Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow IV

chant and his friends sit down early in the day, and a sort of thick, sweet pancake is served up hot. The feast continues for many hours, and the ambition of the Russian merchant is to eat more than his neighbour. Fifty or sixty of these hot cakes a man will consume at a sitting, and a dozen funerals in Mos­cow is often the result.

An uncivilised people, we call them in our lordly way, but they are young. Russian history is not yet three hundred years old. They will see us out, I am inclined to think. Their ener­gy, their intelligence – when these show above the ground­work – are monstrous. I have known a Russian learn Chinese within six months. English! they learn it while you are talking to them. The children play at chess and study the violin for their own amusement.

According to this argument, fi shes should be the happiest of mortals, the sea consisting – at least, so says my atlas: I have not measured it myself – 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 who lives near the Brittainy coast is sad and discontented because the Norwegian sardine

In Holland work is easily found; this takes away the charm of looking for it. A farm labourer in Holland lives in a brick­built house of six rooms, which generally belongs to him, with an acre or so of ground, and only eats meat once a day. The rest of his time he fi lls up on eggs and chicken and cheese and beer. But you rarely hear him grumble. His wife and daugh­ter may be seen on Sundays wearing gold and silver jewellery worth from fi fty to one hundred pounds, and there is gener­ally enough old delft and pewter in the house to start a local museum anywhere outside Holland. On high days and holi­days, of which in Holland there are plenty, the average Dutch vrouw would be well worth running away with. The Dutch peasant girl has no need of an illustrated journal once a week to tell her what the fashion is; she has it in the portrait of her mother, or of her grandmother, hanging over the glittering chimney-piece.

On colder days the women wear bright-coloured capes made of fi ne spun silk, from underneath the ample folds of which you sometimes hear a little cry; and sometimes a little hooded head peeps out, regards with preternatural thought­fulness the toy-like world without, then dives back into shel­ter. As for the children – women in miniature, the single dif­ference in dress being the gay pinafore – you can only say of

The Dutch peasant lives surrounded by canals, and reach­es his cottage across a drawbridge. I suppose it is in the blood of the Dutch child not to tumble into a canal, and the Dutch mother never appears to anticipate such possibility. One can imagine the average English mother trying to bring up a fam­ily in a house surrounded by canals. She would never have a minute’s peace until the children were in bed. But then the mere sight of a canal to the English child suggests the delights of a sudden and unexpected bath. I put it to a Dutchman once. Did the Dutch child by any chance ever fall into a canal?

“Yes,” he answered, “we spank ’em.”

There is always a wind in Holland; it comes from over the sea. There is nothing to stay its progress. It leaps the low dykes and sweeps with a shriek across the sad, soft dunes, and thinks it is going to have a good time and play havoc in the land. But the Dutchman laughs behind his great pipe as it comes to him shouting and roaring. “Welcome, my hearty, welcome,”

What charms one in Holland is the neatness and cleanliness of all about one. Maybe to the Dutchman there are drawbacks. In a Dutch household life must be one long spring-cleaning. No milk-pail is considered fi t that cannot just as well be used for a looking-glass. The great brass pans, hanging under the pent house roof outside the cottage door, fl ash like burnished gold. You could eat your dinner off the red-tiled fl oor, but that the deal table, scrubbed to the colour of cream cheese, is more convenient. By each threshold stands a row of empty sabots, and woe-betide the Dutchman who would dream of crossing it in anything but his stockinged feet.

If you would see Holland outside the big towns a smatter­ing of Dutch is necessary. If you know German there is not much diffi culty. Dutch – I speak as an amateur – appears to be very bad German mis-pronounced. Myself, I fi nd 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. The Dutchman appears to keep his G in his stomach, and to haul it up when wanted. Myself, I fi nd the ordinary G, preceded by a hiccough and followed by a sob, the nearest I can get to it. But they tell me it is not quite right, yet.

Watching building operations in Holland brings home to you forcibly, what previously you have regarded as a meaning­less formula – namely, that the country is built upon piles. A dozen feet below the level of the street one sees the labour­ers working in fi shermen’s boots up to their knees in water, driving the great wooden blocks into the mud. Many of the older houses slope forward at such an angle that you almost fear to pass beneath them. I should be as nervous as a kitten,