Little Travels and Roadside Sketches

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  "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.

  There are two exquisite Vandykes (whatever Sir Joshua may say of them), and in which the very management of the gray tones which the President abuses forms the principal excellence and charm. Why, after all, are we not to have our opinion? Sir Joshua is not the Pope. The color of one of those Vandykes is as fine as FINE Paul Veronese, and the sentiment beautifully tender and graceful.

  I saw, too, an exhibition of the modern Belgian artists (1843), the remembrance of whose pictures after a month's absence has almost entirely vanished. Wappers's hand, as I thought, seemed to have grown old and feeble, Verboeckhoven's cattle-pieces are almost as good as Paul Potter's, and Keyser has dwindled down into namby-pamby prettiness, pitiful to see in the gallant young painter who astonished the Louvre artists ten years ago by a hand almost as dashing and ready as that of Rubens himself. There were besides many caricatures of the new German school, which are in themselves caricatures of the masters before Raphael.

  An instance of honesty may be mentioned here with applause. The writer lost a pocket-book containing a passport and a couple of modest ten-pound notes. The person who found the portfolio ingeniously put it into the box of the post-office, and it was faithfully restored to the owner; but somehow the two ten-pound notes were absent. It was, however, a great comfort to get the passport, and the pocket-book, which must be worth about ninepence.

  BRUSSELS.

  It was night when we arrived by the railroad from Antwerp at Brussels; the route is very pretty and interesting, and the flat countries through which the road passes in the highest state of peaceful, smiling cultivation. The fields by the roadside are enclosed by hedges as in England, the harvest was in part down, and an English country gentleman who was of our party pronounce
d the crops to be as fine as any he had ever seen. Of this matter a Cockney cannot judge accurately, but any man can see with what extraordinary neatness and care all these little plots of ground are tilled, and admire the richness and brilliancy of the vegetation. Outside of the moat of Antwerp, and at every village by which we passed, it was pleasant to see the happy congregations of well-clad people that basked in the evening sunshine, and soberly smoked their pipes and drank their Flemish beer. Men who love this drink must, as I fancy, have something essentially peaceful in their composition, and must be more easily satisfied than folks on our side of the water. The excitement of Flemish beer is, indeed, not great. I have tried both the white beer and the brown; they are both of the kind which schoolboys denominate "swipes," very sour and thin to the taste, but served, to be sure, in quaint Flemish jugs that do not seem to have changed their form since the days of Rubens, and must please the lovers of antiquarian knick-knacks. Numbers of comfortable-looking women and children sat beside the head of the family upon the tavern-benches, and it was amusing to see one little fellow of eight years old smoking, with much gravity, his father's cigar. How the worship of the sacred plant of tobacco has spread through all Europe! I am sure that the persons who cry out against the use of it are guilty of superstition and unreason, and that it would be a proper and easy task for scientific persons to write an encomium upon the weed. In solitude it is the pleasantest companion possible, and in company never de trop. To a student it suggests all sorts of agreeable thoughts, it refreshes the brain when weary, and every sedentary cigar-smoker will tell you how much good he has had from it, and how he has been able to return to his labor, after a quarter of an hour's mild interval of the delightful leaf of Havana. Drinking has gone from among us since smoking came in. It is a wicked error to say that smokers are drunkards; drink they do, but of gentle diluents mostly, for fierce stimulants of wine or strong liquors are abhorrent to the real lover of the Indian weed. Ah! my Juliana, join not in the vulgar cry that is raised against us. Cigars and cool drinks beget quiet conversations, good-humor, meditation; not hot blood such as mounts into the head of drinkers of apoplectic port or dangerous claret. Are we not more moral and reasonable than our forefathers? Indeed I think so somewhat; and many improvements of social life and converse must date with the introduction of the pipe.

  We were a dozen tobacco-consumers in the wagon of the train that brought us from Antwerp; nor did the women of the party (sensible women!) make a single objection to the fumigation. But enough of this; only let me add, in conclusion, that an excellent Israelitish gentleman, Mr. Hartog of Antwerp, supplies cigars for a penny apiece, such as are not to be procured in London for four times the sum.

  Through smiling corn-fields, then, and by little woods from which rose here and there the quaint peaked towers of some old-fashioned chateaux, our train went smoking along at thirty miles an hour. We caught a glimpse of Mechlin steeple, at first dark against the sunset, and afterwards bright as we came to the other side of it, and admired long glistening canals or moats that surrounded the queer old town, and were lighted up in that wonderful way which the sun only understands, and not even Mr. Turner, with all his vermilion and gamboge, can put down on canvas. The verdure was everywhere astonishing, and we fancied we saw many golden Cuyps as we passed by these quiet pastures.

  Steam-engines and their accompaniments, blazing forges, gaunt manufactories, with numberless windows and long black chimneys, of course take away from the romance of the place but, as we whirled into Brussels, even these engines had a fine appearance. Three or four of the snorting, galloping monsters had just finished their journey, and there was a quantity of flaming ashes lying under the brazen bellies of each that looked properly lurid and demoniacal. The men at the station came out with flaming torches—awful-looking fellows indeed! Presently the different baggage was handed out, and in the very worst vehicle I ever entered, and at the very slowest pace, we were borne to the "Hotel de Suede," from which house of entertainment this letter is written.

  We strolled into the town, but, though the night was excessively fine and it was not yet eleven o'clock, the streets of the little capital were deserted, and the handsome blazing cafes round about the theatres contained no inmates. Ah, what a pretty sight is the Parisian Boulevard on a night like this! how many pleasant hours has one passed in watching the lights, and the hum, and the stir, and the laughter of those happy, idle people! There was none of this gayety here; nor was there a person to be found, except a skulking commissioner or two (whose real name in French is that of a fish that is eaten with fennel-sauce), and who offered to conduct us to certain curiosities in the town. What must we English not have done, that in every town in Europe we are to be fixed upon by scoundrels of this sort; and what a pretty reflection it is on our country that such rascals find the means of living on us!

  Early the next morning we walked through a number of streets in the place, and saw certain sights. The Park is very pretty, and all the buildings round about it have an air of neatness—almost of stateliness. The houses are tall, the streets spacious, and the roads extremely clean. In the Park is a little theatre, a cafe somewhat ruinous, a little palace for the king of this little kingdom, some smart public buildings (with S. P. Q. B. emblazoned on them, at which pompous inscription one cannot help laughing), and other rows of houses somewhat resembling a little Rue de Rivoli. Whether from my own natural greatness and magnanimity, or from that handsome share of national conceit that every Englishman possesses, my impressions of this city are certainly anything but respectful. It has an absurd kind of Lilliput look with it. There are soldiers, just as in Paris, better dressed, and doing a vast deal of drumming and bustle; and yet, somehow, far from being frightened at them, I feel inclined to laugh in their faces. There are little Ministers, who work at their little bureaux; and to read the journals, how fierce they are! A great thundering Times could hardly talk more big. One reads about the rascally Ministers, the miserable Opposition, the designs of tyrants, the eyes of Europe, &c., just as one would in real journals. The Moniteur of Ghent belabors the Independent of Brussels; the Independent falls foul of the Lynx; and really it is difficult not to suppose sometimes that these worthy people are in earnest. And yet how happy were they sua si bona norint! Think what a comfort it would be to belong to a little state like this; not to abuse their privilege, but philosophically to use it. If I were a Belgian, I would not care one single fig about politics. I would not read thundering leading-articles. I would not have an opinion. What's the use of an opinion here? Happy fellows! do not the French, the English, and the Prussians, spare them the trouble of thinking, and make all their opinions for them? Think of living in a country free, easy, respectable, wealthy, and with the nuisance of talking politics removed from out of it. All this might the Belgians have, and a part do they enjoy, but not the best part; no, these people will be brawling and by the ears, and parties run as high here as at Stoke Pogis or little Pedlington.

  These sentiments were elicited by the reading of a paper at the cafe in the Park, where we sat under the trees for a while and sipped our cool lemonade. Numbers of statues decorate the place, the very worst I ever saw. These Cupids must have been erected in the time of the Dutch dynasty, as I judge from the immense posterior developments. Indeed the arts of the country are very low. The statues here, and the lions before the Prince of Orange's palace, would disgrace almost the figurehead of a ship.

  Of course we paid our visit to this little lion of Brussels (the Prince's palace, I mean). The architecture of the building is admirably simple and firm; and you remark about it, and all other works here, a high finish in doors, wood-works, paintings, &c., that one does not see in France, where the buildings are often rather sketched than completed, and the artist seems to neglect the limbs, as it were, and extremities of his figures.

  The finish of this little place is exquisite. We went through some dozen of state-rooms, paddling along over the slippery floors of inlaid woods in great slippers
, without which we must have come to the ground. How did his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange manage when he lived here, and her Imperial Highness the Princess, and their excellencies the chamberlains and the footmen? They must have been on their tails many times a day, that's certain, and must have cut queer figures.

  The ball-room is beautiful—all marble, and yet with a comfortable, cheerful look; the other apartments are not less agreeable, and the people looked with intense satisfaction at some great lapis-lazuli tables, which the guide informed us were worth four millions, more or less; adding with a very knowing look, that they were un peu plus cher que l'or. This speech has a tremendous effect on visitors, and when we met some of our steamboat companions in the Park or elsewhere—in so small a place as this one falls in with them a dozen times a day—"Have you seen the tables?" was the general question. Prodigious tables are they, indeed! Fancy a table, my dear—a table four feet wide—a table with legs. Ye heavens! the mind can hardly picture to itself anything so beautiful and so tremendous!

  There are some good pictures in the palace, too, but not so extraordinarily good as the guide-books and the guide would have us to think. The latter, like most men of his class, is an ignoramus, who showed us an Andrea del Sarto (copy or original), and called it a Correggio, and made other blunders of a like nature. As is the case in England, you are hurried through the rooms without being allowed time to look at the pictures, and, consequently, to pronounce a satisfactory judgment on them.