After admiring on the ramparts of Calais the Poissardes with their
picturesque nets, ugly faces, and beautiful legs, we set out for
Gravelines, with whips clacking in a manner which you certainly cannot
forget. The stillness and desolation of Gravelines was like the city in
the Arabian Tales where every one is turned into stone. Fortifications
constructed by the famous Vauban, lunes, and demi-lunes, and curtains,
all which did not prevent the French from trotting through it.
We left Gravelines with an equipage at which Sobriety herself could not
have forborne to laugh: to our London coach were fastened by long rope
traces six Flemish horses of different heights, but each large and
clumsy enough to draw an English waggon. The nose of the foremost horse
was thirty-five feet from the body of the coach, their hoofs all shaggy,
their manes all uncombed, and their tails long enough to please Sir
Charles Grandison himself. These beasts were totally disencumbered of
every sort of harness except one strap which fastened the saddle on
their backs; and high, high upon their backs, sat perfectly
perpendicular, long-waisted postillions in jack-boots, with pipes in
their mouths. The country appeared one vast flat common, without hedges,
or ditches, or trees, tiled farmhouses of equal size and similar form at
even distances. All that the power of monotony can do to put a traveller
to sleep is here tried; but the rattling and jolting on the paved roads
set Morpheus and monotony both at defiance. To comfort ourselves we had
a most entertaining _Voyage dans les Pays Bas par M. Breton_ to read,
and the charming story of Mademoiselle de Clermont in Madame de Genlis's
_Petits Romans._ I never read a more pathetic and finely written tale.
Dunkirk is an ugly, bustling town. Strange-looking _charettes_, driven
by thin men in cocked hats,--the window-shutters turned out to the
streets and painted by way of signs with various commodities. A variety
of things, among them little shifts, petticoats, and corsets, were
fairly spread upon the ground on the bridges and in the streets. The
famous basin, about which there have been such disputes, is little
worth. Voltaire wonders at the English and French waging war "for a few
acres of snow"; he might with equal propriety have laughed at them for
fighting about a _slop-basin._ The _pont-tournant_ is well worth seeing,
and for those who have strong legs and who have breakfasted, it is worth
while to climb the two hundred and sixty-four steps of the tower. Whilst
we were climbing the town clock struck, and the whole tower vibrated,
and the vibration communicated itself to our ears and heads in a most
sublime and disagreeable manner.
At Dunkirk we entered what was formerly called L'ancien Brabant, and all
things and all persons began to look like Dutch prints and Dutch toys,
especially the women with their drop earrings, and their necklaces like
the labels of decanters, their long-waisted, long-flapped jackets of one
colour, and stiff petticoats of another. Even when moving the people all
looked like wooden toys set in motion by strings--the strings in
Flanders must be of gold: the Flemings seem to be all a money-making,
money-loving people: they are fast recovering their activity after the
Revolution.
The road to Bruges, fifty feet broad, solidly paved in the middle,
seems, like all French and Flemish roads, to have been laid out by some
inflexible mathematician: they are always right lines, the shortest
possible between two points. The rows of trees on each side of these
never-ending avenues are of the ugliest sort and figure possible: tall
poplars stripped almost to the top, as you would strip a pen, and
pollarded willows: the giant poplar and the dwarf willow placed side by
side alternately, knight and squire. The postillions have badges like
the badges of charity schools, strapped round their arms; these are
numbered and registered, and if they behave ill, a complaint may be
lodged against them by merely writing their names on the register, which
excludes them from a pension, to which they would be entitled if they
behaved well for a certain number of years. The post-houses are often
lone, wretched places, one into which I peeped, a _grenier_, like that
described by Smollett, in which the murdered body is concealed. At
another post-house we met with a woman calling herself a _servante_, to
whom we took not only an aversion, but a horror; Charlotte said that she
should be afraid, not of that woman's cutting her throat, but that she
would take a mallet and strike her head flat at one blow. Do you
remember the woman in _Caleb Williams_, when he wakens and sees her
standing over him with an uplifted hatchet? Our _servante_ might have
stood for this picture.
Bruges is a very old, desolate-looking town, which seems to have felt in
common with its fellow-towns the effects of the Revolution. As we were
charged very high at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, at Dunkirk, my father
determined to go to the Hôtel de Commerce at Bruges, an old strange
house which had been a monastery: the man chamber-maid led us through
gallery after gallery, up stairs and down stairs, turning all manner of
ways, with a bunch of keys in his hand, each key ticketed with a pewter
ticket. There were twenty-eight bed-chambers: thank heaven we did not
see them all! I never shall forget the feeling I had when the door of
the room was thrown open in which we were to sleep. It was so large and
so dark, that I could scarcely see the low bed in a recess in the wall,
covered with a dark brown quilt. I am sure Mrs. Radcliffe might have
kept her heroine wandering about this room for six good pages. When we
meet I will tell Margaret of the night Charlotte and I spent in this
room, and the footsteps we heard overhead--just a room and just a night
to suit her taste.
In the morning we went to see the Central School; it is in what was an
old monastery, and the church belonging to it is filled with pictures
collected from all the suppressed convents, monasteries, and churches.
Buonaparte has lately restored some of their pictures to the churches,
but those by Rubens and Raphael are at Paris. In the cabinet of natural
history there is the skeleton and the skin of a man who was guillotined,
as fine white leather as ever you saw. The preparations for these Écoles
Centrales are all too vast and ostentatious: the people are just
beginning to send their children to them. Government finds them too
expensive, and their number is to be diminished. The librarian of this
École Centrale at Bruges is an Englishman, or rather a Jamaica man, of
the name of Edwards. Brian Edwards was his great friend, and he was well
acquainted with Johnson the bookseller, and Dr. Aikin, and Mr. and Mrs.
Barbauld. Mr. Edwards and his son had often met Lovell at Johnson's, and
spoke of him quite with affection. The two sons spent the evening with
us, and they and their father accompanied us next morning part of our
way to Ghent. We went by the canal barque, as elegant as any
pleasure-boat I ever was in. My father entertained the Edwards with the
history of his physiognomical guesses in a stage-coach. The eldest son
piques himself upon telling character from handwriting. He was positive
that mine could not be the hand of a woman, and then he came off by
saying it was the writing of a _manly_ character! We had an extremely
fine day, and the receding prospect of Bruges, with its mingled spires,
shipping, and windmills, the tops of their giant vanes moving above the
trees, gave a pleasing example of a Flemish landscape, recalling the
pictures of Teniers and the prints of Le Bas. We had good and agreeable
company on board our barque, the Mayor of Bruges and his lady; her
friend, a woman of good family; and an old Baron Triste, of a
sixteen-quartering family. At the name of Mayor of Bruges, you probably
represent to yourself a fat, heavy, formal, self-sufficient
mortal--_tout au contraire_: our Mayor was a thin gentleman, of easy
manners, literature, and amusing conversation: Madame, a beautiful
Provinciale. M. Lerret, the Mayor, found us out to be the Edgeworths
described by M. Pictet in the _Journal Britannique._ Since we came to
France we have found M. Pictet's account very useful, for at every
public library, and in every École Centrale, the _Journal Britannique_
is taken, and we have consequently received many civilities. It was
Sunday, and when we arrived at Ghent, all the middling people of the
town in their holiday clothes were assembled on the banks of the canal
according to custom to see the barque arrive: they made the scene very
cheerful. The old Baron de Triste, though he had not dined, and though
he had, as he said of himself, "un faim de diable," stayed to battle our
coach and trunks through an army of custom-house officers. We stayed two
days at Ghent, and saw pictures and churches without number. Here were
some fine pictures by that Crayer of whom Rubens said, "Crayer! personne
ne te surpassera!" Do not be afraid, my dear Sophy, I am not going to
overwhelm you with pictures, nor to talk of what I don't understand; but
it is extremely agreeable to me to see paintings with those who have
excellent taste and no affectation. At the École Centrale was a smart
little librarian, to whom we were obliged for getting the doors of the
cathedral opened to us _at night_: we went in by moonlight, the
appearance was sublime; lights burning on the altar veiled from sight,
and our own monstrous shadows cast on the pillars, added to the effect.
The verger took one of the tall candles to light us to some monuments in
white marble of exquisite sculpture. There were no pictures, but the
walls were painted in the manner of the Speaker's room at the Temple,
and by the master who taught De Gray. This kind of painting seems to
suit churches, and to harmonise well with sculpture and statues.
My dear friend, I have not room to say half I intended, but let me make
what resolutions I please, I never can get all I want to say to you into
a letter.
_To_ MISS CHARLOTTE SNEYD.