Littell's Living Age/Volume 162/Issue 2096/Three Days amongst the Dutchmen

If you have any notion of visiting Amsterdam, let me counsel you not to go through a course of guide-books before you do so. Read very sparingly on the subject until you have seen the place. And, in particular, eschew the compilers of the descriptive (and discursive) handbooks, who rhapsodize on the Amsterdam of the past with an apparently honest belief that they are describing the Amsterdam of the present. Baedeker, who sticks to his facts, and never tries fine writing, is the only guide. It is possible, indeed, in looking on the canvas of Teniers, Brouwer, or Ian Steen, to imagine that Amsterdam — the city of the ninety islands and the three hundred bridges — was at some time or other an exceedingly picturesque place. Beautiful it never could have been, and certainly not "pretty;" but in its old days there must have been a rare and peculiar charm about its streets and buildings, and the people who inhabited them — a quaint, irregular charm; humorous, fantastic, sentimental; with an abundance of sober coloring, and the teeming evidences — on the canals, in the markets and the alehouses — of a hearty, lusty life. But between the Amsterdam of yesterday and the Amsterdam of to-day there is hardly the ghost of a likeness. The modern city is a very modern one indeed; a thriving commercial place, with only an occasional and more or less accidental picturesqueness in its streets, and no picturesqueness at all in its people.

I saw it under a gala aspect, when I went there in a journalistic capacity, in the spring of last year, to describe the opening of the International Exhibition. Let us dismiss the Exhibition as briefly as possible. The king was to open it, but, if I may presume to say so, his Majesty was in a somewhat unkindly mood, having been compelled on account of the opening ceremony to remain in Amsterdam — which I am told he hates — for at least a week beyond the day he had fixed for his departure to the Hague. Consequently every one connected with the Exhibition (committee, commissioners, exhibitor; and all) was in a desperate hurry to complete the preparations, and let the king go his way to the Hague. But hurry ended in confusion, and when the day arrived nothing was ready. Postpone the opening for a week? By no means. The burgomaster felt that his office, to say nothing of his head, would be endangered by any suggestion of that sort; his Majesty having hinted, indeed, that if the Exhibition could not be got ready by the day named, he would go his way, and let it open itself as best it might.

So there was nothing for it but to let the king open an exhibition in which there was little except packing-cases exhibited. The ceremony was performed with due solemnity, the king and his suite stalking gravely through a mile or more of empty courts; the burgomaster pausing at intervals to assure his Majesty that in this department or the other there would be some extraordinarily fine things to see in a week or two. The king read his speech, said he had no doubt the exhibition was, or would be, the finest ever seen; and, after bestowing a private frown on the burgomaster, got into his carriage, and was whisked away by six bay horses to the palace.

Meanwhile, the city being en fête, the streets and the people showed themselves at their gayest. The little policemen, dressed something like the men of our London fire brigade, and looking as if they neglected the barber sadly, had lively work to keep the crowd in order, a duty which they performed with unnecessary roughness, pushing and bawling, and using their truncheons freely, to all of which the people submitted with exemplary patience. The cheer which they raised when the king went by was hearty enough, but lacked volume; and altogether they did not strike one as a very able-bodied crowd. With the citizens were mingled numbers of country-folk; the men in blouses and high caps, with their hair cut square; the women in the cleanest and stiffest of prints, with great overarching caps or bonnets, many of them wearing the headdresses of solid gold, which are the dearest of their household gods. I was taken in tow for an hour or two by a commissioner of police, a little brisk, pock-marked man, who appeared to have visited most countries under the sun, and discoursed about the novels of Thackeray in a patois which was not only Dutch but double Dutch to me.

The crowd filled all the streets, but behaved itself in a quiet, sober manner. All the cafés, beer-shops, and other places of refreshment were open, and thronged, but during the whole of that and the two succeeding days, I saw but one drunken person. Let me say in the same breath that I encountered only one beggar.

In one particular, and one only, did the Dutch crowd remind me of an English crowd. They did not seem to know what to do with themselves on a holiday. They dawdled through the streets, and stood in groups at the corners, and strolled in and out of the cafés, but did not seem to be animated by any definite purpose; and in fact gave one the notion that they regarded the holiday rather as a nuisance than otherwise. But there was no brawling, no horseplay, no hustling of women on the pavement, no bawling of rowdy songs; they were, in short, save in the circumstance mentioned, as little like an English Bank-holiday crowd as possible.

At night the streets were illuminated, and my romanticism, which had already sustained some pretty severe shocks, was almost entirely dispelled when I came upon a quaint old-fashioned square brilliantly lighted by electricity. An arc-lamp was the last thing I had expected to find in Amsterdam.

I had selected the Kalver Straat for my evening promenade; it is the Regent Street of Amsterdam, and here I had been informed by the author of an imaginative guide-book that I should find a typical Dutch crowd, with wide felt hats, "rolling bellies," long pipes, and all the other characteristics of the Dutch people of history or fable. Judge of my disappointment when I found myself in the midst of a crowd composed for the most part of persons in frock-coats and chimney-pot hats! From that moment my dream was finally broken; I relinquished for good and all the Amsterdam of my imaginings. But though the "dead past" have "buried their dead" here as in so many other of the European cities of history, let it not be supposed that the Dutch capital of to-day has nothing of interest for a foreigner.

The city itself, regarded as a whole, is a wonder of the first magnitude. It continues to stand, and to present a solid front, thanks only to the energy of its inhabitants. You might think, as you walked through most of its streets, that its foundations were no different from those of other cities; and you are surprised when you learn for the first time that it rests on no more solid basis than a number of wooden posts, or piles, firmly driven into a soil of loose sand and loam. If the pile-driving were not very well done, and this singular sub-structure when once laid were not constantly looked to, the entire city would very soon be embedded in mud, and soon after that drowned in water. Some fifty years ago, one of the biggest buildings in the place did literally sink out of sight, and vanish as completely as Boehmer's diamond necklace, when, through the agency of the "dramaturgic countess," that distinguished bauble was whisked through the horn-gate of dreams.

Any one who has visited the towns and villages in the salt-working districts of Cheshire, where, owing to the continuous withdrawal of the liquid brine which floats beneath the soil, the foundations of the houses give way, and the houses themselves assume all sorts of desperate attitudes, may have a notion of the aspect of many of the streets in Amsterdam, where every other house is more or less out of the perpendicular. This may or may not be pleasant for the occupants, but it is curious enough to look at.

Vexed with the crowd in the streets, because it was not at least as old as Rembrandt, I turned into one of the numerous little cafés, and from that into another, until 1 came to the well-known Café Krasnapolski, the best place of the kind in the city. It has the electric light, and is very new in style, but a comfortable place, with nothing gaudy or garish in its decorations, and offering as hearty a welcome to the working man and his family, as to the young gentlemen about town who are amongst its regular habitués. It is no uncommon thing indeed to see a couple of young Dutch "mashers" in evening dress sitting at the same table with a peasant in his blue shirt and high cap. Smoking and tippling are the order of the evening, immoderate smoking and very moderate tippling. The place is packed as in a London music-hall, but the people are more agreeable company than an average audience at the Oxford, the Pavilion, or the Canterbury.

I visited some Dutch music-halls, by the way, of which there are a considerable number in the principal streets; small primitive places, for the most part, bare of decoration, and offering no particular attractions either on the stage or elsewhere. The audience sat on narrow wooden benches, smoked cigars at about a farthing a piece, drank German beer and curaçoa, and occasionally joined with great gusto in a guttural chorus, which it would break all the teeth in an Englishman s head to attempt.

There were no opportunities at that time for a peep at the Dutch national drama, for with the commencement of the summer season the principal theatres close their doors. Madame Bernhardt was playing in "Frou Frou," but one did not go to Amsterdam to see Madame Bernhardt.

There was, however, a notable musical performance on the evening of the day on which the exhibition was opened, to which the burgomaster and Town Council, who organized it, invited the king and queen, the members of the court and aristocracy, and all the foreign guests of distinction (including the journalists). The theatre was a blaze of jewels, rich uniforms, and brilliant dresses; but, putting courtesy on one side, I am bound to say that in point of good looks, the Dutch nobility assembled there offered as striking a spectacle of the absence of them as it has ever been my lot to witness. I never before saw so much plainness gathered under one roof.

I would have said something about the performance itself, had not my attention been wholly distracted from the stage by the efforts of the burgomaster to keep the king from falling asleep over his programme. In the privacy of a "box," his Majesty would presumably have been suffered to sleep in peace; but on this occasion he had the misfortune to be posted on a red tribune in the very centre of the theatre, where every eye might see him. "If he nods he is lost," the burgomaster seemed to reason with himself; so whenever the royal head began to incline, either forwards or backwards, or to the right or the left, he was ready with some pretty little joke or comment, which served to keep off the catastrophe. "Has your Majesty heard this one?" he seemed to say, as he bent over the great gilt chair, and I am sure there was a general feeling of pleasure at the burgomaster's success when the face of the king brightened in response, and he gave vent to a low chuckle. This was the only Dutch theatre I saw.

There was one other entertainment in connection with the exhibition which I should like to refer to, for it was the pleasantest of all. This was the reception given at the Krasnapolski by the journalists of Amsterdam to their foreign brethren of the quill. The city swarmed with special correspondents from all quarters of the globe. The leading newspapers in nearly all the chief cities of Europe had their representative — there were several from America, and one at least from the antipodes. All of these were gathered at the Krasnapolski one evening, and a very curious assemblage it was. The late Mr. Cobden, you may remember, was in the habit of expressing a wish that all the newspaper men in London could be collected in Hyde Park, that the citizens might go there "and see by what a d——d ugly set of fellows they were governed." I found myself wondering what Cobden would have said or thought had he been present at the Krasnapolski that evening. There were no strictures as to costume, so it need scarcely be said that the wearers of white ties and clean shirt fronts were in a minority. Coffee, wine, and lager beer flowed in abundance, pipes were not tabooed, and towards the middle of the evening you could hardly see across the room for smoke. Speeches were made, and healths proposed, in a score of languages; and, indeed, it was a second Pentecost in regard to the variety of tongues that were uttered. I have no distinct recollection of the latter part of the proceedings, except that we all invited the editor of the Handelsblad, our principal host, to visit us at the offices of our respective newspapers; who, if he ever sets out to respond to those invitations, will spend the rest of his days, like Cain, a wanderer on the face of the earth.

Progress through the streets of Amsterdam is not difficult when you have become very slightly acquainted with them. The names are written plainly everywhere, and a little study of the map enables the stranger to find his bearings readily enough. Asking your way is of no use at all unless you know something more of the language than can be learned in the pages of Baedeker; for though you might easily learn to say, "Mag ik u vragen, hoe ga ik naar … ?" which means, "May I ask you how I am to go to … ?"you might go on asking it for a week without having the least idea of what was said in reply; and the Dutch are not sufficiently fertile in pantomime to give direction by the aid of signs. If in great difficulty, you may fall back on the tramcars, which are excellent, and used by everybody. The queen of Sweden, who had a suite of rooms at the hotel where I stayed (I was a good deal nearer the sky than her Majesty) stepped into the car in which I was jaunting one afternoon as unconcernedly as though she had been a burgher's wife.

No reference to the streets of Amsterdam would be satisfactory without a word on the canals. The canals are an unmitigated nuisance. They may be all very well in the winter, if the frost be hard enough to freeze them, but as soon as the weather begins to grow warm, they give out an odor like that which the Scriptures tell us is emitted by the deeds of the wicked. They cut the city in all directions, and are of course only to be crossed at regular intervals by the aid of bridges; so that the pedestrian wanting to get from one side of the street to the other, is liable to be sent a couple of hundred yards out of his way before he can do so. At night, in a dark street, they are to be approached warily, for a false tep or a stumble against the stone pillars to which the boats and barges are moored would be apt to send one head foremost into the water. But the quaint craft that ply their sluggish waters have a character and interest of their own, and the mingling of town life with the life of the river is curious enough in the streets where the canals are found.

It is necessary, in trying to get some dim and hazy notion of the city as it might once have been, to plunge far into the maze of narrow, winding streets in the centre, and from these to work one's way steadily to the outskirts. Pursued on some such plan as this, one's search has a chance of being rewarded. You could note the market at the end of the Kloveniersburgwal, with a variety of cheap goods exposed on stalls, or spread on matting on the ground; and at one corner of the market, a medæval building in red brick, with its five round towers, which was a gate of the city three hundred years ago.

Crossing the canal, you would find yourself soon in the Jews' quarter, which, for its uncleanliness if for nothing else, is one of the sights of the city. Rhapsodical tourists are still found who go into ecstasies over the shock-headed, evil-smelling Jews, and their quarter, which they have diligently converted into one huge pigsty; but the cleanly Dutchmen have neither eye nor nose for the virtues of a people who are filthy and not ashamed. The Jews form one-tenth of the whole population of Amsterdam, and contribute probably nine-tenths of its dirt. Indeed there is very little dirt to be met with, except in the Jews' quarter. They have ten or a dozen synagogues, the largest of which, belonging to the Portuguese Jews, is built in imitation of the temple of Solomon. The famous diamond polishing industry, the show trade of the city, is mainly in the hands of the Portuguese Jews.

If you have managed to push your way right through the city, to the bright waters of the Zuyder Zee itself, you will not have had your journey for nothing. It is worth going thus far to taste the air that blows over the "rolling waters" of the Zee; and, more than this, there stands on the brink of the waves one of the oldest, oddest, and most remarkable houses in Amsterdam, which you must in no wise leave the city before visiting. It is the Huis Zeeburgh, a simple little inn whose walls have been laved (and cellars flooded) by the sea for nearly three hundred years. The landlord will receive you, I won't say with politenesss, but with positive enthusiasm; he will turn the house inside out that you may see everything in it that is worth seeing, and will take down from the bar, where it hangs, the portrait of Slimme Ian, his racehorse (for he is a bit of a sportsman, and can chew a straw with the best of them), and will fetch out the silver tea-service which Slimme Ian won for him in a trotting match ten years ago. He keeps down-stairs, for the special delight of English and American visitors, an old copper kettle, which he holds up and pats, and says "Mijnheer, he vas mended von hondred time." He takes great pride in the sleeping-rooms of his domestics, with their tiny square cots, all curtained round, and smelling as fresh as a meadow; and in the broad wooden staircase, which is so wonderfully built that when you have reached the first landing, you cannot get to the landing beyond, except by going downstairs and mounting again by a different route. "Ia, but he is a good stairs," says the landlord, stroking the balustrade.

While the landlord was expatiating on his kettle, and his staircase, there drove up to the inn a queer, high, two-wheeled vehicle, which from its size, shape, and color, I took to be a species of private hearse. The notion was strengthened by the deliberate way in which it pulled up at a public-house. It was not a hearse, however, but the family conveyance of a squat Dutch farmer, who got down to pass the compliments and drink a glass of beer with mine host of the Huis Zeeburgh. I left them discussing, probably for the hundredth time, Slimme Ian's "points" as a trotter.

Within a few hundred yards of the Huis Zeeburgh lies the Jews' Cemetery, a dreary Golgotha of a place, with the sea wind soughing in the branches of the trees, and the grass overgrown and rank. The grey, mouldering tombstones lean this way and that, for the ceaseless wash of the waves beneath is always lessening their hold on the earth. The inscriptions on the tombs are in Hebrew, and the presence of that strange old tongue seems still further to isolate the desolate cemetery from the busy world around it.