Kennemer Land stretches along the coast of North Holland from Haarlem to Alkmaar and beyond. The name is a reminiscence of the ancient days when the old Kin-heim meer, or the "sea" of Kinheim, filled much of this whole region.
Just north and west of Amsterdam there is Zaanland, a region wherein are many names ending or beginning with Zaan, which "lost to sight " in canals is "to memory dear" on mediæval maps. Here is Zaandam, known all over the world as the place where the greatest of the Muscovites began to learn his trade as carpenter, or - what the word carpenter originally meant - shipwright. To the east is Oostzaan, further up is Koog-aan-de-Zaan, toward the North Sea is Westzaan. Still further north is Zaandijk, whither I wend my way.
I was invited by a quondam ship-passenger, a physician, whose society at sea I had greatly enjoyed, to come into this region and ancient valley, rich in windmills. Once a wide natural stream, the Zaan River is now a settled-down old canal. Taking the Alkmaar packet, a trim little steamer, from the pier behind the great Central Station below the Bible Hotel, in Amsterdam, I started off on the cool morning, in the loveliest of the months, - June 28. The glistening tile roofs, gayly painted houses, fields full of mustard flowers, yellow enough for the Emperor of China, and a lavish use of bright colors generally, seemed to show how necessary it is in this land of dull sky and chronic damp weather to offset the general grayness of nature with bright hues.
I was met on the landing-stage at Zaandijk by the doctor, who had come to those "years which bring the philosophic mind," as well as to a general mellowness of spirit and judgment. He led me up the narrow little way to the main thoroughfare, which consisted of a canal with many bridges. There was a pavement for wagons on one side, with a diminutive sidewalk along the one-storied houses which seemed to have been dipped in paint-pots. Outside of the land of Colorado beetles, it seemed to me as if I never had seen so much Paris green on bridges, fences, doors, windows, and walls. The trees were clipped because, except heavenward, there is no room for them to grow.
The doctor's house, by the canal, was large, handsome, and modern, with wide halls, high-ceiled rooms, and imposing stairways and furniture. The walls were lined with trophies of travel and proofs of both wealth and taste. Besides holding an official appointment, the doctor owned a cheese farm, and counted his cows by the score. There was a general atmosphere of plain but rich living and high thinking about his home, such as I have found among the Philadelphia Friends, - those spiritual cousins to the followers of Menno Simons, - whom the world calls Quakers.
After greetings and chat in the family circle, we sallied forth to see the sights of this miniature city. Zaandijk has its coat of arms, its town hall, and a long history. On September 21, 1894, the people celebrated the fourth centennial aniversary of the town. Some one, the doctor explained, had found an old perkament (parchment), which told how the first dam and house were built here in 1494. The Dutch delight in festivals, with fine dressing and good eating, nor do they ever neglect an opportunity of celebrating something. So the Zaandijkers got out old costumes, and renewed, for the nonce, ancient customs.
Two boats, modeled after the Venetian gondolas of the fifteenth century, were built for the occasion and put to use. In the doctor's youth these old gondolas, or trek-schuits, were still used for travel, transportation, love-making, and church-going. Even now the canal, with its many high-arched bridges, suggests Venice itself. As a matter of fact, many details of life in the little confederacy behind the dikes were copied or imported from that southern republic which stood on piles in the lagoons. Both amphibious peoples were fond of republicanism and of bright hues, and from among them sprang artists who lead the world as colorists.
As we were talking, a boat laden with garden produce and propelled by a truck farmer, who peddled his commodities along the way at the different houses by the water's edge, brought up a vision of the manner in which one of the greatest of American fortunes was initiated in the hills on and off Staten Island.
We walked to the tiny museum founded in this town long ago by Mynheer Jacob Honig. His name suggests sweets, and his coat of arms very appropriately is embroidered with bees. From his youth he enjoyed collecting things old, curious, and obsolete. Whatever had been stranded by fashion and left, as "dead fact … on the shores of the oblivious years," was his delight and quest. He made a curiosity shop which illustrates local and social history in epitome. Here is a model of the first windmill erected in Zaandam. It stood in the water, and had to be towed round and round by a boat in order to wake the sails face the wind. Later on, the mill was set on a post, and the whole structure turned upon this as an axis, as in a revolving library. Still later the edifice was made to revolve from the bottom, like a monitor's turret. Finally, the comparatively modern Dutch invention of a cap, holding the axle and sails with cog-wheel and spindle inside and easily moved from below by a hand wheel and windlass, secured the proper frontage at will.
As for the modern windmills, - they say there are twelve thousand in Netherland, - even though one can still see battalions of them deployed along the canals and over against the horizon, their days are numbered. Already they are much less numerous than fifty years ago. A new one is rarely if ever built, since steam is more to be depended upon than wind. No more as of yore will there be lawsuits, as between the Lord of Woerst and the Over-Ijssel monastery, as to who owns the wind and has a right to use it. The old feudal master claimed that he owned Boreas, and all his breath that blew over his fields, as well as Neptune and all his puddles. The suit was referred to the Bishop of Utrecht, who decided in favor of the lord. Even the hundred proverbs that stick to the subject, as barnacles to a ship, will soon bear the flavor of mythology.
In the old days of inundation and heavy rains, the water lay upon the land so long that malaria and sickness were often epidemic and continuous. Since the use of steam power, which can raise water and saw wood, even when Boreas refuses to blow, the flooded areas have been quickly pumped dry. Improved health is everywhere the result.
The museum shows a schoolmaster's implement of correction, the klap, with which, during a century or two, small boys were spanked; also the little stoves once used to warm the feet of wives and maidens in church, - almost exactly like the same contrivances still used for hands in Japan.
Zaandijk once derived great wealth from its fisheries. The whale also brought comfort to many homes and prosperity to the city. Its oil filled the lamps and cheered the soap-maker. Its "bone" gave steadiness to unstable busts. Here are pictures of the oil refineries, and of ships and boats home from the Arctic Sea. The whale has had a mighty influence upon the civilization of Holland, of the United States, and upon Japan. First the English and then the Yankee borrowed the idea of whale-hunting from the Dutch. The whale was our pilot into the Pacific. The skeleton of one of these great mammals hangs from the museum's ceiling.
The crockery of Zaandijk shown is ancient, wonderful, and abundant. In its decoration one local subject is constantly repeated. A furious bull tossed a woman, and while she was some twelve feet up in the air, she was delivered of a child, who was thus actually born between heaven and earth. Both parent and babe survived for a number of days, and the husband and father, who had been gored, even longer. In the eyes of the realistic Zaandijk keramists, judging from their various art products, Mahomet's coffin was a circumstance hardly to be compared with this event.
The fireplace in Holland is the centre not only of comfort and social life, but also of domestic art and education. Beside its warmth and light were the tiles with Scripture story, and above it was the mantelpiece rich in ornament and artistic suggestion. The hearth was the focus of council, meditation, æsthetics, instruction, and comfort.
Everything relating to the nursery is well illustrated in this little museum. Pins are plenty in Dutch proverbs and idioms, and so they are in the home. Here is a pin-cushion. On one side the name of a girl is tricked out in the little silvery disks, and on the other is the name of a boy, - provision being thus made for nature's uncertainties. Whether for Hannah or for William, every thing is ready. One cushion provides for a possible pair of twins. Then, there are cradles and baptismal quilts, besides clothing of men, women, and children in all sorts of fashion, even to a set of mourning clothes, from scalp to sole. Not far apart are the cradle and the tomb.
How inventors toiled to anticipate the steamship and the balloon is shown by the model of a boat warranted to go against wind and tide. The thing had no "go" in it, and was called "The Fool's Ship." Another machine was called the flying ship, but it would not fly. A table is spread with all the eating and drinking implements of the former days, including that very late corner, the fork. Here were tea trays decorated with pictures of whales and whalers. Bowls and plates made at Delft have names of the owners and pictures of their ships, or legends in old Dutch celebrating their success, that is, "Goedt success na London." The Honig family, with more right than Napoleon in his ermined robe copied from Charlemagne's, has a tablecloth embroidered with bees. The smoker's outfit is remarkably rich. Here are pipe-cases, stoves to hold fire for lighting pipes, and tobacco boxes in all forms, one being a half-bound book with the motto, " Human life is short."
My cicerone chats, laughs, and delightfully explains everything with wit and jokes; meanwhile smoking his cigar until short as a chincapin, without any fear of burning his lips. He shows the carved wooden schoolbook bags, once daily carried by boys and girls; a quill pen with a tassel on the end of a long feather; all sorts of linen dresses, mangles and bangles, and baby chairs, such as one sees in Jan Stem's pictures; a Bible, hung on silver chains and carried to church by rosy-checked maidens; bedwarmers, cake moulds, and a hundred other knickknacks, suggesting the good old times, and tempting one to see and think out, if not to write, a story.
Yet, rich as is this wonderful collection, I believe that almost everything in it, except the purely local and marine wonders, either actually was or could have been duplicated in 1880, when we held in Schenectady our Loan Exposition at the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Reformed Dutch Church. A "kermis," the latter might have been called, but was not. Besides home-made colonial and Iroquois relics was a mighty host of articles of use, beauty, and luxury brought over from Patria.
Both Waterland and the Zaanland have been famous in the history of the Mennonites, my hostess being one of them. Wishing to see a modern Mennonite meeting-house, we took carriage and rode down toward Zaandam. We called on the Domine, who lived next door to the edifice, and so had a good guide. The structure was reared in 1680, and restored in 1873. The floor, scrubbed as clean as a butter firkin, was covered with fine sand. Beside the organ were the usual psalm books, and the long poles with silver-rimmed bag and tassels hung up against the wall on books by the ring, which, like plumpers in sleeves, kept the bag open. At the bottom of each was a little bell.
I noticed many quaint bas-reliefs on the house fronts. Soon we came to the huisje, that is, the hut of Peter the Great. The workman's shanty, in which the Czar lived for only a week, is rather groggy looking, and leans over from age. Inside is the sleeping-room or bed-closet, made in the style of a bunk. Everything belonging to the original structure suggests lowly life, but the chimney - the typical part of a Dutch domestic interior - has been restored and decorated with tiles. On the walls are tablets of Russian monarchs. The window-panes are diamond-scratched by many fools, and some other people. Like the little worm-eaten meeting-house - perhaps the oldest extant wooden church edifice in America - at Salem, Mass., Peter's hut is inclosed by an outer wooden building of some pretensions. Close to the portraits of Peter and Catherine is inscribed a Russian proverb, meaning "Nothing too little for a great man." Some years ago a Muscovite general, who visited this place, gave money to institute a prize fund, the interest of which goes yearly to some Zaandam boy in the higher public schools.
The yard and site of the hut belong to the Russian government, being the gift of the royal family of Holland. In the Russian navy to this day, many of the nautical terms are Dutch. Mighty was the influence which the great Czar took with him from the little country which then led the world in civilization. Our own William Penn, who anticipated disarmament and "the parliament of the world," once had an interview with Peter, holding a long conversation in Dutch, which was spoken by both the founder of Pennsylvania and of New Russia. Penn presented the Czar with Dutch translations of friends' books. With all his potency to compel reform among his people, the Czar had little moral power to civilize himself.
We rode back along the painted houses and bridges. I was constantly reminded of the old joke and picture - "Do you see anything green?" The various shades, when fresh, suggested peas, apples, olives, grass, malachite, or beryl; the older and more weather-worn, old bottles and verdigris.
We discussed the Anabaptists and Mennonites as we rode, and then visited another house of worship, where the sand on the floor was wrinkled and ribbed in patterns of decorative art imitative of the seashore. A broomstick had been the only tool used.
The doctor declared that the disciples of Menno Simons were excellent people, but in modern days so rich, close, and thrifty, that "Jews cannot live in the same place with Mennonites." As to religion in Holland, the doctor thought that the burghers, city folk, and professionals were mostly "Modernen," while the common country people and the aristocracy were "Orthodox."
While waiting under the walnut and plum trees in the garden, expecting the Alkmaar packet back to Amsterdam, we branched off into some of the metaphysical aspects of religion. Just as we were getting warm and intense, the sound of the whistle announced the cowing boat. Shaking hands, we agreed to resume the discussion when we next met. So ended a happy June day.