Among other travellers who have summed up the Dutch in a few phrases is Sir Thomas Overbury, the author of some witty characters, including that very charming one of a Happy Milk Maid.  In 1609 he thus generalised upon the Netherlander:  “Concerning the people:  they are neither much devout, nor much wicked; given all to drink, and eminently to no other vice; hard in bargaining, but just; surly and respectless, as in all democracies; thirsty, industrious, and cleanly; disheartened upon the least ill-success, and insolent upon good; inventive in manufactures, and cunning in traffick:  and generally, for matter of action, that natural slowness of theirs, suits better (by reason of the advisedness and perseverance it brings with it) than the rashness and changeableness of the French and Florentine wits; and the equality of spirits, which is among them and Switzers, renders them so fit for a democracy:  which kind of government, nations of more stable wits, being once come to a consistent greatness, have seldom long endured.”

Many Englishmen have travelled in Holland and have set down the record of their experiences, from Thomas Coryate downwards.  But the country has not been inspiring, and Dutch travels are poor reading.  Had Dr. Johnson lived to accompany Boswell on a projected journey we should be the richer, but I doubt if any very interesting narrative would have resulted.  One of Johnson’s contemporaries, Samuel Ireland, the engraver, and the father of the fraudulent author of Vortigern, wrote A Picturesque Tour through Holland, Brabant, and part of France, in 1789, while a few years later one of Charles Lamb’s early “drunken companions,” Fell, wrote A Tour through the Batavian Republic, 1801; and both of these books yield a few experiences not without interest.  Fell’s is the duller.  I quote from them now and again throughout this volume, but I might mention here a few of their more general observations.

Fell, for example, was embarrassed by the very formal politeness of the nation.  “The custom of bowing in Holland,” he writes, “is extremely troublesome.  It is not sufficient, as in England, that a person slightly moves his hat, but he must take it off his head, and continue uncovered till the man is past him to whom he pays the compliment.  The ceremony of bowing is more strictly observed at Leyden and Haarlem, than at Rotterdam or The Hague.  In either of the former cities, a stranger of decent appearance can scarcely walk in the streets without being obliged every minute to pull off his hat, to answer some civility of the same kind which he receives; and these compliments are paid him not only by opulent people, but by mechanics and labourers, who bow with all the gravity and politeness of their superiors.”

Such civilities to strangers have become obsolete.  So far from courtesy being the rule of the street, it is now, as I have hinted in the next chapter, impossible for an English-woman whose clothes chance to differ in any particular from those of the Dutch to escape embarrassing notice.  Staring is carried to a point where it becomes almost a blow, and laughter and humorous sallies resound.  I am told that the Boer war to a large extent broke down old habits of politeness to the English stranger.