HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH LITTLE.
FOLKS suffering from Jingoism, Spreadeagleism, Chauvinism—all such likeisms, to whatever country they belong—would be well advised to take atour in Holland. It is the idea of the moment that size spellshappiness. The bigger the country the better one is for living there.The happiest Frenchman cannot possibly be as happy as the most wretchedBritisher, for the reason that Britain owns many more thousands of squaremiles than France possesses. The Swiss peasant, compared with theRussian serf, must, when he looks at the map of Europe and Asia, feelhimself to be a miserable creature. The reason that everybody in Americais happy and good is to be explained by the fact that America has an areaequal to that of the entire moon. The American citizen who has backedthe wrong horse, missed his train and lost his bag, remembers this andfeels bucked up again.
According to this argument, fishes should be the happiest of mortals, thesea consisting—at least, so says my atlas: I have not measured itmyself—of a hundred and forty-four millions of square miles. But, maybe,the sea is also divided in ways we wot not of. Possibly the sardine wholives near the Brittainy coast is sad and discontented because theNorwegian sardine is the proud inhabitant of a larger sea. Perhaps thatis why he has left the Brittainy coast. Ashamed of being a Brittainysardine, he has emigrated to Norway, has become a naturalized Norwegiansardine, and is himself again.
The happy Londoner on foggy days can warm himself with the reflectionthat the sun never sets on the British Empire. He does not often see thesun, but that is a mere detail. He regards himself as the owner of thesun; the sun begins his little day in the British Empire, ends his littleday in the British Empire: for all practical purposes the sun is part ofthe British Empire. Foolish people in other countries sit underneath itand feel warm, but that is only their ignorance. They do not know it isa British possession; if they did they would feel cold.
My views on this subject are, I know, heretical. I cannot get it into myunpatriotic head that size is the only thing worth worrying about. InEngland, when I venture to express my out-of-date opinions, I am called aLittle Englander. It fretted me at first; I was becoming a mere shadow.But by now I have got used to it. It would be the same, I feel, whereverI went. In New York I should be a Little American; in Constantinople aLittle Turk. But I wanted to talk about Holland. A holiday in Hollandserves as a corrective to exaggerated Imperialistic notions.
There are no poor in Holland. They may be an unhappy people, knowingwhat a little country it is they live in; but, if so, they hide the fact.To all seeming, the Dutch peasant, smoking his great pipe, is as much aman as the Whitechapel hawker or the moocher of the Paris boulevard. Isaw a beggar once in Holland—in the townlet of Enkhuisen. Crowds werehurrying up from the side streets to have a look at him; the idea atfirst seemed to be that he was doing it for a bet. He turned out to be aPortuguese. They offered him work in the docks—until he could getsomething better to do—at wages equal in English money to about tenshillings a day. I inquired about him on my way back, and was told hehad borrowed a couple of forms from the foreman and had left by theevening train. It is not the country for the loafer.
In Holland work is easily found; this takes away the charm of looking forit. A farm labourer in Holland lives in a brick-built house of sixrooms, which generally belongs to him, with an acre or so of ground, andonly eats meat once a day. The rest of his time he fills up on eggs andchicken and cheese and beer. But you rarely hear him grumble. His wifeand daughter may be seen on Sundays wearing gold and silver jewelleryworth from fifty to one hundred pounds, and there is generally enough olddelft and pewter in the house to start a local museum anywhere outsideHolland. On high days and holidays, of which in Holland there areplenty, the average Dutch _vrouw_ would be well worth running away with.The Dutch peasant girl has no need of an illustrated journal once a weekto tell her what the fashion is; she has it in the portrait of hermother, or of her grandmother, hanging over the glittering chimney-piece.
When the Dutchwoman builds a dress she builds it to last; it descendsfrom mother to daughter, but it is made of sound material in thebeginning. A lady friend of mine thought the Dutch costume would servewell for a fancy-dress ball, so set about buying one, but abandoned thenotion on learning what it would cost her. A Dutch girl in her Sundayclothes must be worth fifty pounds before you come to ornaments. Incertain provinces she wears a close-fitting helmet, made either of solidsilver or of solid gold. The Dutch gallant, before making himself known,walks on tiptoe a little while behind the Loved One, and looks at himselfin her head-dress just to make sure that his hat is on straight and hisfront curl just where it ought to be.
In most other European countries national costume is dying out. Theslop-shop is year by year extending its hideous trade. But the countryof Rubens and Rembrandt, of Teniers and Gerard Dow, remains still true toart. The picture post-card does not exaggerate. The men in thosewondrous baggy knickerbockers, from the pockets of which you sometimessee a couple of chicken’s heads protruding; in gaudy coloured shirts, inworsted hose and mighty sabots, smoking their great pipes—the women intheir petticoats of many hues, in gorgeously embroidered vest, inchemisette of dazzling white, crowned with a halo of many frills,glittering in gold and silver—are not the creatures of an artist’s fancy.You meet them in their thousands on holiday afternoons, walking gravelyarm in arm, flirting with sober Dutch stolidity.
On colder days the women wear bright-coloured capes made of fine spunsilk, from underneath the ample folds of which you sometimes hear alittle cry; and sometimes a little hooded head peeps out, regards withpreternatural thoughtfulness the toy-like world without, then dives backinto shelter. As for the children—women in miniature, the singledifference in dress being the gay pinafore—you can only say of them thatthey look like Dutch dolls. But such plump, contented, cheerful littledolls! You remember the hollow-eyed, pale-faced dolls you see swarmingin the great, big and therefore should be happy countries, and wish thatmere land surface were of less importance to our statesmen and our ableeditors, and the happiness and well-being of the mere human items worth alittle more of their thought.
The Dutch peasant lives surrounded by canals, and reaches his cottageacross a drawbridge. I suppose it is in the blood of the Dutch child notto tumble into a canal, and the Dutch mother never appears to anticipatesuch possibility. One can imagine the average English mother trying tobring up a family in a house surrounded by canals. She would never havea minute’s peace until the children were in bed. But then the mere sightof a canal to the English child suggests the delights of a sudden andunexpected bath. I put it to a Dutchman once. Did the Dutch child byany chance ever fall into a canal?
“Yes,” he replied, “cases have been known.”
“Don’t you do anything for it?” I enquired.
“Oh, yes,” he answered, “we haul them out again.”
“But what I mean is,” I explained, “don’t you do anything to preventtheir falling in—to save them from falling in again?”
“Yes,” he answered, “we spank ’em.”
There is always a wind in Holland; it comes from over the sea. There isnothing to stay its progress. It leaps the low dykes and sweeps with ashriek across the sad, soft dunes, and thinks it is going to have a goodtime and play havoc in the land. But the Dutchman laughs behind hisgreat pipe as it comes to him shouting and roaring. “Welcome, my hearty,welcome,” he chuckles, “come blustering and bragging; the bigger you arethe better I like you.” And when it is once in the land, behind thelong, straight dykes, behind the waving line of sandy dunes, he seizeshold of it, and will not let it go till it has done its tale of work.
The wind is the Dutchman’s; servant before he lets it loose again it hasturned ten thousand mills, has pumped the water and sawn the wood, haslighted the town and worked the loom, and forged the iron, and driven thegreat, slow, silent wherry, and played with the children in the garden.It is a sober wind when it gets back to sea, worn and
weary, leaving theDutchman laughing behind his everlasting pipe. There are canals inHolland down which you pass as though a field of wind-blown corn; a soft,low, rustling murmur ever in your ears. It is the ceaseless whirl of thegreat mill sails. Far out at sea the winds are as foolish savages,fighting, shrieking, tearing—purposeless. Here, in the street of mills,it is a civilized wind, crooning softly while it labours.
What charms one in Holland is the neatness and cleanliness of all aboutone. Maybe to the Dutchman there are drawbacks. In a Dutch householdlife must be one long spring-cleaning. No milk-pail is considered fitthat cannot just as well be used for a looking-glass. The great brasspans, hanging under the pent house roof outside the cottage door, flashlike burnished gold. You could eat your dinner off the red-tiled floor,but that the deal table, scrubbed to the colour of cream cheese, is moreconvenient. By each threshold stands a row of empty sabots, andwoe-betide the Dutchman who would dream of crossing it in anything buthis stockinged feet.
There is a fashion in sabots. Every spring they are freshly painted.One district fancies an orange yellow, another a red, a third white,suggesting purity and innocence. Members of the Smart Set indulge inornamentation; a frieze in pink, a star upon the toe. Walking in sabotsis not as easy as it looks. Attempting to run in sabots I do notrecommend to the beginner.
“How do you run in sabots?” I asked a Dutchman once. I had beenexperimenting, and had hurt myself.
“We don’t run,” answered the Dutchman.
And observation has proved to me he was right. The Dutch boy, when heruns, puts them for preference on his hands, and hits other Dutch boysover the head with them as he passes.
The roads in Holland, straight and level, and shaded all the way withtrees, look, from the railway-carriage window, as if they would be goodfor cycling; but this is a delusion. I crossed in the boat from Harwichonce, with a well-known black and white artist, and an equally well-knownand highly respected humorist. They had their bicycles with them,intending to tour Holland. I met them a fortnight later in Delft, or,rather, I met their remains. I was horrified at first. I thought it wasdrink. They could not stand still, they could not sit still, theytrembled and shook in every limb, their teeth chattered when they triedto talk. The humorist hadn’t a joke left in him. The artist could nothave drawn his own salary; he would have dropped it on the way to hispocket. The Dutch roads are paved their entire length with cobbles—big,round cobbles, over which your bicycle leaps and springs and plunges.
If you would see Holland outside the big towns a smattering of Dutch isnecessary. If you know German there is not much difficulty. Dutch—Ispeak as an amateur—appears to be very bad German mis-pronounced.Myself, I find my German goes well in Holland, even better than inGermany. The Anglo-Saxon should not attempt the Dutch G. It is hopelessto think of succeeding, and the attempt has been known to produceinternal rupture. The Dutchman appears to keep his G in his stomach, andto haul it up when wanted. Myself, I find the ordinary G, preceded by ahiccough and followed by a sob, the nearest I can get to it. But theytell me it is not quite right, yet.
One needs to save up beforehand if one desires to spend any length oftime in Holland. One talks of dear old England, but the dearest land inall the world is little Holland. The florin there is equal to the francin France and to the shilling in England. They tell you that cigars arecheap in Holland. A cheap Dutch cigar will last you a day. It is notuntil you have forgotten the taste of it that you feel you ever want tosmoke again. I knew a man who reckoned that he had saved hundreds ofpounds by smoking Dutch cigars for a month steadily. It was years beforehe again ventured on tobacco.
Watching building operations in Holland brings home to you forcibly, whatpreviously you have regarded as a meaningless formula—namely, that thecountry is built upon piles. A dozen feet below the level of the streetone sees the labourers working in fishermen’s boots up to their knees inwater, driving the great wooden blocks into the mud. Many of the olderhouses slope forward at such an angle that you almost fear to passbeneath them. I should be as nervous as a kitten, living in one of theupper storeys. But the Dutchman leans out of a window that is hangingabove the street six feet beyond the perpendicular, and smokescontentedly.
They have a merry custom in Holland of keeping the railway time twentyminutes ahead of the town time—or is it twenty minutes behind? I nevercan remember when I’m there, and I am not sure now. The Dutchman himselfnever knows.
“You’ve plenty of time,” he says
“But the train goes at ten,” you say; “the station is a mile away, and itis now half-past nine.”
“Yes, but that means ten-twenty,” he answers, “you have nearly an hour.”
Five minutes later he taps you on the shoulder.
“My mistake, it’s twenty to ten. I was thinking it was the other wayabout.”
Another argues with him that his first idea was right. They work it outby scientific methods. Meanwhile you have dived into a cab. The resultis always the same: you are either forty minutes too soon, or you havemissed the train by twenty minutes. A Dutch platform is always crowdedwith women explaining volubly to their husbands either that there was notany need to have hurried, or else that the thing would have been to havestarted half an hour before they did, the man in both cases being, ofcourse, to blame. The men walk up and down and swear.
The idea has been suggested that the railway time and the town timeshould be made to conform. The argument against the idea is that if itwere carried out there would be nothing left to put the Dutchman out andworry him.
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