dort the
Calvinists proclaimed themselves as infallible as the Pope, and their
resolutions became the law of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Arminians
were forthwith outlawed; a hundred ministers who refused to subscribe
to the dictates of the Synod were banished; Hugo Grotius and Rombout
Hoogerbeets were imprisoned for life at Loevestein; the body of the
secretary Ledenberg, was hung; and Van Olden Barneveldt, the friend of
William the Silent, was beheaded in his seventy-second year....
Through the street of wine--Wijnstraat--built over stonehouses used
for the staple, we went to the museum to see the pictures. There were
two schools of Dortrecht. Jacob Geritee Cuyp (1575); Albert Cuyp
(1605), Ferdinand Bol (1611), Nicolas Maas (1632), and Schalken (1643)
belonged to the former; Arend de Gelder, Arnold Houbraken, Dirk
Stoop, and Ary Scheffer are of the latter. Sunshine and glow were the
characteristics of the first school, grayness and sobriety of the
second. But there are few good pictures at Dort now, and some of the
best works of Cuyp are to be found in our National Gallery, [London]
executed at his native place and portraying the great brick tower of
the church in the golden haze of evening, seen across rich pastures,
where the cows are lying deep in the meadow grass. The works of Ary
Scheffer are now the most interesting pictures in the Dortrecht
Gallery. Of the subject, "Christus Consolator," there are two
representations. In the more striking of these the pale Christ is
seated among the sick, sorrowful, blind, maimed, and enslaved, who
are all stretching their hands to Him. Beneath is the tomb which the
artist executed for his mother, Cornelia Scheffer, whose touching
figure is represented lying with outstretched hands, in the utmost
abandonment of repose.
THE ZUYDER ZEE[A]
[Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline
Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the
publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.]
BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS
This great basin of the North Sea, which bathes five provinces and has
an extent of more than seven hundred square kilometers, six hundred
years ago was not in existence. North Holland touched Friesland, and
where the gulf now extends there was a vast region sprinkled with
fresh-water lakes, the largest of which, the Flevo, mentioned by
Tacitus, was separated from the sea by a fertile and populous isthmus.
Whether the sea by its own force broke through the natural dikes
of the region, or whether the sinking of the land left it free to
invasion, is not certainly known. The great transformation was
completed during the course of the thirteenth century.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
12