amsterdam i should certainly include among my cities of light and charm, a place to live in. not that it has, in my judgment, any of that capital significance of paris or rome or venice. though greater by a hundred thousand in population than frankfort, it has not even the forceful commercial texture of that place. the spirit of the city seemed so much more unbusinesslike,—so much slower and easier-going. before i sent forth a single letter of introduction i spent an entire day idling about its so often semicircular streets, following the canals which thread their centers like made pools, rejoicing in the cool brick walks which line the sides, looking at the reflection of houses and buildings in the ever-present water.
holland is obviously a land of canals and windmills, but much more than that it is a land of atmosphere. i have often speculated as to just what it is that the sea does to its children that marks them so definitely for its own. and here in amsterdam the thought came to me again. it is this: your waterside idler, whether he traverses the wide stretches of the ocean or remains at home near the sea, has a seeming vacuity or dreaminess of soul that no rush of ordinary life can disturb. i have noted it of every port of the sea, that the eager intensity of men so often melts away at the water’s edge. boats are not loaded with the hard realism that marks the lading of trains. a sense of the idle-devil-may-care indifference of water seems to play about the affairs of these people, of those who have to do with them—the495 unhastening indifference of the sea. perhaps the suggestion of the soundless, timeless, heartless deep that is in every channel, inlet, sluice, and dock-basin is the element that is at the base of their lagging motions. your sailor and seafaring man will not hurry. his eyes are wide with a strange suspicion of the deep. he knows by contact what the subtlety and the fury of the waters are. the word of the sea is to be indifferent. “never you mind, dearie. as it was in the beginning, so it ever shall be.”
i think the peace and sweetness of amsterdam bear some relationship to this wonderful, soporific spirit of the endless deep. as i walked along these “grachts” and “kades” and through these “pleins”—seemingly enameled worlds in which water and trees and red brick houses swam in a soft light, exactly the light and atmosphere you find in dutch art—i felt as though i had come out of a hard modern existence such as one finds in germany and back into something kindly, rural, intellectual, philosophic. spinoza was, i believe, holland’s contribution to philosophy,—and a worthy dutch philosopher he was—and erasmus its great scholar. both rembrandt and frans hals have indicated in their lives the spirit of their country. i think, if you could look into the spirits and homes of thousands of simple hollanders, you would find that same kindly, cleanly realism which you admire in their paintings. it is so placid. it was so here in amsterdam. one gathered it from the very air. i had a feeling of peaceful, meditative delight in life and the simplicities of living all the time i was in holland, which i take to be significant. all the while i was there i was wishing that i might remain throughout the spring and summer, and dream. in germany i was haunted by the necessity of effort.
it was while i was in amsterdam this first morning496 that the realization that my travels were fast drawing to a close dawned upon me. i had been having such a good time! that fresh, interested feeling of something new to look forward to with each morning was still enduring; but now i saw that my splendid world of adventure was all but ended. thoreau has proved, as i recalled now with some satisfaction, that life can be lived, with great intellectual and spiritual distinction in a meager way and in small compass, but oh, the wonder of the world’s highways—the going to and fro amid the things of eminence and memory, seeing how, thus far, this wordly house of ours has been furnished by man and by nature.
all those wonderful lands and objects that i had looked forward to with such keen interest a few months before were now in their way things of the past. england, france, italy, germany, london, paris, rome, berlin, canterbury, amiens, st. peter’s, pisa—i could not look on those any more with fresh and wondering eyes. how brief life is, i thought! how taciturn in its mood! it gives us a brief sip, some of us, once and then takes the cup away. it seemed to me, as i sat here looking out on the fresh and sweet canals of holland, that i could idle thus forever jotting down foolish impressions, exclaiming over fleeting phases of beauty, wiping my eyes at the hails and farewells that are so precious and so sad. holland was before me, and belgium, and one more sip of paris, and a few days in england, perhaps, and then i should go back to new york to write. i could see it—new york with its high buildings, its clanging cars, its rough incivility. oh, why might i not idle abroad indefinitely?
the second morning of my arrival i received a telephone message from a sister of madame a., madame j., the wife of an eminent dutch jurist who had something497 to do with the international peace court. would i come to lunch this day? her husband would be a little late, but i would not mind. her sister had written her. she would be so glad to see me. i promptly accepted.
the house was near the ryks museum, with a charming view of water from the windows. i can see it now—this very pleasant holland interior. the rooms into which i was introduced were bluish-gray in tone, the contents spare and in good taste. flowers in abundance. much brass and old copper. madame j. was herself a study in steel blue and silver gray, a reserved yet temperamental woman. a better linguist than madame a., she spoke english perfectly. she had read my book, the latest one, and had liked it, she told me. then she folded her hands in her lap, leaned forward and looked at me. “i have been so curious to see what you looked like.”
“well,” i replied smilingly, “take a long look. i am not as wild as early rumors would indicate, i hope. you mustn’t start with prejudices.”
she smiled engagingly. “it isn’t that. there are so many things in your book which make me curious. it is such a strange book—self-revealing, i imagine.”
“i wouldn’t be too sure.”
she merely continued to look at me and smile in a placid way, but her inspection was so sympathetic and in a way alluring that it was rather flattering than otherwise. i, in turn, studied her. here was a woman that, i had been told, had made an ideal marriage. and she obviously displayed the quiet content that few achieve.
like shakespeare, i would be the last one to admit an impediment to the marriage of true minds. unquestionably in this world in spite of endless liaisons, sex diversions, divorces, marital conflicts innumerable, the right people do occasionally find each other. there are498 true chemical-physical affinities, which remain so until death and dissolution undo their mysterious spell. yet, on the other hand, i should say this is the rarest of events and if i should try to formulate the mystery of the marital trouble of this earth i should devote considerable percentages to: a—ungovernable passion not willed or able to be controlled by the individual; b—dull, thick-hided irresponsiveness which sees nothing in the emotional mood of another and knows no guiding impulse save self-interest and gluttony; c—fickleness of that unreasoning, unthinking character which is based on shallowness of soul and emotions—the pains resulting from such a state are negligible; d—diverging mental conceptions of life due to the hastened or retarded mental growth of one or the other of the high contracting parties; e—mistaken unions, wrong from the beginning, based on mistaken affections—cases where youth, inexperience, early ungovernable desire lead to a union based on sex and end, of course, in mental incompatibility; f—a hounding compulsion to seek for a high spiritual and intellectual ideal which almost no individual can realize for another and which yet may be realized in a lightning flash, out of a clear sky, as it were. in which case the last two will naturally forsake all others and cleave only the one to the other. such is sex’s affection, mental and spiritual compatibility.
but in marriage, as in no other trade, profession, or contract, once a bargain is struck—a mistake made—society suggests that there is no solution save in death. you cannot back out. it is almost the only place where you cannot correct a mistake and start all over. until death do us part! think of that being written and accepted of a mistaken marriage! my answer is that death would better hurry up. if the history of human marriage indicates anything, it is that the conditions which499 make for the union of two individuals, male and female, are purely fortuitous, that marriages are not made in heaven but in life’s conditioning social laboratory, and that the marriage relation, as we understand it, is quite as much subject to modification and revision as anything else. radical as it may seem, i predict a complete revision of the home standards as we know them. i would not be in the least surprised if the home, as we know it, were to disappear entirely. new, modifying conditions are daily manifesting themselves. aside from easy divorce which is a mere safety valve and cannot safely (and probably will not) be dispensed with, there are other things which are steadily undermining the old home system as it has been practised. for instance, endless agencies which tend to influence, inspire, and direct the individual or child, entirely apart from the control and suggestion of parents, are now at work. in the rearing of the average child the influence of the average parent is steadily growing less. intellectual, social, spiritual freedom are constantly being suggested to the individual, but not by the home. people are beginning to see that they have a right to seek and seek until they find that which is best suited to their intellectual, physical, spiritual development, home or no home. no mistake, however great, or disturbing in its consequences, it is beginning to be seen, should be irretrievable. the greater the mistake, really, the easier it should be to right it. society must and is opening the prison doors of human misery, and old sorrows are walking out into the sunlight where they are being dispelled and forgotten. as sure as there are such things as mental processes, spiritual affinities, significant individualities and as sure as these things are increasing in force, volume, numbers, so sure, also, is it that the marriage state and the sex relation with which these things are so curiously and indissolubly involved will be500 modified, given greater scope, greater ease of adjustment, greater simplicity of initiation, greater freedom as to duration, greater kindliness as to termination. and the state will guarantee the right, privileges and immunities of the children to the entire satisfaction of the state, the parents, and the children. it cannot be otherwise.
mynheer j. joined us presently. he was rather spare, very waxy, very intellectual, very unattached philosophically—apparently—and yet very rigid in his feeling for established principle. the type is quite common among intellectuals. much reading had not made him mad but a little pedantic. he was speculatively interested in international peace though he did not believe that it could readily be established. much more, apparently, he was interested in the necessity of building up a code or body of international laws which would be flexible and binding on all nations. imaginatively i could see him at his heavy tomes. he had thin, delicate, rather handsome hands; a thin, dapper, wiry body. he was older than madame j.,—say fifty-five or sixty. he had nice, well-barbered, short gray whiskers, a short, effective mustache, loose, well-trained, rather upstanding hair. some such intellectual northman ibsen intended to give hedda.
