A Tour Through the Batavian Republic/Letter XVIII
LETTER XVIII.
THE atmosphere of Amsterdam, from its marshy situation, is at all periods of the year loaded with humid vapours; and I believe we had not the good fortune, during a residence of about a week in that city, to catch one glimpse of the sun. I will not venture to hazard any conjecture what effect the air has on the inhabitants of the place, but for the most part they are a dull and heavy-looking race, with countenances full of cares and concerns of business. I must, however, observe here, that I have not seen in Holland one Dutch face which had the least expression of that despicable quality, cunning, in it, either on the Exchange, in shops, or in the streets; and, on the contrary, I do not think I ever saw a shopkeeper in England, on whose countenance that quality was not most legibly written. A Dutchman's countenance, whatever his avocations may be, is honest, frank, and candid; and the only expression which ever appears in it that is displeasing, is an expression of caution which borders on suspicion. Most Dutch merchants, from education, example, and habit, are tainted more or less with the vice of avarice, or rather a strong passion for accumulation; but, I believe, the merchants of no nation in the world are more to be praised for their scrupulous honesty and inflexible integrity; and let me add too, for their patriotism, public spirit, and munificence. What city in Europe can boast of charitable foundations more splendidly endowed than those of Amsterdam? Its institution[1] for the increase of knowledge and the encouragement of the fine arts is yet in its infancy, but its utility has already been proved, and in a few years it may vie with the oldest established and most opulent societies in Europe.
During our stay at Amsterdam, we crossed the Y, to visit the pleasant villages of Broek and Saardam in North Holland. The one celebrated for its singular neatness, the other for its mills and extensive yards for the building of ships.
The village ot Broek is at the easy distance of six miles from Amsterdam, and inhabited chiefly by merchants of overgrown wealth, who, when the hours of business are over, retire from the tumult and confusion of the city, to enjoy the tranquillity of a secluded village. Broek contains about an hundred houses, each of which is decorated and painted with the nicest care. To every house, as is the case throughout North Holland, there are two doors; one of which is never opened but when a corpse or a christening is carried from the house, and the other serves the ordinary purposes of the family. I could not learn the nature of the superstition from whence this custom is supposed to have originated; and I believe it is peculiar to North Holland. To a stranger, there is something solemn in the custom; and we could not help contemplating these doors, opened only for sepulchral rites, or to introduce a new-born infant into the christian community, with a sort of religious awe and respect.
Over some of these doors were carvings, descriptive of the lives of some of the former possessors of the houses. One of these attracted a considerable portion of our notice. It was divided into four compartments. The first described the embarkation of a young man on ship-board, and his relatives on the quay, weeping on account of his departure. The second represented his arrival in a foreign part, where a number of Indians were waiting to receive him. The third described him as a planter, surrounded by his slaves, and the productions of the tropics. The last related the story of his return to his country, advanced in life, and blessed with wealth. The date affixed to it was 1661. Another of these carvings described the history of a shopkeeper's life; and a third, that of a man who had acquired his riches by the whale-fishery.
The houses of Broek are painted with different colours, but chiefly with green and white, and some of them in addition are gilded. They are small, few of them containing more than eight rooms, and none of them above two stories high. Before most of the houses is a small garden, dressed out in a fantastic style with shells, pieces of stained glass, bits of broken china, and the like; and the shrubs and trees are tortured into all manner of shapes. In one garden, a tree was cut into the shape of a table, with bottles and glasses on it; another tree was topped and bent to resemble a ship; and a bed of box-wood described the chace of a hare. This ridiculous taste of horticulture began to prevail in Holland about the time when the Dutch, having shaken off the yoke of the Spaniards, applied themselves almost wholly to commerce, consequently neglected all elegant and agreeable pursuits; and it continues to prevail at Broek in its original style, two centuries old, unaltered and unimproved.
In the streets of Broek, cleanliness seems to have obtained its ne plus ultra. They are closely paved with small bricks, the interstices of which are frequently scraped, and not a speck of dirt or blade of grass is any-where to be perceived. No animal is permitted with unhallowed steps to profane the streets of Broek. The dogs and cats of the place are rigorously confined in the houses of their respective owners, and never permitted to breathe abroad the delicious air of freedom. Even the birds of the air are chased away from this abode of cleanliness, lest, like the obscene harpies which Virgil tells us of, they should defile with their excrements the streets or the houses.
The virtue of cleanliness is carried in Broek to a painful extreme, I never saw a more joyless, uncomfortable, and melancholy place. The houses and gardens were fit only to amuse the infancy or the dotage of life, to gratify the vanities of childhood, or to give employment to the caprices of old age.
The inhabitants of Broek, even children, partake of the melancholy of the place. We saw a group of boys, of an age when gaiety and playfulness are qualities almost inherent in youth, soberly seated by the side of one of the canals, with countenances as contemplative and sedate as could have been expected in old men; and we passed them without exciting so much of their curiosity, as to make them turn their heads to see which way we went. If any women were at the windows, they hastily withdrew as we approached; and if the door of a house was open, it was shut with inhospitable rudeness. Want of curiosity is, I believe, a quality characteristic of the Dutch nation, and it certainly reigns with sovereign dullness in the village of Broek[2].
From Broek, we drove in our voiture to Saardam. Part of the road is on the dyke which defends North Holland from the waters of the Y. At different commanding points of this road, there were batteries, mounting three or four large guns, which had been erected the year before, to oppose the progress of the English, had they advanced against Amsterdam. The guns of some of these batteries were removing by Dutch soldiers; and we were told, that in so secure a state was the country supposed to be, that it was intended the whole should be razed.In Saardam and its environs there are about two thousand windmills, which at a distance form something like the appearance of a forest. The trade of the place is so greatly impoverished, that scarcely two hundred of these mills were at work, and a large proportion of the number unemployed seemed in a ruinous and decayed condition. The war has most materially affected the prosperity of Saardam, by putting a stop to the navigation of Holland, and consequently to the demand for ships, the construction of which was the principal source of the opulence of Saardam. I did not see a single ship upon the stocks at Saardam, but there were two or three large men-of-war in a wet dock, which I understood had been lately launched, and some frigates were repairing. In the different yards for ship building which we passed, there was a great abundance of excellent timber for the construction of vessels, but very few carpenters were at work in any of the yards. In some of them it did not appear that the least work had been done for a considerable period of time, and rank grass was growing on many of the spots where mighty fleets had been created.
We visited the hut where Peter the Great of Russia resided, when, to acquire a practical knowledge in the art of ship-building, he laid aside his imperial dignity, and worked for some time as a common carpenter in the dock-yards and naval arsenals of Saardam. The cottage in which this prince lived is one of the meanest in the town, and without other accommodations than what might have suited the circumstances of the humblest mechanic. The hut was full of children, and abominably dirty, a fault that is not to be charged on the generality of Dutch cottages. A nitche was shewn us in the room which contained the emperor's bed, an execrable engraving of him by a French artist, and a copper coin on which his head was impressed. The woman of the house also shewed us two wine-glasses, which were given her some years ago by the present Emperor of Russia, then the Archduke Paul, when he visited, the hut where his ancestor resided: a singular present for a young prince on such an occasion!
A funeral was performing in the churchyard of Saardam as we passed, and we stopt to observe the ceremony. It was the interment of an indigent person, and, the obsequies were performed without, the assistance of a priest. The coffin was of plain fir, unvarnished and unornamented, and the grave in which it was deposited was a large hole, containing about a dozen coffins, and capable of receiving perhaps as many more. After the corpse was put into this populous grave, it was covered with boards, and the mourners departed. The frugality of the Dutch is scarcely more remarkable in any thing, than the economy of their funerals. A person would be despised by his neighbours as a profligate spendthrift who should bestow on a deceased relation a magnificent interment, and there are sumptuary laws against expensive burials. Prayers at the grave, or the tolling of a bell, are considered as idle superstitions, nor do female mourners ever attend these last sad offices of humanity, to weep with decent and pious sorrow over the remains of their departed friends.
The day after our return from our excursion to Broek and Saardam, we took our leave, probably for ever, of the capital of Holland. — Let me here perform the promise which I made to the good mistress of our hotel, that on my return to England I would speak of her house in the terms which I thought it deserved. — The civilities and highly useful attentions of Mrs. Oosterlinck during our stay in Amsterdam, entitle her to my most respectful acknowledgements; and I can safely recommend her hotel, the Doele, on the Cingel, as one of the most pleasant and agreeable houses of accommodation to be met with in Holland. The Cingel is one of the principal streets in Amsterdam, and near the centre of the town. It may not be improper to add, that our charges at the Doele were extremely reasonable; a full third less, I am satisfied, than, under similar circumstances, we should have paid in England.
We travelled from Amsterdam to Utrecht in treckschuyts, and were so fortunate on our passage as to obtain in all the boats places in the roof. Our journey occupied about nine hours, and we arrived at Utrecht much fatigued and exhausted. On each side of the canal, from Amsterdam to Utrecht, there is, with little intermission, a continuation of pleasant houses, country seats, and gardens adorned, in the Dutch taste, with grotesque temples, statues, stagnate pools, Chinese bridges, and trees planted in a straight line, or tortured into a thousand shapes. The country through which we passed seemed extremely populous and well cultivated; and there was less water on the lands than we had observed elsewhere, not because it was higher, but because the mills for pumping it off into the canals are more numerous, and serve better to drain the land.
Utrecht is one of the most agreeable cities in the Batavian republic, and somewhat larger than the Hague. On account of the pleasantness of its situation, and the imagined or real salubrity of the air, Utrecht is chosen by many persons who have made a fortune by commerce, and have the good sense, in the evening of their lives, to quit the bustle of trade for the tranquil pleasures of retirement, as the place of their retreat. A more eligible one could scarcely be chosen.
The streets of Utrecht are large and spacious, and the same cleanliness reigns in the town which distinguishes the most favoured cities of Holland. It was formerly a post of considerable military strength and importance; but, happily for its inhabitants, its fortifications are no longer in a condition to provoke or resist the attack of the enemy. In 1672 it surrendered to Lewis the Fourteenth without opposition, and for upwards of a year Utrecht was the theatre of the triumphs of that magnificent monarch. He commanded his soldiers to spare the beautiful mall, which extends near a mile from the town, shaded with three rows of trees, and his clemency was celebrated by the venal poets of times; but for this moderation, or act of forbearance, he levied a contribution of two hundred thousand pounds on the inhabitants of the place.
In 1787 Utrecht surrendered to the arms of Prussia without making any resistance, though the regular forces in the town amounted to seven thousand men, and its inhabitants were animated with the most violent animosity against the Prince of Orange, whose cause the Prussian army supported. On this occasion, treachery was imputed to the governor, the rhingrave of Salm; for though it was not supposed that the town could have held out long against the Prussian forces, it was contended that, with the strength which it contained, and the disposition of the inhabitants, it was base and cowardly to surrender the place without some opposition. The character of the prince who commanded the garrison justified the suspicions of his treachery.
On the approach of the French army in 1795, the city of Utrecht threw open its gates, and the republican troops were received as friends and deliverers. No-where throughout the United Provinces was the disposition of the people more favourable to the French than that at Utrecht; and, notwithstanding the severe impositions that have been laid on them, the inhabitants of the place still continue to entertain the strongest attachment to France.
The university of Utrecht has suffered more by the war than that of Leyden, and scarcely contains at present fifty students. It has at all periods, I believe, been inferior to the celebrated academy of the latter city, whether for the learning and reputation of its professors, the number of students which they attracted, or the assistance afforded to pupils by public libraries, botanical gardens, or anatomical preparations. As people are led by their partialities in favour of certain opinions, the university of Utrecht is censured or praised for its attachment to, and cultivation of, French principles; while, on the contrary, though early in the new order of things a deputation of students congratulated the provisional representatives of Holland on the revolution in the government that had happily taken place, the university of Leyden is supposed strongly to favour the old system.
Before we left Rotterdam, our friend General Chorié expected daily to be appointed to the command of Nimeguen, and we then promised him that we would extend our tour to that fortress, in order that we might have the pleasure of seeing him again, before we quitted the Batavian republic. At Utrecht I found, from the advanced period of the season and other circumstances, that ——— could not make the excursion without considerable inconvenience, and therefore, leaving her at the Chateau d'Anvers, I took a seat in the post chariot for Nimeguen. My companions were a French officer and his lady, and their politeness and agreeable conversation beguiled the tediousness of the journey.
On my arrival at Nimeguen, I was greatly disappointed to find, that the appointment of General Chorié to the command of that fortress had not yet been confirmed, and consequently the pleasure which I promised myself from meeting with a person to whose civilities and attentions I was so deeply indebted, was prevented.
Every part of Nimeguen exhibits the melancholy effects of the late siege. Houses destroyed and rebuilt, public edifices in ruins, trees shattered, and the pavement of the streets torn up to prevent the rebounding of balls and shells, and yet unreplaced. The fortifications of Nimeguen, at the time when it was attacked, were in good condition; the Dutch garrison in the town, was strong, and an army of thirty thousand English lay encamped on the other side of the Waal, from whence, by means of a flying bridge, they could throw succours into the town. It was therefore expected to sustain a siege of considerable length, if not to disappoint the views of the assailants. Besides its ordinary fortifications, it was strengthened with additional outworks, and its garrison was composed of the flower of the Dutch army. — But all its means of defence were ineffectual against the ardour of the besieging army. After Nimeguen had been bombarded some days, preparations were made by the French for a general assault. These measures alarmed the English, and they withdrew their forces from the town. The Dutch troops would have followed them, but the bridge was broken down by the enemy's artillery, and being too weak for resistance now that they were deserted by their allies, they were obliged to surrender to the French without conditions. The town was indeed taken by assault, but the humanity of General Souham, who commanded the French, preserved the garrison and inhabitants of the place from the exercise of those severities which, the usage of war authorises in towns that are taken by storm.
The inhabitants of Nimeguen discourse of this calamitous period with the most vivid emotions, and a general air of melancholy and dejection reigns throughout the place. Beggars are numerous, and many of them appear as if they had enjoyed happier days.
The French garrison in Nimeguen consisted of about eight hundred men, most of whom had received wounds in the service. Were the fortress to be besieged, it would require a force of between six and seven thousand men to defend the works; but happily such an event is improbable. The fortifications of Nimeguen have been repaired since the siege, and are in a good condition; but the out-works are destroyed, and the cultivated garden now smiles where the hideous battery appeared. Nimeguen is one of the principal depots of the stores of the French army in the Batavian republic; and probably will continue, though a general peace mould be made, and by the treaty between the two republics it is then to be restored to the Dutch, to be garrisoned by French troops.
Disappointed of seeing General Chorié, I stopt but a single day at Nimeguen, and returned to Utrecht by night. We quitted that city early in the morning in a treckschuyt, and arrived in the evening at Rotterdam.
Our wishes now anxiously turned towards England. Our tour had been productive of much pleasure, and we continued to experience at Rotterdam the same hospitable treatment that we had before met with; but the objects of curiosity to interest us being diminished, the desire of returning home almost entirely possessed our thoughts. Unterrified with the prospect of encountering the turbulence and dangers of the North Sea at an advanced period of the year, — preferred that we should sail for London in some vessel from Rotterdam, rather than return by the route of Calais, as we once proposed and intended; and a sloop belonging to Mr. ——— being on the eve of departure, we agreed for our passage on board of it. — From this gentleman and Mrs. ——— we received during our stay in Rotterdam attentions and civilities which can never be effaced from our minds.
The accommodations of our vessel (which fails under the Prussian flag, but is English property) are much on a par with those of the sloop in which we were captured; but the captain and his crew, Prussians or Dutch, cultivate the virtue of cleanliness out of comparison more carefully than our English captain and his sailors did.
Change of wind obliged our vessel to come to to anchor off Maaslandsluys, and the same cause has detained us some days. Our time has been agreeably employed. The short distance between the Briel and Maaslandsluys, has afforded us an opportunity of renewing our intercourse with Commodore ——— and Captain ———. The better we are acquainted with these excellent persons, the more reason we have to love and admire them. Generous brave, and benevolent men! may they long live, an honour and a defence to their country, an ornament and examples to humanity! May they live to see, and long enjoy, the full completion of their patriotic wishes — to see the commerce of their country revive, and its independence and liberty established on a sure and solid basis! — the extinction of party feuds and violence, and the restoration of domestic harmony and tranquillity to the bosom of their native land!.......
Whatever changes the revolution may have produced in the manners and habits of the Dutch, I am persuaded that there remains in the nation a rich fund of old Batavian virtue, integrity, and honour: that the genuine principles of liberty are nowhere better understood, or more fervently admired, though, by the unhappy circumstances of the times, perverted or neglected: that no-where are the domestic and social duties of life more sedulously cultivated. — May the exercise of these virtues speedily be encouraged by the restoration of peace!