Part 1 (2/2)

”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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sumes a look of perfect health and happiness. See her companion in shot silk and a dove-colored parasol; in what a graceful Watteau-like att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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, ”G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sengers, right and left, if they will take a little supper. What a grand object is a sunset, and what a wonder is an appet.i.te at sea! Lo! the horned moon s.h.i.+nes 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 s.h.i.+p'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 att.i.tudes 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 n.o.bleman asleep among the portmanteaus; and t.i.tmarsh, 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. Flus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 ca.n.a.ls, 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 c.o.c.ked hat; imagine ”G.o.d 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 bombsh.e.l.l at that abomination, and have given the n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble. A rich, tender suns.h.i.+ne is streaming in through the windows, and gilding the stately edifice with the purest light. The admirable stained-gla.s.s 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 n.o.ble. 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 cus.h.i.+on 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 superst.i.tions, 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, coa.r.s.e, 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

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