Yesterday (14th August) we were warned by meagre fare at thetable d’hôteof our hotel that it was the vigil of some saint’s day. Our gastronomic knowledge was enlarged by the opportunity of partaking of boiled mussels. A small and delicate species of this little fish—despised of Englishmen—is found in extraordinary quantities on this coast. The sand is dotted with the shells after every ebb. The wattles of the jetties are full of them. After the first shock of having a salad bowl full of small black shells presented to one, following immediately on a delicatepotage à l’oseille, the British citizen may pursue his education in this direction fearlessly, with the certainty of becoming acquainted with a delicate and appetising morsel; and he will return to his native country with at least a toleration for “winks” and “pickled whelks,” when he sees them vended at corner stalls in Clare Market or in the Old Kent Road, for the benefit of the dangerous classes of his fellow-citizens who take their meals in the street. In these Flemish parts they are eaten with bread and butter, and even as whitebait, and by all classes.
After the meal I consulted the calendar in my pocket-book as to the approaching festival, not wishing to thrust my heretical ignorance unnecessarily on the notice of the simple folk who inhabit theLion d’Or. That obstinately Protestant document, however, informed me simply that the Rev. E. Irving was born on this day in 1792, probably not the saint I was in quest of. AChurchman’s Almanac, with which the only English lady in the place was provided, was altogether silent as to the day. In the end, therefore, I was obliged to fall back upon the bright-eyed littledemoiselle de la maison, who informed me that it was the vigil of the Assumption of the Virgin, and that thefêtewas one greatly honoured by the community of Blankenberghe.
Thus prepared, I was not surprised at being roused at five in the morning by the clumping of sabots and clinking of hammers in the street below—my room is a corner one, looking from two windows on the Rue d’Eglise, the principal street of the place, and from the other two on the Rue des Pecheurs, or “Visschurs’ Straet,” which runs across the northern end of the Rue d’Eglise. A flight of broad steps here runs up on to the Digue, or broad terrace fronting the sea, and at the foot of these steps they were erecting a temporary altar, and over it a large picture of fishermen hauling in nets full of monsters of the deep. They had brought it from the parish church, and, as such pictures go, it was by no means a bad one. Presently tricoloured flags began to appear from the windows of most of the houses in both streets, and here and there garlands of bright-coloured paper were hung across from one side to the other. As the morning advanced the bells from the church and convent called the simple folk to mass at short intervals, six, half-past seven, nine, and grand mass at ten. The call seemed to be answered by more people than we had fancied the town could have held. At eleven there was to be a procession, and now miniature altars with lighted candles appeared in many of the ground-floor windows, both of shops and private houses; and the streets were strewed with rushes and diamond-shaped pieces of coloured paper. Punctual to its time the head of the procession came round the corner of “Visschurs’ Straet,” half a dozen small boys ringing bells leading the way. Then came the beadledom of Blankenberghe, in the shape of several imposing persons in municipal uniform, then three little girls dressed in white, with bouquets, more boys, including a diligent but not very skilful drummer, six or seven other maidens in white, somewhat older than their predecessors, of whom the centre one carried some ornament of tinsel and flowers. Then came the heavy silk canopy, supported by four light poles carried by acolytes, and surrounded by choristers, of whom the leader bore a large silver censer, and under the canopy marched a shaven monk in cream-coloured brocade satin, carrying the pyx, and a less gorgeously attired brother with an open missal. Around the whole of the procession, to protect it from the accompanying crowd, were a belt of bronzed fishermen in their best clothes, some carrying staves, some hymn-books, and almost all joining in the chant which was rolled out by the priest, in a powerful bass with a kind of metallic ring in it, as they neared the altar at the foot of the steps. Here the whole procession paused, and the greater part knelt, while the priest put incense in the censer, and made his obeisances and prayed in an unknown tongue, and the censer boy swung his sweet-smelling smoke about, and the fishermen and their wives and children prayed too, in their own tongue, I suppose, and their own way, probably for fair weather and plenty of fish, and let us hope for brave and gentle hearts to meet whatever rough weather and short commons may be in store for them by land or water, Then the procession rose, and passed down the Rue d’Eglise, pausing at the corner of the little market-place opposite a rude figure of the Madonna in a niche over some pious doorway, [Greek phrase] and so out of sight. And thebourgeoisblew out the candles and took away the chairs on which, while the halt lasted, they had been kneeling from their shop windows, putting back the bathing dresses, and the shell boxes, and other sea-side merchandise, while the whole non-shopkeeping population, and the neighbours from Bruges, and the strangers who fill the hotels and lodging-houses turned out upon the splendid sands and on the Digue to enjoy theirfête-day. In the afternoon thecorps de musiqueof the communal schools of Bruges gave a gratuitous concert to us all by the permission of the communal administration of that town, as we bathed, or promenaded, or sipped coffee or liqueurs in the broad verandahs of thecaféswhich line the Digue. Gaily dressed middle-class women (of upper classes, as we understand them, I see none), in many-coloured garments and immense structures of false back hair, such as these eyes have never before seen; a sprinkling of Belgian officers in uniform, Russians, Frenchmen, Germans a few, and two Anglo-Saxons, Englishmen I cannot say, for one is an American citizen and the other your contributor, who compose the only English-speaking males, so far as I can judge; groups of Flemish women of the people in long black cloth cloaks, with large hoods lined with black satin, more expensive probably, but not nearly so picturesque as the old red cloak which thirty years ago was the almost universal Sunday dress of women in Wiltshire, Berkshire, and other Western counties; little old-fashioned girls in nice mob caps, and the fishermen in excellent blue broad-cloth jackets and trousers, and well-blacked shoes or boots, instead of the huge sabots of their daily life; in short, every soul, I suppose, in Blankenberghe, from the Bourgmestre who sits on his throne, to the donkey-boy who drives along his Neddy under a freight of children, at half a franc an hour, whenever he can entice the small fry from the superior attraction of engineering with the splendid sand, spends his or her three or four hours on the Digue, enjoying whatever of the music, gossip, coffee, beer, or other pastimes they are inclined to or can afford; and in that whole crowd of pleasant holiday-making folk there is not one single trace of poverty, not a starved face, not a naked foot, not a ragged garment. It is the same on the week-days. The people, notably the fishermen andbaigneurs, dress roughly, but they have all comfortable thick worsted stockings in their sabots, and their jerseys and overalls are ample and satisfactory. Why is it that in nine places out of ten on the Continent this is so, and that in England you shall never be able to find a watering-place which is not deformed more or less by poverty and thriftlessness? Right across the sea, there, on the Norfolk coast, lie Cromer and Sherringham. More daring sailors never manned lifeboat, more patient fishermen never dragged net, than the seafaring folk of those charming villages. They are courteous, simple, outspoken folk, too, singularly attractive in their looks and ways. But, alas! for the rags, and the grinding poverty, declaring itself in a dozen ways, in the cottages, in the children’s looks, in the women’s premature old age. When will England wake up, and get rid of the curse of her wealth and the curse of her poverty? When will an Englishman be able again to look on at a fête-day in Belgium, or Switzerland, or Germany, or France, without a troubled conscience and a pain in his heart, as he thinks of the contrast at home, and the bitter satire in the old, worn-out name of “Merry England?” It is high time that we all were heartsick over it, for the canker grows on us. Those who know London best will tell you so; those who know the great provincial towns and country villages will tell you so, except perhaps that the latter are now getting depopulated, and so contain less altogether of joy or sorrow. However, sir, there are other than these holiday times in which to dwell on this dark subject. I ought to apologise for having fallen into it unawares, when I sat down merely to put on paper, if I could in a few lines, and impart to your readers the exceeding freshness of the feeling which the feast-day at this little Belgian watering-place leaves on one. But who knows when he sits down, at any rate in the holidays, what he is going to write? However good your intentions, at times you can’t “get the hang of it,” can’t say the thing you meant to say.
You may wonder, too, at this sudden plunge into thefêteof the Assumption at Blankenberghe, when I have never warned you even that I had flitted from my round on the great crank which grinds for us all so ruthlessly in the parts about the Strand and the Inns of Court. Well, sir, I plead in my defence the test that a very able friend of mine applies to novels. He opens the second volume and reads a chapter; if that tempts him, on he goes to the end of the book; if it is very good indeed, he then goes back, and fairly begins at the beginning. So I hope your readers will be inclined to peruse in future weeks some further gossip respecting this place, which should perhaps have preceded thefête-day. If they should get to take the least interest in Blankenberghians and their works and ways, it is more than these latter can be said to do about them, for in the two or three cheap sheets which I find on the table here, and which constitute the press of this corner of Belgium, there is seldom more than a couple of lines devoted to the whole British Empire. The fact that there is not another Englishman in the place, and that the American above mentioned, the only other representative of our English-speaking stock here, went once to see the Derby, and got so bored by two o’clock that he left the Downs and walked back to Epsom station, enduring the whole chaff of the road, and finding the doors locked and the clerks and porters all gone up to the race, ought to be enough to make them curious—curious enough at any rate for long-vacation purposes. There are plenty of odds and ends of life a little out of our ordinary track lying about here to make a small “harvest for a quiet eye,” which I am inclined to try and garner for you, if you think well. And are not the new King and Queen coming next week to delight their subjects, and witness many kinds of fireworks, and a “concours des joueurs de boule, dits pas baenbolders,” whatever these may be?
Ishould like to know how many grown Englishmen or Englishwomen, apart from those unfortunates who are preparing for competitive examinations, are aware of the existence of this place? No Englishman is bound to know of it by any law of polite education acknowledged amongst us, for is it not altogether ignored in Murray?
Even Bradshaw’sContinental Guideis silent as to its whereabouts. This is somewhat hard upon Blankenberghe, sturdy and rapidly growing little watering-place that she is, already exciting the jealousy of her fashionable neighbour, Ostend. It must be owned, however, that she returns the compliment by taking the slightest possible interest in the contemporary history of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the place has certain recommendations to persons in search of a watering-place out of England. If you are content with an hotel of the country, of which there is a large choice, you may have three good meals a day and a bedroom for six and a half francs, with a considerable reduction for families. Even at the fashionable hotels on the Digue the price is only eight or nine francs; and when you have paid your hotel bill you are out of all danger of extravagance, for there is literally nothing to spend money upon. Your bathing machine costs you sixpence. There are no pleasure boats and no wheeled vehicles for hire in the place, and no excursions if there were; shops there are none; and the market is of the smallest and meagerest kind. There are no beggars and no amusements, except bathing and the Kursaal. These, however, suffice to keep the inhabitants and visitors in a state of much contentment.
But now for the geography. From Ostend harbour to the mouth of the Scheldt is a dead flat, highly cultivated, and dotted all over with villages and farmhouses, but somewhat lower than high-water mark. The sea is kept out by an ancient and dilapidated-looking dyke, some fifty feet high, on the slopes of which flourishes a strong, reedy sort of grass, planted in tufts at regular intervals, to hold the loose soil together. The fine sand drifts up the dyke and blows over it, lying just like snow, so that if you half-close your eyes and look at it from fifty yards’ distance, you may fancy yourself on a glacier in the Oberland. Blankenberghe is an ancient fishing village, lying just under the dyke, between eight and nine miles from Ostend. When it came into the minds of the inhabitants to convert it into a watering-place they levelled the top of their dyke for some 600 yards until it is only about twenty-five feet above high-water mark. They paved the sea face with good stone, and the fine flat walk on the top, thirty yards broad, with brick, and called it the Digue, in imitation of Ostend. They built a Kursaal, three or four great hotels, and half a dozen first-class lodging-houses, opening on to the Digue, with deep verandahs in front, and they brought a single line branch of the Flanders railway from Bruges, and the deed was accomplished. There is no such a sea-walk anywhere that I can remember as Blankenberghe Digue, from which you look straight away with nothing but sea between you and the North Pole. From the Digue you descend by a flight of twenty-four steps on one side to the sands, on the other into the town, the chief of these latter flights being at the head of the Rue d’Eglise, the backbone, as it were, of the place, which runs from the railway station to the Digue. There may be 1500 inhabitants out of the season, when all the Digue hotels and lodging-houses are shut up; at present, perhaps, another 1000, coming and going, and attracted by the bathing.
Of this institution an Englishman is scarcely a fair judge, as it is conducted on a method so utterly unlike anything we have at home at present. My American friend assures me that we are 100 years behind all other nations in this matter, that the Belgians conduct it exactly as they do in the States, and that theirs is the only decent mode of bathing. It may be so. One sees such rapid changes in these days, and advanced opinions of all kinds are being caught up so quickly by even such Philistines as the English middle classes, that he is a bold man who will assert that we shall not see the notions of Brighton and Dover yield to the new ideas of Newport and Blankenberghe before long. In one respect, indeed, it is well that they should, for the machines here are convenient little rooms on wheels, with plenty of pegs, two chairs, a small tub, a looking-glass, and everything handsome about them. But the wheels are broad, and very-low; consequently you are only rolled down to the neighbourhood of the water, thinking yourself lucky if you get within five or six yards of it. Now, as the occupants of the machine on your left and right are probably sprightly and somewhat facetious young Belgian or French women, and as the beach shelves so gently that you have at least a run of fifty yards before you can get into deep enough water to swim with comfort, the root difference between Blankenberghian and English habits discloses itself to you from the first. Of course, as men, women, and children all bathe together, costumes are necessary, but those in which the men have to array themselves only make bathing a discomfort, without giving one the consciousness of being decently clad. You have handed to you with your towels a simple jersey, with arms and legs six or eight inches in length, reaching perhaps to the middle of the biceps and femoral muscles. Into this apology for a dress you insert and button yourself up (it is well for you, by the way, if one or two buttons be not missing), and then are expected to walk calmly out into the water through groups of laughing girls in jackets and loose trousers. Having threaded your way through these, and avoided a quadrille party on the one hand, and an excellent fat couple, reminding you of the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Bubb in the one-horse “chay,” who are bathing their family on the other, you address yourself to swimming. As you descended from the Digue you read, “Bathers are expressly recommended to hold themselves at least fifteen yards from the breakers by buoys designed.” You do not see any breakers, but there is a line of buoys about eighty yards out to which you contemptuously paddle, and after all find that you are scarcely out of your depth. When you have had enough you return, poor, dripping, forked mortal, to a last and severest trial. For the universal custom is to sit about on chairs amongst the machines; and on one side of your door are perhaps a couple of nursemaids chatting while their children build sand castles, on the other a matron or two working and gossiping. Now, sir, a man who has been taking the rough and the smooth of life for a good many years within half a mile of Temple Bar is not likely to be oversensitive, but I would appeal to any contributor on your staff, sir, or to yourself, whether you would be prepared to go through such an ordeal without wincing? On my return from my first swim I recognised my American cousin in his element. He was clad in a blue striped jersey,—would that I could have sprinkled it with a few stars,—and was sauntering about with the greatest coolness from group to group, enjoying the whole business, and no doubt looking forward complacently to the time when differences of sex shall be altogether ignored in the academies of the future. He threw a pitying glance at me as I skedaddled to my machine, secretly vowing to abstain from all such adventures hereafter. Since that time I have taken my dip too early for the Belgian public to be present at the ceremony, but, like the rest of the world, I daily look on, and, unlike them, wonder. As to the morality of it, I can’t say that I think the custom of promiscuous bathing as practised here seems to me either moral or immoral. Occasionally when the waves are a little rough you see couples clinging together for mutual support more than the circumstances perhaps strictly require; but there is very little of this. The whole business seemed to me not immoral, but in our conventional sense vulgar, much like “kissing in the ring,” which I have seen played by most exemplary sets of young men and women on excursions in Greenwich or Richmond Park, but which would not do in Hamilton Gardens or a May Fair drawing-room. Meanwhile, I hope that as long at least as I can enjoy the water we shall remain benighted bathers in the eyes of our American cousins and of the brave Belgians. To a man the first requisite of a really enjoyable bath is surely deep water, and the second, no clothes, for the loss of either of which no amount of damp flirtation can compensate, in the opinion at least of your contributor, who, nevertheless in these Belgian parts, while obliged to record his opinion, has perhaps a great consciousness that he may be something of an old fogey.
I suppose that a man or nation is to be congratulated about whom their neighbours have nothing to say. If so, the position of England at this time is peculiarly enviable out here. I read theIndépendance Belgediligently, but under the head “Nouvelles d’Angleterre,” for which that journal retains, as it would seem, a special correspondent, I never learn anything whatever except the price of funds. We occupy an average of perhaps twelve lines in its columns, and none at all in those of theLa Vigie de la Côte, the special production of Blankenberghe, or of the Bruges and Ostend journals.
Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Certainly a short residence at Blankenberghe should be taken in conjunction with the volume of essays on international policy by Mr. Congreve and his fellow Comtists, which I happen to have brought with me for deliberate perusal, if one wants to feel the shine taken out of one’s native land. I don’t.
Blankenberghe has one branch of native industry, and one only. From time immemorial it has been a fishing station. The local paper declares that there has been no change in the boats, the costumes, or the implements of this industry since the sixteenth century, with the exception noticed below. One can quite believe it, as far as the boats are concerned. They are very strongly built tubs, ranging from twenty to thirty tons, flat-bottomed, the same breadth of beam fore and aft, built I should think on the model of the first duck which was seen off this coast, and a most sensible model too. They have no bowsprit, but a short foremast in the bows, carrying one small sail, and a strong mainmast amidships, carrying one big sail. Each of these sails is run up by a single rope, rigged through a pulley in the top of the masts, and of other rigging there is none. The boats are all of a uniform russet-brown colour, the tint of old age, looking as if they had been once varnished, in the time, let us say, of William the Silent, and had never been touched since. There is not a scrap of paint on the whole fleet. In short, I am convinced that the local paper by no means exaggerates their antiquity. Instead of finding it hard to believe that sixteenth-century men went to sea in them, I should not be startled to hear that our first parents were the original proprietors, or at any rate that the present fleet was laid down by Japhet, when the Ark was broken up. The habits of the fleet are as quaint as their looks. There is no scrap of anchorage or shelter of any kind here, the sands lie perfectly open to the north and west, and the surf seems about as rough as it is elsewhere. But the Blankenberghe fishermen are perfectly indifferent, convinced no doubt that neither sea nor sand will do anything to hurt them or their boats, for old acquaintance’ sake. To me, accustomed to the scrambling, and shouting, and hauling up above high-water mark, the running of naked-legged boys into the water, and the energetic doings of the crew when a fishing boat comes to land at home, there is something of the comically sublime in the contrast presented by these good Flemings. As one of the old brown tubs rolls towards the shore, looking as if she scarcely had made up her mind which end to send in first, you see a man quietly pitch a small anchor over the bows, and then down come the two sails. Sometimes the anchor begins to hold before the boat grounds, but just as often she touches before the anchor bites, but nobody cares. The only notice taken is to unship the rudder and haul it aboard; then comes a wave which swings her round, and leaves her broadside to the surf. Nobody moves. Bang comes the next breaker, lifting her for a moment, and bumping her down again on the sand, her bows perhaps a trifle more to sea, but the crew only smoke and hold on. And so it goes on, bang, bump, thump, till sooner or later she swings right round and settles into her place on the sand. When she has adjusted this to her own satisfaction one of the crew just drops over the stern with another anchor on his shoulder, which he fixes in the sand, and then he and the rest leave her and walk up to the Digue, and generally on to vespers at the church, which is often three parts filled with these jolly fellows. Getting off again is much the same happy-go-lucky business. The men shoulder the anchor which is out at the stern, or, as often as not, leave it on shore with their cable coiled, ready for their return. Then they clamber into their tub, which is bumping away, held only by the anchor out at the bows. They wait for the first wave that floats them, then up go the sails, on goes the rudder, they get a haul on the anchor, and after heading one or two different ways get fairly off.
Their costume is picturesque,—thick red flannel shirts, the collars of which fold over their tightly buttoned blue jackets, and give a tidy, uniform appearance to a group of them. The old stagers still wear huge loose red knickerbockers and pilot boots, but the younger generation are degenerating into the common blue trousers and sabots, the latter almost big enough to come ashore on in case of wreck. Altogether they are the most well-to-do set of fishermen to look at that I have ever seen, though where their money comes from I cannot guess, as they seem to take little but small flounders and skate. There used to be good cod-fishing in the winter, they say, but of late years it has fallen off. The elder fishermen attribute this to the disgust of the cod at an innovation in the good old ways of fishing. Formerly two boats worked together, dragging a net with large meshes between them, but this has been of late superseded by the English bag-net system, which brings up everything small and great, and disturbs thepâture accoutuméeof the cod, whereupon he has emigrated.
Disastrous islanders that we are, who never touch anything, from Japan to Blankenberghe, without setting honest folk by the ears and bringing trouble! The “Corporation of Fishers,” a close and privileged body, who hold their heads very high here, are looking into the matter, and it seems likely that this destructivechalut, d’origine Anglaise, may yet be superseded. It remains to be seen whether the cod will come back.
We have had abominable weather here, but nothing in the shape of a storm. I confess to have been looking out for a good north-wester with much interest. Assuming that the effect as to breakers and surf would be much the same as elsewhere, one is curious to ascertain whether these fishing boats are left to bump it out on the sands. If so, and no harm comes to them, the sooner our fishermen adopt the Blankenberghe model of boat the better. I fear, however, that with all their good looks and old traditions, the seafaring folk on this coast are wanting in the splendid daring of our own ’long-shore people. On Monday night the mail packet from Ostend to Dover went out in a stiffish breeze, but nothing which ‘we should call a gale, at eight o’clock. By some curious mismanagement both her engines got out of order and came to a dead stop almost immediately. Strange to say, her anchors were down in the hold under the luggage (the boats are Belgian, not English manned), and she had a very narrow escape of drifting right on shore. Luckily the crew, managed to get up an anchor in time to prevent this catastrophe, and there she lay right off the harbour, perfectly helpless, throwing up rockets and burning blue lights for hours. Neither tug, nor lifeboat, nor pilot boat stirred, and she rode at anchor till morning, when the wind went down. I venture to think that such a case is unheard of on our coasts. It occurs to one to ask whether there is such an official as a harbourmaster at the port of Ostend, and if so, what his duties are. There were sailors enough in harbour to have manned fifty lifeboats, for the Ostend fishing fleet of 200 boats had come back from their three months’ cruise on that very afternoon. The contingency of riding out a stormy night in a mail packet within a few hundred yards of a lee shore, in front of a great port full of seamen, is scarcely one of those on which we holiday folk reckon when we book ourselves for the Continent.
Coming out on the Digue one night, soon after my arrival, I was brought to a stand-still by the appearance of the sea. It was low water, so that I was about 200 yards off, and at first I could scarcely believe my eyes, which seemed to tell me that every breaker was a flood of pale fire. I went down close to the water to confirm or disenchant myself, and found it more beautiful the nearer I got. Of course one has seen the ordinary phosphorescence of the sea in a hundred places, but this was quite a different affair. The sand under one’s feet even was molten silver. The scientific doctor says it is simply the effect of the constant presence on this coast of great numbers of an animalcule which can only be seen through a microscope, called theNoctiluca miliaris. It looked on that evening as if huge fiery serpents were constantly rising and dashing along. People here say that they have it always, but this is certainly not so. On several other evenings the breaking waves were slightly luminous, but scarcely enough to attract attention. If you could only make sure of seeing sea and shore ablaze as it was on that particular night, you ought at once, sir, to pack traps and off, notwithstanding these abominably high winds. I cannot help thinking that, besides a monster gathering—probably a Reform League meeting—of the Noctiluca miliaris, there must have been something very unusual in the atmosphere on that particular night. It was a kind of “eldritch” night, in which you felt as if you had got into the atmosphere of Tennyson’sMorte d’Arthur, and a great hand might come up out of the water without giving you a start. There was light right up in the sky above one’s head, a succession of half luminous rain clouds were drifting rapidly across at a very low elevation from the northwest, not fifty yards high, as it seemed, while the smoke of my cigar floated away slowly almost in the opposite direction. Luckily, sir, my American friend was with me on the night in question, to whom I can appeal as to the truth of my facts, and we had had nothing but one bottle of very moderately strongvin ordinaireat thetable d’hote. If your scientific readers say that the thing is impossible, I can only answer that so it was.
Parson Wilbur, when he is considering the question whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good than evil, esteems his own ignorance of all tongues except Yankee and the dead languages as “a kind of martello tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity.” There is something comforting and fascinating in this doctrine, but still on the whole it is decidedly disagreeable to be reduced to signs for purposes of intercourse, as is generally the case here. Not one soul in a hundred can speak French. Their talk sounds like a sewing machine, with an occasional word of English interspersed in the clicking. I am told that if you will only talk broad Durham or Yorkshire they will understand you, but I do not believe it, as the sounds are quite unlike. The names of these people are wonderful. For instance, those on the bathing machines just opposite my hotel are, Yan Yooren, Yan Yulpen, Siska Deneve, Sandelays, and Colette Claes, abbreviated into Clotty by two English schoolboys who have lately appeared, and are the worst dressed and the best bathers of all the young folk here. They are fast friends, I see, with a young Russian, whose father, an old officer, sits near me at thetable d’hôte. Poor old boy! I never saw a man so bored, in fact he has disclosed to me that he can stand it no longer. Blankenberghe has been quite too much for him. Lest it should also prove so to your readers, I will end with his last words (though I by no means endorse his judgment of the little Flemish watering-place), “Maintenant je n’y puis plus!”
My father in 1870 went to America for the first time. His time was so much occupied there that he could write only home letters. My mother has allowed me to make extracts from these, thinking that they serve to introduce his later letters from America, which were addressed to theSpectator.
It was owing to the fact of my father’s having publicly taken the side of the North in the Civil War that his reception in the United States in 1870 was so particularly warm and hearty.
Here I am, in my officer’s cabin, a small separate hole in our little world on the water, all to myself. At this moment I look out of my porthole and see the Welsh mountains coming out against a bed of daffodil sky, for though it has been misty all day it is now a lovely clear evening. The sea is quite calm, and there is scarcely any motion in the ship. The tea-bell is ringing, so I must stop for a little, but I shall have plenty of time to tell you all that has happened as yet, as we shall be lying off Londonderry nearly all day to-morrow. The mail does not come off to us till about 5 P.M., and we shall be there about nine in the morning or thereabouts. I may perhaps run up to Derry to see the old town and the gate and walls, etc., sacred to the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good king William.
Tea was excellent, and afterwards R——— and I went on deck, and saw the sun go down gloriously in the line of our ship’s course; we were steaming right up a great road of fire. The sea gets calmer and calmer, and, in fact, there couldn’t be less movement if we were in Greenwich reach. So now for the narrative of all my adventures since I left you at the window. The moment we got on board, there was the rush and scramble for places at the saloon table, which Harry I——— warned me about. We were on board amongst the first, but agreed not to join the scramble, taking any places that might happen to be going. There is something so ludicrously contemptible to me in seeing people eagerly and seriously struggling about such matters that I am quite unable to join in the worry. I doubt if I could even if the ship were going down, and we were all taking to the boats. It isn’t the least from any virtuous or heroic feeling, but simply from the long dwelling in the frame of mind described in a chapter inPast and Present. When every one had taken the seats they liked, we settled down very comfortably into two which were vacant, and which, for all I can see, are as good as any of the rest.
Off the north coast of Ireland, and a splendid coast it is. A stout party, on whom I do not the least rely, told me an hour or so ago, when I first went on deck, that we were passing the Giant’s Causeway. The morning is deliciously fresh, and there is just a little roll in the vessel which is slightly discomforting some of the passengers, I see. I slept like a top without turning, for which, indeed, I haven’t room in my tray on the top of the drawers. My only mishap has been that when they were sluicing the decks this morning, the water running down the ship’s side naturally turned into my wide-open porthole to see if I was getting up. The device was quite successful, as I shot out of bed at once to close it up and save my things lying on the sofa below. No damage done fortunately.
Here we are lying quietly at anchor in Lough Foyle after an excellent breakfast. We wait here for the mails, but as it is nineteen miles I find by road up to Derry, I shall not make the attempt. The plot thickens on board, and I am already deeply interested. There are 150 emigrants from the East End, who are being taken over by their parson and a philanthropist whose name I haven’t caught yet. I have been forward amongst these poor folk, and have won several hearts or at least opened many mouths by distributing some few spare stamps I luckily had in my pocket. Lovely as the morning is, and delicious as the contrast between the exquisite air on deck, where they are all sitting, when contrasted with Whitechapel air, I can’t help looking at them with very mingled feelings. They are a fine steady respectable class of poor. The women nursing and caring for their children with grave, serious, sweet faces, and the men really attentive. All of them anxious to send off scraps of letters to their friends in Great Babylon. There is one slip of the foredeck roped off entirely for nursing mothers and small children, and there are a lot of quaint little plumps rolling and tumbling about there, with some of whom I hope to make friends. A bird-fancier from the East End has several cages full of larks and sparrows, and a magpie and jay in state cabins by themselves, all of which he hopes to make great merchandise of in Canada, where English birds are longed for, but are very hard to keep. He had lost his hempseed in Liverpool, but luckily a boat has gone ashore, and I think there is good hope of getting him a fresh supply. There is a little gathering of the emigrants for service at eight in the evening forward. I didn’t know of it last night, but shall attend henceforth. No thought of such a thing in the state saloon! “How hardly shall they that have riches”!
Here, as elsewhere, the truest and deepest life, because the simplest, lies amongst those who have little of the things of this world lying between them and their Father and this invisible world, with its realities.
We are well out on the broad Atlantic, which at present we are inclined to think a little of an imposture. There is certainly a swell of some kind, for the ship pitches more or less, but to the unpractised eye looking out on the waste of waters it is quite impossible to account for the swell, for, except for the better colour, the sea looks very much as it does off the Isle of Wight; great waves like the slope of a chalk down, following one another in solemn procession, up which the long ship climbs like a white road. However, it is early days to grumble about the want of swell, and when it comes I may not like it any more than another. After finishing my letter to you this morning, I went ashore to post it, and found that after all it wouldn’t reach London till to-morrow night. So I sent you a telegram, which I hope you got before bed-time at any rate, and redirected my letter to Cromer. To pass the time I took a jaunting car with two other passengers, and we drove to an old castle looking over Lough Foyle, formerly a stronghold of the O’Doherty’s till it was sacked and knocked about their ears by an expedition of Scotch Campbells, who did a good work for the district by destroying it. We found lots of shamrock in the ruins, and enjoyed the drive and still more a bathe afterwards. The country seems very prosperous. The people, strapping, light-haired, blue-eyed Celts, handsome and well-to-do; in fact, evidently much better fed and better educated than almost any English country district I know. The mails came down from Derry in a tender, which brought us the news of the first battle and the Prussian victory, which I for one always looked for, and we got away by seven, two hours later than we expected. However, the wind is fair and we are making famous way, and by the time I get up in the morning I expect we shall be 200 miles from the Irish coast.
Along calm day and we have made a splendid run—shall be in Quebec in good time to-morrow week if this weather holds; but knowing persons say it won’t, and that we have seen the last of fine weather, and must look out for squalls—for why? the wind has gone round against the sun, and it has settled to rain hard with a barometer steadily going down. The Roman Catholic bishop (who is not very expert in weather that I know of, but is a very, jovial party, who enjoys his cigar and gossip, and was one of the first to go in for a game of shovel-board on deck this morning) declares that we shall have it fine all the way, as he has made the passage six times and has never had bad weather yet. In any case I hope it won’t be rough to-morrow, for we are to have a real treat in the way of spiritual dissipation. First, the bishop is to have some kind of mass and preach a short sermon at nine (N.B. a time-table conscience clause is to run all day, so that only latitudinarians like me will go in for it all). Then the captain who is a rare good fellow, with a spice of sentiment about him, which sits so well on such a bulletheaded, broad-shouldered, resolute Jack-Tar, has his own service at eleven, in which he will do the priest himself, an excellent example, with a sermon by the emigrant parson, whose name is H———, afterwards. These in the saloon; then at 2.30 a service in the steerage by H———, or G———, the other parson, and a final wind up, also in the steerage at 7.30. G———is the clergyman of Shaftesbury, George Glyn’s borough; was formerly in the Navy, and was in the Ragged School movement of ’48, ’49, when I used to go off twice a week in the evening to Ormond Yard, when poor old M——— had the gas turned out, and his hat knocked over his eyes by his boys. He knew Ludlow and Furnival, but I don’t remember him. However, he is a right good fellow, and gave us a really goodextemporeprayer last night at the midships’ service. The steerage is certainly most interesting. There are now nearly 500 emigrants on board there, and the captain says they are about the best lot he has ever had. Going round this morning I was struck by a dear little light-haired girl, who was standing with her arm round the neck of a poor woman very sick and ill, and such tenderness and love in her poor little face as she turned it up to us as almost brought tears into one’s eyes. Of course I thought the woman was her mother. No such thing; she was no relation at all. The little dear had never seen her till she met her on board, but was attracted by her misery, and had never left her side since she had been so ill. The poor woman had two strapping daughters on board who had never been near her. How strangely folk are fixed up in this queer world.