Washington Irving
Humor
Wouter Van Twiller
It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Mynheer
Wouter Van Twiller was
appointed Governor of the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, under the commission and control of their High
Mightinesses the Lords States General of the United
Netherlands, and the privileged West India Company.
This
renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the
sweetest month in all the year; when Dan Apollo* seems to dance up the
transparent firmament — when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton
songsters make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious
little bob-lincoln revels among the clover blossoms
of the meadows — all which happy coincidences persuaded the old dames of New
Amsterdam, who were skilled in the art of foretelling events, that this was to
be a happy and prosperous administration.
The
renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller
was descended from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively
dozed away their lives and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam,
and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety that
they were never either heard or talked of — which, next to being universally
applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers.
There are two opposite ways by which some men make a figure in the world; one,
by talking faster than they think, and the other, by holding their tongues and
not thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer
acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts; by the other, many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to
be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark,
which I would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself,
like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed
he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never
known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and
prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence that set
light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of
perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when,
after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would
continue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out the ashes,
would exclaim, “Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh about!”
With
all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His
adherents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He
conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to
turn it over and examine both sides of it. Certain it is that, if any matter
were propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at
first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his capacious
head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length observe that “he had
his doubts about the matter”; which gained him the reputation of a man slow of
belief and not easily imposed upon. What is more, it gained him a lasting name;
for to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname of Twiller; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English, Doubter.
The
person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned as though
it had been molded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of
majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and
six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of
such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature, with all her sex’s ingenuity,
would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore
she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his
backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong, and particularly
capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence seeing that he was
a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His
legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain, so
that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids.
His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by those lines and angles which disfigure the
human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled
feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament;
and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that
went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a
Spitzenberg apple.
His
habits were as regular as his person. He daily took the four stated meals,
appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and
he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller — a true
philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly settled
below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had lived in it for years,
without feeling the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it,
or it round the sun; and he had watched for at least half a century the
smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head
with any of those numerous theories by which a philosopher would have perplexed
his brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding atmosphere.
In his
council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a huge chair of
solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of The Hague, fabricated by an
experienced timmerman of Amsterdam, and curiously
carved about the arms and feet into exact imitations of gigantic eagle’s claws.
Instead of a scepter, he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmine and
amber, which had been presented to a stadtholder of
Holland at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In
this stately chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke,
shaking his right knee with constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours
together upon a little print of Amsterdam which hung in a black frame against
the opposite wall of the council chamber. Nay, it has even been said that when
any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the
renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two
hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at
such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular
guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the noise of conflict
made by his contending doubts and opinions.
It is
with infinite difficulty I have been enabled to collect these biographical anecdotes
of the great man under consideration. The facts respecting him were so
scattered and vague, and divers of them so questionable in point of
authenticity, that I have had to give up the search after many, and decline the
admission of still more, which would have tended to heighten the coloring of
his portrait.
I have
been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the
consideration that he was not only the first but also the best Governor that
ever presided over this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil and
benevolent was his reign, that I do not find throughout the whole of it a
single instance of any offender being brought to punishment — a most
indubitable sign of a merciful Governor, and a case unparalleled, excepting in
the reign of the illustrious King Log, from who, it is hinted, the renowned Van
Twiller was a lineal descendant.
The
very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an
example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable
administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the
moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled
with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven, a very
important old burgher of New Amsterdam, who complained bitterly of one Barent Bleecker, inasmuch as he
refused to come to a settlement of accounts, seeing that there was a heavy
balance in favor of the said Wandle. Governor Van Twiller, as I have already observed, was a man of few
words; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writings — or being
disturbed at his breakfast. Having listened attentively to the statement of Wandle Schoonhoven, giving an
occasional grunt, as he shoveled a spoonful of Indian pudding into his mouth —
either as a sign that he relished the dish, or comprehended the story — he
called unto him his constable, and pulling out of his breeches pocket a huge
jack-knife, despatched it after the defendant as a
summons, accompanied by his tobacco-box as a warrant.
This
summary process was as effectual in those simple days as was the seal-ring of
the great Harun-al-Raschid among the true believers.
The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of
accounts, written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a
High-Dutch commentator or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised
them in his hands and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell
straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying
a word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose and shutting his eyes for
a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a subtle idea by the tail,
he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of tobacco-smoke,
and with marvelous gravity and solemnity pronounced, that, having carefully
counted over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found that one was just
as thick and as heavy as the other; therefore, it was the final opinion of the
court that the accounts were equally balanced: therefore, Wandle
should give Barent a receipt, and Barent
should give Wandle a receipt, and the constable
should pay the costs.
This
decision, being straightway made known, diffused general joy throughout New
Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived that they had a very wise and
equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest effect was that not
another lawsuit took place throughout the whole of his administration; and the
office of constable fell into such decay that there was not one of those losel
scouts known in the province for many years. I am the more particular in
dwelling on this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the most sage
and righteous judgments on record, and well worthy
the attention of modern magistrates, but because it was a miraculous event in the
history of the renowned Wouter — being the only time
he was ever known to come to a decision in the whole course of his life.
* Although the
meaning for “Dan Apollo” is not readily known, it is thought to be a nickname
for the sun
As some sleek ox, sunk in the rich repose of a clover-field, dozing
and chewing the cud, will bear repeated blows before it raises itself, so the
province of Nieuw Nederlandts,
having waxed fat under the drowsy reign of the Doubter, needed cuffs and kicks
to rouse it into action. The reader will now witness the manner in which a
peaceful community advances toward a state of war; which is apt to be like the
approach of a horse to a drum, with much prancing and little progress, and too
often with the wrong end foremost.
Wilhelmus Kieft, who in 1634 ascended the gubernatorial chair (to
borrow a favorite though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists),
was of a lofty descent, his father being inspector of windmills in the ancient
town of Saardam; and our hero, we are told, when a
boy, made very curious investigations into the nature and operations of these
machines, which was one reason why he afterward came to be so ingenious a
Governor. His name, according to the most authentic etymologists, was a
corruption of Kyver — that is to say, a wrangler or scolder,
and expressed the characteristic of his family, which, for nearly two
centuries, have kept the windy town of Saardam in hot
water and produced more tartars and brimstones than any ten families in the
place; and so truly did he inherit this family peculiarity, that he had not
been a year in the government of the province before he was universally
denominated William the Testy. His appearance answered to his name. He was a
brisk, wiry, waspish little old gentleman, such a one as may now and then
be seen stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons, a
cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His
face was broad, but his features were sharp; his cheeks were scorched into a
dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes, his nose turned up, and the corners of
his mouth turned down, pretty much like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog.
I have heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, inciting him to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient tradition speaks much of his learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, and brought off rich booty in ancient saws and apothegms, which he was wont to parade in his public harangues, as a triumphant general of yore his spolia
optima.
Of metaphysics he knew enough to confound all hearers and himself into the
bargain. In logic he knew the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas, and was
so proud of his skill that he never suffered even a self-evident fact to pass unargued. It was observed, however, that he seldom got into
an argument without getting into a perplexity, and then into a passion with his
adversary for not being convinced gratis.
He had,
moreover, skirmished smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences, was
fond of experimental philosophy, and prided himself upon inventions of all
kinds. His abode, which he had fixed at a Bowerie or country-seat at a
short distance from the city, just at what is now called Dutch Street, soon abounded
with proofs of his ingenuity; patent smoke-jacks that required a horse to work
them; Dutch ovens that roasted meat without fire; carts that went before the
horses; weathercocks that turned against the wind; and other wrong-headed
contrivances that astonished and confounded all beholders. The house, too, was
beset with paralytic cats and dogs, the subjects of his experimental
philosophy; and the yelling and yelping of the latter unhappy victims of
science, while aiding in the pursuit of knowledge, soon gained for the place
the name of “Dog’s Misery,” by which it continues to be known even at the
present day.
It is
in knowledge as in swimming: he who flounders and splashes on the surface makes
more noise, and attracts more attention, than the pearl-diver who quietly dives
in quest of treasures to the bottom. The vast acquirements of the new Governor
were the theme of marvel among the simple burghers of New Amsterdam; he figured
about the place as learned a man as a Bonze at Pekin, who had mastered one-half
of the Chinese alphabet, and was unanimously pronounced a “universal genius!” .
. . .
Thus
end the authenticated chronicles of the reign of William the Testy; for
henceforth, in the troubles, perplexities and confusion of the times, he seems
to have been totally overlooked, and to have slipped forever through the
fingers of scrupulous history. . . .
It is
true that certain of the early provincial poets, of whom there were great numbers
in the Nieuw Nederlands, taking advantage of his mysterious exit, have fabled
that, like Romulus, he was translated to the skies, and forms a very fiery
little star somewhere on the left claw of the Crab; while others, equally
fanciful, declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good
King Arthur, who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the
delicious abodes of fairy-land, where he still exists in pristine worth and
vigor, and will one day or another return to restore the gallantry, the honor
and the immaculate probity which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round
Table.
All
these, however, are but pleasing fantasies, the cobweb visions of those
dreaming varlets, the poets, to which I would not have my judicious readers
attach any credibility. Neither am I disposed to credit an ancient and rather
apocryphal historian who asserts that the ingenious Wilhelmus was annihilated
by the blowing down of one of his windmills; nor a writer of later times, who
affirms that he fell a victim to an experiment in natural history, having the
misfortune to break his neck from a garret window of the stadthouse
in attempting to catch swallows by sprinkling salt upon their tails. Still less
do I put my faith in the tradition that he perished at sea in conveying home to
Holland a treasure of golden ore, discovered somewhere among the haunted
regions of the Catskill Mountains.
The
most probable account declares that, what with the constant troubles on his
frontiers, the incessant schemings and projects going on in his own pericranium, the memorials, petitions, remonstrances
and sage pieces of advice of respectable meetings of the sovereign people, and
the refractory disposition of his councillors, who were sure to differ from him
on every point and uniformly to be in the wrong, his mind was kept in a
furnace-heat until he became as completely burnt out as a Dutch family pipe
which has passed through three generations of hard smokers. In this manner did
he undergo a kind of animal combustion, consuming away like a farthing rushlight; so that when grim death finally snuffed him
out there was scarce left enough of him to bury.
Peter Stuyvesant was
the last, and, like the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, the best of our ancient
Dutch Governors, Wouter having surpassed all who preceded him, and Peter, or
Piet, as he was sociably called by the old Dutch burghers, who were ever prone
to familiarize names, having never been equaled by any successor. He was in fact
the very man fitted by nature to retrieve the desperate fortunes of her beloved
province, had not the Fates, those most potent and unrelenting of all ancient
spinsters, destined them to inextricable confusion.
To say
merely that he was a hero would be doing him great injustice; he was in truth a
combination of heroes; for he was of a sturdy, raw-boned make, like Ajax
Telamon, with a pair of round shoulders that Hercules would have given his hide
for (meaning his lion’s hide) when he undertook to ease old Atlas of his load.
He was, moreover, as Plutarch describes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the
force of his arm, but likewise of his voice, which sounded as though it came
out of a barrel; and, like the self-same warrior, he possessed a sovereign
contempt for the sovereign people, and an iron aspect which was enough of
itself to make the very bowels of his adversaries quake with terror and dismay.
All this martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an
accidental advantage, with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil
have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden leg, which
was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his
country, but of which he was so proud that he was often heard to declare he
valued it more than all his other limbs put together; indeed, so highly did he
esteem it that he had it gallantly enchased and relieved with silver devices,
which caused it to be related in divers histories and legends that he wore a
silver leg.
The very first movements of the great Peter, on taking the reins of
government, displayed his magnanimity, though they occasioned not a little
marvel and uneasiness among the people of the Manhattoes. Finding himself constantly
interrupted by the opposition, and annoyed by the advice of his privy council,
the members of which had acquired the unreasonable habit of thinking and
speaking for themselves during the preceding reign, he determined at once to
put a stop to such grievous abominations. Scarcely, therefore, had he entered
upon his authority than he turned out of office all the meddlesome spirits of
the factious cabinet of William the Testy; in place of whom he chose unto
himself counselers from those fat, somniferous, respectable burghers who had
flourished and slumbered under the easy reign of Walter the Doubter. All these
he caused to be furnished with abundance of fair long pipes, and to be regaled
with frequent corporation dinners, admonishing them to smoke, and eat, and
sleep for the good of the nation, while he took the burden of government upon
his own shoulders — an arrangement to which they all gave hearty acquiescence.
Nor did
he stop here, but made a hideous rout among the inventions and expedients
of his learned predecessor, rooting up his patent gallows, where caitiff
vagabonds were suspended by the waistband; demolishing his flag-staffs and
windmills, which, like might giants, guarded the ramparts of New Amsterdam;
pitching to the duyvel whole batteries of Quaker
guns; and, in a word, turning topsy-turvy the whole philosophic, economic and
windmill system of the immortal sage of Saardam.
The
honest folks of New Amsterdam began to quake now for the fate of their
matchless champion, Antony the Trumpeter, who had acquired prodigious favor in
the eyes of the women by means of his whiskers and his trumpet. Him did Peter
the Headstrong cause to be brought into his presence, and eyeing him for a
moment from head to foot, with a countenance that would have appalled anything
else than a sounder of brass — “Pr’ythee, who and what art thou?” said he.
“Sire,” replied the other, in nowise dismayed, “for my name, it is Antony Van
Corlear; for my parentage, I am the son of my mother; for my profession, I am
champion and garrison of this great city of New Amsterdam.” “I doubt me much,”
said Peter Stuyvesant, “that thou art some scurvy costard-monger
knave. How didst thou acquire this paramount honor and dignity?” “Marry, sir,”
replied the other, “like many a great man before me, simply by sounding
my own trumpet.” “Aye, is it so?” quoth the Governor; “why, then, let us
have a relish of thy art.” Whereupon the good Antony put his instrument to his
lips, and sounded a charge with such a tremendous outset, such a delectable
quaver, and such a triumphant cadence, that it was enough to make one’s heart
leap out of one’s mouth only to be within a mile of it. Like as a war-worn
charger, grazing in peaceful plains, starts at a strain of martial music,
pricks up his ears, and snorts, and paws, and kindles at the noise, so did the
heroic Peter joy to hear the clangor of the trumpet; for of him might
truly be said, what was recorded of the renowned St. George of England, “there
was nothing in all the world that more rejoiced his heart than to hear the
pleasant sound of war, and see the soldiers brandish forth their steeled
weapons.” Casting his eye more kindly, therefore, upon the sturdy Van Corlear,
and finding him to be a jovial varlet, shrewd in his discourse, yet of great
discretion and immeasurable wind, he straightway conceived a vast kindness for
him, and discharging him from the troublesome duty of garrisoning, defending
and alarming the city, ever after retained him about his person as his chief
favorite, confidential envoy and trusty squire. Instead of disturbing the city
with disastrous notes, he was instructed to play so as to delight the Governor
while at his repasts, as did the minstrels of yore in the days of the glorious
chivalry — and on all public occasions to rejoice the ears of the people with
warlike melody — thereby keeping alive a noble and martial spirit.
It is tropically observed by honest old Socrates that Heaven infuses
into some men at their birth a portion of intellectual gold, into others of
intellectual silver, while others are intellectually furnished with iron and
brass. Of the last class was General Van Poffenburgh; and it would seem as if
Dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had given him brass enough for a
dozen ordinary braziers. All this he had contrived to pass off upon William the
Testy for genuine gold; and the little Governor would sit for hours and listen
to his gunpowder stories of exploits, which left those of Tirante the White,
Don Belianis of Greece, or St. George and the Dragon quite in the background.
Having been promoted by William Kieft to the command of his whole disposable
forces, he gave importance to his station by the grandiloquence of his
bulletins, always styling himself Commander-In-Chief of the Armies of the New
Netherlands, though in sober truth these armies were nothing more than a
handful of hen-stealing, bottle-bruising ragamuffins.
In
person he was not very tall, but exceedingly round; neither did his bulk
proceed from his being fat, but windy, being blown up by a prodigious
conviction of his own importance, until he resembled one of those bags of wind
given by Æolus, in an incredible fit of generosity,
to that vagabond warrior Ulysses. His windy endowments had long excited the
admiration of Antony Van Corlear, who is said to have hinted more than once to William
the Testy that in making Van Poffenburgh a general he had spoiled an admirable
trumpeter.
As it
is the practise in ancient story to give the reader a description of the arms
and equipments of every noted warrior, I will bestow a word upon the dress of
this redoubtable commander. It comported with his character, being so crossed
and slashed, and embroidered with lace and tinsel, that he seemed to have as
much brass without as Nature had stored away within. He was swathed, too, in a
crimson sash, of the size and texture of a fishing-net — doubtless to keep his
swelling heart from bursting through his ribs. His face glowed with
furnace-heat from between a huge pair of well-powdered whiskers, and his
valorous soul seemed ready to bounce out of a pair of large, glassy, blinking
eyes, projecting like those of a lobster.
I swear
to thee, worthy reader, if history and tradition belie not this warrior, I
would give all the money in my pocket to have seen him accoutred cap-à-pie —
booted to the middle, sashed to the chin, collared to the ears, whiskered to
the teeth, crowned with an overshadowing cocked hat, and girded with a leathern
belt ten inches broad, from which trailed a falchion, of a length that I dare
not mention. Thus equipped, he strutted about, as bitter-looking a man of war
as the far-famed More, of Morehall, when he sallied forth to slay the dragon of
Wantley. For what says the ballad?
“Had
you but seen him in this dress,
How fierce he looked and how big,
You would have thought him for to be
Some Egyptian porcupig.
He frighted all — cats, dogs, and all,
Each cow, each
horse, and each hog;
For fear they did flee, for they took him to be
Some strange outlandish hedgehog.”
From:
Knickerbocker’s History of New York.