A Tour Through the Batavian Republic/Letter XIII
LETTER XIII.
Amsterdam, November, 1800.
THE temples of religious worship in Amsterdam are numerous, and belong to all sects and persuasions. The new church of the reformed religion, near the stadthouse, is visited by strangers, as being the mausoleum where Dutchmen distinguished for their valour or endowments repose. In it are monuments erected by national gratitude, to the memory of Admiral de Ruyter, of whom it is inscribed, with truth, "intaminatis sulget honoribus;" to the memory of Van Galen, an admiral who fell in a combat against the English; and among other erections to record the services of naval officers, is a monument in honour of Captain Bentinck, who died in consequence of the wounds which he received in the engagement off the Dogger Bank. Vondel, a Dutch poet who flourished in the seventeenth century, is interred here, and a handsome monument proclaims the estimation in which he is held by his countrymen. He was a voluminous writer, and few kinds of poetry escaped his pen. He lived to the great age of ninety-one years, and experienced during his life-time a poet's fate — indigence and neglect.
In the old church is an organ little inferior in size to the famous instrument of Haerlem, and almost equal to it for the power and harmony of its tones. The pulpit is admired for its carving, and the windows for their stained glass representing various historical and religious stories. One of them, perhaps the best, and certainly the most interesting, describes Philip IV. of Spain, in the habiliments of his regal dignity, presenting to the deputies of Holland the treaty by which he acknowledges the independence of the United Provinces. This church also contains monuments erected by the city of Amsterdam, or the states-general, in honour of various naval and military commanders, whose services have thus called forth the gratitude of the republic.
Such is the wise and liberal toleration allowed by the government of Holland, that scarcely a religious community is to be named, which has not some place of public assembly or worship in Amsterdam. The Portuguese synagogue is perhaps the noblest temple in which the jewish worship has been celebrated, since the dispersion of that fanatic people. It is a lofty, spacious building, fitted for the purposes of religion, according to the ordinances of the Mosaic law, and containing also apartments for the use of the rabbins, who daily attend to expound the Hebrew law and the Thalmud. The Jews of Germany and Holland, whose creed varies from that of their Portuguese brethren, have also a noble synagogue, and in different quarters of the city there are other temple's where the superstitions of the Hebrew worship are celebrated. The number of Jews in Amsterdam is supposed to amount to eighty thousand souls: I know not on what calculation this estimate is founded, but I am inclined to believe it rather exceeds, than falls short of, reality.
Beside their commodious temples of worship, the Jews of Amsterdam have a theatre, where dramatic pieces are performed in the Hebrew language. This place of entertainment unfortunately was not open, or I should have visited it with much curiosity; nor could I obtain any information respecting either the nature of the pieces which are acted in it, or the performers. The external appearance of the building is as mean as can be imagined, and I should suppose it was resorted to only by the lowest classes of the Jewish race.
The revolution has not produced any changes in the ecclesiastical policy of the United Provinces. The ministers of the established church, that of the reformer of Geneva, though they are almost without exception attached to the old government, and consequently hostile to the new, continue to receive their regular salaries from the state, and perform unmolested the duties of their sacred function. The churches and other places dedicated to pious uses, are well attended on days of public worship. That day which the christian world has peculiarly appropriated to the service of religion, is kept in Amsterdam with becoming solemnity and observance; and I believe there is, in general, less indifference on religious subjects in Holland, than in any part of Europe. There is not, however, much zeal. The happy toleration which all the sectaries enjoy, and the wise seclusion of the ministers of the established church from any concern in the government of the republic, which would give them a dangerous influence as well as an invidious distinction, are the preponderating causes which have checked the growth of religious dissensions in Holland.
Since the first establishment of the independence of the United Provinces, the repose of the republic has scarcely ever been disturbed by disputes concerning religion. The synods of Dort have not indeed often been distinguished for the moderation of their sentiments, but the reluctance of the government to adopt their religious animosities, repressed the spirit of persecution and theological rancour which they evinced.
The republic early derived manifold advantages from the liberal system of toleration which it adopted. That they might enjoy in tranquillity their religious opinions, and serve God after the dictates of their own hearts, multitudes, harassed by persecution in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and England, fled into Holland, where they were hospitably received, and materially contributed by their industry and virtues to advance the prosperity of the republic. They brought with them a large portion of liberality of sentiment, and, from personal suffering and experience, a determined aversion to every species of religious persecution. The sentiments of moderation, which perhaps they at first adopted through necessity, or to place in a disadvantageous view the conduct of their triumphant adversaries, became in course of time fundamental maxims, increasing in solidity and firmness as the lapse of years wore away the asperities of .ersonal resentments.
The respectable sect of Quakers is less numerous in Holland than I should have expected for a religious community whose manners and habits seem so suitable to the genius of the Dutch nation. The Anabaptist congregations are large, and dispersed over all parts of the republic. The members of this persuasion have always shewn themselves warmly attached to civil and religious liberty, and the weight of their influence has constantly been thrown into the patriotic scale.Amsterdam abounds in charitable institutions for the indiscriminate benefit of the indigent of all religious persuasions. Into the Foundling-hospital are equally received the unhappy offspring of Christians and Jews; but they are all educated in the calvinistic faith. This hospital for the reception and maintenance of destitute children, usually afforded before the revolution an asylum to near two thousand deserted infants, but its funds have suffered considerably from that event, and the number of objects which it supports is consequenly reduced. The Roman-catholics, the Lutherans, the Anabaptists, and even the Jews, have orphan-houses for the destitute children of their sects: that which belongs to the Roman-catholics is the noblest building, and enjoys the amplest revenues.
As a subject connected with hospitals and charitable foundations, it may not be improper here to mention, that the cow-pox, which time will probably prove to be one of the most valuable discoveries in the art of preventing disease ever made, has met with as favourable a reception in Holland from the faculty, as it has in England. A few bigotted persons, with whom superstitious women and weak men join, object to the cow-pox inoculation, because they say it introduces a bestial disorder into the human system; but the liberal and enlightened part of the medical tribe espouse with warmth this new method of avoiding a loathsome and dangerous distemper, and their practice has been uniformly successful. The disease has been known for time immemorial to the peasants of FriesLand, in which province the greatest quantities of butter and cheese are yearly produced, and the result of various enquiries among them have been uniformly in favour of the cow-pox.
The belief of its utility and efficacy is so thoroughly established in Holland, that in the Foundling-hospital of Amsterdam, and other charitable institutions where young children are received, the old mode of inoculation is exploded, and the vaccine infection substituted in its stead. This departure from the old practice of surgery was not made, until the consent and approbation of the governors and curators of these benevolent establishments had been previously obtained, and therefore it may be concluded that the vaccine inoculation is extensively adopted in private families.
The Dutch theatre in Amsterdam is a building about the size of the summer play-house in the Haymarket. It can seldom, boast of a numerous audience; but whether this proceeds from a want of taste in the Dutch for dramatic representations, or the calamities of the republic have injured public spectacles and entertainments as well as the fortunes of individuals, I cannot determine; Though plays are only performed in the Dutch theatre three times a week, and a favourite piece was acted on the evening I attended it, scarcely half a dozen of boxes were occupied by company, nor was the audience in the pit and gallery proportionably much more numerous. The house was ill lighted; and it did not appear to have been painted for some considerable time. On one side of the stage is a figure of the tragic, and on the other of the comic muse, which are spiritedly executed, and produce a good effect.
The play was a tragedy founded on a domestic story, and by no means destitute of striking incident or feeling, though perhaps sometimes too declamatory for the genuine march of passion. The performance of the actors in general was highly respectable, and we were much gratified in particular with the acting of Madame Kaphuyze, the Mrs. Siddons of the Dutch stage, who was the heroine of the piece. This lady possesses most of the requisites which are necessary to form an excellent actress. She is tall and well formed in her person; and her features are beautiful and expressive. Her voice is powerful, and capable of all the variety of tones which different passions require. She is spoken of as a woman not only of great judgment in whatever relates to her profession, but with respect to literature in general as a person of singular acquirements and knowledge. Madame Kaphuyze is thought by her admirers equally to excel in the display of violent and pathetic emotions, to feign with equal correctness the wild phrensies of madness, and the sober melancholy of despair. She was happiest, I thought, in the delivery of those sentiments where tenderness and delicate feeling prevail; and of such a cast chiefly was the character in which we saw her perform. Her action is chaste, but never languid, and always correct, without any appearance: of study of constraint. On her first entrance on the stage, she was welcomed with universal applause, a testimony of public favour which was bestowed on no other performer, and every passage which she delivered with more than common energy was as flatteringly received. Madame Kaphuyze does not exceed the age of thirty, and for several years she has been the favourite of the Amsterdam stage. A Dutch lady, who accompanied us to the theatre, preferred her to Mrs. Siddons, whom she had seen in her principal characters, and of whose merits she spoke with just and critical admiration; but we sought her obvioully inferior to the great actess of the English stage, though undoubtedly possessed of a high degree of excellence.
One scene of the tragedy would have excited the indignation or laughter of an English audience. A character of considerable consequence in the piece is discovered on the stage with a lighted pipe of tobacco in his mouth, which he smokes at his ease, delivering, in the interval between each puff, a soliloquy. The Dutch audience not only tolerated, but applauded this incident.
Nearly all the plays which have appeared in Germany or England, from the rapid pen of Kotzebue, have been exhibited on the Dutch stage; and the theatres of Holland are also enriched with faithful translations of the best dramatic pieces which exist in the English or French languages. Nor have there been wanting dramatic authors of the Dutch nation, whose works have been favourably received on the stage. The public taste for dramatic representation in Holland has, like the public taste in England, been vitiated by the numerous pieces which have been borrowed from the German stage, pieces the moral tendency of which is bad, the feeling that they exhibit forced, and in which the place of nature is usurped by a creature of the poet's imagination, which he denominates sensibility[1].
As at Rotterdam, which remark I had before occasion to make, the concerts are the best attended places of amusements in the capital of Holland. They are usually performed either at the Felix Meritis, or the French theatre. At the latter place, on a Sunday evening, which is the fashionable day in Amsterdam for this entertainment, we heard a good concert of vocal and instrumental music. The company was numerous, and composed of the most opulent and polite persons of both sexes in the city. The performances of the evening, the singers, and the musicians, were suitable to the audience. We were dazzled, as on a former occasion in the same place, and afterwards at the Dutch theatre, with the profusion of diamonds which the ladies wore.
Some girls, clad in the dress which prevailed in Holland a century or two ago, with their hair bound close to their heads, and covered with a scanty unornamented cap, such as the female quakers wear in England; with large plates of thin gold projecting from each side of their foreheads, and a plate on the middle; with ponderous ear-rings and necklaces of the same metal; with gowns of thick silk, heavily embroidered, and waists of unnatural length and rotundity; formed a striking contrast with the females arrayed in the tasteful elegancies of modern fashion. They were daughters of the ancient stock of burghers, and adhered, probably with some tincture of affectation, uninfluenced by modern refinements and variations of female dress, to the uncouth habiliments of their ancestors.
The women of Holland in general are lovely rather than beautiful. For the most part they are well formed in their persons; their complexions are fair, their eyes full and sparkling, and their features bold and regular. But their countenances are inanimate; they want that cast and expression of feature, without which, to my ideas, no high degree of beauty can exist, and with which an ordinary face charms. I speak, I should observe, of women whose graces the heats of five-and-twenty summers, or the rigors of as many winters, have not impaired, for after that period of life the Dutch ladies lose their attractions; the rosy blush of youth forsakes them, and their fine complexions assume a sallow autumnal hue. Women are shorter lived in Holland than men, but from what cause I cannot pretend to account: the contrary is the case in England; and the reason is obvious, because women lead more regular and temperate lives. There are few, perhaps no instances of what can be called extreme longevity in Holland; and the fault is rather in the unwholesomeness of the climate, than in any want of precautions in the Dutch to protract their lives to the utmost date. They are in general temperate in their diet, and the use of spirituous liquors and wines does not prevail to near so great an extent in Holland as in England. A drunken person is rarely to be seen; and that vice is accounted infamously dishonourable, if frequently practised.
Among the personal faults which I have heard imputed to the stadtholder, after imbecility of understanding, he has usually been accused of a passion for the pleasures of intoxication; and it is said that during the latter part of his government he was seldom sober. Much credit, however, is not to be attached to such rumours, and certainly the Prince of Orange does not carry marks of inebriety on his face. The lethargic disposition of the stadtholder has not been seized by the wit or malice of party in Holland, as a subject of ridicule against the fugitive prince. His personal infirmities disappear before more substantial objects of irritation and resentment.
The Dutch in general are well acquainted with anecdotes of the court and domestic parties in England: but they confidently attribute to the king a vice so well known to be contrary to his disposition and habits, that calumny only could have invented, and the most virulent animosity received, the accusation. They maintain that his majesty indulges so freely in the pleasures of the bottle, as frequently to be incapable of attending to public affairs; and the acts of the British government which they most loudly condemn, they suppose to originate from this pernicious propensity in the chief magistrate of the empire. The only caricature print which I saw in Holland, respecting British personages (except an obsolete one relative to Lord Malmsbury's fruitless journies to Paris and Lisle, and the rout of the English and Russian troops in North Holland), represented the king asleep, apparently in the last stage of intoxication, with bottles and glasses before him, and at a distance Mr. Pitt, the Emperor of Germany, and other potentates and princes, in hostile array against Bonaparte. Mr. Pitt is made to encourage the confederates, by faying, "Fight on: — George will pay for all." — It may be gathered from hence, that inebriety is accounted by the Dutch a vice highly pernicious and dishonourable.
I had frequently to answer enquiries, particularly of French officers, respecting the attempt made by Hadfield on the life of the king. The accounts of that transaction which had reached Holland were imperfect; and from the acquittal of the culprit it was concluded, that the king's life had been in less imminent danger than it really was. The conduct of the English court of justice during the trial of Hadfield had given extremely favourable impressions of its equity, and his acquitment was regarded something like a phenomenon in the history of modern tribunals. It was considered as a consummate act of justice. The subsequent confinement of Hadfield they regarded in a proper view, not as an act of punishment or revenge, but as a necessary precaution against any future mischiefs which his insanity might lead him to attempt.
The Dutch, in general, are to be praised for their temperance, and the extreme impropriety which they attach to the vice of drunkenness. A woman who should be guilty of this fault, did she belong to the higher walks of life, would be shunned and despised by her acquaintance; and if she moved in a lower sphere, the magistrates would think her a fit object for the correction and discipline of the Spin-house.
As a subject not unconnected with the foregoing observations respecting health and temperance, I may be permitted to animadvert on the preposterous management of children in Holland. The air of the country is considered so prejudicial to tender infants, that for the first two or three months of their existence they are not suffered to be taken abroad; and during the period of their confinement, the windows of their apartments are kept inviolably shut. Their dress chiefly consists of flannel rollers, which are girt so tightly about their bodies, that the infant has not the power to move its limbs; and these ligatures are further covered with an ample flannel wrapper, which is bound three or Four times round the body of the child, and securely fastened with pins at its feet. These ligatures are Removed, and the flannels changed, according to the circumstances of the parents; but whether the offspring of opulent persons or poor, the use of water and ablutions are rigorously denied to infants. For many months the under dress of children consists entirely of woollen garments; and when they are permitted to go abroad, the greatest care is taken, by wrapping them up in a flannel mantle, which covers their heads, to prevent them from respiring the free air.
Thus absurdly managed, Dutch infants are sickly, squalid objects; and the ruddy tints of health never appear on their cheeks till they are liberated from the restraints of the nursery. Children, particularly females, are frequently indulged in the pernicious use of chauffepies or stoves, and this custom invariably gives them an unwholesome, diseased appearance.
I must not omit to mention a practice — which I believe is peculiar to Holland. When a woman is brought to bed, a bulletin is daily fixed to her house for a fortnight, or longer if she continues so ill as to excite the solicitude of her friends, which contains a statement of the health of the mother and the child. This bulletin is fastened to a board ornamented with lace, according to the circumstances of the person lying in, and serves to answer the enquiries of her friends, and to prevent any unnecessary noise being made near the door of the indisposed person. We saw at Leyden the most of these boards ornamented with lace, and there learnt their meaning. When a person of consequence is dangerously ill, a bulletin of health is generally affixed to their house, to satisfy the numerous enquiries that are, or are supposed to be, made after them; but, unless it is a child-bed case, the board, to which the bulletin is pasted, is unornamented with lace.
- ↑ This sensibility is a kind of defensive armour for the delicate fibres of the heart, which, true to nature, shrink from the slightest hostile contact.