Little Travels And Roadside Sketches Part 2

In the midst of it one of the white-veiled sisters approached us with a very mysterious air, and put down her white veil close to our ears and whispered. Were we doing anything wrong, I wondered? Were they come to that part of the service where heretics and infidels ought to quit the church? What have you to ask, O sacred, white-veiled maid?

All she said was, "Deux centiemes pour les suisses," which sum was paid; and presently the old ladies, rising from their chairs one by one, came in face of the altar, where they knelt down and said a short prayer; then, rising, unpinned their veils, and folded them up all exactly in the same folds and fas.h.i.+on, and laid them square like napkins on their heads, and tucked up their long black outer dresses, and trudged off to their convents.

The novices wear black veils, under one of which I saw a young, sad, handsome face; it was the only thing in the establishment that was the least romantic or gloomy: and, for the sake of any reader of a sentimental turn, let us hope that the poor soul has been crossed in love, and that over some soul-stirring tragedy that black curtain has fallen.

Ghent has, I believe, been called a vulgar Venice. It contains dirty ca.n.a.ls and old houses that must satisfy the most eager antiquary, though the buildings are not quite in so good preservation as others that may be seen in the Netherlands. The commercial bustle of the place seems considerable, and it contains more beer-shops than any city I ever saw.

These beer-shops seem the only amus.e.m.e.nt of the inhabitants, until, at least, the theatre shall be built, of which the elevation is now complete, a very handsome and extensive pile. There are beer-shops in the cellars of the houses, which are frequented, it is to be presumed, by the lower sort; there are beer-shops at the barriers, where the citizens and their families repair; and beer-shops in the town, glaring with gas, with long gauze blinds, however, to hide what I hear is a rather questionable reputation.

Our inn, the "Hotel of the Post," a s.p.a.cious and comfortable residence, is on a little place planted round with trees, and that seems to be the Palais Royal of the town. Three clubs, which look from without to be very comfortable, ornament this square with their gas-lamps. Here stands, too, the theatre that is to be; there is a cafe, and on evenings a military band plays the very worst music I ever remember to have heard. I went out to-night to take a quiet walk upon this place, and the horrid brazen discord of these trumpeters set me half mad.

I went to the cafe for refuge, pa.s.sing on the way a subterraneous beer-shop, where men and women were drinking to the sweet music of a cracked barrel-organ. They take in a couple of French papers at this cafe, and the same number of Belgian journals. You may imagine how well the latter are informed, when you hear that the battle of Boulogne, fought by the immortal Louis Napoleon, was not known here until some gentlemen out of Norfolk brought the news from London, and until it had travelled to Paris, and from Paris to Brussels. For a whole hour I could not get a newspaper at the cafe. The horrible bra.s.s band in the meantime had quitted the place, and now, to amuse the Ghent citizens, a couple of little boys came to the cafe and set up a small concert: one played ill on the guitar, but sang, very sweetly, plaintive French ballads; the other was the comic singer; he carried about with him a queer, long, damp-looking, mouldy white hat, with no brim. "Ecoutez," said the waiter to me, "il va faire l'Anglais; c'est tres drole!" The little rogue mounted his immense brimless hat, and, thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, began to faire l'Anglais, with a song in which swearing was the princ.i.p.al joke. We all laughed at this, and indeed the little rascal seemed to have a good deal of humor.

How they hate us, these foreigners, in Belgium as much as in France!

What lies they tell of us; how gladly they would see us humiliated!

Honest folks at home over their port-wine say, "Ay, ay, and very good reason they have too. National vanity, sir, wounded--we have beaten them so often." My dear sir, there is not a greater error in the world than this. They hate you because you are stupid, hard to please, and intolerably insolent and air-giving. I walked with an Englishman yesterday, who asked the way to a street of which he p.r.o.nounced the name very badly to a little Flemish boy: the Flemish boy did not answer; and there was my Englishman quite in a rage, shrieking in the child's ear as if he must answer. He seemed to think that it was the duty of "the sn.o.b," as he called him, to obey the gentleman. This is why we are hated--for pride. In our free country a tradesman, a lackey, or a waiter will submit to almost any given insult from a gentleman: in these benighted lands one man is as good as another; and pray G.o.d it may soon be so with us! Of all European people, which is the nation that has the most haughtiness, the strongest prejudices, the greatest reserve, the greatest dulness? I say an Englishman of the genteel cla.s.ses. An honest groom jokes and hobs-and-n.o.bs and makes his way with the kitchen-maids, for there is good social nature in the man; his master dare not unbend.

Look at him, how he scowls at you on your entering an inn-room; think how you scowl yourself to meet his scowl. To-day, as we were walking and staring about the place, a worthy old gentleman in a carriage, seeing a pair of strangers, took off his hat and bowed very gravely with his old powdered head out of the window: I am sorry to say that our first impulse was to burst out laughing--it seemed so supremely ridiculous that a stranger should notice and welcome another.

As for the notion that foreigners hate us because we have beaten them so often, my dear sir, this is the greatest error in the world: well-educated Frenchmen DO NOT BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE BEATEN THEM. A man was once ready to call me out in Paris because I said that we had beaten the French in Spain; and here before me is a French paper, with a London correspondent discoursing about Louis Buonaparte and his jacka.s.s expedition to Boulogne. "He was received at Eglintoun, it is true," says the correspondent, "but what do you think was the reason? Because the English n.o.bility were anxious to revenge upon his person (with some coups de lance) the checks which the 'grand homme' his uncle had inflicted on us in Spain."

This opinion is so general among the French, that they would laugh at you with scornful incredulity if you ventured to a.s.sert any other. Foy's history of the Spanish War does not, unluckily, go far enough. I have read a French history which hardly mentions the war in Spain, and calls the battle of Salamanca a French victory. You know how the other day, and in the teeth of all evidence, the French swore to their victory of Toulouse: and so it is with the rest; and you may set it down as pretty certain, 1st, That only a few people know the real state of things in France, as to the matter in dispute between us; 2nd, That those who do, keep the truth to themselves, and so it is as if it had never been.

These Belgians have caught up, and quite naturally, the French tone.

We are perfide Albion with them still. Here is the Ghent paper, which declares that it is beyond a doubt that Louis Napoleon was sent by the English and Lord Palmerston; and though it states in another part of the journal (from English authority) that the Prince had never seen Lord Palmerston, yet the lie will remain uppermost--the people and the editor will believe it to the end of time. . . . See to what a digression yonder little fellow in the tall hat has given rise! Let us make his picture, and have done with him.

I could not understand, in my walks about this place, which is certainly picturesque enough, and contains extraordinary charms in the shape of old gables, quaint spires, and broad s.h.i.+ning ca.n.a.ls--I could not at first comprehend why, for all this, the town was especially disagreeable to me, and have only just hit on the reason why. Sweetest Juliana, you will never guess it: it is simply this, that I have not seen a single decent-looking woman in the whole place; they look all ugly, with coa.r.s.e mouths, vulgar figures, mean mercantile faces; and so the traveller walking among them finds the pleasure of his walk excessively damped, and the impressions made upon him disagreeable.

In the Academy there are no pictures of merit; but sometimes a second-rate picture is as pleasing as the best, and one may pa.s.s an hour here very pleasantly. There is a room appropriated to Belgian artists, of which I never saw the like: they are, like all the rest of the things in this country, miserable imitations of the French school--great nude Venuses, and Junos a la David, with the drawing left out.

BRUGES.

The change from vulgar Ghent, with its ugly women and coa.r.s.e bustle, to this quiet, old, half-deserted, cleanly Bruges, was very pleasant. I have seen old men at Versailles, with shabby coats and pigtails, sunning themselves on the benches in the walls; they had seen better days, to be sure, but they were gentlemen still: and so we found, this morning, old dowager Bruges basking in the pleasant August sun, and looking if not prosperous, at least cheerful and well-bred. It is the quaintest and prettiest of all the quaint and pretty towns I have seen. A painter might spend months here, and wander from church to church, and admire old towers and pinnacles, tall gables, bright ca.n.a.ls, and pretty little patches of green garden and moss-grown wall, that reflect in the clear quiet water. Before the inn-window is a garden, from which in the early morning issues a most wonderful odor of stocks and wallflowers; next comes a road with trees of admirable green; numbers of little children are playing in this road (the place is so clean that they may roll in it all day without soiling their pinafores), and on the other side of the trees are little old-fas.h.i.+oned, dumpy, whitewashed, red-tiled houses. A poorer landscape to draw never was known, nor a pleasanter to see--the children especially, who are inordinately fat and rosy. Let it be remembered, too, that here we are out of the country of ugly women: the expression of the face is almost uniformly gentle and pleasing, and the figures of the women, wrapped in long black monk-like cloaks and hoods, very picturesque. No wonder there are so many children: the "Guide-book"

(omniscient Mr. Murray!) says there are fifteen thousand paupers in the town, and we know how such multiply. How the deuce do their children look so fat and rosy? By eating dirt-pies, I suppose. I saw a couple making a very nice savory one, and another employed in gravely sticking strips of stick betwixt the pebbles at the house-door, and so making for herself a stately garden. The men and women don't seem to have much more to do. There are a couple of tall chimneys at either suburb of the town, where no doubt manufactories are at work, but within the walls everybody seems decently idle.

We have been, of course, abroad to visit the lions. The tower in the Grand Place is very fine, and the bricks of which it is built do not yield a whit in color to the best stone. The great building round this tower is very like the pictures of the Ducal Palace at Venice; and there is a long market area, with columns down the middle, from which hung shreds of rather lean-looking meat, that would do wonders under the hands of Cattermole or Haghe. In the tower there is a chime of bells that keep ringing perpetually. They not only play tunes of themselves, and every quarter of an hour, but an individual performs selections from popular operas on them at certain periods of the morning, afternoon, and evening. I have heard to-day "Suoni la Tromba," "Son Vergin Vezzosa,"

from the "Puritani," and other airs, and very badly they were played too; for such a great monster as a tower-bell cannot be expected to imitate Madame Grisi or even Signor Lablache. Other churches indulge in the same amus.e.m.e.nt, so that one may come here and live in melody all day or night, like the young woman in Moore's "Lalla Rookh."

In the matter of art, the chief attractions of Bruges are the pictures of Hemling, that are to be seen in the churches, the hospital, and the picture-gallery of the place. There are no more pictures of Rubens to be seen, and, indeed, in the course of a fortnight, one has had quite enough of the great man and his magnificent, swaggering canvases. What a difference is here with simple Hemling and the extraordinary creations of his pencil! The hospital is particularly rich in them; and the legend there is that the painter, who had served Charles the Bold in his war against the Swiss, and his last battle and defeat, wandered back wounded and penniless to Bruges, and here found cure and shelter.

This hospital is a n.o.ble and curious sight. The great hall is almost as it was in the twelfth century; it is spanned by Saxon arches, and lighted by a multiplicity of Gothic windows of all sizes; it is very lofty, clean, and perfectly well ventilated; a screen runs across the middle of the room, to divide the male from the female patients, and we were taken to examine each ward, where the poor people seemed happier than possibly they would have been in health and starvation without it.

Great yellow blankets were on the iron beds, the linen was scrupulously clean, glittering pewter-jugs and goblets stood by the side of each patient, and they were provided with G.o.dly books (to judge from the binding), in which several were reading at leisure. Honest old comfortable nuns, in queer dresses of blue, black, white, and flannel, were bustling through the room, attending to the wants of the sick. I saw about a dozen of these kind women's faces: one was young--all were healthy and cheerful. One came with bare blue arms and a great pile of linen from an outhouse--such a grange as Cedric the Saxon might have given to a guest for the night. A couple were in a laboratory, a tall, bright, clean room, 500 years old at least. "We saw you were not very religious," said one of the old ladies, with a red, wrinkled, good-humored face, "by your behavior yesterday in chapel." And yet we did not laugh and talk as we used at college, but were profoundly affected by the scene that we saw there. It was a fete-day: a ma.s.s of Mozart was sung in the evening--not well sung, and yet so exquisitely tender and melodious, that it brought tears into our eyes. There were not above twenty people in the church: all, save three or four, were women in long black cloaks. I took them for nuns at first. They were, however, the common people of the town, very poor indeed, doubtless, for the priest's box that was brought round was not added to by most of them, and their contributions were but two-cent pieces,--five of these go to a penny; but we know the value of such, and can tell the exact worth of a poor woman's mite! The box-bearer did not seem at first willing to accept our donation--we were strangers and heretics; however, I held out my hand, and he came perforce as it were. Indeed it had only a franc in it: but que voulez-vous? I had been drinking a bottle of Rhine wine that day, and how was I to afford more? The Rhine wine is dear in this country, and costs four francs a bottle.

Well, the service proceeded. Twenty poor women, two Englishmen, four ragged beggars, cowering on the steps; and there was the priest at the altar, in a great robe of gold and damask, two little boys in white surplices serving him, holding his robe as he rose and bowed, and the money-gatherer swinging his censer, and filling the little chapel with smoke. The music pealed with wonderful sweetness; you could see the prim white heads of the nuns in their gallery. The evening light streamed down upon old statues of saints and carved brown stalls, and lighted up the head of the golden-haired Magdalen in a picture of the entombment of Christ. Over the gallery, and, as it were, a kind protectress to the poor below, stood the statue of the Virgin.

III.--WATERLOO.

It is, my dear, the happy privilege of your s.e.x in England to quit the dinner-table after the wine-bottles have once or twice gone round it, and you are thereby saved (though, to be sure, I can't tell what the ladies do up stairs)--you are saved two or three hours' excessive dulness, which the men are obliged to go through.

I ask any gentleman who reads this--the letters to my Juliana being written with an eye to publication--to remember especially how many times, how many hundred times, how many thousand times, in his hearing, the battle of Waterloo has been discussed after dinner, and to call to mind how cruelly he has been bored by the discussion. "Ah, it was lucky for us that the Prussians came up!" says one little gentleman, looking particularly wise and ominous. "Hang the Prussians!" (or, perhaps, something stronger "the Prussians!") says a stout old major on half-pay.

"We beat the French without them, sir, as beaten them we always have!

We were thundering down the hill of Belle Alliance, sir, at the backs of them, and the French were crying 'Sauve qui peut' long before the Prussians ever touched them!" And so the battle opens, and for many mortal hours, amid rounds of claret, rages over and over again.

I thought to myself considering the above things, what a fine thing it will be in after-days to say that I have been to Brussels and never seen the field of Waterloo; indeed, that I am such a philosopher as not to care a fig about the battle--nay, to regret, rather, that when Napoleon came back, the British Government had not spared their men and left him alone.

But this pitch of philosophy was unattainable. This morning, after having seen the Park, the fas.h.i.+onable boulevard, the pictures, the cafes--having sipped, I say, the sweets of every flower that grows in this paradise of Brussels, quite weary of the place, we mounted on a Namur diligence, and jingled off at four miles an hour for Waterloo.

The road is very neat and agreeable: the Forest of Soignies here and there interposes pleasantly, to give your vehicle a shade; the country, as usual, is vastly fertile and well cultivated. A farmer and the conducteur were my companions in the imperial, and could I have understood their conversation, my dear, you should have had certainly a report of it. The jargon which they talked was, indeed, most queer and puzzling--French, I believe, strangely hashed up and p.r.o.nounced, for here and there one could catch a few words of it. Now and anon, however, they condescended to speak in the purest French they could muster; and, indeed, nothing is more curious than to hear the French of the country.

You can't understand why all the people insist upon speaking it so badly. I asked the conductor if he had been at the battle; he burst out laughing like a philosopher, as he was, and said "Pas si bete." I asked the farmer whether his contributions were lighter now than in King William's time, and lighter than those in the time of the Emperor? He vowed that in war-time he had not more to pay than in time of peace (and this strange fact is vouched for by every person of every nation), and being asked wherefore the King of Holland had been ousted from his throne, replied at once, "Parceque c'etoit un voleur:" for which accusation I believe there is some show of reason, his Majesty having laid hands on much Belgian property before the lamented outbreak which cost him his crown. A vast deal of laughing and roaring pa.s.sed between these two worldly people and the postilion, whom they called "baron,"

and I thought no doubt that this talk was one of the many jokes that my companions were in the habit of making. But not so: the postilion was an actual baron, the bearer of an ancient name, the descendant of gallant gentlemen. Good heavens! what would Mrs. Trollope say to see his lords.h.i.+p here? His father the old baron had dissipated the family fortune, and here was this young n.o.bleman, at about five-and-forty, compelled to bestride a clattering Flemish stallion, and b.u.mp over dusty pavements at the rate of five miles an hour. But see the beauty of high blood: with what a calm grace the man of family accommodates himself to fortune. Far from being cast down, his lords.h.i.+p met his fate like a man: he swore and laughed the whole of the journey, and as we changed horses, condescended to partake of half a pint of Louvain beer, to which the farmer treated him--indeed the worthy rustic treated me to a gla.s.s too.

Much delight and instruction have I had in the course of the journey from my guide, philosopher, and friend, the author of "Murray's Handbook." He has gathered together, indeed, a store of information, and must, to make his single volume, have gutted many hundreds of guide-books. How the Continental ciceroni must hate him, whoever he is!

Every English party I saw had this infallible red book in their hands, and gained a vast deal of historical and general information from it.

Thus I heard, in confidence, many remarkable anecdotes of Charles V., the Duke of Alva, Count Egmont, all of which I had before perceived, with much satisfaction, not only in the "Handbook," but even in other works.

The Laureate is among the English poets evidently the great favorite of our guide: the choice does honor to his head and heart. A man must have a very strong bent for poetry, indeed, who carries Southey's works in his portmanteau, and quotes them in proper time and occasion. Of course at Waterloo a spirit like our guide's cannot fail to be deeply moved, and to turn to his favorite poet for sympathy. Hark how the laureated bard sings about the tombstones at Waterloo:--

"That temple to our hearts was hallow'd now, For many a wounded Briton there was laid, With such for help as time might then allow, From the fresh carnage of the field conveyed.

And they whom human succor could not save, Here, in its precincts, found a hasty grave.

And here, on marble tablets, set on high, In English lines by foreign workmen traced, The names familiar to an English eye, Their brethren here the fit memorial placed; Whose unadorned inscriptions briefly tell THEIR GALLANT COMRADES' rank, and where they fell.

The stateliest monument of human pride, Enriched with all magnificence of art, To honor chieftains who in victory died, Would wake no stronger feeling in the heart Than these plain tablets by the soldier's hand Raised to his comrades in a foreign land."

There are lines for you! wonderful for justice, rich in thought and novel ideas. The pa.s.sage concerning their gallant comrades' rank should be specially remarked. There indeed they lie, sure enough: the Honorable Colonel This of the Guards, Captain That of the Hussars, Major So-and-So of the Dragoons, brave men and good, who did their duty by their country on that day, and died in the performance of it.

Amen. But I confess fairly, that in looking at these tablets, I felt very much disappointed at not seeing the names of the MEN as well as the officers. Are they to be counted for nought? A few more inches of marble to each monument would have given s.p.a.ce for all the names of the men; and the men of that day were the winners of the battle. We have a right to be as grateful individually to any given private as to any given officer; their duties were very much the same. Why should the country reserve its grat.i.tude for the genteel occupiers of the army-list, and forget the gallant fellows whose humble names were written in the regimental books? In reading of the Wellington wars, and the conduct of the men engaged in them, I don't know whether to respect them or to wonder at them most. They have death, wounds, and poverty in contemplation; in possession, poverty, hard labor, hard fare, and small thanks. If they do wrong, they are handed over to the inevitable provost-marshal; if they are heroes, heroes they may be, but they remain privates still, handling the old brown-bess, starving on the old twopence a day. They grow gray in battle and victory, and after thirty years of b.l.o.o.d.y service, a young gentleman of fifteen, fresh from a preparatory school, who can scarcely read, and came but yesterday with a pinafore in to papa's dessert--such a young gentleman, I say, arrives in a spick-and-span red coat, and calmly takes the command over our veteran, who obeys him as if G.o.d and nature had ordained that so throughout time it should be.

That privates should obey, and that they should be smartly punished if they disobey, this one can understand very well. But to say obey for ever and ever--to say that Private John Styles is, by some physical disproportion, hopelessly inferior to Cornet Snooks--to say that Snooks shall have honors, epaulets, and a marble tablet if he dies, and that Styles shall fight his fight, and have his twopence a day, and when shot down shall be shovelled into a hole with other Styleses, and so forgotten; and to think that we had in the course of the last war some 400,000 of these Styleses, and some 10,000, say, of the Snooks sort--Styles being by nature exactly as honest, clever, and brave as Snooks--and to think that the 400,000 should bear this, is the wonder!

Suppose Snooks makes a speech. "Look at these Frenchmen, British soldiers," says he, "and remember who they are. Two-and-twenty years since they hurled their King from his throne and murdered him" (groans).

"They flung out of their country their ancient and famous n.o.bility--they published the audacious doctrine of equality--they made a cadet of artillery, a beggarly lawyer's son, into an Emperor, and took ignoramuses from the ranks--drummers and privates, by Jove!--of whom they made kings, generals, and marshals! Is this to be borne?" (Cries of "No! no!") "Upon them, my boys! down with these G.o.dless revolutionists, and rally round the British lion!"

So saying, Ensign Snooks (whose flag, which he can't carry, is held by a huge grizzly color-sergeant,) draws a little sword, and pipes out a feeble huzza. The men of his company, roaring curses at the Frenchmen, prepare to receive and repel a thundering charge of French cuira.s.siers.

The men fight, and Snooks is knighted because the men fought so well.

But live or die, win or lose, what do THEY get? English glory is too genteel to meddle with those humble fellows. She does not condescend to ask the names of the poor devils whom she kills in her service. Why was not every private man's name written upon the stones in Waterloo Church as well as every officer's? Five hundred pounds to the stone-cutters would have served to carve the whole catalogue, and paid the poor compliment of recognition to men who died in doing their duty. If the officers deserved a stone, the men did. But come, let us away and drop a tear over the Marquis of Anglesea's leg!

As for Waterloo, has it not been talked of enough after dinner? Here are some oats that were plucked before Hougoumont, where grow not only oats, but flouris.h.i.+ng crops of grape-shot, bayonets, and legion-of-honor crosses, in amazing profusion.

Well, though I made a vow not to talk about Waterloo either here or after dinner, there is one little secret admission that one must make after seeing it. Let an Englishman go and see that field, and he NEVER FORGETS IT. The sight is an event in his life; and, though it has been seen by millions of peaceable GENTS--grocers from Bond Street, meek attorneys from Chancery Lane, and timid tailors from Piccadilly--I will wager that there is not one of them but feels a glow as he looks at the place, and remembers that he, too, is an Englishman.

It is a wrong, egotistical, savage, unchristian feeling, and that's the truth of it. A man of peace has no right to be dazzled by that red-coated glory, and to intoxicate his vanity with those remembrances of carnage and triumph. The same sentence which tells us that on earth there ought to be peace and good-will amongst men, tells us to whom GLORY belongs.