Folks suffering from Jingoism,Spreadeagleism,Chauvinism--all such like isms,to whatever country they belong--would be well advised to take a tour in Holland.It is the idea of the moment that size spells happiness.The bigger the country the better one is for living there.The happiest Frenchman cannot possibly be as happy as the most wretched Britisher,for the reason that Britain owns many more thousands of square miles than France possesses.The Swiss peasant,compared with the Russian serf,must,when he looks at the map of Europe and Asia,feel himself to be a miserable creature.The reason that everybody in America is happy and good is to be explained by the fact that America has an area equal to that of the entire moon.The American citizen who has backed the wrong horse,missed his train and lost his bag,remembers this and feels bucked up again.
According to this argument,fishes 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 is the proud inhabitant of a larger sea.Perhaps that is why he has left the Brittainy coast.
Ashamed of being a Brittainy sardine,he has emigrated to Norway,has become a naturalized Norwegian sardine,and is himself again.
The happy Londoner on foggy days can warm himself with the reflection that the sun never sets on the British Empire.He does not often see the sun,but that is a mere detail.He regards himself as the owner of the sun;the sun begins his little day in the British Empire,ends his little day in the British Empire:for all practical purposes the sun is part of the British Empire.Foolish people in other countries sit underneath it and feel warm,but that is only their ignorance.
They do not know it is a British possession;if they did they would feel cold.
My views on this subject are,I know,heretical.I cannot get it into my unpatriotic head that size is the only thing worth worrying about.In England,when I venture to express my out-of-date opinions,I am called a Little Englander.It fretted me at first;Iwas becoming a mere shadow.But by now I have got used to it.It would be the same,I feel,wherever I went.In New York I should be a Little American;in Constantinople a Little Turk.But I wanted to talk about Holland.A holiday in Holland serves as a corrective to exaggerated Imperialistic notions.
There are no poor in Holland.They may be an unhappy people,knowing what a little country it is they live in;but,if so,they hide the fact.To all seeming,the Dutch peasant,smoking his great pipe,is as much a man as the Whitechapel hawker or the moocher of the Paris boulevard.I saw a beggar once in Holland--in the townlet of Enkhuisen.Crowds were hurrying up from the side streets to have a look at him;the idea at first seemed to be that he was doing it for a bet.He turned out to be a Portuguese.They offered him work in the docks--until he could get something better to do--at wages equal in English money to about ten shillings a day.I inquired about him on my way back,and was told he had borrowed a couple of forms from the foreman and had left by the evening train.It is not the country for the loafer.
In Holland work is easily found;this takes away the charm of looking for it.A farm labourer in Holland lives in a brick-built 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 fills 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 fifty 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.
When the Dutchwoman builds a dress she builds it to last;it descends from mother to daughter,but it is made of sound material in the beginning.A lady friend of mine thought the Dutch costume would serve well for a fancy-dress ball,so set about buying one,but abandoned the notion on learning what it would cost her.A Dutch girl in her Sunday clothes must be worth fifty pounds before you come to ornaments.In certain provinces she wears a close-fitting helmet,made either of solid silver or of solid gold.The Dutch gallant,before ****** himself known,walks on tiptoe a little while behind the Loved One,and looks at himself in her head-dress just to make sure that his hat is on straight and his front curl just where it ought to be.
In most other European countries national costume is dying out.The slop-shop is year by year extending its hideous trade.But the country of Rubens and Rembrandt,of Teniers and Gerard Dow,remains still true to art.The picture post-card does not exaggerate.The men in those wondrous baggy knickerbockers,from the pockets of which you sometimes see a couple of chicken's heads protruding;in gaudy coloured shirts,in worsted hose and mighty sabots,smoking their great pipes--the women in their petticoats of many hues,in gorgeously embroidered vest,in chemisette of dazzling white,crowned with a halo of many frills,glittering in gold and silver--are not the creatures of an artist's fancy.You meet them in their thousands on holiday afternoons,walking gravely arm in arm,flirting with sober Dutch stolidity.