Little Travels and Roadside Sketches

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LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES


By William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA Titmarsh)




I. FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM

II. GHENT--BRUGES:--

Ghent (1840)

Bruges

III. WATERLOO




LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES




I.--FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM


. . . I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" at Richmond, one of the
comfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England, and
a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the "Star and Garter,"
whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his hair curled,
frightens you off the premises; and where, if you are bold enough to
brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle
of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view
which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor--a
view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter: I say, I
quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" with deep regret, believing that I
should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and
its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people
must go out of town, and so I got on the top of the omnibus, and the
carpet-bag was put inside.


If I were a great prince and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I
were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of
the best Havanas in my pocket--not for my own smoking, but to give them
to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poison
the air with the odor of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in his
circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above
simple precaution.

A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back and asked for a
light. He was a footman, or rather valet. He had no livery, but the
three friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and-salt
undress jackets with a duke's coronet on their buttons.

After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his cheroot,
the gentleman produced another wind-instrument, which he called a
"kinopium," a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a great inclination
to play. He began puffing out of the "kinopium" a most abominable
air, which he said was the "Duke's March." It was played by particular
request of one of the pepper-and-salt gentry.

The noise was so abominable that even the coachman objected (although
my friend's brother footmen were ravished with it), and said that it
was not allowed to play toons on HIS 'bus. "Very well," said the valet,
"WE'RE ONLY OF THE DUKE OF B----'S ESTABLISHMENT, THAT'S ALL." The
coachman could not resist that appeal to his fashionable feelings. The
valet was allowed to play his infernal kinopium, and the poor fellow
(the coachman), who had lived in some private families, was quite
anxious to conciliate the footmen "of the Duke of B.'s establishment,
that's all," and told several stories of his having been groom in
Captain Hoskins's family, NEPHEW OF GOVERNOR HOSKINS; which stories the
footmen received with great contempt.

The footmen were like the rest of the fashionable world in this
respect. I felt for my part that I respected them. They were in daily
communication with a duke! They were not the rose, but they had lived
beside it. There is an odor in the English aristocracy which intoxicates
plebeians. I am sure that any commoner in England, though he would die
rather than confess it, would have a respect for those great big hulking
Duke's footmen.

The day before, her Grace the Duchess had passed us alone in a
chariot-and-four with two outriders. What better mark of innate
superiority could man want? Here was a slim lady who required four--six
horses to herself, and four servants (kinopium was, no doubt, one of the
number) to guard her.

We were sixteen inside and out, and had consequently an eighth of a
horse apiece.

A duchess = 6, a commoner = 1/8; that is to say,

1 duchess = 48 commoners.

If I were a duchess of the present day, I would say to the duke my noble
husband, "My dearest grace, I think, when I travel alone in my chariot
from Hammersmith to London, I will not care for the outriders. In these
days, when there is so much poverty and so much disaffection in the
country, we should not eclabousser the canaille with the sight of our
preposterous prosperity."

But this is very likely only plebeian envy, and I dare say, if I were
a lovely duchess of the realm, I would ride in a coach-and-six, with a
coronet on the top of my bonnet and a robe of velvet and ermine even in
the dog-days.

Alas! these are the dog-days. Many dogs are abroad--snarling dogs,
biting dogs, envious dogs, mad dogs; beware of exciting the fury of
such with your flaming red velvet and dazzling ermine. It makes ragged
Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of-gold; and so
if I were a beauteous duchess . . . Silence, vain man! Can the Queen
herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of
"the Duke of B----'s establishment-- that's all."


ON BOARD THE "ANTWERPEN," OFF EVERYWHERE.

We have bidden adieu to Billingsgate, we have passed the Thames Tunnel;
it is one o'clock, and of course people are thinking of being hungry.
What a merry place a steamer is on a calm sunny summer forenoon, and
what an appetite every one seems to have! We are, I assure you, no less
than 170 noblemen and gentlemen together, pacing up and down under the
awning, or lolling on the sofas in the cabin, and hardly have we passed
Greenwich when the feeding begins. The company was at the brandy and
soda-water in an instant (there is a sort of legend that the beverage is
a preservative against sea-sickness), and I admired the penetration of
gentlemen who partook of the drink. In the first place, the steward WILL
put so much brandy into the tumbler that it is fit to choke you; and,
secondly, the soda-water, being kept as near as possible to the boiler
of the engine, is of a fine wholesome heat when presented to the hot and
thirsty traveller. Thus he is prevented from catching any sudden cold
which might be dangerous to him.

The forepart of the vessel is crowded to the full as much as the
genteeler quarter. There are four carriages, each with piles of
imperials and aristocratic gimcracks of travel, under the wheels of
which those personages have to clamber who have a mind to look at the
bowsprit, and perhaps to smoke a cigar at ease. The carriages overcome,
you find yourself confronted by a huge penful of Durham oxen, lying
on hay and surrounded by a barricade of oars. Fifteen of these horned
monsters maintain an incessant mooing and bellowing. Beyond the cows
come a heap of cotton-bags, beyond the cotton-bags more carriages, more
pyramids of travelling trunks, and valets and couriers bustling and
swearing round about them. And already, and in various corners and
niches, lying on coils of rope, black tar-cloths, ragged cloaks, or hay,
you see a score of those dubious fore-cabin passengers, who are never
shaved, who always look unhappy, and appear getting ready to be sick.

At one, dinner begins in the after-cabin--boiled salmon, boiled beef,
boiled mutton, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, and parboiled wine for
any gentlemen who like it, and two roast-ducks between seventy. After
this, knobs of cheese are handed round on a plate, and there is a talk
of a tart somewhere at some end of the table. All this I saw peeping
through a sort of meat-safe which ventilates the top of the cabin, and
very happy and hot did the people seem below.

"How the deuce CAN people dine at such an hour?" say several genteel
fellows who are watching the manoeuvres. "I can't touch a morsel before
seven."

But somehow at half-past three o'clock we had dropped a long way down
the river. The air was delightfully fresh, the sky of a faultless
cobalt, the river shining and flashing like quicksilver, and at this
period steward runs against me bearing two great smoking dishes covered
by two great glistening hemispheres of tin. "Fellow," says I, "what's
that?"

He lifted up the cover: it was ducks and green pease, by jingo!

"What! haven't they done YET, the greedy creatures?" I asked. "Have the
people been feeding for three hours?"

"Law bless you, sir, it's the second dinner. Make haste, or you won't
get a place." At which words a genteel party, with whom I had been
conversing, instantly tumbled down the hatchway, and I find myself one
of the second relay of seventy who are attacking the boiled salmon,
boiled beef, boiled cabbage, &c. As for the ducks, I certainly had
some pease, very fine yellow stiff pease, that ought to have been
split before they were boiled; but, with regard to the ducks, I saw the
animals gobbled up before my eyes by an old widow lady and her party
just as I was shrieking to the steward to bring a knife and fork to
carve them. The fellow! (I mean the widow lady's whiskered companion)--I
saw him eat pease with the very knife with which he had dissected the
duck!

After dinner (as I need not tell the keen observer of human nature who
peruses this) the human mind, if the body be in a decent state, expands
into gayety and benevolence, and the intellect longs to measure itself
in friendly converse with the divers intelligences around it. We ascend
upon deck, and after eying each other for a brief space and with a
friendly modest hesitation, we begin anon to converse about the weather
and other profound and delightful themes of English discourse. We
confide to each other our respective opinions of the ladies round about
us. Look at that charming creature in a pink bonnet and a dress of the
pattern of a Kilmarnock snuff-box: a stalwart Irish gentleman in a green
coat and bushy red whiskers is whispering something very agreeable into
her ear, as is the wont of gentlemen of his nation; for her dark eyes
kindle, her red lips open and give an opportunity to a dozen beautiful
pearly teeth to display themselves, and glance brightly in the sun;
while round the teeth and the lips a number of lovely dimples make their
appearance, and her whole countenance assumes a look of perfect health
and happiness. See her companion in shot silk and a dove-colored
parasol; in what a graceful Watteau-like attitude she reclines. The tall
courier who has been bouncing about the deck in attendance upon these
ladies (it is his first day of service, and he is eager to make a
favorable impression on them and the lady's-maids too) has just brought
them from the carriage a small paper of sweet cakes (nothing is prettier
than to see a pretty woman eating sweet biscuits) and a bottle that
evidently contains Malmsey madeira. How daintily they sip it; how happy
they seem; how that lucky rogue of an Irishman prattles away! Yonder
is a noble group indeed: an English gentleman and his family. Children,
mother, grandmother, grown-up daughters, father, and domestics,
twenty-two in all. They have a table to themselves on the deck, and the
consumption of eatables among them is really endless. The nurses have
been bustling to and fro, and bringing, first, slices of cake; then
dinner; then tea with huge family jugs of milk; and the little people
have been playing hide-and-seek round the deck, coquetting with the
other children, and making friends of every soul on board. I love to
see the kind eyes of women fondly watching them as they gambol about; a
female face, be it ever so plain, when occupied in regarding children,
becomes celestial almost, and a man can hardly fail to be good and happy
while he is looking on at such sights. "Ah, sir!" says a great big man,
whom you would not accuse of sentiment, "I have a couple of those little
things at home;" and he stops and heaves a great big sigh and swallows
down a half-tumbler of cold something and water. We know what the honest
fellow means well enough. He is saying to himself, "God bless my girls
and their mother!" but, being a Briton, is too manly to speak out in a
more intelligible way. Perhaps it is as well for him to be quiet, and
not chatter and gesticulate like those Frenchmen a few yards from him,
who are chirping over a bottle of champagne.

There is, as you may fancy, a number of such groups on the deck, and
a pleasant occupation it is for a lonely man to watch them and build
theories upon them, and examine those two personages seated cheek by
jowl. One is an English youth, travelling for the first time, who has
been hard at his Guidebook during the whole journey. He has a "Manuel du
Voyageur" in his pocket: a very pretty, amusing little oblong work it is
too, and might be very useful, if the foreign people in three languages,
among whom you travel, would but give the answers set down in the book,
or understand the questions you put to them out of it. The other honest
gentleman in the fur cap, what can his occupation be? We know him at
once for what he is. "Sir," says he, in a fine German accent, "I am a
brofessor of languages, and will gif you lessons in Danish, Swedish,
English, Bortuguese, Spanish and Bersian." Thus occupied in meditations,
the rapid hours and the rapid steamer pass quickly on. The sun is
sinking, and, as he drops, the ingenious luminary sets the Thames on
fire: several worthy gentlemen, watch in hand, are eagerly examining the
phenomena attending his disappearance,--rich clouds of purple and gold,
that form the curtains of his bed,--little barks that pass black across
his disc, his disc every instant dropping nearer and nearer into the
water. "There he goes!" says one sagacious observer. "No, he doesn't,"
cries another. Now he is gone, and the steward is already threading the
deck, asking the passengers, right and left, if they will take a
little supper. What a grand object is a sunset, and what a wonder is an
appetite at sea! Lo! the horned moon shines pale over Margate, and the
red beacon is gleaming from distant Ramsgate pier.

*****

A great rush is speedily made for the mattresses that lie in the boat at
the ship's side; and as the night is delightfully calm, many fair ladies
and worthy men determine to couch on deck for the night. The proceedings
of the former, especially if they be young and pretty, the philosopher
watches with indescribable emotion and interest. What a number of pretty
coquetries do the ladies perform, and into what pretty attitudes do they
take care to fall! All the little children have been gathered up by the
nursery-maids, and are taken down to roost below. Balmy sleep seals
the eyes of many tired wayfarers, as you see in the case of the Russian
nobleman asleep among the portmanteaus; and Titmarsh, who has been
walking the deck for some time with a great mattress on his shoulders,
knowing full well that were he to relinquish it for an instant, some
other person would seize on it, now stretches his bed upon the deck,
wraps his cloak about his knees, draws his white cotton nightcap tight
over his head and ears; and, as the smoke of his cigar rises calmly
upwards to the deep sky and the cheerful twinkling stars, he feels
himself exquisitely happy, and thinks of thee, my Juliana!

*****

Why people, because they are in a steamboat, should get up so deucedly
early I cannot understand. Gentlemen have been walking over my legs ever
since three o'clock this morning, and, no doubt, have been indulging
in personalities (which I hate) regarding my appearance and manner of
sleeping, lying, snoring. Let the wags laugh on; but a far pleasanter
occupation is to sleep until breakfast-time, or near it.

The tea, and ham and eggs, which, with a beefsteak or two, and three
or four rounds of toast, form the component parts of the above-named
elegant meal, are taken in the River Scheldt. Little neat, plump-looking
churches and villages are rising here and there among tufts of trees and
pastures that are wonderfully green. To the right, as the "Guide-book"
says, is Walcheren; and on the left Cadsand, memorable for the English
expedition of 1809, when Lord Chatham, Sir Walter Manny, and Henry Earl
of Derby, at the head of the English, gained a great victory over the
Flemish mercenaries in the pay of Philippe of Valois. The cloth-yard
shafts of the English archers did great execution. Flushing was taken,
and Lord Chatham returned to England, where he distinguished himself
greatly in the debates on the American war, which he called the
brightest jewel of the British crown. You see, my love, that, though an
artist by profession, my education has by no means been neglected; and
what, indeed, would be the pleasure of travel, unless these charming
historical recollections were brought to bear upon it?


ANTWERP.

As many hundreds of thousands of English visit this city (I have met
at least a hundred of them in this half-hour walking the streets,
"Guide-book" in hand), and as the ubiquitous Murray has already depicted
the place, there is no need to enter into a long description of it,
its neatness, its beauty, and its stiff antique splendor. The tall
pale houses have many of them crimped gables, that look like Queen
Elizabeth's ruffs. There are as many people in the streets as in London
at three o'clock in the morning; the market-women wear bonnets of
a flower-pot shape, and have shining brazen milk-pots, which are
delightful to the eyes of a painter. Along the quays of the lazy Scheldt
are innumerable good-natured groups of beer-drinkers (small-beer is the
most good-natured drink in the world); along the barriers outside of
the town, and by the glistening canals, are more beer-shops and more
beer-drinkers. The city is defended by the queerest fat military. The
chief traffic is between the hotels and the railroad. The hotels give
wonderful good dinners, and especially at the "Grand Laboureur" may be
mentioned a peculiar tart, which is the best of all tarts that ever a
man ate since he was ten years old. A moonlight walk is delightful. At
ten o'clock the whole city is quiet; and so little changed does it seem
to be, that you may walk back three hundred years into time, and fancy
yourself a majestical Spaniard, or an oppressed and patriotic Dutchman
at your leisure. You enter the inn, and the old Quentin Durward
court-yard, on which the old towers look down. There is a sound of
singing--singing at midnight. Is it Don Sombrero, who is singing an
Andalusian seguidilla under the window of the Flemish burgomaster's
daughter? Ah, no! it is a fat Englishman in a zephyr coat: he is
drinking cold gin-and-water in the moonlight, and warbling softly--

"Nix my dolly, pals, fake away,
N-ix my dolly, pals, fake a--a--way."*


* In 1844.

I wish the good people would knock off the top part of Antwerp Cathedral
spire. Nothing can be more gracious and elegant than the lines of the
first two compartments; but near the top there bulges out a little
round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no
doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set
upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King"
ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately,
elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal
Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have
given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of
the early fifteenth century, in which it was begun.

This style of criticism is base and mean, and quite contrary to the
orders of the immortal Goethe, who was only for allowing the eye to
recognize the beauties of a great work, but would have its defects
passed over. It is an unhappy, luckless organization which will be
perpetually fault-finding, and in the midst of a grand concert of music
will persist only in hearing that unfortunate fiddle out of tune.

Within--except where the rococo architects have introduced their
ornaments (here is the fiddle out of tune again)--the cathedral is
noble. A rich, tender sunshine is streaming in through the windows,
and gilding the stately edifice with the purest light. The admirable
stained-glass windows are not too brilliant in their colors. The
organ is playing a rich, solemn music; some two hundred of people are
listening to the service; and there is scarce one of the women kneeling
on her chair, enveloped in her full majestic black drapery, that is
not a fine study for a painter. These large black mantles of heavy silk
brought over the heads of the women, and covering their persons, fall
into such fine folds of drapery, that they cannot help being picturesque
and noble. See, kneeling by the side of two of those fine devout-looking
figures, is a lady in a little twiddling Parisian hat and feather, in
a little lace mantelet, in a tight gown and a bustle. She is almost as
monstrous as yonder figure of the Virgin, in a hoop, and with a huge
crown and a ball and a sceptre; and a bambino dressed in a little hoop,
and in a little crown, round which are clustered flowers and pots of
orange-trees, and before which many of the faithful are at prayer.
Gentle clouds of incense come wafting through the vast edifice; and in
the lulls of the music you hear the faint chant of the priest, and the
silver tinkle of the bell.

Six Englishmen, with the commissionaires, and the "Murray's Guide-books"
in their hands, are looking at the "Descent from the Cross." Of this
picture the "Guide-book" gives you orders how to judge. If it is the end
of religious painting to express the religious sentiment, a hundred of
inferior pictures must rank before Rubens. Who was ever piously affected
by any picture of the master? He can depict a livid thief writhing upon
the cross, sometimes a blond Magdalen weeping below it; but it is a
Magdalen a very short time indeed after her repentance: her yellow
brocades and flaring satins are still those which she wore when she was
of the world; her body has not yet lost the marks of the feasting and
voluptuousness in which she used to indulge, according to the legend.
Not one of the Rubens's pictures among all the scores that decorate
chapels and churches here, has the least tendency to purify, to touch
the affections, or to awaken the feelings of religious respect and
wonder. The "Descent from the Cross" is vast, gloomy, and awful; but the
awe inspired by it is, as I take it, altogether material. He might have
painted a picture of any criminal broken on the wheel, and the sensation
inspired by it would have been precisely similar. Nor in a religious
picture do you want the savoir-faire of the master to be always
protruding itself; it detracts from the feeling of reverence, just as
the thumping of cushion and the spouting of tawdry oratory does from
a sermon: meek religion disappears, shouldered out of the desk by
the pompous, stalwart, big-chested, fresh-colored, bushy-whiskered
pulpiteer. Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he
takes a pious subject, it is to show you in what a fine way he, Peter
Paul Rubens, can treat it. He never seems to doubt but that he is doing
it a great honor. His "Descent from the Cross," and its accompanying
wings and cover, are a set of puns upon the word Christopher, of which
the taste is more odious than that of the hooped-petticoated Virgin
yonder, with her artificial flowers, and her rings and brooches. The
people who made an offering of that hooped petticoat did their best, at
any rate; they knew no better. There is humility in that simple, quaint
present; trustfulness and kind intention. Looking about at other altars,
you see (much to the horror of pious Protestants) all sorts of queer
little emblems hanging up under little pyramids of penny candles that
are sputtering and flaring there. Here you have a silver arm, or
a little gold toe, or a wax leg, or a gilt eye, signifying and
commemorating cures that have been performed by the supposed
intercession of the saint over whose chapel they hang. Well, although
they are abominable superstitions, yet these queer little offerings seem
to me to be a great deal more pious than Rubens's big pictures; just as
is the widow with her poor little mite compared to the swelling Pharisee
who flings his purse of gold into the plate.

A couple of days of Rubens and his church pictures makes one thoroughly
and entirely sick of him. His very genius and splendor pails upon one,
even taking the pictures as worldly pictures. One grows weary of being
perpetually feasted with this rich, coarse, steaming food. Considering
them as church pictures, I don't want to go to church to hear, however
splendid, an organ play the "British Grenadiers."


The Antwerpians have set up a clumsy bronze statue of their divinity
in a square of the town; and those who have not enough of Rubens in the
churches may study him, and indeed to much greater advantage, in a good,
well-lighted museum. Here, there is one picture, a dying saint taking
the communion, a large piece ten or eleven feet high, and painted in an
incredibly short space of time, which is extremely curious indeed
for the painter's study. The picture is scarcely more than an immense
magnificent sketch; but it tells the secret of the artist's manner,
which, in the midst of its dash and splendor, is curiously methodical.
Where the shadows are warm the lights are cold, and vice versa; and the
picture has been so rapidly painted, that the tints lie raw by the side
of one another, the artist not having taken the trouble to blend them.