shawl that cost ninety-two guilders, and yet between us there has never been any talk of such a silly love which at all costs wanted to live at the end of the world. When we were married, we made a trip to The Hague—there she bought flannel, of which I am still wearing undervests—and, further than this, love never drove us into the world. Therefore, it’s all silliness and lies!
And would you think, then, that my marriage must be less happy than that of people who for love go into consumption, or tear their hair out by the roots? Or would you imagine that my household is one atom less well regulated than it would be if seventeen years ago I had told my sweetheart in verses that I wanted to marry her? Nonsense! Yet I might have done so just as well as anyone else, for versifying is a trade, certainly less difficult than turning ivory. Why else are lozenges with rhymed mottoes so cheap?—Frits says: “caramels,” I don’t know why.—And just ask the price of a set of billiard-balls!
I have nothing against verses in themselves. If one wishes to make the words fall into line, all right! But don’t say anything that is not true. “The raindrops pour, the clock strikes four.” This may pass, if the rain really does pour, and it is four. But if it should be a quarter to three, I, who do not place my words in line, can say: “The raindrops pour, and it is a quarter to three.” But the versifier is bound to the hour of four by the downpour of the first line. For him it must absolutely be four o’clock, or there may be no pouring rain. Even a quarter to four is forbidden by the metre. So then he sets about perverting the truth! Either the weather must be changed, or the time. And so one of them must be a lie.
And it is not only those verses that lure the young to untruth. Just go to the theatre and listen to the lies that are there served up. The hero of the piece is pulled out of the water by a man who is on the verge of bankruptcy. For this he gives him half his fortune. Such a thing can’t be true. When recently on the Prince’s Canal my hat blew into the water—Frits says “was blown”—I gave the man who brought it back to me twopence, and he was satisfied.
