Huygens Kleef

Huygens Kleef, proprietor of the Red Lion Inn in Leiden, is a small-scale but sharply drawn figure of Dutch domestic life: stout, short-legged, and associated with a very long pipe, he presides over a weathered former burgher’s house with an innkeeper’s pride in its order and reputation. His brief part in the boys’ journey turns on a revealing contrast. He promises abundant hospitality to hungry travelers, yet a robber’s presence in his house makes him fear public disgrace and hurry to seek the police.

Identity and Setting

The Red Lion stands near Breedstraat, its entrance marked by a comically painted lion. The book introduces Kleef through the inn and its local color: he is a stout Dutchman with short legs and a very long pipe, a figure fitted to the establishment he keeps. The travelers arrive ravenous after their tiffin at Haarlem, their exertion, and a swift sail along the canal. Their need for food makes the inn a practical refuge, but the building soon becomes more than a stopping place: its rooms and arrangements shape the danger that follows.

The house had once been a fine residence belonging to a rich burgher. As it aged and passed through many hands, it became shabby, though Kleef remained convinced that repair and paint would restore its beauty. Looking up at its broken walls, he liked to say, “Mend it and paint it, and there’s not a prettier house in Leyden.” The six-story building rose in irregular stages: three stories of differing heights stood above the street, while three more occupied the high roof, each level narrowing like a set of steps toward the peak. Short, shining roof tiles and small windowpanes scattered without any apparent concern for symmetry gave the exterior its particular character.

Kleef distinguishes the public room from this worn exterior. It is his pride, maintained in Dutch neatness and order rather than left to share the neglect of the walls. Its striking floor is a checkerboard of glazed earthen squares, alternating yellow and red. High-backed wooden chairs stand around a large fireplace; polished steel firedogs reflect its blaze, while tiles cover the hearth and chimney sides. A narrow shelf above the room holds brass candlesticks, pipe lighters, and tinderboxes. Tables, a closet, a dresser crowded with mugs, dishes, pipes, tankards, and bottles, and a brass-hooped keg complete the furnishings. Tobacco smoke dims the room, but the narrator emphasizes that, apart from the smoke, its cleanliness is exemplary. Kleef’s attachment to the room gives his pride a concrete object: the inn may look dilapidated outside, but the space by which guests judge his service is kept in order.

The Innkeeper and His Guests

When the boys ask him to serve whatever he can, Kleef bows and assures them, “I can give you anything—everything.” The expansive offer suits the travelers’ hunger and presents him as ready to oblige. The scene also places him in a comic exchange with Peter van Holp, who answers by naming the food the party wants. Kleef’s words sound grander than the ordinary transaction requires; his theatrical bow and the boys’ joking manner keep the exchange light.

That welcome is tested by the inn’s less reassuring arrangements. During the night, a thief is concealed in a room adjoining the boys’ lodging, beyond their easy sight and hearing. Kleef is not shown knowingly sheltering him: the evidence of the theft emerges when his daughter runs in with the thief’s huge wooden shoes and identifies him as the man put in the neighboring room after the young travelers had gone to bed. Her rebuke is directed at the decision to lodge the boys so far out of sight and sound. The exposure makes the innkeeper’s house, whose public room had represented care and order, suddenly seem vulnerable to disorder within its own walls.

The Thief and Kleef’s Reputation

On learning what has happened, Kleef calls the intruder a scoundrel and says that he has disgraced the house. He immediately goes for the police. His reaction is not presented as a calculated investigation but as an innkeeper’s urgent response to an affront against the establishment he is responsible for. The public character of his concern is plain: the thief has not only committed a crime but, in Kleef’s view, damaged the standing of the Red Lion.

Within fifteen minutes, two officers arrive. They tell Kleef that he must appear early the next morning with the boys and make his complaint before a magistrate, then take the prisoner away. The scene briefly turns the travelers into witnesses and sets up a formal consequence for the night’s intrusion. Kleef’s role is practical as well as emotional: his complaint helps carry the discovery out of the inn and into the hands of the authorities.

The episode does not keep the boys awake for long. Exhaustion wins, and by ten o’clock they come down one by one. Kleef gruffly calls the hour late and reminds them that they must appear before the court. He then asks them to testify truthfully that they found excellent food and lodging at the Red Lion. His concern about the testimony makes explicit what his earlier outburst implied: the robbery threatens not only the house’s good name but also the account of the hospitality he offers paying guests. Carl Schummel answers saucily that the food and lodging were excellent, as was the company, though it arrived at an unseasonable hour. Kleef responds with a stare and a “humph!” rather than continuing the banter.

Narrative Role

Kleef connects the boys’ travel adventure to the textures of an ordinary Dutch inn: its painted sign, old stepped roof, tiled public room, household fittings, and concern for a guest’s meal. In this setting, local detail is not detached from action. The lodging arrangements place a thief close to the party; the wooden shoes provide his daughter’s identifying clue; and the landlord’s complaint brings the police into the episode. The inn’s domestic order and its breach are therefore part of the same small plot.

His characterization also rests on a modest comic tension. Kleef can offer everything to hungry travelers and take pride in a room kept spotless, yet his respectable house contains a hidden criminal, and his guests are later asked to affirm its quality in court. The contrast does not make him responsible for the theft; rather, it exposes how quickly an innkeeper’s confidence in his establishment can be unsettled by an event inside it. Through Kleef, the Red Lion is at once shelter, business, and reputation—a stopping place whose public face must be defended as soon as the night’s disorder comes to light.