To Brussels.—The old and new city.—The paradise and purgatory of dogs.—The Hôtel de Ville and Grand Place.—St. Gudule.—The picture galleries.—Wiertz and his odd paintings.—Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte Brontë's school.—The scene of "Villette."
To Brussels.—The old and new city.—The paradise and purgatory of dogs.—The Hôtel de Ville and Grand Place.—St. Gudule.—The picture galleries.—Wiertz and his odd paintings.—Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte Brontë's school.—The scene of "Villette."
THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle, their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the —— family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.
Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is passed, the low hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for, coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Müller leaned upon her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields beneath a level sky, the windmills beganto appear in the distance, slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly resolved into our original element—dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.
The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but joined to it—like an old man with a gay young wife—is the beautiful Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that passes upon the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed puff-balls to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine which is the most forlorn—the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray, barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family offriends. With them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop window,—straggling along one after another in a way that would have been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here, where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of the old city—a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,—who lost their heads while striving to gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish Inquisition,—and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hôtel de Ville, with its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows. It comes to me like a picture now—the gathering shadows of a summer night, the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of the old women nodding over their flowers.
Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome, and dimensions nobody reads. If I could only tell you how far extending they are, both upon earth and towards heaven—how they seem not so much to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,—one, far above the grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before the altar—workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the drone of white-robedpriests, the low, full chant from hidden singers, echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust—whose works have followed him.
After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture galleries in the old palaces of the city,—galleries of modern Belgian art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one, Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through peep-holes—one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage occupantwas ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window, an oldconciergeleaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed upon the walls.
Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its laces. We visited one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny, cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle and thread, for thepointlace, or twisting the bobbins among the innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for thepoint appliqué. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome labor—coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot, handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs,barbesthat fairly pierced our hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm—that as we turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.
Table-d'hôteover, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?" queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now escaped from the thraldom of a Frenchpensionnat.
"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for once by ourselves. If there were only something to see—somewhere to go."
"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the scene ofVillettelaid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte Brontë's boarding-school here? I am sure it is. Suppose we seek it out—we four girls alone."
"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be fine?" chorused the others. There was a hasty search through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could we find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that were almost certainties.
"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish we had aVillette."
"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.
"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.
Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,—the elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,—and sallied out at last into the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted liberty. Acommissionairegave us the address of the bookstore we sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery, and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the shimmering sunlight.But to AxelleVillettewas more real than that June day.
"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and at night?—how a young English stranger conducted her across the park, she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from the soaked leaves? This must be the park."
When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one side.
"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place. Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,—being frightened,—and losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she descended, and found, instead of the inn, thepensionnatof Madame Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "Wasthe scene ofVillettelaid in Brussels?" and "Isthe school really here?" and "Youdon'tsay so!" though we had insisted upon it from the first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O,dotell us how we may find it."
"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused.
"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there."
"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard."
We nudged each other significantly.
"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you—"
"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,—an awe-struck group,—before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we read,—
"pensionnat de demoiselles.Héger—Parent."
"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we will ring the bell."
"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.
"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her reply. "We will only ask permission to see the garden, and as the portress will doubtless speak nothing but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must act as mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each other, and at the steps leading into the upper town, as though they meditated flight. "I cannot," and "Icannot," said each one of the shrinking group.
Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one long, strong pull. "Now," she said, quietly, "some one of you must speak. You are ladies: you will not run away."
And they accepted the situation.
We were shown into a smallsalon, where presently there entered to us a brisk, sharp-featured little French woman,—a teacher in the establishment,—who smiled a courteous welcome from out her black eyes as we apologized for the intrusion, and made known our wishes.
"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who, having learned to know and love Charlotte Brontë through her books, desire to see the garden of which she wrote inVillette."
"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response. "Americans often come to visit the school and the garden."
"Then thisisthe school where she was for so long a time?" we burst out simultaneously, forgetting our little prepared speeches.
"Yes,mesdemoiselles;I also was a pupil at thattime," was the reply. We viewed the dark little woman with sudden awe.
"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was she like—like—" We could think of no comparison that would do justice to the subject.
The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She was just a quiet little thing, in no way remarkable. I am sure," she added, "we did not think her a genius; and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"
"But they aresowonderful!" ventured one of our number, gushingly.
"They are very untrue," she replied, while something like a spark shot from the dark eyes.
O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are to be judged?
"Madame Héger," she went on, "who still has charge of the school, is a most excellent lady, and not at all the person described as 'Madame Beck.'"
"And M. Paul Emmanuel,—Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"—we ventured to suggest with some timidity.
"Is Madame Héger's husband, and was at that time," she replied, with a little angry toss of the head. After this terrible revelation there was nothing more to be said.
She led the way through a narrow passage, and opening a door at the end, we stepped into the garden. We had passed the class-rooms on our right—where, "on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte and Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale faces, the shy figures bending over the desk in the gathering dusk.
The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte's time, new class-rooms having been added, which cut off something from its length. But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes. Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow space. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the "allée défendue," which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours, when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant pear trees,—huge, misshapen, gnarled,—that bore no fruit to us but associations vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer twilight, the ghost ofVillettewas wont to steal, and buried at the foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we knew poor Lucy's love-letters were hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen, laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted—that was all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot associated in one's mind with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet how full the place was to us! The very leaves overhead, the stones in the walls around us, whispered a story, as we walked to and fro where little feet, that tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years before.
"May we take one leaf—only one?" we asked, as we turned away.
"As many as you please;" and the little French woman grasped at the leaves growing thick and dark above her head. We plucked them with our own hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many thanks, and our adieus, we came away.
"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had returned to the hotel and our friends. They only smiled their unbelief.
"Do you not know—can you not see—O, do you not feel?" we cried, displaying our glistening trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere but upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte Brontë used to walk and dream?"
And our words carried conviction to their hearts.
To Waterloo.—Beggars and guides.—The Mound.—Chateau Hougomont.—Victor Hugo's "sunken road."—Antwerp.—A visit to the cathedral.—A drive about the city.—An excursion to Ghent.—The funeral services in the cathedral.—"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"—The watch-tower.—The Friday-market square.—The nunnery.—Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of Bruges."
To Waterloo.—Beggars and guides.—The Mound.—Chateau Hougomont.—Victor Hugo's "sunken road."—Antwerp.—A visit to the cathedral.—A drive about the city.—An excursion to Ghent.—The funeral services in the cathedral.—"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"—The watch-tower.—The Friday-market square.—The nunnery.—Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of Bruges."
WE could not leave the city without driving out to the battle-field of Waterloo. It is about a dozen miles to The Mound, and you may take the public coach if you choose—it runs daily. Our party being large, we preferred to engage a carriage.
We left the house after breakfast, and passed through the wide, delightful avenues of the Forêt de Soignes,—the Bois de Boulogne of Brussels,—then across the peaceful country which seemed never to have known anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies the village which gave its name to the battle-field though the thickest of the fight was not there. In an old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie intombed many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon pall upon the taste, and nothing less than Wellington or Napoleon himself could have awakened a spark ofinterest in us by this time. Then, too, the vivid present blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with summer scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields. A swarm of little barefooted beggars importuned us, turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only a maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop, satisfied or despairing, gave way to another, and the guides were almost as annoying as the beggars. They walk for miles out of their villages to forestall each other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come from Brussels on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains. As you near the centre of interest, competition is greater, and their demands proportionately less. We refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and finally picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue blouse, who hung upon the step of the carriage, or ran beside it for the last mile or two of the distance. The village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings of brick. We rolled through it without stopping, and out again between the quiet, smiling fields, our minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they had swarmed once with an army; that in this little village we had just left—dull, half asleep in the sunshine—dreadful slaughter had held high carnival one July day, not many years before. Even when the guide, clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the story of the struggle in apatoisall his own, hardly a shadow of the scene was presented to us.
As our horses slackened their pace, he stepped down from his perch to gather a nosegay of the flowers by the road-side, making no pause in his mechanical narrative—ofhow the Anglo-Belgian army were gathered upon this road and the fields back to the wood, on the last day of the fight; how many of the officers had been called at a moment's notice from the gayeties at Brussels, and more than one was found dead upon the field the next day, under the soaking rain, dressed as for a ball. He pushed back his visorless cap, uttering an exclamation over the heat, and adding, in the same breath, that just here, about Mont St. Jean, the battle waged fiercely in the afternoon, when Ney, with his brave cuirassiers, tried in vain to carry the position; and all the time, the summer sounds of twittering birds and hum of locusts were in our ears; the barefooted children still turned upon their axles beside the carriage wheels as we rolled along, and that other day seemed so far away, that we could neither bring it near nor realize it. One grim reminder of the past rose in the distance, and, as we drew near, swelled and grew before our eyes. It was the huge mound of earth raised two hundred feet, to commemorate the victory of the allies. Hills were cut down, the very face of nature changed for miles around, to rear this monument to pride and vain-glory. Upon its summit crouches the Belgian lion.
We turn from the paved road, when we have reached what seems to be a mass of unsightly ruins, with only a tumbling outbuilding left here and there. The whole is enclosed by a wall, which skirts also an orchard, neglected, grown to weeds. The carriage stops before the great gates. It is very cool and quiet in the shaded angle of the battered wall as we step down. It has been broken and chipped as if by pick-axes.Ah! the shot struck hardest here. The top of the low wall is irregular; the bricks have been knocked out; the dust has sifted down; the mosses have gathered, and a fringe of grass follows all its length. Even sweet wild flowers blossom where the muskets rested in those dreadful days. At intervals, half way up its height, a brick is missing. Accident? Ah, no; hastily constructed loopholes, through which the English fired at first, before the horrible time when they beat each other down with the butts of their guns while they fought hand to hand here, like wild beasts.
We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered room or two remain, where the greed that gloats even over the field of blood offerssouvenirsof the place importunately. In the centre of this court-yard may still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It must have given out blood for many a day. Upon one side are the remains of the building used for a hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where the wounded and dying perished in torment, when the French succeeded in firing the chateau; for this isHougomont.
We came out at the gateway where we had entered; crossed the slope under the shadow of the branches from the apple trees, and followed the road winding through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on either side rose the nodding crests; and among them wild flowers, purple, scarlet, and blue, fairly dazzled our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain in the sunshine. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you have been sown with heroes; you have been enriched with blood!"
It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound to the narrow foothold beside the platform where rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once there, we held to every possible support in the hurricane of wind that seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic farm and village spread out before our eyes. Only a couple of miles cover all the battle-field—the smallest where grand armies ever met; but the slaughter was the more terrible.
Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is a museum of curiosities. Here are queer old helmets worn by the cuirassiers, hacked and rust-stained; broken swords, and old-fashioned muskets; buttons, and bullets even—everything that could be garnered after such a sowing of the earth.
In unquestioning faith we bought buttons stained with mildew, and bearing upon them, in raised letters, the number of a regiment. Alas! reason told us, later, that the buttons disposed of annually here would supply an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they are buried now in quantities, to be exhumed as often as the supply fails.
I remembered Victor Hugo to have said inLes Misérablessomething in regard to a sunken road here, which proved a pitfall to the French, and helped, in his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But we had seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the guide, who said that Victor Hugo spent a fortnight examining the ground before writing that description of the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite true. There is now no road such as he described;that was all changed when the earth was scraped together to form The Mound."
We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos and trophies, and served by an elderly woman, whose father had been a sergeant in the Belgian army, then late in the afternoon drove back to town.
The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and then we were off to Antwerp—only an hour's ride. I will tell you nothing about the former wealth and commercial activity of the city—that in the sixteenth century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &c., &c. For all these interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook of Northern Germany. As soon as we had secured rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral. The houses of the people have crept close to it, until many of them, old and gray, have fairly grown to it, like barnacles to a ship; or it seemed as though they had built their nests, like the rooks, under the moss-grown eaves. The interior of the cathedral was singularly grand and open. As we threw our shawls about us—a precaution never omitted—an old man shuffled out from a dark corner to show the church, take ourfrancs, and pull aside the curtains from before the principal pictures, if so dignified a name as curtain can be applied to the dusty, brown cambric that obstructed our vision. Rubens's finest pictures are here, and indeed the city abounds in all that is best of Flemish art,—most justly, since it was the birthplace of its master. Rubens in the flesh we had seen at the Louvre; the spiritual manifestation was reserved for Antwerp; and to recall the city is to recall a series of visions of which one may not speak lightly.
Across, from the cathedral, upon a wide wooden bench in the market-place we sat a moment to consider our ways—the signal for the immediate swooping down upon us of guides and carriages, and the result of which was, our departure in a couple of dingy open vehicles to finish the city. We crawled about the town like a diminutive funeral procession, dismounting at the Church of St. Jacques to see the pictures, with which it is filled. In one of the chapels was a young American artist, copying Rubens's picture of "A Holy Family"—the one in which his two wives and others of his family enact the part of Mary, Martha, St. Jerome, &c. Behind the high altar is the tomb of Rubens, with an inscription of sufficient length to extinguish an ordinary man. There was a museum, too, in the city, rich in the works of Rubens and Vandyck, and the fine park in the new part of the town, as well as the massive docks built by the first Napoleon, were yet to be seen. The older members of the party were in the first carriage, and received any amount of valuable information, which was transmitted to us who followed in a succession of shouts sounding as much like "fire!" as anything else, with all manner of beckoning, and pointing, and wild throwing up of arms, that undoubtedly gave vent to their feelings, but brought only confusion and distraction to our minds. Not to be outdone, our driver began a series of utterly unintelligible explanations, the only part of which we understood in the least was, when pointing to the docks, he ejaculated, "Napoleon!" At that we nodded our heads frantically, which only encouraged him to go on. Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like all theothers, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics" upon a rickety sign over the door. There were old casks, and anchors, and ropes, and rotting wood all around, for it was down upon the wharves. We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded so well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation in an unknown tongue. What do you suppose it was all about? Can it be that he was explaining the principles of hydraulics?
We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges. We left the train at Ghent to walk up through the narrow streets, that have no sidewalks, to the cathedral. There was a funeral within. The driver of the hearse profusely decorated with inverted feather dusters, was comfortably smoking his pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with great, glassy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the aisle to the screen beside the high altar, where we looked between the tombs and the monuments, upon the long procession of men circling around the coffin in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As there were only about a dozen candles in all, and each must hold one while he passed the coffin, it was a piece of dexterity, at least, to manage them, which so engrossed our attention, that we caught but an occasional sentence from our guide's whispered story of the seventh bishop of Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the cathedral, and around whose marble feet we were trying to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we ejaculated, absently, our eyes anxiously fixed upon one man to whom had been given no candle as yet); of thetall brass candlesticks, supposed to have been brought from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more of fragmentary information, forgotten now. The whole interior of the church is rich in decoration, black and white marble predominating, with pictures of the early Flemish school filling every available space. Once out of the church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and drove about the city, our little guide standing beside the driver, back to the horses most of the time, to pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most edifying spectacle it would have been anywhere else. Do read Henry Taylor's "Philip von Artevelde" before going to Ghent: the mingled romance and history throw a charm about the place and people which bare history can never give. Veritable Yankees these old Flemish weavers seem to have been, with a touch of the Irish in their composition—always up in arms for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a head. There is a new part to the city, with a grand opera-house, shaded promenades and palatial dwellings, but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets, and the old market squares, in which every stone could tell a story.
We saw the tall, brick watch-tower, where still hangs the bell that tolled,—
"I am Roland, I am Roland! There is victory in the land,"
and the oldHôtelde Ville, of conglomerate architecture, one side of which, in the loveliest flamboyant Gothic imaginable, seems crumbling away from its very richness. In the Friday-market square—it chancing to be Friday—was a score of bustling busybodies,swarming like bees. Here, in the old, quarrelsome times, battles were fought between the different guilds. I say battles, because at one time fifteen hundred were slain in this very square. Such a peaceful old square as it seemed to be the day of our visit! the old gray houses, that have echoed to the sound of strife, fairly smiling in the sunshine, and the market women kneeling upon the stones which have run with blood. At one corner rose a tower, and half way up its height may still be seen the iron rod, over which was hung imperfect linen, to shame the weaver who had dared to offer it in the market.
There is a great nunnery here in Ghent—a town of itself, surrounded by a moat and a wall, where are six hundred or more sisters, from families high and low, who tend the sick, weave lace, and mortify the flesh in black robes and white veils. When they become weary of it, they may return to the world, the flesh, and—their homes: no vows bind them. We drove along the streets past the cell-like houses where they dwell. Over the door of each was the name of her patron saint. It seemed a quiet retreat, a noiseless city, notwithstanding the six hundred women! But by far the most interesting sight, because the most ancient in the quaint old city, was the archway and turret of the old royal castle, erected a thousand years ago; only this gateway remains. Here John o' Gaunt was born. Built all round, and joined to it, are houses of more recent date, themselves old and tottering, and the arch beneath which kings and queens rode once, is now the entrance to a cotton factory.
We had only a few hours at Bruges—the city oncemore powerful than Antwerp even, but where not a house has been raised for a hundred years, and where nearly a third of its inhabitants are paupers. But decay and dilapidation are strong elements of the picturesque, and nothing seen that day was more charming than a piece of wall, still standing, belonging to the old Charles V.'s palace—honey-combed, black, of florid Gothic architecture, rising from the quiet waters of the canal. At one end it threw an arch over the street, with a latticed window above it, beneath which we passed, after crossing the bridge. More than one picture of Bruges rests within my memory—its canals spanned by the picturesque bridges, and overhung with willows that dipped their long branches into the water, and the quaint old houses with many-stepped gables, rising sheer from the stream.
But with all its past grandeur, the old city is best known to us Americans through the chimes from its belfry tower, and we were some of Longfellow's pilgrims. We drove into the great paved Place under the shadow of the belfry tower when its shadows were growing long, and watched the stragglers across the square—women in queer black-hooded cloaks; chubby little blue-eyed maidens with school-books in hand; a party of tourists; and last, but by no means least, the ubiquitous American girl, with an immense bow on the back of her dress, and her eye fixed steadily upon the milliner's shop just visible around the corner. Almost three hundred feet the dingy brick tower rose above us, with low wings on either side, where were once the halls of some guilds, in the days when the tower wasa lookout to warn of coming foes,—when the square was planned for defence. In a little court-yard, gained by passing under its arch, we watched and listened, until at last the sweet tinkle of the silver-toned bells broke the hush of waiting—so far away, so heavenly, we held our breath, lest we should lose the sound that fell
"Like the psalms from some old cloister when the nuns sing in the choir,And the great bell tolled among them like the chanting of a friar."
We came back to Antwerp that night, tired, but triumphant, feeling as though we had read a page from an old book, or sung a strain from an old song.
Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.—Dutch sights and ways.—The pretty milk-carriers.—The tea-gardens.—Preparations for the Sabbath.—An English chapel.—"The Lord's barn."—From Rotterdam to the Hague.—The queen's "House in the Wood."—Pictures in private drawing-rooms.—The bazaar.—An evening in a Dutch tea-garden.—Amsterdam to a stranger.—The "sights."—The Jews' quarter.—The family whose home was upon the canals.—Out of the city.—The pilgrims.
Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.—Dutch sights and ways.—The pretty milk-carriers.—The tea-gardens.—Preparations for the Sabbath.—An English chapel.—"The Lord's barn."—From Rotterdam to the Hague.—The queen's "House in the Wood."—Pictures in private drawing-rooms.—The bazaar.—An evening in a Dutch tea-garden.—Amsterdam to a stranger.—The "sights."—The Jews' quarter.—The family whose home was upon the canals.—Out of the city.—The pilgrims.
AT nine o'clock, the next morning, we left Antwerp for Rotterdam. Two hours by rail brought us to a place with an unpronounceable name, ending in "djk," where we were to take a steamer. How delightful, after the dust and heat of the railway carriage, were the two hours that followed! The day was charming, the passengers numerous, but scattered about the clean, white deck, picturesquely, upon the little camp stools, drinking brandy and water as a preventive to what seemed impossible, eating fruit, reading, chatting, or pleased, like ourselves, with the panorama before their eyes. In and out of the intricate passages to the sea we steamed, the land and water all around us level as a floor; the only sign of life theslow-revolving arms of the windmills, near and far, with here and there a solitary mansion shut in by tall trees; or, as we wound in and out among the islands fringed with green rushes, and waving grasses that fairly came out into the water to meet us, and sailed up the Meuse, the odd Dutch villages that had turned their backs to the river, though their feet were still in the water over which hung rude wooden balconies, or still ruder bay-windows, filled with pots of flowers. This monotonous stretch of sea and land might grow tiresome after a while, but there was something peculiarly restful in that sail up the wide mouth of the river, beckoned on by the solemn arms of the windmills.
When we reached Rotterdam, how strange it was to find, instead of a row of houses across from our hotel, a wharf and a row of ships! Such a great, comfortable room as awaited us! with deep, wide arm-chairs, a heavy round table suggesting endless teas, and toast unlimited, and everything else after the same hearty, substantial manner. There was no paper upon the walls, but, in its place, paintings upon canvas. Delilah sat over the mantel, with the head of the sleeping Samson in her lap, and Rebekah and the thirsty camels were behind our bed curtains. From the wide windows we watched the loading and unloading of the ships, while the song of the sailors came in on the evening breeze, and with it, we half-fancied, the odor of sandal-wood and spices from the East Indiamen anchored across the way. Our hotel was upon the Boompjes, the quay that borders the river; but through nearly all the streets flow the canals, deep enough to float large ships. You can appreciate theadvantage of sailing a ship to the very door of one's warehouse, as you might drive a cart up to unload; and you can imagine, perhaps, the peculiar appearance of the city, with its mingled masts and chimneys, its irregular, but by no means picturesque, houses, and the inhabitants equally at home upon water or land. Among the women of the lower classes may still be seen some national peculiarities in dress, shown principally in the startling ornaments—twisted gold wire horns, and balls, and rings of mammoth size thrust out from their caps just above their ears. Whether their bare red arms would come under the head of dress, might be questioned; but a national peculiarity they certainly were, and unlike anything ever seen before in the way of human flesh. Was that painfully deep magenta hue nature or art? We could never tell. There were some very pretty faces among the girls carrying milk about the city in bright brass cans, or in pails suspended from a yoke over their shoulders—faces of one type, round, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, with the mouth called rosebud by poets, and bewitching little brown noses of an upward tendency. As they all wore clean purple calico gowns, and had each a small white cap on their heads, the resemblance among them was rather striking. These caps left the whole top of the head exposed to the sun. Only an iron-clad, fire-proof brain could endure it, I am sure.
Not a beggar did we see anywhere in Holland. The people seemed thoroughly industrious and thrifty. A gentleman connected with the civil service there—an agreeable, cultivated man, who had been half over the world, written a book or two, and parted his hair inthe middle—gave the people credit for all these, with many more good qualities, and added, "They are the simplest minded people in the world. Why, would you believe it, one of the canal bridges was run into and broken down, the other day,—a fortnight ago,—and it has been town talk ever since. No two men meet upon the street without, 'Have you heard about the bridge?'" And sure enough, when we reached the scene of the accident, in our after-dinner walk through the city, quite a crowd was collected to watch the passage of a temporary ferry-boat, the simplest contrivance imaginable, only an old barge pulled back and forth by ropes. Still later we found the entrance to a narrow street choked with people, though nothing more unusual seemed to be taking place than the bringing out of a table and a few chairs.
Upon the outskirts of the city are pleasant tea-gardens, often attached to club-rooms, where concerts are held Sunday evenings, attended by the upper classes. We walked through one, over the pebbled paths, and among the deserted tables, and then returned to see more of the town. It was Saturday night. All the little girls upon the street had their locks twisted up in papers so tight and fast that they could shut neither eyes nor mouth, but seemed to be in a continual state of wonderment. All their mothers were down upon their hands and knees, scrubbing the doorsteps and sidewalk, in preparation for the Sabbath. The streets were dirty and uninviting with a few exceptions, yet hardly more so than could be expected, when you remember that nearly the whole city is a line of wharves; but we felt no disposition to walk throughit in our slippers, as the guide book in praising its cleanliness, says you may. What an advantage it would be to the world if the compilers of guide-books would only visit the places they describe so graphically! We spent a quiet Sabbath here—the fourth of July—with not so much as a torpedo to disturb its serenity or mark the day, attending church at the English chapel, and joining in the responses led by a clear soprano voice behind us, which we had some desire to locate; but when we turned, at the conclusion of the service, there was only a row of horrible chignons to be seen, to none of which, I am sure, the voice belonged.
There is nothing to be seen in Rotterdam but its shipping. One great, bare church we did visit—"the Lord's barn;" for these cathedrals, stripped of altar, and image, and stained glass, and boarded into stiff pews, without the least regard to the eternal fitness of things, are ugly enough. There is somewhere here a collection of Ary Scheffer's works,—in the city I mean,—but we did not see it. It is less than an hour's ride by rail from Rotterdam to the Hague, with the same delightfully monotonous scenery all along the way—meadows smooth and green, and fields white for the harvest, separated by the almost invisible canals. No wonder the Spaniards held the Low Countries with a grasp of iron—the whole land is a garden. The Hague, being the residence of the court, is much after the pattern of all continental capitals, with wide, white streets, white stuccoed houses of regular and beautiful appearance, and fine, large parks and pleasure-grounds filled with deer, and shaded by grand old elms as largeas those in our own land, but lacking the long, sweeping branches. A mile from the city is "The House in the Wood," the private residence of the queen of the Netherlands. The wood is heavy and of funereal air, but the little palace is quite charming within, though upon the exterior only a plain brick country-house. The rooms are small, and hung with rice-paper, or embroidered white satin, with which also much of the furniture is covered. The bare floors are of polished wood, with a square of carpet in the centre, the border of which was worked by hand. "Please step over it," said the neat little old woman who was showing us through, which we accordingly did. There was a home-like air, very unpalatial, about it all,—as though the lady of the house might have been entertaining callers, or having a dress-maker in the next room. Delicate trinkets were scattered about—pretty, rare things worth a fortune, with any amount of old Dutch china in the cosy dining-room. In one of the rooms hung the portrait of a handsome young man,—just as there hang portraits of handsome young men in our houses. This was the eldest son of the queen,—heir to the throne,—who, rumor says, is still engaged in that agricultural pursuit so fascinating to young men—the sowing of wild oats. In the next room was a portrait of Queen Sophie herself—a delicate, queenly face—a face of character. The walls of the ball-room are entirely covered with paintings upon wood by Rubens and his pupils. "Speak low, if you please," said our little old woman; "the queen is in the next room, and she has a bad headache to-day." I am sure she had a dress-maker! As we stooped to examine a rug workedby the royal fingers, an attendant passed, bearing upon a silver salver the remains of her majesty's lunch.
From the palace we drove back to town to visit two private collections of paintings. It seemed odd, if not impertinent, to walk through the drawing-rooms of strangers, criticise their pictures, and fee their servants. Upon the table, in one, were thrown down carelessly the bonnet and gloves of the lady of the house. I was tempted to carry them off. Only a vigorous early training, and the thought of a long line of pious ancestors, prevented. Here were pictures from most of the earlier and some of the later Dutch artists—Paul Potter's animals, Jan Steen's pots and pans, Vandervelde's quays and luggers, and green, foaming seas, and even a touch or two from the brush of the master of Dutch art. We stopped on our way back to the hotel, at a bazaar,—a place of beguilement, with long rooms full of everything beautiful in art, everything tempting to the eye,—and after dinner went out to one of the adjacent tea-gardens. It was filled with family parties drinking tea around little tables. The music was fine, though unexpected at times, as, for instance, when a trumpet blew a startling blast, and a little man in its range sprang from his seat as though blown out of his place. It was amusing and interesting to watch the stream of promenaders circling around the musicians' stand—broad, heavily-built men, long of body, short of limbs; women "square-rigged," of easy, good-natured countenance. I doubt if there was a nerve in the whole assembly.
At noon the next day, we took the train for Amsterdam—another two hours' ride. The land began to undulateas we went towards the sea, with the shifting hillocks of sand raised by wind and wave. We passed Leyden, famous for its resistance to the Spaniards, as well as for having been the birthplace of Rembrandt and a score of lesser lights, and Haarlem, known for its great organ, and still the sand-hills rose one above the other, until they shut out everything beyond. It was only when we made a sharp turn, and struck out in a straight line for the city, that the Zuyder Zee opened before us, the curving line of land along its edge alive with windmills. We counted a hundred and twenty in sight at one time, and still did not exhaust them; so many skipped and whirled about, and refused to be counted. It hardly seems possible that the city of Amsterdam is built upon piles driven into the sand and mud. Certainly, when you have been jolted and shaken until your teeth chatter, for a long mile, in one of the hotel omnibuses from the station through the narrow streets and over the rough pavements, you will think there must be a tolerably firm foundation. Such a peaceful, sleepy, free-from-danger air, these slimy canals give to the cities! You forget that just beyond the dikes the mighty, restless sea lurks, and watches day and night for a chance to rush in and claim its own. The canals run in a succession of curves, one within the other, all through the city. Upon the quays are the dwellings and warehouses. In the narrow streets, crossing them by means of endless bridges, are the shops and dwellings of the lower classes. Looking down a street, no two houses present an unbroken line. They have all settled in their places until they nod, and leer, and wink at each other, in adecidedly sociable, intoxicated manner. The whole city, to a stranger, is a curious sight—the arched bridges over the interminable canals; the clumsy boats (for the canals are too shallow to admit anything but coasters and river boats); the antic and antiquated houses with high gables, rising in steps, to the street; the women of the lower classes, with yokes over their shoulders, and long-eared white caps on their heads, surmounted by naked straw bonnets of obsolete fashion and coal-scuttle shape, and out and from which, on either side, protruded all the wonderful tinkling ornaments of which the prophet speaks; the long quays and streets utterly bare of trees; the iron rods thrust out from the houses half way up their height, upon which all manner of garments, freshly washed, hang over the street to dry. Down in an open Place stands the dark, square palace, grand and grim, where Hortense played queen a little time while Louis Bonaparte was king of Holland. Near the palace is a national monument, for the Dutch, too, remember their brave. There are old and new churches also to be seen, but churches bare of everything which clothes cathedrals with beauty, having been stripped in the time of the reformation. I suppose one should rejoice; but we did miss the high altar, the old carved saints, and the pictures in the chapels.
Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are in the national museum here;genrepictures, many, if not most of them, but pleasant to look at, if not of the highest art; and we visited another collection of the same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several other private collections thrown open to the public.But after all, the most charming picture was the Jews' quarter of the city. I know it was horribly filthy, and so crowded that we could hardly make our way; I know it was filled with squalor and rags, and great dark eyes, and breathed an odor by no means of sanctity. The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to move, and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the lane-like streets filled with everything known and unknown in merchandise, or leaning out from the windows of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the sill, to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination about it all, a suggestion of vagabondism, of Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here no continuing city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist minister's daughter in our party.
Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water, as did our hotel, the entrance being gained from another street in front. Our room was like a town hall, with mediæval bed furniture and sofa, high chest of drawers, and great round table that might have come in with the Dutch when they took Holland. The deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was one of the river boats. Early in the morning the wife of the skipper—a square woman, brown-faced, with faded, braided hair—ran out bareheaded into the town, coming back with her arms mysteriously full. Down into the cabin she disappeared, from whence directly came a sound of sputtering and frying, with a most savory odor. Up she would come again—frying pan in hand to corroborate her statement—to call her husband to breakfast. He was never ready to respond,never, though he was doing nothing to support his energetic family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling old ropes, or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful of rope-yarn. I know he only delayed to add to his own dignity and the importance of his final advent. Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the little world as I cannot describe—a shaking out of garments, a scraping out of plates, and throwing into the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up with pots and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down again with the same, and all in the face and eyes of the town, with nevertheless the most absorbed and unconscious air imaginable. When it was over, somewhat what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear upon the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend her husband's stockings, or put on a needed patch. We left the boat still fast to the quay; but I know that some day, when it was filled with scented oils, and rouge, and borax, and all the other things exported from the manufactories here, our skipper and his wife went sailing out of the canals and along the edge of the sea or up the Rhine, the stockings all mended, and the good woman not above giving a strong pull at the ropes.
To drive about the streets of Amsterdam is slow torture, so rough are the pavings, so springless the carriages; but to roll along the smooth, wide roads in the suburbs is delightful. Upon one side is a canal, stagnant, lifeless, with a green weed growing upon its still surface, which often for a long distance entirely hides the water; beyond the canal are pleasant little gardens and a row of low, comfortable-looking wooden houseswith green doors. Before each door is a narrow bridge—a neatly-painted plank with hand-rails—thrown over the canal, to be swung around or raised like a drawbridge at night, making every man's house a moated castle. We passed a fine zoölogical garden here upon the outskirts of the city, a garden of animals that ranks next to the famous one in London; but had no time to visit it, nor did we see any of the charitable institutions in which Amsterdam excels.
"You know the pilgrim fathers?" said Emmie—whose family had preceded us by a day or two—the night after our arrival. "O, yes; had not our whole lives been straightened out after their maxims?" "Well, we've found the house where it is said they held meetings before they embarked for America. Wouldn't you like to see it?" Of course we would; in fact, it would be showing no more than proper respect to our forefathers. So six of us—women and girls—put ourselves under her guidance. We found a narrow, dirty street, the dwellers in which stared after us curiously. Between two old houses was an opening, hardly wide enough to be called an alley, hardly narrow enough to be looked upon as a gutter. Into this we crowded. "There; this is the house," said Emmie, laying her slight fingers upon the old stone wall before us. It was quite bare, and devoid of ornament or entrance, being evidently the back or side of a house. Down from the peak of the gable looked a solitary window. A rude balcony, holding a few plants, was below it, with freshly-washed clothes hanging from its rail. We rolled our eyes, experienced a shiver that may have been caused by awe or the damp chill of the spot, andcame out to find the narrow street half filled with staring men and women crowding about the point of our disappearance, while from the upper end of the street, and even around the corner, others hastened to join the whispering, wondering crowd. How could we explain? It was utterly impossible; so we came quickly and quietly away; but whether this house had ever been a church, whether the pilgrim fathers ever saw it, or indeed whether there ever were any pilgrim fathers, are questions I cannot undertake to answer.