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SCHEVENINGEN—5 P.M. TO 6 P.M. · Around the Clock in Europe : A Travel Sequence

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Section five of Around the Clock in Europe a Travel Sequence. This is a
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liprivox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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or to volunteer, please visit liprivox dot org. Recording by Avayi in November
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two thousand twenty three. Around the Clock in Europe A Travel Sequence by Charles
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fish Howell, Schraveningen five p m to six p m. Nurtured in the
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salt Sadness of the Sea, Scaveningen is a whistler nocturne. Its prevailing and
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distinctive tones are neutral and elusive. There are, of course days when the
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sun is as clear and powerful here as elsewhere, but more often it is
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obscured. Then the sky becomes pearly, the sea are palescant to show a
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drab and done presently, a thin fog drifts in, or vapors steal over
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the trees from the inland marshes, and all tints are rapidly neutralized into a
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common dimness of that vague and sentimental mistland so dear to the heart of the
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painter. This is the characteristic suspended color note of the average day at Schaveningen.
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It harmonizes to perfection with the sentiment of the environment, and invests the
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region with a marvelous charm, peculiar distinctive and of the finest dignity. The
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power of schavening AND's attraction, the force of its appeal, lies largely in
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its grim aloofness and self sufficiency. It is unsympathetic, discouraging, It consistently
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dominates its visitors, and indeed with an easy insolence and indifference. Wealth and
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fashion may abide with it for a few days under tolerance, but the impression
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of the temporary and migratory character of their sojourn is always present, undistracted.
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The fierce and gaunt sea assails the stark and surely shore, and the grim
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fishermen stand by and have their toll of both. Of the presence of the
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strangers, they are all but unaware. In a brief day, the incongruous
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invaders will have gone, but this relentless warfare will continue unabated all the way
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from Helder to the Hook. Glistening seas will hiss over the flat beaches,
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snarling and biting at the shoulders of the dunes, all through the long bitter
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winter, without an instant's intermission, the struggle will go on. It is
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consequently of the very heart of the charm of the place that one has the
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feeling of intruding on battle of tolerated propinquity to Titanic contenders, loafing its havening
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in is the apotheosis of idleness. The strong wind stimulates, the broad beaches
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delight, the solemn sea inspires to This must be added the sense of strong
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contrasts. It emphasizes the impression of having dropped for a time out of the
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familiar monotony of life's treadmill, of being away from home, of both resting
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and recreating. It is present to the eyes in the eloquent disproportion between the
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vast cour house and the diminutive homes of the villagers, in the incongruity of
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Parisian finery invading, the savage haunts of the gull and the curlew, In
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the novel and bizarre activities of the fisher folk, as in their theatrical surroundings
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as well, one finds just the right touch of the picturesque and the unfamiliar
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to complete the full realization of Dolce farniente, of the fabled monsters of the
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wild nor see the imaginative man will believe he sees one certain survivor in that
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languid sea serpent of a peer, the jette konigin Wilhelmina, that stretches its
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delicate length a quarter mile over the waves from off the trap sand dunes of
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Schaveningen. Its pavilion crowned head snuggles flatly on the water in the afternoon and
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evening when its orchestra is playing. One fancies the monster is actually singing.
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At five o'clock precisely we have its last drowsy utterance as it drops off into
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a three hour snap, quite as Fafner in the opera yawns at albarechen Mutter's
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last mich laugh. It must be admitted it is a highly pleasing song.
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He sings a wildtoeufel Waltz more than likely, and we come in time to
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recognize in it the closing number of the Matigny Musicale. And then, like
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Jonah's captor, he wearies of his living contents, and we see them emerge
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by hundreds, scathless and unafraid, gay with parasols and immaculative raiment, and
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pick their way leisurely along his back, until they have rejoined their friends in
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the voluble company that crowds the cafes of the coor house. In a moment
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more, the abandoned monster is fast asleep, which by a familiar association of
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ideas is assigned to the multitudes on the beaches that serve bathing ends in just
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one hour forthwith, there is a great bustling all along the shore side of
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the broad boulevard they call the strandwech bathers pick themselves up regretfully from sun baths
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in the soft, powdery sand, and trod down for a final dip in
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the surf. And those already in hasten to convert pleasure into work with increased
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energy and enthusiasm. To all such the implacable watchmen shall come within the hour
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and beckon them out with stern and remorseless gestures. And the curious little wagons
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they call bath cars will engulf each in turn and trundle them up out of
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the water, while the nervous old women who look after the bathing suits will
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hover about with anxious eyes and lay violent hands on the dripping and discarded garments.
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And now a tremendous clamor arises from all the little Holland children, who
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from early morning have been indulging the national instinct for Nike building and surrounding their
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mother's beach chairs with scientific sand bulwarks against the imaginary encroachments of the sea.
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For all their nurses approach wonderful in white streamers and golden head ornaments, and
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visions of the odious antiprandial toilet rise like North Sea fogs in every youngster's eye,
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until even dinner its self appears abhorrent. Vagabund jugglers run through their final
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tricks, fold their carpets and steal away Itinerant peddlers redouble their efforts and retire
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disgusted or jubilant, as Fortune may have hidden or shown her face. More
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than ever does the seafront take on the appearance of a long apiary, with
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the hundreds of tall shrouded bee hives of beach chairs emptying themselves of their comfortable
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occupants, and being bundled by bee men in white linen to safety for the
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night. And of all the odd sights of schavening, and certainly no other
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will remain longer in mind than this curious huddled colony of beach chairs. What
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a pleasing and cheerful spectacle. Thronging the shore for quite a mile. They
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contribute to the local picture decidedly its most jolly and fantastic feature. Between the
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beach chairs and the boulevard there is a picket line of prim little peaked white
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tents, with the top of each precisely matching all the others in an edging
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of stiff woodenese scallops. Now that the flaps are thrown back and the sides
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rolled up, we see tables and chairs inside with evidence of recent and jovial
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occupancy. To the eye of a man taking his comfort at the pretty little
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Cafede la Plage on the cour House terrace. All this bustle in late afternoon
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animation is bound to prove decidedly diverting. The broad paved plazas that lie like
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carpets between him and the dunes are steadily filling with a considerable proportion of the
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thirty thousand Hollanders and Germans whose summer here and acquaintances are exchanging civilities and joining
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and taking leave of little groups in a way to make the general picture a
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brilliant restless and bewildering interweaving of color. As the open air tables are filling,
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the activity of the waiters approaches hysteria, and the verandahs and saloons of
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the ponderous CoA house begin to hum with the advent of the evening guests.
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Copies of Leucuriere d. S. Cravening pass from hand to hand as the
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curious scandalist of the latest arrivals while look over the various musical programs of the
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evening. Out on the terraces, the ornate little newspaper kiosks attract groups of
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loiterers and gradually take on the character of social centers. And as these companies
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increase, one thinks of stock exchanges and the rallying about the trading standards.
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The matinee at the signpost concludes and out troops its audience to swell the human
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high tide. Bright bits of color are afforded by the blue uniforms and yellow
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facings of Holland infantrymen dotted here and there in the press. It is all
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to see. The usually aerid and monotonous dunes grow brilliant with an artificial blossoming
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of fashionable millinery, where by nature there is nothing better than a scraggy growth
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of stringy heather, a little rosemary and broom, or the dry stem of
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the miller. It is at this hour, when the quiet colored end of
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evening smiles, that the stolid natives array themselves and sally forth like delved tiles,
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come to life, to the amused amazement of the visitors. Your scavening
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in man is wont to go about his duties during the day, flopping vigorously
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in vivid red nickobockers, voluminous as sails and quite as crudely patched. But
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when he makes a point of toilet, he appears in gray homespun. The
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nicobockers cut from the same pattern as the red ones, but there is a
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jacket closed up to the chin with two rows of large buttons, a red
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handkerchief twisted about the neck, a small cap with a glazed peak, and
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of course the wooden clompin such a display richly deserves attention. But what can
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the poor man expect when his wife appears in her full regalia, She too
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is shot with clompin, though you have to take that on faith. In
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view of the dozen or two of petticoats that balloon above them, and her
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waist is a gay butterfly of variegated embroidery, while her head gear is about
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the most incredible thing conceivable. You might at a distance mistake them from bishops
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with the miters tilted back at a rakish angle. Nor is it always after
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one pattern. Usually it is a sort of long white cap of linen embroidered
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at the edges, and the wearer ads a touch of coquetry in the shape
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of a long curl hanging at either side. But not infrequently you see a
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formidable contrivance of vastly more consequence. It consists first of a skull cap of
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polished gold or silver technically known as a hoofed iSER, pierced at the top
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for ventilation and cut to leave room for the exposure of the forehead. And
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over this is drawn an elaborate cape of lace, with gold ornaments of spirals
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and squares dangling over the ears. This triumph of millinery never fails to elicit
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cries of delight from feminine visitors or to set me a man to chuckling.
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It is most likely to form a part of the impressive gear of the nurses
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from the provinces, who have more money for such uses than the wives of
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the fishermen. And the things that are told to newcomers as to the significance
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of this or that ornament is the boldest advantage ever taken of innocent credulity.
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They undertook to tell me that you could distinguish between married, single, and
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engaged women by glancing at the ornaments. I wonder if you can. It
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is said that parents present their daughters with this head dress on the day of
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their confirmation, and that it is a fine sight to behold the array of
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them at Caermas time, with their wearers six or eight abreast, arm in
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arm, rushing down the streets in the odd dancers peculiar to those festivals droning
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monotonous tunes. To my way of thinking, the unflagging industry of the shavening
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in women is a matter of quite as much. Note one seldom sees them
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without their knitting, even when they are recreating, And as they stroll along,
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laughing and chatting together, their fingers, all unnoticed by them, are
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flashing with extraordinary speed, like things of an independent volition. Many of the
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women wear no sleeves and take great pride in their strong round arms, and
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this, I am told is the case even in winter, when they are
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cracked and purple from exposure to the cold. The faces of the elder fisherfolk
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are studies in wrinkles. Their eyes are brave and quizzical, but with a
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certain settled hardness, not perhaps to be unlooked for in men and women who
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come of a stock that, for five hundred years has forced even the savage
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North Sea to yield them a livelihood. They show next to nothing of humor,
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but rather a stern and weary hopelessness. Strong faces are these hard,
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weather beaten faces, but eloquent of tenacity and desperate courage. They have been
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called the most poetic and original of all Hollanders. They are grave, dignified,
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and self reliant, and as they pass you by they show their invariable
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courtesy in a bow and a quiet hun dach. One has only to see
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them to feel the propriety and justification of the boast in their natural song bill
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Helmus Vanassauer, ben Ick Vanda Blute. Fishermen naturally suggest ships, and if
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you glance down the beach you will usually see several of them drawn up to
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the edge of the water with the red, white and blue of Holland at
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the masthead. During the midsummer season, the fishing fleet is away on the
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cruise for red herring off the coasts of Scotland. But there are always a
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few that could not get away, and so we have the famous caavening and
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bomb on its native strand. How the artists have delighted in these lumbering,
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flat bottomed tubs, ponderous of mast and weather of sail. Mezdak Maris,
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Alfred Stevens and the rest have familiarized the world with this fantastic and picturesque craft.
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Who would buy a painting of scavening? And unless it shown the bomb
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were too hauled up on the beach, And that is precisely the resondetre of
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the bomb. It can be hauled up on the beach. Otherwise what should
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a scaverning and fishermen do with a boat having no deep water harbor at hand
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nor anchorage facility. There have through the sentries been many other styles of Dutch
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fishing boats, buses, loggers, hookers, sloops, pinkin, et cetera.
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And at times when the four handed Hollanders have made away with the lion's
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share of the foreign catch. Outsiders have lost patience and classed them as Dutch
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toads. But there have been no bombs, but scavening in bombs. Nowadays
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they have had to build them larger, and they do not beach so easily,
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And it is probably only a matter of time when steam vessels will supplant
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them all together. But when that evil hour strikes, the chiefest picturesque glory
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of this little village will have forever departed. There used to be vast excitement
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in the old days over the first herring catch of the season, and it
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would always hurried ashore and conveyed to the king's table with no end of flourish
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and punctilio. Over at Fladingen, they used to post a watchman on the
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church tower, and when he made out the first boat coming in, he
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would hoist the blue flag, and all the people trooped joyfully down to the
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wharves, shouting a song called the newer harring. Scavening in indeed still presents
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one of its most picturesque scenes, when the returning fishermen arrive and their catch
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is auctioned off down the beach near the lighthouse with much more of gusto and
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excitement than you would imagine. These phlegmatic people could muster the shrewd shavening and
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fishermen have learned how to eke out the bare three hundred florins they realize from
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a year's fishing by turning new tricks in the way of rope spinning, sail
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making, ship building, and curing and smoking the herring. The fish go
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into this latter process as stir harring and emergees bocking, if that means anything
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to anybody. The long beaked curlew that flashes overhead with hoarse, raucous news
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of the sea, looks down at this hour on pleasant and curious sights as
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he wings his swift circle above the scavening neighborhood. The placid village of twisted
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alleys, of innumerable tabac tocop signs, of queer little gabled houses and unpainted
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fishermen's huts has emptied its good folk into the narrow main street, which,
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fickle of name, starts out as Kaiserstrat, almost immediately becomes Willemstrat, and
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within a moment is the outwech. Here one sees in actual life the fascinating
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things he has marveled over in the canvases of ten years. Jan Stain and
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herad dough good Dutch vrause supper marketing. There they go ballooning along, bargaining
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and bustling from shop to shop, storing capacious hampers with game and cheeses,
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and every grim line in their faces shouts a challenge to the shopmen to best
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them by so much as a stiver if they can. From time to time,
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quaint little children, like sturdy Dutch toys, escape from the press and
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clatter of home with an air of mass responsibility, hugging in both arms a
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brown loaf of bread a yard long. How it recalls the bright pages of
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Hans Sprinker. And as you can a glimpse of the broad canal down the
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street, it is natural enough to speculate upon the probability of cratls winning another
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pair of silver skates before you get back to scavening in next summer. In
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the meadows back of the village, women in blue shawls are drying and mending
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fishing nets. Noy do they so much as raise their heads as the yellow
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double decked tramway car rumbles past on its trip to the hay. If all
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seats are occupied, the cow will display a large sign marked fall and rattle
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along, oblivious to appeals from any and all who ask to get on.
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It is but three scant miles to the beautiful capital of Holland, and a
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tramway makes it in ten minutes, a notable concession by leisurely Holland to the
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time saving spirit of the age, in view of other days when they devoted
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a half hour to making the same journey by a canal barge. The broad,
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smooth highway that the yellow car follows is, as every one knows,
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one of the favorite roads of Europe. As the curlw looks down between five
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and six o'clock of any bright summer afternoon, he is sure to find it
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thronged with handsome equipages and to see gay companies In each little wayside inn that
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peeps out from the deep shade of the noble trees. The desired touch of
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the foreign and unusual is supplied to the visitor in the scores of heavy carts
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drawn by frisking, barking dogs, in the ever present windmills beating the air
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with long, awkward arms, and in dozens of storks that cock their wise
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heads over the edges of their nests and regard the passing show with philosophic amusement,
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patient as the old apple women of Amsterdam. The scavening in Bosque is
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one of the most delightful woods imaginable. It is national property, and no
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private park could be more beautifully kept up. A ball would roll with perfect
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smoothness down its driveways of crushed gravel, and even Ireland would be taxed to
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equal the vivid greenness of its lawns. This whole fair forest is studded with
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villas of the aristocracy and even of royalty. Their wide verandahs and orchards and
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flowery lawns moved the most contented to envy a Hollander at the comfort he takes
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in his zo omer house. To know the Bosque rightly, it must be
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walked through, and the more leisurely and the oftener, the better. It
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is not only a lovely woodland set with charming homes, but everything a fine
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forest should be. The green and coppery beaches, the hardy oaks and elms,
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and the living embroidery of bright flowers perfume the air with delicate odors,
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and the wind in the lofty tops make sweet and haunting music. Deep down
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in the clear mirror of the canals, splotches of broad leaf shadows lazily float
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and dapple like drowsy fishes. Through the deep foliage, you catch occasional glimpses
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of open sunny meadows with cows contentedly grazing, and you come to revel in
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every vague and tranquil sensation in the midst of this beautiful forest. Two centries
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and a half ago, the best beloved and most widely read of Holland's poets,
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the venerable Jacob Cuts, composed his madrigals and moral fables, and so
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passed the last eight years of his eventful career. Rembrandt loved and painted him,
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and a monument stands to his memory. In his native down of Powershaven.
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They say his books are in every peasant's hut, and his verses in
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every peasant's heart. His cottage was at Zorgfleet, a few steps from Schaveningen,
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near where the Queen Mother now has her summer home. And there in
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the garden of the Kafedila promenade, they will show you the old stone table
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at which he wrote, with the hole he cut in it for his inkstand.
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Wild game thronged the wooded inner dunes, Partridges, hares and rabbits abound
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in the underbrush, and the polder meadows yield the finest grade of Mallard ducks.
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The pines and firs are resonant with the calls of kukoose, pheasants and
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nightingales. Farmers clear patches of ground to serve as finch flats, which they
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call finky barns, and there in the autumn they sneered chaffinches, which they
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sell for a centerpiece, to be used as a garnishment in serving other game.
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As you look out across the shavening in June's and watch the day declining,
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stirring thoughts come trooping to mind of the gallant scenes these bleak shores have
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witnessed off Yonder two centuries and a half ago, felt the brave Tromp,
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hero of thirty three Sea Fights. On the bridge of his lofty, sterned
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Brederode. He died as every true warrior longs to die, in the foremost
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thick of the fray. I am done, but keep up a good heart,
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were his last words as they carried him into his cabin. Next day
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they brought his body to these shores and bore it away to lie in the
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old gray church had delft beside the revered William the Silent, the bravest,
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star, the tenderest, and his warhartened sailors were not ashamed to weep as
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heartily for him as the little children fifty years before had wept in the streets
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for the Great William. Half a dozen years later, a shouting multitude thronged
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this speech and waived the bon voyage to Charles the Second of England as he
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sailed homeward to his recovered throne to restore a licentious court and renew s such
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royal revels as had already cost England a revolution. Another dozen years roll around
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and scavening, and looks on while the fleets of France and England are battered
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to wreckage. By the canon of Holland's pet hero, the interpret the writer
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a sentry or so more, and once again this village is the storm center
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of Holland's hopes and fears. As William Frederick the First eludes the pursuing French
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troops and a little scavening and fishing. Smack bears the whole royal family away
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in safety to Germany, And when he came back in triumph twenty years later,
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it was its caverning in that he landed, and that the very spot
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where yonder gray Obelisk now stands in commemoration. And now, through chilly mists
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the sun, a vast, bloated orange settles down into the glowing wastes of
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the desolate North Sea. The roaring serf spreads glittering carpets far up the beach.
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It has suddenly become a region of placid power and glory, something quite
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other than the fabled home of monsters and terrors, of tempest and shipwreck.
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That vessel in the offing, with the black hull and the crimson sails may
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be the very flying Dutchman's own, but still you would like to be on
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it. And so much nearer the sinking sun, the sky is astounding like
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a glorified Holland there you see cloud islands more wonderful than Wulgheren, gray wastes,
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that Beggar desied us Ay, sky dunes that stretch beyond Helder o'er the
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hook meadows more gorgeous than the tulip fields of Harlem, Celestial flora more pure
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and palpitating than any fairest, faintest bloom in any rarest dimmest glade throughout the
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whole woodland of the Hague. It is Holland in excelsis, end of section five.