The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 2

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In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy of
iron-work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some of
whose pictures we saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of the
finest pictures of the Dutch school,--the "Crucifixion" of Rubens,
the "Christ on the Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, Otto
Vennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of his
wife,--a picture whose sweet strength and wealth of color draws one
to it with almost a passion of admiration. We had already seen "The
Descent from the Cross" and "The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in
the cathedral. With all his power and rioting luxuriance of color, I
cannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt. Doubtless he painted what
he saw; and we still find the types of his female figures in the
broad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of Antwerp. We walked down to his
house, which remains much as it was two hundred and twenty-five years
ago. From the interior court, an entrance in the Italian style leads
into a pleasant little garden full of old trees and flowers, with a
summer-house embellished with plaster casts, and having the very
stone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet place, and fit
for an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city, and lived the
life of a man who took a strong hold of the world.

AMSTERDAM

The rail from Antwerp north was through a land flat and sterile.
After a little, it becomes a little richer; but a forlorner land to
live in I never saw. One wonders at the perseverance of the Flemings
and Dutchmen to keep all this vast tract above water when there is so
much good solid earth elsewhere unoccupied. At Moerdjik we changed
from the cars to a little steamer on the Maas, which flows between
high banks. The water is higher than the adjoining land, and from
the deck we look down upon houses and farms. At Dort, the Rhine
comes in with little promise of the noble stream it is in the
highlands. Everywhere canals and ditches dividing the small fields
instead of fences; trees planted in straight lines, and occasionally
trained on a trellis in front of the houses, with the trunk painted
white or green; so that every likeness of nature shall be taken away.
>From Rotterdam, by cars, it is still the same. The Dutchman spends
half his life, apparently, in fighting the water. He has to watch
the huge dikes which keep the ocean from overwhelming him, and the
river-banks, which may break, and let the floods of the Rhine swallow
him up. The danger from within is not less than from without. Yet
so fond is he of his one enemy, that, when he can afford it, he
builds him a fantastic summer-house over a stagnant pool or a slimy
canal, in one corner of his garden, and there sits to enjoy the
aquatic beauties of nature; that is, nature as he has made it. The
river-banks are woven with osiers to keep them from washing; and at
intervals on the banks are piles of the long withes to be used in
emergencies when the swollen streams threaten to break through.

And so we come to Amsterdam, the oddest city of all,--a city wholly
built on piles, with as many canals as streets, and an architecture
so quaint as to even impress one who has come from Belgium. The
whole town has a wharf-y look; and it is difficult to say why the
tall brick houses, their gables running by steps to a peak, and each
one leaning forward or backward or sideways, and none perpendicular,
and no two on a line, are so interesting. But certainly it is a most
entertaining place to the stranger, whether he explores the crowded
Jews' quarter, with its swarms of dirty people, its narrow streets,
and high houses hung with clothes, as if every day were washing-day;
or strolls through the equally narrow streets of rich shops; or
lounges upon the bridges, and looks at the queer boats with clumsy
rounded bows, great helms' painted in gay colors, with flowers in the
cabin windows,--boats where families live; or walks down the
Plantage, with the zoological gardens on the one hand and rows of
beer-gardens on the other; or round the great docks; or saunters at
sunset by the banks of the Y, and looks upon flat North Holland and
the Zuyder Zee.

The palace on the Dam (square) is a square, stately edifice, and the
only building that the stranger will care to see. Its interior is
richer and more fit to live in than any palace we have seen. There
is nothing usually so dreary as your fine Palace. There are some
good frescoes, rooms richly decorated in marble, and a magnificent
hall, or ball-room, one hundred feet in height, without pillars.
Back of it is, of course, a canal, which does not smell fragrantly in
the summer; and I do not wonder that William III. and his queen
prefer to stop away. From the top is a splendid view of Amsterdam
and all the flat region. I speak of it with entire impartiality, for
I did not go up to see it. But better than palaces are the
picture-galleries, three of which are open to the sightseer. Here
the ancient and modern Dutch painters are seen at their best, and I
know of no richer feast of this sort. Here Rembrandt is to be seen
in his glory; here Van der Helst, Jan Steen, Gerard Douw, Teniers the
younger, Hondekoeter, Weenix, Ostade, Cuyp, and other names as
familiar. These men also painted what they saw, the people, the
landscapes, with which they were familiar. It was a strange pleasure
to meet again and again in the streets of the town the faces, or
types of them, that we had just seen on canvas so old.

In the Low Countries, the porters have the grand title of
commissionaires. They carry trunks and bundles, black boots, and act
as valets de place. As guides, they are quite as intolerable in
Amsterdam as their brethren in other cities. Many of them are Jews;
and they have a keen eye for a stranger. The moment he sallies from
his hotel, there is a guide. Let him hesitate for an instant in his
walk, either to look at something or to consult his map, or let him
ask the way, and he will have a half dozen of the persistent guild
upon him; and they cannot easily be shaken off. The afternoon we
arrived, we had barely got into our rooms at Brack's Oude Doelan,
when a gray-headed commissionaire knocked at our door, and offered
his services to show us the city. We deferred the pleasure of his
valuable society. Shortly, when we came down to the street, a
smartly dressed Israelite took off his hat to us, and offered to show
us the city. We declined with impressive politeness, and walked on.
The Jew accompanied us, and attempted conversation, in which we did
not join. He would show us everything for a guilder an hour,--for
half a guilder. Having plainly told the Jew that we did not desire
his attendance, he crossed to the other side of the street, and kept
us in sight, biding his opportunity. At the end of the street, we
hesitated a moment whether to cross the bridge or turn up by the
broad canal. The Jew was at our side in a moment, having divined
that we were on the way to the Dam and the palace. He obligingly
pointed the way, and began to walk with us, entering into
conversation. We told him pointedly, that we did not desire his
services, and requested him to leave us. He still walked in our
direction, with the air of one much injured, but forgiving, and was
more than once beside us with a piece of information. When we
finally turned upon him with great fierceness, and told him to
begone, he regarded us with a mournful and pitying expression; and as
the last act of one who returned good for evil, before he turned
away, pointed out to us the next turn we were to make. I saw him
several times afterward; and I once had occasion to say to him, that
I had already told him I would not employ him; and he always lifted
his hat, and looked at me with a forgiving smile. I felt that I had
deeply wronged him. As we stood by the statue, looking up at the
eastern pediment of the palace, another of the tribe (they all speak
a little English) asked me if I wished to see the palace. I told him
I was looking at it, and could see it quite distinctly. Half a dozen
more crowded round, and proffered their aid. Would I like to go into
the palace ? They knew, and I knew, that they could do nothing more
than go to the open door, through which they would not be admitted,
and that I could walk across the open square to that, and enter
alone. I asked the first speaker if he wished to go into the palace.
Oh, yes! he would like to go. I told him he had better go at once,-
-they had all better go in together and see the palace,--it was an
excellent opportunity. They seemed to see the point, and slunk away
to the other side to wait for another stranger.

I find that this plan works very well with guides: when I see one
approaching, I at once offer to guide him. It is an idea from which
he does not rally in time to annoy us. The other day I offered to
show a persistent fellow through an old ruin for fifty kreuzers: as
his price for showing me was forty-eight, we did not come to terms.
One of the most remarkable guides, by the way, we encountered at
Stratford-on-Avon. As we walked down from the Red Horse Inn to the
church, a full-grown boy came bearing down upon us in the most
wonderful fashion. Early rickets, I think, had been succeeded by the
St. Vitus' dance. He came down upon us sideways, his legs all in a
tangle, and his right arm, bent and twisted, going round and round,
as if in vain efforts to get into his pocket, his fingers spread out
in impotent desire to clutch something. There was great danger that
he would run into us, as he was like a steamer with only one
side-wheel and no rudder. He came up puffing and blowing, and
offered to show us Shakespeare's tomb. Shade of the past, to be
accompanied to thy resting-place by such an object! But he fastened
himself on us, and jerked and hitched along in his side-wheel
fashion. We declined his help. He paddled on, twisting himself into
knots, and grinning in the most friendly manner. We told him to
begone. "I am," said he, wrenching himself into a new contortion, "I
am what showed Artemus Ward round Stratford." This information he
repeated again and again, as if we could not resist him after we had
comprehended that. We shook him off; but when we returned at sundown
across the fields, from a visit to Anne Hathaway's cottage, we met
the sidewheeler cheerfully towing along a large party, upon whom he
had fastened.

The people of Amsterdam are only less queer than their houses. The
men dress in a solid, old-fashioned way. Every one wears the
straight, high-crowned silk hat that went out with us years ago, and
the cut of clothing of even the most buckish young fellows is behind
the times. I stepped into the Exchange, an immense interior, that
will hold five thousand people, where the stock-gamblers meet twice a
day. It was very different from the terrible excitement and noise of
the Paris Bourse. There were three or four thousand brokers there,
yet there was very little noise and no confusion. No stocks were
called, and there was no central ring for bidding, as at the Bourse
and the New York Gold Room; but they quietly bought and sold. Some
of the leading firms had desks or tables at the side, and there
awaited orders. Everything was phlegmatically and decorously done.

In the streets one still sees peasant women in native costume. There
was a group to-day that I saw by the river, evidently just crossed
over from North Holland. They wore short dresses, with the upper
skirt looped up, and had broad hips and big waists. On the head was
a cap with a fall of lace behind; across the back of the head a broad
band of silver (or tin) three inches broad, which terminated in front
and just above the ears in bright pieces of metal about two inches
square, like a horse's blinders, Only flaring more from the head;
across the forehead and just above the eyes a gilt band, embossed; on
the temples two plaits of hair in circular coils; and on top of all a
straw hat, like an old-fashioned bonnet) stuck on hindside before.
Spiral coils of brass wire, coming to a point in front, are also worn
on each side of the head by many. Whether they are for ornament or
defense, I could not determine.

Water is brought into the city now from Haarlem, and introduced into
the best houses; but it is still sold in the streets by old men and
women, who sit at the faucets. I saw one dried-up old grandmother,
who sat in her little caboose, fighting away the crowd of dirty
children who tried to steal a drink when her back was turned, keeping
count of the pails of water carried away with a piece of chalk on the
iron pipe, and trying to darn her stocking at the same time. Odd
things strike you at every turn. There is a sledge drawn by one poor
horse, and on the front of it is a cask of water pierced with holes,
so that the water squirts out and wets the stones, making it easier
sliding for the runners. It is an ingenious people!

After all, we drove out five miles to Broek, the clean village;
across the Y, up the canal, over flatness flattened. Broek is a
humbug, as almost all show places are. A wooden little village on a
stagnant canal, into which carriages do not drive, and where the
front doors of the houses are never open; a dead, uninteresting
place, neat but not specially pretty, where you are shown into one
house got up for the purpose, which looks inside like a crockery
shop, and has a stiff little garden with box trained in shapes of
animals and furniture. A roomy-breeched young Dutchman, whose
trousers went up to his neck, and his hat to a peak, walked before us
in slow and cow-like fashion, and showed us the place; especially
some horrid pleasure-grounds, with an image of an old man reading in
a summer-house, and an old couple in a cottage who sat at a table and
worked, or ate, I forget which, by clock-work; while a dog barked by
the same means. In a pond was a wooden swan sitting on a stick, the
water having receded, and left it high and dry. Yet the trip is
worth while for the view of the country and the people on the way:
men and women towing boats on the canals; the red-tiled houses
painted green, and in the distance the villages, with their spires
and pleasing mixture of brown, green, and red tints, are very
picturesque. The best thing that I saw, however, was a traditional
Dutchman walking on the high bank of a canal, with soft hat, short
pipe, and breeches that came to the armpits above, and a little below
the knees, and were broad enough about the seat and thighs to carry
his no doubt numerous family. He made a fine figure against the sky.

COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA

It is a relief to get out of Holland and into a country nearer to
hills. The people also seem more obliging. In Cologne, a
brown-cheeked girl pointed us out the way without waiting for a
kreuzer. Perhaps the women have more to busy themselves about in the
cities, and are not so curious about passers-by. We rarely see a
reflector to exhibit us to the occupants of the second-story windows.
In all the cities of Belgium and Holland the ladies have small
mirrors, with reflectors, fastened to their windows; so that they can
see everybody who passes, without putting their heads out. I trust
we are not inverted or thrown out of shape when we are thus caught up
and cast into my lady's chamber. Cologne has a cheerful look, for
the Rhine here is wide and promising; and as for the "smells," they
are certainly not so many nor so vile as those at Mainz.

Our windows at the hotel looked out on the finest front of the
cathedral. If the Devil really built it, he is to be credited with
one good thing, and it is now likely to be finished, in spite of him.
Large as it is, it is on the exterior not so impressive as that at
Amiens; but within it has a magnificence born of a vast design and
the most harmonious proportions, and the grand effect is not broken
by any subdivision but that of the choir. Behind the altar and in
front of the chapel, where lie the remains of the Wise Men of the
East who came to worship the Child, or, as thev are called, the Three
Kings of Cologne, we walked over a stone in the pavement under which
is the heart of Mary de Medicis: the remainder of her body is in St.
Denis near Paris. The beadle in red clothes, who stalks about the
cathedral like a converted flamingo, offered to open for us the
chapel; but we declined a sight of the very bones of the Wise Men.
It was difficult enough to believe they were there, without seeing
them. One ought not to subject his faith to too great a strain at
first in Europe. The bones of the Three Kings, by the way, made the
fortune of the cathedral. They were the greatest religious card of
the Middle Ages, and their fortunate possession brought a flood of
wealth to this old Domkirche. The old feudal lords would swear by
the Almighty Father, or the Son, or Holy Ghost, or by everything
sacred on earth, and break their oaths as they would break a wisp of
straw: but if you could get one of them to swear by the Three Kings
of Cologne, he was fast; for that oath he dare not disregard.

The prosperity of the cathedral on these valuable bones set all the
other churches in the neighborhood on the same track; and one can
study right here in this city the growth of relic worship. But the
most successful achievement was the collection of the bones of St.
Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, and their preservation in the
church on the very spot where they suffered martyrdom. There is
probably not so large a collection of the bones of virgins elsewhere
in the world; and I am sorry to read that Professor Owen has thought
proper to see and say that many of them are the bones of lower orders
of animals. They are built into the walls of the church, arranged
about the choir, interred in stone coffins, laid under the pavements;
and their skulls grin at you everywhere. In the chapel the bones are
tastefully built into the wall and overhead, like rustic wood-work;
and the skulls stand in rows, some with silver masks, like the jars
on the shelves of an apothecary's shop. It is a cheerful place. On
the little altar is the very skull of the saint herself, and that of
Conan, her ]over, who made the holy pilgrimage to Rome with her and
her virgins, and also was slain by the Huns at Cologne. There is a
picture of the eleven thousand disembarking from one boat on the
Rhine, which is as wonderful as the trooping of hundreds of spirits
out of a conjurer's bottle. The right arm of St. Ursula is preserved
here: the left is at Bruges. I am gradually getting the hang of this
excellent but somewhat scattered woman, and bringing her together in
my mind. Her body, I believe, lies behind the altar in this same
church. She must have been a lovely character, if Hans Memling's
portrait of her is a faithful one. I was glad to see here one of the
jars from the marriage-supper in Cana. We can identify it by a piece
which is broken out; and the piece is in Notre Dame in Paris. It has
been in this church five hundred years. The sacristan, a very
intelligent person, with a shaven crown and his hair cut straight
across his forehead, who showed us the church, gave us much useful
information about bones, teeth, and the remains of the garments that
the virgins wore; and I could not tell from his face how much he
expected us to believe. I asked the little fussy old guide of an
English party who had joined us, how much he believed of the story.
He was a Protestant, and replied, still anxious to keep up the credit
of his city, "Tousands is too many; some hundreds maybe; tousands is
too many."

A GLIMPSE OF THE RHINE

You have seen the Rhine in pictures; you have read its legends. You
know, in imagination at least, how it winds among craggy hills of
splendid form, turning so abruptly as to leave you often shut in with
no visible outlet from the wall of rock and forest; how the castles,
some in ruins so as to be as unsightly as any old pile of rubbish,
others with feudal towers and battlements, still perfect, hang on the
crags, or stand sharp against the sky, or nestle by the stream or on
some lonely island. You know that the Rhine has been to Germans what
the Nile was to the Egyptians,--a delight, and the theme of song and
story. Here the Roman eagles were planted; here were the camps of
Drusus; here Caesar bridged and crossed the Rhine; here, at every
turn, a feudal baron, from his high castle, levied toll on the
passers; and here the French found a momentary halt to their invasion
of Germany at different times. You can imagine how, in a misty
morning, as you leave Bonn, the Seven Mountains rise up in their
veiled might, and how the Drachenfels stands in new and changing
beauty as you pass it and sail away. You have been told that the
Hudson is like the Rhine. Believe me, there is no resemblance; nor
would there be if the Hudson were lined with castles, and Julius
Caesar had crossed it every half mile. The Rhine satisfies you, and
you do not recall any other river. It only disappoints you as to its
"vine-clad hills." You miss trees and a covering vegetation, and are
not enamoured of the patches of green vines on wall-supported
terraces, looking from the river like hills of beans or potatoes.
And, if you try the Rhine wine on the steamers, you will wholly lose
your faith in the vintage. We decided that the wine on our boat was
manufactured in the boiler.

There is a mercenary atmosphere about hotels and steamers on the
Rhine, a watering-place, show sort of feeling, that detracts very
much from one's enjoyment. The old habit of the robber barons of
levying toll on all who sail up and down has not been lost. It is not
that one actually pays so much for sightseeing, but the charm of
anything vanishes when it is made merchandise. One is almost as
reluctant to buy his "views" as he is to sell his opinions. But one
ought to be weeks on the Rhine before attempting to say anything
about it.

One morning, at Bingen,--I assure you it was not six o'clock,--we
took a big little rowboat, and dropped down the stream, past the
Mouse Tower, where the cruel Bishop Hatto was eaten up by rats, under
the shattered Castle of Ehrenfels, round the bend to the little
village of Assmannshausen, on the hills back of which is grown the
famous red wine of that name. On the bank walked in line a dozen
peasants, men and women, in picturesque dress, towing, by a line
passed from shoulder to shoulder, a boat filled with marketing for
Rudesheim. We were bound up the Niederwald, the mountain opposite
Bingen, whose noble crown of forest attracted us. At the landing,
donkeys awaited us; and we began the ascent, a stout, good-natured
German girl acting as guide and driver. Behind us, on the opposite
shore, set round about with a wealth of foliage, was the Castle of
Rheinstein, a fortress more pleasing in its proportions and situation
than any other. Our way was through the little town which is jammed
into the gorge; and as we clattered up the pavement, past the church,
its heavy bell began to ring loudly for matins, the sound
reverberating in the narrow way, and following us with its
benediction when we were far up the hill, breathing the fresh,
inspiring morning air. The top of the Niederwald is a splendid
forest of trees, which no impious Frenchman has been allowed to trim,
and cut into allees of arches, taking one in thought across the water
to the free Adirondacks. We walked for a long time under the welcome
shade, approaching the brow of the hill now and then, where some
tower or hermitage is erected, for a view of the Rhine and the Nahe,
the villages below, and the hills around; and then crossed the
mountain, down through cherry orchards, and vine yards, walled up,
with images of Christ on the cross on the angles of the walls, down
through a hot road where wild flowers grew in great variety, to the
quaint village of Rudesheim, with its queer streets and ancient
ruins. Is it
possible that we can have too many ruins? "Oh dear!" exclaimed the
jung-frau as we sailed along the last day, "if there is n't another
castle!"

HEIDELBERG

If you come to Heidelberg, you will never want to go away. To arrive
here is to come into a peaceful state of rest and content. The great
hills out of which the Neckar flows, infold the town in a sweet
security; and yet there is no sense of imprisonment, for the view is
always wide open to the great plains where the Neckar goes to join
the Rhine, and where the Rhine runs for many a league through a rich
and smiling land. One could settle down here to study, without a
desire to go farther, nor any wish to change the dingy, shabby old
buildings of the university for anything newer and smarter. What the
students can find to fight their little duels about I cannot see; but
fight they do, as many a scarred cheek attests. The students give
life to the town. They go about in little caps of red, green, and
blue, many of them embroidered in gold, and stuck so far on the
forehead that they require an elastic, like that worn by ladies,
under the back hair, to keep them on; and they are also distinguished
by colored ribbons across the breast. The majority of them are
well-behaved young gentlemen, who carry switch-canes, and try to keep
near the fashions, like students at home. Some like to swagger about
in their little skull-caps, and now and then one is attended by a
bull-dog.

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