Little Travels and Roadside Sketches

by William Makepeace Thackeray

In the Museum more time was granted me, and I spent some hours with pleasure there. It is an absurd little gallery, absurdly imitating the Louvre, with just such compartments and pillars as you see in the noble Paris gallery; only here the pillars and capitals are stucco and white in place of marble and gold, and plaster-of-paris busts of great Belgians are placed between the pillars. An artist of the country has made a picture containing them, and you will be ashamed of your ignorance when you hear many of their names. Old Tilly of Magdeburg figures in one corner; Rubens, the endless Rubens, stands in the midst. What a noble countenance it is, and what a manly, swaggering consciousness of power!

  The picture to see here is a portrait, by the great Peter Paul, of one of the governesses of the Netherlands. It is just the finest portrait that ever was seen. Only a half-length, but such a majesty, such a force, such a splendor, such a simplicity about it! The woman is in a stiff black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is behind her—the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to the vice-Queen. A common bungler would have painted her in her best clothes, with crown and sceptre, just as our Queen has been painted by—but comparisons are odious. Here stands this majestic woman in her every-day working-dress of black satin, LOOKING YOUR HAT OFF, as it were. Another portrait of the same personage hangs elsewhere in the gallery, and it is curious to observe the difference between the two, and see how a man of genius paints a portrait, and how a common limner executes it.

  Many more pictures are there here by Rubens, or rather from Rubens's manufactory,—odious and vulgar most of them are; fat Magdalens, coarse Saints, vulgar Virgins, with the scene-painter's tricks far too evident upon the canvas. By the side of one of the most astonishing color-pieces in the world, the "Worshipping of the Magi," is a famous picture of Paul Veronese that cannot be too much admired. As Rubens sought in the first picture to dazzle and astonish by gorgeous variety, Paul in his seems to wish to get his effect by simplicity, and has produced the most noble harmony that can be conceived. Many more works are there that merit notice,—a singularly clever, brilliant, and odious Jordaens, for example; some curious costume-pieces; one or two works by the Belgian Raphael, who was a very Belgian Raphael, indeed; and a long gallery of pictures of the very oldest school, that, doubtless, afford much pleasure to the amateurs of ancient art. I confess that I am inclined to believe in very little that existed before the time of Raphael. There is, for instance, the Prince of Orange's picture by Perugino, very pretty indeed, up to a certain point, but all the heads are repeated, all the drawing is bad and affected; and this very badness and affectation, is what the so-called Catholic school is always anxious to imitate. Nothing can be more juvenile or paltry than the works of the native Belgians here exhibited. Tin crowns are suspended over many of them, showing that the pictures are prize compositions: and pretty things, indeed, they are! Have you ever read an Oxford prize-poem! Well, these pictures are worse even than the Oxford poems—an awful assertion to make.

  In the matter of eating, dear sir, which is the next subject of the fine arts, a subject that, after many hours' walking, attracts a gentleman very much, let me attempt to recall the transactions of this very day at the table-d'-hote. 1, green pea-soup; 2, boiled salmon; 3, mussels; 4, crimped skate; 5, roast-meat; 6, patties; 7, melons; 8, carp, stewed with mushrooms and onions; 9, roast-turkey; 10, cauliflower and butter; 11, fillets of venison piques, with asafoetida sauce; 12, stewed calf's-ear; 13, roast-veal; 14, roast-lamb; 15, stewed cherries; 16, rice-pudding; 17, Gruyere cheese, and about twenty-four cakes of different kinds. Except 5, 13, and 14, I give you my word I ate of all written down here, with three rolls of bread and a score of potatoes. What is the meaning of it? How is the stomach of man to be brought to desire and to receive all this quantity? Do not gastronomists complain of heaviness in London after eating a couple of mutton-chops? Do not respectable gentlemen fall asleep in their arm-chairs? Are they fit for mental labor? Far from it. But look at the difference here: after dinner here one is as light as a gossamer. One walks with pleasure, reads with pleasure, writes with pleasure—nay, there is the supper-bell going at ten o'clock, and plenty of eaters, too. Let lord mayors and aldermen look to it, this fact of the extraordinary increase of appetite in Belgium, and, instead of steaming to Blackwall, come a little further to Antwerp.

  Of ancient architectures in the place, there is a fine old Port de Halle, which has a tall, gloomy, bastille look; a most magnificent town-hall, that has been sketched a thousand of times, and opposite it, a building that I think would be the very model for a Conservative club-house in London. Oh! how charming it would be to be a great painter, and give the character of the building, and the numberless groups round about it. The booths lighted up by the sun, the market-women in their gowns of brilliant hue, each group having a character and telling its little story, the troops of men lolling in all sorts of admirable attitudes of ease round the great lamp. Half a dozen light-blue dragoons are lounging about, and peeping over the artist as the drawing is made, and the sky is more bright and blue than one sees it in a hundred years in London.

  The priests of the country are a remarkably well-fed and respectable race, without that scowling, hang-dog look which one has remarked among reverend gentlemen in the neighboring country of France. Their reverences wear buckles to their shoes, light-blue neck-cloths, and huge three-cornered hats in good condition. To-day, strolling by the cathedral, I heard the tinkling of a bell in the street, and beheld certain persons, male and female, suddenly plump down on their knees before a little procession that was passing. Two men in black held a tawdry red canopy, a priest walked beneath it holding the sacrament covered with a cloth, and before him marched a couple of little altar-boys in short white surplices, such as you see in Rubens, and holding lacquered lamps. A small train of street-boys followed the procession, cap in hand, and the clergyman finally entered a hospital for old women, near the church, the canopy and the lamp-bearers remaining without.

  It was a touching scene, and as I stayed to watch it, I could not but think of the poor old soul who was dying within, listening to the last words of prayer, led by the hand of the priest to the brink of the black fathomless grave. How bright the sun was shining without all the time, and how happy and careless every thing around us looked!

  The Duke d'Arenberg has a picture-gallery worthy of his princely house. It does not contain great pieces, but tit-bits of pictures, such as suit an aristocratic epicure. For such persons a great huge canvas is too much, it is like sitting down alone to a roasted ox; and they do wisely, I think, to patronize small, high-flavored, delicate morceaux, such as the Duke has here.

  Among them may be mentioned, with special praise, a magnificent small Rembrandt, a Paul Potter of exceeding minuteness and beauty, an Ostade, which reminds one of Wilkie's early performances, and a Dusart quite as good as Ostade. There is a Berghem, much more unaffected than that artist's works generally are; and, what is more, precious in the eyes of many ladies as an object of art, there is, in one of the grand saloons, some needlework done by the Duke's own grandmother, which is looked at with awe by those admitted to see the palace.

  The chief curiosity, if not the chief ornament of a very elegant library, filled with vases and bronzes, is a marble head, supposed to be the original head of the Laocoon. It is, unquestionably a finer head than that which at present figures upon the shoulders of the famous statue. The expression of woe is more manly and intense; in the group as we know it, the head of the principal figure has always seemed to me to be a grimace of grief, as are the two accompanying young gentlemen with their pretty attitudes, and their little silly, open-mouthed despondency. It has always had upon me the effect of a trick, that statue, and not of a piece of true art. It would look well in the vista of a garden; it is not august enough for a temple, with all its jerks and twirls, and polite convulsions. But who knows wha
t susceptibilities such a confession may offend? Let us say no more about the Laocoon, nor its head, nor its tail. The Duke was offered its weight in gold, they say, for this head, and refused. It would be a shame to speak ill of such a treasure, but I have my opinion of the man who made the offer.

  In the matter of sculpture almost all the Brussels churches are decorated with the most laborious wooden pulpits, which may be worth their weight in gold, too, for what I know, including his reverence preaching inside. At St. Gudule the preacher mounts into no less a place than the garden of Eden, being supported by Adam and Eve, by Sin and Death, and numberless other animals; he walks up to his desk by a rustic railing of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, with wooden peacocks, paroquets, monkeys biting apples, and many more of the birds and beasts of the field. In another church the clergyman speaks from out a hermitage; in a third from a carved palm-tree, which supports a set of oak clouds that form the canopy of the pulpit, and are, indeed, not much heavier in appearance than so many huge sponges. A priest, however tall or stout, must be lost in the midst of all these queer gimcracks; in order to be consistent, they ought to dress him up, too, in some odd fantastical suit. I can fancy the Cure of Meudon preaching out of such a place, or the Rev. Sydney Smith, or that famous clergyman of the time of the League, who brought all Paris to laugh and listen to him.

  But let us not be too supercilious and ready to sneer. It is only bad taste. It may have been very true devotion which erected these strange edifices.

  II.—GHENT—BRUGES.

  GHENT. (1840.)

  The Beguine College or Village is one of the most extraordinary sights that all Europe can show. On the confines of the town of Ghent you come upon an old-fashioned brick gate, that seems as if it were one of the city barriers; but, on passing it, one of the prettiest sights possible meets the eye: At the porter's lodge you see an old lady, in black and a white hood, occupied over her book; before you is a red church with a tall roof and fantastical Dutch pinnacles, and all around it rows upon rows of small houses, the queerest, neatest, nicest that ever were seen (a doll's house is hardly smaller or prettier). Right and left, on each side of little alleys, these little mansions rise; they have a courtlet before them, in which some green plants or hollyhocks are growing; and to each house is a gate, that has mostly a picture or queer-carved ornament upon or about it, and bears the name, not of the Beguine who inhabits it, but of the saint to whom she may have devoted it—the house of St. Stephen, the house of St. Donatus, the English or Angel Convent, and so on. Old ladies in black are pacing in the quiet alleys here and there, and drop the stranger a curtsy as he passes them and takes off his hat. Never were such patterns of neatness seen as these old ladies and their houses. I peeped into one or two of the chambers, of which the windows were open to the pleasant evening sun, and saw beds scrupulously plain, a quaint old chair or two, and little pictures of favorite saints decorating the spotless white walls. The old ladies kept up a quick, cheerful clatter, as they paused to gossip at the gates of their little domiciles; and with a great deal of artifice, and lurking behind walls, and looking at the church as if I intended to design that, I managed to get a sketch of a couple of them.

  But what white paper can render the whiteness of their linen; what black ink can do justice to the lustre of their gowns and shoes? Both of the ladies had a neat ankle and a tight stocking; and I fancy that heaven is quite as well served in this costume as in the dress of a scowling, stockingless friar, whom I had seen passing just before. The look and dress of the man made me shudder. His great red feet were bound up in a shoe open at the toes, a kind of compromise for a sandal. I had just seen him and his brethren at the Dominican Church, where a mass of music was sung, and orange-trees, flags, and banners decked the aisle of the church.

  One begins to grow sick of these churches, and the hideous exhibitions of bodily agonies that are depicted on the sides of all the chapels. Into one wherein we went this morning was what they called a Calvary: a horrible, ghastly image of a Christ in a tomb, the figure of the natural size, and of the livid color of death; gaping red wounds on the body and round the brows: the whole piece enough to turn one sick, and fit only to brutalize the beholder of it. The Virgin is commonly represented with a dozen swords stuck in her heart; bleeding throats of headless John Baptists are perpetually thrust before your eyes. At the Cathedral gate was a papier-mache church-ornament shop—most of the carvings and reliefs of the same dismal character: one, for instance, represented a heart with a great gash in it, and a double row of large blood-drops dribbling from it; nails and a knife were thrust into the heart; round the whole was a crown of thorns. Such things are dreadful to think of. The same gloomy spirit which made a religion of them, and worked upon the people by the grossest of all means, terror, distracted the natural feelings of man to maintain its power—shut gentle women into lonely, pitiless convents—frightened poor peasants with tales of torment—taught that the end and labor of life was silence, wretchedness, and the scourge—murdered those by fagot and prison who thought otherwise. How has the blind and furious bigotry of man perverted that which God gave us as our greatest boon, and bid us hate where God bade us love! Thank heaven that monk has gone out of sight! It is pleasant to look at the smiling, cheerful old Beguine, and think no more of yonder livid face.

  One of the many convents in this little religious city seems to be the specimen-house, which is shown to strangers, for all the guides conduct you thither, and I saw in a book kept for the purpose the names of innumerable Smiths and Joneses registered.

  A very kind, sweet-voiced, smiling nun (I wonder, do they always choose the most agreeable and best-humored sister of the house to show it to strangers?) came tripping down the steps and across the flags of the little garden-court, and welcomed us with much courtesy into the neat little old-fashioned, red-bricked, gable-ended, shining-windowed Convent of the Angels. First she showed us a whitewashed parlor, decorated with a grim picture or two and some crucifixes and other religious emblems, where, upon stiff old chairs, the sisters sit and work. Three or four of them were still there, pattering over their laces and bobbins; but the chief part of the sisterhood were engaged in an apartment hard by, from which issued a certain odor which I must say resembled onions: it was in fact the kitchen of the establishment.

  Every Beguine cooks her own little dinner in her own little pipkin; and there was half a score of them, sure enough, busy over their pots and crockery, cooking a repast which, when ready, was carried off to a neighboring room, the refectory, where, at a ledge-table which is drawn out from under her own particular cupboard, each nun sits down and eats her meal in silence. More religious emblems ornamented the carved cupboard-doors, and within, everything was as neat as neat could be: shining pewter-ewers and glasses, snug baskets of eggs and pats of butter, and little bowls with about a farthing's-worth of green tea in them—for some great day of fete, doubtless. The old ladies sat round as we examined these things, each eating soberly at her ledge and never looking round. There was a bell ringing in the chapel hard by. "Hark!" said our guide, "that is one of the sisters dying. Will you come up and see the cells?"

  The cells, it need not be said, are the snuggest little nests in the world, with serge-curtained beds and snowy linen, and saints and martyrs pinned against the wall. "We may sit up till twelve o'clock, if we like," said the nun; "but we have no fire and candle, and so what's the use of sitting up? When we have said our prayers we are glad enough to go to sleep."

  I forget, although the good soul told us, how many times in the day, in public and in private, these devotions are made, but fancy that the morning service in the chapel takes place at too early an hour for most easy travellers. We did not fail to attend in the evening, when likewise is a general muster of the seven hundred, minus the absent and sick, and the sight is not a little curious and striking to a stranger.

  The chapel is a very big whitewashed place of worship, supported by half a dozen columns on either side, over each of which
stands the statue of an Apostle, with his emblem of martyrdom. Nobody was as yet at the distant altar, which was too far off to see very distinctly; but I could perceive two statues over it, one of which (St. Laurence, no doubt) was leaning upon a huge gilt gridiron that the sun lighted up in a blaze—a painful but not a romantic instrument of death. A couple of old ladies in white hoods were tugging and swaying about at two bell-ropes that came down into the middle of the church, and at least five hundred others in white veils were seated all round about us in mute contemplation until the service began, looking very solemn, and white, and ghastly, like an army of tombstones by moonlight.

  The service commenced as the clock finished striking seven: the organ pealed out, a very cracked and old one, and presently some weak old voice from the choir overhead quavered out a canticle; which done, a thin old voice of a priest at the altar far off (and which had now become quite gloomy in the sunset) chanted feebly another part of the service; then the nuns warbled once more overhead; and it was curious to hear, in the intervals of the most lugubrious chants, how the organ went off with some extremely cheerful military or profane air. At one time was a march, at another a quick tune; which ceasing, the old nuns began again, and so sung until the service was ended.

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

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