Dutch Life in Town and Country | Page 2

of some other nations. There are one or
two towns, such as The Hague and Arnhem, where an Indo-Dutch
Society may be found, consisting of retired colonial civil servants, who
very often have married Indian women, and have either returned home
to live on well-earned pensions or who prefer to spend the money
gained in India in the country which gave them birth. But Holland has
not yet begun to develop as far as she might the great resources of
Netherlands India, and therefore no very great amount of interest is
taken in the colonial possessions outside merely home, official, or Indo
Dutch society.
[Illustration: Zeeland Peasant--The Dark Type.]
With regard to the affairs of his country generally, the state of mind of
the average Dutchman has been well described as that of a man well on
in years, who has amassed a fair fortune, and now takes things easily,
and loves to talk over the somewhat wild doings of his youth. Nothing
is more common than to hear the remarks from both old and young,
'We have been great,' 'We have had our time,' 'Every nation reaches a
climax;' and certainly Holland has been very great in statesmen,
patriots, theologians, artists, explorers, colonizers, soldiers, sailors, and
martyrs. The names of William the Silent, Barneveldt, Arminius,
Rembrandt, Rubens, Hobbema, Grotius, De Ruyter, Erasmus, Ruysdael,
Daendels, Van Speijk, Tromp afford proof of the pertinacity, courage,
and devotion of Netherland's sons in the great movements which have
sprung from her soil.
To have successfully resisted the might of a Philip of Spain and the
strategy and cruelties of an Alva is alone a title-deed to imperishable
fame and honour. Dutch men and women fought and died at the dykes,
and suffered awful agonies on the rack and at the stake. 'They sang
songs of triumph,' so the record runs, 'while the grave diggers were
shovelling earth over their living faces.' It is not, therefore, to be
wondered at that a legacy of true and deep feeling has been bequeathed
to their descendants, and the very suspicion of injustice or infringement
of what they consider liberty sets the Dutchman's heart aflame with

patriotic devotion or private resentment. Phlegmatic, even comal, and
most difficult to move in most things, yet any 'interference' wakes up
the dormant spirit which that Prince of Orange so forcibly expressed
when he said, in response to a prudent soldier's ear of consequences if
resistance were persisted in, 'We can at least die in the last ditch.'
Until one understands this tenacity in the Dutch character one cannot
reconcile the old world methods seen all over the country with the
advanced ideas expressed in conversation, books, and newspapers. The
Dutchman hates to be interfered with, and resents the advice of candid
friends, and cannot stand any 'chaff.' He has his kind of humour, which
is slow in expression and material in conception, but he does not
understand 'banter.' He is liberal in theories, but intensely conservative
in practice. He will agree with a new theory, but often do as his
grandfather did, and so in Holland there may be seen very primitive
methods side by side with _fin de siècle_ thought. In a salon in any
principal town there will be thought the most advanced, and manner of
life the most luxurious; but a stone's-throw off, in a cottage or in a
farmhouse just outside the town, may be witnessed the life of the
seventeenth century. Some of the reasons for this may be gathered from
the following pages as they describe the social life and usages of the
people.
In the seven provinces which comprise the Netherlands there are
considerable differences in scenery, race, dialect, pronunciation, and
religion, and therefore in the features and character of the people.
United provinces in the course of time effect a certain homogeneity of
purpose and interest, yet there are certain fundamental differences in
character. The Frisian differs from the Zeelander: one is fair and the
other dark, and both differ from the Hollander. And not only do the
provincials differ in character, dialect, and pronunciation from one
another, but also the inhabitants of some cities differ in these respects
from those of other cities. An educated Dutchman can tell at once if a
man comes from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or The Hague. The 'cockney'
of these places differs, and of such pronunciations 'Hague Dutch' is
considered the worst, although--true to the analogy of London--the best
Dutch is heard in The Hague. This difference in 'civic' pronunciation is
certainly very remarkable when one remembers that The Hague and
Rotterdam are only sixteen miles apart, and The Hague and Amsterdam

only forty miles. Arnhem and The Hague are the two most
cosmopolitan cities in the kingdom, and one meets in their streets all
sorts and conditions of