Retracing the PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

Why Leiden, birthplace of Rembrandt, is so often bypassed by travelers to Holland I have no idea, for it is a gem of a city. Small, walkable, with plenty of canals, museums and ancient buildings, it lies less than an hour from Amsterdam by train and easily can be seen in a day.

And, of course, it holds special meaning for Americans, since it was the refuge of the Pilgrims for almost a dozen years before they finally sailed for the New World.

My special reason for wanting to see Leiden was that I--along with several hundred other Americans--am a direct descendant of William Brewster, the good gray elder of the Pilgrim church. This is not to wave the Mayflower flag; my father’s people never made anything of the connection. Being farmers, they were too practical--and too busy--to join organizations like the General Society of Mayflower Descendants or the Elder Brewster Society.

But in this age when a third of Internet usage supposedly is devoted to genealogical sleuthing, there’s nothing quite like family roots to make history spring to life. So I looked forward to being my own kind of pilgrim in the city where my ancestor once lived. Besides, from what I had read, Brewster seemed such a decent fellow: “Wise and discreet and well spoken . . . of a very cheerful spirit, very sociable and pleasant among his friends,” as his contemporary William Bradford described him.

As it turned out, the Leiden tourist office makes a pilgrimage easy. It has a map and guide that outlines a walk through town that will take you to all the sites associated with the Pilgrims, including Brewster’s house on Stincksteeg (Stink Alley), renamed William Brewstersteeg, no doubt with modern visitors’ sensibilities in mind. Even Brewster seems to have had second thoughts about his address. Some of the religious books he published from his house bear the imprint of Choir Alley, a passageway adjacent to the Stincksteeg house.

Coming to Leiden from Amsterdam in early September, I was unprepared for the modernity of the railroad station, wrapped as it is in a kind of cage of white metal girders. Another surprise was the sea of bicycles I encountered in the plaza outside, hundreds upon hundreds of them, slouched against one another, waiting idly for their owners to return at day’s end from jobs in nearby cities such as The Hague and Utrecht.

I had only to walk down the street to see that Leiden is really a small town, with a low skyline punctuated by steeples and the gables of old houses. Its population is 130,000, only 100,000 more than it was in Rembrandt’s time, when Leiden, with its peerless university, was considered the most beautiful and charming city in Holland. A center of tolerance, it drew English and French refugees--including those English “separatists,” the future Pilgrims, seeking to escape the rigid edicts of King James I and practice their determined, austere form of Protestantism.

Consulting the map/guide to Pilgrim sites I had picked up at the tourist office near the railroad station, I walked down Stationstraat, a broad street leading into town. I made the recommended left turn onto Rijnsburgersingel and caught sight of a windmill, De Valk (the falcon), standing tall and proud in a lovely little park. Built in 1743 atop the city’s fortified walls--long since torn down--the windmill continued to grind wheat for flour well into the 1920s.

The door was open, and I went inside to find that it held a windmill museum devoted to the history of milling and the life, skills and techniques typical of an 18th century miller. Climbing to the top story, up ladder-like wooden stairs, I had a bracing view of Leiden, with the mill’s great sails--now held stationary against the wind--forming an enormous X above my head.

From my aerie, I could orient myself in the direction of the Hooglandse Kerk (Highland Church), a cathedral from the Middle Ages that rose in the center of town. Down on the ground again, I headed toward the church along a broad canal, Oude Singel, lined with antique buildings. On the way, I passed the stately, almost palatial Lakenhal (Cloth Hall), dating from 1640, when it was the center of the textile industry that made Leiden rich. Today it is a museum containing paintings by such Dutch masters as Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Gerard Dou and Frans van Mieris, all of whom worked in the city. I passed it up, vowing to return later in the day.

Soon I came to the Burcht, a fortress built upon a constructed hill in the 11th century. Now, a hill in flat Holland is a rare feature, an attraction in and of itself, and this mound draws flocks of Dutch visitors happy to make the steep climb to give themselves, in a manner of speaking, a fresh historical perspective. From the fortress’s height above the town I enjoyed a panorama the Pilgrims would recognize, so little has Leiden’s profile changed in the intervening years. Across the red-tile rooftops of the houses I could see not only the mighty, soaring mass of the Hooglandse Kerk, but the spired magnificence of other venerable churches, among them the 12th century Pieterskerk (Peter’s Church), which has Pilgrim associations. I would visit it later on my walk--and be more than surprised by what I found inside. But for the moment, I had my sights set on the nearby Hooglandse Kerk, built between 1450 and 1500, when Holland was yet Catholic.

Stripped of its statues after it became a Protestant church in the Reformation, the Hooglandse Kerk, on Nieuwstraat, has the soaring, light-filled interior of similar churches captured in paintings by the 17th century Dutch masters Pieter Jansz Saenredam and Emanuel de Witte. I stood in the transept, awed by what I beheld. Light poured through pointed Gothic windows filled with small panes of slightly greenish glass, and glittered on brass chandeliers suspended from the vaulted ceiling high above. To add to the enchantment, organ music filled the vastness of the cathedral.

In comparison, William Brewster’s house on its narrow alley, about 10 minutes away, seemed toylike. Yet in its cramped quarters he had lived with his wife and several children (from one of whom, Patience, I descend) and had managed to carry on his printing business, producing religious books prohibited in England but clandestinely distributed there, which made him a target of the king’s wrath.

As I stood looking up at the windows, trying to imagine Brewster, in plain Pilgrim attire, striding down this little lane, I was distracted by two men moving furniture out of the house opposite. They could barely maneuver a couch along the narrow passageway. Obviously the Pilgrims gained a lot more than religious freedom when they came to America; for one thing, they got room!

I had come to Leiden, without knowing it, on market day, and I was soon caught up by its hustle and bustle. Along one of the canals, the Nieuwe Rijn, awninged stalls had been set up, with vendors selling everything from pickled herring, a great Dutch favorite, to exuberant bouquets of Van Gogh-perfect sunflowers. On one corner sat a wagon-like Dutch street organ, painted a bold pink. It was a sight unto itself--a melange of rococo curlicues, flower garlands and a tiny band of standing mechanical male and female musicians who struck bells, blew trumpets and tapped drums. There is only one word to describe the music that pours forth from air-fed contraptions like this: rollicking. Indeed, street organ music is the sound of Holland as much as the accordion is that of France, and it imbued the market scene with a gaiety as warm as the sun streaming down from the sky.

After dropping some coins into the organ owner’s brass cup, I continued my pilgrimage. I passed Town Hall, a long, imposing building with a double staircase leading up to the statue-guarded front entrance. Erected in 1597, it burned in 1929, but because the thick stone walls had remained standing, restorers could reconstruct it. Then, as I darted down a busy street on my way to the Pieterskerk, I saw an open gate to a passageway and decided, on the spur of the moment, to follow it. Within seconds, I was standing in a garden courtyard, rimmed by low-eaved brick houses painted white--a little bit of country right in the heart of Leiden. The city boasts 35 similar courtyards, which offer the peace of an old-fashioned village to the people lucky enough to live around them.

From the crowd milling in front of the Gothic Pieterskerk--in whose shadow many of the Pilgrims had lived--I knew something must be going on. But before entering the church, I tried to take the measure of its large size from the open areas around the side and front. On the southwest wall I found a bronze plaque erected in honor of the Pilgrims’ pastor in Leiden, the Rev. John Robinson, who died in 1625, before he could join his brethren at the Plymouth Colony in what is now Plymouth, Mass. He had lived just across the street from the church and is buried here, as are some of the other Pilgrims who departed this world in Leiden.

On the spot where Robinson’s large Pilgrim-built house stood--also marked by a plaque--is the Jean Pesijnhofje, an almshouse dating to 1683 (now privately owned), and behind it is the place where many of the Pilgrims lived in 21 tiny, one-room houses. (Because they were not considered official citizens of Leiden, most were obliged to work at poor-paying jobs, many in the textile trade.) Today the site is occupied by a grassy courtyard bordered by contiguous red-brick houses. Standing in the silence, I felt some of the tranquillity that the Pilgrims must have experienced here together, able at last to reject the dictates of the Church of England.

Ah, but how shocked they would have been had they accompanied me into the Pieterskerk, which has been deconsecrated and no longer functions as a church. My ears were bombarded by the sound of an amplified rock band, and where the altar had been, a Dutch television interview show was in progress. On a close-by stage dancers in black tights performed, and beer flowed at a bar. I had happened on an arts festival.

With old Brewster still twirling in his grave, I hastened to an alley called the Begijnhof, at the end of which a locked gate barred my way to the building where the Pilgrims held church services. It belonged then to Leiden’s university; on the ground floor students practiced fencing, while in the room next to the Pilgrims’ makeshift chapel, professors led classes in dissection.

Interestingly, it was not entirely for religious reasons that the Pilgrims left Holland (after all, they enjoyed the religious freedom given them by the Dutch). They also wanted to better their economic situation and to protect their children from, as Bradford put it, “the great licentiousness of youth in that country, and the manifold temptations of the place.”

A sudden shower sent me scurrying for a doorway. When it ended, I crossed a stone bridge to walk down the Rapenburg, a tree-lined canal bordered by houses in which Leiden’s rich burghers had lived, toward a canal called De Vliet (the brook). From here departed the first group of Pilgrims on their way back to England to board the Mayflower for the New World. They formed a resolute band, “well weaned from the delicate milk of our mother country,” as Brewster and Pastor Robinson put it in a letter, “inured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land.”

Brewster himself was not among the departees that day in 1620, having already gone to England to make arrangements for the transatlantic journey. But Mary, his wife, and their two younger sons, Love and Wrestling, were. The other children, Jonathan, and the daughters, Fear, age 14, and my ancestor Patience, 20, were left behind in Leiden. They joined the rest of the family three years later when they sailed for Plymouth in the company of other Pilgrims.

What a moment that must have been as relatives and friends separated at the canal, perhaps never to see one another again. More than half the members of the Pilgrim church had elected to stay in Leiden. Bradford remembered the scene years later in stirring words: “So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrims [the first time they were described thusly], and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”

This very spot had been an end and a beginning, and I found it startling, looking down on the gleaming water, to realize suddenly that had those brave men, women and children huddled in the boat not pursued their American destiny, I would never have been born.

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GUIDEBOOK: Leiden Lanes

Getting there: There’s nonstop service, LAX to Amsterdam, on KLM Airlines. Other service requires a change of planes, including Lufthansa (connecting in Frankfurt), Air France (Paris) and British Airways (London). Round-trip fares start at $506.

Trains for Leiden leave four times an hour from Amsterdam’s main station, about a 40-minute trip. First-class one-way fares, about $11; second class, about $7. You can rent a car, but parking in Leiden’s city center can be difficult.

Exploring Leiden: The Tourist Office (signified throughout the country by the logo VVV), Stationsplein 210, 2312 AR Leiden, The Netherlands, fax 011- 31-71-512-5318, e-mail mail@leidenpromotie.nl, offers a one-day package, “Discover the Secrets of Leiden,” which includes a self-guided walking tour, entrance tickets to the Botanical Garden (plus a cup of coffee or tea at the Orangerie) and lunch at the Stadtscafe Van der Werff. Price: about $16.

For more information: Netherlands Board of Tourism, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1854, Chicago, IL 60601; tel. (888) GO HOLLAND (464-6552) or (312) 819-1500, fax (312) 819-1740, Internet https://www.goholland.com.