A Wanderer in Holland | Page 7

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jongeling," by Jan van Scorel, of whom we shall learn more at Utrecht.
This little portrait, which I reproduce on the opposite page, is wholly
charming and vivid.
The Boymans Museum contains also modern Dutch paintings.
Wherever modern Dutch paintings are to be seen, I look first for the
delicate art of Matthew Maris, and next for Anton Mauve. Here there is
no Matthew Maris, and but one James Maris. There is one Mauve. The
modern Dutch painter for the most part paints the same picture so often.
But Matthew Maris is full of surprises. If a new picture by any of his
contemporaries stood with its face to the wall one would know what to
expect. From Israels, a fisherman's wife; from Mesdag, a grey stretch of
sea; from Bosboom, a superb church interior; from Mauve, a peasant
with sheep or a peasant with a cow; from Weissenbruch, a stream and a
willow; from Breitner, an Amsterdam street; from James Maris a
masterly scene of boats and wet sky. Usually one would have guessed
aright. But with Matthew Maris is no certainty. It may be a little dainty
girl lying on her side and watching butterflies; it may be a sombre
hillside at Montmartre; it may be a girl cooking; it may be scaffolding
in Amsterdam, or a mere at evening, or a baby's head, or a village street.
He has many moods, and he is always distinguished and subtle.
Rotterdam has a zoological garden which, although inferior to ours, is
far better than that at Amsterdam, while it converts The Hague's Zoo
into a travesty. Last spring the lions were in splendid condition. They
are well housed, but fewer distractions are provided for them than in
Regent's Park. I found myself fascinated by the herons, who were
continually soaring out over the neighbouring houses and returning like
darkening clouds. In England, although the heron is a native, we rarely
seem to see him; while to study him is extremely difficult. In Holland
he is ubiquitous: both wild and tame.
More interesting still was the stork, whose nest is set high on a pinnacle
of the buffalo house. He was building in the leisurely style of the
British working man. He would negligently descend from the heavens
with a stick. This he would lay on the fabric and then carefully perform
his toilet, looking round and down all the time to see that every one

else was busy. Whenever his eye lighted upon a toddling child or a
perambulator it visibly brightened. "My true work!" he seemed to say;
"this nest building is a mere by-path of industry." After prinking and
overlooking, and congratulating himself thus, for a few minutes, he
would stroll off, over the housetops, for another stick. He was the
unquestionable King of the Garden.
Why are there no heronries in the English public parks? And why is
there no stork? The Dutch have a proverb, "Where the stork abides no
mother dies in childbed". Still more, why are there no storks in France?
The author of Fécondité should have imported them.
No Zoo, however well managed, can keep an ourang-outang long, and
therefore one should always study that uncomfortably human creature
whenever the opportunity occurs. I had great fortune at Rotterdam, for I
chanced to be in the ourang-outang's house when his keeper came in.
Entering the enclosure, he romped with him in a score of diverting
ways. They embraced each other, fed each other, teased each other. The
humanness of the creature was frightful. Perhaps our likeness to
ourang-outangs (except for our ridiculously short arms, inadequate
lower jaws and lack of hair) made him similarly uneasy.
Rotterdam, I have read somewhere, was famous at the end of the
eighteenth century for a miser, the richest man in the city. He always
did his own marketing, and once changed his butcher because he
weighed the paper with the meat He bought his milk in farthingsworths,
half of which had to be delivered at his front door and half at the back,
"to gain the little advantage of extra measure". Different travellers note
different things, and William Chambers, the publisher, in his Tour in
Holland in 1839, selected for special notice another type of Rotterdam
resident: "One of the most remarkable men of this [the merchant] class
is Mr. Van Hoboken of Rhoon and Pendrecht, who lives on one of the
havens. This individual began life as a merchant's porter, and has in
process of time attained the highest rank among the Dutch mercantile
aristocracy. He is at present the principal owner of twenty large ships in
the East India trade, each, I was informed, worth about fourteen
thousand pounds, besides a large landed estate, and much floating

wealth of different descriptions. His establishment is of vast