Zwolle

“ At Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans Page 254Hals’ studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgomaster of the town. He died at Deventer in 1681. Zwolle has none of his pictures, and does not appear to value his memory. Nor does Deventer. How Terburg looked as Burgomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It was not often that the great Dutch painters rose to civic eminence. Rembrandt became a bankrupt, Frans Hals was on the rates, Jan Steen drank all his earnings. ”

“ FEITH, RHIJNVIS (1753–1824) , Dutch poet, was born of an aristocratic family at Zwolle, the capital of the province Overijssel, on the 7th of February 1753. He was educated at Harderwijk and at the university of Leiden, where he took his degree in 1770. In 1772 he settled at his birthplace, and married. In 1780, in his twenty-seventh year, he became burgomaster of Zwolle. He built a luxurious villa, which he named Boschwijk, in the outskirts of the town, and there he lived in the greatest comfort. ”

“ One of the first cares of the council-pensionary after the peace with England was to deal with the internal troubles which were disturbing certain parts of the land, notably Groningen, Zeeland and Overyssel. In the last-named province a serious party struggle arose out of the appointment of a strong Orangist, named Haersolte, to the post of Drost or governor of Twente. The Estates were split up, the Orange partisans meeting at Zwolle, the anti-Orange at Deventer. Both enlisted troops, but those of Zwolle were the stronger and laid siege to Deventer. ”

“ Zwolle also has an ancient church which retains its original religion—the church of Notre Dame, with a crucifix curiously protected by iron bars. I looked into the stadhuis to see a Gothic council room; and smoked meditatively among the stalls of a little flower market, wondering why some of the costumes of Holland are so charming and others so unpleasing. A few dear old women in lace caps were present, Page 255but there were also younger women who had made their pretty heads ugly with their decorations. ”

“ When the most beloved Master was sojourning in Zwolle for the purpose of preaching the Word, some of his disciples aforementioned who dwelt together there came to him secretly and confessed that they desired to live a life further removed from that of the world, for they could not bear to mingle with worldlings without suffering hurt to their spiritual life ”

“ Zwolle has a considerable trade by river, a large fish market, and the most important cattle market in Holland after Rotterdam. The more important industries comprise cotton manufactures, iron works, boat-building, dyeing and bleaching, tanning, rope-making and salt-making. ”

“ Along the shores of the Zuider Zee, however, west of the Zwolle-Leeuwarden railway, the country is low-lying and covered for the most part with fertile pasture lands. Cattle-rearing and butter and cheese making are consequently the chief occupations, while on the coast many of the people are engaged in making mats and besoms. The river system of the province is determined by two main ridges of hills. ”

“ Afterward he was chosen to dwell in the new House that had been built for a congregation of Clerks by Meynold of Windesem, a rich citizen of Zwolle, and after a while was instituted as Rector of the same House, being held worthy of that office by his Elders. He was one of great stature and innocency of life. In word kindly, in counsel wise, in bearing composed; to the poor compassionate, to strangers courteous, and the citizens loved him; moreover, he burned fervently with divine love to gain the souls of many. ”

“ Other considerable towns are Dordrecht, Maastricht, Leeuwarden, Zwolle, Delft, ’s Hertogenbosch, Schiedam, Deventer, Breda, Apeldoorn, Helder, Enschedé, Gouda, Zaandam, Kampen, Hilversum, Flushing, Amersfoort, Middelburg, Zutphen and Alkmaar. Many of the smaller towns, such as Assen, Enschedé, Helmond, Hengelo, Tiel, Venlo, Vlaardingen, Zaandam, Yerseke, show a great development, and it is a noteworthy fact that the rural districts, taken as a whole, have borne an equal share in the general increase of population. ”

“ The efforts of the brethren called into life throughout the Netherlands an active educational spirit which has never since deserted the country. Statistics are generally suspicious; and we may decline to be overcome by the statement that Cele’s school at Zwolle, early in the fifteenth century, sometimes numbered nearly one thousand, and the school at Herzogenbusch even twelve hundred pupils. ”

“ In the three chief cities in Holland, the Hague, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, there are few buildings remaining of 17th-century work, so that they must be sought in the south at Dordrecht and Delft, or in the north at Leiden, Haarlem, Alkmaar, Hoorn, Enkhuisen, or, crossing the Zuyder Zee into Friesland, in Leeuwarden, Bolsward, Kampen and Zwolle, the dead cities. In all these towns ancient buildings have been preserved, there being no reason to pull them down. ”

“ In the same year, in Holland, Utrecht, Amersfoort, Zwolle, Kampen, Deventer, Zutphen and many other towns and hamlets, a bubonic plague raged, and many devout persons and religious, as also many worldlings, departed from this present life. In the same year the winter time was very mild, with but little snow and thin ice, but the wind was cold. In Lent, and at the beginning of March, our fishers took great abundance of the fish called smelts, wherewith, during the Fast, our Brothers were fed, and also many poor beggars at our gates. ”

“ Here you may board the large river steamer that takes you to Zaandam in half an hour for the price of one-half of one Dutch cent a minute; here you may take the little excursion boats for ports along the Zuyder Zee; here you may engage passage to Alkmaar or to The Helder or even to Leeuwarden or Groningen or Zwolle, situated in that unpenetrated part of the kingdom which may be termed the hinterland of Holland; and here you may hire a private yacht or motor boat, master and all, to carry you whither you will and for as long as you wish for as little as five dollars a day inclusive. ”

“ The rite was performed by Matthias of Biduane, the Suffragan of our Lord and Reverend Father in Christ, Frederic de Blanckenhem, Bishop of Utrecht. Many religious persons and priests were present thereat, namely, the Prior of Windesem, the Prior of Belheem, Conrad Hengel and John of Haarlem, who were priests at Zwolle. Many other honourable persons also, both men and women, young and old, men of the town and men of the country, came together to this dedication. ”

“ Therefore he took to him certain men that were well disposed, and with them he began to live the Common Life in Zwolle, but afterward they took up their abode upon Mount Nemel (which is now called Mount St. Agnes) , because they wished to dwell outside the tumult of the world. Here they gathered a larger company, the which he governed for many years with faithful devotion, assisted by divers helpers, until the monastery was founded, for he did not fear the many hindrances that met him. ”

“ The title His Royal Highness would be given to the Prince of Orange by Andros because of his recent marriage (1677) to the Princess Mary, daughter of the Duke of York and niece of Charles II.
[319] Pemaquid.
[320] Meus for Bartholomaeus, Bartholomew.
[321] When the English conquered New Netherland, in 1664. Zwolle is in the province of Overyssel. The old man was Jacob Hellekers, his daughter's husband Gerrit van Duyn. See p. 36, note 2. In fact, however, Gerrit had not gone back to Holland till 1670, nor his wife till 1671. ”

“ THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITECTURE AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE BOOKS THEY PRINTED In the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent seventy-two of his ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls of the cloister of Mount St. Agnes near the good town of Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic city on the river Ysel. He was known as Brother Thomas and because he had been born in the village of Kempen, he was called Thomas à Kempis. ”

“ To return to the towns—the three most important ones—Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague. The town on the Rotte is given precedence because most travellers land there. It is the Liverpool or the Glasgow of Holland, and since 1830 the powerful rival of Antwerp. As you look up the haven, and catch a glimpse of a tall, commanding windmill, you feel that you have arrived in a very Dutch town. Its cosmopolitan shipping has perhaps given it a reputation abroad of being less Dutch than other towns in Holland, but here again the activity and energy of the race are prominent. ”

“ Dordrecht, Leiden, Haarlem, Delft, Vlaardingen, Rotterdam in Holland, and Middleburg and Zierikzee in Zeeland, repeated with modifications the characteristics of the communes of Flanders and Brabant. But the growth and development of the northern communal movement, though strong and instinct with life, was slower and less tempestuous than the Flemish. In the bishopric of Utrecht, in Gelderland and Friesland, the privileges accorded to Utrecht, Groningen, Zutphen, Stavoren, Leeuwarden followed rather on the model of those of the Rhenish “free cities” than of the Franco-Flemish commune. ”

“ And, as is the habit with many of the towns in this section of Holland, Groningen has made the most of the site of her old ramparts and city fortifications by transforming it into a public park.
Without the least savor of favoritism, Groningen might easily capture the palm for supporting about the most uninteresting market in Holland. Held in the great square that serves the town as a center for outdoor business transactions and trolley service, it is a market of everything and a market of nothing. ”

“ Groningen is larger than Leeuwarden—it has nearly seventy thousand inhabitants—and its evening light seemed to me even more beautifully liquid. I sat for a long time in a cafe overlooking the great square, feeding a very greedy and impertinent terrier, and alternately watching an endless game of billiards and the changing hue of the sky as day turned to night and the clean white stars came out. In Holland one can sit very long in cafes: I had dined and left a table of forty Dutchmen just settling down to their wine, at six o’clock, with the whole evening before me. ”

“ The severity of manners, the love of labor, and reciprocal charity banish poverty from those small religious communities where all know, watch over, and help each other. Groningen, in fact, is like a species of republic governed by a class of educated peasants; a new and virgin country, where no patrician castle rears its head above the roofs of the tillers of the soil; a province where the produce of the land remains in the hands of the cultivators, where wealth and labor always go hand in hand, and idleness and opulence are for ever divided. ”

“ The Widow Cloos had come but recently from Holland, sent out by charity at the instance of her brother, Van Swearingen, the schout or bailiff of New Amstel colony. Her son, who was almost a man in years, had been kept in the Orphan House at Amsterdam until his growth made him a misplaced object there, and his feeble intellect forbade that he should become a soldier, and die, like his father, in the Dutch battles. So the Widow Cloos brought Nanking out in the ship Mill, to the city of Amsterdam's own colony on the banks of the South River, which the English called the Delaware. ”

“ In fact, one quarter of the whole kingdom, consisting of the provinces of North and South Holland, the western portion of Utrecht as far as the Vaart Rhine, Zeeland, except the southern part of Zeeland-Flanders, and the north-west part of North Brabant, lies below the Amsterdam zero; and altogether 38% of the country, or all that part lying west of a line drawn through Groningen, Utrecht and Antwerp, lies within one metre above the Amsterdam zero and would be submerged if the sea broke down the barrier of dunes and dikes. ”

“ As you go on beyond Over-Yssel the country changes its aspect. Near Zvolle, the native town of the painter Lerburg, capital of the province, with about twenty thousand inhabitants, there are fine roads, bordered by trees, which refresh the eye after the bare and dreary country you have just traversed. ”

“ Whatever the cause of Zeeland’s friendliness, there it is; and in Middelburg the foreigner wanders at ease, almost as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were in France.
And it is the pleasantest town to wander in, and an astonishingly large one. A surprising expansiveness, when one begins to explore them, is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch towns. From the railway, seeing a church spire and a few roofs, one had expected only a village; and behold street runs into street until one’s legs ache. ”

“ The excursion to Marken and the excursion to Edam and its neighbourhood take each a day; but between Amsterdam and Zaandam, just off the great North Canal, steamers ply continually, and one may be there in half an hour. The journey must be made, because Zaandam is superficially the gayest town in Holland and the capital of windmill land. In an hour’s drive (obviously no excursion for Don Quixote) one may pass hundreds. These mills do everything except grind corn. ”

“ This town flourished amazingly, and soon far outstripped Pretoria in size and importance, just as the Uitlanders had outstripped the Boers in point of numbers and wealth.
The native population of the Transvaal is very scattered. They are a nation of farmers, and at the present time there are only about 15,000 Boer men in the whole territory, while of the English-speaking Uitlanders there are more than five times that number.
No sooner did Johannesburg grow to be a powerful city, than the Uitlanders, her citizens, demanded that they should have a voice in the government of the country. ”