A Wanderer in Holland | Page 8

extent, and
contains departments for the building of ships and manufacture of all
their necessary equipments. This gentleman, until lately, was in the
habit of giving a splendid fête once a year to his family and friends, at
which was exhibited with modest pride the porter's truck which he
drew at the outset of his career. One seldom hears of British merchants
thus keeping alive the remembrance of early meanness of
circumstances."
At one of Rotterdam's stations I saw the Queen-Mother, a smiling,
maternal lady in a lavender silk dress, carrying a large bouquet, and
saying pretty things to a deputation drawn up on the platform.
Rotterdam had put out its best bunting, and laid six inches of sand on
its roads, to do honour to this kindly royalty. The band played the
tender national anthem, which is always so unlike what one expects it
to be, as her train steamed away, and then all the grave bearded
gentlemen in uniforms and frock coats who had attended her drove in
their open carriages back to the town. Not even the presence of the
mounted guard made it more formal than a family party. Everybody
seemed on the best of friendly terms of equality with everybody else.
Tom Hood, who had it in him to be so good a poet, but living in a
country where art and literature do not count, was permitted to coarsen
his delicate genius in the hunt for bread, wrote one of his comic poems
on Rotterdam. In it are many happy touches of description:--
Before me lie dark waters In broad canals and deep, Whereon the silver
moonbeams Sleep, restless in their sleep; A sort of vulgar Venice
Reminds me where I am; Yes, yes, you are in England, And I'm at
Rotterdam.
Tall houses with quaint gables, Where frequent windows shine, And
quays that lead to bridges, And trees in formal line, And masts of spicy
vessels From western Surinam, All tell me you're in England, But I'm
in Rotterdam.
With headquarters at Rotterdam one may make certain small journeys
into the neighbourhood--to Dordrecht by river, to Delft by canal, to

Gouda by canal; or one may take longer voyages, even to Cologne if
one wishes. But I do not recommend it as a city to linger in. Better than
Rotterdam's large hotels are, I think, the smaller, humbler and more
Dutch inns of the less commercial towns. This indeed is the case all
over Holland: the plain Dutch inn of the neighbouring small town is
pleasanter than the large hotels of the city; and, as I have remarked in
the chapter on Amsterdam, the distances are so short, and the trains so
numerous, that one suffers no inconvenience from staying in the
smaller places.
Gouda (pronounced Howda) it is well to visit from Rotterdam, for it
has not enough to repay a sojourn in its midst. It has a Groote Kerk and
a pretty isolated white stadhuis. But Gouda's fame rests on its stained
glass--gigantic representations of myth, history and scripture, chiefly
by the brothers Crabeth. The windows are interesting rather than
beautiful. They lack the richness and mystery which one likes to find in
old stained glass, and the church itself is bare and cold and unfriendly.
Hemmed in by all this coloured glass, so able and so direct, one sighs
for a momentary glimpse of the rose window at Chartres, or even of the
too heavily kaleidoscopic patterns of Brussels Cathedral. No matter, the
Gouda windows in their way are very fine, and in the sixth, depicting
the story of Judith and Holofernes, there is a very fascinating little
Düreresque tower on a rock under siege.
If one is taking Gouda on the way from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, the
surrounding country should not be neglected from the carriage
windows. Holland is rarely so luxuriant as here, and so peacefully
beautiful.
Chapter II
The Dutch in English Literature
Hard things against the Dutch--Andrew Marvell's satire--The iniquity
of living below sea-level--Historic sarcasms--"Invent a shovel and be a
magistrate"--Heterogeneity--Foot warmers--A champion of the Hollow
Land--The Dutch Drawn to the Life--Dutch suspicion--Sir William

Temple's opinion--and Sir Thomas Overbury's--Dr. Johnson's
project--Dutch courtesy--Dutch discourtesy--National manners--A few
phrases--The origin of "Dutch News"--A vindication of Dutch courage.
To say hard things of the Dutch was once a recognised literary pastime.
At the time of our war with Holland no poet of any pretensions
refrained from writing at least one anti-Batavian satire, the classical
example of which is Andrew Marvell's "Character of Holland"
(following Samuel Butler's), a pasquinade that contains enough wit and
fancy and contempt to stock a score of the nation's ordinary assailants.
It begins perfectly:--
HOLLAND, that scarce deserves the name of land, As but th'
off-scouring of the British sand, And so much earth as was contributed
By