CORRESPONDENCE.
DUTCH BOYS.
The Hague. Sin,—Much may be said both for and against breaking ones- good resolutions, but no one, I should think, will deny the- merit of making them. Well, Sir, before starting for my Whitsuntide jaunt this year, I resolved firmly that nothing should induce me to send you any more letters over this signature. Have I not been trying your patience, and the long- suffering of your readers any time these thirty years, with my crude first impressions of cities and their inhabitants, from Constantinople to the Upper Missouri P "Surely," I said to- myself, "sat prata biberunt." What can young England. in the last decade of the century — who enjoy, or at any rate read, "Marcella," and "The Fabian Essays," and "The Heavenly Twins " — care or want to know about the notions of an old fogey, whose faiths—or fads, as- they would call them—on social and political problems were- formed, if not stereotyped, in the first half P What, then, has shaken this wise resolve P You might guess for a week and never come within miles of the answer. It was the sight of a group of Dutch boys playing leap-frog in front of this hotel, and the contrast which came unbidden into my head' between the chances of Dutch and English boys in this matter, and the different use they make of them.
In front of this hotel lies the large open space, now planted with trees, and about the size of Grosvenor Square, which- is called " Tournooiveld," and was in the Middle Ages the tilt-yard of the doughty young Dutch candidates for knighthood. The portion of this square immediately in front of the hotel, about 40 yards deep and 150 broad, is marked off from the rest by a semi-circular row of granite posts, rather over 3 ft. in height, and 3 to 4 yards apart, two of them being close to lamp-posts, but the line otherwise unbroken. No chain connects these posts, and they have no spike on the top of them. As I stood at the door the morning after my arrival, admiring the fine linden-trees in full foliage, enter four Dutch boys from the left, who, without a word, broke at once into single file, and did "follow my leader" over all the posts till they got to the end on the extreme right, and disappeared quietly down a side street. Well, you will say, wouldn't four English boys have done just the same?
and I answer,—Yes, certainly, so far as playing leap-frog over the posts goes ; but they would have to come out here to find such a row of posts in the middle of a city. At any rate, in the city with which I am best acquainted in England, the few posts there are fit for leap-frog are connected with chains and have spikes on their tops. Moreover, do I not pass daily up a flight of steps, fenced on either side by a broad iron banister, which was obviously intended by Providence for passing boys to get a delicious slide down.? But, Sir, no English boy on his way to school or on an errand has ever slid down those banisters, for the British Bumble has had prohibitory knobs placed on them at short intervals for no possible reason except to prevent boys sliding down. The faith that all material things should be made to serve the greatest good of the greatest number, is 'surely as widely held in England as in Holland, and yet, here
are the tops of these Dutch posts " culott6," if I may say so, .worn smooth and polished by the many generations of boys who have enjoyed leap-frog over them, while the British posts
and banisters have given pleasure to no human being but -Bumble from the day they were put up.
But it was not of the Dutch posts but the Dutch boys that I intended to write, for they certainly struck me as differing -in two particulars from our boys, thus. Two of the posts, as I have said, are so close to the lamp-posts, that you can't vault over them without coming full butt against the lamp- post on the other side. When the leader came to the first of them he did not pass it, as I expected, but just vaulted on to the top, and sat there while he passed his leg between the poet and the lamp-post, and then jumped down and went -on to the next. Every one of the rest followed his example gravely and without a word, whereas, had they been English 'boys, there would have been a bolt past the leader as soon as he was seated, and a race with much shouting for the lead -over the remaining pillars. I have been studying the Dutch boy ever since, and am convinced that he is the most silent -and most "thorough" of any of his species I have ever come -across; and the boy is father to the man in both qualities.
-On Whit-Monday this city was crowded, all the citizens and • country-folk from the suburbs being in the streets and _gardens ; the galleries and museums, oddly enough, being - closed for the day. Walking about amongst them the silence was really rather provoking. At last I took to counting the • couples we met who were obviously just married, or courting, and ought at any rate to have had something to say to each -other. Out of eleven couples in one street, only one were talking, though all looked quite happy and content. It is the --same everywhere. As we neared the landing-place at the Hook of Holland, our steamer's bows were too far out, -and a rope had to be thrown from the shore. There were at least twenty licensed porters -waiting for us, in clean white jackets,—one of these, without a word, just coiled a rope and flung it. It was missed twice by the sailor in our bows, and fell into the water, out of which the thrower drew it, and just coiled and threw it again without a word of -objurgation or remonstrance, and the third time successfully.
Not one of the white-jacketed men who stood round had -uttered a syllable of advice or comment ; but what a Babel would have arisen in like case at the pier-heads of Calais or Dieppe, or for that matter at Dover or Liverpool. No wonder -that William the Silent is the typical hero of Dutchmen; there are two statues of him in the best sites in this city, and thalf-a-dozen portraits in the best places in the galleries.
Hosea Riglow's-
"Talk, if you keep it, pays its keep, But gabble's the short road to ruin. 'Tit; gratis (gals half price), but cheap At no price when it hinders doing," -
-ought -ought to be put into Dutch as the national motto. Then as to thoroughness. Take the most notable example of it first. We have been driving all round for some days, and have only -once-come to a slope up which our horse had to walk. When we got to the top, there was the sea on the other side, obviously -even to the untrained eye at a considerably higher level than 'the green fields through which we bad just been driving. Of -course it is an old story, the Dutchman's long war with the -German Ocean, but one never realises it till one comes to drive -uphill to the sea, and then it fairly takes one's breath away. I was deeply impressed ; and took advantage of a chance that -offered of talking the subject over with an expert, who, like most Dutchmen, happily speaks English fluently. Far from
expressing any anxiety as to the land already won, he informed me that they are seriously contemplating operations against the Zuider Zee, and driving him permanently out of Holland And I declare I believe they will do it, and so win the right, alone, so far as I know, amongst the nations, of saying to the sea : "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." One more example,—their thoroughness as to cleanliness. Not only the pavements of the main thoroughfares, but all the side-streets are thoroughly well washed and cleansed daily. When you walk out in the early morning you might eat your breakfast anywhere with perfect comfort on the sidewalks. We had to look for more than a quarter of an hour to find a bit of paper in the streets, and the windows in the back streets, even of houses to let, are rubbed bright. and poliahe 1 to a point which must be the despair of the passing English housewife. Why are Dutch home-maidens so incomparably more di eg(ni- and clean ti an English ? Can it be their Puritan bringing-up ? I remember a story current at home of an excellent housewife who main- tained her conviction that her maid-of-all-work had "found salvation." Being asked the ground of her belief, she replied that the girl had taken to sweeping under all the rugs. In short, ten days' residence here—I have never before done anything but rush through the country on my way east— seems likely to make me review old prejudices, and to exclaim, "If I were not an Englishman, I would be a Dutchman !" One may read and enjoy Motley without really appreciating this silent and " thorough " people, or understanding how it came to pass that by them, in this tiny and precarious corner of Europe, "the great deliverance was wrought Oat."
VAC UIIS VIATOR.
Previous page
