EVERY tourist knows that Holland is one of the historic cradles of political freedom, and also a chain of cities which are in effect museums of invaluable art. The voyager in a little ship may learn that in addition to all this Holland is the home of a vast number of plain persons who are under the necessity of keeping themselves alive seven days a week, and whose experiments in the adventure of living have an interest quite equal to the interest of ancient art. To judge that adventure in its final aspect, one should see Holland on a Sunday, and not the Holland of the cities, but of the little towns.
We came one Sunday morning to a place called Zieriksee, on an island to the north of the East Schelde. Who has heard of Zieriksee? Nevertheless, Zieriksee exists, and seven thousand people prosecute the adventure therein without the aid of museums and tourists. At first, from the mouth of its private canal, it seems to be a huge, gray tower surrounded by tiniest doll’s-houses with vermilion roofs; and as you approach, the tower waxes, until the stones of it appear sufficient to build the whole borough; then it wanes, and is lost in the town, as all towers ultimately are. The cobbled quay and streets were empty as we moored. And in an instant a great crowd sprang up out of the earth,—men and boys and girls, but few women,—staring, glaring, giggling, gabbling, pushing. Their inquisitiveness had no shame, no urbanity. Their cackle deafened. They worried the Velsa like starving wolves worrying a deer. The Velsa was a godsend, unhoped for in the enormous and cruel tedium which they had created for themselves. To escape them we forced our way ashore, and trod the clean, deathlike, feet-torturing streets. One shop was open; we entered it, and were supplied with cigarettes by two polite and gracious very old women who knew no English. On emerging from this paganism, we met a long, slow-slouching, gloomy procession of sardonic human beings,—not a pretty woman among them, not a garment that was comely or unclean or unrespectable, not a smile,—the great, faithful congregation marching out of the great church. Here was the life of leisure in Holland as distinguished from the week-day life of industry. It was a tragic spectacle. When we returned to the yacht, the other congregation was still around it. And it was still there, just as noisy and boorish, when we left several hours later. And it would still have been there if we had remained till midnight. The phenomenon of that crowd, wistful in its touching desire for distraction, was a serious criticism of the leaders of men in Holland. As we slid away, we could see the crowd rapidly dissolving into the horror of its original ennui. I asked the cook, a cockney, what he thought of Zieriksee.
His face lightened to a cheerful smile.
“Rather a nice sort of place, sir. More like England.”
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The same afternoon we worked up the Schelde in a dead calm to Zijpe. The rain had pretermitted for the first time, and the sun was hot. Zijpe is a village, a haven, a dike, and a junction of train and steamer. The village lies about a mile inland. The haven was pretty full of barges laid up for Sunday. On the slopes of the haven, near the railway-station and the landing-stage, a multitude of at least a thousand people were strolling to and fro or sitting on the wet grass, all in their formidable Sabbath best. We joined them, in order, if possible, to learn the cause of the concourse; but the mystery remained for one hour and a half in the eventless expanse of the hot afternoon, when the train came in over the flat, green leagues of landscape. We then understood. The whole of Zijpe had turned out to see the afternoon train come in! It was a simple modest Dutch local train, making a deal of noise and dust, and bearing perhaps a score of passengers. But it marked the grand climacteric of leisured existence at Zijpe. We set off to the village, and discovered a village deserted, and a fair-ground, with all its booths and circuses swathed up in gray sheeting. Scarcely a soul! The spirit of romance had pricked them all to the railway-station to see the train come in!
Making a large circuit, we reached again the river and the dike, and learned what a dike is in Holland. From the top of it we could look down the chimneys of houses on the landward side. The population was now on the dike, promenading in magnificent solemnity and self-control. Everybody gravely saluted us in passing. We gravely saluted everybody, and had not a moment to ourselves for miles.
“Over there,” said the skipper afterward, pointing vaguely to the southeast over the Schelde, “they ’re Roman Catholics. There ’s a lot of Spaniards left in Holland.” By Spaniards he meant Dutchmen with some Spanish blood.
“Then they enjoy their Sundays?” I suggested.
“Yes,” he answered sarcastically, “they enjoy their Sundays. They put their playing-cards in their pockets before they go to church, and then they go straight from the church to the cafÉ, and play high, and as like as not knife each other before they ’ve done.” Clearly it takes all sorts to make a little world like Holland, and it is difficult to strike the mean between absolute nullity and homicidal knives. My regret is that the yacht never got as far as those Spaniards gaming and knifing in cafÉs.
On Monday morning every skipper on every river and canal of Holland tries to prove that the stagnation of Sunday is only a clever illusion. The East Schelde hummed with express barges at five A. M. It was exactly like a Dutch picture by an old master. Even we, in no hurry, with a strong tide under us and a rising northwester behind us, accomplished fifteen sea-miles in ninety minutes. Craft were taking shelter from the threatened gale. In spite of mistakes by an English crew unaccustomed to a heavy mainsail in tortuous navigation and obstreperous weather, we reached Dordrecht railway bridge without public shame; and then the skipper decided that our engine could not be trusted to push us through the narrow aperture against wind and tide. Hence we bargained with a tug, and were presently attached thereto, waiting for the bridge to open.
Considering that Holland is a country where yachts are understood, and where swing-bridges open at a glance, we had to wait some little time for that bridge; namely, three hours. The patriotism of the skipper was strained. During the whole period the tug rushed to and fro, frisking us wildly about like a kettle at the tail of a busy dog, and continuously collecting other kettles, so that our existence was one long shock and collision. But we saw a good deal of home life on the barges, from a minor barge which a girl will steer to the three-thousand-ton affair that surpasses mail steamers in capacity.
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There are two homes on these monsters, one at the stem and the other at the stern; the latter is frequently magnificent in spaciousness and gilding. That the two families in the two distant homes are ever intimate is impossible, that they are even acquainted is improbable; but they seem to share a tireless dog, who runs incessantly along the leagues of planking which separate them.
The bridge did at last open, and everything on the river, unmindful of everything else, rushed headlong at the opening, like a crowd of sinners dashing for a suddenly unbarred door into heaven. Our tug jerked us into the throng, a fearful squeeze, and we were through. We cast off, the gulden were collected in a tin, and within five minutes we were moored in the New Haven, under the lee of the Groote Kerk, with trees all around us, in whose high tops a full gale was now blowing.
The next morning our decks were thickly carpeted with green leaves, a singular sight. The harbor-master came aboard to demand dues, and demanded them in excellent English.
“Where did you learn English?” I asked, and he answered with strange pride:
“Sir, I served seven years under the British flag.”
Standing heedless in the cockpit, under driving rain, he recounted the casualties of the night. Fifteen miles higher up the river a fifteen-hundred-ton barge had sunk, and the master and crew, consisting, inter alia, of all his family, were drowned. I inquired how such an event could happen in a narrow river amid a numerous population, and learned that in rough weather these barges anchor when a tug can do no more with them, and the crew go to bed and sleep. The water gradually washes in and washes in, until the barge is suddenly and silently engulfed. Dutch phlegm! Corresponding to their Sabbatic phlegm, no doubt. Said the harbor-master:
“Yes, there is a load-line, but they never takes no notice of it in Holland; they just loads them up till they won’t hold any more.”
The fatalism of the working-classes everywhere is perhaps the most utterly astounding of all human phenomena.
Thoughtful, I went off to examine the carved choir-stalls in the Groote Kerk. These choir-stalls are among the most lovely sights in Holland. Their free, fantastic beauty is ravishing and unforgetable; they make you laugh with pleasure as you behold them. I doubt not that they were executed by a rough-tongued man, in a dirty apron, with shocking finger-nails.
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