Wilhelmina of the Netherlands

“ Her palace at The Hague is pretty, but simple, while she finds the one in Amsterdam too large and too expensive for common use. She spends a large part of her own private fortune for providing Creches, an old people's home. She is never so happy as when she finds among her people an energetic mother with a good-sized [Pg 142] family. The one great unhappiness in Queen Wilhelmina's girlhood was that she wanted children and was deprived of having them. Her mother and friends say that she has grown ten years younger since she had her little daughter. ”

“ Perhaps it will be thought that I am going too far in my investigation, but the Dutch ladies ride bicycles so generally that even a man from America can see a few things, no matter how hard he tries to look the other way and comes near getting run over.
The Queen of Holland is a woman. This is not a startling statement, for so far as I know a man has never been a queen in any country. But there is no king. Queen Wilhelmina’s [47] husband, Prince Henry, is not a king. If there is any ruling to do in Holland it is done by Wilhelmina. Henry can’t even appoint a notary public. ”

“ In Holland, Greece, Russia, Austria, and a few German states a woman may succeed to the throne, provided every single male heir to the crown is dead. Queen Wilhelmina became sovereign in Holland only because the House of Orange was extinct in the male line, and Holland lost, on account of the accession of Wilhelmina, the rich and important Duchy of Luxemburg. ”

“ There is, of course, the Princess Wilhelmina, the wife of William, a woman possessed of all the strength and executive ability of her great-uncle Frederick, the late King of Prussia. But just now she is regarded as the arch-traitress, the Jezebel of the country. Alone she can do nothing, and among the gold-laced brethren who doze in the princely anterooms there is not a man of even mediocre ability. ”

“ In England everybody is loyal to King Edward because he not only represents the sovereignty of the nation, but he stands for the English constitution, rights of parliament and the people, and the king [210] is the result of centuries of English thought and political action. But the Dutch have been without a king most of their history and they don’t feel the reverence for the crown that the English do. Wilhelmina is not very popular, and her husband, who is a second-rate German prince that never mixes with the people and is said to be mean to his wife, is not liked at all. ”

“ It was a natural though difficult ambition. The marriage of Queen Wilhelmina, and later the birth of a heir, averted any immediate probability of acquiring Holland and, with it, the Dutch colonial possessions, except by means of force. ”

“ So the little Wilhelmine, whom we saw, will be, after her father’s death, which cannot be far off, the Queen of Holland. She is a pretty child, and looked in dress and movements no different from hundreds of our own little eight-year-old girls. The people here seem to be much attached to their king, and say he has been a benefactor to them, and that his public life has been beyond reproach, whatever his faults in private life may have been. ”

“ It is not even rumored that the Dutch themselves object to the succession of the king’s daughter, the little Princess Wilhelmina, or that they desire a republic, and there is only one external power which has the means even to raise the question. France has no claim, and puts forward no claim, either on Holland or Luxemburg; the Austrian claims, once so real, were disposed of by the Treaty of Vienna, and there remains only Germany which could benefit even by successful interference. ”

“ This modest, almost rough dress, that was worn at the zenith of his power and glory by William, the head of the Republic of the Netherlands, is a noble testimony to the patriarchal simplicity of Dutch manners. There is perhaps no other modern nation, equally prosperous, that has been less given to vanity and pomp. It is related that when the Earl of Leicester, who was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth, arrived in Holland, and when Spinola came to sue for peace in the name of the King of Spain, their magnificence was considered almost infamous. ”

“ It was she who first aroused him from indifference to intellectual pursuits, awakened in him a love of study, and stimulated his better nature. In this way they came to share each other's studies and recreations, and found in each other's presence mutual sympathy and consolation. To add to the misfortunes of Wilhelmina, she was shamefully ill-used and beaten by her governess, who wished, for purposes of her own, to induce her to disclose what passed between her father and mother. In consequence of this brutal treatment, Wilhelmina was from time to time seriously ill. ”

“ When upon the throne, she maintained her independence by asking little of her people, and staked her policy upon running no risks. Military glory could not seduce a distrustful woman. The sovereignty of the Netherlands, notwithstanding the efforts of the Dutch to induce her to accept it, did not tempt her wary ambition. ”

“ They both had round, rosy faces, and round, blue eyes, and yellow hair, only you would not know that Wilhelmina had any hair at all, for it was completely hidden by her cap. They both wore little wooden shoes, and it was a marvel how fast they could run in them, for they seem to be on the point of dropping off most of the time, but, strange to say, they never do.
Holland is the dearest little wee country in the world. Uncle Sam could put it in his vest pocket. It looks like a country just made to play in. ”

“ Although Queen Wilhelmina is fonder of her home and more interested in the welfare of her subjects than she is of public life, she is a splendid stateswoman and diplomat.
She never signs any paper, whether it is important or unimportant, without carefully studying its contents. There is little about the history of her people or her kingdom that she does not know, for she believes much of her ability as a ruler depends on her knowledge of the past history of her country. ”

“ Queen Wilhelmina’s summer residence at Het Loo is the center of a large settlement of country homes and villas on the outskirts of Apeldoorn. The landscape gardening throughout the colony is the best to be seen in Holland ”

“ By this law the female child of a first wife was the heir in preference to the male child of a later marriage. The Dutch dreaded the approach of the French military power to their frontiers, and yet the decrepitude of Spain seemed to render it inevitable. There appeared to De Witt to be only two solutions of the difficulty. Either what was styled "the cantonment" of the southern Netherlands, i.e. their being formed into a self-governing republic under Dutch protection guaranteed by a French alliance, or the division of the Belgic provinces between the two powers. ”

“ The scenery of Dutch history has episodes as stirring and instructive as those of any civilized people since history began; but it reached its dramatic and moral apogee when the independence of the United Netherlands was acknowledged by Spain. The Netherlands then reached their loftiest pinnacle of power and prosperity; their colonial possessions were vast and rich; their reputation as guardians of liberty and the rights of man was foremost in the world. ”

“ After begging for a short time for consideration, 246 Wilhelmine agreed to do as her father wished, and on his return to Berlin, a few days later, he behaved to her with much affection—for the first time for many years. The queen, on the contrary, vowed she would no longer look on Wilhelmine as a daughter, and on the sudden appearance at Berlin of the prince of Baireuth, on the eve of a great review, was so rude to him that he told her politely, but with spirit, that if she objected so much to receiving him into her family he would withdraw his request for the hand of her daughter. ”

“ As she grew up, the childhood of Wilhelmina was sadly embittered by Court intrigues and home quarrels. State favourites plotting against the King, endeavoured to induce him, while she was yet quite a child, to engage his daughter in marriage in a certain direction. An ambitious mother, scheming in another, with the members of the Royal household acting as spies and go-betweens, did not augur well for the tranquillity and happiness of the Princess. ”

“ Willoughby complained that the republic was utterly in the hands of Barneveld, that no man ventured to lift his voice or his eyes in presence of the terrible Advocate who ruled every Netherlander with a rod of iron, and that his violent and threatening language to Wingfield and himself at the dinner- table in Bergen-op-Zoom on the subject of the mutiny (when one hundred of the Gertruydenberg garrison were within sound of his voice) had been the chief cause of the rebellion. Inspired by these remonstrances, the Queen once more emptied the vials of her wrath upon the United Netherlands. ”

“ Such was the cause of a considerable decline in public liberty during the fifteenth century. It is true that John the Fearless gave almost his whole attention to his French political intrigues, and to the fierce quarrels which he maintained with the House of Orleans. But his nephew, John, duke of Brabant, having married, in 1416, his cousin Jacqueline, daughter and heiress of William IV., count of Holland and Hainault, this branch of the House of Burgundy seemed to get the start of the elder in its progressive influence over the provinces of the Netherlands. ”

“ For Holland, without manufactures, was the natural mart for those of England, while Belgium under an English prince had been the route for constantly inundating France and Germany."
So asked Napoleon, and England may answer and justify her conduct so impugned, on principles consistent with the general wishes and the common good of Europe. The discussion of the question is foreign to our purpose, which is to trace the circumstances, not to argue on the policy, that led to the formation of the Netherlands as they now exist. ”

“ Two regents (Duchess Margaret and Queen Mary of Hungary) , under whose eyes she had grown up, had gradually initiated her into the maxims by which this peculiar people might be most easily governed; and they would also serve her as models. She did not want either in talents; and possessed, moreover, a particular turn for business, which she had acquired from her instructors, and had afterwards carried to greater perfection in the Italian school. The Netherlands had been for a number of years accustomed to female government ”

“ Philip also consulted the states-general on his projects of a double alliance between himself and his sister with the son and daughter of Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and Isabella, queen of Castile; and from this wise precaution the project soon became one of national partiality instead of private or personal interest. In this manner complete harmony was established between the young prince and the inhabitants of the Netherlands. All the ills produced by civil war disappeared with immense rapidity in Flanders and Brabant, as soon as peace was thus consolidated. ”

“ As for Wilhelmina, she is close prisoner in her apartments in the Berlin Palace, sentries pacing at every outlet, for many months to come. Wilhelmina almost rather likes it, such a dog of an existence has she had hitherto, for want of being well let alone. She plays, reads; composes music; smuggles letters to and from Mamma,—one in Pencil, from my Brother even, O Heavens! Wilhelmina weeps, now and then, with her good Sonsfeld ”

“ But after the great Revolution and the Napoleonic times officialdom lost its influence and social importance in Holland in consequence of the demolition of the oligarchic, patrician Republic; and clause five of the Netherlands constitution, which declares that 'Every Netherlander may be appointed to every public office,' is a very real and true description of the actual, visible facts of social life.
Chapter IV The Position of Women
The Dutch woman, generally speaking, is not the 'new woman' in the sense of taking any very definite part in the politics of the country. ”

“ It was the eldest son of the great founder of the Dutch republic. Philip William, Prince of Orange, had at last, after twenty-eight years of captivity in Spain, returned to the Netherlands, whence he had been kidnapped while a school boy at Louvain, by order of the Duke of Alva. Rarely has there been a more dreary fate, a more broken existence than his. ”

“ Not content with this counter-stroke, Aerschot went to Ghent to stir up opposition to the appointment of William as Ruward of Brabant. The populace however in Ghent was Orangist, and, rising in revolt, seized Aerschot and a number of other Catholic leaders and threw them into prison. They were speedily released, but the breach between the Catholic nobles and the Calvinist stadholder of Holland was widened. William himself saw in the coming of Matthias a favourable opportunity for securing the erection of the Netherlands into a constitutional State under the nominal rule of a Habsburg prince. ”

“ The authority of governor-general, though not the title, was now fully shared by the count of Fuentes, who was sent to Brussels by the king of Spain; and the ill effects of this double viceroyalty was soon seen, in the brilliant progress of Prince Maurice, and the continual reverses sustained by the royalist armies. The king, still bent on projects of bigotry, sacrificed without scruple men and treasure for the overthrow of Henry IV. and the success of the League. The affairs of the Netherlands seemed now a secondary object ”

“ It has been seen that when Charles V. resigned his throne and the possession of his vast dominions to his son, arts, commerce, and manufactures had risen to a state of considerable perfection throughout the Netherlands. The revolution, of which we have traced the rise and progress, naturally produced to those provinces which relapsed into slavery a most lamentable change in every branch of industry, and struck a blow at the general prosperity, the effects of which are felt to this very day. Arts, science, and literature were sure to be checked and withered in the blaze of civil war ”