READER, perhaps you were never in Belgium? Haply you don’t know the
physiognomy of the country? You have not its lineaments defined upon
your memory, as I have them on mine?
Three--nay four--pictures line the four-walled cell where are stored for
me the records of the past. First, Eton. All in that picture is in far
perspective, receding, diminutive; but freshly coloured, green, dewy,
with a spring sky, piled with glittering yet showery clouds; for my
childhood was not all sunshine--it had its overcast, its cold, its
stormy hours. Second, X----, huge, dingy; the canvas cracked and smoked;
a yellow sky, sooty clouds; no sun, no azure; the verdure of the suburbs
blighted and sullied--a very dreary scene.
Third, Belgium; and I will pause before this landscape. As to the
fourth, a curtain covers it, which I may hereafter withdraw, or may not,
as suits my convenience and capacity. At any rate, for the present it
must hang undisturbed. Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name
that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such
as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can
produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight.
It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves
unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept,
are seen by me ascending from the clouds--haloed most of them--but while
I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their
outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all,
like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns,
resealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!
This is Belgium, reader. Look! don’t call the picture a flat or a dull
one--it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld it. When I
left Ostend on a mild February morning, and found myself on the road
to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me. My sense of enjoyment
possessed an edge whetted to the finest, untouched, keen, exquisite.
I was young; I had good health; pleasure and I had never met; no
indulgence of hers had enervated or sated one faculty of my nature.
Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of
her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind.
Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that
from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise; what
if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not; his eyes are
fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having
gained it he is certain of the scene beyond. He knows that the sun will
face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon,
and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the
god’s career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl
and warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained
by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot
no hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles,
inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the crimson
peak above; my imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and
I thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns
scratching my face and hands.
I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the diligence
(these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and railroads).
Well! and what did I see? I will tell you faithfully. Green, reedy
swamps; fields fertile but flat, cultivated in patches that made them
look like magnified kitchen-gardens; belts of cut trees, formal as
pollard willows, skirting the horizon; narrow canals, gliding slow by
the road-side; painted Flemish farmhouses; some very dirty hovels; a
gray, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops: not a beautiful,
scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole route; yet to
me, all was beautiful, all was more than picturesque. It continued fair
so long as daylight lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp
days had sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain
recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness my eye
caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw little of the
city but its lights that night. Having alighted from the diligence, a
fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de ----, where I had been advised by a
fellow-traveller to put up; having eaten a traveller’s supper, I retired
to bed, and slept a traveller’s sleep.
Next morning I awoke from prolonged and sound repose with the impression
that I was yet in X----, and perceiving it to be broad daylight I
started up, imagining that I had overslept myself and should be behind
time at the counting-house. The momentary and painful sense of restraint
vanished before the revived and reviving consciousness of freedom, as,
throwing back the white curtains of my bed, I looked forth into a wide,
lofty foreign chamber; how different from the small and dingy, though
not uncomfortable, apartment I had occupied for a night or two at a
respectable inn in London while waiting for the sailing of the packet!
Yet far be it from me to profane the memory of that little dingy room!
It, too, is dear to my soul; for there, as I lay in quiet and darkness,
I first heard the great bell of St. Paul’s telling London it was
midnight, and well do I recall the deep, deliberate tones, so full
charged with colossal phlegm and force. From the small, narrow window
of that room, I first saw THE dome, looming through a London mist. I
suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are
felt but once; treasure them, Memory; seal them in urns, and keep them
in safe niches! Well--I rose. Travellers talk of the apartments in
foreign dwellings being bare and uncomfortable; I thought my chamber
looked stately and cheerful. It had such large windows--CROISEES that
opened like doors, with such broad, clear panes of glass; such a great
looking-glass stood on my dressing-table--such a fine mirror glittered
over the mantelpiece--the painted floor looked so clean and glossy;
when I had dressed and was descending the stairs, the broad marble steps
almost awed me, and so did the lofty hall into which they conducted.
On the first landing I met a Flemish housemaid: she had wooden shoes, a
short red petticoat, a printed cotton bedgown, her face was broad,
her physiognomy eminently stupid; when I spoke to her in French, she
answered me in Flemish, with an air the reverse of civil; yet I thought
her charming; if she was not pretty or polite, she was, I conceived,
very picturesque; she reminded me of the female figures in certain Dutch
paintings I had seen in other years at Seacombe Hall.
I repaired to the public room; that, too, was very large and very lofty,
and warmed by a stove; the floor was black, and the stove was black, and
most of the furniture was black: yet I never experienced a freer
sense of exhilaration than when I sat down at a very long, black table
(covered, however, in part by a white cloth), and, having ordered
breakfast, began to pour out my coffee from a little black coffee-pot.
The stove might be dismal-looking to some eyes, not to mine, but it
was indisputably very warm, and there were two gentlemen seated by
it talking in French; impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or
comprehend much of the purport of what they said--yet French, in the
mouths of Frenchmen, or Belgians (I was not then sensible of the horrors
of the Belgian accent) was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen
presently discerned me to be an Englishman--no doubt from the fashion in
which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in
my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English.
The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice, politely accosted
me in very good English; I remember I wished to God that I could speak
French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for
the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the
capital I was in; it was my first experience of that skill in living
languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels.
I lingered over my breakfast as long as I could; while it was there
on the table, and while that stranger continued talking to me, I was a
free, independent traveller; but at last the things were removed, the
two gentlemen left the room; suddenly the illusion ceased, reality and
business came back. I, a bondsman just released from the yoke, freed for
one week from twenty-one years of constraint, must, of necessity, resume
the fetters of dependency. Hardly had I tasted the delight of being
without a master when duty issued her stern mandate: “Go forth and seek
another service.” I never linger over a painful and necessary task; I
never take pleasure before business, it is not in my nature to do so;
impossible to enjoy a leisurely walk over the city, though I perceived
the morning was very fine, until I had first presented Mr. Hunsden’s
letter of introduction, and got fairly on to the track of a new
situation. Wrenching my mind from liberty and delight, I seized my hat,
and forced my reluctant body out of the Hotel de ---- into the foreign
street.
It was a fine day, but I would not look at the blue sky or at the
stately houses round me; my mind was bent on one thing, finding out “Mr.
Brown, Numero --, Rue Royale,” for so my letter was addressed. By dint
of inquiry I succeeded; I stood at last at the desired door, knocked,
asked for Mr. Brown, and was admitted.
Being shown into a small breakfast-room, I found myself in the
presence of an elderly gentleman--very grave, business-like, and
respectable-looking. I presented Mr. Hunsden’s letter; he received me
very civilly. After a little desultory conversation he asked me if there
was anything in which his advice or experience could be of use. I said,
“Yes,” and then proceeded to tell him that I was not a gentleman of
fortune, travelling for pleasure, but an ex-counting-house clerk, who
wanted employment of some kind, and that immediately too. He replied
that as a friend of Mr. Hunsden’s he would be willing to assist me as
well as he could. After some meditation he named a place in a mercantile
house at Liege, and another in a bookseller’s shop at Louvain.
“Clerk and shopman!” murmured I to myself. “No.” I shook my head. I
had tried the high stool; I hated it; I believed there were other
occupations that would suit me better; besides I did not wish to leave
Brussels.
“I know of no place in Brussels,” answered Mr. Brown, “unless indeed you
were disposed to turn your attention to teaching. I am acquainted with
the director of a large establishment who is in want of a professor of
English and Latin.”
I thought two minutes, then I seized the idea eagerly.
“The very thing, sir!” said I.
“But,” asked he, “do you understand French well enough to teach Belgian
boys English?”
Fortunately I could answer this question in the affirmative;
having studied French under a Frenchman, I could speak the language
intelligibly though not fluently. I could also read it well, and write
it decently.
“Then,” pursued Mr. Brown, “I think I can promise you the place, for
Monsieur Pelet will not refuse a professor recommended by me; but come
here again at five o’clock this afternoon, and I will introduce you to
him.”
The word “professor” struck me. “I am not a professor,” said I.
“Oh,” returned Mr. Brown, “professor, here in Belgium, means a teacher,
that is all.”
My conscience thus quieted, I thanked Mr. Brown, and, for the present,
withdrew. This time I stepped out into the street with a relieved heart;
the task I had imposed on myself for that day was executed. I might now
take some hours of holiday. I felt free to look up. For the first time
I remarked the sparkling clearness of the air, the deep blue of the sky,
the gay clean aspect of the white-washed or painted houses; I saw what
a fine street was the Rue Royale, and, walking leisurely along its broad
pavement, I continued to survey its stately hotels, till the palisades,
the gates, and trees of the park appearing in sight, offered to my eye a
new attraction. I remember, before entering the park, I stood awhile to
contemplate the statue of General Belliard, and then I advanced to the
top of the great staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow
back street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d’Isabelle.
I well recollect that my eye rested on the green door of a rather large
house opposite, where, on a brass plate, was inscribed, “Pensionnat de
Demoiselles.” Pensionnat! The word excited an uneasy sensation in
my mind; it seemed to speak of restraint. Some of the demoiselles,
externats no doubt, were at that moment issuing from the door--I looked
for a pretty face amongst them, but their close, little French bonnets
hid their features; in a moment they were gone.
I had traversed a good deal of Brussels before five o’clock arrived,
but punctually as that hour struck I was again in the Rue Royale.
Re-admitted to Mr. Brown’s breakfast-room, I found him, as before,
seated at the table, and he was not alone--a gentleman stood by the
hearth. Two words of introduction designated him as my future master.
“M. Pelet, Mr. Crimsworth; Mr. Crimsworth, M. Pelet,” a bow on each
side finished the ceremony. I don’t know what sort of a bow I made; an
ordinary one, I suppose, for I was in a tranquil, commonplace frame of
mind; I felt none of the agitation which had troubled my first interview
with Edward Crimsworth. M. Pelet’s bow was extremely polite, yet not
theatrical, scarcely French; he and I were presently seated opposite to
each other. In a pleasing voice, low, and, out of consideration to my
foreign ears, very distinct and deliberate, M. Pelet intimated that he
had just been receiving from “le respectable M. Brown,” an account of my
attainments and character, which relieved him from all scruple as to
the propriety of engaging me as professor of English and Latin in
his establishment; nevertheless, for form’s sake, he would put a few
questions to test my powers. He did, and expressed in flattering terms
his satisfaction at my answers. The subject of salary next came on; it
was fixed at one thousand francs per annum, besides board and lodging.
“And in addition,” suggested M. Pelet, “as there will be some hours
in each day during which your services will not be required in my
establishment, you may, in time, obtain employment in other seminaries,
and thus turn your vacant moments to profitable account.”
I thought this very kind, and indeed I found afterwards that the terms
on which M. Pelet had engaged me were really liberal for Brussels;
instruction being extremely cheap there on account of the number of
teachers. It was further arranged that I should be installed in my new
post the very next day, after which M. Pelet and I parted.
Well, and what was he like? and what were my impressions concerning him?
He was a man of about forty years of age, of middle size, and rather
emaciated figure; his face was pale, his cheeks were sunk, and his eyes
hollow; his features were pleasing and regular, they had a French
turn (for M. Pelet was no Fleming, but a Frenchman both by birth
and parentage), yet the degree of harshness inseparable from Gallic
lineaments was, in his case, softened by a mild blue eye, and a
melancholy, almost suffering, expression of countenance; his physiognomy
was “fine et spirituelle.” I use two French words because they define
better than any English terms the species of intelligence with which his
features were imbued. He was altogether an interesting and prepossessing
personage. I wondered only at the utter absence of all the ordinary
characteristics of his profession, and almost feared he could not be
stern and resolute enough for a schoolmaster. Externally at least
M. Pelet presented an absolute contrast to my late master, Edward
Crimsworth.
Influenced by the impression I had received of his gentleness, I was a
good deal surprised when, on arriving the next day at my new employer’s
house, and being admitted to a first view of what was to be the
sphere of my future labours, namely the large, lofty, and well-lighted
schoolrooms, I beheld a numerous assemblage of pupils, boys of course,
whose collective appearance showed all the signs of a full, flourishing,
and well-disciplined seminary. As I traversed the classes in company
with M. Pelet, a profound silence reigned on all sides, and if by chance
a murmur or a whisper arose, one glance from the pensive eye of this
most gentle pedagogue stilled it instantly. It was astonishing, I
thought, how so mild a check could prove so effectual. When I had
perambulated the length and breadth of the classes, M. Pelet turned and
said to me--
“Would you object to taking the boys as they are, and testing their
proficiency in English?”
The proposal was unexpected. I had thought I should have been allowed at
least three days to prepare; but it is a bad omen to commence any career
by hesitation, so I just stepped to the professor’s desk near which we
stood, and faced the circle of my pupils. I took a moment to collect
my thoughts, and likewise to frame in French the sentence by which I
proposed to open business. I made it as short as possible:--
“Messieurs, prenez vos livres de lecture.”
“Anglais ou Francais, monsieur?” demanded a thickset, moon-faced young
Flamand in a blouse. The answer was fortunately easy:--
“Anglais.”
I determined to give myself as little trouble as possible in this
lesson; it would not do yet to trust my unpractised tongue with the
delivery of explanations; my accent and idiom would be too open to the
criticisms of the young gentlemen before me, relative to whom I felt
already it would be necessary at once to take up an advantageous
position, and I proceeded to employ means accordingly.
“Commencez!” cried I, when they had all produced their books. The
moon-faced youth (by name Jules Vanderkelkov, as I afterwards learnt)
took the first sentence. The “livre de lecture” was the “Vicar of
Wakefield,” much used in foreign schools because it is supposed to
contain prime samples of conversational English; it might, however,
have been a Runic scroll for any resemblance the words, as enunciated by
Jules, bore to the language in ordinary use amongst the natives of Great
Britain. My God! how he did snuffle, snort, and wheeze! All he said was
said in his throat and nose, for it is thus the Flamands speak, but
I heard him to the end of his paragraph without proffering a word of
correction, whereat he looked vastly self-complacent, convinced,
no doubt, that he had acquitted himself like a real born and bred
“Anglais.” In the same unmoved silence I listened to a dozen in
rotation, and when the twelfth had concluded with splutter, hiss, and
mumble, I solemnly laid down the book.
“Arretez!” said I. There was a pause, during which I regarded them all
with a steady and somewhat stern gaze; a dog, if stared at hard enough
and long enough, will show symptoms of embarrassment, and so at length
did my bench of Belgians. Perceiving that some of the faces before me
were beginning to look sullen, and others ashamed, I slowly joined my
hands, and ejaculated in a deep “voix de poitrine”--
“Comme c’est affreux!”
They looked at each other, pouted, coloured, swung their heels; they
were not pleased, I saw, but they were impressed, and in the way
I wished them to be. Having thus taken them down a peg in their
self-conceit, the next step was to raise myself in their estimation; not
a very easy thing, considering that I hardly dared to speak for fear of
betraying my own deficiencies.
“Ecoutez, messieurs!” said I, and I endeavoured to throw into my
accents the compassionate tone of a superior being, who, touched by the
extremity of the helplessness, which at first only excited his scorn,
deigns at length to bestow aid. I then began at the very beginning of
the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and read, in a slow, distinct voice, some
twenty pages, they all the while sitting mute and listening with fixed
attention; by the time I had done nearly an hour had elapsed. I then
rose and said:--
“C’est assez pour aujourd’hui, messieurs; demain nous recommencerons, et
j’espere que tout ira bien.”
With this oracular sentence I bowed, and in company with M. Pelet
quitted the school-room.
“C’est bien! c’est tres bien!” said my principal as we entered his
parlour. “Je vois que monsieur a de l’adresse; cela, me plait, car, dans
l’instruction, l’adresse fait tout autant que le savoir.”
From the parlour M. Pelet conducted me to my apartment, my “chambre,”
as Monsieur said with a certain air of complacency. It was a very small
room, with an excessively small bed, but M. Pelet gave me to understand
that I was to occupy it quite alone, which was of course a great
comfort. Yet, though so limited in dimensions, it had two windows. Light
not being taxed in Belgium, the people never grudge its admission into
their houses; just here, however, this observation is not very APROPOS,
for one of these windows was boarded up; the open windows looked into
the boys’ playground. I glanced at the other, as wondering what aspect
it would present if disencumbered of the boards. M. Pelet read, I
suppose, the expression of my eye; he explained:--
“La fenetre fermee donne sur un jardin appartenant a un pensionnat
de demoiselles,” said he, “et les convenances exigent--enfin, vous
comprenez--n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
“Oui, oui,” was my reply, and I looked of course quite satisfied; but
when M. Pelet had retired and closed the door after him, the first thing
I did was to scrutinize closely the nailed boards, hoping to find
some chink or crevice which I might enlarge, and so get a peep at the
consecrated ground. My researches were vain, for the boards were well
joined and strongly nailed. It is astonishing how disappointed I felt. I
thought it would have been so pleasant to have looked out upon a
garden planted with flowers and trees, so amusing to have watched the
demoiselles at their play; to have studied female character in a variety
of phases, myself the while sheltered from view by a modest muslin
curtain, whereas, owing doubtless to the absurd scruples of some old
duenna of a directress, I had now only the option of looking at a bare
gravelled court, with an enormous “pas de geant” in the middle, and the
monotonous walls and windows of a boys’ school-house round. Not only
then, but many a time after, especially in moments of weariness and
low spirits, did I look with dissatisfied eyes on that most tantalizing
board, longing to tear it away and get a glimpse of the green region
which I imagined to lie beyond. I knew a tree grew close up to the
window, for though there were as yet no leaves to rustle, I often heard
at night the tapping of branches against the panes. In the daytime,
when I listened attentively, I could hear, even through the boards, the
voices of the demoiselles in their hours of recreation, and, to speak
the honest truth, my sentimental reflections were occasionally a trifle
disarranged by the not quite silvery, in fact the too often brazen
sounds, which, rising from the unseen paradise below, penetrated
clamorously into my solitude. Not to mince matters, it really seemed to
me a doubtful case whether the lungs of Mdlle. Reuter’s girls or those
of M. Pelet’s boys were the strongest, and when it came to shrieking
the girls indisputably beat the boys hollow. I forgot to say, by-the-by,
that Reuter was the name of the old lady who had had my window bearded
up. I say old, for such I, of course, concluded her to be, judging from
her cautious, chaperon-like proceedings; besides, nobody ever spoke of
her as young. I remember I was very much amused when I first heard her
Christian name; it was Zoraide--Mademoiselle Zoraide Reuter. But the
continental nations do allow themselves vagaries in the choice of names,
such as we sober English never run into. I think, indeed, we have too
limited a list to choose from.
Meantime my path was gradually growing smooth before me. I, in a
few weeks, conquered the teasing difficulties inseparable from the
commencement of almost every career. Ere long I had acquired as much
facility in speaking French as set me at my ease with my pupils; and
as I had encountered them on a right footing at the very beginning, and
continued tenaciously to retain the advantage I had early gained, they
never attempted mutiny, which circumstance, all who are in any degree
acquainted with the ongoings of Belgian schools, and who know the
relation in which professors and pupils too frequently stand towards
each other in those establishments, will consider an important and
uncommon one. Before concluding this chapter I will say a word on the
system I pursued with regard to my classes: my experience may possibly
be of use to others.
It did not require very keen observation to detect the character of the
youth of Brabant, but it needed a certain degree of tact to adopt one’s
measures to their capacity. Their intellectual faculties were generally
weak, their animal propensities strong; thus there was at once an
impotence and a kind of inert force in their natures; they were dull,
but they were also singularly stubborn, heavy as lead and, like lead,
most difficult to move. Such being the case, it would have been truly
absurd to exact from them much in the way of mental exertion; having
short memories, dense intelligence, feeble reflective powers, they
recoiled with repugnance from any occupation that demanded close study
or deep thought. Had the abhorred effort been extorted from them by
injudicious and arbitrary measures on the part of the Professor, they
would have resisted as obstinately, as clamorously, as desperate swine;
and though not brave singly, they were relentless acting EN MASSE.
I understood that before my arrival in M. Pelet’s establishment, the
combined insubordination of the pupils had effected the dismissal of
more than one English master. It was necessary then to exact only the
most moderate application from natures so little qualified to apply--to
assist, in every practicable way, understandings so opaque and
contracted--to be ever gentle, considerate, yielding even, to a certain
point, with dispositions so irrationally perverse; but, having reached
that culminating point of indulgence, you must fix your foot, plant it,
root it in rock--become immutable as the towers of Ste. Gudule; for a
step--but half a step farther, and you would plunge headlong into the
gulf of imbecility; there lodged, you would speedily receive proofs
of Flemish gratitude and magnanimity in showers of Brabant saliva and
handfuls of Low Country mud. You might smooth to the utmost the path of
learning, remove every pebble from the track; but then you must finally
insist with decision on the pupil taking your arm and allowing himself
to be led quietly along the prepared road. When I had brought down my
lesson to the lowest level of my dullest pupil’s capacity--when I
had shown myself the mildest, the most tolerant of masters--a word of
impertinence, a movement of disobedience, changed me at once into
a despot. I offered then but one alternative--submission and
acknowledgment of error, or ignominious expulsion. This system answered,
and my influence, by degrees, became established on a firm basis. “The
boy is father to the man,” it is said; and so I often thought when
looked at my boys and remembered the political history of their
ancestors. Pelet’s school was merely an epitome of the Belgian nation.