At Haarlem station it is customary for those who have come in the bulb flowering time of April and May to hire a carriage and go the route prescribed by the driver; thus, without leaving their seats, seeing the gardens, and carrying away the impression of a patchwork quilt of flowers. An arrangement of foursquare bits of colour, separated from each other by as yet scantily-leafed hedges, and, here and there, intersected by pieces of ground resting from bulb culture, and either bare or green with vegetables, which, from sheer exhaustion, if not contrariness, the eye is inclined to prefer to the gorgeous flower patches. But that is not the way to see the bulb gardens. It is better, for one who has leisure, to go first in early summer, when the great mass of flowers is over, and only the later and fewer bulbs are in bloom; when there is opportunity to know them as individuals, and appreciate the exquisite contrast of iris colours and green hedges, and to see to full advantage ranunculus, and the early blooming gladioli, and the hundred varieties of the lily tribe. To see them, as the unaccustomed eye cannot see them when it first meets flowers in sheets, field after field of colour. In June, then, come to Haarlem; there take a tram, and do not forget that the chances are some one in the vehicle will understand English very well indeed. And when the tram has come as near as may be to the destination, walk the rest of the way to the house of the grower. To see the bulb flowers without the grower is not to see them. On arrival at the house there is usually a meal first. It is always mid-day “coffee-drinking” in my memories, and there is never much talk of the flowers at it; questions, rather, about people in England and Holland, and perhaps about fashions and food, and the length of the winter, and the health of Mevrouw. After that there is a rest, during which Mevrouw offers cordials and home-made liquors of a most excellent order, and den Heer finishes important letters. After that, walk forth to the flowers.
The gardens are sometimes rather far from the house, and often not very near each other, one man owning or renting several at considerable distances apart. Some of the younger men use bicycles to get from one to the other, some of the elder tricycles, which seems a doubtful expedient, seeing the nature of the roads. One old man who used the latter method, and wished to try the former, wept tears of sheer rage when his wife and family interfered, for the sake of his safety, to prevent him from learning to ride the swifter machine. And, being Dutch not French, he was not content with weeping, but proceeded to frustrate their well-meant interference. Of an evening, when by his own account he was late working in the office, he took his son’s bicycle to a bulb barn, and, by the light of a lantern, rode it up and down the centre aisle. He damaged himself a good deal from time to time, and the bicycle somewhat; but he was not discovered. He explained his own injuries in various ingenious, if not strictly truthful, ways; and of the bicycle’s he was never suspected, although he showed himself generous in subscribing to the cost of repairing the mysteriously caused damage. He spent most of the evenings of one winter in this way. It took him all that time to at all master the machine. He was less apt than determined, and, had he not been bent on proving his independence, he might have given up. But he was bent, very seriously—one knows the concentration with which he ground up and down the barn aisle night after night, peering with short-sighted eyes for unseen obstacles among the lantern shadows, and colliding with the same corner at the same time each turn. In the spring he bought a second-hand bicycle. He was too good a man of business to risk the price of a new one on his own proficiency as a rider on the roads; moreover, he wanted a machine with solid tyres, he preferred the substantiality. On his purchase he rode proudly to his own door, and dismounted in time to save himself from falling off at his wife’s feet. He is now occasionally to be seen on the roads, a proud and perspiring man. It is true, he does not ride his bicycle very much when his wife is not about to protest and object, but he is always (verbally at least) an enthusiast about it. It is his opinion that the roads of Holland are the most excellent in the world for cycles. They are, he says, no matter what the weather, always so clean. That is true, clean they are; but good!—it is a matter of opinion. There is a foot-wide brick track in the centre, deep sand everywhere else; at least such are the roads to the bulb gardens I know best.