Produced by Donald Lainson
LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES
By William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA Titmarsh)
I. FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM
II. GHENT--BRUGES:--
Ghent (1840)
Bruges
III. WATERLOO
LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES
I.--FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM
. . . I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" at Richmond, one of the
comfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England, and
a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the "Star and Garter,"
whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his hair curled,
frightens you off the premises; and where, if you are bold enough to
brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle
of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view
which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor--a
view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter: I say, I
quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" with deep regret, believing that I
should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and
its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people
must go out of town, and so I got on the top of the omnibus, and the
carpet-bag was put inside.
If I were a great prince and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I
were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of
the best Havanas in my pocket--not for my own smoking, but to give them
to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poison
the air with the odor of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in his
circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above
simple precaution.
A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back and asked for a
light. He was a footman, or rather valet. He had no livery, but the
three friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and-salt
undress jackets with a duke's coronet on their buttons.
After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his cheroot,
the gentleman produced another wind-instrument, which he called a
"kinopium," a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a great inclination
to play. He began puffing out of the "kinopium" a most abominable
air, which he said was the "Duke's March." It was played by particular
request of one of the pepper-and-salt gentry.
The noise was so abominable that even the coachman objected (although
my friend's brother footmen were ravished with it), and said that it
was not allowed to play toons on HIS 'bus. "Very well," said the valet,
"WE'RE ONLY OF THE DUKE OF B----'S ESTABLISHMENT, THAT'S ALL." The
coachman could not resist that appeal to his fashionable feelings. The
valet was allowed to play his infernal kinopium, and the poor fellow
(the coachman), who had lived in some private families, was quite
anxious to conciliate the footmen "of the Duke of B.'s establishment,
that's all," and told several stories of his having been groom in
Captain Hoskins's family, NEPHEW OF GOVERNOR HOSKINS; which stories the
footmen received with great contempt.
The footmen were like the rest of the fashionable world in this
respect. I felt for my part that I respected them. They were in daily
communication with a duke! They were not the rose, but they had lived
beside it. There is an odor in the English aristocracy which intoxicates
plebeians. I am sure that any commoner in England, though he would die
rather than confess it, would have a respect for those great big hulking
Duke's footmen.
The day before, her Grace the Duchess had passed us alone in a
chariot-and-four with two outriders. What better mark of innate
superiority could man want? Here was a slim lady who required four--six
horses to herself, and four servants (kinopium was, no doubt, one of the
number) to guard her.
We were sixteen inside and out, and had consequently an eighth of a
horse apiece.
A duchess = 6, a commoner = 1/8; that is to say,
1 duchess = 48 commoners.
If I were a duchess of the present day, I would say to the duke my noble
husband, "My dearest grace, I think, when I travel alone in my chariot
from Hammersmith to London, I will not care for the outriders. In these
days, when there is so much poverty and so much disaffection in the
country, we should not eclabousser the canaille with the sight of our
preposterous prosperity."
But this is very likely only plebeian envy, and I dare say, if I were
a lovely duchess of the realm, I would ride in a coach-and-six, with a
coronet on the top of my bonnet and a robe of velvet and ermine even in
the dog-days.
Alas! these are the dog-days. Many dogs are abroad--snarling dogs,
biting dogs, envious dogs, mad dogs; beware of exciting the fury of
such with your flaming red velvet and dazzling ermine. It makes ragged
Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of-gold; and so
if I were a beauteous duchess . . . Silence, vain man! Can the Queen
herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of
"the Duke of B----'s establishment-- that's all."
ON BOARD THE "ANTWERPEN," OFF EVERYWHERE.
We have bidden adieu to Billingsgate, we have passed the Thames Tunnel;
it is one o'clock, and of course people are thinking of being hungry.
What a merry place a steamer is on a calm sunny summer forenoon, and
what an appetite every one seems to have! We are, I assure you, no less
than 170 noblemen and gentlemen together, pacing up and down under the
awning, or lolling on the sofas in the cabin, and hardly have we passed
Greenwich when the feeding begins. The company was at the brandy and
soda-water in an instant (there is a sort of legend that the beverage is
a preservative against sea-sickness), and I admired the penetration of
gentlemen who partook of the drink. In the first place, the steward WILL
put so much brandy into the tumbler that it is fit to choke you; and,
secondly, the soda-water, being kept as near as possible to the boiler
of the engine, is of a fine wholesome heat when presented to the hot and
thirsty traveller. Thus he is prevented from catching any sudden cold
which might be dangerous to him.
The forepart of the vessel is crowded to the full as much as the
genteeler quarter. There are four carriages, each with piles of
imperials and aristocratic gimcracks of travel, under the wheels of
which those personages have to clamber who have a mind to look at the
bowsprit, and perhaps to smoke a cigar at ease. The carriages overcome,
you find yourself confronted by a huge penful of Durham oxen, lying
on hay and surrounded by a barricade of oars. Fifteen of these horned
monsters maintain an incessant mooing and bellowing. Beyond the cows
come a heap of cotton-bags, beyond the cotton-bags more carriages, more
pyramids of travelling trunks, and valets and couriers bustling and
swearing round about them. And already, and in various corners and
niches, lying on coils of rope, black tar-cloths, ragged cloaks, or hay,
you see a score of those dubious fore-cabin passengers, who are never
shaved, who always look unhappy, and appear getting ready to be sick.
At one, dinner begins in the after-cabin--boiled salmon, boiled beef,
boiled mutton, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, and parboiled wine for
any gentlemen who like it, and two roast-ducks between seventy. After
this, knobs of cheese are handed round on a plate, and there is a talk
of a tart somewhere at some end of the table. All this I saw peeping
through a sort of meat-safe which ventilates the top of the cabin, and
very happy and hot did the people seem below.
"How the deuce CAN people dine at such an hour?" say several genteel
fellows who are watching the manoeuvres. "I can't touch a morsel before
seven."
But somehow at half-past three o'clock we had dropped a long way down
the river. The air was delightfully fresh, the sky of a faultless
cobalt, the river shining and flashing like quicksilver, and at this
period steward runs against me bearing two great smoking dishes covered
by two great glistening hemispheres of tin. "Fellow," says I, "what's
that?"
He lifted up the cover: it was ducks and green pease, by jingo!
"What! haven't they done YET, the greedy creatures?" I asked. "Have the
people been feeding for three hours?"
"Law bless you, sir, it's the second dinner. Make haste, or you won't
get a place." At which words a genteel party, with whom I had been
conversing, instantly tumbled down the hatchway, and I find myself one
of the second relay of seventy who are attacking the boiled salmon,
boiled beef, boiled cabbage, &c. As for the ducks, I certainly had
some pease, very fine yellow stiff pease, that ought to have been
split before they were boiled; but, with regard to the ducks, I saw the
animals gobbled up before my eyes by an old widow lady and her party
just as I was shrieking to the steward to bring a knife and fork to
carve them. The fellow! (I mean the widow lady's whiskered companion)--I
saw him eat pease with the very knife with which he had dissected the
duck!
After dinner (as I need not tell the keen observer of human nature who
peruses this) the human mind, if the body be in a decent state, expands
into gayety and benevolence, and the intellect longs to measure itself
in friendly converse with the divers intelligences around it. We ascend
upon deck, and after eying each other for a brief space and with a
friendly modest hesitation, we begin anon to converse about the weather
and other profound and delightful themes of English discourse. We
confide to each other our respective opinions of the ladies round about
us. Look at that charming creature in a pink bonnet and a dress of the
pattern of a Kilmarnock snuff-box: a stalwart Irish gentleman in a green
coat and bushy red whiskers is whispering something very agreeable into
her ear, as is the wont of gentlemen of his nation; for her dark eyes
kindle, her red lips open and give an opportunity to a dozen beautiful
pearly teeth to display themselves, and glance brightly in the sun;
while round the teeth and the lips a number of lovely dimples make their
appearance, and her whole countenance assumes a look of perfect health
and happiness. See her companion in shot silk and a dove-colored
parasol; in what a graceful Watteau-like attitude she reclines. The tall
courier who has been bouncing about the deck in attendance upon these
ladies (it is his first day of service, and he is eager to make a
favorable impression on them and the lady's-maids too) has just brought
them from the carriage a small paper of sweet cakes (nothing is prettier
than to see a pretty woman eating sweet biscuits) and a bottle that
evidently contains Malmsey madeira. How daintily they sip it; how happy
they seem; how that lucky rogue of an Irishman prattles away! Yonder
is a noble group indeed: an English gentleman and his family. Children,
mother, grandmother, grown-up daughters, father, and domestics,
twenty-two in all. They have a table to themselves on the deck, and the
consumption of eatables among them is really endless. The nurses have
been bustling to and fro, and bringing, first, slices of cake; then
dinner; then tea with huge family jugs of milk; and the little people
have been playing hide-and-seek round the deck, coquetting with the
other children, and making friends of every soul on board. I love to
see the kind eyes of women fondly watching them as they gambol about; a
female face, be it ever so plain, when occupied in regarding children,
becomes celestial almost, and a man can hardly fail to be good and happy
while he is looking on at such sights. "Ah, sir!" says a great big man,
whom you would not accuse of sentiment, "I have a couple of those little
things at home;" and he stops and heaves a great big sigh and swallows
down a half-tumbler of cold something and water. We know what the honest
fellow means well enough. He is saying to himself, "God bless my girls
and their mother!" but, being a Briton, is too manly to speak out in a
more intelligible way. Perhaps it is as well for him to be quiet, and
not chatter and gesticulate like those Frenchmen a few yards from him,
who are chirping over a bottle of champagne.
There is, as you may fancy, a number of such groups on the deck, and
a pleasant occupation it is for a lonely man to watch them and build
theories upon them, and examine those two personages seated cheek by
jowl. One is an English youth, travelling for the first time, who has
been hard at his Guidebook during the whole journey. He has a "Manuel du
Voyageur" in his pocket: a very pretty, amusing little oblong work it is
too, and might be very useful, if the foreign people in three languages,
among whom you travel, would but give the answers set down in the book,
or understand the questions you put to them out of it. The other honest
gentleman in the fur cap, what can his occupation be? We know him at
once for what he is. "Sir," says he, in a fine German accent, "I am a
brofessor of languages, and will gif you lessons in Danish, Swedish,
English, Bortuguese, Spanish and Bersian." Thus occupied in meditations,
the rapid hours and the rapid steamer pass quickly on. The sun is
sinking, and, as he drops, the ingenious luminary sets the Thames on
fire: several worthy gentlemen, watch in hand, are eagerly examining the
phenomena attending his disappearance,--rich clouds of purple and gold,
that form the curtains of his bed,--little barks that pass black across
his disc, his disc every instant dropping nearer and nearer into the
water. "There he goes!" says one sagacious observer. "No, he doesn't,"
cries another. Now he is gone, and the steward is already threading the
deck, asking the passengers, right and left, if they will take a
little supper. What a grand object is a sunset, and what a wonder is an
appetite at sea! Lo! the horned moon shines pale over Margate, and the
red beacon is gleaming from distant Ramsgate pier.
*****
A great rush is speedily made for the mattresses that lie in the boat at
the ship's side; and as the night is delightfully calm, many fair ladies
and worthy men determine to couch on deck for the night. The proceedings
of the former, especially if they be young and pretty, the philosopher
watches with indescribable emotion and interest. What a number of pretty
coquetries do the ladies perform, and into what pretty attitudes do they
take care to fall! All the little children have been gathered up by the
nursery-maids, and are taken down to roost below. Balmy sleep seals
the eyes of many tired wayfarers, as you see in the case of the Russian
nobleman asleep among the portmanteaus; and Titmarsh, who has been
walking the deck for some time with a great mattress on his shoulders,
knowing full well that were he to relinquish it for an instant, some
other person would seize on it, now stretches his bed upon the deck,
wraps his cloak about his knees, draws his white cotton nightcap tight
over his head and ears; and, as the smoke of his cigar rises calmly
upwards to the deep sky and the cheerful twinkling stars, he feels
himself exquisitely happy, and thinks of thee, my Juliana!
*****
Why people, because they are in a steamboat, should get up so deucedly
early I cannot understand. Gentlemen have been walking over my legs ever
since three o'clock this morning, and, no doubt, have been indulging
in personalities (which I hate) regarding my appearance and manner of
sleeping, lying, snoring. Let the wags laugh on; but a far pleasanter
occupation is to sleep until breakfast-time, or near it.
The tea, and ham and eggs, which, with a beefsteak or two, and three
or four rounds of toast, form the component parts of the above-named
elegant meal, are taken in the River Scheldt. Little neat, plump-looking
churches and villages are rising here and there among tufts of trees and
pastures that are wonderfully green. To the right, as the "Guide-book"
says, is Walcheren; and on the left Cadsand, memorable for the English
expedition of 1809, when Lord Chatham, Sir Walter Manny, and Henry Earl
of Derby, at the head of the English, gained a great victory over the
Flemish mercenaries in the pay of Philippe of Valois. The cloth-yard
shafts of the English archers did great execution. Flushing was taken,
and Lord Chatham returned to England, where he distinguished himself
greatly in the debates on the American war, which he called the
brightest jewel of the British crown. You see, my love, that, though an
artist by profession, my education has by no means been neglected; and
what, indeed, would be the pleasure of travel, unless these charming
historical recollections were brought to bear upon it?
ANTWERP.
As many hundreds of thousands of English visit this city (I have met
at least a hundred of them in this half-hour walking the streets,
"Guide-book" in hand), and as the ubiquitous Murray has already depicted
the place, there is no need to enter into a long description of it,
its neatness, its beauty, and its stiff antique splendor. The tall
pale houses have many of them crimped gables, that look like Queen
Elizabeth's ruffs. There are as many people in the streets as in London
at three o'clock in the morning; the market-women wear bonnets of
a flower-pot shape, and have shining brazen milk-pots, which are
delightful to the eyes of a painter. Along the quays of the lazy Scheldt
are innumerable good-natured groups of beer-drinkers (small-beer is the
most good-natured drink in the world); along the barriers outside of
the town, and by the glistening canals, are more beer-shops and more
beer-drinkers. The city is defended by the queerest fat military. The
chief traffic is between the hotels and the railroad. The hotels give
wonderful good dinners, and especially at the "Grand Laboureur" may be
mentioned a peculiar tart, which is the best of all tarts that ever a
man ate since he was ten years old. A moonlight walk is delightful. At
ten o'clock the whole city is quiet; and so little changed does it seem
to be, that you may walk back three hundred years into time, and fancy
yourself a majestical Spaniard, or an oppressed and patriotic Dutchman
at your leisure. You enter the inn, and the old Quentin Durward
court-yard, on which the old towers look down. There is a sound of
singing--singing at midnight. Is it Don Sombrero, who is singing an
Andalusian seguidilla under the window of the Flemish burgomaster's
daughter? Ah, no! it is a fat Englishman in a zephyr coat: he is
drinking cold gin-and-water in the moonlight, and warbling softly--
"Nix my dolly, pals, fake away,
N-ix my dolly, pals, fake a--a--way."*
* In 1844.
I wish the good people would knock off the top part of Antwerp Cathedral
spire. Nothing can be more gracious and elegant than the lines of the
first two compartments; but near the top there bulges out a little
round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no
doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set
upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King"
ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately,
elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal
Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have
given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of
the early fifteenth century, in which it was begun.
This style of criticism is base and mean, and quite contrary to the
orders of the immortal Goethe, who was only for allowing the eye to
recognize the beauties of a great work, but would have its defects
passed over. It is an unhappy, luckless organization which will be
perpetually fault-finding, and in the midst of a grand concert of music
will persist only in hearing that unfortunate fiddle out of tune.
Within--except where the rococo architects have introduced their
ornaments (here is the fiddle out of tune again)--the cathedral is
noble. A rich, tender sunshine is streaming in through the windows,
and gilding the stately edifice with the purest light. The admirable
stained-glass windows are not too brilliant in their colors. The
organ is playing a rich, solemn music; some two hundred of people are
listening to the service; and there is scarce one of the women kneeling
on her chair, enveloped in her full majestic black drapery, that is
not a fine study for a painter. These large black mantles of heavy silk
brought over the heads of the women, and covering their persons, fall
into such fine folds of drapery, that they cannot help being picturesque
and noble. See, kneeling by the side of two of those fine devout-looking
figures, is a lady in a little twiddling Parisian hat and feather, in
a little lace mantelet, in a tight gown and a bustle. She is almost as
monstrous as yonder figure of the Virgin, in a hoop, and with a huge
crown and a ball and a sceptre; and a bambino dressed in a little hoop,
and in a little crown, round which are clustered flowers and pots of
orange-trees, and before which many of the faithful are at prayer.
Gentle clouds of incense come wafting through the vast edifice; and in
the lulls of the music you hear the faint chant of the priest, and the
silver tinkle of the bell.
Six Englishmen, with the commissionaires, and the "Murray's Guide-books"
in their hands, are looking at the "Descent from the Cross." Of this
picture the "Guide-book" gives you orders how to judge. If it is the end
of religious painting to express the religious sentiment, a hundred of
inferior pictures must rank before Rubens. Who was ever piously affected
by any picture of the master? He can depict a livid thief writhing upon
the cross, sometimes a blond Magdalen weeping below it; but it is a
Magdalen a very short time indeed after her repentance: her yellow
brocades and flaring satins are still those which she wore when she was
of the world; her body has not yet lost the marks of the feasting and
voluptuousness in which she used to indulge, according to the legend.
Not one of the Rubens's pictures among all the scores that decorate
chapels and churches here, has the least tendency to purify, to touch
the affections, or to awaken the feelings of religious respect and
wonder. The "Descent from the Cross" is vast, gloomy, and awful; but the
awe inspired by it is, as I take it, altogether material. He might have
painted a picture of any criminal broken on the wheel, and the sensation
inspired by it would have been precisely similar. Nor in a religious
picture do you want the savoir-faire of the master to be always
protruding itself; it detracts from the feeling of reverence, just as
the thumping of cushion and the spouting of tawdry oratory does from
a sermon: meek religion disappears, shouldered out of the desk by
the pompous, stalwart, big-chested, fresh-colored, bushy-whiskered
pulpiteer. Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he
takes a pious subject, it is to show you in what a fine way he, Peter
Paul Rubens, can treat it. He never seems to doubt but that he is doing
it a great honor. His "Descent from the Cross," and its accompanying
wings and cover, are a set of puns upon the word Christopher, of which
the taste is more odious than that of the hooped-petticoated Virgin
yonder, with her artificial flowers, and her rings and brooches. The
people who made an offering of that hooped petticoat did their best, at
any rate; they knew no better. There is humility in that simple, quaint
present; trustfulness and kind intention. Looking about at other altars,
you see (much to the horror of pious Protestants) all sorts of queer
little emblems hanging up under little pyramids of penny candles that
are sputtering and flaring there. Here you have a silver arm, or
a little gold toe, or a wax leg, or a gilt eye, signifying and
commemorating cures that have been performed by the supposed
intercession of the saint over whose chapel they hang. Well, although
they are abominable superstitions, yet these queer little offerings seem
to me to be a great deal more pious than Rubens's big pictures; just as
is the widow with her poor little mite compared to the swelling Pharisee
who flings his purse of gold into the plate.
A couple of days of Rubens and his church pictures makes one thoroughly
and entirely sick of him. His very genius and splendor pails upon one,
even taking the pictures as worldly pictures. One grows weary of being
perpetually feasted with this rich, coarse, steaming food. Considering
them as church pictures, I don't want to go to church to hear, however
splendid, an organ play the "British Grenadiers."
The Antwerpians have set up a clumsy bronze statue of their divinity
in a square of the town; and those who have not enough of Rubens in the
churches may study him, and indeed to much greater advantage, in a good,
well-lighted museum. Here, there is one picture, a dying saint taking
the communion, a large piece ten or eleven feet high, and painted in an
incredibly short space of time, which is extremely curious indeed
for the painter's study. The picture is scarcely more than an immense
magnificent sketch; but it tells the secret of the artist's manner,
which, in the midst of its dash and splendor, is curiously methodical.
Where the shadows are warm the lights are cold, and vice versa; and the
picture has been so rapidly painted, that the tints lie raw by the side
of one another, the artist not having taken the trouble to blend them.
There are two exquisite Vandykes (whatever Sir Joshua may say of them),
and in which the very management of the gray tones which the President
abuses forms the principal excellence and charm. Why, after all, are we
not to have our opinion? Sir Joshua is not the Pope. The color of one
of those Vandykes is as fine as FINE Paul Veronese, and the sentiment
beautifully tender and graceful.
I saw, too, an exhibition of the modern Belgian artists (1843), the
remembrance of whose pictures after a month's absence has almost
entirely vanished. Wappers's hand, as I thought, seemed to have grown
old and feeble, Verboeckhoven's cattle-pieces are almost as good as
Paul Potter's, and Keyser has dwindled down into namby-pamby prettiness,
pitiful to see in the gallant young painter who astonished the Louvre
artists ten years ago by a hand almost as dashing and ready as that of
Rubens himself. There were besides many caricatures of the new German
school, which are in themselves caricatures of the masters before
Raphael.
An instance of honesty may be mentioned here with applause. The
writer lost a pocket-book containing a passport and a couple of modest
ten-pound notes. The person who found the portfolio ingeniously put it
into the box of the post-office, and it was faithfully restored to the
owner; but somehow the two ten-pound notes were absent. It was, however,
a great comfort to get the passport, and the pocket-book, which must be
worth about ninepence.
BRUSSELS.
It was night when we arrived by the railroad from Antwerp at Brussels;
the route is very pretty and interesting, and the flat countries
through which the road passes in the highest state of peaceful, smiling
cultivation. The fields by the roadside are enclosed by hedges as in
England, the harvest was in part down, and an English country gentleman
who was of our party pronounced the crops to be as fine as any he had
ever seen. Of this matter a Cockney cannot judge accurately, but any man
can see with what extraordinary neatness and care all these little plots
of ground are tilled, and admire the richness and brilliancy of the
vegetation. Outside of the moat of Antwerp, and at every village by
which we passed, it was pleasant to see the happy congregations of
well-clad people that basked in the evening sunshine, and soberly smoked
their pipes and drank their Flemish beer. Men who love this drink must,
as I fancy, have something essentially peaceful in their composition,
and must be more easily satisfied than folks on our side of the water.
The excitement of Flemish beer is, indeed, not great. I have tried both
the white beer and the brown; they are both of the kind which schoolboys
denominate "swipes," very sour and thin to the taste, but served, to be
sure, in quaint Flemish jugs that do not seem to have changed their
form since the days of Rubens, and must please the lovers of antiquarian
knick-knacks. Numbers of comfortable-looking women and children sat
beside the head of the family upon the tavern-benches, and it was
amusing to see one little fellow of eight years old smoking, with much
gravity, his father's cigar. How the worship of the sacred plant of
tobacco has spread through all Europe! I am sure that the persons who
cry out against the use of it are guilty of superstition and unreason,
and that it would be a proper and easy task for scientific persons
to write an encomium upon the weed. In solitude it is the pleasantest
companion possible, and in company never de trop. To a student it
suggests all sorts of agreeable thoughts, it refreshes the brain when
weary, and every sedentary cigar-smoker will tell you how much good he
has had from it, and how he has been able to return to his labor, after
a quarter of an hour's mild interval of the delightful leaf of Havana.
Drinking has gone from among us since smoking came in. It is a wicked
error to say that smokers are drunkards; drink they do, but of gentle
diluents mostly, for fierce stimulants of wine or strong liquors are
abhorrent to the real lover of the Indian weed. Ah! my Juliana, join
not in the vulgar cry that is raised against us. Cigars and cool drinks
beget quiet conversations, good-humor, meditation; not hot blood such as
mounts into the head of drinkers of apoplectic port or dangerous claret.
Are we not more moral and reasonable than our forefathers? Indeed I
think so somewhat; and many improvements of social life and converse
must date with the introduction of the pipe.
We were a dozen tobacco-consumers in the wagon of the train that brought
us from Antwerp; nor did the women of the party (sensible women!) make a
single objection to the fumigation. But enough of this; only let me add,
in conclusion, that an excellent Israelitish gentleman, Mr. Hartog
of Antwerp, supplies cigars for a penny apiece, such as are not to be
procured in London for four times the sum.
Through smiling corn-fields, then, and by little woods from which rose
here and there the quaint peaked towers of some old-fashioned chateaux,
our train went smoking along at thirty miles an hour. We caught a
glimpse of Mechlin steeple, at first dark against the sunset, and
afterwards bright as we came to the other side of it, and admired long
glistening canals or moats that surrounded the queer old town, and were
lighted up in that wonderful way which the sun only understands, and
not even Mr. Turner, with all his vermilion and gamboge, can put down
on canvas. The verdure was everywhere astonishing, and we fancied we saw
many golden Cuyps as we passed by these quiet pastures.
Steam-engines and their accompaniments, blazing forges, gaunt
manufactories, with numberless windows and long black chimneys, of
course take away from the romance of the place but, as we whirled into
Brussels, even these engines had a fine appearance. Three or four of the
snorting, galloping monsters had just finished their journey, and there
was a quantity of flaming ashes lying under the brazen bellies of each
that looked properly lurid and demoniacal. The men at the station came
out with flaming torches--awful-looking fellows indeed! Presently the
different baggage was handed out, and in the very worst vehicle I ever
entered, and at the very slowest pace, we were borne to the "Hotel de
Suede," from which house of entertainment this letter is written.
We strolled into the town, but, though the night was excessively fine
and it was not yet eleven o'clock, the streets of the little capital
were deserted, and the handsome blazing cafes round about the theatres
contained no inmates. Ah, what a pretty sight is the Parisian Boulevard
on a night like this! how many pleasant hours has one passed in watching
the lights, and the hum, and the stir, and the laughter of those happy,
idle people! There was none of this gayety here; nor was there a person
to be found, except a skulking commissioner or two (whose real name
in French is that of a fish that is eaten with fennel-sauce), and who
offered to conduct us to certain curiosities in the town. What must we
English not have done, that in every town in Europe we are to be fixed
upon by scoundrels of this sort; and what a pretty reflection it is on
our country that such rascals find the means of living on us!
Early the next morning we walked through a number of streets in the
place, and saw certain sights. The Park is very pretty, and all the
buildings round about it have an air of neatness--almost of stateliness.
The houses are tall, the streets spacious, and the roads extremely
clean. In the Park is a little theatre, a cafe somewhat ruinous, a
little palace for the king of this little kingdom, some smart public
buildings (with S. P. Q. B. emblazoned on them, at which pompous
inscription one cannot help laughing), and other rows of houses somewhat
resembling a little Rue de Rivoli. Whether from my own natural greatness
and magnanimity, or from that handsome share of national conceit that
every Englishman possesses, my impressions of this city are certainly
anything but respectful. It has an absurd kind of Lilliput look with it.
There are soldiers, just as in Paris, better dressed, and doing a vast
deal of drumming and bustle; and yet, somehow, far from being frightened
at them, I feel inclined to laugh in their faces. There are little
Ministers, who work at their little bureaux; and to read the journals,
how fierce they are! A great thundering Times could hardly talk more
big. One reads about the rascally Ministers, the miserable Opposition,
the designs of tyrants, the eyes of Europe, &c., just as one would
in real journals. The Moniteur of Ghent belabors the Independent of
Brussels; the Independent falls foul of the Lynx; and really it is
difficult not to suppose sometimes that these worthy people are in
earnest. And yet how happy were they sua si bona norint! Think what a
comfort it would be to belong to a little state like this; not to abuse
their privilege, but philosophically to use it. If I were a Belgian,
I would not care one single fig about politics. I would not read
thundering leading-articles. I would not have an opinion. What's the use
of an opinion here? Happy fellows! do not the French, the English, and
the Prussians, spare them the trouble of thinking, and make all their
opinions for them? Think of living in a country free, easy, respectable,
wealthy, and with the nuisance of talking politics removed from out of
it. All this might the Belgians have, and a part do they enjoy, but not
the best part; no, these people will be brawling and by the ears, and
parties run as high here as at Stoke Pogis or little Pedlington.
These sentiments were elicited by the reading of a paper at the cafe in
the Park, where we sat under the trees for a while and sipped our cool
lemonade. Numbers of statues decorate the place, the very worst I
ever saw. These Cupids must have been erected in the time of the Dutch
dynasty, as I judge from the immense posterior developments. Indeed the
arts of the country are very low. The statues here, and the lions before
the Prince of Orange's palace, would disgrace almost the figurehead of a
ship.
Of course we paid our visit to this little lion of Brussels (the
Prince's palace, I mean). The architecture of the building is admirably
simple and firm; and you remark about it, and all other works here, a
high finish in doors, wood-works, paintings, &c., that one does not see
in France, where the buildings are often rather sketched than completed,
and the artist seems to neglect the limbs, as it were, and extremities
of his figures.
The finish of this little place is exquisite. We went through some dozen
of state-rooms, paddling along over the slippery floors of inlaid woods
in great slippers, without which we must have come to the ground. How
did his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange manage when he lived here,
and her Imperial Highness the Princess, and their excellencies the
chamberlains and the footmen? They must have been on their tails many
times a day, that's certain, and must have cut queer figures.
The ball-room is beautiful--all marble, and yet with a comfortable,
cheerful look; the other apartments are not less agreeable, and the
people looked with intense satisfaction at some great lapis-lazuli
tables, which the guide informed us were worth four millions, more or
less; adding with a very knowing look, that they were un peu plus cher
que l'or. This speech has a tremendous effect on visitors, and when we
met some of our steamboat companions in the Park or elsewhere--in so
small a place as this one falls in with them a dozen times a day--"Have
you seen the tables?" was the general question. Prodigious tables are
they, indeed! Fancy a table, my dear--a table four feet wide--a table
with legs. Ye heavens! the mind can hardly picture to itself anything so
beautiful and so tremendous!
There are some good pictures in the palace, too, but not so
extraordinarily good as the guide-books and the guide would have us
to think. The latter, like most men of his class, is an ignoramus,
who showed us an Andrea del Sarto (copy or original), and called it a
Correggio, and made other blunders of a like nature. As is the case in
England, you are hurried through the rooms without being allowed time
to look at the pictures, and, consequently, to pronounce a satisfactory
judgment on them.
In the Museum more time was granted me, and I spent some hours with
pleasure there. It is an absurd little gallery, absurdly imitating the
Louvre, with just such compartments and pillars as you see in the noble
Paris gallery; only here the pillars and capitals are stucco and
white in place of marble and gold, and plaster-of-paris busts of great
Belgians are placed between the pillars. An artist of the country
has made a picture containing them, and you will be ashamed of your
ignorance when you hear many of their names. Old Tilly of Magdeburg
figures in one corner; Rubens, the endless Rubens, stands in the
midst. What a noble countenance it is, and what a manly, swaggering
consciousness of power!
The picture to see here is a portrait, by the great Peter Paul, of one
of the governesses of the Netherlands. It is just the finest portrait
that ever was seen. Only a half-length, but such a majesty, such a
force, such a splendor, such a simplicity about it! The woman is in a
stiff black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is
behind her--the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this
great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can
be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to the
vice-Queen. A common bungler would have painted her in her best clothes,
with crown and sceptre, just as our Queen has been painted by--but
comparisons are odious. Here stands this majestic woman in her every-day
working-dress of black satin, LOOKING YOUR HAT OFF, as it were. Another
portrait of the same personage hangs elsewhere in the gallery, and it is
curious to observe the difference between the two, and see how a man of
genius paints a portrait, and how a common limner executes it.
Many more pictures are there here by Rubens, or rather from Rubens's
manufactory,--odious and vulgar most of them are; fat Magdalens, coarse
Saints, vulgar Virgins, with the scene-painter's tricks far too evident
upon the canvas. By the side of one of the most astonishing color-pieces
in the world, the "Worshipping of the Magi," is a famous picture of Paul
Veronese that cannot be too much admired. As Rubens sought in the first
picture to dazzle and astonish by gorgeous variety, Paul in his seems
to wish to get his effect by simplicity, and has produced the most noble
harmony that can be conceived. Many more works are there that merit
notice,--a singularly clever, brilliant, and odious Jordaens, for
example; some curious costume-pieces; one or two works by the Belgian
Raphael, who was a very Belgian Raphael, indeed; and a long gallery
of pictures of the very oldest school, that, doubtless, afford much
pleasure to the amateurs of ancient art. I confess that I am inclined
to believe in very little that existed before the time of Raphael.
There is, for instance, the Prince of Orange's picture by Perugino, very
pretty indeed, up to a certain point, but all the heads are repeated,
all the drawing is bad and affected; and this very badness and
affectation, is what the so-called Catholic school is always anxious to
imitate. Nothing can be more juvenile or paltry than the works of the
native Belgians here exhibited. Tin crowns are suspended over many
of them, showing that the pictures are prize compositions: and pretty
things, indeed, they are! Have you ever read an Oxford prize-poem! Well,
these pictures are worse even than the Oxford poems--an awful assertion
to make.
In the matter of eating, dear sir, which is the next subject of the fine
arts, a subject that, after many hours' walking, attracts a gentleman
very much, let me attempt to recall the transactions of this very day at
the table-d'-hote. 1, green pea-soup; 2, boiled salmon; 3, mussels; 4,
crimped skate; 5, roast-meat; 6, patties; 7, melons; 8, carp, stewed
with mushrooms and onions; 9, roast-turkey; 10, cauliflower and butter;
11, fillets of venison piques, with asafoetida sauce; 12, stewed
calf's-ear; 13, roast-veal; 14, roast-lamb; 15, stewed cherries;
16, rice-pudding; 17, Gruyere cheese, and about twenty-four cakes of
different kinds. Except 5, 13, and 14, I give you my word I ate of all
written down here, with three rolls of bread and a score of potatoes.
What is the meaning of it? How is the stomach of man to be brought to
desire and to receive all this quantity? Do not gastronomists complain
of heaviness in London after eating a couple of mutton-chops? Do not
respectable gentlemen fall asleep in their arm-chairs? Are they fit for
mental labor? Far from it. But look at the difference here: after dinner
here one is as light as a gossamer. One walks with pleasure, reads with
pleasure, writes with pleasure--nay, there is the supper-bell going at
ten o'clock, and plenty of eaters, too. Let lord mayors and aldermen
look to it, this fact of the extraordinary increase of appetite in
Belgium, and, instead of steaming to Blackwall, come a little further to
Antwerp.
Of ancient architectures in the place, there is a fine old Port de
Halle, which has a tall, gloomy, bastille look; a most magnificent
town-hall, that has been sketched a thousand of times, and opposite
it, a building that I think would be the very model for a Conservative
club-house in London. Oh! how charming it would be to be a great
painter, and give the character of the building, and the numberless
groups round about it. The booths lighted up by the sun, the
market-women in their gowns of brilliant hue, each group having a
character and telling its little story, the troops of men lolling in all
sorts of admirable attitudes of ease round the great lamp. Half a dozen
light-blue dragoons are lounging about, and peeping over the artist as
the drawing is made, and the sky is more bright and blue than one sees
it in a hundred years in London.
The priests of the country are a remarkably well-fed and respectable
race, without that scowling, hang-dog look which one has remarked
among reverend gentlemen in the neighboring country of France. Their
reverences wear buckles to their shoes, light-blue neck-cloths, and
huge three-cornered hats in good condition. To-day, strolling by the
cathedral, I heard the tinkling of a bell in the street, and beheld
certain persons, male and female, suddenly plump down on their knees
before a little procession that was passing. Two men in black held a
tawdry red canopy, a priest walked beneath it holding the sacrament
covered with a cloth, and before him marched a couple of little
altar-boys in short white surplices, such as you see in Rubens, and
holding lacquered lamps. A small train of street-boys followed the
procession, cap in hand, and the clergyman finally entered a hospital
for old women, near the church, the canopy and the lamp-bearers
remaining without.
It was a touching scene, and as I stayed to watch it, I could not but
think of the poor old soul who was dying within, listening to the last
words of prayer, led by the hand of the priest to the brink of the black
fathomless grave. How bright the sun was shining without all the time,
and how happy and careless every thing around us looked!
The Duke d'Arenberg has a picture-gallery worthy of his princely house.
It does not contain great pieces, but tit-bits of pictures, such as suit
an aristocratic epicure. For such persons a great huge canvas is too
much, it is like sitting down alone to a roasted ox; and they do wisely,
I think, to patronize small, high-flavored, delicate morceaux, such as
the Duke has here.
Among them may be mentioned, with special praise, a magnificent small
Rembrandt, a Paul Potter of exceeding minuteness and beauty, an Ostade,
which reminds one of Wilkie's early performances, and a Dusart quite
as good as Ostade. There is a Berghem, much more unaffected than that
artist's works generally are; and, what is more, precious in the eyes of
many ladies as an object of art, there is, in one of the grand saloons,
some needlework done by the Duke's own grandmother, which is looked at
with awe by those admitted to see the palace.
The chief curiosity, if not the chief ornament of a very elegant
library, filled with vases and bronzes, is a marble head, supposed to
be the original head of the Laocoon. It is, unquestionably a finer head
than that which at present figures upon the shoulders of the famous
statue. The expression of woe is more manly and intense; in the group as
we know it, the head of the principal figure has always seemed to me to
be a grimace of grief, as are the two accompanying young gentlemen
with their pretty attitudes, and their little silly, open-mouthed
despondency. It has always had upon me the effect of a trick, that
statue, and not of a piece of true art. It would look well in the vista
of a garden; it is not august enough for a temple, with all its jerks
and twirls, and polite convulsions. But who knows what susceptibilities
such a confession may offend? Let us say no more about the Laocoon, nor
its head, nor its tail. The Duke was offered its weight in gold, they
say, for this head, and refused. It would be a shame to speak ill of
such a treasure, but I have my opinion of the man who made the offer.
In the matter of sculpture almost all the Brussels churches are
decorated with the most laborious wooden pulpits, which may be worth
their weight in gold, too, for what I know, including his reverence
preaching inside. At St. Gudule the preacher mounts into no less a place
than the garden of Eden, being supported by Adam and Eve, by Sin and
Death, and numberless other animals; he walks up to his desk by a
rustic railing of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, with wooden peacocks,
paroquets, monkeys biting apples, and many more of the birds and
beasts of the field. In another church the clergyman speaks from out a
hermitage; in a third from a carved palm-tree, which supports a set of
oak clouds that form the canopy of the pulpit, and are, indeed, not much
heavier in appearance than so many huge sponges. A priest, however tall
or stout, must be lost in the midst of all these queer gimcracks; in
order to be consistent, they ought to dress him up, too, in some odd
fantastical suit. I can fancy the Cure of Meudon preaching out of such a
place, or the Rev. Sydney Smith, or that famous clergyman of the time of
the League, who brought all Paris to laugh and listen to him.
But let us not be too supercilious and ready to sneer. It is only bad
taste. It may have been very true devotion which erected these strange
edifices.
II.--GHENT--BRUGES.
GHENT. (1840.)