Dutch

“ Addie, how Dutch you are! For a boy born on the Riviera, brought up in Brussels, who had never been in Holland before his thirteenth year, how is it possible that you should be the most Dutch of us all! You have nothing of the cosmopolitan about you! ”

“ His volume is the book of national wisdom, the second Bible of the Dutch people, a manual for the teaching of an honest and peaceful life. He gives counsel to all; to the youth and to the old man, to the merchant as to the prince, to the mistress as to the servant, to the rich man as to the mendicant. ”

“ Here was cool shade under broad trees; and here were innumerable little tables at which a number of people were seated, laughing and chattering and lunching pleasantly, while little children, some of them not more than three years old, kept running about and playing games. And all these tiny tots, too, were talking Dutch, happily and unconcerned, tossing about in childish glee and with incredible ease, onbepaalde wijzen, verleden deelwoorden and voorzetsels, not to speak of het and hen and hun and je. ”

“ So that we may truly say of the Dutch, that although they are amongst us, yet certainly they are not of us, no not they who are born and bred here in our own Countrey, for stil they will be Dutch, not having so much as one drop of English bloud in their hearts. ”

“ The Dutch have selected the subject-matter of their artistic production out of their own substance, out of the actual presence of their daily life. To have once for all realized that presence even in art is no matter of reproach to them. ”

“ Toward the close of the fifteenth century, the Dutch gained the ascendency over the others, which it has never since lost. This language is energetic and flexible, rich in synonyms and delicate shades, and from its fullness and strength, better adapted to history, tragedy, and odes, than to comedy and the lighter kinds of poetry. The Flemish, which still remains the literary language of the southern provinces, is inferior to the Dutch, and has been greatly corrupted by the admixture of foreign words. ”

“ This is D. Goslings’ translation of Tromp’s epitaph:—
For an Eternal Memorial
You, who love the Dutch, virtue and true labour, read and mourn.
The ornament of the Dutch people, the formidable in battle, lies low, he who never lay down in his life, and taught by his example that a commander should die standing, he, the love of his fellow-citizens, the terror of his enemies, the wonder of the ocean. ”

“ There is a tremendous lot of the English character about the Dutch. Hoogstraat, Rotterdam, on Sunday night might be High Street, Islington, at the same time. The boys yell, the girls scream and rush about, and a dense black crowd surges and shoves up and down and sings and walks arm-in-arm a dozen wide, and generally comports itself with high spirits and low habits. A Dutch crowd is English in its rough unconcern for the delicate shades of etiquette. But individually the Dutch are kind, hospitable, and most courteous to strangers. ”

“ It is the rarest thing in the world to meet with a gentleman in Holland. The Dutch are equally devoid of that acquired good breeding which distinguishes the well educated English, and that native politeness and winning courtesy which is so irresistibly engaging among the French, and even the Belgic people. ”

“ The Dutch are still notorious for their partiality to them, and continue to pay higher prices for them than any other people. As the rich Englishman boasts of his fine race-horses or his old pictures, so does the wealthy Dutchman vaunt him of his tulips. ”

“ That art of making a period of every idea, a story of every fact, a question of every trifle, in which Italians, French, and Spaniards are masters, is here totally unknown. Dutch conversation is not an exchange of sounds, but a commerce of facts, and nobody makes the least effort to appear learned, eloquent, or witty. ”

“ When one thinks of it, the Dutch habit of staring at the visitor until he almost wishes the sea would roll in and submerge him, argues a want of confidence in their country, tantamount to a confession of failure. Had they a little more trust in the attractive qualities of their land, a little more imagination to realise that in other eyes its flatness and quaintness might be even alluring, they would accept and acknowledge the compliment by doing as little as possible to make their country’s admirers uncomfortable. ”

“ The Dutch appear to me to be sincere and honest; they have the politeness of the French without their levity. Their peasantry and mechanics are the most industrious set of people I have ever seen, and so honest, that it is as safe in the evening and night in the streets as in the houses. We hear of no duels, murders, or robberies ”

“ Tobacco-pipes, too, and toys, such as the friendly saint, whom Protestant children have been taught by Dutch tradition to invoke, delights to drop into the votive stocking,—they come from the mother city, where she sits upon the waters, quite as much a Sea-Cybele as Venice herself. And linens, too, fair and fresh and pure as the maidens that weave them, come forth from Dutch looms ready to grace our tables or to deck our beds. ”

“ They can see over the heads of the tallest. It is strange to see those little bodies high in the air, carried about on mysterious legs. They have such a resolute look on their round faces, what wonder that nervous old gentlemen with tender feet wince and tremble while the long-legged little monsters stride past them.
You will read in certain books that the Dutch are a quiet people—so they are generally. ”

“ As the Dutch have made their country what it is, so the country has made the Dutch what they are. No wonder that men who, like their fathers before them, have been trained in such a school of self-reliance, should be good soldiers and good sailors, good traders, good farmers, and, above all, good patriots. ”

“ If we Americans, who after all are homeopathic preparations of Holland stock, can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers and hint that their country may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, and say they have proved themselves heroes and that their country will not float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it. ”

“ President:—Ladies—to whom now, as always, I look up for inspiration—and gentlemen of the Holland Society, when one has been rocked in a Dutch cradle, and baptized with a Dutch name and caressed with a Dutch slipper, and nursed on Dutch history, and fed on Dutch theology, he is open to accept an invitation from the Holland Society. It is now four years since I had the pleasure of speaking my mind freely about the Dutch, and in the meantime so much mind—or is it only speech—has accumulated that the present opportunity comes very much like a merciful interposition of Providence on my behalf. ”

“ No doubt the Dutch may have many faults; but looking at them, no one can deny that some of the finest types of humanity are to be seen among them. Watching their faces you can see and better understand the natures which braved so much. ”

“ It did not look inviting for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape, where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown together in a harmonious union. ”

“ They are all here as advertised, and they color the lives of the people as they do the landscape of the country. To the eye they are artistic and beautiful, but in practice they are common, plain necessities, and in these signs the Dutch have conquered. ”

“ Men heard such tales more calmly then than now, and seldom sought the coward’s refuge—incredulity. The Dutch, like other nations, did better things than fight. They painted glorious pictures, they bred great statesmen and good doctors. ”

“ Nearly every thing had its Dutch name gummed on to it, such as ‘spiegel lijst,’ ‘behangsel,’ ‘schotel of bakje,’ and even on his sleeve ‘mouw van mijn jas.’
“It’s all right!” he burst forth enthusiastically. “Doing Berlitz Dutch, you see! Self-taught, too! Splendid plan. Three hundred words a day. I’ll have two thousand new nouns at my fingers’ ends before the Macs are back from the Drachenfels. ”

“ Jan’s reminiscences are all about my Dutch. Well, I’ll lend you my diary, and the most entertaining Grammar in Holland. Besides, I’ve written a monograph on obvious blunders, English into Dutch. Read these, now, when you’re tending this convalescent boy-hero of yours. He’ll understand them, I’ll be [79] bound; and it’ll shake him up, and do you a world of good yourself. ”

“ His people have character, dignity, and a pervading feeling that they are the great types of the Dutch race—people of substantial physique, slow in thought and impulse, yet capable of feeling, comprehending, enjoying, suffering. ”

“ The Dutch, sir, are naturally a cool, patient people, and not given to sudden changes, either in their tempers or passions; therefore the rendering a proclamation of banns necessary may do very well in that country; but in this, where the people are naturally sanguine, impatient, and as apt to change as the air they breathe, I am convinced that such a regulation would be the cause of numberless mischiefs. ”

“ The Dutchesses Rotterdam, July 24.
The secret of the success of the Dutch is no secret at all. Everybody works, not excepting father, grandfather and grandmother. I suppose this habit began with the unceasing fight against the sea, the building of the dikes, the pumping out of the water, and the construction of a soil. It has continued until there is no other people more persistently industrious. They rise early and get busy. ”

“ The Dutch artists did but follow the imperious taste of their countrymen, who painted their houses in vivid colors, as well as their ships, and in some places the trunks of their trees and the palings and fences of their fields and gardens ”

“ A very shrewd woman-observer, writing in the middle of the eighteenth century of the Dutch, gives what seems to me a very just estimate and good description of one of their traits. She says: “Though they have no vivacity, they are smarter, a great deal smarter, than the English, that is, more uptaking.” ”

“ The Dutch language is spoken here, and it is so rare to find any one who understands English, that it is necessary to bring an interpreter as well as guide in visiting this secluded spot. The inhabitants look upon us as though we have dropped from the clouds, or sprung suddenly out of the earth. ”

“ A people like the Dutch, serious and taciturn, richer in hidden qualities than in brilliant showy ones—a people who are, if I may so express myself, self-contained rather than superficial, who do much and talk little, who do not pass for more than they are worth—may be studied without a knowledge of their language. On the other hand, the French language is generally known in Holland. ”

“ The Dutch, I generally found to possess, in a high degree, the kindly, charitable feelings of human nature, which show themselves to the greater advantage, from the native simplicity of their manners. ”

“ 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 is necessary. If you know German there is not much difficulty. Dutch—I speak as an amateur—appears to be very bad German mis-pronounced. Myself, I find my German goes well in Holland, even better than in Germany. The Anglo-Saxon should not attempt the Dutch G. It is hopeless to think of succeeding, and the attempt has been known to produce internal rupture. ”

“ In talk with a stranger at one of the cafés, I learned that the Dutch student works harder in the holidays than in term. In term he is a social and imbibing creature; but when the vacation comes and he returns to a home to which most of the allurements which an English boy would value are wanting, he applies himself to his books. ”

“ The endeavours of the industrious Dutch do give sufficient testimony of this truth, to our great shame, and no less perill, if it have not a timely prevention: for, whilst we leave our wonted honourable exercises and studies, following our pleasures, and of late years besotting our selves with pipe and pot, in a beastly manner, sucking smoak, and drinking healths, until death stares many in the face; the said Dutch have well-neer left this swinish vice,The Netherlanders ingratitude. ”

“ The same may be said of the Dutch language, and it is to be hoped that the Dutch are used to it. They seem to get along with it passably well, at all events. But their ability to master the impossible does not alleviate our troubles in the least. ”

“ The eminent historian of the Dutch Republic, who has made the story of its earlier days as interesting as that of Athens and Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the generous glow of his own genius, has the highest of titles to be heard with respectful attention by the citizens of a community which, in its origin, was an offshoot of that renowned republic. ”

“ It shows what a literary people the Dutch are, that they are pleased beyond measure when a foreigner in conversation refers to any small technicality out of the grammar. Indeed so encouraged was I by all this enthusiasm that I boldly made use of my remaining words.
“Mynheer! wilt u mij toestaan U te vragen..... verkoopt gy snavels?” ”

“ It is generally believed that a knowledge of German will enable one to get on in Holland, but such is far from being the case. Although the Dutch and German languages possess much that is in common, the pronunciations and the spellings are at variance. ”

“ PREFACE The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times. ”

“ The Dutch, too, tell us that their system is more agreeable to the natives than our own clumsy though well-meant efforts for the improvement of their condition, which, although not true, is far too near the truth to allow us to rest in our complacency. ”