There are few foreign trips, for English holiday-makers, that answer
better than a run into Belgium. Belgium is easily got at, and easily
left. Its features are varied and not vast. You can explore its
interior, inspect its circumference, and take the whole of it in,
without being tired. It is a pocket kingdom. Instead of wearing your
patience, as France does, when you are in a hurry to get from one
end of it to the other, you can dart across it with the ease of a
swallow skimming over the Isle of Wight. Moreover, Belgium is rich in
matters of interest considerably beyond the proportions of its size.
It gives you the idea of an originally extensive country, which has
been subjected, like an ungainly truss of hay, to hydraulic pressure.
For its area, it feeds a very large population. The district of St.
Nicholas, near Ghent, carries five thousand two hundred and ten
souls per square league--the space required, in savage life, for the
maintenance of a single individual. The large towns lie so close
together, that, as soon as you have done with one, by entering a
railway carriage you are landed in another in two, three, four, or five
quarters of an hour.
A lovely May morning blesses, with its lucky omen, our approach to
the frontier. All nature smiles as we glide along. The orchards
are bedecked in white, pink, and green. Get ready your tubs, O
cyder-drinkers, the apple-trees promise you a plentiful supply!
Remember, however, that there’s many a slip between the apple-blossom
and the lip. The sower strides over the well-powdered earth with
measured step, and with white apron heavily laden. “Take that, old
lady,” he mentally exclaims, as each handful is scattered, “and give
me fifty-fold back again.” The cows in the meadows lie basking in the
sun, with their feet doubled under them. They are chewing the cud,
to give the grass a short respite, and to allow it a little time to
grow in peace. The homesteads are overtopped by clumps of poplars,
whose young and maidenly leaves blush ruddy pink at the touch of
the sunbeam. On the skirts of the forest are prudent oaks, who are
waiting till the blackthorn winter is over, before they put on their
summer fashions. Along the road which crosses our railway come Flemish
wagons, like triumphal cars in the processions of Ceres, and not of
Bacchus, but of the twin gods Baccy and Beer. And so we rush over a
flat fertile land, till we pass Roubaix, a wilderness of bricks and
mortar. Tourcoing also, and ditto; both very rural in their aspect for
manufacturing towns, and with atmospheres that Bradford and Leeds might
envy. At Mouscron, we are safely over the border. The custom-house
officers, I suppose, are ordered to ascertain whether new arrivals are
personally cleanly in their habits; for, as soon as they have inspected
my oiled-silk sponge-bag, my comb, and my bit of soap (which latter
they don’t supply you with at inns), they tell me I may lock up our
baggage again. It is too bad that they should rumple Mademoiselle’s
muslin-dress, with which she intends to make a sensation, into a wisp,
and should further annoy her by calling her Madame; but they are not a
bad set of fellows on the whole, nor wanting in a certain cordiality
of manner. They look at my passport, enter it in their book, and then
bid me good morning by name, as if they had known me for the last ten
years. They are Flemings, no doubt. You may know a Flemish man or woman
by the friendly vocatives with which they interlard their conversation.
Mon ami or mon cher ami is ever on their lips, while addressing you.
“What are you looking for, my friend?” asked a market-woman, whom
I had never in my life seen before--unless, perhaps, twenty years
ago, when she must have been a little girl. “I want half a hundred
cauliflower plants,” I replied.--“Ah, my dear friend, you won’t find
that for another fortnight. But you’ll come and see me again in another
fortnight; you’ll come to me for them, won’t you, my dear friend?”
Returned once more to our railway carriage, a change has come over
the spirit of our journey. We lose the red-legged soldiery of France,
exchanging them for others with grey and pepper-and-salt continuations.
The military, too, are men of taller stature, with more flesh upon
their bones. Generally, the Belgians feed better than the natives of
the north of France, and show it in their personal appearance. Piebald
or rusty-brown monks and nuns flutter about and read their breviaries
in greater profusion. Belgium is still a monastic stronghold of
brotherhoods and sisterhoods; and the clergy are struggling hard for an
increase of power.
The aspect of the country from Mouscron to Ghent is ever rich and
highly cultivated. The crops are mostly grown in ridges, with deep
furrows between them, indicative of a strong clayey loam, but wet. Of
wood, as in France, little is to be seen compared with England, except
where congregated into forests. Here and there are a few plantations of
Scotch firs, set very thick, to spindle them up for poles and railings.
Railway travelling is cheaper (by something like a third), than in
France, and, consequently much cheaper than in England; children under
eight years of age pay half-price; under three, and in arms, nothing;
but certainly the article you get for your money is inferior in quality
to that furnished by the first-named country. In France every traveller
is allowed sixty pounds (French) of luggage gratis, independent of his
small personalities; in Belgium none at all. Whatever you do not take
into the carriage with you, such as a carpet-bag or basket of moderate
weight, has to be paid for in addition to your ticket. The first-class
carriages are handsome and comfortable, but small. The third-class
chars-à-bancs are open at the sides, exposed to the wind, the rain, and
the snow, which sometimes rake them fore and aft; in inclement weather,
they are not fit to carry sheep and cattle, much less human beings.
Dogs in Belgium pay third-class fare, but are snugly stowed away in
a baggage-wagon. In one of these locomotive pens for men, women, and
tender children, a fat hog might have his health seriously injured as
the consequence of a long day’s journey.
The State is the sole proprietor of nearly all the Belgian railways;
and while it paternally confers on its subjects the benefit of cheap
circulation and traffic, it might also modify an arrangement which is
no other than unfeeling, and is deficient in that humanity which a
government ought to exercise towards all under its protecting sway,
without reference to wealth or rank. The second-class carriages are
tolerable, with stuffed seats and a little horizontal stripe of
stuffing to ease the back, and ladies may travel in them; but they are
of scant dimensions, very naked inside, and unprovided with any hooks
for hats or caps, or with receptacles for sticks and umbrellas. The
seats are fancifully arranged with a sort of passage left between them,
to give the means of stepping from one to the other, as if you were
occupying a little parlour; but the result is no addition to comfort.
The signal for starting is given, not by the whistle of the engine, but
by a little musical flourish, a tir-ely, consisting of three notes,
blown on his bugle by the conductor of the train. Of the officials,
general civility and obliging behaviour is the rule. The passengers’
luggage department would be improved by assimilation with the system
adopted in France. But nations are often like wilful children; they
are determined to have a way of their own, for the sake of having it.
They refuse to attend to good advice, because it is counsel given by
another; and they persist in some evidently inconvenient mode of doing
things, merely to show that they are independent agents, and that they
can and will follow their own devices.
Ghent, with its hundred thousand inhabitants and its considerable
trade, has still the air of a town half-asleep, as if you had caught
it yawning and stretching at half-past three on a summer’s morning.
Its extent is much exaggerated in the current printed descriptions.
Charles the Fifth’s time-honoured pun--“I could put Paris into my Gand”
(that is, my glove)--is apocryphal and highly improbable. If you doubt
it, mount the tower of the beffroi. People who lose their way in a
labyrinth of lanes, always fancy they have travelled over an enormous
area. Now, the map of Ghent puts you in mind of a Medusa’s head, or of
the clustered worms that are taken out into the country, on a sultry
day, to participate in the pleasures of a fishing party. Buy a map of
Ghent, colour the streets blue, the river Escaut yellow, the river Lys
red, and you will have a faithful representation of the famous Gordian
knot, if you happen never to have seen one before. I long wandered
about the streets of Ghent, trying to find the city, and could not.
It is a town made up of bits of west-ends, Faubourg St. Germains, and
fashionable suburbs, with no heart or kernel to it--no Cheapside, no
Ludgate Hill, no Rue de Rivoli, no Rue St. Honoré. There is a slight
recovery of suspended animation in the Marché-aux-Grains and the Rue
des Champs; but the pulse, even there, beats very feebly. The market
tries (when it is not market-day) to manifest its vitality in an
unhealthy, spasmodic way, by book-stalls of amatory literature, over
which a little censorship would be no great tyranny. In the street, to
enter a fashionable lace and embroidery shop, we had to ring at the
glass-door, as if it had been a private house. After waiting, while the
lady up-stairs gave a touch of arrangement to her cap and her hair,
we were duly admitted to make our purchase, much in the style of a
morning call. Elsewhere, in the modern quarters, you see unbroken lines
of large, handsome, well-painted houses, hybrids between a palace and
a ladies’ boarding-school. Business may be transacted therein, but it
is done in the quietest possible way. You see dentelles (lace), or
calicots (calicos), engraved on a neat brass-plate on a house-door,
as if some private individual,--Monsieur Dentelles, or Madame Veuve
Calicots,--were living there on their property, in great state and
dignified retirement. The older portions of the town are decorated
with houses built before the window-tax was born or thought of,--with
quaint, pointed gable ends, as if a child had been trying to cut fancy
conic sections out of a red brick wall. But in whatever direction you
wend your way, you can’t go twenty steps without crossing a bridge. For
the convenience at once of the land-carriage and the canal navigation,
these are swing bridges; often you have to wait while a barge, laden
perhaps with vegetable mould for the pot-plants in training by one of
the Vans,--Van Houtte, Van Schaffelt, or Van Geert,--intercepts the
passage. The time is not exactly lost, because it allows you to stare
about you without rudeness. But soon, the bridge-swinger takes his toll
from the barge, which he collects by means of a wooden shoe at the end
of a string fastened to a fishing-rod; the isthmus of planks is then
replaced, and resounds with the pattering of gros sabots. Certainly,
the popular costume is droll, in its extremes. At top, the women wear
a close-worked cottage hat of straw, with three dabs of blue ribbon
stuck on behind; at foot, they are garnished with masses of hollow
timber, which must be a serious drain on the Belgian forests. But hats
worn by women at the same time with sabots, are, in French eyes, or
in eyes accustomed to France, as utterly anomalous a combination as a
fish-tailed mermaid, or a man-headed centaur are considered, on cool
reflection, by Professor Owen. Conspicuous in the air rise the portly
towers of St. Nicholas, St. Michel, and St. Bavon, around which, and
the lofty houses, multitudinous swifts, whirl and scream, in delight at
the abundance of their insect game. The canals are propitious to the
propagation of gnats. Where is the carcase, there are the vultures; and
where are the gnats, there flock the swifts.
That the quietude of the town is more apparent than real, and that busy
life is going on within, is plain from the Belgian fashion of sticking
looking-glasses outside the houses, at angles (sometimes they glance
in three directions) which allow the inmates to catch a glimpse of
passers-by, without being seen themselves. “Au Nouveau Miroir,” (the
new looking-glass) is occasionally used as the sign of an inn. The
mirrors are generally on a level with the first-floor; and a smaller
one receives the rays it reflects straight from the entrance door; so
that Not at home is easily responded to the inquiries of a dun, or
worse, a bore. It is not one city alone which adopts the system of
quicksilvered peepers; nor is the custom new, but was probably first
introduced by peculiarities of historical and political situation. In
Belgium, it has not always been convenient to open the door to every
new-comer.
“If you please, monsieur,” we politely ask, “have the goodness to tell
us which is the way to the Botanic Garden?”
“N’entends Français,” is the reply, accompanied by a disclamatory shake
of the head. It is a reminder that the Flemish tongue is master here,
in actual fact, if not by legal right. Even the government is obliged
to come to a compromise, and affix the names of the streets to their
corners both in Flemish and in French. The railway porter, who handed
us our luggage, was deaf and dumb as far as we were concerned, and
signed us over to a brother medium. The coachman who drove us to our
inn just comprehended the words “Hôtel de Flandre”--and a capital and
recommendable hotel it is--but he comprehended no more of the further
clever remarks addressed to him. Many of the Gantois who do speak
French manage it so badly, and are so decidedly not at home in it, that
you feel quite delighted at your own superiority to them, born Belgians
though they be. But Flemish has so close a relationship to our own
vernacular, that the names of trades over the shops, the bills, and the
public notices, are as amusing to read as it is to hear a foreigner
speak broken English. Drap Straet is Cloth, or Draper’s Street. One
man sells alle soorte of wares; another offers you cart-grease under
the name of wagen smeer; kelder te huren is cellar to hire; kamer te
huren is chamber to hire. A koperslager is a coppersmith. Professions
which require no interpreter are the bakker, the matte-maeker, the
timmerman, the apotheker en drogiste, and the boekhandlaer. The three
grand literary elements are announced for sale as pennen, inkt, en
papier. If your family is small, you may be content with securing Een
Huis to let; but should you be expecting a large and sudden increase,
you had better engage Twee Huyzen, if adjacent. In the Apelmerkt, you
could hardly mistake the fruit that is sold there. When thirsty, you
may go and drink a glass of dobbel-bier at the hospitable sign of De
Roose; or you may prefer to patronise the Oliphant (without a castle),
or the Bruyn Visch,--that is to say, the Red Herring. Good little boys
and girls punctually attend a zondagschool. Booksellers’ windows invite
you to the perusal of Flemish novels; such as Een Zwanenzang (a swan’s
song), by Jan Van Beers, and De Zending der Vrow (Woman’s Mission), by
Hendrik Conscience.
“How triste, how sad it is for you not to be able to speak Flemish!”
ejaculated a dame who sold goeden drank, but who could not, though
she would, converse with me. In such cases, it rarely strikes the
tongue-tied Flemings belonging to the portion of society below the
middle-class, that they are like the fox who was minus a tail. They
are content with, and would have other people learn, a language which
confines them, as tightly as a tether fastens a cow, to a few score
square leagues of the earth’s vast superficies. But a striking point
in Flemish popular manners, is the forming themselves into bands
and societies. These little close corporations are perhaps, in some
degree, the result of their narrowly-diffused tongue. And so the
blue-bloused archers of one town go and shoot against the black-capped
long-bows of another, distant a quarter-of-a-day’s pedestrian journey;
the chorus-club of Schoutenhoul will pay a fraternal visit to the
orpheonists of Raspenscraep. In the French army, the French Flemings
hang together like bees at swarming-time. Here at Ghent, the workmen,
even at leisure hours and meal-times, form themselves into companies.
Young people, both girls and boys, run together in distinct and
closely-grouped herds, like flocks of young lambs at the same age. One
would think that babies in Flanders came all at once, in falls, in
imitation of the lambing season with Southdowns and Leicesters.
But the Botanic garden--where is it? Let us first look at our map,
and then at the corner of the street, and endeavour to pilot our way
thither. In Belgian towns, generally, if you use your eyes with the
slightest expression of inquiring curiosity, up starts a phantom
before you, like a most impertinent Jack-in-the-box, calling himself a
commissionaire, but who must not be confounded with a superior being,
the French commissionaire. Where these creatures come from, I cannot
tell. They suddenly appear before you, as if the air had curdled itself
into human form. Peep into a shop window, and you have one at your
elbow; gaze up at a steeple, and, when you look down, you will find
a commissionaire between your legs; turn the angle of a street, on a
walk of discovery, and round the corner you knock your nose against a
commissionaire. They start from behind doors, down staircases, out of
cellars, from the dark mouths of narrow lanes; and I believe that, upon
inquiry, they would be found now and then to drop from the roofs. They
follow you about with the hungry look of a beast of prey, regarding
you as the game on their preserve, and themselves as very forbearing
to spare you a little while. I do not say that no respectable man
exercises the calling of commissionaire; but, whenever such jewels are
found, they ought to be set in sterling gold. In age, they vary from
sixteen to sixty. They deal in cigars, and have often a select female
acquaintance. They are mostly seedy in garment, cloudy in complexion,
uncleanly in person, offensive in breath, jargonic in speech, forward
in manner, and given to drink. Commissionaires attach themselves to
every hotel, as leeches hang to the side of their vessel, ready to
fix on anything that has blood or money to yield; and these consider
themselves the head of their profession. But there are wandering
commissionaires who prowl about the streets, willing to make themselves
useful in any way--too useful, at times, many people might think.
One fellow, who pleaded his large family at home, and whom I took for
an hour or two to get over the ground more quickly, disappeared every
time we came to anything that required more than a minute to examine.
Each disappearance had for its object the injection of a dram into his
weakly stomach, which relieved me from listening to his account of
the lions. But, after a little unsteadiness, he tripped and tumbled
on the ground, and concluded by running into an iron post with a
violence that must have done serious damage to the post. I confess to a
prejudice against Belgian commissionaires, and never employ them when
I can help it. They attack you in the very churches. “You won’t leave
the cathedral without paying the concièrge,” was the parting remark
of a young commissionaire whose services I persisted in declining;
and, while hunting for the Botanic garden, I can’t proceed without
interruption, but am obliged to say to a person who continually crosses
my path, “I have already told you three times I do not want you. Cannot
you take an answer, and leave me to myself?”
The garden, when found at last, is a painful instead of a pleasurable
sight, and must be far from gratifying to the citizens of Ghent. It
is a warning to avoid, and not an example to follow, as all botanic
gardens ought to be. The hardy perennials are the only plants in good
condition; among these is a remarkable Andromeda arborea. The enormous
carp, rising and sinking in their pond, are a lingering remnant of
former prosperity. In the houses, dirt, dust, thrips, scale, red
spider, and aphis, threaten to get the upper hand, and to establish
their dynasty on a permanent footing. A fine Doum palm, in a handsome
but filthy cage of glass, excites pity by its wretched want of comfort.
Other unhappy captives, lank and lean, bald and mangy, beg hard for
some one to have compassion on them. There are many noble specimens in
a deplorable way.
Two small-leaved standard myrtles, in boxes, cannot be less than a
hundred and fifty or two hundred years old. Their trunks measure
thirteen or fourteen inches in circumference; it would be difficult to
find many such in Europe. A leading English nurseryman has endeavoured
to get them across the water; it is a pity he cannot, for they would
be properly cared for here. There are many other far-from-every-day
myrtles, which the head of the establishment seems trying hard to kill.
He is the Celestine Doudet of greenhouse evergreens; his pupils do not
thrive; his oleanders are in the last stage of suffering. The alleged
excuse is want of sufficient accommodation and hands; but when a thing
is to be done, it is not a bad plan to do it yourself. Had I such
handsome orange trees, so neglected, so begrimed with soot, I would get
up at three in the morning, and, in my shirt-sleeves, with an apron
on, with a bucket of soapsuds and a sponge in hand, would mount an A
ladder and work away, day after day, till the task was done. But are
there no such things as garden engines in Ghent? A Victoria, in a tank,
contrives to wash itself partially, though tattered and torn about the
leaves; but it is not clear what business a pit of pine-apples has in a
place for study, where scantiness of room is complained of. One plant,
or two, are all right and proper, but a botanical lecturer does not
want a crop of anything.
Near the entrance of the garden stands a vase, conspicuously mounted on
a pedestal, in which grows what the official who did the honours was
pleased to point out as a rose-bush grafted on an oak-tree. I shook my
head in disgust at the falsehood. “Look,” he insisted, “the stem is
an oak-stem, the side branches are covered with oak-leaves, and the
central twig is the rose which has been grafted in the middle. You can
see that its leaves are rose-leaves, can’t you?--and it is full of buds
coming into flower.”
“No, no; it is only a trick,” I answered, without apologising for
flatly contradicting him. “You have perforated the stem of the oak from
the root to the top; through the tube thus made you have inserted the
stem of a rooted rose-bush; but there is no union between the two, like
the junction of a scion with the stock. It grows independently in the
earth, as the oak-plant does, although encased within it; and you call
that grafting a rose on an oak, which I am gardener enough to know to
be impossible.”
“Ah! you know that. You have found it out. And yet, many people, when
they see this specimen, go away persuaded that we have succeeded in
grafting a rose on an oak.”
I made no further remark than my looks expressed; but I thought
that botanic gardens were instituted for the teaching of accurate
information and useful facts, and not to mislead ignorant persons and
to propagate error. An educational establishment, subsidised partly
by the government and partly by the town, forgets its duties when
it blazons forth a charlatanism which would upset the principles of
vegetable physiology and stultify the hard-earned acquirements of
science.
On the 18th of July was published, price Five Shillings and Sixpence,
neatly bound in cloth,
THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing the Numbers issued between the Nineteenth of January and
the Twelfth of July, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-six.
Complete sets of Household Words may always be had.
_The Right of Translating Articles from_ HOUSEHOLD WORDS
_is reserved by the Authors_.
Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.