I thought as I stood there how
impossible it would be for an English woman tired with the week to sit
up like this to clean a shop against the next day. Sir William Temple
has a pleasant story illustrating at once the inherent passion for
cleanliness in the Dutch women and also their old masterfulness. It
tells how a magistrate, paying an afternoon call, was received at the
door by a stout North Holland lass who, lest he should soil the floor,
took him bodily in her arms and carried him to a chair; sat him in it;
removed his boots; put a pair of slippers on his feet; and then led
him to her mistress's presence.
Bergen-op-Zoom has its place in history; but it is a dull town in
fact. Nor has it beautiful streets, with the exception of that which
leads to the old Gevangenpoort with its little painted towers. I
must confess that I did not like Bergen-op-Zoom. It seemed to me
curiously inhospitable and critical; which was of course a wrong
attitude to take up towards a countryman of Grimston and Redhead; Who
are Grimston and Redhead? I seem to hear the reader asking. Grimston
and Redhead were two members of the English garrison when the Prince
of Parma besieged Bergen-op-Zoom in 1588, and it was their cunning
which saved the town.
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