A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise
and purgatory of dogs.--The Hotel de Ville and
Grand Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture
galleries.--Wiertz and his odd
paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour with the
lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte
Bronte's school.--The scene of "Villette."
THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had
grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark
cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle,
their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the ----
family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.
Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is passed, the low
hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of
whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were
the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for,
coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women
were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Mueller leaned upon
her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields
beneath a level sky, the windmills began to appear in the distance,
slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we
neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly
resolved into our original element--dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever
equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor
did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like
a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.
The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but
joined to it--like an old man with a gay young wife--is the beautiful
Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a
little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five
degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that passes upon
the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the
finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and
old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores
of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may
here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed
puff-balls to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of
dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals
dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine
which is the most forlorn--the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never
understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of
the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray,
barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our
hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family of friends. With
them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the
middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to
water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop
window,--straggling along one after another in a way that would have
been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here,
where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal
worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their
vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other
profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of
the old city--a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses
ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of
one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of
carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of
women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were
holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the
two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,--who lost their heads while striving to
gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish
Inquisition,--and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time
and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a
palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hotel de Ville, with
its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows. It
comes to me like a picture now--the gathering shadows of a summer night,
the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of
the old women nodding over their flowers.
Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I
could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the
vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome,
and dimensions nobody reads. If I could only tell you how far extending
they are, both upon earth and towards heaven--how they seem not so much
to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the
foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some
strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in
awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull
echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun
beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose
all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches
where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast
length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,--one, far above the
grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the
walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of
saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim
distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the
stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before
the altar--workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a
moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a
stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children
dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant
they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the
drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers,
echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the
aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight
of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have
followed him.
After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture
galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian
art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish
pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The
best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern
paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly
deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and
diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one,
Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his
arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to
hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry
air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly
unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many
of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through
peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and
their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the
room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping
out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage
occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window,
an old _concierge_ leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures
hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot
and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed
to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think
that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed
upon the walls.
Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its laces. We visited
one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny,
cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle
and thread, for the _point_ lace, or twisting the bobbins among the
innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for
the _point applique_. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are
sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room
above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome
labor--coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot,
handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, _barbes_ that fairly pierced our
hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these
soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm--that as we
turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some
of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.
_Table-d'hote_ over, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?"
queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now
escaped from the thraldom of a French _pensionnat_.
"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for once by ourselves.
If there were only something to see--somewhere to go."
"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the scene of _Villette_
laid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte Bronte's boarding-school here? I am
sure it is. Suppose we seek it out--we four girls alone."
"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be fine?" chorused the others.
There was a hasty search through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could
we find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that were almost
certainties.
"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish we had a _Villette_."
"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.
"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.
Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for
information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,--the
elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,--and sallied out at last into
the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted
liberty. A _commissionaire_ gave us the address of the bookstore we
sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path
of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across
the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty
trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery,
and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the
shimmering sunlight. But to Axelle _Villette_ was more real than that
June day.
"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and
at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park,
she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only
the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from
the soaked leaves? This must be the park."
When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a
kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of
some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps
led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked
down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one
side.
"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place.
Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's
guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and
losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she
descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame
Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others
prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling
the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the
library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole
attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over
an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and
pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the
scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels?" and "_Is_ the school really
here?" and "You _don't_ say so!" though we had insisted upon it from the
first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O, _do_ tell
us how we may find it."
"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused.
"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there."
"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard."
We nudged each other significantly.
"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you--"
"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions
ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of
expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of
thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and
then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We
descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,--an awe-struck
group,--before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we
read,--
"PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES.
HEGER--PARENT."
"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the
satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we
will ring the bell."
"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.
"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her reply. "We will only ask
permission to see the garden, and as the portress will doubtless speak
nothing but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must act as
mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each other, and at the steps
leading into the upper town, as though they meditated flight. "I
cannot," and "_I_ cannot," said each one of the shrinking group.
Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one long, strong pull.
"Now," she said, quietly, "some one of you must speak. You are ladies:
you will not run away."
And they accepted the situation.
We were shown into a small _salon_, where presently there entered to us
a brisk, sharp-featured little French woman,--a teacher in the
establishment,--who smiled a courteous welcome from out her black eyes
as we apologized for the intrusion, and made known our wishes.
"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who, having learned to
know and love Charlotte Bronte through her books, desire to see the
garden of which she wrote in _Villette_."
"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response. "Americans often
come to visit the school and the garden."
"Then this _is_ the school where she was for so long a time?" we burst
out simultaneously, forgetting our little prepared speeches.
"Yes, _mesdemoiselles_; I also was a pupil at that time," was the
reply. We viewed the dark little woman with sudden awe.
"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was she like--like--" We
could think of no comparison that would do justice to the subject.
The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She was just a quiet
little thing, in no way remarkable. I am sure," she added, "we did not
think her a genius; and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see
nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"
"But they are _so_ wonderful!" ventured one of our number, gushingly.
"They are very untrue," she replied, while something like a spark shot
from the dark eyes.
O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are to be judged?
"Madame Heger," she went on, "who still has charge of the school, is a
most excellent lady, and not at all the person described as 'Madame
Beck.'"
"And M. Paul Emmanuel,--Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"--we ventured to
suggest with some timidity.
"Is Madame Heger's husband, and was at that time," she replied, with a
little angry toss of the head. After this terrible revelation there was
nothing more to be said.
She led the way through a narrow passage, and opening a door at the end,
we stepped into the garden. We had passed the class-rooms on our
right--where, "on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte and
Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale faces, the shy figures
bending over the desk in the gathering dusk.
The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte's time, new
class-rooms having been added, which cut off something from its length.
But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes.
Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow
space. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the
"_allee defendue_," which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours,
when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant
pear trees,--huge, misshapen, gnarled,--that bore no fruit to us but
associations vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer
twilight, the ghost of _Villette_ was wont to steal, and buried at the
foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we knew poor Lucy's love-letters were
hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen,
laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted--that was
all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot associated
in one's mind with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that
day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet how full the
place was to us! The very leaves overhead, the stones in the walls
around us, whispered a story, as we walked to and fro where little feet,
that tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years before.
"May we take one leaf--only one?" we asked, as we turned away.
"As many as you please;" and the little French woman grasped at the
leaves growing thick and dark above her head. We plucked them with our
own hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many thanks, and our
adieus, we came away.
"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had returned to the hotel and
our friends. They only smiled their unbelief.
"Do you not know--can you not see--O, do you not feel?" we cried,
displaying our glistening trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere
but upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte Bronte used to
walk and dream?"
And our words carried conviction to their hearts.