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diff --git a/old/55113-h/55113-h.htm b/old/55113-h/55113-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index aa4b877..0000000 --- a/old/55113-h/55113-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5117 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> - <title>From The Log of The "Velsa", by Arnold Bennett</title> - <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" /> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} - .x-small {font-size: 75%;} - .small {font-size: 85%;} - .large {font-size: 115%;} - .x-large {font-size: 130%;} - .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} - .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} - .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} - .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} - .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} - .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; - font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; - text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; - border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} - .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} - span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of From The Log of The "Velsa", by Arnold Bennett - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: From The Log of The "Velsa" - -Author: Arnold Bennett - -Illustrator: E. A. Rickards - Arnold Bennett - -Release Date: July 15, 2017 [EBook #55113] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM THE LOG OF THE "VELSA" *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - FROM THE LOG OF THE VELSA - </h1> - <h2> - By Arnold Bennett - </h2> - <h3> - Pictures By E. A. Rickards - </h3> - <h3> - And A Frontispiece By The Author - </h3> - <h4> - New York: The Century Co. - </h4> - <h3> - 1914 - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0008.jpg" alt="0008 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0008.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>FROM THE LOG OF THE VELSA</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART"> <b>PART I HOLLAND</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I—VOYAGING ON THE CANALS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II—DUTCH LEISURE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III—DUTCH WORK </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV—THE ZUYDER ZEE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V—SOME TOWNS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI—MUSEUMS </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART II—THE BALTIC</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII—THE YACHT I LOST </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII—BALTIC COMMUNITIES </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX—A day’s SAIL </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART3"> <b>PART III COPENHAGEN</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X—THE DANISH CAPITAL </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI—CAFÉS AND RESTAURANTS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII—ARISTOCRACY AND ART </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII—THE RETURN </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART4"> <b>PART IV—ON THE FRENCH AND FLEMISH COAST</b> - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV—FOLKESTONE TO BOULOGNE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV—TO BELGIUM </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI—BRUGES </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART5"> <b>PART V—EAST ANGLIAN ESTUARIES</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII EAST ANGLIA </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII—IN SUFFOLK </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX—THE INCOMPARABLE BLACKWATER - </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - FROM THE LOG OF THE VELSA - </h1> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART I HOLLAND - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I—VOYAGING ON THE CANALS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE skipper, who, - in addition to being a yachtsman, is a Dutchman, smiled with calm - assurance as we approached the Dutch frontier in the August evening over - the populous water of the canal which leads from Ghent to Terneuzen. He - could not abide Belgium, possibly because it is rather like Holland in - some ways. In his opinion the bureaucrats of Belgium did not understand - yachts and the respect due to them, whereas the bureaucrats of Holland - did. Holland was pictured for me as a paradise where a yacht with a - seventy-foot mast never had to wait a single moment for a bridge to be - swung open. When I inquired about custom-house formalities, I learned that - a Dutch custom-house did not exist for a craft flying the sacred blue - ensign of the British Naval Reserve. And it was so. Merely depositing a - ticket and a tip into the long-handled butterfly-net dangled over our deck - by the bridge-man as we passed, we sailed straight into Holland, and no - word said! But we knew immediately that we were in another country—a - country cleaner and neater and more garnished even than Belgium. The - Terneuzen Canal, with its brickwork banks and its villages “finished” to - the last tile, reminded me of the extravagant, oily perfection of the main - tracks of those dandiacal railroads, the North Western in England and the - Pennsylvania in America. The stiff sailing breeze was at length favorable. - We set the mainsail unexceptionably; and at once, with the falling dusk, - the wind fell, and the rain too. We had to depend again on our erratic - motor, with all Holland gazing at us. Suddenly the whole canal was lit up - on both sides by electricity. We responded with our lights. The - exceedingly heavy rain drove me into the saloon to read Dostoyevsky. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0019.jpg" alt="0019 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0019.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - At eight P. M. I was dug up out of the depths of Dostoyevsky in order to - see my first Dutch harbor. Rain poured through the black night. There was - a plashing of invisible wavelets below, utter darkness above, and a few - forlorn lights winking at vast distances. I was informed that we were - moored in the yacht-basin of Terneuzen. I remained calm. Had we been - moored in the yacht-basin of Kamchatka, the smell of dinner would still - have been issuing from the forecastle-hatch, the open page of Dostoyevsky - would still have invited me through the saloon skylight, and the amiable - ray of the saloon lamp would still have glinted on the piano and on the - binnacle with impartial affection. Herein lies an advantage of yachting - over motoring. I redescended without a regret, without an apprehension. - Already the cook was displacing Dostoyevsky in favor of a white - table-cloth and cutlery. - </p> - <p> - The next morning we were at large on the billow’s of the West Schelde, a - majestic and enraged stream, of which Flushing is the guardian and Antwerp - the mistress. The rain had in no wise lost heart. With a contrary wind and - a choppy sea, the yacht had a chance to show her qualities and defects. - She has both. Built to the order of a Dutch baron rather less than twenty - years ago, she is flat-bottomed, with lee-boards, and follows closely the - lines of certain very picturesque Dutch fishing-smacks. She has a length - of just over fifty-five feet and a beam of just over fifteen feet. Her - tonnage is fifty-one, except when dues have to be paid, on which serious - occasions it mysteriously shrinks to twenty-one net. Yachtsmen are always - thus modest. Her rig is, roughly, that of a cutter, with a deliciously - curved gaff that is the secret envy of all real cutters. - </p> - <p> - Her supreme advantage, from my point of view, is that she has well over - six feet of head-room in the saloon and in the sleeping-cabins. And, next, - that the owner’s bed is precisely similar to the celestial bed which he - enjoyed on a certain unsurpassed American liner. Further, she carries a - piano and an encyclopedia, two necessaries of life. I may say that I have - never known another yacht that carried an encyclopedia in more than a - score of volumes. Again, she is eternal. She has timbers that recall those - of the <i>Constitution</i>. There are Dutch eel-boats on the Thames which - look almost exactly like her at a distance, and which were launched before - Victoria came to the throne. She has a cockpit in which Hardy might have - kissed Nelson. She sails admirably with a moderate wind on the quarter. - More important still, by far, she draws only three feet eight inches, and - hence can often defy charts, and slide over sands where deep-draft boats - would rightly fear to tread; she has even been known to sail through - fields. - </p> - <p> - Possibly for some folk her chief attribute would be that, once seen, she - cannot be forgotten. She is a lovely object, and not less unusual than - lovely. She is smart also, but nothing more dissimilar to the average - smart, conventional English or American yacht can well be conceived. She - is a magnet for the curious. When she goes under a railway bridge while a - train is going over it, the engine-driver, of no matter what nationality, - will invariably risk the lives of all his passengers in order to stare at - her until she is out of sight. This I have noticed again and again. The - finest compliment her appearance ever received was paid by a schoolboy, - who, after staring at her for about a quarter of an hour as she lay at a - wharf at Kingston-on-Thames, sidled timidly up to me as I leaned in my - best maritime style over the quarter, and asked, “Please, sir, is this a - training brig?” Romance gleamed in that boy’s eye. - </p> - <p> - As for her defects, I see no reason why I should catalogue them at equal - length. But I admit that, to pay for her headroom, she has no - promenade-deck for the owner and his friends to “pace,” unless they are - prepared to exercise themselves on the roof of the saloon. Also that, - owing to her shallowness, she will ignobly blow off when put up to the - wind. Indeed, the skipper himself, who has proved that she will live in - any sea, describes her progress under certain conditions as “one mile - ahead and two miles to leeward”; but he would be hurt if he were taken - seriously. Her worst fault is due to her long, overhanging prow, which - pounds into a head sea with a ruthlessness that would shake the funnels - off a torpedo-boat. You must not press her. Leave her to do her best, and - she will do it splendidly; but try to bully her, and she will bury her - nose and defy you. - </p> - <p> - That morning on the wide, broad Schelde, with driving rain, and an - ever-freshening northwester worrying her bows, she was not pressed, and - she did not sink; but her fierce gaiety was such as to keep us all alive. - She threshed the sea. The weather multiplied, until the half-inch wire - rope that is the nerve between the wheel and the rudder snapped, and we - were at the mercy, etc. While the skipper, with marvelous resource and - rapidity, was improvising a new gear, it was discovered amid general - horror, that the piano had escaped from its captivity, and was lying - across the saloon table. Such an incident counts in the life of an amateur - musician. Still, under two hours later, I was playing the same piano again - in the tranquillity of Flushing lock. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0026.jpg" alt="0026 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0026.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - It was at Middelburg that the leak proved its existence. Middelburg is an - architecturally delightful town even in heavy, persevering rain and a - northwest gale. It lies on the canal from Flushing to Veere, and its - belfry had been a beacon to us nearly all the way down the Schelde from - Temeuzen. Every English traveler stares at its renowned town-hall; and - indeed the whole place, having been till recently the haunt of more or - less honest English racing tipsters and book-makers, must be endeared to - the British sporting character. We went forth into the rain and into the - town, skirting canals covered with timber-rafts, suffering the lively - brutishness of Dutch infants, and gazing at the bare-armed young women - under their umbrellas. We also found a goodish restaurant. - </p> - <p> - When we returned at nine P. M., the deck-hand, a fatalistic philosopher, - was pumping. He made a sinister figure in the dark. And there was the - sound of the rain on our umbrellas, and the sound of the pumped water - pouring off our decks down into the unseen canal. I asked him why he was - pumping at that hour. He answered that the ship leaked. It did. The - forecastle floor was under an inch of water, and water was pushing up the - carpet of the starboard sleeping-cabin, and all the clean linen in the - linen-locker was drenched. In a miraculous and terrifying vision, which - changed the whole aspect of yachting as a recreation, I saw the yacht at - the bottom of the canal. I should not have had this vision had the skipper - been aboard; but the skipper was ashore, unfolding the beauties of Holland - to the cook. I knew the skipper would explain and cure the leak in an - instant. A remarkable man, Dutch only by the accident of birth and - parentage, active as a fox-terrier, indefatigable as a camel, adventurous - as Columbus, and as prudent as J. Pierpont Morgan, he had never failed me. - Half his life had been spent on that yacht, and the other half on the - paternal barge. He had never lived regularly in a house. Consequently he - was an expert of the very first order on the behavior of Dutch barges - under all conceivable conditions. While the ship deliberately sank and - sank, the pumping monotonously continued, and I waited in the saloon for - him to come back. Dostoyevsky had no hold on me whatever. The skipper - would not come back: he declined utterly to come back; he was lost in the - mazy vastness of Middelburg. - </p> - <p> - Then I heard his voice forward. He had arrived in silence. “I hear our - little ship has got a leak, sir,” he said when I joined the group of - professional mariners on the forward deck, in the thick rain that veiled - even gas-lamps. I was disappointed. The skipper was depressed, - sentimentally depressed, and he was quite at a loss. Was the leak caused - by the buffetings of the Schelde, by the caprices of the piano, by the - stress of working through crowded locks? He knew not. But he would swear - that the leak was not in the bottom, because the bottom was double. The - one thing to do was to go to Veere, and put the ship on a grid that he was - aware of in the creek there, and find the leak. And, further, there were a - lot of other matters needing immediate attention. The bob-stay was all to - pieces, both pumps were defective, and the horn for rousing lethargic - bridge-men would not have roused a rabbit. All which meant for him an - expedition to Flushing, that bustling port! - </p> - <p> - The ship was pumped dry. But the linen was not dry. I wanted to spread it - out in the saloon; but the skipper would not permit such an outrage on the - sanctity of the saloon, he would not even let the linen rest in the saloon - lavatory (sometimes called the bath-room). It must be hidden like a shame - in the forecastle. So the crew retired for the night to the sodden, small - forecastle amid soaked linen, while I reposed in dry and comfortable - spaciousness, but worried by those sociological considerations which are - the mosquitos of a luxurious age—and which ought to be. None but a - tyrant convinced of the divine rights of riches could be always at ease on - board a small yacht; on board a large one, as in a house, the contrasts - are less point-blank. And yet must small yachts he abolished? Absurd idea! - Civilization is not so simple an affair as it seems to politicians - perorating before immense audiences. - </p> - <p> - Owing to the obstinacy of water in finding its own level, we went to bed - more than once during that night, and I thought of selling the ship and - giving to the poor. What a declension from the glory of the original - embarkation! - </p> - <p> - The next afternoon, through tempests and an eternal downpour, we reached - Veere, at the other end of the canal. Veere is full of Scotch history and - of beauty; it has a cathedral whose interior is used by children as a - field, a gem of a town-hall, and various attractions less striking; but - for us it existed simply as a place where there was a grid, to serve the - purpose of a dry-dock. On the following morning we got the yacht onto the - grid, and then began to wait for the tide to recede. During its - interminable recession, we sat under a shed of the shipyard, partly - sheltered from the constant rain, and labored to produce abominable - watercolors of the yacht, with the quay and the cathedral and the - town-hall as a background. And then some one paddling around the yacht in - the dinghy perceived a trickle out of a seam. The leak! It was naught but - the slight starting of a seam! No trace of other damage. In an hour it had - been repaired with oakum and hammers, and covered with a plaster of - copper. The steering-gear was repaired. The pumps were repaired. The - bobstay was repaired. The water-color looked less abominable in the - discreet, kindly light of the saloon. The state of human society seemed - less volcanically dangerous. God was in His heaven. “I suppose you’d like - to start early to-morrow morning, sir,” said the skipper, whose one desire - in life is to go somewhere else. I said I should. - </p> - <p> - I went ashore with the skipper to pay bills—four gulden for repairs - and three gulden for the use of the grid. It would have been much more but - for my sagacity in having a Dutch skipper. The charming village proved to - be virtually in the possession of one of those formidable English families - whose ladies paint in water-colors when no golf-course is near. They ran - ecstatically about the quay with sheets of Whatman until the heavy rain - melted them. The owner of the grid lived in a large house with a most - picturesque façade. Inside it was all oilcloth, red mahogany, and crimson - plush, quite marvelously hideous. The shipwright was an old, jolly man, - with white whiskers spreading like a peacock’s tail. He gave us cigars to - pass the time while he accomplished the calligraphy of a receipt. He was a - man sarcastic about his women (of whom he had many), because they would - not let him use the <i>voor-kammer</i> (front room) to write receipts in. - I said women were often the same in England, and he gave a short laugh at - England. Nevertheless, he was proud of his women, because out of six - daughters five had found husbands, a feat of high skill in that island of - Walcheren, where women far outnumber men. - </p> - <p> - Outside, through the mullioned window, I saw a young matron standing - nonchalant and unprotected in the heavy rain. She wore an elaborate local - costume, with profuse gilt ornaments. The effect of these Dutch costumes - is to suggest that the wearer carries only one bodice, thin and armless, - but ten thousand skirts. Near the young matron was a girl of seven or - eight, dressed in a fashion precisely similar, spectacle exquisite to - regard, but unsatisfactory to think about. Some day all these women will - put on long sleeves and deprive themselves of a few underskirts, and all - the old, jolly men with spreading white beards will cry out that women are - unsexed and that the end of the world is nigh. In another house I bought a - fisherman’s knitted blue jersey of the finest quality, as being the sole - garment capable of keeping me warm in a Dutch summer. I was told that the - girl who knitted it received only half a gulden for her labor. Outrageous - sweating, which ought never to have been countenanced. Still, I bought the - jersey. - </p> - <p> - At six-thirty next day we were under way—a new ship, as it seemed to - me. Yachts may have leaks, but we were under way, and the heavenly smell - of bacon was in the saloon; and there had been no poring over time-tables, - no tipping of waiters, no rattling over cobbles in omnibuses, no waiting - in arctic railway-stations, no pugnacity for corner seats, no checking of - baggage. I was wakened by the vibration of the propeller; I clad myself in - a toga, and issued forth to laugh good-by at sleeping Veere—no other - formalities. And all along the quay, here and there, I observed an open - window among the closed ones. Each open window denoted for me an English - water-colorist sleeping, even as she or he had rushed about the quay, with - an unconcealed conviction of spiritual, moral, and physical superiority. - It appeared to me monstrous that these English should be so ill bred as to - inflict their insular notions about fresh air on a historic Continental - town. Every open window was an arrogant sneer at Dutch civilization, was - it not? Surely they could have slept with their windows closed for a few - weeks! Or, if not, they might have chosen Amsterdam instead of Veere, and - practised their admirable Englishness on the “Victorian Tea-Room” in that - city. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0035.jpg" alt="0035 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0035.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - We passed into the Veeregat and so into the broad Roompot Channel, and - left Veere. It was raining heavily, but gleams near the horizon allowed me - to hope that before the day was out I might do another water-color. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II—DUTCH LEISURE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>VERY tourist knows - that Holland is one of the historic cradles of political freedom, and also - a chain of cities which are in effect museums of invaluable art. The - voyager in a little ship may learn that in addition to all this Holland is - the home of a vast number of plain persons who are under the necessity of - keeping themselves alive seven days a week, and whose experiments in the - adventure of living have an interest quite equal to the interest of - ancient art. To judge that adventure in its final aspect, one should see - Holland on a Sunday, and not the Holland of the cities, but of the little - towns. - </p> - <p> - We came one Sunday morning to a place called Zieriksee, on an island to - the north of the East Schelde. Who has heard of Zieriksee? Nevertheless, - Zieriksee exists, and seven thousand people prosecute the adventure - therein without the aid of museums and tourists. At first, from the mouth - of its private canal, it seems to be a huge, gray tower surrounded by - tiniest doll’s-houses with vermilion roofs; and as you approach, the tower - waxes, until the stones of it appear sufficient to build the whole - borough; then it wanes, and is lost in the town, as all towers ultimately - are. The cobbled quay and streets were empty as we moored. And in an - instant a great crowd sprang up out of the earth,—men and boys and - girls, but few women,—staring, glaring, giggling, gabbling, pushing. - Their inquisitiveness had no shame, no urbanity. Their cackle deafened. - They worried the <i>Velsa</i> like starving wolves worrying a deer. The <i>Velsa</i> - was a godsend, unhoped for in the enormous and cruel tedium which they had - created for themselves. To escape them we forced our way ashore, and trod - the clean, deathlike, feet-torturing streets. One shop was open; we - entered it, and were supplied with cigarettes by two polite and gracious - very old women who knew no English. On emerging from this paganism, we met - a long, slow-slouching, gloomy procession of sardonic human beings,—not - a pretty woman among them, not a garment that was comely or unclean or - unrespectable, not a smile,—the great, faithful congregation - marching out of the great church. Here was the life of leisure in Holland - as distinguished from the week-day life of industry. It was a tragic - spectacle. When we returned to the yacht, the other congregation was still - around it. And it was still there, just as noisy and boorish, when we left - several hours later. And it would still have been there if we had remained - till midnight. The phenomenon of that crowd, wistful in its touching - desire for distraction, was a serious criticism of the leaders of men in - Holland. As we slid away, we could see the crowd rapidly dissolving into - the horror of its original ennui. I asked the cook, a cockney, what he - thought of Zieriksee. - </p> - <p> - His face lightened to a cheerful smile. - </p> - <p> - “Rather a nice sort of place, sir. More like England.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0040.jpg" alt="0040 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0040.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The same afternoon we worked up the Schelde in a dead calm to Zijpe. The - rain had pretermitted for the first time, and the sun was hot. Zijpe is a - village, a haven, a dike, and a junction of train and steamer. The village - lies about a mile inland. The haven was pretty full of barges laid up for - Sunday. On the slopes of the haven, near the railway-station and the - landing-stage, a multitude of at least a thousand people were strolling to - and fro or sitting on the wet grass, all in their formidable Sabbath best. - We joined them, in order, if possible, to learn the cause of the - concourse; but the mystery remained for one hour and a half in the - eventless expanse of the hot afternoon, when the train came in over the - flat, green leagues of landscape. We then understood. The whole of Zijpe - had turned out to see the afternoon train come in! It was a simple modest - Dutch local train, making a deal of noise and dust, and bearing perhaps a - score of passengers. But it marked the grand climacteric of leisured - existence at Zijpe. We set off to the village, and discovered a village - deserted, and a fair-ground, with all its booths and circuses swathed up - in gray sheeting. Scarcely a soul! The spirit of romance had pricked them - all to the railway-station to see the train come in! - </p> - <p> - Making a large circuit, we reached again the river and the dike, and - learned what a dike is in Holland. From the top of it we could look down - the chimneys of houses on the landward side. The population was now on the - dike, promenading in magnificent solemnity and self-control. Everybody - gravely saluted us in passing. We gravely saluted everybody, and had not a - moment to ourselves for miles. - </p> - <p> - “Over there,” said the skipper afterward, pointing vaguely to the - southeast over the Schelde, “they ’re Roman Catholics. There ’s - a lot of Spaniards left in Holland.” By Spaniards he meant Dutchmen with - some Spanish blood. - </p> - <p> - “Then they enjoy their Sundays?” I suggested. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he answered sarcastically, “they enjoy their Sundays. They put - their playing-cards in their pockets before they go to church, and then - they go straight from the church to the café, and play high, and as like - as not knife each other before they ’ve done.” Clearly it takes all - sorts to make a little world like Holland, and it is difficult to strike - the mean between absolute nullity and homicidal knives. My regret is that - the yacht never got as far as those Spaniards gaming and knifing in cafés. - </p> - <p> - On Monday morning every skipper on every river and canal of Holland tries - to prove that the stagnation of Sunday is only a clever illusion. The East - Schelde hummed with express barges at five A. M. It was exactly like a - Dutch picture by an old master. Even we, in no hurry, with a strong tide - under us and a rising northwester behind us, accomplished fifteen - sea-miles in ninety minutes. Craft were taking shelter from the threatened - gale. In spite of mistakes by an English crew unaccustomed to a heavy - mainsail in tortuous navigation and obstreperous weather, we reached - Dordrecht railway bridge without public shame; and then the skipper - decided that our engine could not be trusted to push us through the narrow - aperture against wind and tide. Hence we bargained with a tug, and were - presently attached thereto, waiting for the bridge to open. - </p> - <p> - Considering that Holland is a country where yachts are understood, and - where swing-bridges open at a glance, we had to wait some little time for - that bridge; namely, three hours. The patriotism of the skipper was - strained. During the whole period the tug rushed to and fro, frisking us - wildly about like a kettle at the tail of a busy dog, and continuously - collecting other kettles, so that our existence was one long shock and - collision. But we saw a good deal of home life on the barges, from a minor - barge which a girl will steer to the three-thousand-ton affair that - surpasses mail steamers in capacity. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0045.jpg" alt="0045 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0045.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - There are two homes on these monsters, one at the stem and the other at - the stern; the latter is frequently magnificent in spaciousness and - gilding. That the two families in the two distant homes are ever intimate - is impossible, that they are even acquainted is improbable; but they seem - to share a tireless dog, who runs incessantly along the leagues of - planking which separate them. - </p> - <p> - The bridge did at last open, and everything on the river, unmindful of - everything else, rushed headlong at the opening, like a crowd of sinners - dashing for a suddenly unbarred door into heaven. Our tug jerked us into - the throng, a fearful squeeze, and we were through. We cast off, the - gulden were collected in a tin, and within five minutes we were moored in - the New Haven, under the lee of the Groote Kerk, with trees all around us, - in whose high tops a full gale was now blowing. - </p> - <p> - The next morning our decks were thickly carpeted with green leaves, a - singular sight. The harbor-master came aboard to demand dues, and demanded - them in excellent English. - </p> - <p> - “Where did you learn English?” I asked, and he answered with strange - pride: - </p> - <p> - “Sir, I served seven years under the British flag.” - </p> - <p> - Standing heedless in the cockpit, under driving rain, he recounted the - casualties of the night. Fifteen miles higher up the river a - fifteen-hundred-ton barge had sunk, and the master and crew, consisting, - <i>inter alia</i>, of all his family, were drowned. I inquired how such an - event could happen in a narrow river amid a numerous population, and - learned that in rough weather these barges anchor when a tug can do no - more with them, and the crew go to bed and sleep. The water gradually - washes in and washes in, until the barge is suddenly and silently - engulfed. Dutch phlegm! Corresponding to their Sabbatic phlegm, no doubt. - Said the harbor-master: - </p> - <p> - “Yes, there is a load-line, but they never takes no notice of it in - Holland; they just loads them up till they won’t hold any more.” - </p> - <p> - The fatalism of the working-classes everywhere is perhaps the most utterly - astounding of all human phenomena. - </p> - <p> - Thoughtful, I went off to examine the carved choir-stalls in the Groote - Kerk. These choir-stalls are among the most lovely sights in Holland. - Their free, fantastic beauty is ravishing and unforgetable; they make you - laugh with pleasure as you behold them. I doubt not that they were - executed by a rough-tongued man, in a dirty apron, with shocking - finger-nails. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0052.jpg" alt="0052 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0052.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III—DUTCH WORK - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e passed through - Rotterdam more than once, without seeing more of it than the amazing - traffic of its river and its admirable zoological gardens full of - chromatically inclined parrots; but we stopped at a minor town close by, - on a canal off the Meuse, Schiedam. Instinct must have guided me, for the - sociological interest of Schiedam was not inconsiderable. Schiedam is - called by the Dutch “stinking Schiedam.” I made a circuit of the town - canals in the dinghy and convinced myself that the epithet was just and - not malicious. On the lengthy quays were a large number of very dignified - gin distilleries, whose architecture was respectable and sometimes even - very good, dating from perhaps early in the last century. Each had a - baptismal name, such as “Liverpool,” inscribed in large letters across its - façade. This rendering decent and this glorification of gin constituted an - impressive phenomenon. But it was the provinciality and the uncouth - melancholy of the apparently prosperous town that took my fancy. We walked - through all its principal streets in the rain, and I thought I had never - seen a provinciality so exquisitely painful and perfect. In this city of - near thirty thousand people there was not visible one agreeably imposing - shop, or one woman attired with intent to charm, or one yard of smooth - pavement. I know not why I find an acrid pleasure in thus beholding - mediocrity, the average, the everyday ordinary, as it is; but I do. No - museum of Amsterdam, The Hague, or Haarlem touched me so nearly as the - town of Schiedam, which, after all, I suppose I must have liked. - </p> - <p> - Toward six o’clock we noticed an unquiet, yet stodgy, gathering in the - square where is the electric-tram terminus, then a few uniforms. I asked a - superior police officer what there was. He said in careful, tranquil - English: - </p> - <p> - “There is nothing. But there is a strike of glass-workers in the town. - Some of them don’t want to work, and some of them do want to work. Those - that have worked to-day are being taken home in automobiles. That is all.” - </p> - <p> - I was glad it was all, for from his manner I had expected him to continue - to the effect that the glass-workers had been led away by paid agitators - and had no good reason to strike. The automobiles began to come along, at - intervals, at a tremendous pace, each with a policeman by the chauffeur’s - side. In one was a single artisan, middle-aged, with a cigar in the corner - of his mouth, and a certain adventurous look in his eye. The crowd grimly - regarded. The police tried to seem as if they were there by accident, but - obviously they lacked histrionic training. In short, the scene was one of - the common objects of the wayside of existence all over the civilized - world. It presented no novelty whatever, and yet to witness it in Holland - was piquant, and caused one to think afresh and perhaps more clearly. - </p> - <p> - At night, when it had ceased to rain. I was escorting a friend to the - station. Musicians were climbing up into the bandstand in the same square. - It was Wednesday, the evening of the weekly municipal concert. The - railway-station, far out, was superbly gloomy, and it was the only station - in Holland where I failed to get a non-Dutch newspaper. The train, with - the arrogance of an international express, slid in, slid out, and forgot - Schiedam. I emerged from the station alone. A one-horse tram was waiting. - </p> - <p> - The tram, empty, with a sinking, but everlasting, white horse under a - yellow cloth, was without doubt the most provincial and melancholy thing - that destiny has yet brought me in contact with. The simple spectacle of - it, in the flickering gaslights and in the light of its own lamps, filled - the heart, with an anguish inexplicable and beautiful. I got in. An age - passed. Then an old workman got in, and saluted; I saluted. Save for the - saluting, it was the Five Towns of the eighties over again, intensified, - and the last tram out of Hanbridge before the theater-tram. - </p> - <p> - An age passed. Then a mysterious figure drew the cloth off the horse, and - the horse braced up all its four legs. We were starting when a - tight-folded umbrella waved in the outer obscurity. An elderly, - easy-circumstanced couple arrived upon us with deliberation; the umbrella - was a good one. - </p> - <p> - We did start. We rumbled and trundled in long curves of suburban - desolation. Then a few miserable shops that ought to have been shut; then - the square once more, now jammed in every part with a roaring, barbaric - horde. In the distance, over a floor of heads, was an island of - illumination, with the figures of puffing and blowing musicians in it; but - no rumor of music could reach us through the din. The white horse trotted - mildly into and right through the multitude, which jeered angrily, but - fell back. An enormous multitude, Gothic, Visi-gothic, savage, - uncivilized, chiefly consisting of young men and big boys—the weekly - concert of humanizing music! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0057.jpg" alt="0057 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0057.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - I left the tram, and walked along the dark, empty canal-side to the yacht. - The impression of stagnation, tedium, provincialism was overwhelming. - Nevertheless, here, as in other towns, we were struck by the number of - shop-windows with artist’s materials for sale. Such was Schiedam. If it is - asked whether I went to Holland on a yachting cruise to see this sort of - thing, the answer is that I just did. - </p> - <p> - After a few weeks I began to perceive that Schiedam and similar places, - though thrilling, were not the whole of Holland, and perhaps not the most - representative of Holland. As the yacht worked northward, Holland seemed - to grow more Dutch, until, in the chain of shallow lakes and channels that - hold Friesland in a sort of permanent baptism, we came to what was for me - the ideal or celestial Holland—everything done by water, even grass - cut under water, and black-and-white cows milked in the midst of ponds, - and windmills over the eternal flatness used exclusively to shift - inconvenient water from one level to another. The road is water in - Friesland, and all the world is on the road. If your approach to a town is - made perilous by a succession of barges that will obstinately keep the - middle of the channel, you know that it is market-day in that town, and - the farmers are rolling home in agreeable inebriation. - </p> - <p> - The motor broke down in Friesland, and we were immobolized in the midst of - blue-green fields, red dogs, the cows aforesaid, green milk-floats, - blue-bloused sportsmen, and cargoes of cannon-ball cheese. We decided to - tow the yacht until we got to a favorable reach. Certain barges sailed - past us right into the eye of the wind, against all physical laws, but the - <i>Velsa</i> possessed not this magic. We saw three men comfortably towing - a string of three huge barges, and we would tow. Unfortunately the only - person, the skipper, who knew how to tow had to remain on board. The cook, - the deck-hand, and I towed like Greeks pulling against Greeks, and could - scarcely move one little yacht. The cook, neurasthenic by temperament, - grew sad, until he fell into three feet of inundation, which adventure - struck him as profoundly humorous, so that he was contorted with laughter. - This did not advance the yacht. Slowly we learned that towing is not mere - brute striving, but an art. - </p> - <p> - We at last came to terms with a tug, as our desire was to sleep at Sneek. - Sneek is the veritable metropolis of those regions. After passing, at late - dusk, the mysterious night-watchers of eel-nets, who are wakened in their - elaborate green-and-yellow boats by a bell, like a Paris concierge, we - gradually emerged into nocturnal Sneek through a quadruple lane of barges - and tugs so long as to put Sneek among the seven great ports of the world. - And even in Sneek at nightfall the impression of immense quantities of - water and of greenness, yellowness, and redness was continued. It rained, - as usual, in Sneek the next day, but no rain and no water could damp - Sneek. It was the most active town any of us had ever seen. It must have - been the original “hive of industry.” It was full, and full of everything. - The market was full of cattle, pigs, and sheep, crowded in pens and in - carts; calves, prone, with all four legs tied together, filled acres of - pavement. The cafés were full of dealers and drovers, mostly rather jolly, - being served by slatternly, pleasant women. The streets were full of good - shops, and of boys and girls following us and touching us to see if we - existed. (Dreadful little boors!) The barges were full of cauliflowers, - cabbages, apples, potatoes, sabots, cheeses, and barrels. The canals were - full of barges and steamers. - </p> - <p> - And immediately one sat down to sketch a group of craft one learned that - nothing was stationary. Everything moved that floated—everything on - the surface of miles of canal! Everybody, without haste, but without - stopping ever, was tirelessly engaged in shifting matter from one spot to - another. At intervals a small steamer, twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty tons, - would set off for a neighboring village with a few passengers,—including - nice girls,—a few cattle, and high piles of miscellaneous packages; - or would come in from a neighboring village. The kaleidoscope was - everlasting; but it did not fatigue, because it never hurried. Only it - made us ashamed of our idleness. Gently occupied old country-women, with - head-dresses of lace-work and a gold casque, the whole ridiculously - surmounted by a black bonnet for fashion’s sake—even these old women - made us ashamed of our untransporting idleness. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0063.jpg" alt="0063 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0063.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Having got our engine more or less repaired, we departed from Sneek, a - spot that beyond most spots abounds in its own individuality. Sneek is - memorable. Impossible to credit that it has fewer than thirteen thousand - inhabitants! - </p> - <p> - As, at breakfast, we dropped down the canal on the way to Leeuwarden, a - new guest on board, whose foible is the search for the ideal, and who had - been declaiming against the unattractiveness of the women of Munich, spoke - thus: - </p> - <p> - “Is this Dutch bread? I think I should like to become a Dutchman, and live - at Sneek, and marry a Dutch girl. They have such nice blue eyes, and they - ‘re so calm.” - </p> - <p> - I remarked that I should have thought that his recent experiences in - Munich would have frightened him right off the entire sex. He said: - </p> - <p> - “Well, they ‘re all beautiful in Vienna, and that worries you just as much - in another way. Sneek is the mean.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV—THE ZUYDER ZEE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E reached the - Zuyder Zee, out of a canal, at Monnikendam, which is a respectably - picturesque townlet and the port of embarkation for Marken, the alleged - jewel of the Zuyder Zee, the precious isle where the customs and the - costumes of a pure age are mingled with the prices of New York for the - instruction of tourists. We saw Marken, but only from the mainland, a - long, serrated silhouette on the verge. The skipper said that Marken was a - side-show and a swindle, and a disgrace to his native country. So I - decided to cut it out of the program, and be the owner of the only foreign - yacht that had cruised in the Zuyder Zee without visiting Marken. My real - reason was undoubtedly that the day’s program had been upset by undue - lolling in the second-hand shops of Monnikendam. Thus we sailed due north - for Hoorn, secretly fearing that at Marken there might be something - lovely, unforgetable, that we had missed. - </p> - <p> - The Zuyder is a sea agreeable to sail upon, provided you don’t mind rain, - and provided your craft does not draw more than about six feet. It has the - appearance of a sea, but we could generally touch the bottom with our - sounding-pole; after all, it is not a sea, but a submerged field. The - skipper would tell inclement stories of the Zuyder Zee under ice, and how - he had crossed it on foot between Enkhuizen and Stavoren, risking his life - for fun; and how he had been obliged to recross it the next day, with more - fatigue, as much risk, and far less fun, because there was no other way - home. We ourselves knew it only as a ruffled and immense pond, with a - bracing atmosphere and the silhouettes of diminished trees and houses - sticking up out of its horizons here and there. When these low silhouettes - happen to denote your destination, they have the strange faculty of - receding from your prow just as fast as you sail toward them, a magic sea - of an exquisite monotony; and when you arrive anywhere, you are so - surprised at having overtaken the silhouette that your arrival is a dream, - in the unreal image of a city. - </p> - <p> - The one fault of Hoorn is that it is not dead. - </p> - <p> - We navigated the Zuyder Zee in order to see dead cities, and never saw - one. Hoorn is a delightful vision for the eye—beautiful domestic - architecture, beautiful warehouses, beautiful towers, beautiful - water-gate, beautiful aniline colors on the surface of dreadful canals. If - it were as near to London and Paris as Bruges is, it would be inhabited - exclusively by water-colorists. At Hoorn I went mad, and did eight - sketches in one day, a record which approaches my highest break at - billiards. Actually, it is inhabited by cheese-makers and dealers. No - other town, not even Chicago, can possibly contain so many cheeses per - head of the population as Hoorn. At Hoorn I saw three men in blue blouses - throwing down spherical cheeses in pairs from the second story of a brown - and yellow and green warehouse into a yellow cart. One man was in the - second story, one in the first, and one in the cart. They were flinging - cheeses from hand to hand when we arrived and when we left, and they never - dropped a cheese or ceased to fling. They flung into the mysterious night, - when the great forms of little cargo-steamers floated soundless over - romance to moor at the dark quays, and the long, white English - steam-yacht, with its two decks, and its chef and its flulfy chambermaid, - and its polished mahogany motor-launch, and its myriad lights and gleams, - glided to a berth by the water-tower, and hung there like a cloud beyond - the town, keeping me awake half the night while I proved to myself that I - did not really envy its owner and that the Velsa was really a much better - yacht. - </p> - -<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0070.jpg" alt="0070 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0070.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - - <p> - The recondite enchantment of Hoorn was intensified by the fact that the - English tongue was not current in it. I met only one Dutchman there who - spoke it even a little, a military officer. Being on furlough, he was - selling cigars in a cigar shop on behalf of his parents. Oh, British army - officer! Oh, West Point Academy! He told me that officers of the Dutch - army had to be able to speak English, French, and German. Oh, British army - officer! Oh, West Point Academy! But he did not understand the phrase - “East Indian cigar.” He said there were no such cigars in his parents’ - shop. When I said “Sumatra,” he understood, and fetched his mother. When I - said that I desired the finest cigars in Hoorn, his mother put away all - the samples already exhibited and fetched his father. The family had begun - to comprehend that a serious customer had strayed into the shop. The - father, in apron, with a gesture of solemnity and deference went - up-stairs, and returned in majesty with boxes of cigars that were warm to - the touch. “These are the best?” - </p> - <p> - “These are the best.” I bought. They were threepence apiece. - </p> - <p> - A mild, deliciously courteous family, recalling the tobacco-selling - sisters at Zieriksee, and a pair of tobacconist brothers in the - Kalver-Straat, Amsterdam, whose politeness and soft voices would have - atoned for a thousand Schiedams. The Hutch middle and upper classes have - adorable manners. It was an ordeal to quit the soothing tobacco shop for - the terrors of the long, exposed Iloorn High Street, infested, like too - many Hutch streets, by wolves and tigers in the outward form of dogs—dogs - that will threaten you for a milt and then bite, in order to prove that - they are of the race that has always ended by expelling invaders with - bloodshed. - </p> - <p> - I was safer in the yacht’s dinghy, on a surface of aniline hues, though - the odors were murderous, and though for two hours, while I sketched, - three violent young housewives were continually splashing buckets into the - canal behind me as they laved and scrubbed every separate stone on the - quay. If canals were foul, streets were as clean as table-tops—cleaner. - </p> - <p> - The other cities of the Zuyder Zee were not more dead than Hoorn, though - Enkhuizen, our next port, was more tranquil, possibly because we arrived - there on a Saturday evening. Enkhuizen, disappointing at the first glance, - exerts a more subtle fascination than Iloorn. However, I remember it as - the place where we saw another yacht come in, the owner steering, and foul - the piles at the entrance. My skipper looked at his owner, as if to say, - “You see what owners do when they take charge.” I admitted it. - </p> - <p> - We crossed from Enkhuizen to Stavoren in bad weather, lost the dinghy and - recovered it, and nearly lost the yacht, owing to the cook having taken to - his bunk without notice when it was imperative to shorten sail in a jiffy. - The last that I heard of this cook was that he had become an omnibus - conductor. Some people are born to rise, and the born omnibus conductor - will reach that estate somehow. He was a pleasant, sad young man, and - himself painted in water-colors. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0076.jpg" alt="0076 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0076.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - I dare say that at Stavoren we were too excited to notice the town; but I - know that it was a busy port. Lemmer also was busy, a severely practical - town, with a superb harbor-master, and a doctor who cured the cook. We - were disappointed with Kampen, a reputed beauty-spot, praised even by E. - V. Lucas, who never praises save on extreme provocation. Kampen has - architecture,—wonderful gates,—but it also has the crudest - pavements in Holland, and it does not smile hospitably, and the east wind - was driving through it, and the rain. The most agreeable corner of Kampen - was the charcoal-heated saloon of the yacht. We left Kampen, which - perhaps, after all, really was dead, on September 21. The morning was warm - and perfect. I had been afloat in various countries for seven weeks - continuously, and this was my first warm, sunny morning. In three hours we - were at the mouth of the tiny canal leading to Elburg. I was steering. - </p> - <p> - “Please keep the center of the channel,” the skipper enjoined me. - </p> - <p> - I did so, but we grounded. The skipper glanced at me as skippers are - privileged to glance at owners, but I made him admit that we were within - half an inch of the mathematical center of the channel. We got a line on - to the pier, and hauled the ship off the sand by brute force. When I had - seen El-burg, I was glad that this incident had occurred; for Elburg is - the pearl of the Zuyder. Where we, drawing under four feet, grounded at - high water in mid-channel, no smart, deep-draft English yacht with chefs - and chambermaids can ever venture. And assuredly tourists will not go to - Elburg by train. Elburg is safe. Therefore I feel free to mention the - town. - </p> - <p> - Smacks were following one another up the canal for the week-end surcease, - and all their long-colored <i>weins</i> (vanes) streamed in the wind - against the blue sky. And the charm of the inefficient canal was the - spreading hay-fields on each side, with big wagons, and fat horses that - pricked up their ears (doubtless at the unusual sight of our blue ensign), - and a young mother who snatched her rolling infant from the hay and held - him up to behold us. And then the skipper was excited by the spectacle of - his aged father’s trading barge, unexpectedly making for the same port, - with his mother, brother, and sister on deck—the crew! Arrived in - port, we lay under the enormous flank of this barge, and the skipper - boarded his old home with becoming placidity. - </p> - <p> - The port was a magnificent medley of primary colors, and the beautiful - forms of boats, and the heavy curves of dark, drying sails, all dom nated - by the toeing streaming in the hot sunshine. Every few minutes a smack - arrived, and took its appointed place for Sunday. The basin seemed to be - always full and always receptive. Nothing lacked for perfect - picturesqueness, even to a little ship-repairing yard, and an - establishment for raddling sails stretched largely out on green grass. The - town was separated from the basin by a narrow canal and a red-brick - water-gate. The main street ran straight away inland, and merged into an - avenue of yellowish-green trees. At intervals straight streets branched - off at right angles from the main. In the center of the burg was a square. - Everywhere rich ancient roofs, gables, masonry, and brickwork in Indian - reds and slaty-blues; everywhere glimpses of courtyards precisely imitated - from the pictures of Pieter de Hooch. The interior of the church was a - picture by Bosboom. It had a fine organ-case, and a sacristan out of a - late novel by Huysmans. - </p> - <p> - The churchyard was a mass of tall flowers. - </p> - <p> - The women’s costumes here showed a difference, the gilt casque being more - visibly divided into two halves. All bodices were black, all skirts blue. - Some of the fishermen make majestic figures, tall, proud, commanding, fit - adversaries of Alva; in a word, exemplifications of the grand manner. - Their salutes were sometimes royal. - </p> - <p> - The gaiety of the color; the distinction of the forms; the strange warmth; - the completeness of the entity of the town, which seemed to have been - constructed at one effort; the content of the inhabitants, especially the - visible, unconscious gladness of the women at the return of their - mariners; the urbanity of everybody—all these things helped to - produce a comfortable and yet disconcerting sensation that the old, - unreformed world was not quite ripe for utter destruction. - </p> - <p> - All day until late in the evening smacks ceased not to creep up the canal. - The aspect of the basin altered from minute to minute, with disastrous - effect on water-colorists. In the dusk we ferreted In a gloomy and - spellbound second-hand shop, amid dozens of rococo wall-clocks, and bought - a few little things. As we finally boarded the yacht in the dark, we could - see a group of sailors in a bosky arbor bending over a table on which was - a lamp that harshly lighted their grave faces. They may have thought that - they were calculating and apportioning the week’s profits; but in reality - they were playing at masterpieces by Rembrandt. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0081.jpg" alt="0081 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0081.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V—SOME TOWNS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>AARLEM is the - capital of a province, and has the airs of a minor metropolis. When we - moored in the Donkere Spaarne, all the architecture seemed to be saying to - us, with innocent pride, that this was the city of the illustrious Frans - Hals, and the only place where Frans Hals could be truly appreciated. - Haarlem did not stare at strangers, as did other towns. The shops in the - narrow, busy Saturday-night streets were small and slow, and it took us - most of an evening, in and out of the heavy rain, to buy three shawls, two - pairs of white stockings, and some cigarettes; but the shopmen and - shop-women, despite their ignorance of English, American, and French, - showed no openmouthed provinciality at our fantastic demands. The - impression upon us of the mysterious entity of the town was favorable; we - felt at home. - </p> - <p> - The yacht was just opposite the habitation of a nice middle-class family, - and on Sunday morning, through the heavy rain, I could see a boy of - sixteen, a girl of fourteen, and a child of five or six, all dressing - slowly together in a bedroom that overlooked us, while the father in - shirt-sleeves constantly popped to and fro. They were calmly content to - see and be seen. Presently father and son, still in shirt-sleeves, - appeared on the stoop, each smoking a cigar, and the girl above, arrayed - in Sunday white, moved about setting the bedroom in order. It was a - pleasant average sight, enhanced by the good architecture of the house, - and by a certain metropolitan self-unconsciousness. - </p> - <p> - We went to church later, or rather into a church, and saw beautiful models - of ships hung in the nave, and aged men entering, with their hats on and - good cigars in their mouths. For the rest, they resembled superintendents - of English Sunday-schools or sidesmen of small parishes. In another church - we saw a Sunday-school in full session, a parson in a high pulpit - exhorting, secretary and minor officials beneath him, and all the boys - standing up with shut eyes and all the girls sitting down with shut eyes. - We felt that we were perhaps in the most Protestant country in Europe. - </p> - <p> - In the afternoon, when the rain-clouds lifted for a few moments and the - museums were closed, we viewed the residential prosperity of Haarlem, of - which the chief seat is the Nieuwe Gracht, a broad canal, forbidden to - barges, flanked by broad quays beautifully paved in small red brick, and - magnificent houses. A feature of the noble architecture here was that the - light ornamentation round the front doors was carried up and round the - central windows of the first and second stories. A grand street! One - properly expected to see elegant women at the windows of these lovely - houses,—some were almost palaces,—and one was disappointed. - Women there were, for at nearly every splendid window, the family was - seated, reading, talking, gazing, or drinking tea; but all the women were - dowdy; the majority were middle-aged; none was beautiful or elegant. Nor - was any of the visible furniture distinguished. - </p> - <p> - The beauty of Haarlem seems to be limited to architecture, pavements, and - the moral comeliness of being neat and clean. The esthetic sense - apparently stops there. Charm must be regarded in Haarlem with suspicion, - as a quality dangerous and unrespectable. As daylight failed, the groups - within gathered closer and closer to the windows, to catch the last yellow - drops of it, and their curiosity about the phenomena of the streets grew - more frank. We were examined. In return we examined. And a discussion - arose as to whether inspection from within justified inquisitiveness from - the street. The decision was that it did not; that a person inside a house - had the right to quiz without being quizzed. But this merely academic - verdict was not allowed to influence our immediate deportment. In many - houses of the lesser streets tables were already laid for supper, and one - noticed heavy silver napkin-rings and other silver. In one house the - shadowy figures of a family were already grouped round a repast, and - beyond them, through another white-curtained window at the back of the - spacious room, could be discerned a dim courtyard full of green and yellow - foliage. This agreeable picture, typifying all the domestic tranquillity - and dignity of prosperous Holland, was the last thing we saw before the - dark and the rain fell, and the gas-lamps flickered in. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0087.jpg" alt="0087 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0087.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - We entered The Hague through canals pitted by heavy rain, the banks of - which showed many suburban residences, undistinguished, but set in the - midst of good gardens. And because it was the holiday week,—the week - containing the queen’s birthday,—and we desired quietude, we - obtained permission to lie at the private quay of the gasworks. The - creators of The Hague gas-works have made only one mistake: they ought to - have accomplished their act much earlier, so that Balzac might have - described it; for example, in “The Alkahest,” which has the best - imaginative descriptions of Dutch life yet written. The Hague gas-works - are like a toy, gigantic; but a toy. Impossible to believe that in this - vast, clean, scrubbed, swept expanse, where every bit of coal is - scrupulously in place, real gas is made. To believe, you must go into the - city and see the gas actually burning. Even the immense traveling-cranes, - when at work or otherwise, have the air of life-size playthings. Our quay - was bordered with flower-beds. The workmen, however, seemed quite real - workmen, realistically dirty, who were not playing at work, nor rising at - five-thirty a.m. out of mere joyous ecstasy. - </p> - <p> - Nor did the bargemen who day and night ceaselessly and silently propelled - their barges past us into the city by means of poles and sweat, seem to be - toying with existence. The procession of these barges never stopped. On - the queen’s birthday, when our ship was dressed, and the whole town was - flagged, it went on, just as the decorated trams and tram-drivers went on. - Some of the barges penetrated right through the populous districts, and - emerged into the oligarchic quarter of ministries, bureaus, official - residences, palaces, parks, art dealers, and shops of expensive lingerie—the - quarter, as in every capital, where the precious traditions of - correctness, patriotism, red-tape, order, luxury, and the moral grandeur - of devising rules for the nice conduct of others are carefully conserved - and nourished. This quarter was very well done, and the bargemen, with - their perspiring industry, might have had the good taste to keep out of - it. - </p> - <p> - The business center of The Hague, lying between the palaces and the - gas-works, is cramped, crowded, and unimpressive. The cafés do not - glitter, and everybody knows that the illumination of cafés in a capital - is a sure index of a nation’s true greatness. Many small cafés, veiled in - costly curtains at window and door, showed stray dazzling shafts of bright - light, but whether the true greatness of Holland was hidden in these - seductive arcana I never knew. Even in the holiday week the principal - cafés were emptying soon after ten o’clock. On the other hand, the large - stores were still open at that hour, and the shop-girls, whose pale faces - made an admirable contrast to their black robes, were still serving ladies - therein. At intervals, in the afternoons, one saw a chic woman, moving - with a consciousness of her own elegance; but she was very exceptional. - The rest might have run over for the day from Haarlem, Delft, Utrecht, or - Leyden. In the really excellent and well-frequented music-halls there was - no elegance either. I have never anywhere seen better music-hall - entertainments than in Holland. In certain major capitals of Europe and - elsewhere the public is apt to prove its own essential naïveté by allowing - itself to be swindled nightly in gorgeous music-halls. The Dutch are more - astute, if less elegant. - </p> - <p> - The dying engine of the yacht lost consciousness, for about the twentieth - time during this trip, as we were nearing Amsterdam; but a high wind, - carrying with it tremendous showers of rain, kindly blew us, under bare - poles, up the last half-mile of the North Sea Canal into the private haven - of the Royal Dutch Yacht-Club, where we were most amicably received, as, - indeed, in all the yacht-club basins of Holland. Baths, telephones, and - smoking-rooms were at our disposal without any charge, in addition to the - security of the haven, and it was possible to get taxicabs from the - somewhat distant city. We demanded a chauffeur who could speak English. - They sent us a taxi with two chauffeurs neither of whom could speak any - language whatsoever known to philologists. But by the use of maps and a - modification of the pictorial writing of the ancient Aztecs, we contrived - to be driven almost where we wanted. At the end of the excursion I had - made, in my quality of observer, two generalizations: first, that - Amsterdam taxis had two drivers for safety; and, second, that taxi-travel - in Amsterdam was very exciting and dangerous. But our drivers were so - amiable, soft-tongued, and energetic that I tipped them both. I then, - somehow, learned the truth: one of the men was driving a taxi for the - first time, and the other was teaching him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0094.jpg" alt="0094 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0094.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - After driving and walking about Amsterdam for several days, I decided that - it would be completely civilized when it was repaved, and not before. It - is the paradise of stomachs and the hell of feet. Happily, owing to its - canals and its pavements, it has rather fewer of the rash cyclists who - menace life in other Dutch cities. In Holland, outside Amsterdam, - everybody uses a cycle. If you are ran down, as you are, it is just as - likely to be by an aged and toothless female peasant as by an office boy. - Also there are fewer homicidal dogs in Amsterdam than elsewhere, and there - is the same general absence of public monuments which makes other Dutch - cities so agreeably strange to the English and American traveler. You can - scarcely be afflicted by a grotesque statue of a nonentity in Holland, - because there are scarcely any statues. - </p> - <p> - Amsterdam is a grand city, easily outclassing any other in Holland. Its - architecture is distinguished. Its historic past is impressively immanent - in the masonry of the city itself, though there is no trace of it in the - mild, commonplace demeanor of the inhabitants. Nevertheless, the - inhabitants understand solidity, luxury, wealth, and good cheer. Amsterdam - has a bourse which is the most peculiar caprice that ever passed through - the head of a stock-broker. It is excessively ugly and graceless, but I - admire it for being a caprice, and especially for being a stock-broker’s - caprice. No English stock-broker would have a caprice. Amsterdam has small - and dear restaurants of the first order, where a few people with more - money than appetite can do themselves very well indeed in hushed privacy. - It also has prodigious cafés. Krasnopolshy’s—a town, not a café—is - said in Amsterdam to be the largest café in Europe. It isn’t; but it is - large, and wondrously so for a city of only half a million people. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0099.jpg" alt="0099 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0099.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - In the prodigious cafés you perceive that Amsterdam possesses the quality - which above all others a great city ought to possess. It pullulates. Vast - masses of human beings simmer in its thoroughfares and boil over into its - public resorts. The narrow Kalver-Straat, even in the rain, is thronged - with modest persons who gaze at the superb luxury of its shops. The - Kalver-Straat will compete handsomely with Bond Street. Go along the - length of it, and you will come out of it thoughtful. Make your way thence - to the Rembrandt-Plein, where pleasure concentrates, and you will have to - conclude that the whole of Amsterdam is there, and all its habitations - empty. The mirrored, scintillating cafés, huge and lofty and golden, are - crowded with tables and drinkers and waiters, and dominated by rhapsodic - orchestras of women in white who do what they can against the hum of ten - thousand conversations, the hoarse calls of waiters, and the clatter of - crockery. It is a pandemonium with a certain stolidity. The excellent - music-halls and circuses are equally crowded, and curiously, so are the - suburban resorts on the rim of the city. Among the larger places, perhaps, - the Café Américain, on the Leidsche-Plein, was the least feverish, and - this was not to be counted in its favor, because the visitor to a city - which pullulates is, and should he, happiest in pullulating. The crowd, - the din, the elbowing, the glitter for me, in a town like Amsterdam! In a - town like Gouda, which none should fail to visit for the incomparable - stained-glass in its church, I am content to be as placid and solitary as - anybody, and I will follow a dancing bear and a Gipsy girl up and down the - streets thereof with as much simplicity as anybody. But Amsterdam is the - great, vulgar, inspiring world. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI—MUSEUMS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> DID not go - yachting in Holland in order to visit museums; nevertheless, I saw a few. - When it is possible to step off a yacht clean into a museum, and heavy - rain is falling, the temptation to remain on board is not sufficiently - powerful to keep you out of the museum. At Dordrecht there is a municipal - museum manned by four officials. They received us with hope, with - enthusiasm, with the most touching gratitude. Their interest in us was - pathetic. They were all dying of ennui in those large rooms, where the - infection hung in clouds almost visible, and we were a specific stimulant. - They seized on us as the morphinomaniac seizes on an unexpected find of - the drug. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0106.jpg" alt="0106 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0106.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Just as Haarlem is the city of Frans Hals, so Dordrecht is the city of Ary - Scheffer. Posterity in the end is a good judge of painters, if not of - heroes, but posterity makes mistakes sometimes, and Ary Scheffer is one of - its more glaring mistakes. (Josef Israels seems likely to be another.) And - posterity is very slow in acknowledging an error. The Dordrecht museum is - waiting for such an acknowledgment. When that comes, the museum will be - burned down, or turned into a brewery, and the officials will be delivered - from their dreadful daily martyrdom of feigning ecstatic admiration for - Ary Scheffer. Only at Dordrecht is it possible to comprehend the full - baseness, the exquisite unimportance, of Scheffer’s talent. The best thing - of his in a museum full of him is a free, brilliant copy of a head by - Rembrandt done at the age of eleven. It was, I imagine, his last tolerable - work. His worst pictures, solemnly hung here, would be justifiably laughed - at in a girls’ schoolroom. But his sentimentality, conventionality, and - ugliness arouse less laughter than nausea. By chance a few fine pictures - have come into the Dordrecht museum, as into most museums. Jakob Maris and - Bosboom are refreshing, but even their strong influence cannot disinfect - the place nor keep the officials alive. We left the museum in the nick of - time, and saw no other visitors. - </p> - <p> - Now, the tea-shop into which we next went was far more interesting and - esthetically valuable than the museum. The skipper, who knew every shop, - buoy, bridge, and shoal in Holland, had indicated this shop to me as a - high-class shop for costly teas. It was. I wanted the best tea, and here I - got it. The establishment might have survived from the age when Dordrecht - was the wealthiest city in Holland. Probably it had so survived. It was - full of beautiful utensils in practical daily use. It had an architectural - air, and was aware of its own dignity. The head-salesman managed to convey - to me that the best tea—that was, tea that a connoisseur would call - <i>tea</i>—cost two and a half florins a pound. I conveyed to him - that I would take two pounds of the same. The head-salesman then displayed - to me the tea in its japanned receptacle. He next stood upright and - expectant, whereupon an acolyte, in a lovely white apron, silently - appeared from the Jan-Steen shadows at the back of the shop, and with - solemn gestures held a tun-dish over a paper bag for his superior to pour - tea into. Having performed his share in the rite, he disappeared. The - parcel was slowly made up, every part of the process being evidently a - matter of secular tradition. I tendered a forty-gulden note. Whereon the - merchant himself arrived in majesty at the counter from his office, and - offered the change with punctilio. He would have been perfect, but for a - hole in the elbow of his black alpaca coat. I regretted this hole. We left - the shop stimulated, and were glad to admit that Dordrecht had atoned to - us for its museum. Ary Scheffer might have made an excellent tea-dealer. - </p> - <p> - The museum at Dordrecht only showed in excess an aspect of displayed art - which is in some degree common to all museums. For there is no museum - which is not a place of desolation. Indeed, I remember to have seen only - one collection of pictures, public or private, in which every item was a - cause of joy—that of Mr. Widener, near Philadelphia. Perhaps the - most wonderful thing in the tourist’s Holland is the fact that the small - museum at Haarlem, with its prodigious renown, does not disappoint. You - enter it with disturbing preliminaries, each visitor having to ring a - bell, and the <i>locus</i> is antipathetic; but one’s pulse is immediately - quickened by the verve of those headstrong masterpieces of Hals. And - Ruysdael and Jan Steen are influential here, and even the mediocre - paintings have often an interest of perversity, as to which naturally the - guide-books say naught. - </p> - <p> - The Teyler Museum at Haarlem also has a few intoxicating works, mixed up - with a sinister assortment of mechanical models. And its aged attendant, - who watched over his finger-nails as over adored children, had acquired - the proper attitude, at once sardonic and benevolent, for a museum of the - kind. He was peculiarly in charge of very fine sketches by Rembrandt, of - which he managed to exaggerate the value. - </p> - <p> - Few national museums of art contain a higher percentage of masterpieces - than the Mauritshuis at The Hague. And one’s first sight of Rembrandt’s - “Lesson in Anatomy” therein would constitute a dramatic event in any - yachting cruise. But my impression of the Mauritshuis was a melancholy - one, owing to the hazard of my visit being on the great public holiday of - the year, when it was filled with a simple populace, who stared coarsely - around, and understood nothing—nothing. True, they gazed in a - hypnotized semicircle at “The Lesson in Anatomy,” and I can hear amiable - persons saying that the greatest art will conquer even the ignorant and - the simple. I don’t believe it. I believe that if “The Lesson in Anatomy” - had been painted by Carolus-Duran, in the manner of Carolus-Duran, the - ignorant and the simple would have been hypnotized just the same. And I - have known the ignorant and the simple to be overwhelmed with emotion by - spurious trickery of the most absurd and offensive kind. - </p> - <p> - An hour or two in a public museum on a national holiday is a tragic - experience, because it forces you to realize that in an artistic sense the - majority and backbone of the world have not yet begun to be artistically - civilized. Ages must elapse before such civilization can make any - appreciable headway. And in the meantime the little hierarchy of art, by - which alone art lives and develops, exists precariously in the midst of a - vast, dangerous population—a few adventurous whites among indigenous - hordes in a painful climate. The indigenous hordes may have splendid - qualities, but they have not that one quality which more than any other - vivifies. They are jockeyed into paying for the manifestations of art - which they cannot enjoy, and this detail is not very agreeable either. A - string of fishermen, in their best blue cloth, came into the Mauritshuis - out of the rain, and mildly and politely scorned it. Their attitude was - unmistakable. They were not intimidated. Well, I like that. I preferred - that, for example, to the cant of ten thousand tourists. - </p> - <p> - Nor was I uplifted by a visit to the Mesdag Museum at The Hague. Mesdag - was a second-rate painter with a first-rate reputation, and his taste, as - illustrated here, was unworthy of him, even allowing for the fact that - many of the pictures were forced upon him as gifts. One or two superb - works—a Delacroix, a Dupre, a Rousseau—could not make up for - the prevalence of Mesdag, Josef Israels, etc. And yet the place was full - of good names. I departed from the museum in a hurry, and, having time to - spare, drove to Scheveningen in search of joy. Scheveningen is famous, and - is supposed to rival Ostend. It is washed by the same sea, but it does not - rival Ostend. It is a yellow and a gloomy spot, with a sky full of kites. - Dutchmen ought not to try to rival Ostend. As I left Scheveningen, my - secret melancholy was profoundly established within me, and in that there - is something final and splendid. Melancholy when it becomes - uncompromisingly sardonic, is as bracing as a bath. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0112.jpg" alt="0112 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0112.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The remarkable thing about the two art museums at Amsterdam, a town of - fine architecture, is that they should both—the Ryks and the - municipal—be housed in such ugly, imposing buildings. Now, as in the - age of Michelangelo, the best architects seldom get the best jobs, and the - result is the permanent disfigurement of beautiful cities. Michelangelo - often had to sit glum and idle while mediocre architects and artists more - skilled than he in pleasing city councils and building-committees muddled - away opportunities which he would have glorified; but he did obtain part - of a job now and then, subject to it being “improved” by some duffer like - Bernini, who of course contrived to leave a large fortune, whereas if - Michelangelo had lived to-day he might never have got any job at all. - </p> - <p> - Incontestably, the exterior, together with much of the interior, of the - Ryks depresses. Moreover, the showpiece of the museum, “The Night-Watch” - of Rembrandt, is displayed with a too particular self-consciousness on the - part of the curator, as though the functionary were saying to you: “Hats - off! Speak low! You are in church, and Rembrandt is the god.” The truth is - that “The Night-Watch” is neither very lovable nor very beautiful. It is - an exhibition-picture, meant to hit the wondering centuries in the eye, - and it does so. But how long it will continue to do so is a nice question. - </p> - <p> - Give me the modern side of the Ryks, where there is always plenty of room, - despite its sickly Josef Israels. The modern side reëndowed me with youth. - It is an unequal collection, and comprises some dreadful mistakes, but at - any rate it is being made under the guidance of somebody who is not afraid - of his epoch or of being in the wrong. Faced with such a collection, one - realizes the shortcomings of London museums and the horror of that steely - English official conservatism, at once timid and ruthless, which will - never permit itself to discover a foreign artist until the rest of the - world has begun to forget him. At the Ryks there are Van Goghs and - Cézannes and Bonnards. They are not the best, but they are there. Also - there are some of the most superb water-colors of the age, and good things - by a dozen classic moderns who are still totally unrepresented in London. - I looked at a celestial picture of women—the kind of thing that Guys - would have done if he could—painted perhaps fifty years ago, and as - modern as the latest Sargent water-color. It was boldly signed T. C. T. - C.? T. C.? Who on earth could T. C. he? I summoned an attendant. Thomas - Couture, of course! A great artist! He will appear in the National - Gallery, Trafalgar Square, about the middle of the twenty-first century. - </p> - <p> - Then there was Daumier’s “Christ and His Disciples,” a picture that I - would have stolen had it been possible and quite safe to do so. It might - seen incredible that any artist of the nineteenth century should take the - subject from the great artists of the past, and treat it so as to make you - think that it had never been treated before. But Daumier did this. It is - true that he was a very great artist indeed. Who that has seen it and - understood its tender sarcasm can forget that group of the exalted, - mystical Christ talking to semi-incredulous, unperceptive disciples in the - gloomy and vague evening landscape? I went back to the yacht and its - ignoble and decrepit engine, full of the conviction that art still lives. - And I thought of Wilson Steer’s “The Music-Room” in the Tate Gallery, - London, which magnificent picture is a proof that in London also art still - lives. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0117.jpg" alt="0117 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0117.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART II—THE BALTIC - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII—THE YACHT I LOST - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>UR adventures - toward the Baltic began almost disastrously, because I put into the - planning of them too much wisdom and calculation. We had a month of time - at our disposal. Now, a fifty-ton yacht in foreign parts thinks nothing of - a month. It is capable of using up a month in mere preliminaries. Hence, - with admirable forethought, I determined to send the yacht on in advance. - The <i>Velsa</i> was to cross from her home port, Brightlingsea, to the - Dutch coast, and then, sheltered by many islands, to creep along the - coasts of Hanover, Holstein, Schleswig, and Denmark, past the mouths of - the Elbe, Weser, and Eider, to the port of Esbjerg, where we were to join - her by a fast steamer from Harwich. She was then to mount still farther - the Danish coast, as far as Liim Fjord and, by a route combining fjords - and canals, cross the top of the Jutland peninsula, and enter the desired - Baltic by Randers Fjord. The banal way would have been through the Kiel - Canal. Yachts never take the Liim Fjord; but to me this was a fine reason - for taking the Liim Fjord. Moreover, English yachts have a habit of - getting into trouble with the German Empire in the Kiel Canal, and English - yachtsmen are apt to languish in German prisons on charges of espionage. I - was uncertain about the comforts provided for spies in German prisons, and - I did not wish to acquire certitude. - </p> - <p> - So the yacht was despatched. The skipper gave himself the large allowance - of a fortnight for the journey to Esbjerg. He had a beautiful new - 30-horse-power engine, new sails, a new mast. Nothing could stop him - except an east wind. It is notorious that in the North Sea the east wind - never blows for more than three days together, and that in July it never - blows at all. Still, in this July it did start to blow a few days before - the yacht’s intended departure. And it continued to blow hard. In a week - the skipper had only reached Harwich, a bare twenty miles from - Brightlingsea. Then the yacht vanished into the North Sea. The wind held - in the east. After another week I learned by cable that my ship had - reached the Helder, in North Holland. By a wondrous coincidence, my Dutch - skipper’s wife and family are established at the Helder. The east wind - still held. The skipper spent money daily in saddening me by cable. Then - he left the Helder, and the day came for us to board the mail-steamer at - Harwich for Esbjerg. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0123.jpg" alt="0123 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0123.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - She was a grand steamer, newest and largest of her fine. This was her very - first trip. She was officered by flaxen, ingenuous, soft-voiced Danes, who - had a lot of agreeable Danish friends about them, with whom they chattered - in the romantic Danish language, to us exquisite and incomprehensible. - Also she was full of original Danish food, and especially of marvelous and - mysterious sandwiches, which, with small quantities of champagne, we ate - at intervals in a veranda cafe passably imitated from Atlantic liners. - Despite the east wind, which still held, that steamer reached Esbjerg in - the twinkling of an eye. - </p> - <p> - When I say the twinkling of an eye, I mean twenty-two hours. It was in the - dusk of a Saturday evening that we had the thrill of entering an unknown - foreign country. A dangerous harbor, and we penetrated into it as great - ships do, with the extreme deliberation of an elephant. There was a vast - fleet of small vessels in the basin, and as we slid imperceptibly past the - mouth of the basin in the twilight, I scanned the multitudinous masts for - the mast of the <i>Velsa</i>. Her long Dutch streamer was ever - unmistakable. It seemed to us that she ought to be there. What the - mail-steamer could do in less than a day she surely ought to have done in - more than a fortnight, east wind or no east wind. On the map the distance - was simply nothing. - </p> - <p> - I saw her not. Still, it was growing dark, and my eyes were human eyes, - though the eyes of love. The skipper would probably, after all, be on the - quay to greet us with his energetic optimism. In fact, he was bound to be - on the quay, somewhere in the dark crowd staring up at the great ship, - because he never failed. Were miracles necessary, he would have - accomplished miracles. But he was not on the quay. The <i>Velsa</i> was - definitely not at Eshjerg. We felt lonely, forlorn. The head waiter of the - Hotel Spangsberg, a man in his way as great as the skipper, singled us - out. He had a voice that would have soothed the inhabitants of purgatory. - He did us good. We were convinced that so long as he consented to be our - friend, no serious harm could happen to our universe. And the hotel was - excellent, the food was excellent, the cigars were excellent. And the - three chambermaids of the hotel, flitting demurely about the long corridor - at their nightly tasks, fair, clad in prints, foreign, separated - romantically from us by the palisades of language—the three modest - chambermaids were all young and beautiful, with astounding complexions. - </p> - <p> - The next morning the wind was north by east, which was still worse than - east or northeast for the progress of the yacht toward us. Nevertheless, I - more than once walked down across the wharves of the port to the extreme - end of the jetty—about a mile each way each time—in the hope - of descrying the <i>Velsa’s</i> long, red streamer in the offing. It was - Sunday. The town of Esbjerg, whose interest for the stranger is strictly - modern and sociological, was not attractive. Its main street, though - extremely creditable to a small town, and a rare lesson to towns of the - same size in England, was not a thoroughfare in which to linger, - especially on Sunday. In the entire town we saw not a single beautiful or - even ancient building. Further, the port was asleep, and the strong, gusty - breeze positively offensive in the deceptive sunshine. - </p> - <p> - We should have been bored, we might even have been distressed, had we not - gradually perceived, in one passing figure after another, that the - standard of female beauty in Esbjerg was far higher than in any other - place we had ever seen. These women and girls, in their light Sunday - summer frocks, had beauty, fine complexions, grace, softness, to a degree - really unusual; and in transparent sleeves or in no sleeves at all they - wandered amiably in that northerly gale as though it had been a southern - zephyr. We saw that our overcoats were an inelegance, but we retained - them. And we saw that life in Esbjerg must have profound compensations. - There were two types of beautiful women, one with straight lips, and the - other with the upper lip like the traditional bow. The latter, of course, - was the more generously formed, acquiescent and yet pouting, more blonde - than the blonde. Both types had the effect of making the foreigner feel - that to be a foreigner and a stranger in Esbjerg, forcibly aloof from all - the daily frequentations and intimacies of the social organism, was a - mistake. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0130.jpg" alt="0130 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0130.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - In the afternoon we hired an automobile, ostensibly to inspect the - peninsula, but in fact partly to see whether similar women prevailed - throughout the peninsula, and partly to give the yacht a chance of - creeping in during our absence. In our hearts we knew that so long as we - stood looking for it it would never arrive. In a few moments, as it - seemed, we had crossed the peninsula to Veile, a sympathetic - watering-place on its own fjord, and were gazing at the desired Baltic, - whereon our yacht ought to have been floating, but was not. It seemed a - heavenly sea, as blue as the Mediterranean. - </p> - <p> - We had driven fast along rather bad and dusty roads, and had passed about - ten thousand one-story farmsteads, brick-built, splendidly thatched, and - each bearing its date on the walls in large iron figures. These - farmsteads, all much alike, showed that some great change, probably for - the better, must have transformed Danish agriculture about thirty or forty - years ago. But though farmers were driving abroad in two-horse vehicles, - and though certain old men strolled to and fro, smoking magnificent pipes - at least a foot and a half long, the weight of which had to be supported - with the hand, there was little evidence of opulence or even of ease. - </p> - <p> - The passage of the automobile caused real alarm among male cyclists and - other wayfarers, who, in the most absurd, girlish manner, would even leap - across ditches to escape the risks of it. The women, curiously, showed - much more valor. The dogs were of a reckless audacity. From every - farmyard, at the sound of our coming, a fierce dog would rush out to - attack us, with no conception of our speed. Impossible to avoid these - torpedoes! We killed one instantaneously, and ran over another, which - somersaulted, and, aghast, then balanced itself on three legs. Scores of - dogs were saved by scores of miracles. Occasionally we came across a wise - dog that must have had previous altercations with automobiles, and learned - the lesson. By dusk we had thoroughly familiarized ourselves with the flat - Danish landscape, whose bare earth is of a rich gray purple; and as we - approached Esbjerg again, after a tour of 120 miles, we felt that we knew - Jutland by heart, and that the yacht could not fail to be waiting for us - in some cranny of the port, ready to take us to other shores. But the - yacht had not come. - </p> - <p> - Then the head waiter grew to be our uncle, our father, our consoler. It is - true that he told us stories of ships that had set forth and never been - heard of again; but his moral influence was invaluable. He soothed us, fed - us, diverted us, interpreted us, and despatched cables for us. We called - him “Ober,” a name unsuitable to his diminutive form, his few years, and - his chubby face. Yet he was a true Ober. He expressed himself in four - languages, and could accomplish everything. In response to all our - requests, he would murmur in his exquisitely soft voice, “Oh, yes! oh, - yes!” He devised our daily excursions. He sent us to Ribe, the one ancient - town that we saw on the peninsula, in the cathedral of which was a young - girl who had stepped out of a picture by Memling, and who sold post-cards - with the gestures of a virgin saint and the astuteness of a dealer. He - sent us to the island of Fano, where the northeaster blows straight from - Greenland across a ten-mile bathing-beach peopled by fragile women who - saunter in muslin in front of vast hotels beneath a canopy of flags that - stand out horizontally in the terrible breeze. He provided us with - water-bottles and with plates (for palettes ), so that we could descend to - the multicolored port, and there, half sheltered from the wind by a pile - of fish-boxes and from the showers by an umbrella, produce wet - water-colors of fishing-smacks continually in motion. - </p> - <p> - Day followed day. We had lived at Esbjerg all our lives. The yacht was - lost at sea. The yacht had never existed. The wife of the skipper, or, - rather, his widow, had twice cabled that she had no news. But the Ober - continued to bear our misfortunes with the most astounding gallantry. And - then there came a cable from the skipper, dated from the island of - Wangeroog.... Wan-geroog! Wangeroog! What a name for an impossible island! - What a name for an island at which to be weatherbound! We knew it not. - Baedeker knew it not. Even the Ober had not heard of it. We found it at - last on a map more than a hundred miles to the south. And I had been - walking down to the jetty thrice a day to gaze forth for the <i>Velsa’s - wein!</i> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0136.jpg" alt="0136 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0136.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The skipper in his cable asked us to meet him at Friedrichstadt, on the - Eider, in Holstein, Germany. The trains were very slow and awkward. The - Ober said: - </p> - <p> - “Why do you not take an automobile? Much quicker.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes; but the German customs?” - </p> - <p> - “Everything shall be arranged,” said the Ober. - </p> - <p> - I said: - </p> - <p> - “I don’t see myself among the German bureaucracy in a hired car.” - </p> - <p> - The Ober said calmly: - </p> - <p> - “I will go with you.” - </p> - <p> - “All the way?” - </p> - <p> - “I will go with you all the way. I will arrange everything. I speak German - very well. Nothing will go wrong.” - </p> - <p> - Such a head waiter deserved encouragement. I encouraged him. He put on his - best clothes, and came, smoking cigars He took us faultlessly through the - German customs at the frontier. He superintended our first meal at a small - German hotel. I asked him to join us at table. He bowed and accepted. When - the meal was over, he rose and bowed again. It was a good meal. He took us - through three tire-bursts amid the horrid wastes of Schleswig-Holstein. He - escorted us into Friedrichstadt, and secured rooms for us at the hotel. - Then he said he must return. No! no! We could not let him abandon us in - the harsh monotony of that excessively tedious provincial town. But he - murmured that he must depart. The yacht might not arrive for days yet. I - shuddered. - </p> - <p> - “At any rate,” I said, “before you leave, inquire where the haven is, and - take me to it, so that I may know how to find it.” - </p> - <p> - He complied. It was a small haven; a steamer and several ships were in it. - Behind one ship I saw a mast and a red pennant somewhat in the style of - the <i>Velsa</i>. - </p> - <p> - “There,” I said, “my yacht has a mast rather like that.” - </p> - <p> - I looked again. Utterly impossible that the <i>Velsa</i> could have - arrived so quickly; but it was the <i>Velsa</i>. Joy! Almost tears of joy! - I led the Ober on board. He said solemnly: - </p> - <p> - “It is very beautiful.” - </p> - <p> - So it was. - </p> - <p> - But our things were at the hotel. We had our rooms engaged at the hotel. - </p> - <p> - The Ober said: - </p> - <p> - “I will arrange everything.” - </p> - <p> - In a quarter of an hour our baggage was on board, and there was no hotel - hill. And then the Ober really did depart, with sorrow. Never shall I look - on his like again. The next day we voyaged up the Eider, a featureless - stream whose life has been destroyed by the Kiel Canal, to its junction - with the Kiel Canal, eighty-six dull, placid kilometers. But no matter the - dullness; we were afloat and in motion. - </p> - <p> - We spent about seventy-two hours in the German Empire, and emerged from - it, at Kiel, by the canal, with a certain relief; for the yacht had - several times groaned in the formidable clutch of the Fatherland’s - bureaucracy. She had been stopped by telephone at Friedrichstadt for - having passed the custom-house at the mouth of the Eider, the said - custom-house not being distinguished, as it ought to have been, by the - regulation flag. Again we were stopped by telephone at Rendsburg, on the - canal, for having dared to ascend the Eider without a pilot. Here the - skipper absolutely declined to pay the pilot-fees, and our papers were - confiscated, and we were informed that the panjandrum of the harbor would - call on us. However, he did not call on us; he returned our papers, and - let us go, thus supporting the skipper’s hotly held theory that by the law - of nations yachts on rivers are free. - </p> - <p> - We were obliged to take a pilot for the canal. He was a nice, - companionable man, unhealthy, and gently sardonic. He told us that the - canal would be remunerative if war-ships paid dues. “Only they don’t,” he - added. Confronted with the proposition that the canal was very ugly - indeed, he repudiated it. He went up and down the canal forever and ever, - and saw nothing but the ships on it and the navigation signals. He said - that he had been piloting for twelve years, and had not yet had the same - ship twice. And there were 150 pilots on the canal! - </p> - <p> - We put him ashore and into the arms of his wife at Kiel, in heavy rain and - the customary northeaster, and we pushed forward into the comparative - freedom of Kiel Fjord, making for Friedrichsort, which looked attractive - on the chart. But Friedrichsort was too naval for us; it made us feel like - spies. We crossed hastily to Moltenort, a little pleasure town. Even here - we had not walked a mile on land before we were involved in forts and - menacing sign-boards. We retreated. The whole fjord was covered with - battle-ships, destroyers, submarines, Hydro-aëroplanes curved in the - atmosphere, or skimmed the froth off the waves. The air was noisy with the - whizzing of varied screws. It was enormous, terrific, intimidating, - especially when at dusk search-lights began to dart among the lights of - the innumerable fjord passenger-steamers. We knew that we were deeply - involved in the tremendous German system. Still, our blue ensign flew - proudly, unchallenged. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0141.jpg" alt="0141 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0141.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The population of Moltenort was not seductive, though a few young men here - and there seemed efficient, smart, and decent. The women and girls left us - utterly unmoved. The major part of the visitors were content to sit - vacantly on the promenade at a spot where a powerful drain, discharging - into the fjord, announced itself flagrantly to the sense. These quiet, - tired, submissive persons struck us as being the raw slavish material of - the magnificent imperial system, and entirely unconnected with the - wondrous brains that organized it and kept it going. The next morning we - departed very early, but huge targets were being towed out in advance of - us, and we effected our final escape into the free Baltic only by braving - a fleet of battleships that fired into the checkered sky. Sometimes their - shells glinted high up in the sun, and seemed to be curving along the top - edge of an imaginary rainbow. We slowly left them astern, with, as I say, - a certain relief. Little, unmilitary Denmark lay ahead. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII—BALTIC COMMUNITIES - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T Vordingborg, a - small town at the extreme south of Sjaelland, the largest and easternmost - of the Danish islands, we felt ourselves to be really for the first time - in pure and simple Denmark (Esbjerg had a certain international quality). - We had sailed through the Langelands Belt, skirting the monotonous - agricultural coasts of all sorts of islands, great and small, until one - evening we reached this city, which looked imposing on the map. When we - had followed the skipper ashore on his marketing expedition, and trodden - all the stony streets of little Vordingborg, we seemed to know what - essential Denmark, dozing in the midst of the Baltic, truly was. - </p> - <p> - Except a huge and antique fort, there was no visible historical basis to - this town. The main thoroughfare showed none of the dignity of tradition. - It was a bourgeois thoroughfare, and comfortable bourgeoises were placidly - shopping therein—the same little bourgeoises that one sees all over - the world. A fairly large hotel; sundry tobacconists; a bookseller who - also sold wall-papers; a sausage-shop, with a girl actuating an efficient - sausage-slicing machine, and in the window an electric fan whirring close - to a gigantic sausage. In the market, on a vague open space, a few carts, - with their shafts on the ground; a few stalls; a few women; a butcher - whipping off a hungry dog; three cheeses on a stand; baskets of fruit and - vegetables on the Danish ground; our skipper chattering by signs and - monosyllables in the middle. That was Vordingborg. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0146.jpg" alt="0146 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0146.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - In the churchyard there were only two graves. The church had no more - architectural interest than a modern church in a London suburb, though it - was older. We went within. The numbers of the hymns at the last service - were still forlornly stuck up on the indicator. The altar and screen were - ingenuously decorated in the style of a high-class booth at a fair. Three - women in huge disfiguring aprons were cleaning the interior. Their cloaks - and a white umbrella lay on the stone floor. They never even glanced at - us. We left the church, and then skirting market-gardens and climbing over - the ramparts of the fort, we descended to the mournful little railway - station, and as we watched a little train amble plaintively in and out of - that terminus, we thought of the numbers of the hymns sung at the last - service in the church, and the immense devastating ennui of provincial - existence in remote places enveloped us like a dank fog. We set sail, and - quitted Vordingborg forever, lest we might harden our hearts and be unjust - to Vordingborg, which, after all, at bottom, must be very like a million - other townlets on earth. - </p> - <p> - Compared with some of the ports we made, Vordingborg was a metropolis and - a center of art. When we had threaded through the Ulfsund and the Stege - Strand and the intricacies of the Rogestrommen, we found shelter in a - village harbor of the name of Faxo. Faxo had nothing—nothing but a - thousand trucks of marl, a girl looking out of a window, and a locked - railway station. We walked inland into a forest, and encountered the - railway track in the middle of the forest, and we walked back to Faxo, and - it was the same Faxo, except that a splendid brig previously at anchor in - the outer roads was slipping away in the twilight, and leaving us alone in - Faxo. - </p> - <p> - At Spotsbjerg, on the north of the island of Sjælland, a small, untidy - fishing village with a harbor as big as a swimming-bath, there was not - even a visible church; we looked vainly for any church. But there was a - telephone, and on the quay there was a young and pretty girl leaning - motionless on her father’s, or her grandfather’s, tarpaulin shoulder. Full - of the thought that she would one day be old and plain, we fled from - Spotsbjerg, and traveled an incredible distance during the whole of a - bright Sunday, in order to refresh our mundane instincts at the capital of - the Jutland peninsula, Aarhus. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0151.jpg" alt="0151 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0151.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - And on approaching Aarhus, we ran into a regatta, and the <i>Velsa</i> had - less of the air of an aristocrat among the industrial classes than in such - ports as Spotsbjerg and Faxo. Further, a reporter came to obtain a “story” - about the strange Dutch yacht with the English ensign. It was almost equal - to being anchored off the Battery, New York. - </p> - <p> - At Aarhus the pulse of the world was beating rather loud. In the windows - of the booksellers’ shops were photographs of the director of the - municipal theater surrounded by his troupe of stars. And he exactly - resembled his important brethren in the West End of London. I myself was - among the authors performed in the municipal theater, and I had a strange, - comic sensation of being world-renowned. Crowds surged in the streets of - Aarhus and in its cafés and tram-cars, and at least one of its taxicabs - was driven by a woman. It had a really admirable hotel, the Royal, with - first-class cooking, and a concert every night in its winter garden, where - the ruling classes met for inexpensive amusement, and succeeded in amusing - themselves with a dignity, a simplicity, and a politeness that could not - possibly be achieved in any provincial town in England, were it five times - the size of Aarhus. And why? - </p> - <p> - Withal, Aarhus, I have to confess, was not much of a place for elegance. - Its women failed, and the appearance of the women is the true test of a - civilization. So far in our Danish experience the women of Esbjerg stood - unrivaled. The ladies of Aarhus, even the leading ladies gathered together - in the Royal Hotel, lacked style and beauty. Many of them had had the - sense to retain the national short sleeve against the ruling of fashion, - but they did not arrive at any effect of individuality. They were neither - one thing nor the other. Their faces showed kindness, efficiency, - constancy, perhaps all the virtues; but they could not capture the - stranger’s interest. - </p> - <p> - There was more style at Helsingôr (Elsinore), a town much smaller than - Aarhus, but probably enlivened by naval and military influences, by its - close proximity to Sweden, with train-ferry communication therewith, and - by its connection with Hamlet and Shakspere. The night ferries keep the - town unduly awake, but they energize it. Till a late hour the station and - the quay are busy with dim figures of chattering youth in pale costumes, - and the departure of the glittering train-laden ferry to a foreign country - two miles off is a romantic spectacle. The churches of Helsingôr have an - architectural interest, and its fruit shops display exotic fruits at high - prices. Officers flit to and fro on bicycles. Generals get out of a closed - cab at the railway station, and they bear a furled standard, and vanish - importantly with it into the arcana of the station. The newspapers of many - countries are for sale at the kiosk. The harbor-master is a great man, and - a suave. - </p> - <p> - The pride of Helsingor is the Kronborg Castle, within sight of the town - and most grandiosely overlooking sea and land. Feudal castles are often - well placed, but one seldom sees a renaissance building of such heroic - proportions in such a dramatically conceived situation. The castle is of - course used chiefly as a barracks. On entering the enormous precincts, we - saw through a window a private sitting on a chair on a table, in fatigue - uniform, playing mildly a flageolet, and by his side on the table another - private in fatigue uniform, with a boot in one hand, doing nothing - whatever. And from these two figures, from the whitewashed bareness of the - chamber, and from the flageolet, was exhaled all the monstrous melancholy - of barrack-life, the same throughout the world. Part of the castle is set - aside as a museum, wherein, under the direction of a guide, one is - permitted to see a collection of pictures the surpassing ugliness of which - nearly renders them interesting. The guide points through a window in the - wall ten feet thick to a little plot of turf. “Where Hamlet walked.” No - historical authority is offered to the visitor for this statement. The - guide then leads one through a series of large rooms, empty save for an - occasional arm-chair, to the true heart of the Kronborg, where he - displayed to us a seated statue of Mr. Hall Caine, tinted an extreme - unpleasant bluish-white. An inscription told that it had been presented to - Kronborg by a committee of Englishmen a few years earlier to mark some - anniversary. The guide said it was a statue of Shakspere. I could not - believe him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0157.jpg" alt="0157 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0157.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX—A day’s SAIL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>LTHOUGH there is a - lively pleasure in discovering even the dullest and smallest towns and - villages, the finest experience offered by the Baltic is the savor of the - Baltic itself in a long day’s sail. I mean a day of fourteen hours at - least, from six in the morning till eight at night, through varied - seascapes and landscapes and varied weather. As soon as the yacht leaves - harbor in the bracing chill of sunrise she becomes a distinct entity, - independent, self-reliant. The half-dozen men on her, cut off from the - world, are closely knitted into a new companionship, the sense of which is - expressed not in words, but by the subtleties of tone and mien; and if - only one amoung them falls short of absolute loyalty and good-will toward - the rest, the republic is a failure, and the air of ocean poisoned. The - dictum of an older and far more practised yachtsman than myself used - always to be, “I ’ll have no man aboard my ship who can’t smile all - the time.” It is a good saying. And it could be applied to my yacht in the - Baltic. We had days at sea in the Baltic which were ideal and thrilling - from one end to the other. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0161.jpg" alt="0161 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0161.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - To make a final study of the chart in the cabin while waiting for - breakfast is a thrilling act. You choose a name on the chart, and decide: - “We will go to that name.” It is a name. It is not yet a town or a - village. It is just what you imagine it to be until you first sight it, - when it instantly falsifies every fancy. The course is settled. The ship - is on that course. The landmarks will suffice for an hour or two, but the - sea-marks must be deciphered on the chart, which is an English chart, and - hence inferior in fullness and clearness to either French or Dutch charts. - Strange, this, for a nation preëminently maritime! To compensate, the - English “Sailing Directions”—for example, the “Pilot’s Guide to the - Baltic”—are so admirably written that it is a pleasure to read them. - Lucid, succinct, elegant, they might serve as models to a novelist. And - they are anonymous. - </p> - <p> - To pick up the first buoy is thrilling. We are all equally ignorant of - these waters; the skipper himself has not previously sailed them, and we - are all, save the cook, engulfed below amid swaying saucepans, on the - lookout for that buoy. It ought to be visible at a certain hour, but it is - not. The skipper points with his hand and says the buoy must be about - there, but it is not. He looks through my glasses, and I look through his; - no result. Then the deck-hand, without glasses, cries grinning that he has - located her. After a quarter of an hour I can see the thing myself. That a - buoy? It is naught but a pole with a slightly swollen head. Absurd to call - it a buoy! Nevertheless, we are relieved, and in a superior manner we - reconcile ourselves to the Baltic idiosyncrasy of employing broom-handles - for buoys. The reason for this dangerous idiosyncrasy neither the skipper - nor anybody else could divine. Presently we have the broom close abeam, a - bobbing stick all alone in the immense wilderness of water. There it is on - the chart, and there it is in the water, a romantic miracle. We assuage - its solitude for a few minutes, and then abandon it to loneliness. - </p> - <p> - We resume the study of the chart; for although we are quite sure of our - course, the skipper can never be sure enough. My attention is drawn to a - foot-note that explains the ice-signals of the Baltic. And the skipper - sets to telling tales of terror about the ice, in the Zuyder Zee and other - seas. He tells how the ice forms under the ship surreptitiously, coming up - from the bottom like treacle. You say, “It’s freezing to-night,” and the - next morning the ship can’t move; and you may die of starvation, for - though the ice will hold the ship, it won’t hold you. The skipper knew men - who could remember ice in the Zuyder Zee in June. He himself had once - oscillated for a whole week between two ports on the Zuyder Zee, visible - to each other, pushed hither and thither by the ice, and unable to get - anywhere at all. But ice was less terrible than it used to he, owing to - the increased strength and efficiency of ice-breakers. And climate was - less rigorous. Thus the skipper would reassure us for a moment, only to - intimidate us afresh. For it seems that the ice has a way of climbing; it - will climb up over everything, and inclose a ship. Indeed, he was most - impressive on the subject of ice. He said that the twin horrors of the sea - were ice and fog. But of fog he told no tales, being occupied with the - forward valve of the engine. We perceived that yachtsmen who go out when - it happens to suit them, between May and September only, can never achieve - intimacy with the entire individuality of the sea. - </p> - <p> - The weather has now cleared for a while. The sun is hot, the saloon - skylight warm to the touch. You throw off a jersey. The tumbling water is - a scale of deep blues, splendid against the brass of the bollard and the - reddishness of the spars. The engine is running without a “knock”; the - sails are nicely filled; the patent log is twirling aft. A small rainbow - shines steadily in the foam thrown up from the bows, and a great rainbow - stretches across all heaven, with its own ghost parallel to it. Among the - large, soft clouds rags of dark cloud are uneasily floating. On the flat - shores of near islands the same cereals ripen as ripen at home. And this - is thrilling. Distant islands are miraged. Even a distant battleship seems - to be lifted clean out of the water by the so-called mirage. - </p> - <p> - And then a trading-schooner, small, but much larger than us, relentlessly - overhauls us. She laughs at the efforts of our engine to aid our sails, - and forges ahead, all slanting, with her dinghy slung up tight aft, over - her rudder. And then it is the still small voice of the stomach that - speaks. Hunger and repletion follow each other very swiftly on such days. - The after-breakfast cigar is scarcely finished before a genuine curiosity - as to the menu of lunch comes to birth within. We glance into the saloon. - Yes, the white cloth is laid, but we cannot eat cloth. The cook and the - chronometer are conspiring together against us. - </p> - <p> - In the afternoon the weather is thick and squally. And we are creeping - between sad and forlorn veiled islands that seem to exude all the - melancholy of the seas. There is plenty of water, but only in a deceiving - horizontal sense. The channel is almost as narrow and as tortuous as a - Devonshire lane. English charts are criminally preposterous, and so are - Danish brooms. Hardly can one distinguish between a starboard and a port - broom. Is the life of a yacht to depend on such negligent devices? The - skipper is worried. And the spectacle of a ship aground in mid-sea does - not tranquilize. Sometimes the hail wipes out for a few seconds the whole - prospect. The eyes of everybody are strained with looking for distant - brooms. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0168.jpg" alt="0168 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0168.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Then we are free of the archipelago, and also the sky clears. The sun, - turning orange, is behind us, and the wind in our teeth. Ahead is a - schooner, beating. And she is the schooner of the morning. Our engine now - has the better of her. As we overtake her, she runs away on one tack, and - comes back on the next. She bears down on our stern, huge, black, - glittering. A man and a boy are all her crew. This man and this boy are - entitled to be called mariners, as distinguished from yachtsmen. We can - see their faces plainly as they gaze down at us from their high deck. And - you may see just the same faces on the liners that carry emigrants from - Denmark to the West, and the same limbs sprawling on the decks of the - Esbjerg steamers, as the same hands scrawl Danish characters on picture - postal cards to the inhabitants of these very islands. - </p> - <p> - The sea is now purple, and the schooner a little black blot on the red - panorama of the sunset; and ahead, amid faint yellow and green fields, is - a white speck, together with sundry red specks and blue specks. The name - on the chart! And then the haven is descried, and a ring of masts with - fluttering rags. And then the lighthouse and the roofs detach themselves, - and the actual mouth of the haven appears. Twilight falls; the engine is - moderated; the deck-hand stands by with a pole. Very slowly we slide in, - and the multitudinous bright tints of the fishing-smacks are startlingly - gay even in the dusk. The skipper glances rapidly about him, and yells out - in Dutch to a fisherman, who replies in Danish. The skipper shakes his - head, at a loss, and gives an order to the deck-hand. The deck-hand claws - with a pole at a yellow smack. We have ceased to be independent. The name - on the chart is a name no longer. It is a living burg, a poor little - place, good enough to sleep in, and no more. But another stage on the - journey to that magic capital Copenhagen. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART III COPENHAGEN - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X—THE DANISH CAPITAL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>CROSS the great - expanse of Kjoge Bay, Copenhagen first became visible as a group of - factory chimneys under a firmament of smoke. We approached it rapidly upon - smooth water, and ran into the narrowing bottle-neck of Kallebo, with the - main island of Sjælland to the west and the appendant island of Amager to - the east. Copenhagen stands on both, straddling over a wide connecting - bridge which carries double lines of electric trams and all the traffic of - a metropolis. When a yacht, even a small one, wishes to enter the harbor, - this bridge is cut in two and lifted into the air, and the traffic - impatiently champs its bit while waiting for the yacht. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0174.jpg" alt="0174 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0174.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Apparently they understand yachts at Copenhagen, as they do in Holland. At - the outer harrier of the harbor we were not even requested to stop. A - cheerful and beneficent functionary cried out for our name, our captain’s - name, our tonnage, and our immediate origin, and, his curiosity being - sated, waved us onward. The great bridge bisected itself for us with - singular promptitude. Nevertheless, the gold-buttoned man in charge - thereof from his high perch signaled to us that our burgee was too small. - We therefore, having nothing else handy to placate him, ran up a blue - ensign to the masthead; but it looked so excessively odd there, so acutely - contrary to the English etiquette of yachts, that we at once hauled it - down again. No further complaint was made. - </p> - <p> - We were now in the haven, and over the funnels of many ships we could see - the city. It was all copper domes and roofs; and we saw that it was a - proud city, and a city where exposed copper turns to a beautiful green - instead of to black, as in London. Splendid copper domes are the chief - symptom of Copenhagen. After all the monotonous, tiny provincialism of the - peninsula and of the islands, it was sensational to find a vast capital at - the far end of the farthest island. We thought we were coming to the end - of the world, and we came to a complete and dazzling city that surpassed, - for example, Brussels in its imposingness. We turned westward out of the - main channel into the heart of the town, and in a moment were tied up to a - smack, and the red-and-green bourse was leaning over us; the rattle and - ringing and stamping of horses, lorries, tram-cars, and taxi-cabs deafened - us on three sides; and a bridge trembling with traffic barred our way. - </p> - <p> - Towers and spires rose beyond the bridge; crowds stood to gaze at us; - steamers and warehouses filled the prospect to the north; and under our - bows the petrol-engined gondolas of Copenhagen, each holding a dozen - passengers or so, continually shot. We were in the midst of a terrific - din, but we cared not. We had arrived, and we had arrived in a grand town; - we knew that at the first glance. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0179.jpg" alt="0179 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0179.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - In something less than half an hour one of us had gone forth and returned - with grave tidings: “This is a most exciting city. I’ve already seen lots - of beautiful women, some with lovely tow-colored hair.” The charm of - distant Esbjerg was at last renewed. I went forth myself, into a very - clean, fresh-looking city, with simple and lively inhabitants. In a trice - I had gazed at the Thorvaldsen Museum (which I had no intention of - entering, Thorvaldsen being for me on about the same artistic plane as the - inexcusable Ary Scheffer of Dordrecht), the Christianborg Palace, which - had an austere and kingly air, the very modern and admirable town hall, - the old railway station, which has been transformed into the largest - kinema in the world, the floating fish shops and fish restaurants (made - out of old smacks and schooners), the narrow, thronged shopping streets, - the celebrated Tivoli establishment, and the yacht-like steamers that from - a quay, which might almost be called the gate to Sweden, in the very - middle of the town, are constantly setting sail for Scandinavia. From - Copenhagen you go to Sweden as thoughtlessly as in New York you go from - Forty-second to Sixty-ninth Street, or in London from the Bank to Chelsea, - and with less discipline. If the steamer has cast off, and the captain - sees you hurrying up the street, he stops his engines and waits for you, - and you are dragged on board by a sailer; whereupon the liner departs, - unless the captain happens to see somebody else hurrying up the street. - </p> - <p> - An hour in the thoroughfares of Copenhagen was enough to convince my feet - that it was not a city specially designed for pedestrians. I limped back - to the yacht, and sent the skipper to hire a carriage. He knew no more of - the city than I did, less indeed; he could no more than I speak a single - word of Danish; but I felt sure that he would return with an equipage. - What I desired was an equipage with a driver who could speak either - English, French, or Dutch. He did return with an equipage, and it was - overpowering. Rather like a second-hand state carriage, it was drawn by - two large gray horses, perhaps out of a circus, and driven by a liveried - being who was alleged to speak French. I shuddered at the probable cost of - this prodigious conveyance, but pretended I did not care. The ligure named - was just seven dollars a day. We monopolized the carriage during our - sojourn, and the days were long; but the coachman never complained. - Possibly because he had no language in which to complain. We learned in a - moment that his ability to speak French was entirely mythical. Then some - one said that a misunderstanding had occurred at the livery-stables, and - that German was the foreign language he spoke, But he did not speak German - either, nor anything else. He was just another of those strange creatures - met in the course of travel who are born, who mature, and who die without - speaking or comprehending any language whatever. - </p> - <p> - From the height of his spacious and sedate vehicle we gazed down upon the - rushing population of Copenhagen—beautiful women, with lovely - tow-colored hair, and simple, nice-gestured men. The driver only made one - mistake, but it was a bad one. We wanted tea, and we asked him to go to a - teagarden, any tea-garden. He smiled, and went. He took us up an - interminable boulevard, with a special strip for cyclists. Thousands upon - thousands of cyclists, all fair, passed and repassed us. He went on and - on. One of the horses fell lame, but it made no difference. We could not - stop him. And repetitions of the word for tea in French and German had no - effect save to make him smile. We constantly descried what seemed in the - distance to be tea-gardens, but they were not tea-gardens. We saw an - incomprehensible colony of doll’s houses—well-kept suburban huts - exteriorly resembling houses—in a doll’s garden. We could not - conceive the nature of this phenomenon, but it was not a tea-garden. - Presently the carriage was stopped by a man demanding money. He wore no - uniform, but conveyed to us that he was an official of the town of - Hillerup, and that strange carriages had to pay forty-eight ore in order - to traverse Hillerup. - </p> - <p> - It seemed a lot of money; but as it only amounted to sixpence, we paid. - The man may have been a highwayman. We looked at the map for Hillerup, and - found it miles away from Copenhagen. - </p> - <p> - We were now in serious need of tea, and helpless. The driver drove on. He - conducted us through half a dozen seaside resorts on the quite unjustly - celebrated “Danish Riviera”; he came actually to the end of the tram-line, - and then he curved inland into a forest (more to pay). We were now angry - and still helpless. The forest had no end, and the roads in it no - direction. Desperate, we signaled to him to turn back. He would not. He - informed us on his lingers that he would be arriving in twenty minutes or - so. When he did arrive, we solved the mystery. He had confused the word - for tea with the word for deer, and had brought us to a well-known country - resort called the Deer Park. A few miserable tourists were in fact - drinking cold, bad tea on a windy terrace overlooking a distant horizon, - far beyond which lay Copenhagen. We swallowed the tea, the driver - swallowed beer, and we started hack. We had no overcoats, and the Baltic - evening was cold. Trams overtook us flying at a tremendous pace into - Copenhagen, and we were behind a lame horse. In the dusk we reached once - more the desirable city, whose women never seemed more fair to us than - they did then. This adventure taught us that the yachtsman must be - prepared for any adventure, even the wildest. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI—CAFÉS AND RESTAURANTS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE most - interesting thing, to the complete stranger, in a large foreign city that - does not live on its own past is not the museums, but the restaurants and - cafés, even in the dead season. We were told that August was the dead - season in Copenhagen, and that all the world was at the seaside resorts. - We had, however, visited a number of Danish seaside resorts, and they were - without exception far more dead than Copenhagen. In particular Marienlyst, - reputed to be the haunt of fashion and elegance, proved to be a very sad, - deserted strand. Copenhagen was not dead. - </p> - <p> - We went for our first dinner to Wivels Restaurant, signalized to us by - authority as the finest in Denmark, a large, rambling, crimson-and-gold - place, full of waiters who had learned English in America, of - hors-d’ouvre, and of music. The hand was much better than the food, but it - has to be said that we arrived at half-past seven, when Danish dinner is - over and Danish supper not begun. Still, many middle-class people were - unceremoniously and expensively eating—in the main hors-d’ouvre. The - metropolitanism of Copenhagen was at once apparent in this great - restaurant. The people had little style, but they had the assurance and - the incuriousness of metropolitans, and they were accustomed to throwing - money about, and to glare, and to stridency, and to the idiosyncrasies of - waiters, and to being in the swim. Wivels might show itself on Fifth - Avenue or in the Strand without blushing. And its food had the wholesale, - crude quality of the food offered in these renowned streets to persons in - the swim. - </p> - <p> - Next we went to the Hôtel d’Angleterre, which was just the restaurant of - the standardized international hotel. Once within its walls, and you might - as well be at Paris, Aix-les-Bains, Harrogate, Rome, Algiers, Brussels, as - at Copenhagen. The same menu, the same cooking, the same waiters, the same - furniture, the same toothpicks, and the same detestable, self-restrained - English travelers, with their excruciating Englishness. The café on the - ground floor of this hotel, overlooking a large and busy circular <i>place</i>, - with the opera and other necessaries of metropolitan life close by, was - more amusing than the restaurant. It was a genuine resort in the - afternoon. The existence of Copenhagen rolled to and fro in front of its - canopied terrace, and one might sit next to an English yachting party of - astounding correctness and complacency (from one of those conceited - three-hundred-ton boats, enameled white, and jeweled in many holes, like a - watch), or to a couple of Danish commercials, or to a dandy and his love. - Here we one night singled out for observation a very characteristic Danish - young man and young woman with the complexions, the quiet, persuasive - voices, and the soothing gestures of the North. It was an agreeable sight; - but when we had carried our observation somewhat further, we discovered - that they were an English pair on their honeymoon. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0186.jpg" alt="0186 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0186.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - In a day or two, feeling more expert in things Danish, we wanted a truly - Danish restaurant, unspoiled by cosmopolitanism. We hit on it in the - Wiener Café, appanage of the Hotel King of Denmark. A long, narrow room, - anciently and curiously furnished, with mid-Victorian engravings on the - somber walls. The waiters had the austerity of priests presiding at a - rite. Their silent countenances said impassively: “This is the most select - resort in our great and historic country. It has been frequented by the - flower of Danish aristocracy, art, and letters for a thousand years. It - has not changed. It never will. No upstart cosmopolitanism can enter here. - Submit yourselves. Speak in hushed tones. Conform to all the niceties of - our ceremonial, for we have consented to receive you.” - </p> - <p> - In brief, it was rather like an English bank, or a historic hotel in an - English cathedral town, though its food was better, I admit. The menu was - in strict Danish. We understood naught of it, but it had the air of a - saga. At the close of the repast, the waiter told us that, for the <i>prix - fixe</i>, we had the choice between cake and cheese. I said, “Will you let - me have a look at the cake, and then I ‘ll decide.” He replied that he - could not; that the cake could not be produced unless it was definitively - ordered. The strange thing was that he persisted in this attitude. Cake - never had been shown on approval at the Wiener Café of the Hotel King of - Denmark, and it never would he. I bowed the head before an august - tradition, and ordered cheese. The Wiener Café ought to open a branch in - London; it was the most English affair I have ever encountered out of - England. - </p> - <p> - Indeed, Copenhagen is often exquisitely English. That very night we chose - the restaurant of the Hotel————for dinner. The - room was darkly gorgeous, silent, and nearly full. We were curtly shown to - an empty table, and a menu was dung at us. The head waiter and three - inefficient under waiters then totally ignored us and our signals for - fifteen minutes; they had their habitués to serve. At the end of fifteen - minutes we softly and apologetically rose and departed, without causing - any apparent regret save perhaps to the hat-and-coat boy, whom we basely - omitted to tip. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0191.jpg" alt="0191 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0191.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - We roved in the wet, busy Sunday streets, searching hungrily for a - restaurant that seemed receptive, that seemed assimilative, and luck - guided us into the Café de l’Industrie, near the Tivoli. The managers of - this industrious café had that peculiar air, both independent and - amicable, which sits so well on the directors of an organism that is - firmly established in the good-will of the flourishing mass. No - selectness, no tradition, no formality, no fashion, no preposterous - manners about the Café de l’Industrie, but an aspect of solid, rather - vulgar, all-embracing, all-forgiving prosperity. It was not cheap, neither - was it dear. It was gaudy, but not too gaudy. The waiters were men of the - world, experienced in human nature, occupied, hasty, both curt and - expansive, not servile, not autocratic. Their faces said: “Look here, I - know the difficulties of running a popular restaurant, and you know them, - too. This is not heaven, especially on a Sunday night; but we do our best, - and you get value for your money.” - </p> - <p> - The customers were samples of all Copenhagen. They had money to spend, but - not too much. There were limits to their recklessness in the pursuit of - joy. They were fairly noisy, quite without affectation, fundamentally - decent, the average Danish. Elegance was rarer than beauty, and - spirituality than common sense, in that restaurant. We ate moderately in - the din and clash of hors d’ouvre, mural decorations, mirrors, and music, - and thanked our destiny that we had had the superlative courage to leave - the Hotel ————, with its extreme correctitude. - </p> - <p> - Finally, among our excursions ‘n restaurants, must be mentioned a crazy - hour in the restaurant of the Hotel ————, supreme - example of what the enterprising spirit of modern Denmark can accomplish - when it sets about to imitate the German <i>art nouveau</i>. The ———— - is a grand hotel in which everything, with the most marvelous and - terrifying ingenuity, has been designed in defiance of artistic tradition. - A fork at the ———— resembles no other fork on - earth, and obviously the designer’s first and last thought was to be - unique. It did not matter to him what kind of fork he produced so long as - it was different from any previous fork in human history. The same with - the table-cloth, the flower-vase, the mustard-pot, the chair, the carpet, - the dado, the frieze, the tessellated pavement, the stair-rail, the - wash-basin, the bedstead, the quilt, the very door-knobs. The proprietors - of the place had ordered a new hotel in the extreme sense, and their order - had been fulfilled. It was a prodigious undertaking, and must certainly - have been costly. It was impressive proof of real initiative. It - intimidated the beholder, who had the illusion of being on another planet. - Its ultimate effect was to outrival all other collections of ugliness. I - doubt whether in Berlin itself such ingenious and complete ugliness could - be equaled in the same cubic space. My idea is that the creators of the - Hotel ———— may lawfully boast of standing alone on - a pinnacle. - </p> - <p> - It was an inspiration on the part of the creators, when the hotel was - finished to the last salt-spoon, to order a number of large and - particularly bad copies of old masters, in inexpensive gilt frames, and to - hang them higgledy-piggledy on the walls. The resulting effect of - grotesquery is overwhelming. Nevertheless, the ———— - justly ranks as one of the leading European hotels. It is a mercy that the - architect and the other designers were forbidden to meddle with the - cooking, which sins not by any originality. - </p> - <p> - The summary and summit of the restaurants and cafes of Copenhagen is the - Tivoli. New York has nothing like the Tivoli, and the Londoner can only - say with regret that the Tivoli is what Earl’s Court ought to be, and is - not. The Tivoli comprises, within the compass of a garden in the midst of - the city, restaurants, cafés, theater, concert-hall, outdoor theater, - bands, pantomime, vaudeville, dancing-halls, and very numerous side-shows - on both land and water. The strangest combinations of pleasure are - possible at the Tivoli. You can, for instance, as we did, eat a French - dinner while watching a performance of monkeys on a tightrope. The - opportunities for weirdness in felicity are endless. We happened to arrive - at Copenhagen just in time for the fêtes celebrating the seventieth - anniversary of the Tivoli, which is as ancient as it is modern. On the - great night the Tivoli reveled until morning. It must be the pride of the - populace of Copenhagen, and one of the city’s dominating institutions. It - cannot be ignored. It probably uses more electric light than any other ten - institutions put together. And however keenly you may resent its - commonplace attraction, that attraction will one day magnetize you to - enter its gates—at the usual fee. - </p> - <p> - I estimate that I have seen twenty thousand people at once in the Tivoli, - not a bad total for one resort in a town of only half a million - inhabitants. And the twenty thousand were a pleasant sight to the foreign - observer, not merely for the pervading beauty and grace cf the women, - which was remarkable, but also for the evident fact that as a race the - Danish know how to enjoy themselves with gaiety, dignity, and simplicity. - Their demeanor was a lesson to Anglo-Saxons, who have yet to discover how - to enjoy themselves freely without being either ridiculous or vulgar or - brutish. The twenty thousand represented in chief the unassuming - middle-class of Copenhagen. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0197.jpg" alt="0197 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0197.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - There were no doubt millionaires, aristocrats, “nuts,” rascals, obelisks, - and mere artisans among the lot, but the solid bulk was the middle-class, - getting value for its money in an agreeable and unexceptionable manner. - The memory of those thousands wandering lightly clad in the cold Northern - night, under domes and festoons and pillars of electric light, amid the - altercations of conflicting orchestras, or dancing in vast, stuffy - inclosures, or drinking and laughing and eating hors-d’ouvre under rustling - trees, or submitting gracefully to Wagnerian overtures in a theater whose - glazed aisles were two restaurants, or floating on icy lakes, or just - beatifically sitting on al-fresco seats in couples—this memory - remains important in the yachtsman’s experiences of the Baltic. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XII—ARISTOCRACY AND ART - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE harbor-master - would not allow us to remain for more than three days in our original - berth, which served us very well as a sort of grand stand for viewing the - life of Copenhagen. His theory was that we were in the way of honest - laboring folk, and that we ought to be up in the “sound,” on the - northeastern edge of the city, where the yachts lie. We contested his - theory, but we went, because it is unwise to quarrel with a bureaucracy of - whose language you are ignorant. - </p> - <p> - The sound did not suit us. The anchorage was opposite a coaling station, - and also opposite a shipbuilding yard, and from the west came a strong - odor out of a manufactory of something unpleasant. We could have tolerated - the dust, the noise, and the smell, but what we could not tolerate was the - heavy rolling, for the north wind was blowing and the anchorage exposed to - it. Indeed, the Royal Danish Yacht Club might have chosen more comfortable - quarters for itself. We therefore unostentatiously weighed anchor again, - and reëntered the town, and hid ourselves among many businesslike tugs in - a little creek called the New Haven, whose extremity was conveniently - close to the Café d’Angleterre. We hoped that the prowling harbor-master - would not catch sight of us, and he did not. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0204.jpg" alt="0204 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0204.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The aristocratic and governing quarter of the town lay about us, including - the Bregade, a street full of antiquaries, marble churches, and baroque - houses, and the Amalienborg Palace, which is really four separate similar - palaces (in an octagonal <i>place</i>) thrown into one. Here all the - prospects and vistas were dignified, magnificent, and proudly exclusive. - The eighteenth century had nobly survived, when the populace was honestly - regarded as a horde created by divine providence in order that the ruling - classes might practise upon it the art of ruling. There was no Tivoli when - those beautiful pavements were made, and as you stand on those pavements - and gaze around at the royal grandiosity, speckless and complete, you can - almost imagine that even the French Revolution has not yet occurred. The - tiny, colored sentry at the vast, gray gates is still living in the - eighteenth century. The architecture is not very distinguished, but it has - style. It shames the ———— Hotel. The Frederiks - Church, whose copper dome overtops the other copper domes, is a fair - example of the quarter. Without being in the least a masterpiece, it - imposes by its sincerity and its sense of its own importance. And the - interior is kept as scrupulously as a boudoir. The impeccability of the - marble flooring is wondrous, and each of the crimson cushions in the - polished pews is like a lady’s pillow. Nothing rude can invade this - marmoreal fane. - </p> - <p> - The Rosenborg Palace, not far off, is open to the public, so that all may - judge what was the life of sovereigns in a small country, and what - probably still is. The royal villas outside Florence are very ugly, but - there is a light grace about their furnishing which lifts them far above - the heavy, stuffy, tasteless mediocrity of such homes as the Rosenborg. - Badly planned, dark, unhygienic, crammed with the miscellaneous ugliness - of generations of royal buying, the Rosenborg is rather a sad sight to - people of taste; and the few very lovely tilings that have slipped in here - and there by inadvertence only intensify its mournfulness. The phantoms of - stupid courtiers seem to pervade, strictly according to etiquette, its - gloomy salons. And yet occasionally, in the disposition of an arm-chair or - a screen, one realizes that it must, after all, have been a home, - inhabited by human beings worthy of sympathy. It is the most bourgeois - home I ever entered. In a glass case, with certain uniforms, were hung the - modern overcoat (a little frayed) and the hat of a late monarch. They - touched the heart of the sardonic visitor, their exposure was so naive. - </p> - <p> - Even more depressing than this mausoleum of nineteenth-century maimers was - the museum of art. As a colossal negation of art, this institution ranks - with the museum of Lausanne. It is an enormous and ugly building, full of - enormous ugliness in painting and sculpture. It contained a fine Rembrandt—“Christ - at Emmaus”—and one good modern picture, a plowing scene by - Wilhelmson. We carefully searched the immense rooms for another good - modern picture, and found it not. Even the specimens of Gauguin, Van Gogh, - and Bonnard were mediocre. - </p> - <p> - The sculpture was simply indescribable. The eye roamed like a bird over - the waters of the deluge, and saw absolutely nothing upon which to alight - with safety. Utter desolation reigned. The directors of this museum had - never, save in the case of Wilhelmson, been guilty of an inadvertence. - Their instinct against beauty in any form was unerring. Imagine the stony - desert of rooms and corridors and giant staircases on a wet Sunday - morning, echoing to the footsteps of the simple holiday crowd engaged - patriotically in the admiration of Danish art; imagine ingenuous, - mackintoshed figures against the vast flanks of stiff and terrific marble - Venuses and other gods; imagine the whispering in front of anecdotes in - paint; imagine the Inferno of an artist—and you have the art museum, - the abode and lurking-place of everlasting tedium. - </p> - <p> - Quite different is the Glyptothek, a museum whose existence is due to - private enterprise and munificence. It is housed in an ugly and - ill-planned building, but the contents are beautiful, very well arranged, - and admirably exposed. The Glyptothek has an entrancing small picture by - Tiepolo, of Antony and Cleopatra meeting, which I was informed must be a - study for a larger picture in Venice It alone should raise the museum to a - shrine of pilgrimage, and it is not even mentioned in Baedeker! But the - Glyptothek triumphs chiefly by its sculpture. Apart from its classical - side, it has a superb collection of Meuniers, which impressed, without - greatly pleasing, me; a roomful of Rodin busts which are so honest and - lifelike and jolly that when you look at them you want to laugh—you - must laugh from joy. And the Carpeaux busts of beautiful women—what - a profound and tranquil satisfaction n gazing at them! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0209.jpg" alt="0209 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0209.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Some of the rooms at the Glyptothek are magical in their effect on the - sensibility. They would make you forget wife and children, yachts, income - tax, and even the Monroe Doctrine. Living Danish women were apposite - enough to wander about the sculpture rooms for our delectation, making - delicious contrasts against the background of marble groups. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIII—THE RETURN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E left Copenhagen - with regrets, for the entity of the town was very romantic and attractive. - Even the humble New Haven, where we sheltered from the eye of the - harbor-master, had its charm for us. It was the real sailors’ quarter, - thoroughly ungentlemanly and downright. The shops on each side of the - creek were below the level of the street and even of the water, and every - one of them was either a café, with mysterious music heating behind glazed - doors, or an emporium of some sort for sailors. Revelries began in the - afternoon. You might see a nice neat Danish wife guiding an obstreperously - intoxicated Danish sailor down the steps leading to a cigar shop. Not a - pleasant situation for a nice wife! But, then, you reflected that he was a - sailor, and that he had doubtless been sober and agreeable a short while - before, and would soon be sober and agreeable again; and that perhaps - there were great compensations in his character. At night Bacchus and Pan - were the true gods of that quarter, and the worship of them was loud and - yet harmonious. - </p> - <p> - We prepared reluctantly to depart; the engine also. The engine would not - depart, and it was a new engine. Two hours were spent in wheedling and - conciliating its magneto. After that the boat traveled faster than it had - ever traveled. We passed out of Copenhagen into the sound, leaving a noble - array of yachts behind, and so up the sound. Soon Copenhagen was naught - but a bouquet of copper domes, and its beautiful women became legendary - with us, and our memory heightened their beauty. And then the engine - developed a “knock.” Now, in a small internal-combustion engine a “knock” - may be due to bad petrol or to a misplacement of the magneto or to a - hundred other schisms in the secret economy of the affair. We slowed to - half-speed and sought eagerly the origin of the “knock,” which, however, - remained inexplicable. We were engloomed; we were in despair. - </p> - <p> - We had just decided to stop the engine when it stopped of itself, with a - fearful crash of broken metal One side of the casing was shattered. The - skipper’s smile was tragical. The manliness of all of us trembled under - the severity of the ordeal which fate had administered. To open out the - engine-box and glance at the wreck in the depths thereof was - heart-rending. We could not closely examine the chaos of steel and brass - because it was too hot, but we knew that the irremediable had occurred in - the bowels of the <i>Velsa</i>. We made sail, and crawled back to the - sound, and mournfully anchored with our unseen woe among the other yachts. - </p> - <p> - The engine was duly inspected bit by bit; and it appeared that only the - bearing of the forward piston was broken, certainly owing to careless - mounting of the engine in the shops. It was an enormous catastrophe, but - perhaps not irremediable. - </p> - <p> - Indeed, within a short time the skipper was calculating that he could get - a new bearing made in Copenhagen in twenty-four hours. Anyhow, we had to - reconcile ourselves to a second visit to Copenhagen. And Copenhagen, a few - hours earlier so sweet a name in our ears, was now hateful to us, a kind - of purgatory to which we were condemned for the sins of others. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0216.jpg" alt="0216 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0216.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The making and fitting of the new bearing occupied just seventy hours. - During this interminable period we enjoyed the scenery of the sound and - grew acquainted with its diverse phenomena. The weather, if wet, was calm, - and the surface of the water smooth; but every steamer that passed would - set up a roll that flung hooks, if not crockery, about the saloon. And the - procession of steamers in both directions was constant from five a. m. to - midnight. They came from and went to every part of the archipelago and of - Sweden and of northern Germany. We gradually understood that at Copenhagen - railways are a trifle, and the sea a matter of the highest importance. - Nearly all traffic is seaborne. - </p> - <p> - We discovered, too, that the immediate shore of the sound, and of the - yacht-basin scooped out of it, was a sort of toy seaside resort for the - city. Part of the building in which the Royal Danish Yacht Club is housed - was used as a public restaurant, with a fine terrace that commanded the - yacht-club landing-stage and all the traffic of the sound. Moreover, it - was a good restaurant, except that the waiters seemed to be always eating - some titbit on the sly. - </p> - <p> - Here we sat and watched the business and pleasure of the sound. The czar’s - yacht came to anchor, huge and old-fashioned and ungraceful, with a - blue-and-white standard large enough to make a suit of sails for a - schooner—the biggest yacht afloat, I think, but not a pleasing - object, though better than the antique ship of the Danish king. The - unwieldy ceremoniousness of Russian courts seemed to surround this pompous - vessel, and the solitary tragedy of imperial existence was made manifest - in her. Ah, the savage and hollow futility of saluting guns! The two - English royal yachts, both of which we saw in the neighborhood, were in - every way strikingly superior to the Russian. - </p> - <p> - Impossible to tire of the spectacle offered by that restaurant terrace. At - night the steamers would slip down out of Copenhagen one after the other - to the ends of the Baltic, and each was a moving parterre of electricity - on the darkness. And then we would walk along the nocturnal shore and find - it peopled with couples and larger groups, whose bicycles were often - stacked in groups, too. And the little yachts in the little yacht-basin - were each an illuminated household! A woman would emerge from a cabin and - ask a question of a man on the dark bank, and he would flash a - lantern-light in her face like a missile, and “Oh!” she would cry. And - farther on the great hulk which is the home of the Copenhagen Amateur - Sailing Club would be lit with festoons of lamps, and from within it would - come the sounds of song and the laughter of two sexes. And then we would - yell, “<i>Velsa</i>, ahoy!” and keep on yelling until all the lightly clad - couples were drawn out of the chilly night like moths by the strange - English signaling. And at last the <i>Velsa</i> would wake up, and the - dinghy would detach itself from her side, and we would go aboard. But not - until two o’clock or so would the hilarity and music of the Amateur - Sailing Club cease, and merge into a frantic whistling for taxicabs from - the stand beyond the restaurant. - </p> - <p> - Then a few hours’ slumber, broken by nightmares of the impossibility of - ever quitting Copenhagen, and we would get up and gaze at the sadness of - the dismantled engine, and over the water at the yachts dozing and rocking - in the dawn. And on a near yacht, out of the maw of a forecastle-hatch - left open for air, a half-dressed sailor would appear, and yawn, and - stretch his arms, and then begin to use a bucket on the yacht’s deck. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0221.jpg" alt="0221 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0221.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The day was born. A green tug would hurry northward, splashing; and the - first of the morning steamers would arrive from some mystical distant - island, a vessel, like most of the rest, of about six hundred tons, red - and black funnels, the captain looking down at us from the bridge; a nice - handful of passengers, including a few young women in bright hats; - everything damp and fresh, and everybody expectant and braced for - Copenhagen. A cheerful, ordinary sight! And then our skipper would emerge, - and the cook with my morning apple on a white plate. And the skipper would - say, “We ought to be able to make a start to-day, sir.” And on the third - day we did make a start, the engine having been miraculously recreated; - and we left Copenhagen, hating it no more. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART IV—ON THE FRENCH AND FLEMISH COAST - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIV—FOLKESTONE TO BOULOGNE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E waited for the - weather a day and a night at Folkestone, which, though one of the gateways - of England, is a poor and primitive place to lie in. Most of the time we - were on the mud, and to get up into England we had to climb a craggy - precipice called the quay-wall. Nevertheless, the harbor (so styled) is - picturesque, and in the less respectable part of the town, between the big - hotels and band-stands and the mail-steamers; there are agreeable - second-hand book shops, in one of which I bought an early edition of - Gray’s poems bound in ancient vellum. - </p> - <p> - The newspapers were very pessimistic about the weather, and smacks - occasionally crept in for shelter, with wild reports of what was going on - in the channel. At four o’clock in the morning, however, we started, - adventurous, for the far coasts of Brittany, via Boulogne. The channel was - a gray and desolate sight, weary and uneasy after the gale. And I also was - weary and uneasy, for it is impossible for a civilized person of regular - habits to arise at four a. m. without both physical and psychical - suffering, and the pleasure derived from the experience, though real, is - perverse. The last gleams of the Gris-Nez and the Varne lights were - visible across the heaving waste, feebly illuminating the intense - melancholy of the dawn. There was nothing to do except steer and keep your - eyes open, because a favorable and moderate southwest wind rendered the - engine unnecessary. The ship, and the dinghy after her, pitched and rolled - over the heavy swell. The skipper said naught. I said naught. The lights - expired. The dark gray of the sea turned to steel. The breeze was icy. - Vitality was at its lowest. Brittany seemed exceedingly remote, even - unattainable. Great, vital questions presented themselves to the enfeebled - mind, cutting at the very root of all conduct and all ambitions. What was - the use of yachting? What was the use of anything? Why struggle? Why - exist? The universe was too vast, and the soul homeless therein. - </p> - <p> - And then the cook, imperfectly attired, came aft, bearing a brass tray, - and on the tray an electro-teapot, sugar-basin, and milk-jug, and a white - cup and saucer with a spoon. Magic paraphernalia! Exquisite and potent - draft, far surpassing champagne drunk amid the bright glances of beauty! - Only the finest China tea is employed aboard the <i>Velsa</i>. I drank, - and was healed; and I gave also to the shipper. Earth was transformed. We - began to talk. The wind freshened. The ship, heeling over, spurted. It was - a grand life. We descried the French coast. The hours flew. Before - breakfast-time we were becalmed, in sunshine, between the piers at - Boulogne, and had to go in on the engine. At 8:15 we ran her on the mud, - on a rising tide, next to a pilot-boat, the <i>Jean et Marie</i>, - inhabited by three jolly French sailors. We carried a warp to the Quai - Chanzy, and another to a buoy, and considered ourselves fairly in France. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0228.jpg" alt="0228 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0228.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The officials of the French republic on the quay had been driven by the - spectacle of our peculiar Dutch lines and rig to adopt strange, emotional - attitudes; and as soon as we were afloat, the French republic came aboard - in a dinghy manned by two acolytes. The skipper usually receives the - representatives of foreign powers, but as the skipper speaks no French, - and as this was the first time I had entered France in this style, I - thought I would be my own ambassador. I received the French republic in my - saloon; we were ravishingly polite to each other; we murmured sweet - compliments to each other. He gave me a clean bill of health, and went off - with four francs and one half-penny. There is no nation like the French. A - French milliner will make a hat out of a piece of felt and nothing; and a - French official will make a diplomatic episode out of nothing at all, - putting into five minutes of futility all the Gallic civilization of - centuries. - </p> - <p> - Boulogne Harbor is a very bustling spot, and as its area is narrowly - limited, and its entrance difficult, the amount of signaling that goes on - is extraordinary. A single ship will fill the entrance; hence a flag flies - to warn the surrounding seas when the entrance is occupied or about to be - occupied. The state of the tide is also indicated, and the expert can read - from hieroglyphics slung in the air the exact depth of water at a - particular moment between the piers. In addition, of course, there is the - weather signaling. We had scarcely been in port a couple of hours before - the weather signaling shocked us; nay, we took it as an affront to - ourselves. The south cone went up. We had come in at the tail-end of one - south gale, and now another was predicted! How could small people like us - hope to work our way down to Brittany in the teeth of the gale! And I had - an appointment in the harbor of Carantec, a tiny village near Morlaix, in - a week’s time! The thing was monstrous. But the south cone was hoisted, - and it remained hoisted. And the cone is never displayed except for a real - gale,—not a yachtsman’s gale, but a sailor’s gale, which is serious. - </p> - <p> - A tender went forth to meet a Dutch American liner in the roads. We - followed her along the jetty. At the end of the jetty the gale was already - blowing; and rain-squalls were all round the horizon. Soon we were in the - midst of a squall ourselves. The rain hid everything for a minute. It - cleared. The vast stretch of sands glistened wet, with the variegated - bathing-tents, from which even then beautiful creatures were bathing in a - shallow surf. Beyond was the casino, and all the complex roofs of - Boulogne, and to the north a road climbing up to the cliff-top, and the - illimitable dunes that are a feature of this part of the country. Above - all floated thunder-clouds, white in steely blue. The skipper did not like - those thunder-clouds; he said they were the most dangerous of all clouds, - “because anything might come out of them.” He spoke as if they already - contained in their bosoms every conceivable sort of weather, which they - would let loose according to their caprice. - </p> - <p> - The rain resumed heavily. The wind compelled us to hold tight to the rail - of the pier. A poster announced that in the casino behind the rain, - Suppé’s “Boccaccio” was to be performed that night, and Massenet’s “Thaïs” - the next night. And opera seemed a very artificial and unnecessary form of - activity as we stood out there in the reality of the storm. The Atlantic - liner had now bid good-by to the tender, and was hugely moving. She found - sea-room, and then turned with the solemnity of her bigness, and headed - straight into the gale, pitching like a toy. The rain soon veiled her, and - she was gone. I could not picture the <i>Velsa</i> in such a situation, at - any rate with the owner on board. We went back, rather pensive, to the - Quai Chanzy. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0234.jpg" alt="0234 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0234.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The men in the pilot-boat alongside the <i>Velsa</i> were not in the least - reassuring as to the chances of the <i>Velsa</i> ever getting to Brittany; - but they were uplifted because the weather was too rough for them to go - out. When the cone is on view, the pilot-service is accomplished by a - powerful steam-vessel. Our friends, in their apparently happy idleness, - sculled forth in a dinghy about fifty yards from where we lay, and almost - immediately rejoined us with three eels that they had caught. I bought the - three eels for two shillings, and the cook cooked them perfectly, and I - ate one of them with ecstasy a few hours later; but eels are excessively - antipathetic to the digestive organs, and may jaundice the true bright - color of the world for days. - </p> - <p> - The transaction of the eels, strengthened our intimacy with the pilot’s - crew, who imparted to us many secrets; as, for example, that they were the - selfsame men who act as porters at the quay for the transfer of luggage - when the cross-channel steamers arrive and depart. On one day they are the - pilot’s crew, and on the next they are porters to carry your handbags - through the customs. This was a blow to me, because on the innumerable - occasions when I had employed those porters I had always regarded them as - unfortunate beings who could earn money only during about an hour each - day, victims of the unjust social system, etc., and who were therefore - specially deserving of compassion and tips. I now divined that their - activities were multiple, and no doubt dovetailed together like a Chinese - puzzle, and all reasonably remunerative. The which was very French and - admirable. Herein was a valuable lesson to me, and a clear saving in - future of that precious commodity, compassion. - </p> - <p> - In a day or two the horrid fact emerged that we were imprisoned in - Boulogne. The south cone did not budge. Neither could we. The tide ebbed; - the tide flowed; we sank softly into the mud; we floated again. A sailor - cut our warp because it was in his way, and therefore incurred our anger - and the comminations of the harbor-master. But we were not released. An - aeroplane meeting was announced, and postponed. We witnessed the - preparations for the ceremonial opening of a grand new dock. We went to - the casino and listened to Russian music, which in other circumstances - would have enchanted us. - </p> - <p> - But none of these high matters could hold our attention. Even when the - cook criticized our water-colors with faint praise, and stated calmly that - he, too, was a water-colorist, and brought proofs of his genius cut of the - forecastle, even then we were not truly interested. We thirsted to depart, - and could not. Our sole solace was to walk round and round the basini in - the rain-squalls, and observe their tremendous vitality, which, indeed, - never ceased, day or night save at low water, when most craft were - aground. - </p> - <p> - At such periods of tranquillity the trucks of the fishing-smacks were - nearly level with the quay, and we noticed that every masthead was - elaborately finished with gilded sculpture—a cross, a star, or a - small figure of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or an angel. The names, too, of - these smacks were significant: <i>Resurrection, Jesus-Marie</i>, and so - on. The ornamentation of the deck-houses and companions of these vessels - showed a great deal of fantasy and brilliant color, though little taste. - And the general effect was not only gay, but agreeable, demonstrating, as - it did, that the boats were beloved. English fishing-boats are beloved by - their owners, but English affection does not disclose itself in the same - way, if it discloses itself at all. On the third afternoon we assisted at - the departure of an important boat for the herring fisheries. It had a - crew of seventeen men, all dressed in brown, young and old, and an - enormous quantity of gear. It bore the air of a noble cooperative - enterprise, and went off on the tide, disdainfully passing the - still-hoisted cone. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps it was this event that gave us to think. If a herring-boat could - face the gale, why not we? Our ship was very seaworthy, and the coast was - dotted with sheltering ports. Only it was impossible to go south, since we - could not have made headway. Then why not boldly cancel the rendezvous in - Brittany, and run northward before the gale? The skipper saluted the idea - with enthusiasm. He spoke of Ostend. He said that if the wind held we - could easily run to Ostend in a day. He did not care for Ostend, but it - would be a change. I, however, did care for Ostend. And so it was decided - that, unless the wind went right round in the night, we would clear out of - Boulogne at the earliest tidal hour the next morning. The joy of - expectancy filled the ship, and I went into the town to buy some of the - beautiful meat-pies that are offered in its shops. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0239.jpg" alt="0239 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0239.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XV—TO BELGIUM - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T 6 a. M. we, too, - were passing disdainfully the still-hoisted cone. Rain descended in - sheets, in blankets, and in curtains, and when we did not happen to be in - the rain, we could see rain-squalls of the most theatrical appearance in - every quarter of the horizon. The gale had somewhat moderated, but not the - sea; the wind, behind us, was against the tide, and considerably - quarreling therewith. Now we were inclosed in walls of water, and now we - were balanced on the summit of a mountain of water, and had a momentary - view of many leagues of tempest. I personally had never been out in such - weather in anything smaller than a mail-steamer. - </p> - <p> - Here I must deal with a distressing subject, which it would be pleasanter - to ignore, but which my training in realism will not allow me to ignore. A - certain shameful crime is often committed on yachts, merchantmen, and even - men-of-war. It is notorious that Nelson committed this crime again and - again, and that other admirals have copied his iniquity. Sailors, and - particularly amateur sailors, would sooner be accused of any wickedness - rather than this. Charge them with cheating at cards, ruining innocent - women, defrauding the Government, and they will not blench; but charge - them with this offense, and they will blush, they will recriminate, and - they will lie disgracefully against all evidence; they cannot sit still - under the mere suspicion of it. - </p> - <p> - As we slipped out of the harbor that morning the secret preoccupation of - the owner and his friend was that circumstances might tempt them to - perpetrate the sin of sins. Well, I am able to say that they withstood the - awful temptation; but only just! If out of bravado they had attempted to - eat their meals in the saloon, the crime would assuredly have been - committed, but they had the sense to order the meals to be served in the - cockpit, in the rain, in the blast, in the cold. No matter the conditions! - They were saved from turpitude, and they ate heartily thrice during the - day. And possibly nobody was more astonished than themselves at their - success in virtue. I have known a yachtsman, an expert, a member of an - exceedingly crack club, suddenly shift his course shoreward in - circumstances not devoid of danger. - </p> - <p> - “What are you about?” was the affrighted question. He replied: - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to beach her. If I don’t, I shall be sick, and I won’t be sick - aboard this yacht.” - </p> - <p> - Such is the astounding influence of convention, which has transformed into - a crime a misfortune over which the victim has no control whatever. We did - not beach the <i>Velsa</i>, nor were our appetites impaired. We were - lucky, and merely lucky; and yet we felt as proud as though we had, by our - own skill and fortitude, done something to be proud of. This is human - nature. - </p> - <p> - As we rounded Cape Gris-Nez, amid one of the most majestic natural scenes - I have ever witnessed, not a gale, but about half of a gale, was blowing. - The wind continued to moderate. Off Calais the tide was slack, and between - Calais and Dunkirk we had it under our feet, and were able to dispense - with the engine and still do six and a half knots an hour. Thenceforward - the weather grew calm with extraordinary rapidity, while the barometer - continuously fell. At four o’clock the wind had entirely expired, and we - restarted the engine, and crawled past Westend and Nieuport, resorts very - ugly in themselves, but seemingly beautiful from the sea. By the time we - sighted the whiteness of the kursaal at Ostend the water was as flat as an - Inland lake. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0246.jpg" alt="0246 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0246.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The sea took on the most delicate purple tints, and the pallor of the - architecture of Belgian hotels became ethereal. While we were yet a mile - and a half from the harbor-mouth, flies with stings wandered out from the - city to meet us. - </p> - <p> - We passed between the pierheads at Ostend at 6:10 p. m., and the skipper - was free to speak again. When he had done manouvering in the basin, he - leaned over the engine-hatch and said to me: - </p> - <p> - “I ‘ve had a bit o’ luck this week.” - </p> - <p> - “With the engine?” I suggested, for the engine had been behaving itself - lately. - </p> - <p> - “No, sir. My wife presented me with a little boy last Tuesday. I had the - letter last night. I’ve been expecting it.” But he had said nothing to me - before. He blushed, adding, “I should like you to do me a very great - favor, sir—give me two days off soon, so that I can go to the - baptism.” Strange, somehow, that a man should have to ask a favor to be - present at the baptism of his own son! The skipper now has two sons. Both, - I was immediately given to understand, are destined for the sea. He has - six brothers-in-law, and they all follow the sea. On a voyage he will - never willingly leave the wheel, even if he is not steering. He will rush - down to the forecastle for his dinner, swallow it in two minutes and a - half, and rush back. I said to him once: - </p> - <p> - “I believe you must be fond of this wheel.” - </p> - <p> - “I am, sir,” he said, and grinned. - </p> - <p> - We lay nearly opposite the railway station, and our rudder was within a - foot of the street. Next to us lay the <i>Velsa’s</i> sister (occasion for - the historic remark that “the world is very small”), a yacht well known to - the skipper, of exactly the same lines as the <i>Velsa</i>, nearly the - same size, and built within four miles of her in the same year! The next - morning, which was a Sunday, the sisters were equally drenched in - tremendous downpours of rain, but made no complaint to each other. I had - the awning rigged, which enabled us, at any rate, to keep the saloon - skylights open. - </p> - <p> - The rain had no effect on the traditional noisiness of Ostend. Like sundry - other cities, Ostend has two individualities, two souls. All that fronts - the sea and claims kinship with the kursaal is grandiose, cosmopolitan, - insincere, taciturn, blatant, and sterile. It calls itself the finest - sea-promenade in Europe, and it may he, but it is as factitious as a - meringue. All that faces the docks and canals is Belgian, more than - Belgian—Flemish, picturesque, irregular, strident, simple, - unaffected, and swarming with children. Narrow streets are full of little - cafés that are full of little men and fat women. All the little streets - are cobbled, and everything in them produces the maximum quantity of - sound. Even the postmen carry horns, and all the dogs drawing little carts - hark loudly. Add to this the din of the tram-cars and the whistling of - railway engines. - </p> - <p> - On this Sunday morning there was a band festival of some kind, upon which - the pitiless rain had no effect whatever. Band after band swung past our - rudder, blaring its uttermost. We had some marketing to do, as the cook - declared that he could market neither in French nor Flemish, and we waited - impatiently under umbrellas for the procession of bands to finish. It - would not finish, and we therefore had to join it. All the way up the Rue - de la Chapelle we could not hear ourselves speak in the brazen uproar; and - all the brass instruments and all the dark uniforms of the puffy - instrumentalists were glittering and melting in the rain. Occasionally at - the end of the street, over the sea, lightning feebly flickered against a - dark cloud. At last I could turn off into a butcher’s shop, where under - the eyes of a score of shopping matrons I purchased a lovely piece of beef - for the nominal price of three francs seventy-five centimes, and bore it - off with pride into the rain. - </p> - <p> - When we got back to the yacht with well-baptized beef and vegetal des and - tarts, we met the deck-hand, who was going alone into the interesting and - romantic city. Asked what he was about, he replied: - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to buy a curio, sir; that’s all.” He knew the city. He had been - to Ostend before in a cargo-steamer, and he considered it neither - interesting nor romantic. He pointed over the canal toward the country. - “There’s a pretty walk over there,” he said; “but there’s nothing here,” - pointing to the town. I had been coming to Ostend for twenty years, and - enjoying it like a child, but the deck-hand, with one soft-voiced - sentence, took it off the map. - </p> - <p> - In the afternoon, winding about among the soaked cosmopolitanism of the - promenade, I was ready to agree with him. Nothing will destroy fashionable - affectations more surely than a wet Sunday, and the promenade seemed to - rank first in the forlorn tragedies of the world. I returned yet again to - the yacht, and was met by the skipper with a disturbed face. - </p> - <p> - “We can’t get any fresh water, sir. Horse is n’t allowed to work on - Sundays. <i>Everything’s changed in Belgium.</i>” The skipper was too - Dutch to be fond of Flanders. His mightiest passion was rising in him—the - passion to go somewhere else. - </p> - <p> - “All right,” I said; “we ‘ll manage with mineral water, and then we ‘ll - move on to Bruges.” In rain it is, after all, better to be moving than to - be standing still. - </p> - <p> - But to leave Ostend was not easy, because the railway bridge would not - swing for us, nor would it yield, for over an hour, to the song of our - siren. Further, the bridge-man deeply insulted the skipper. He said that - he was not supposed to swing for <i>canal-boats</i>. - </p> - <p> - “Canal-boat!” the skipper cried. “By what canal do you think I brought - this ship across the North Sea?” He was coldly sarcastic, and his sarcasm - forced the bridge open. We passed through, set our sails, and were - presently heeling over and washing a wave of water up the banks of the - canal. I steered, and, as we overtook an enormous barge, I shaved it as - close as I could for the fun of the thing. Whereupon the skipper became - excited, and said that for a yacht to touch a barge was fatal, because the - barges were no stronger than cigar-boxes, having sides only an inch thick, - and would crumble at a touch; and the whole barge-population of Belgium - and Holland, but especially Belgium, was in a conspiracy to extract - damages out of yachts on the slightest pretext. It seemed to me that the - skipper’s alarm was exaggerated. I understood it a few days later, when he - related to me that he had once quite innocently assisted at the cracking - of a cigar-box, for which his employer had had to pay five thousand - francs. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0251.jpg" alt="0251 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0251.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The barge which I had failed to sink had two insignificant square-sails - set, like pocket-handkerchiefs, but was depending for most of its motion - on a family of children who were harnessed to its tow-rope in good order. - </p> - <p> - Now the barometer began to fall still lower, and simultaneously the - weather improved and brightened. It was a strange summer, was that summer! - The wind fell, the lee-board ceased to hum pleasantly through the water, - and we had to start the engine, which is much less amusing than the sails. - And the towers of Bruges would not appear on the horizon of the monotonous - tree-lined canal, upon whose banks every little village resembles every - other little village. We had to invent something to pass the time, and we - were unwise enough to measure the speed of the engine on this smooth water - in this unusual calm. A speed trial is nearly always an error of tact, for - the reason that it shatters beautiful illusions. I had the beautiful - illusion that under favorable conditions the engine would drive the yacht - at the rate of twelve kilometers an hour. The canal-bank had small posts - at every hundred meters and large posts at every thousand. The first test - gave seven and a half kilometers an hour. It was unthinkable. The - distances must be wrong. My excellent watch must have become capricious. - The next test gave eight kilometers. The skipper administered a tonic to - the engine, and we rose to nine, only to fall again to eight. Allowing - even that the dinghy took a kilometer an hour off the speed, the result of - the test was very humiliating. We crawled. We scarcely moved. - </p> - <p> - Then, feeling the need of exercise, I said I would go ashore and walk - along the bank against the yacht until we could see Bruges. I swore it, - and I kept the oath, not with exactitude, but to a few hundred meters; and - by the time my bloodshot eyes sighted the memorable belfry of Bruges in - the distance, I had decided that the engine was perhaps a better engine - than I had fancied. I returned on board, and had to seek my berth in a - collapse. Nevertheless the <i>Velsa</i> had been a most pleasing object as - seen from the bank. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVI—BRUGES - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E moored at the - Quai Spinola, with one of the most picturesque views in Bruges in front of - us, an irresistible temptation to the watercolorist, even in wet weather. - I had originally visited Bruges about twenty years earlier. It was the - first historical and consistently beautiful city I had ever seen, and even - now it did not appear to have sunk much in my esteem. It is incomparably - superior to Ghent, which is a far more important place, but in which I - have never been fortunate. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0044" id="linkimage-0044"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0258.jpg" alt="0258 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0258.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Ghent is gloomy, whereas Bruges is melancholy, a different and a finer - attribute. I have had terrible, devastating adventures in the restaurants - of Ghent, and the one first-class monument there is the medieval castle of - the counts of Flanders, an endless field for sociological speculation, but - transcendency ugly and depressing. Ghent is a modern town in an old suit - of clothes, and its inhabitants are more formidably Belgian than those of - any other large city of Flanders. I speak not of the smaller industrial - places, where Belgianism is ferocious and terrible. - </p> - <p> - At Bruges, water-colors being duly accomplished, we went straight to Notre - Dame, where there was just enough light left for us to gaze upon - Michelangelo’s “Virgin and Child,” a major work. Then to the streets and - lesser canals. I found changes in the Bruges of my youth. Kinematographs, - amid a conflagration of electricity, were to be expected, for no show-city - in Europe has been able to keep them out. Do they not enliven and illumine - the ground floors of some of the grandest renaissance palaces in Florence? - But there were changes more startling than the advent kinematographs. - </p> - <p> - Incandescent gas-mantles had replaced the ordinary burners in the - street-lamps of the town! In another fifty years the corporation of Bruges - will be using electricity. - </p> - <p> - Still more remarkable, excursion motor-boats were running on the canals, - and at the improvised landing-stages were large signs naming Bruges “The - Venice of the North.” I admit that my feelings were hurt—not by the - motor-boats, but by the signs. Bruges is no more the Venice of the North, - than Venice is the Bruges of the South. - </p> - <p> - We allowed the soft melancholy of Bruges to descend upon us and penetrate - us, as the motorboats ceased to run and the kinematographs grew more - brilliant in the deepening night. We had to dine, and all the restaurants - of the town were open to us. Impossible to keep away from the Grande Place - and the belfry, still incessantly chattering about the time of day. - Impossible not to look with an excusable sentimentality at the Hôtel du - Panier d’Or, which in youth was the prince of hotels, with the fattest - landlord in the world, and thousands of mosquitos ready among its - bed-hangings to assist the belfry-chimes in destroying sleep. The Panier - d’Or was the only proper hotel for the earnest art-loving tourist who - could carry all his luggage and was firmly resolved not to spend more than - seven francs a day at the outside. At the Panier d’Or one was sure to - encounter other travelers who took both art and life seriously. - </p> - <p> - No, we would not dine at the Panier d’Or, because we would not disturb our - memories. We glanced like ghosts of a past epoch at its exterior, and we - slipped into the café restaurant next door, and were served by a postulant - boy waiter who had everything to learn about food and human nature, but - who was a nice boy. And after dinner, almost saturated with the exquisite - melancholy of the Grande Place, we were too enchanted to move. We drank - coffee and other things, and lingered until all the white cloths were - removed from the tables; and the long, high room became a café simply. A - few middle-aged male habitués wandered in separately,—four in all,—and - each sat apart and smoked and drank beer. The mournfulness was sweet and - overwhelming. It was like chloroform. The reflection that each of these - sad, aging men had a home and an <i>intimité</i> somewhere in the - spacious, transformed, shabby interiors of Bruges, that each was a living - soul with aspirations and regrets, this reflection was excruciating in its - blend of forlornness and comedy. - </p> - <p> - A few more habitués entered, and then a Frenchman and a young Frenchwomen - appeared on a dais at the back of the café and opened a piano. They were - in correct drawing-room costume, with none of the eccentricities of the <i>cafe-chantant</i>, - and they produced no effect whatever on the faces or in the gestures of - the habitués, They performed. He sang; she sang; he played; she played. - Just the common songs and airs of the Parisian music-halls, vulgar, but - more inane than vulgar, The young woman was agreeable, with the large, red - mouth which is the index of a comfortable, generous, and good-natured - disposition They sang and played a long time. Nobody budged; nobody - smiled. Certainly we did not; in a contest of phlegm Englishmen can, it is - acknowledged, hold their own. Most of the habitués doggedly read - newspapers, but at intervals there was a momentary dull applause. The - economic basis of the entertainment was not apparent to us. The prices of - food and drink were very moderate, and no collection was made by or on - behalf of the artists. - </p> - <p> - At length, when melancholy ran off us instead of being absorbed, because - we had passed the saturation-point, we rose and departed. Yes, - incandescent-mantles and motor-boats were not the only changes in Bruges. - And in the café adjoining the one we had left a troupe of girls in white - were performing gaily to a similar audience of habitués. We glimpsed them - through the open door. And in front of the kinematograph a bell was - ringing loudly and continuously to invite habitués, and no habitués were - responding. It was all extremely mysterious. The chimes of the belfry - flung their strident tunes across the sky, and the thought of these and of - the habitués gave birth in us to a suspicion that perhaps, after all, - Bruges had not changed. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0045" id="linkimage-0045"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0263.jpg" alt="0263 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0263.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - We moved away out of the Grande Place into the maze of Bruges toward the - Quai Spinola, our footsteps echoing along empty streets and squares of - large houses the fronts of which showed dim and lofty rooms inhabited by - the historical past and also no doubt by habitués. And after much - wandering I had to admit that I was lost in Bruges, a city which I was - supposed to know like my birthplace. And at the corner of a street, - beneath an incandescent-mantle, we had to take out a map and unfold it and - peer at it just as if we had belonged to the lowest rank of tourists. - </p> - <p> - As we submitted ourselves to this humiliation, the carillon of the belfry - suddenly came to us over a quarter of a mile of roofs. Not the clockwork - chimes now, but the carillonneur himself playing on the bells, a bravura - piece, delicate and brilliant. The effect was ravishing, as different from - that of the clockwork chimes as a piano from a barrel-organ. All the magic - of Bruges was reawakened in its pristine force. Bruges was no more a - hackneyed rendezvous for cheap trippers and amateur painters and - poverty-stricken English bourgeois and their attendant chaplains. It was - the miraculous Bruges of which I had dreamed before I had ever even seen - the place—just that. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0046" id="linkimage-0046"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0267.jpg" alt="0267 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0267.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Having found out where we were in relation to the Quai Spinola, we folded - up the map and went forward. The carillon ceased, and began again, - reaching us in snatches over the roofs in the night wind. We passed under - the shadows of rococo churches, the façades and interiors of which are - alike neglected by those who take their pleasures solely according to the - instructions of guide-books, and finally we emerged out of the maze upon a - long lake, pale bluish-gray in the gloom. And this lake was set in a frame - of pale bluish-gray houses with stepwise gables, and by high towers, and - by a ring of gas-lamps, all sleeping darkly. And on the lake floated the - <i>Velsa</i>, like the phantom of a ship, too lovely to be real, and yet - real. It was the most magical thing. - </p> - <p> - We could scarcely believe that there was our yacht right in the midst of - the town. This was the same vessel that only a little earlier had rounded - Cape Gris-Nez in a storm, and suffered no damage whatever. Proof enough of - the advantage of the barge-build, with a light draft, and heavy lee-boards - for use with a beam wind when close-hauled. Some yachtsmen, and expert - yachtsmen, too, are strongly against the barge. But no ordinary yacht of - the <i>Velsas</i> size could have scraped into that lake by the Quai - Spinola and provided us with that unique sensation. The <i>Velsa</i> might - have been designed specially for the background of Bruges. She fitted it - with exquisite perfection. - </p> - <p> - And the shaft of light slanting up from her forecastle hatch rendered her - more domestic than the very houses around, which were without exception - dark and blind, and might have been abandoned. We went gingerly aboard - across the narrow, yielding gangway, and before turning in gazed again at - the silent and still scene. Not easy to credit that a little way off the - kinematograph was tintinnabulating for custom, and a Parisian couple - singing and playing, and a troupe of white-frocked girls coarsely dancing. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART5" id="link2H_PART5"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART V—EAST ANGLIAN ESTUARIES - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVII EAST ANGLIA - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER the exoticism - of foreign parts, this chapter is very English. But no island could be - more surpassingly strange, romantic, and baffling than this island. I had - a doubt about the propriety of using the phrase “East Anglia” in the - title. I asked, therefore, three educated people whether the northern part - of Essex could be termed East Anglia, according to current usage. One said - he did n’t know. The next said that East Anglia began only north of the - Stour. The third said that East Anglia extended southward as far as - anybody considered that it ought to extend southward. He was a true - Englishman. I agreed with him. England was not made, but born. It has - grown up to a certain extent, and its pleasure is to be full of anomalies, - like a human being. It has to be seen to be believed. - </p> - <p> - Thus, my income tax is assessed in one town, twelve miles distant. After - assessment, particulars of it are forwarded to another town in another - county, and the formal demand for payment is made from there; but the - actual payment has to be made in a third town, about twenty miles from - either of the other two. What renders England wondrous is not such - phenomena, but the fact that Englishmen see nothing singular in such - phenomena. - </p> - <p> - East Anglia, including North Essex, is as English as any part of England, - and more English than most. Angles took possession of it very early in - history, and many of their descendants, full of the original Anglian - ideas, still powerfully exist in the counties. And probably no place is - more Anglian than Brightlingsea, the principal yachting center on the east - coast, and the home port of the <i>Velsa</i>. Theoretically and - officially, Harwich is the home port of the <i>Velsa</i>, but not in - practice: we are in England, and it would never do for the theory to - accord with the fact. Brightlingsea is not pronounced Brightlingsea, - except at railway stations, but Brigglesea or Bricklesea. There is some - excuse for this uncertainty, as Dr. - </p> - <p> - Edward Percival Dickin, the historian of the town, has found 193 different - spellings of the name. - </p> - <p> - Brightlingsea is proud of itself, because it was “a member of the Cinque - Ports.” Not <i>one</i> of the Cinque Ports, of which characteristically - there were seven, but a member. A “member” was subordinate, and - Brightlingsea was subordinate to Sandwich, Heaven knows why. But it shared - in the responsibilities of the Cinque. It helped to provide fifty-seven - ships for the king’s service every year. In return it shared in the - privilege of carrying a canopy over the king at the coronation, and in a - few useful exemptions. After it had been a member of the Cinque for many - decades and perhaps even centuries, it began to doubt whether, after all, - it was a member, and demanded a charter in proof. This was in 1442. The - charter was granted, and it leads off with these words: “To all the - faithful in Christ, to whom these present letters shall come, the Mayors - and Bailiffs of the Cinque Ports, Greeting in the Lord Everlasting.” By - this time ships had already grown rather large. They carried four masts, - of which the aftermost went by the magnificent title of the “bonaventure - mizen”; in addition they had a mast with a square sail at the extremity of - the bow-sprit. They also carried an astrolabe, for the purposes of - navigation. - </p> - <p> - Later, smuggling was an important industry at Brightlingsea, and to - suppress it laws were passed making it illegal to construct fast rowing- - or sailing-boats. In the same English, and human, way, it was suggested at - the beginning of the twentieth century that since fast motor-cars kicked - up dust on the roads, the construction of motor-cars capable of traveling - fast should be made illegal. There are no four-masted ships now at - Brightlingsea; no bowsprit carries a mast; no ship puts to sea with an - astrolabe; the “bonaventure mizen” is no more; smuggling is unfashionable; - fast craft are encouraged. - </p> - <p> - Nevertheless, on a summer’s morning I have left the <i>Velsa</i> in the - dinghy and rowed up the St. Osyih Creek out of Brightlingsea, and in ten - minutes have been lost all alone between slimy mud banks with a border of - pale grass at the top, and the gray English sky overhead, and the whole - visible world was exactly as it must have been when the original Angles - first rowed up that creek. At low water the entire Christian era is - reduced to nothing, in many a creek of the Colne, the Black water, and the - Stour; England is not inhabited; naught has been done; the pristine reigns - as perfectly as in the African jungle. And the charm of the scene is - indescribable. But to appreciate it one must know what to look for. I was - telling an Essex friend of mine about the dreadful flatness of - Schleswig-Holstein. He protested. “But aren’t you educated up to flats?” - he asked. I said I was. He persisted. “But are you educated up to mud, the - lovely colors on a mud-flat?” He was a true connoisseur of Essex. The man - who is incapable of being ravished by a thin, shallow tidal stream running - between two wide, shimmering mud banks that curve through a strictly - horizontal marsh, without a tree, without a shrub, without a bird, save an - eccentric sea-gull, ought not to go yachting in Essex estuaries. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0047" id="linkimage-0047"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0278.jpg" alt="0278 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0278.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Brightlingsea is one of the great centers of oyster-fishing, and it - catches more sprats than any other port in the island, namely, about - fifteen hundred tons of them per annum. But its most spectacular industry - has to do with yachting, It began to be a yachting resort only yesterday; - that is to say, a mere seventy-five years ago. It has, however, steadily - progressed, until now, despite every natural disadvantage and every - negligence, it can count a hundred and twenty yachts and some eight - hundred men employed therewith. A yacht cannot get into Brightlingsea at - all from the high sea without feeling her way among sand-banks,—in - old days before bell-buoys and gas-buoys, the inhabitants made a - profitable specialty of salving wrecks,—and when a yacht has - successfully come down Brightlingsea Reach, which is really the estuary of - the River Colne, and has arrived at the mouth of Brightlingsea Creek, her - difficulties will multiply. - </p> - <p> - In the first place, she will always discover that the mouth of the creek - is obstructed by barges at anchor. She may easily run aground at the - mouth, and when she is in the creek, she may, and probably will, mistake - the channel, and pile herself up on a bank known as the Cinders, or the - Cindery. Farther in, she may fail to understand that at one spot there is - no sufficiency of water except at about a yard and a half from the shore, - which has the appearance of being flat. Escaping all these perils, she - will almost certainly run into something, or something will run into her, - or she may entangle herself in the oyster preserves. Yachts, barges, - smacks, and floating objects without a name are anchored anywhere and - anyhow. There is no order, and no rule, except that a smack always deems a - yacht to be a lawful target. The yacht drops her anchor somewhere, and - asks for the harbormaster. No harbor-master exists or ever has existed or - ever will. Historical tradition—sacred! All craft do as they like, - and the craft with the thinnest sides must look to its sides. - </p> - <p> - Also, the creek has no charm whatever of landscape or seascape. You can - see nothing from it except the little red streets of Brightlingsea and the - yacht-yards. Nevertheless, by virtue of some secret which is - uncomprehended beyond England, it prospers as a center of yachting. Yachts - go to it and live in it not by accident or compulsion, but from choice. - Yachts seem to like it. Of course it is a wonderful place, because any - place where a hundred and twenty yachts foregather must be a wonderful - place. The interest of its creek is inexhaustible, once you can reconcile - yourself to its primitive Anglianism, which, after all, really harmonizes - rather well with the mud-flats of the county. - </p> - <p> - An advantage of Brightlingsea is that when the weather eastward is - dangerously formidable, you can turn your back on the North Sea and go for - an exciting cruise up the Colne. A cruise up the Colne is always exciting - because you never know when you may be able to return. Even the <i>Velsa</i>, - which can float on puddles, has gone aground in the middle of the fair and - wide Colne. A few miles up are the twin villages of Wivenhoe and Rowhedge, - facing each other across the river, both inordinately picturesque, and - both given up to the industry of yachting. At Wivenhoe large yachts and - even ships are built, and in winter there is always a choice selection of - world-famous yachts on the mud, costly and huge gewgaws, with their brass - stripped off them, painfully forlorn, stranded in a purgatory between the - paradise of last summer and the paradise of the summer to come. - </p> - <p> - If you are adventurous, you keep on winding along the curved reaches, and - as soon as the last yacht is out of sight, you are thrown hack once more - into the pre-Norman era, and there is nothing but a thin, shallow stream, - two wide mud hanks, and a border of grass at the top of them. This is your - world, which you share with a sea-gull or a crow for several miles; and - then suddenly you arrive at a concourse of great barges against a quay, - and you wonder by w hat magic they got there, and above the quay rise the - towers and steeples of a city that was already ancient when William the - Conqueror came to England in the interests of civilization to take up the - white man’s burden,—Colchester, where more oysters are eaten on a - certain night of the year at a single feast than at any other feast on - earth. Such is the boast. - </p> - <p> - But such contrasts as the foregoing do not compare in violence with the - contrasts offered by the River Stour, a few miles farther north on the map - of England. Harwich is on the Stour, at its mouth, where, in confluence - with the River Orwell (which truly <i>is</i> in East Anglia) it forms a - goodish small harbor. And Harwich, though a tiny town, is a fairly - important naval port, and also “a gate of the empire,” where steamers go - forth for Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. We came into - Harwich Harbor on the tide one magnificent Sunday afternoon, with the sea - a bright green and the sky a dangerous purple, and the entrance to the - Stour was guarded by two huge battle-ships, the <i>Blake</i> and the <i>Blenheim</i>, - each apparently larger than the whole of the town of Harwich. Up the - Stour, in addition to all the Continental steamers, was moored a fleet of - forty or fifty men-of-war, of all sorts and sizes, in a quadruple line. It - was necessary for the <i>Velsa</i> to review this fleet of astoundingly - ugly and smart black monsters, and she did so, to the high satisfaction of - the fleet, which in the exasperating tedium of Sunday afternoon was - thirsting for a distraction, even the mildest. On every sinister ship—the - <i>Basilisk</i>, the <i>Harpy</i>, etc., apposite names!—the young - bluejackets (they seemed nearly all to be youths) were trying bravely to - amuse themselves. The sound of the jews’-harp and of the concertina was - heard, and melancholy songs of love. Little circles of men squatted here - and there on the machinery-encumbered decks playing at some game. A few - students were reading; some athletes were sparring; many others - skylarking. None was too busy to stare at our strange lines. Launches and - longboats were flitting about full of young men, going on leave to the - ecstatic shore joys of Harwich or sadly returning therefrom. Every sound - and noise was clearly distinguishable in the stillness of the hot - afternoon. And the impression given by the fleet as a whole was that of a - vast masculine town, for not a woman could be descried anywhere. It was - striking and mournful. When we had got to the end of the fleet I had a - wild idea: - </p> - <p> - “Let us go up the Stour.” - </p> - <p> - At half-flood it looked a noble stream at least half a mile wide, and - pointing west in an almost perfect straight line. Nobody on board ever had - been up the Stour or knew anybody who had. The skipper said it was a - ticklish stream, but he was always ready for an escapade. We proceeded. - Not a keel of any kind was ahead. And in a moment, as it seemed, we had - quitted civilization and the latest machinery and mankind, and were back - in the Anglian period. River marshes, and distant wooded hills, that was - all; not even a tilled field in sight! The river showed small headlands, - and bights of primeval mud. Some indifferent buoys indicated that a - channel existed, but whether they were starboard or port buoys nobody - could tell. We guessed, and took no harm. But soon there were no buoys, - and we slowed down the engine in apprehension, for on the wide, deceptive - waste of smooth water were signs of shallows. We dared not put about, we - dared not go ahead. Astern, on the horizon, was the distant fleet, in - another world. A head, on the horizon, was a hint of the forgotten town of - Mistley. Then suddenly a rowboat approached mysteriously out of one of - those bights, and it was maimed by two men with the air of conspirators. - </p> - <p> - “D’ ye want a pilot?” - </p> - <p> - We hardened ourselves. - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - They rowed round us, critically staring, and receded. - </p> - <p> - “Why in thunder is n’t this river buoyed?” I demanded of the skipper. - </p> - <p> - The skipper answered that the intention obviously was to avoid taking the - bread out of the mouths of local pilots. He put on speed. No catastrophe. - The town of Mistley approached us. Then we had to pause again, reversing - the propeller. We were in a network of shallows. Far to port could be seen - a small red buoy; it was almost on the bank. Impossible that it could - indicate the true channel. We went straight ahead and chanced it. The next - instant we were hard on the mud in midstream, and the propeller was making - a terrific pother astern. We could only wait for the tide to float us off. - The rowboat appeared again. - </p> - <p> - ‘D’ ye want a pilot?” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - And it disappeared. - </p> - <p> - When we floated, the skipper said to me in a peculiar challenging tone: - </p> - <p> - “Shall we go on, sir, or shall we return?” - </p> - <p> - “We ‘ll go on,” I said. I could say no less. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0048" id="linkimage-0048"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0288.jpg" alt="0288 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0288.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - We bore away inshore to the red buoy, and, sure enough, the true channel - was there, right under the south bank. And we came safely to the town of - Mistley, which had never in its existence seen even a torpedo-boat and - seldom indeed a yacht, certainly never a <i>Velsa</i>. And yet the smoke - of the harbor of Harwich was plainly visible from its antique quay. The - town of Mistley rose from its secular slumber to enjoy a unique sensation - that afternoon. - </p> - <p> - “Shall we go on to Manningtree, sir?” said the skipper, adding with a - grin, “There’s only about half an hour left of the flood, and if we get - aground again——” - </p> - <p> - It was another challenge. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” I said. - </p> - <p> - Manningtree is a town even more recondite than Mistley, and it marks the - very end of the navigable waters of the Stour. It lay hidden round the - next corner. We thought we could detect the channel, curving out again now - into midstream. We followed the lure, opened out Manningtree the desired—and - went on the mud with a most perceptible bump. Out, quick, with the dinghy! - Cover her stern-sheets with a protecting cloth, and lower an anchor - therein and about fifty fathoms of chain, and row away! We manned the - windlass, and dragged the <i>Velsa</i> off the mud. - </p> - <p> - “Shall we go on, sir?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” I said, not a hero. “We ‘ll give up Manningtree this trip.” - Obstinacy in adventure might have meant twelve hours in the mud. The crew - breathed relief. We returned, with great care, to civilization. We knew - now why the Stour is a desolate stream. Thus to this day I have never - reached Manningtree except in an automobile. - </p> - <p> - And there are still stranger waters than the Stour; for example, Hamford - Water, where explosives are manufactured on lonely marshes, where - immemorial wharves decay, and wild ducks and owls intermingle, and - public-houses with no public linger on from century to century, and where - the saltings are greener than anywhere else on the coast, and the east - wind more east, and the mud more vivid. And the <i>Velsa</i> has been - there, too. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVIII—IN SUFFOLK - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE Orwell is - reputed to have the finest estuary in East Anglia. It is a broad stream, - and immediately Shotley Barracks and the engines of destruction have been - left behind, it begins to be humane and reassuring. Thanks to the - surprising modernity of the town of Ipswich, which has discovered that - there are interests more important than those of local pilots, it is - thoroughly well buoyed, so that the stranger and the amateur cannot fail - to keep in the channel. It insinuates itself into Suffolk in soft and - civilized curves, and displays no wildness of any kind and, except at one - point, very little mud. When you are navigating the Orwell, you know - positively that you are in England. On each side of you modest but - gracefully wooded hills slope down with caution to the bank, and you have - glimpses of magnificent mansions set in the midst of vast, undulating - parks, crisscrossed with perfectly graveled paths that gleam in the - sunshine. Everything here is private and sacred, and at the gates of the - park lodge-keepers guard not only the paradisiacal acres, but the original - ideas that brought the estate into existence. - </p> - <p> - Feudalism, benevolent and obstinate, flourishes with calm confidence in - itself; and even on your yacht’s deck you can feel it, and you are awed. - For feudalism has been, and still is, a marvelous cohesive force. And it - is a solemn thought that within a mile of you may be a hushed drawingroom - at whose doors the notion of democracy has been knocking quite in vain for - a hundred years. Presently you will hear the sweet and solemn chimes of a - tower-clock, sound which seems to spread peace and somnolence over half a - county. And as you listen, you cannot but be convinced that the feudal - world is august and beautiful, and that it cannot be improved, and that to - overthrow it would be a vandalism. That is the estuary of the Orwell and - its influence. Your pleasure in it will be unalloyed unless you are so - ill-advised as to pull off in the dinghy, and try to land in one of the - lovely demesnes. - </p> - <p> - About half-way up the estuary, just after passing several big - three-masters moored in midstream and unloading into lighters, you come to - Pinmill, renowned among yachtsmen and among painters. Its haven is formed - out of the angle of a bend in the river, and the narrowness of the channel - at this point brings all the traffic spectacularly close to the yachts at - anchor. Here are all manner of yachts, and you are fairly certain to see a - friend, and pay or receive a visit of state. And also very probably, if - you are on board the Velsa some painter on another yacht will feel bound - to put your strange craft into a sketch. And the skipper, who has little - partiality for these river scenes, will take the opportunity to go - somewhere else on a bicycle. You, too, must go ashore, because Pinmill is - an exhibition-village, entirely picturesque, paintable, and English. It is - liable to send the foreigner into raptures, and Americans have been known - to assert that they could exist there in happiness forever and ever. - </p> - <p> - I believe that some person or persons in authority offer prizes to the - peasantry for the prettiest cottage gardens in Pinmill. It is well; but I - should like to see in every picturesque and paint-able English village a - placard stating the number of happy peasants who sleep more than three in - a room, and the number of adult able-bodied males who earn less than - threepence an hour. All aspects of the admirable feudal system ought to be - made equally apparent. The chimes of the castle-clock speak loud, and need - no advertisement; cottage gardens also insist on the traveler’s attention, - but certain other phenomena are apt to escape it. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0049" id="linkimage-0049"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0297.jpg" alt="0297 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0297.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - The charm of Pinmill is such that you usually decide to remain there over - night. In one respect this is a mistake, for the company of yachts is such - that your early morning Swedish exercises on deck attract an audience, - which produces self-consciousness in the exerciser. - </p> - <p> - Ipswich closes the estuary of the Orwell, and Ipswich is a genuine town - that combines industrialism with the historic sense. No American can - afford not to visit it, because its chief hotel has a notorious connection - with Mr. Pickwick, and was reproduced entire a lifelike-size at a world’s - fair in the United States. Aware of this important fact, the second-hand - furniture and curio-dealers of the town have adopted suitable measures. - When they have finished collecting, Americans should go to the docks—as - interesting as anything in Ipswich—and see the old custom-house, - with its arch, and the gloriously romantic French and Scandinavian - three-masters that usually lie for long weeks in the principal basin. - Times change. Less than eighty years ago the docks of Ipswich were larger - than those of London. And there are men alive and fighting in Ipswich - to-day who are determined that as a port Ipswich shall resume something of - her ancient position in the world. - </p> - <p> - Just around the corner from the Orwell estuary, northward, is the estuary - of the River Deben. One evening, feeling the need of a little ocean air - after the close feudalism of the Orwell, we ran down there from to the - North Sea, and finding ourselves off Woodbridgehaven, which is at the - mouth of the Deben, with a flood-tide under us, we determined to risk the - entrance. According to all printed advice, the entrance ought not to be - risked without local aid. There is a bank at the mouth, with a patch that - dries at low water, and within there is another bank. The shoals shift - pretty frequently, and, worst of all, the tide runs at the rate of six - knots and more. Still, the weather was calm, and the flood only two hours - old. We followed the sailing directions, and got in without trouble just - as night fell. The rip of the tide was very marked, and the coast-guard - who boarded us with a coast-guard’s usual curiosity looked at us as though - we were either heroes or rash fools, probably the latter. - </p> - <p> - We dropped anchor for the night, and the next morning explored the - estuary, with the tide rising. We soon decided that the perils of this - famous river had been exaggerated. There were plenty of beacons,—which, - by the way, are continually being shifted as the shoals shift,—and - moreover the channel defined itself quite simply, for the reason that the - rest of the winding river-bed was dry. We arrived proudly at Woodbridge, - drawing all the maritime part of the town to look at us, and we ourselves - looked at Woodbridge in a fitting manner, for it is sacred to the memory - not of Omar Khayyam, but to much the same person, Edward Fitzgerald, who - well knew the idiosyncrasies of the Deben. Then it was necessary for us to - return, as only for about two hours at each tide is there sufficient water - for a yacht to lie at Woodbridge. - </p> - <p> - The exit from the Deben was a different affair from the incoming. Instead - of a clearly defined channel, we saw before us a wide sea. The beacons or - perches were still poking up their heads, of course, but they were of no - use, since they had nothing to indicate whether they were starboard or - port beacons. It is such details that harmonize well with the Old-World - air of English estuaries—with the swans, for instance, those - eighteenth-century birds that abound on the Deben. We had to take our - choice of port or starboard. Heaven guided us. We reached the entrance. - The tide was at half-ebb and running like a race; the weather was - unreliable. It was folly to proceed. We proceeded. We had got in alone; we - would get out alone. We shot past the coast-guard, who bawled after us. We - put the two beacons in a line astern, obedient to the sailing directions; - but we could not keep them in a line. The tide swirled us away, making - naught of the engine. We gave a tremendous bump. Yes, we were assuredly on - the bank for at least ten hours, if not forever; if it came on to blow, we - might well be wrecked. But no. The ancient <i>Velsa</i> seemed to rebound - elastically off the traitorous sand, and we were afloat again, In two - minutes more we were safe. What the coastguard said is not known to this - day. We felt secretly ashamed of our foolishness, but we were sustained by - the satisfaction of having deprived more local pilots of their fees. - </p> - <p> - Still, we were a sobered crew, and at the next river-mouth northward—Orford - Haven—we yielded to a base common sense, and signaled for a pilot. - The river Ore is more dangerous to enter, and far more peculiar even than - the Deben. The desolate spot, where it runs into the sea is well called - Shinglestreet, for it is a wilderness of shingles. The tide runs very fast - indeed; the bar shifts after every gale, and not more than four feet of - water is guaranteed on it. Last and worst, the bottom is hard. It was - probably the hardness of the bottom that finally induced us to stoop to a - pilot. To run aground on sand is bad, but to run aground on anything of a - rocky nature may be fatal. Our signal was simply ignored. Not the - slightest symptom anywhere of a pilot. We were creeping in, and we - continued to creep in. The skipper sent the deck-hand forward with the - pole. He called out seven feet, eight feet, seven feet; but these were - Dutch feet, of eleven inches each, because the pole is a Dutch pole. The - water was ominous, full of curling crests and unpleasant hollows, as the - wind fought the current. The deckhand called out seven, six, five and a - half. We could almost feel the ship bump... and then we were over the bar. - Needless to say that a pilot immediately hove in sight. We waved him off, - though he was an old man with a grievance. - </p> - <p> - We approached the narrows. We had conquered the worst difficulties by the - sole help of the skipper’s instinct for a channel, for the beacons were - incomprehensible to us; and we imagined that we could get through the - narrows into the river proper. But we were mistaken. We had a fair wind, - and we set all sails, and the engine was working well; but there was more - than a six-knot tide rushing out through those narrows, and we could not - get through. We hung in them for about half an hour. Then, imitating the - example of a fisherman who had followed us, we just ran her nose into the - shingle, with the sails still set, and jumped ashore with a rope. The - opportunity to paint a water-color of the <i>Velsa</i> under full sail was - not to be lost. Also we bought fish and we borrowed knowledge from the - fisherman. He informed us that we had not entered by the channel at all; - that we were never anywhere near it. He said that the channel had four - feet at that hour. Thus we learned that local wisdom is not always - omniscience. - </p> - <p> - After a delay of two hours, we went up the Ore on the slack. The Ore is a - very dull river, but it has the pleasing singularity of refusing to quit - the ocean. For mile after mile it runs exactly parallel with the North - Sea, separated from it only by a narrow strip of shingle. Under another - name it all but rejoins the ocean at Aldeburgh where at length it curves - inland. On its banks is Orford, a town more dead than any dead city of the - Zuyder Zee, and quite as picturesque and as full of character. The - deadness of Orford may be estimated from the fact that it can support a - kinematograph only three nights a week. It has electric light, but no - railway, and the chief attractions are the lofty castle, a fine church, an - antique quay, and a large supply of splendid lobsters. It knows not the - tourist, and has the air of a natural self-preserving museum. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0050" id="linkimage-0050"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0308.jpg" alt="0308 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0308.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIX—THE INCOMPARABLE BLACKWATER - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>IME was when I - agreed with the popular, and the guide-book, verdict that the Orwell is - the finest estuary in these parts; but now that I know it better, I - unhesitatingly give the palm to the Blackwater. It is a nobler stream, a - true arm of the sea; its moods are more various, its banks wilder, and its - atmospheric effects much grander. The defect of it is that it does not - gracefully curve. The season for cruising on the Blackwater is September, - when the village regattas take place, and the sunrises over leagues of - marsh are made wonderful by strange mists. - </p> - <p> - Last September the <i>Velsa</i> came early into Mersea Quarters for Mersea - Regatta. The Quarters is the name given to the lake-like creek that is - sheltered between the mainland and Mersea Island—which is an island - only during certain hours of the day. Crowds of small yachts have their - home in the Quarters, and the regatta is democratic, a concourse or medley - of craft ranging from sailing dinghies up through five-tonners to - fishing-smacks, trading-barges converted into barge-yachts, real - barge-yachts like ourselves, and an elegant schooner of a hundred tons or - so, fully “dressed,” and carrying ladies in bright-colored jerseys, to - preside over all. The principal events occur in the estuary, but the - intimate and amusing events, together with all the river gossip and - scandal, are reserved for the seclusion of the Quarters, where a long lane - of boats watch the silver-gray, gleaming sky, and wait for the tide to - cover the illimitable mud, and listen to the excessively primitive band - which has stationed itself on a barge in the middle of the lane. - </p> - <p> - We managed to get on the mud, but we did that on purpose, to save the - trouble of anchoring. Many yachts and even smacks do it not on purpose, - and at the wrong state of the tide, too. A genuine yachtsman paid us a - visit—one of those men who live solely for yachting, who sail their - own yachts in all weathers, and whose foible is to dress like a sailor - before the mast or like a longshore loafer—and told us a tale of an - amateur who had bought a yacht that had Inhabited Mersea Quarters all her - life. When the amateur returned from his first cruise in her, he lost his - nerve at the entrance to the Quarters, and yelled to a fisherman at anchor - in a dinghy, “Which is the channel?” The fisherman, seeing a yacht whose - lines had been familiar to him for twenty years, imagined that he was - being made fun of. He drawled out, “<i>You</i> know.” In response to - appeals more and more excited he continued to drawl out, “<i>You</i> - know.” At length the truth was conveyed to him, whereupon he drawlingly - advised: “Let the old wench alone. Let her alone. <i>She</i> ’ll - find her way in all right.” Regattas like the Mersea are full of tidal - stories, because the time has to be passed somehow while the water rises. - There was a tale of a smuggler on the mud-flats, pursued in the dead of - night by a coast-guardsman. Suddenly the flying smuggler turned round to - face the coast-guardsman. “Look here,” said he to the coast-guardsman with - warning persuasiveness, “you’d better not come any further. <i>You do see - such ‘wonderful queer things in the newspapers nowadays</i>.” The - coast-guardsman, rapidly reflecting upon the truth of this dark - st-guardsman with warning persuasiveness, “you’d better not come any - further. <i>You do see such ‘wonderful queer things in the newspapers - nowadays</i>.” The coast-guardsman, rapidly reflecting upon the truth of - this dark saying, accepted the advice, and went home. - </p> - <p> - The mud-flats have now disappeared, guns begin to go off, and presently - the regatta is in full activity. The estuary is dotted far and wide with - white, and the din of orchestra and cheering and chatter within the lane - of boats in the Quarters is terrific. In these affairs, at a given moment - in the afternoon, a pause ensues, when the minor low-comedy events are - finished, and before the yachts and smacks competing in the long races - have come back. During this pause we escaped out of the Quarters, and - proceeded up the river, past Brad-well Creek, where Thames barges lie, and - past Tollesbury, with its long pier, while the high tide was still slack. - We could not reach Maldon, which is the Mecca of the Blackwater, and we - anchored a few miles below that municipal survival, in the wildest part of - the river, and watched the sun disappear over vast, flat expanses of water - as smooth as oil, with low banks whose distances were enormously enhanced - by the customary optical delusions of English weather. Close to us was - Osea Island, where an establishment for the reformation of drunkards adds - to the weird scene an artistic touch of the sinister. From the private - jetty of Osea Island two drunkards in process of being reformed gazed at - us steadily in the deepening gloom. Then an attendant came down the jetty - and lighted its solitary red eye, which joined its stare to that of the - inebriates. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0051" id="linkimage-0051"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0313.jpg" alt="0313 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0313.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - Of all the estuary towns, Maldon, at the head of the Blackwater, is the - pearl. Its situation on a hill, with a tine tidal lake in front of it, is - superb, and the strange thing in its history is that it should not have - been honored by the brush of Turner. A thoroughly bad railway service has - left Maldon in the eighteenth century for the delight of yachtsmen who are - content to see a town decay if only the spectacle affords esthetic - pleasure. - </p> - <p> - There is a lock in the river just below Maldon, leading to the Chelmsford - Canal. We used this lock, and found a lock-keeper and lock-house steeped - in tradition and the spirit of history. Beyond the lock was a basin in - which were hidden two beautiful Scandinavian schooners discharging timber - and all the romance of the North. The prospect was so alluring that we - decided to voyage on the canal, at any rate as far as the next lock, and - we asked the lock-keeper how far off the next lock was. He said curtly: - </p> - <p> - “Ye can’t go up to the next lock.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” - </p> - <p> - “Because there’s only two feet of water in this canal. There never was any - more.” - </p> - <p> - We animadverted upon the absurdity of a commercial canal, leading to a - county town, having a depth of only two feet. - </p> - <p> - He sharply defended his canal. - </p> - <p> - “Well,” he ended caustically, “it’s been going on now for a hundred or a - hundred and twenty year like that, and I think it may last another day or - two.” - </p> - <p> - We had forgotten that we were within the influences of Maldon, and we - apologized.. - </p> - <p> - Later—it was a Sunday of glorious weather—we rowed in the - dinghy through the tidal lake into the town. The leisured population of - Maldon was afoot in the meadows skirting the lake. A few boats were - flitting about. The sole organized amusement was public excursions in open - sailing-boats. There was a bathing-establishment, but the day being Sunday - and the weather hot and everybody anxious to bathe, the place was - naturally closed. There ought to have been an open-air concert, but there - was not. Upon this scene of a population endeavoring not to be bored, the - ancient borough of Maldon looked grandly down from its church-topped hill. - </p> - <p> - Amid the waterways of the town were spacious timber-yards; and - eighteenth-century wharves with wharfinger’s residence all complete, as in - the antique days, inhabited still, but rotting to pieces; plenty of - barges; and one steamer. We thought of Sneek, the restless and - indefatigable. I have not yet visited in the <i>Velsa</i> any Continental - port that did not abound in motor-barges, but in all the East Anglian - estuaries together I have so far seen only one motor-barge, and that was - at Harwich. English bargemen no doubt find it more dignified to lie in - wait for a wind than to go puffing to and fro regardless of wind. - Assuredly a Thames barge—said to be the largest craft in the world - sailed by a man and a boy—in full course on the Blackwater is a - noble vision full of beauty, but it does not utter the final word of - enterprise in transport. - </p> - <p> - The next morning at sunrise we dropped slowly down the river in company - with a fleet of fishing-smacks. The misty dawn was incomparable. The - distances seemed enormous. The faintest southeast breeze stirred the - atmosphere, but not the mirror of the water. All the tints of the pearl - were mingled in the dreaming landscape. No prospect anywhere that was not - flawlessly beautiful, enchanted with expectation of the day. The - unmeasured mud-flats steamed as primevally as they must have steamed two - thousand years ago, and herons stood sentry on them as they must have - stood then. Incredibly far away, a flash of pure glittering white, a - sea-gull! The whole picture was ideal. - </p> - <p> - At seven o’clock we had reached Goldhanger Creek, beset with curving - water-weeds. And the creek appeared to lead into the very arcana of the - mist. We anchored, and I rowed to its mouth. A boat sailed in, scarcely - moving, scarcely rippling the water, and it was in charge of two old - white-haired fishermen. They greeted me. - </p> - <p> - “Is this creek long?” I asked. A pause. They both gazed at the creek with - the beautiful name, into which they were sailing, as though they had never - seen it before. - </p> - <p> - “Aye, it’s long.” - </p> - <p> - “How long is it? Is it a mile?” - </p> - <p> - “Aye, it’s a mile.” - </p> - <p> - “Is there anything up there?” Another pause. The boat was drawing away - from me. - </p> - <p> - “Aye, there’s oysters up there.” The boat and the men withdrew - imperceptibly into the silver haze. I returned to the yacht. Just below, - at Tollesbury pier, preparations were in progress for another village - regatta; and an ineffable melancholy seemed to distil out of the extreme - beauty of the estuary, for this was the last regatta, and this our last - cruise, of the season. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0052" id="linkimage-0052"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0320.jpg" alt="0320 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0320.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h3> - THE END - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's From The Log of The "Velsa", by Arnold Bennett - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM THE LOG OF THE "VELSA" *** - -***** This file should be named 55113-h.htm or 55113-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/1/1/55113/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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