fingers--lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that
at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbors,
which may be straight, or not so visibly inclined; one leans forward
as if it would fall into the street; another backward, another to the
left, another to the right; at some points six or seven contiguous
houses all lean forward together, those in the middle most, those at
the ends less, looking like a paling with the crowd pressing against
it. At another point two houses lean together as if supporting one
another. In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all
one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing wind; and then another long
row will lean in the opposite direction, as if the wind had changed.
Sometimes there is a certain regularity of inclination that is scarcely
noticeable; and again, at crossings and in the smallest streets there
is an indescribable confusion of lines, a real architectural frolic, a
dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that
nod forward as if asleep, others that start backward as if frightened;
some bending towards each other, their roofs almost touching, as if in
secret conference; some falling upon one another as if they were drunk;
some leaning backward between others that lean forward like malefactors
dragged onward by their guards; rows of houses that courtesy to a
steeple, groups of small houses all inclined towards one in the middle,
like conspirators in conclave.
Observe them attentively one by one, from top to bottom, and they are
interesting as pictures.
In some, upon the summit of the façade, there projects from the middle
of the parapet a beam with cord and pulley to pull up baskets and
buckets. In others, jutting from a round window, is the carved head of
a deer, a sheep, or a goat. Under the head, a line of whitewashed stone
or wood cuts the whole façade in half. Under this line there are two
broad windows with projecting awnings of striped linen. Under these
again, over the upper panes, a little green curtain. Below this green
curtain two white ones, divided in the middle to show a suspended
bird-cage or a basket of flowers. And below the basket or the cage, the
lower panes are covered by a net-work of fine wire that prevents the
passer-by from seeing into the room. Within, behind the netting, there
stands a table covered with objects in porcelain, crystal, flowers,
and toys of various kinds. Outside on the stone sill is a row of small
flower-pots. From the stone sill or from one side projects an iron stem
curving upward, which sustains two small mirrors joined in the form of
a book, movable, and surmounted by another, also movable, so that those
inside the house can see, without being seen, everything that passes in
the street.
On some of the houses there is a lamp projecting between the two
windows, and below is the door of the house or a shop door. If it is
a shop, over the door there is the carved head of a Moor with his
mouth wide open, or that of a Turk with a hideous grimace; sometimes
there is an elephant or a goose; sometimes a horse's or a bull's
head, a serpent, a half-moon, a windmill, or an arm extended, the
hand holding some object of the kind sold in the shop. If it is the
house-door,--always kept closed,--there is a brass plate with the name
of the occupant, another with a slit for letters, another with the
handle of a bell, the whole, including the locks and bolts, shining
like gold. Before the door there is a small bridge of wood, because
in many of the houses the ground-floor or basement is much lower than
the street; and before the bridge two little stone columns surmounted
by two balls; two more columns in front of these are united by iron
chains, the large links of which are in the form of crosses, stars, and
polygons; in the space between the street and the house are pots of
flowers; and at the windows of the ground-floor more flower-pots and
curtains. In the more retired streets there are bird-cages on both
sides of the windows, boxes full of green growing things, clothes hung
out to air or dry, a thousand objects and colors, like a universal fair.
But without going out of the older town, one need only to go away from
the centre to see something new at every step.
In some narrow, straight streets one may see the end suddenly closed
as if by a curtain concealing the view; but it disappears as it came,
and is recognized as the sail of a vessel moving in a canal. In other
streets a net-work of cordage seems to stop the way; the rigging of
vessels lying in some basin. In one direction there is a drawbridge
raised, and looking like a gigantic swing provided for the diversion of
the people who live in those preposterous houses; and in another there
is a windmill, tall as a steeple and black as an antique tower, moving
its arms like a monstrous firework. On every side, finally, among the
houses, above the roofs, between the distant trees, are seen masts
of vessels, flags, and sails and rigging, reminding us that we are
surrounded by water, and that the city is a seaport.
Meantime, the shops were opened and the streets became full of
people. There was great animation, but no hurry, the absence of which
distinguishes the streets of Rotterdam from those of London, between
which some travellers find great resemblance, especially in the color
of the houses and the grave aspect of the inhabitants. White faces,
pallid faces, faces the color of Parmesan cheese; light hair, very
light hair, reddish, yellowish; broad beardless visages, beards under
the chin and around the neck; blue eyes, so light as to seem almost
without a pupil; women stumpy, fat, rosy, slow, with white caps and
ear-rings in the form of corkscrews,--these are the first things one
observes in the crowd.
But for the moment it was not the people that first stimulated my
curiosity. I crossed the Hoog Street, and found myself in the new city.
Here it is impossible to say if it be port or city, if land or water
predominate, if there are more ships than houses, or _vice versa_.
Broad and long canals divide the city into so many islands, united by
drawbridges, turning bridges, and bridges of stone. On either side of
every canal extends a street, flanked by trees on one side and houses
on the other. All these canals are deep enough to float large vessels,
and all are full of them from one end to the other, except a space in
the middle left for passage in and out,--an immense fleet imprisoned in
a city.
When I arrived it was the busiest hour, so I planted myself upon the
highest bridge over the principal crossing. From thence were visible
four canals, four forests of ships, bordered by eight files of trees;
the streets were crammed with people and merchandise; droves of cattle
were crossing the bridges; bridges were rising in the air, or opening
in the middle, to allow vessels to pass through, and were scarcely
replaced or closed before they were inundated by a throng of people,
carts, and carriages; ships came and went in the canals, shining like
models in a museum, and with the wives and children of the sailors
on the decks; boats darted from vessel to vessel; the shops drove a
busy trade; servant-women washed the walls and windows; and all this
moving life was rendered more gay and cheerful by the reflections in
the water, the green of the trees, the red of the houses, the tall
windmills showing their dark tops and white sails against the azure of
the sky, and still more by an air of quiet simplicity not seen in any
other northern city.
I took observations of a Dutch vessel. Almost all the ships crowded
in the canals of Rotterdam are built for the Rhine and Holland; they
have one mast only, and are broad, stout, and variously colored like
toy ships. The hull is generally of a bright grass-green, ornamented
with a red or a white stripe, or sometimes several stripes, looking
like a band of different-colored ribbons. The poop is usually gilded.
The deck and mast are varnished and shining like the cleanest of
house-floors. The outside of the hatches, the buckets, the barrels, the
yards, the planks, are all painted red, with white or blue stripes.
The cabin where the sailors' families are is colored like a Chinese
kiosk, and has its windows of clear glass, and its white muslin
curtains tied up with knots of rose-colored ribbon. In every moment of
spare time sailors, women, and children are busy washing, sweeping,
polishing every part with infinite care and pains; and when their
little vessel makes its exit from the port, all fresh and shining like
a holiday-coach, they all stand on the poop and accept with dignity the
mute compliments which they gather from the glances of the spectators
along the canals.
From canal to canal, and from bridge to bridge, I finally reached the
dyke of the Boompjes upon the Meuse, where boils and bubbles all the
life of the great commercial city.
On the left extends a long row of small many-colored steamboats, which
start every hour in the day for Dordrecht, Arnhem, Gouda, Schiedam,
Brilla, Zealand, and continually send forth clouds of white smoke and
the sound of their cheerful bells. To the right lie the large ships
which make the voyage to various European ports, mingled with fine
three-masted vessels bound for the East Indies, with names written
in golden letters,--Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Samarang,--carrying the
fancy to those distant and savage countries like the echoes of distant
voices. In front the Meuse, covered with boats and barks, and the
distant shore with a forest of beech-trees, windmills, and towers; and
over all the unquiet sky, full of gleams of light and gloomy clouds,
fleeting and changing in their constant movement, as if repeating the
restless labor on the earth below.
ANTWERP AND ITS PEOPLE.
ROSE G. KINGSLEY.
[The traveller to whom we owe the following selection makes
it part of a paper on "The Home of Rubens," in which she
appreciatively describes that artist's works. Her account of the
city in which the greatest of these works are enshrined is more to
our purpose, and is here given.]
It had rained in England for a month without stopping, when, weary of
sodden gray clouds above and sodden green grass below, M---- and I
determined to seek new sketching-grounds under a more kindly sky. We
had but a fortnight to spend on our trip. Where, therefore, could we
find a richer field of work than in Flanders? for there quaint cities,
beautiful buildings, glorious pictures, and, if we were minded to go
deeper, a tangled mass of historic interest, lay within easy reach.
Thus it came to pass that the 30th of September found us driving
through the streets of Brussels, and three days later we were steaming
out into the (to us) unknown, on our way to Antwerp. Our three days had
been chiefly spent in making closer acquaintance with Flemish art in
the museum of the capital,--a collection most valuable and typical, a
collection too often ignored or hastily glanced through by the tourist,
who, if by chance he cares for such things, hurries on to see Memling
at Bruges, Van Eyck at Ghent, or Rubens at Antwerp. He forgets, or does
not know, that, as Fromentin justly says, "Belgium is a magnificent
book of art, of which, happily for provincial glory, the chapters are
scattered everywhere, but of which the preface is at Brussels, and only
at Brussels. To all who are tempted to skip the preface in order to get
at the book, I should say they are wrong,--that they open the book too
soon and will read it ill." We therefore studied the preface with some
care, and now were about to turn the first page of the book itself....
Everything seemed new, pretty, and amusing, as the train cleared the
last of the suburbs of Brussels. The sun shone on the long lines of
poplars, just burnished with autumn's gold, which cast their shadows
on damp green meadows ruled off into squares with almost mathematical
precision. Here a man in a brown apron and brilliant crimson sleeves
was raking up the aftermath off a water-meadow. There a girl in a
blue frock was herding black and white cows, and we began to think of
Cuyp. Then we saw, across flat stretches of smiling country, pointed
steeples and red roofs, showing behind thick groups of trees in a
soft blue haze, while an old windmill on blackened wooden stilts, a
little donkey-cart, and a group of crimson-jacketed peasants in the
foreground made us think of some of Teniers the Younger's landscapes,
and recollect that we must be close to Drei Torren, his house at Perck.
Then came Malines, our first brown canal, with red-sailed, green-and
black-painted barges, the great cathedral rising through a screen of
trees over scarlet house-roofs, a picturesque crowd on the platform
of burly shovel-hatted priests, nuns with black shawls over their
white caps, men with blue blouses and brilliant yellow sabots,--and we
thought of Prout. It was all so absurdly like what we had expected,
with a difference,--just the difference between art and nature.
Then came more flat country, more canals, more fields, more absurd
cocky little wheat-ricks, with hardly corn enough in them to make a
loaf of bread, more white and purple lupins on the embankments, more
red-tiled roofs, half thatch, half tile, which M---- pronounced "most
æsthetic," more sun, yes, that was perhaps the best of all. Then a
great green fort, and we were at Antwerp.
We hardly gave ourselves time to swallow a hasty _déjeûner_, and then
set forth with the charming feeling that we had nothing to do but
amuse ourselves. We had not an idea of where we were going, or what we
meant to see. All was new, therefore all to us was worth seeing. Only
a vague impression floated in our minds that we ought before long to
find our way to the cathedral. It was not hard to find; in fact, it was
impossible to miss it, for, as we sauntered down the Place de Meir, the
golden clock-face on the steeple shone before us like a beacon over the
high house-roofs, and
"Far up, the carillon did search
The wind."
We pushed our way past the odious touters, clamorously asking in vile
French and still viler English if we wished to see the cathedral? had
we seen it? did we know we ought to see it? finally, of course, should
they show it to us? We were in too mighty a presence to heed them.
Above us, almost painfully high, rose the great steeple, pointing up to
the clear blue sky. We stood at a corner of the old Marché and gazed
and gazed, hardly able at first to take in the idea of its real height,
foreshortened as it is when one stands so near. It grew upon us,
revealed itself to us, as we looked and wondered, and ever after, while
in the city, we seemed to feel its protecting presence, even though
it might be hidden from our eyes. And we thought how often must weary
sailors, beating up the stormy waters of the North Sea, have longed
for a glimpse of that weather-stained tower, token to them of home and
safety after some perilous voyage to bring gold and sugar from the New
World, or priceless stuffs and spices from the Indies and far Cathay!
Or as painters, after long study in the schools of Rome and Venice,
made their slow way northward once more across the Alps, to add fresh
glory to the Guild of St. Luke, how eagerly they must have watched for
the first sight of their cathedral, pointing heavenward out of the
flat misty plain, as if to lift their minds from earth into some purer
atmosphere!
Yet, splendid as is the casket, still more precious is the treasure
it contains. Many men have built cathedrals. There has been but one
Rubens; and of all Rubens's works, the "Descent from the Cross"
enshrined in Antwerp Cathedral is, one may venture to say without
fear of criticism, unquestionably the most wonderful and beautiful.
There is a sobriety, a reticence, about it in color, in movement, in
drawing, in the exquisite balance of light and shade, in the nobility
and yet tenderness of conception, which one hardly looks for in the
painter, splendid though he be, of the Assumption of the Virgin over
the high altar close by, still less of the gorgeous but revolting
Marie de Medici series in the Louvre. To quote Fromentin once more,
"_Tout y est contenu, concis, laconique comme dans une page du texte
sacré._" Let those who judge him merely by pictures such as the last
go to Antwerp, and, casting aside all preconceived ideas, say then
whether Peter Paul Rubens shall not be pardoned all his carelessness,
his coarseness,--yes, even his horrors,--and be to them henceforth the
painter of the noble and majestic "Descent from the Cross."
It was long before we could summon resolution to leave the cathedral.
Half a dozen times we started, as many times we turned back to the
great triptych to impress some detail more firmly on our minds; and at
last, when the door swung to behind us, and we saw the great master's
statue standing in dusty sunshine in the Place Verte, we were in no
humor for more sight-seeing. So we wandered happily and aimlessly on,
now enchanted by some _pignon espagnol_, the quaint gable running up in
a series of steps, which was introduced, some say, by the Spaniards,
now stopping to scribble down the details of a bit of costume, or to
look at a street shrine on a corner house, with its figure and lamp and
tinsel flowers, until at last we found ourselves on the quays.
Here, where Van Noort, where Rubens, where Jordaens made studies among
the rude fishermen for their pictures of the Miraculous Draught,--here,
where generations of painters from their day down to our own have
loved to dwell upon the changing aspects of the quiet river, the
hurrying quays, the picturesque people,--here was indeed a spot where
we humble disciples of Apelles might hope to gather inspiration from
the example of the great departed. So we hunted out a pile of wood on
the very brink of the river, a quiet corner where we ran no risk of
being trampled underfoot by gigantic Flemish dray-horses or knocked
down by heavily laden wagons; and there we sat peacefully, sketching
the long reaches of the Scheldt bathed in a flood of golden haze. Up
it sailed long low boats, floating past us with full red sails, flat,
faint, wooded shores behind them, a tall smoking chimney or little
church-spire breaking the blue line of the trees here and there. The
river reaches were full of repose to eye and mind alike, and our
thoughts turned instinctively to Van de Velde, to his glassy water,
where little gleams catch the curl of some lazy ripple, and his skiffs
and schooners floating in a veil of filmy gold, which warms his usual
pearly grays, while they in turn give a sober undertone to the golden
glory. A contrast to the quiet river was the foreground of the picture,
where a steamer was lading for some distant voyage, funnels, rigging,
hull, a great mass of black and brown against the pale golden water,
and the bustling quay, where horses, men, carriages, foot-passengers,
long low trollies,--apparently on only two wheels, so minute were
the front pair,--piled high with bales and barrels, were jumbled in
inextricable confusion.
[Illustration: THE WATERLOO PYRAMID]
We were working away, thankful that every one was too full of his own
business to care to look at us, when suddenly a pleasant smell of
burning made us wonder whether the municipality were trying to fumigate
the town and overpower the very unsavory odors around us. Presently
blacks began to settle on our sketch-books. Then burning morsels flew
through the air, and, turning round, we saw that a quantity of bales
standing on the quay twenty yards behind us were on fire. Half a dozen
bystanders looked on with true Flemish phlegm. A woman in blue and
gray, with yellow sabots, stood watching on a fallen mast. Then others
began to arrive, and as the flames rose higher some slight interest
arose with them. The gray woman turned and ran for the pompiers. The
interest grew and spread among the gathering crowd. Soldiers just
landing from the Tête de Flandre caught sight of the crackling flames
and rushed towards them. Stevedores left the lading of their steamer,
and, leaping across masts and spars, with sacks over their heads
and their blue blouses puffed into balloons by the wind, rushed to
the scene of action. M---- and I thought it prudent to retire to a
street-corner, away from the turmoil.
Such a street! all in warm shade, with rich reds and grays and
browns among its high-roofed houses. Out of the Fish-Market close
by poured a motley crowd,--men in blue jerseys, men in red jerkins,
men in shirt-sleeves, little lads in sailor-clothes with bright
yellow sabots, women with yellow sabots and blue stockings, or yellow
stockings and black sabots, or black shoes and pink stockings, women in
three-cornered shawls, women in long black cloaks. The tardily-awakened
interest had grown into intense excitement. Every one ran,--soldiers,
ladies, porters, priests; and as we left the Quai Vandyck to go home,
and looked up at the stone lace-work of the cathedral tower against
the bright blue sky, the pompiers raced past us with their little
hand-engine, to find that the fire had burnt itself out.
Too tired by our long day to walk any more, but unwilling to waste the
evening in our rooms, we chartered a comfortable little carriage and
drove down to the Port just after sunset. The cathedral tower stood
stately and sombre against a pale-pink sky. Against this delicate
background, too, we caught fantastic irregular outlines of old houses
at every turn of the streets. The busy Quai Vandyck we now saw under
a completely changed aspect. The pink of the upper sky melted into
yellow, the yellow into a heavy blue-purple blending with the farther
shore of the river. The bands of color, intensified by black masts
and sails rising from yet blacker hulls lying under the bank, were
reflected in the opalescent water; while fluttering pennons on a forest
of fishing-boats looked, as M---- said, "like a shoal of minnows."
As we drove along in the growing darkness the scene was weird and
strange. We caught glimpses of black figures, with heavy burdens on
their shoulders, rushing up and down gangways of loading steamers like
the demons of some Walpurgisnacht, lighted by oil-cans flaming from
their two spouts. Then came a street of ancient houses,--we could
see only the steps of their gables against the sky,--and, instead
of a roadway below, the street was full of water and ships, sails
half furled, lights, red, green, and yellow, repeating themselves in
long reflections amid the black boats on the smooth surface of the
canal. Across the river steamer-lights crept to and fro. Low carts,
with huge horses that brought to mind Paul Potter's etching of "The
Friesland Horse," grazed past us. Then came a black mass,--the house
of the Hanseatic League. Then great docks like the sea, stretching
away infinitely into the darkness, a mysterious confusion of masts,
spars, cordage, chimneys, lights, water, black hulls. On shore a tangle
of carts and trollies standing horseless, barrels, cotton-bales,
wool-sacks. A locomotive snorted past us in dangerous proximity,
appearing one knew not from whence, disappearing again into the gloom.
Electric lights flashed on ahead far up the line. We passed more huge
warehouses, more canals, more narrow streets. Then the Port and its
strange life, its flaming oil-cans, its murky darkness, were left
behind, and we found ourselves back in nineteenth-century civilization,
driving down the new Frenchified boulevards, with only the statue of
David Teniers and the Italian facade of Rubens's house to remind us
where we were.
ART MUSEUMS OF DRESDEN.
ELIZABETH PEAKE.
["Pen Pictures of Europe," by Elizabeth Peake, is amply worth
reading by all who wish to gain a rapid acquaintance with what is
worth seeing on that continent. Its interesting descriptions are
so many and varied that choice among them is not easy to make, and
we present what our traveller saw in Dresden and at Potsdam simply
as examples of the whole.]