Dutch Homes, c. 1911
From Home Life in Holland by David Storrar Meldrum, 1911.
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1911 C.E.
Location: Holland, Netherlands
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Home Life in Holland by David Storrar Meldrum, 1911.
We will now go indoors. I suppose no society was ever so exhibited in its entirety as that of Holland by her painters in the seventeenth century; and with a very special particularity they represented the houses of their time. These, in consequence, we know, in and out, from cellar to top-most attic. They were high and narrow, with decorated window cornices and arches; and most had crow-stepped gables, facing the street or canal, often surmounted by vases and statues. Frequently set into these gables, and displaying a high standard of craftsmanship, were the arms of the dweller, or some sculptured figure or device by which the house was popularly known; so that the occupant was called, not by his own name, but by that of his dwelling, as Dutch farmers to-day still are by that of their farms.
The principal room was the voorhuis (the front-house), which in many cases was led to directly from the door on the street. It was the reception-room; in great houses very spacious, and decorated with tapestries, arms, and the trophies of the chase; and in the burgher-houses, where it served as a living-room also, it had tiled or whitened walls, and sand-strewn brick floors. The spinning and knitting, the household work and the nursery duties, were all performed here by the citizens, when they did not issue for the purpose upon the open verandas on the street, or under the luifels (an older fashion), where often, too, the master of the house had his workshop.
In these burgher front-houses the rafters as a rule were left open. The broad, deep mantelpiece was un-decorated by the ware and lacquer of the larger mansions, and there were no pots or vases in the open hearth where, in winter, wood and peat were burned. But there were almost always pictures on the walls, as Evelyn and others remarked. The French traveller Sorbiere spoke of "l’excessive curiosite pour les peintures.” Pictures were regarded as furniture, and were found in every room, even the attic, and even in the peasants' cottages, though there no doubt they were as cheap and nasty as often now they are cheap and pious.
The kitchen and some rooms behind (including possibly the master's office, or comptoorke, used also by the lady of the house, careful of her living-room) led off the narrow hall (gang), which ran from the front-house to the courtyard (hofje or binnenplaats), that most characteristic feature of the seventeenth-century Dutch house. Behind these back rooms (forming the achterhuis) was the garden (tuin), the formal adjunct of greenery and open air without which no Dutch dwelling was then complete.
The stair to the second storey issued from the front-house or perhaps from the kitchen; and traps and ladders from the bedrooms above led aloft duly to the uppermost attic or zolder. The bedrooms were often laid with Spanish matting there were no carpets in those days; and besides the beds and the ordinary bedroom furniture, contained the coffers and cupboards and cabinets in which the housewife kept her treasures of linen and sometimes ware, all of which, both chests and contents, are not to be shamed by perfunctory attempts at description.
How far, now that we have stepped within a modern one, do we find repeated around us this seventeenth-century house?
In some cases we are actually within the old shells, very little changed in their outward appearances, or even in the general plan of their interiors. All over Holland still are to be found survivals of the houses, of varying estate, yet singularly true to a common type, which we have been recalling from the pictures of the past.
One of them in Leyden, which I select only because it must have attracted the attention of many strangers, exemplifies the Dutchman's love of emblem in naming his house. An old and partially destroyed gable at the end of the Breestraat has inscribed on it "Who can live unenvied?" To that question answer is made by a crab; which points the moral that only those who are back-going can expect to lead the unenvied life. That the crab should be golden is not uncharacteristic: the "golden scales," the "golden beaker," the "golden heart," are met with at every turn by the twentieth as by the seventeenth or eighteenth century traveller.
The Hollander still displays this naivete in the expression of his feelings, though almost always too he exhibits a curious, deep reserve, thinking more than he says (though he can be frank enough) as we often discover by the lightning illumination of a remark blurted out in passion. See how he expresses his ideal in naming his house to-day, showing exactly how much, chiefly of comfort, it means for him. His are not the regrets of an exile, such as carry our own suburban householder back with some longing to his childhood, when he names one house of a row in a Brixton or Stoke Newington street "Tiverton," "Dunkeld," "Killiecrankie."
The Dutchman will be comfortable without a pang in his Lust en Rust (Rust is a great word in Holland), Buiten Zorg ("Without Care"), Myn Genoegen ("My Joy"), or some ascription (as Holcroft said, noting the same custom a hundred years ago) that might characterise the Vale of Tempe or the Garden of Eden. I dare say it is largely because it was the custom a hundred years ago that he follows it now. Yet he can vary it to suit the circumstance. I have found him in a London suburb at the address not known in Holland, Twist Niet ("Do not quarrel!"), a tribute maybe to the more strenuous air of England.
Indoors also one is sometimes curiously reminded of the house of two or three hundred years ago. I can remember two cases at least where this is so.
The first, in an ancient town, is the width of the front room and the vestibule upon which one enters from the street; flanked on both sides by other houses, from which very thick walls separate it. From the vestibule the narrower gang, floored with marble, and the walls whitewashed, runs through its whole depth to the garden; past a bedroom, the inner courtyard, the kitchen, and another public room, with a door into each. The front room (voorkamer), which has windows on the street, and the bedroom behind, which looks out into the court-yard, compose the "front-house" of old. The old "back-house" is represented now in the kitchen (looking and giving upon the courtyard) and the parlour (kuiskamtr) behind. There are windows as well as the door in the gang towards the courtyard.
Access to the second storey is gained by a stair between kitchen and parlour. This storey and another above it contain bedrooms; and higher up is the attic (zolder), itself surmounted by still another, the uttering. These double garrets, often spacious and massive, are reminders of the days when the merchant citizens stored their goods in their houses. There is a room in many town dwellings known as the opkamer, because you ascend to it by one or two steps. The construction is explained when you remember that the opkamer in the farmhouses, the "best" room, seldom or never entered or used, is raised a few steps, because situated above the milk cellar.
The voorkamer is the reception-room; the huiskamer is the real living-room and (in the absence of a separate eetkamer) the dining-room as well.
This is a type of hundreds of houses in Holland to-day, old, of course, and found chiefly in the older towns.
The second house I am thinking of is more ancient, much larger, and therefore particular. It is, in fact, the old town house of a great family, and dates back to the sixteenth century. To adapt it to the use of two families, the ancient cellars and turrets have been closed up; but the ground floor, which alone I know, preserves the model described above, with a gang running from street-door to garden, past the voorkamer an alcove, a bedroom, an enormous zaal, a passage leading to kitchens at the side and another bedroom beyond. What a time we had to wait, listening to the approaching footsteps of old Doortje, pattering down that long hall, before she gave us entrance! In the salle was a four-poster, curtained with yellow damask, which looked, I remember, like a tent in a desert. And on the curtains, where you must handle them to part them in getting in and out of bed, the careful housekeeper, I remember also, had sewn a strip of crochet.
The likeness in general plan of present-day houses to those of the Little Masters need not be pressed too far. How the comparatively new house, with its voorkamer and huiskamer en suite, its hall still faithful to whitewash if not to marble, its little consulting-room (spreekkamer) which might be a comptoorke, the loftiness of its living-rooms, to which (on a narrow site) are sacrificed ease and elegance in the staircases, how far this has been developed from the old model, and the evolution does not seem difficult to trace, is less to our purpose than the fact that it is the uniform type throughout Holland now. Granted difference of scale, all Holland, all middle-class Holland, at any rate, is lodged much in the same manner; though probably it is rather the limited range of estate in Holland that calls for remark.
Even in the so-called bovenhuis, built into endless dreary blocks in the cities, the straitness and precipitousness of whose stairs (with ropes for opening the street doors from above, and draw-baskets by which to send up your wares or calling-cards from below) would make life intolerable to an English household, the model is followed as far as may be. This bovenhuis, above a shop, or above another dwelling, or benedenhuis (in which case the two dovetail in the restricted space with the ingenuity of a Chinese puzzle), is the nearest approach in Holland to our flat, and is occupied by families of all conditions. A bachelor acquaintance of mine in one of the large cities pays for his bovenhuis over a shop the same rent as another in London is charged for his small flat in Piccadilly.
The high price of land and heavy communal taxes explain, no doubt, the constancy to this type of town house, which contrasts with the vagaries in taste, of the owners or their architects, displayed in the most modern country villas. Many of these, large and sumptuous, frequently "Art-y" and frequently not very beautiful, are the homes of the city class for whom the name of "Forenzen" has been coined. As early as the seventeenth century, long before op centen or surcharges on taxes were invented, the Dutch began to build them-selves comfortable retreats for the villegiature. Some of these, buitenplaatsen, as they were called, remain, square, a little formal, with spacious rooms, yet with a careless overflow into surrounding gardens, on the Vecht and the waterings of the Rhine. Like the chateaux of the Eastern provinces, the moated mansions of Overyssel, for example, with their ample provision for the reception of guests in an isolated countryside, they sometimes discover recesses and passages and porches and other relics of a more ancient construction.
The uniformity in the plan of Dutch houses, to which I have referred, is noticeable in their furnishing also. Though that is more mobile at the direction of the occupant's taste, there are many conditions still tending to conserve it in the old fashion. The increased expenditure on furniture, it is true, is one of the signs of the present times remarked by Dutch economists and statisticians; but how constant, until recently, were Dutch households, and how constant are the majority of them even now, to the inherited furnishings and treasures, among which the parent doves ensconsed themselves when first they made their nests!
Some of these nests are imposing edifices, some are tiny structures. Some are built out in the open, others against the grey faces of the towns. From among them there has been left on my memory a composite impression of the Dutch middle-class house, which I propose that we explore now, in a leisurely manner, passing from one phase of it to another, in a search for the essence of the whole.
Perhaps there is a stoep. The stoep is not only the single or double flight of steps leading to the landing outside the front door, but also the strip of street flanking the house, usually raised a step or two, of blue granite, or railed off with granite posts and an iron bar or chain. That is why, especially on the older grachts and streets, one has so much difficulty in finding and keeping to a pavement Op de stoepen te loopen to jump in and out of the stoeps in front of the windows is a temptation against which well-bred Dutch children are admonished. I can remember, nevertheless, how some of them, as well as the raggamuffins in one town used to invade that of a cantankerous old lady, who kept her groom with a whip behind her door ready to chase them off.
In place of a pavement a narrow strip of yellow bricks the kleine steentjes, the "small stones" is found running along the level of the street, and this, when walking with a lady, you always reserve for her. The natives keep naturally to the " small stones " (though these are not sacred from hand-carts or any vehicle: what part of a Dutch street is?), and they tell me they can generally determine the foreigner by his betaking himself to the crown of the caus'ay in his irate impatience of the inequalities of the stoeps. In earlier times the citizen was fined if he failed to preserve in cleanliness the street, quay, and even the bridge in front of his stoep; so that for hundreds of years, night and morning, there have no doubt been in progress those purifying activities which still entertain foreign eyes in Dutch thoroughfares.
The leisure that was passed on the stoep (where occasionally still a bench or garden-seat is placed invitingly) is now enjoyed under the verandas, which cling to the houses on whatever wall they can, after the manner of the Indies, whence, like their name, they come. To that extent, life, at least in the towns, is lived less in the view of the neighbours. In the country, however, and in summer, only the lattice of the verandas screens some of its intimate hours from the public gaze, the family reunion at the after-dinner tea-drinking, for example, the tea-lights (thee-lichtjes) star the countryside like glow-worms in the summer twilight or the little gathering of friends invited to a "bowl."
This "bowl" is simple cup of Rhine wine, flavoured with woodruff here called "straw from the bed of Our Lady" and sociably poured and shared round the table in the open air. Perhaps a ben or basket of fruit has arrived as a present from a Betuwe orchard, and a youthful company summoned to a feast agree to "eat for the last cherry." In this diversion you eat cherry by cherry in turn from the heaped-up dish, the penalty for having the last one fall to your share being the cost of some little treat, a cycling-party tea at an inn in the woods or dune fringes, or a run down the canal in your motor yacht. Such are the simple, homely pleasures that variegate life in Holland.
Under the stoep in an old town house such as I am imagining, a door gives entrance to a half-basement. Here is the butler's room, from which he looks out upon the street, a little under the level of his eye. The lower hall is marble, or tiled. Off it are the kitchen quarters, and farther back is a room where the family dine en famille. Giving upon the garden, this room is often known as the tuinkamer.
A Rotterdam house, of the same social estate, but newer, in which I have sometimes enjoyed hospitality, is of another construction. The drive leads to a low ground floor with the domestic offices, and from it a broad staircase mounts to a suite of lofty living rooms an ante-room and a large drawing-room, with sliding doors giving entrance to a spacious dining-room, and windows looking out upon the river side of the city. One of these windows leads out into a balcony, from which a stair descends to the garden.
I am writing as if it exists still as it was many years ago, when we used to be received in it: since then our entertainers, at least, have gone down among the "dusty dead," and doubtless many common customs have become uncommon. We dined, dining well, at an early hour, before going on to the opera, where Madame had a box. Dressed in black, not décolletée she kept no maid, but each morning a hairdresser from the town came in to dress her hair our hostess looked the type of robust Dutch comfortableness. There was about her what the Scots call a "bein air," which her polished, massive surroundings reflected; she had in her face the blended dignity and knowingness of Elizabeth Bas, aristocrat, or rather patrician of burgher womanhood, as she sat in the heavily-panelled and curtained dining- room with a young company around her. At her foot under the table, I remember, was a bell for summoning the servants, who did not remain in the room during the courses I think that conversation might flow more intimately.
This youthful company was interesting, because it was very special old Rotterdam. I do not recollect observing (though it was noticeable in other classes) the loudness of dress, but there was sometimes unmistakable the accent, which the rest of Holland, in disconsideration of this city, imputes to all its natives. The Dutch pay ourselves the compliment of calling it an English town. The ground of this discrimination, I gather, is not so much its wealth as the manner of amassing wealth, and less the amassing it by trade than the unabashed pride in trade itself. Distinctions between Piet Plank and Piet Zeep were readily accepted by wood merchant and soap boiler themselves; and one of them had proudly incorporated a wheelbarrow in his coat of arms, to commemorate the lowly round in which his family first trundled to fortune. This foundation on the bare half-crown, it seems, is the English manner. We are a nation of "men from Sheffield." How various is our national repute abroad!
There has been an English colony in Rotterdam ever since the passing of the Navigation Acts made it profitable for British shipowners and traders to establish themselves there. Mr. Peregrine Pickle, it will be remembered, was invited to meet a large company of his countrymen at Rotterdam, of all ranks and degrees, from the merchant to the periwig-maker's 'prentice. Their numbers are greatly diminished now, but English words and phrases have crept into the town's everyday parlance.
"Heb je lucifers, Mina?" "O!_ ja, plenty, juffrouw_" This conversation I once overheard between a Rotterdam young lady and her maid. And from the adventures of "Boefje," the Wee Macgreegor (with a difference) for whom M. Brusse has achieved popularity, I gather that the Rotterdam raggamuffin decorates his debased speech with occasional English, "'t vagevuur was hem te heet an ze boddie": Boefje opined that hell would be too hot for his "body."
But let us get back to the house with the stoep and seek admittance by the front door, on or beside which, by the way, the name of the occupier and the number of the house are generally neatly displayed. It used to be a half-door, which is still not uncommon. In most new houses, as in many of the old, the street doors have a grille or rooster, protecting a glass panel, which in summer is kept open, letting in air and light and a glimpse of what is passing in the world outside. When you make a call after nightfall, dropping in to drink tea in the friendly fashion of the country, you are sighted through the rooster by the housemaid before she admits you with a kind of family smile.
A constant object in the hall, which attracts the stranger's eye, is the fonteintje, with spotless towel looped on a nail beside it. This "little fountain" is merely a marble or earthenware hand-basin and resevoir, which has come into general use in a country where water, so plentiful everywhere outside the house, was seldom led within it. It is comparatively seldom led into it now. Half the population of Holland is still without a central water supply. The habit of copious personal ablutions has not been achieved. Few Dutch households possess a bathroom yet, and where there is a bathroom it does not always contain a bath. To install one is by many regarded as faddy. The lodgings of some student friends of mine who did so had considerable, and I believe a profitable, notoriety as "the rooms with the bath." On the other hand, I know of a modern house with bathroom and bath unused, because the occupier, a medical doctor, jibs at the expense of bath-fittings. Decidedly there is as yet no Dutch verb tubben.
Arriving some months ago at a late hour at a hotel starred "first-class" in one of the largest cities, I found it full; all the inns in town were in the same case strangers had arrived in crowds for a special occasion and I was glad to sleep in a bed made up in the sample-room. Over night I ordered a bath, and the morning saw me punctually escorted through the labyrinth of the building to the distant corridor where, I was assured, "it" awaited. There was evidently only one "it," to be spoken of with the temporising respect due to a disconsidered institution which looks as if it may assert its usefulness after all.
Our progress, which on the part of my attendant maid seemed remarkably like one of discovery, was followed by the surprised glances of the charwomen brushing and swabbing in the halls and passages. The chamber I was ultimately ushered into could only be described as a bathroom, though as such it left much to be desired. I discovered, before I left it, more bath than room. The door did not shut; the bolt was broken, the key had been lost. A chair, over the back of which hung a magnificent bath-towel (with the initials of the hostess daintily sewn in red cotton), had been imported from a neighbouring bedroom. The only other furniture was a German-made, unenamelled bath, which leaked; a douche that never ceased to drip, yet could not be persuaded to come on in greater force; and a most daintily turned apparatus for suspending clothes, which was of the dimensions and strength of a pipe-rack. Accommodation for disrobing and robing again there was none. The bath, as I say, leaked. The floor of the room had been metal-lined, evidently with a pre-vision of inundation; and on this floor, thus converted into a kind of ante-bath, was laid an open gangway, which failed to keep one's feet out of the water that lipped up over it with a noisome scum of metal.
I shut the door by propping the chair against it, and had my bath; but dressed adventurously, all the points of my garments persisting in dipping in the rising flood. The adventure, I may say, was not charged in the bill: I do not doubt it was an unheard of item.
So much for the significance of the fair fonteintje fixed on the white wall. For the rest, the hall calls for no remark. It is simply furnished. A strip of carpet, the looper, runs its full length. There are a few mats, seldom many rugs; the doors off it have wooden thresholds to keep out of the rooms the draught that sweeps across the polished marble. Here and there perhaps a picture or print relieves its gleaming bareness, and somewhere a wag-at-the-wall ticks out the time.
Meldrum, David Storrar. Home Life in Holland. Methuen & Co., 1911.
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