nations. It is a mound of earth 150 feet high, pyramid-shaped, and
a half-mile around the base. On top of the mound is a figure of a
colossal lion. The mound is the highest point for many miles, and from
its top the entire battlefield is easily seen. It is a very impressive
sight. When the great mound was constructed the earth was carried in
baskets by women who were paid 8 cents a day. That kind of a price
for labor makes a steam shovel sick. The people who live around the
battlefield have a rich tourist crop. Although they are Belgians I
think some of them are descendants of Napoleon’s soldiers, judging
from the way they charge. Just about the time the visitor gets excited
or interested in the historic spots, he is reminded that there is
“something for the guide,” or that he can buy maps, picture cards,
bullets, buttons from Napoleon’s coat, or get a drink of water from
the well in which the bodies of 150 French soldiers were thrown.
[Illustration]
Belgium is one of the busiest countries in Europe, but labor is really
not better paid than elsewhere. A laboring man gets 30 cents a day,
skilled laborers up to a dollar. A woman works at lace-making for 20
cents a day, or a woman will come at 7 o’clock in the morning and work
until 8 o’clock in the evening, a Belgian working-day, for 20 cents.
The cost of good, decent living is not much if any less than in Kansas,
but of course people who earn only 20 or 30 cents a day don’t live
well. Their home is with the cow or the dog or with people just as
poor, and a beefsteak would probably give them the gout. I have seen
similar conditions in the slums of American cities, and once, when the
tariff bars were thrown down and our factories put to competition with
Belgian and other European factories where labor is paid as I have
stated, there was a temporary paralysis of labor attended by suffering
and want. But these are the normal conditions in Belgium and in Europe
at a time which is considered one of general prosperity. I wonder how
it must be with hard times. The “bugaboo” of “competition with pauper
labor” is not a political imagination, but would be a sad reality if
the American people should vote for a change in the tariff policy. I
have learned this lesson from the mouths and faces of the workingmen of
Europe.
Of course there are American-made goods that come into Europe. They are
all here because the Europeans have nothing near as good. The American
typewriter, the sewing-machine, the Wernicke office supplies and the
American shoe are always advertised boldly and freely. Other American
wares are sold without the American label because of some prejudice,
especially in England. In order to show my patriotism I started lifting
my hat every time I saw the sign or advertisement of American goods.
At first I enjoyed the novelty, but as I learned to look for the marks
I soon had my hat off most of the time. I didn’t mind honoring any
American article, but it grew wearisome to have my hand bobbing up to
my hat whenever I turned around, especially as Carter’s liver pills
and Quaker oats have just covered Europe with their posters and their
catch-lines. When the American does start to do business in Europe
he does it right, and is not afraid to put his name on any place the
police will let him. And it is comforting to a pilgrim in a strange
land to see in big letters on street cars and fences the names that
decorated the old walls and billboards at home.
EUROPEAN ART AND GRUB.
BRUGES, BELGIUM, Aug. 8, 1905.
In this quaint old town we are spending the last day of our stay on the
continent of Europe. To-morrow we sail from Ostend to Dover, and the
prospect of a return to a land where the English language is spoken is
next to getting home.
Of all the cities of the Netherlands, Bruges has best held on to the
ancient appearance and ways. The fact may be explained by the figures.
During the boom in Belgium a few centuries ago, Bruges had a population
of 200,000, while now there are only 54,000. There was no necessity
to tear down the old buildings to make room for modern structures or
provide wide boulevards and promenades. Consequently the old buildings
stand, only modified in appearance by the wear and tear of weather
and years. The sole business of the town as near as I could see is
lace-making, and as the women do that there is little left for the men,
except to drive cabs and hold the offices. We walked down a little
narrow street, perhaps twelve feet wide, lined from one end to the
other on this pleasant day with women sitting on stools making lace.
The advent of a few Americans almost caused a riot in the desire to
see and be seen, and the little street seemed to swarm with women and
with children. Working over the pillow these women make lace to be
sold at 15 or 20 cents for their day’s labor. Girls hardly into their
teens and grandmothers up in the 80’s were laboring side by side. One
old lady with whom we had a most delightful visit, although neither
could understand the other’s language, and from whom Mrs. Morgan bought
some of the handiwork, is 86 years old, and yet she cheerfully and
ably manipulates the hand-shuttles that make the lace as if she were
not half that age. There is a special provision of Providence that
nearly always applies. These women of all ages who have to make lace
or starve, work in abominable light and yet have excellent eyesight
and never wear spectacles or glasses. In America, where the lace is
bought and where such work is a delicate, eye-trying task, the women
have trouble with their eyesight and must have artificial help to see
the lace that the Belgian women make. The wind is tempered to the shorn
lamb.
[Illustration]
Bruges is also the depository of the earliest specimens of Dutch and
Flemish art, for here nearly 500 years ago lived Jan Van Eyck, and he
and his brother were the pioneers in the style of painting which is
generally known as “Dutch.” They were followed a few years later by
Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, De Crayer, Jordaens, and their crowd, who
went to Italy and learned a good deal, but who were really followers
of the Van Eycks. I have spent some time in the art galleries at
Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp and Brussels, and have picked up a
smattering of knowledge of Dutch and Flemish art which I would like
to unload. The “whole shooting-match,” as the Germans would say,
is generally called Dutch, but there is a perceptible difference
between the work in Holland and Belgium, although the artists lived
so close together that they naturally formed one great school. Peter
Paul Rubens, who generally gets first place, was a Belgian, although
he was born out of that country when his parents were politically
exiled. He lived at Antwerp and was brought up in a Jesuit school in a
Catholic country. Rembrandt was a Dutchman, born at Leyden, Holland,
and a politician as well as an artist in a Protestant country. If
one will reflect upon the religious situation in Europe in the early
seventeenth century, he will see that no matter if both used the
same colors and the same rules for drawing, they were bound to treat
different subjects, or have different conceptions of the same subject.
Van Dyck, the third of the celebrated trio, was born in Antwerp, but
went to London, and there did most of his work in portrait-painting,
his specialty, because he was better paid by Englishmen. The Catholic
Rubens and his followers painted for the churches and cathedrals, and
for a Catholic constituency, and usually portrayed religious subjects,
while Rembrandt and his pupils painted for the Dutch burghers, and
their best pictures are of men, grouped in military companies or
trade guilds. Rubens is more ideal and spiritual, Rembrandt more
material and human. Therefore it is that people who like one often
do not appreciate the other. I really like the Dutch art better than
the Italian, although it is a good deal like a boy trying to decide
whether he will have cherry pie or custard pie, and wanting both. The
influence of environment and education is clearly seen in the fat
Madonnas and the pictures of public-houses and drinking-bouts which
are favorite subjects. The Dutch artists also lean to “realism,” and
about nine times in ten a picture of the realist school is unpleasant
and therefore to my mind inartistic. For example, one of Rubens’s
great masterpieces represents the martyrdom of a saint who had his
tongue torn out, and in the picture the executioner is handing the
red, bleeding tongue to a dog. Another picture shows an execution, the
axeman holding up the head, and the body with the stump of a neck the
main feature of the foreground. Some people like this sort of thing,
but I don’t. For a hundred years after Rubens and Rembrandt, the
Netherlands produced no art, at the time the countries themselves were
demoralized and the prey of the larger powers. Recently Dutch art has
revived in the portraying of Dutch landscapes, windmills, canals and
such, and to my mind it is the pleasantest and most effective art now
alive in Europe, away ahead of the Italians, who persist in imitating
the old masters and tackling subjects which have been thoroughly
covered so much that there is hardly a chance for a new impression.
Every town of any size in Belgium and Holland has a public art gallery,
and the people ought to be artists merely from association. But as a
matter of fact three-fourths of the visitors to the galleries when I
was there were Americans and English.
Speaking of art reminds me of hotels. Before leaving Europe I want
to pay a tribute to the hotel-keepers of the continent. I must have
been wrongly impressed by what I had read and heard, for I had looked
forward with dread to the queer ways and the strange dishes I was
to go against on the trip. As a matter of fact the hotels in Europe
are better and cheaper than those of America. The management is more
courteous, the service better, and the eating far surpasses the
equivalent in the United States. The “tipping system” is not bad at all
and the effort of the landlord to get at your money is concealed by a
show of cordiality and hospitality which I have never experienced in
a strange hostelry in my own country. I am overcharged and worked ten
times more in Kansas City, Chicago and New York than in Rome, Cologne,
Brussels, or any other European city.
When a traveler arrives at a continental hotel he is greeted at the
entrance by the hall porter or clerk, and instead of being bulldozed
over a counter by a gentleman with a diamond stud into paying twice the
ordinary price for a room, he is quietly and pleasantly told what rooms
are vacant, what are their rates, and allowed to make a selection. He
does not have to tip a porter or a bell-boy for every little favor.
From the proprietor to the “boots” everyone in the hotel is at your
service and nothing to pay—not then. Of course you expect to do the
right thing when you leave, but for the time this cordial service seems
to be spontaneous and animated with a sincere desire for your comfort.
In Germany the proprietor of the hotel keeps up the pretense that you
are his guest, and every day he inquires after your welfare. In the
German restaurants the proprietor walks around and speaks pleasantly
to everyone and you feel that he is really glad to see you without
associating that sensation with the payment of the bill. Everything
and everybody in the hotel is at your service. There is always a
reading-room with newspapers, often American papers, smoking-rooms,
lounging-rooms, and comfortable parlors where it is a pleasure to spend
the time. In nearly every hotel there is a free library, mostly books
of the country, but always some in English. At the Parker House in
Boston, my last stopping-place in America, I had been surprised and
delighted to find a well-selected library for the use of the guests of
the hotel. I supposed that was a Boston innovation and was prepared
to brag about it, but I have found a similar library in nearly every
hotel at which I have stayed in Europe. An American hotel does not give
half the space to the general use and comfort of guests that a European
hotel does, and what it does offer is usually only a big office and
stiff parlors in which people stay only when they can find nowhere else
to go.
European cooking is far ahead of American cooking. A cook in this
country is not an accident, not a man or woman who is cooking until a
better job offers. A cook is something between a professional man and
a skilled mechanic, and young men learn the business as thoroughly as
they do engineering or banking. Labor is cheap, so that in the kitchen
as well as in the front rooms there is always plenty of service, and
it is by people who are brought up to it and not by boys or men who
are down on their luck. I expected to be “fussy” over the cooking and
cookery, but I have hardly had a poor meal in Europe and not a bad one
at all. There is not much difference in the stuff used or in the way of
serving, but the work is better done, and all the good American dishes
like beefsteak and eggs are found in Europe looking as natural as life.
The Europeans do more with mutton, veal and fish and less with beef
than our cooks, and the small farms raise vegetables that are delicious.
When one leaves the hotel the proprietor or manager always comes to
see him off and say good-by. There isn’t such a crowd of servants
waiting for tips as is generally alleged. Your porter, who has polished
your shoes and carried your baggage, is on hand, and the chambermaid
casually meets you on the stairs. The head waiter expects a tip and
so does the hall porter, and there are usually a couple of other
attendants ready to receive, but not obnoxiously so. I learned that
the best way to do was to be as polite as the Europeans. A few minutes
before time to leave I would say good-by to the head waiter, the
smoking-room attendant, and any other who had rendered special service,
giving each a small tip which he always took with many expressions of
good-will and appreciation. That prevented any assemblage at the door
when we left, and the last good-bys and tips were only expected by
the man who brought the baggage and the hall porter who put us in the
carriage and gave me full information as regards the coming journey and
the next stop.
The rates at European hotels are much less than in ours. The prices
for rooms are about half what they would be in America for similar
accommodations in the same-sized places. The restaurant prices are a
little less than ours. I should say that in Europe you pay about $2 to
$3 a day for what would cost $3 to $4 in America. In small hotels and
boarding-houses the same ratio is maintained, and there is no doubt
in my mind that “room and board” on a European trip for an American
is little more than half what it would be for a European in America.
In these prices I include tips. The ordinary American will greatly
enjoy life on the continent, provided, of course, he does not always
eat at the “table d’hôte,” or regular meal-table, which is monotonous
everywhere. And also he must not want a room with a bath, or an
elevator. Very few buildings in Europe have elevators, and the natives
do not use them. It is an inconvenience to walk up two or three flights
of stairs to your room, but in the hotels that do not have “lifts”
you must remember that is the way the nobility and everybody does in
Europe, and quit kicking. You can get a bath in the bathroom or you
can scrub yourself with the contents of the washbowl, after you have
had some experience. That is the custom of the country, and the thing
to do is not to be telling about the rooms with baths in America, but
accept the situation, look pleasant, and you will get along all right.
It is the same way in Europe that it is everywhere else in this vale
of tears: if you look for trouble you easily find it, and if you are
constantly talking and thinking of the conveniences which American
customs have provided and which are not used in Europe, you can make
yourself miserable and unpopular. But if you accept the ways of the
country, enjoy the novelties even if they seem old-fashioned and
strange, you will have a grand old time and will make yourself solid
with the people.
[Illustration]
In Europe the name “United States” is rarely used. We are “Americans.”
The people of Canada are Canadians and the people of the United
States have the sole use of the title of Americans. They consider us
the whole thing, and we always admit it without argument. There is
a general impression in the Old World that all Americans are rich.
There is a general impression that sometime we will fight the rest
of the world, and I think there is an impression that we will lick.
So far as I can see, Americans are treated about as well as dukes,
and the ways of traveling are greased for them by everybody along the
line. (Grease to be paid for, of course.) In two months’ travel on the
continent, usually not knowing the language, we have never missed a
train or connection, been mistreated or imposed upon, allowed to suffer
inconvenience or annoyance. That is a record it would be hard to equal
in America.
ENGLAND.
IN OLD, OLD ENGLAND.
WARWICK, ENGLAND, June 12, 1905.
When the American tourist reaches old England he has a large and
well-selected stock of emotions which he can feel, in addition to
the thanks in his heart that the short but “nahsty” trip across the
Irish sea is at an end. No matter where an individual’s ancestors may
have come from, the mother country of America is England. Up to 1776
our history was only English history, our customs English customs,
our laws English laws, and when the Continental army began shooting
at the British soldiers, the Continental Congress accompanied every
volley with a resolution declaring that the colonists had no desire
to separate from England, but were only fighting in self-defense.
Our laws, our language, our literature are English. The fight of the
parliament against the crown has reached practically the same result in
England that the revolution of Congress against King George did by a
short cut.
This is the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens, who are just
as much American as English, except for the accident of birthplace.
This is the home of our heroes of medieval times, of Ivanhoe, Richard
the Lion-hearted, and the Black Prince. This is the country which is
familiar to us by name and history through Scott and Thackeray, Dickens
and Lytton, and a hundred other authors whose works are read in the
American homes. We are not strangers to such names as Kenilworth,
York, Shrewsbury, Chester, Stratford, Oxford, Cambridge, and in fact
nearly every town on the map of England. This is more like the visit to
a long-absent friend and not an entrance into a foreign land. We are
now going among places of which we have read and among the monuments
and works of men whom we have held close to our hearts through the
pictures painted for us by our authors. We are going to actually see
the things we have so often read about and which we have so much
dreamed about.
[Illustration]
Instead of beginning at London, the great center of trade, we are going
to begin here at Warwick, the center of the oldest Old England left on
earth. In Warwick we are five miles from Kenilworth, the castle Scott
made famous, seven miles from Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was
born, and surrounded by beautiful rural England, with a fine old castle
only five minutes walk away, and churches and buildings which were old
when Columbus discovered America.
The first stop in England was at Chester, which was a town of
importance when Julius Cæsar was doing business. The walls the Romans
built were demolished by the Saxons but rebuilt, and Chester was the
last place in England to surrender to William the Conqueror. During the
Middle Ages it was the scene of more fights and sieges and the walls
then completed are the same walls which we walked on this week. The
walls are from ten to twenty feet wide at the top, twenty to thirty
feet high, and little towers occupy the angles and corners. From the
wall of Chester Charles the First saw the parliamentary army defeat
his soldiers, and when Chester surrendered, Cromwell’s men had all of
England.
There are two main streets in Chester, crossing each other at the
center of the town and terminating in the four city gates. All the
other streets of the old town are alleys from six to ten feet wide. But
the curious part of Chester is “the Rows.” Along a good part of the
main streets there is a second floor, or rather a stone roof over the
sidewalks. On this upstairs street are stores and shops, and business
is going on as briskly along the second story as on the ground floor.
As there were originally but the two streets in Chester, the people
simply doubled the street capacity,—a thousand years ago and they
haven’t changed. In fact, I suppose a great many people in Chester who
have never been out of the neighborhood, think that is the proper and
usual way of arranging business streets in all towns.
[Illustration]
The greatest place in England is Stratford-on-Avon, because Shakespeare
was born there. A great many English towns have ancient cathedrals and
are the birthplaces or the deathplaces of kings and queens, dukes and
ministers, but Stratford is the only place where Shakespeare was born
and there has been but one Shakespeare. Many great men have several
birthplaces, or perhaps I should say, several towns claim to be the
only birthplace. But Stratford-on-Avon is a thousand years old or
more, and has never done anything for the world except to provide
William Shakespeare, and the world says that is enough to last another
thousand. I stood in the church and saw the slab which covers the
dust of the great poet and man-knower. By his side are the graves of
his wife and daughter. Around the chancel are the inscriptions and
memorials which tell of the admiration and affection of the world.
[Illustration]
The house where the poet was born is now owned by a public association,
and great pains have been taken to gather all the relics of his
lifetime that have been spared. The rooms are arranged just as they
were when his father, a highly respected tradesman who reached the
dignity of a justice of the peace, was running his little shop and
William was poaching in the neighboring fields and streams and sparking
Anne Hathaway, whose home was a mile away. The Hathaway cottage is
kept in the same way as the Shakespeare house, and we wandered through
the low rooms and up the narrow stairs just as they were nearly four
centuries ago. In talking with an Englishman at Warwick he said he
believed the Americans thought more of Shakespeare than the English
did, for more of them went to Stratford. Of course that is hardly
correct, for the English all love Shakespeare, but they probably do
not visit his birthplace so much as American travelers do. Practically
every American goes to Stratford, some of them perhaps just because
the others do. Coming over on the ship I was being enlightened by an
aggressive American on just what was what. “Going to Stratford?” he
said. I assented. “Yes, you’ll go there and look around and wonder
what in hell you went there for.” But that is not the sentiment which
fills the hearts of most of the cousins from across the ocean, as is
evidenced by the reverential awe and the thorough appreciation of every
nook and corner shown by them when they are in the historic village.
The river Avon is about the size of Cow creek, and looks a good deal
like it. The banks are low and the meadows and fields come right to
them, without the timber that borders most American streams. The town
of Stratford is old-fashioned and quaint. Just as in Warwick, the
hotels or inns bear such names as “The Red Dog,” “The Bull and Cow,”
“The Golden Lion,” a style of nomenclature which I had always half-way
thought was imaginary with the great authors who have made such names
familiar. Large, stately trees line the roads and stone walls and
hedges conceal the fields and farms, revealing just enough to enhance
the beauty of the landscape. One can dreamily think as he rides in the
coach from Stratford to Warwick that he is back in the days of Queen
Elizabeth and half expect ye knights and ladies to appear before the
gate of Kenilworth, but as he does so there is a sudden whir-r-r, a
cloud of dust and a smell, and the automobile of the twentieth century
has rudely broken the dream.
[Illustration]