ROSE G. KINGSLEY.
[The traveller to whom we owe the following selection makes it part of a paper on “The Home of Rubens,” in which she appreciatively describes that artist’s works. Her account of the city in which the greatest of these works are enshrined is more to our purpose, and is here given.]
It had rained in England for a month without stopping, when, weary of sodden gray clouds above and sodden green grass below, M—— and I determined to seek new sketching-grounds under a more kindly sky. We had but a fortnight to spend on our trip. Where, therefore, could we find a richer field of work than in Flanders? for there quaint cities, beautiful buildings, glorious pictures, and, if we were minded to go deeper, a tangled mass of historic interest, lay within easy reach.
Thus it came to pass that the 30th of September found us driving through the streets of Brussels, and three days later we were steaming out into the (to us) unknown, on our way to Antwerp. Our three days had been chiefly spent in making closer acquaintance with Flemish art in the museum of the capital,—a collection most valuable and typical, a collection too often ignored or hastily glanced through by the tourist, who, if by chance he cares for such things, hurries on to see Memling at Bruges, Van Eyck at Ghent, or Rubens at Antwerp. He forgets, or does not know, that, as Fromentin justly says, “Belgium is a magnificent book of art, of which, happily for provincial glory, the chapters are scattered everywhere, but of which the preface is at Brussels, and only at Brussels. To all who are tempted to skip the preface in order to get at the book, I should say they are wrong,—that they open the book too soon and will read it ill.” We therefore studied the preface with some care, and now were about to turn the first page of the book itself....
Everything seemed new, pretty, and amusing, as the train cleared the last of the suburbs of Brussels. The sun shone on the long lines of poplars, just burnished with autumn’s gold, which cast their shadows on damp green meadows ruled off into squares with almost mathematical precision. Here a man in a brown apron and brilliant crimson sleeves was raking up the aftermath off a water-meadow. There a girl in a blue frock was herding black and white cows, and we began to think of Cuyp. Then we saw, across flat stretches of smiling country, pointed steeples and red roofs, showing behind thick groups of trees in a soft blue haze, while an old windmill on blackened wooden stilts, a little donkey-cart, and a group of crimson-jacketed peasants in the foreground made us think of some of Teniers the Younger’s landscapes, and recollect that we must be close to Drei Torren, his house at Perck. Then came Malines, our first brown canal, with red-sailed, green-and black-painted barges, the great cathedral rising through a screen of trees over scarlet house-roofs, a picturesque crowd on the platform of burly shovel-hatted priests, nuns with black shawls over their white caps, men with blue blouses and brilliant yellow sabots,—and we thought of Prout. It was all so absurdly like what we had expected, with a difference,—just the difference between art and nature.
Then came more flat country, more canals, more fields, more absurd cocky little wheat-ricks, with hardly corn enough in them to make a loaf of bread, more white and purple lupins on the embankments, more red-tiled roofs, half thatch, half tile, which M—— pronounced “most æsthetic,” more sun, yes, that was perhaps the best of all. Then a great green fort, and we were at Antwerp.
We hardly gave ourselves time to swallow a hasty déjeûner, and then set forth with the charming feeling that we had nothing to do but amuse ourselves. We had not an idea of where we were going, or what we meant to see. All was new, therefore all to us was worth seeing. Only a vague impression floated in our minds that we ought before long to find our way to the cathedral. It was not hard to find; in fact, it was impossible to miss it, for, as we sauntered down the Place de Meir, the golden clock-face on the steeple shone before us like a beacon over the high house-roofs, and
“Far up, the carillon did search
The wind.”
We pushed our way past the odious touters, clamorously asking in vile French and still viler English if we wished to see the cathedral? had we seen it? did we know we ought to see it? finally, of course, should they show it to us? We were in too mighty a presence to heed them. Above us, almost painfully high, rose the great steeple, pointing up to the clear blue sky. We stood at a corner of the old Marché and gazed and gazed, hardly able at first to take in the idea of its real height, foreshortened as it is when one stands so near. It grew upon us, revealed itself to us, as we looked and wondered, and ever after, while in the city, we seemed to feel its protecting presence, even though it might be hidden from our eyes. And we thought how often must weary sailors, beating up the stormy waters of the North Sea, have longed for a glimpse of that weather-stained tower, token to them of home and safety after some perilous voyage to bring gold and sugar from the New World, or priceless stuffs and spices from the Indies and far Cathay! Or as painters, after long study in the schools of Rome and Venice, made their slow way northward once more across the Alps, to add fresh glory to the Guild of St. Luke, how eagerly they must have watched for the first sight of their cathedral, pointing heavenward out of the flat misty plain, as if to lift their minds from earth into some purer atmosphere!
Yet, splendid as is the casket, still more precious is the treasure it contains. Many men have built cathedrals. There has been but one Rubens; and of all Rubens’s works, the “Descent from the Cross” enshrined in Antwerp Cathedral is, one may venture to say without fear of criticism, unquestionably the most wonderful and beautiful. There is a sobriety, a reticence, about it in color, in movement, in drawing, in the exquisite balance of light and shade, in the nobility and yet tenderness of conception, which one hardly looks for in the painter, splendid though he be, of the Assumption of the Virgin over the high altar close by, still less of the gorgeous but revolting Marie de Medici series in the Louvre. To quote Fromentin once more, “Tout y est contenu, concis, laconique comme dans une page du texte sacré.” Let those who judge him merely by pictures such as the last go to Antwerp, and, casting aside all preconceived ideas, say then whether Peter Paul Rubens shall not be pardoned all his carelessness, his coarseness,—yes, even his horrors,—and be to them henceforth the painter of the noble and majestic “Descent from the Cross.”
It was long before we could summon resolution to leave the cathedral. Half a dozen times we started, as many times we turned back to the great triptych to impress some detail more firmly on our minds; and at last, when the door swung to behind us, and we saw the great master’s statue standing in dusty sunshine in the Place Verte, we were in no humor for more sight-seeing. So we wandered happily and aimlessly on, now enchanted by some pignon espagnol, the quaint gable running up in a series of steps, which was introduced, some say, by the Spaniards, now stopping to scribble down the details of a bit of costume, or to look at a street shrine on a corner house, with its figure and lamp and tinsel flowers, until at last we found ourselves on the quays.
Here, where Van Noort, where Rubens, where Jordaens made studies among the rude fishermen for their pictures of the Miraculous Draught,—here, where generations of painters from their day down to our own have loved to dwell upon the changing aspects of the quiet river, the hurrying quays, the picturesque people,—here was indeed a spot where we humble disciples of Apelles might hope to gather inspiration from the example of the great departed. So we hunted out a pile of wood on the very brink of the river, a quiet corner where we ran no risk of being trampled underfoot by gigantic Flemish dray-horses or knocked down by heavily laden wagons; and there we sat peacefully, sketching the long reaches of the Scheldt bathed in a flood of golden haze. Up it sailed long low boats, floating past us with full red sails, flat, faint, wooded shores behind them, a tall smoking chimney or little church-spire breaking the blue line of the trees here and there. The river reaches were full of repose to eye and mind alike, and our thoughts turned instinctively to Van de Velde, to his glassy water, where little gleams catch the curl of some lazy ripple, and his skiffs and schooners floating in a veil of filmy gold, which warms his usual pearly grays, while they in turn give a sober undertone to the golden glory. A contrast to the quiet river was the foreground of the picture, where a steamer was lading for some distant voyage, funnels, rigging, hull, a great mass of black and brown against the pale golden water, and the bustling quay, where horses, men, carriages, foot-passengers, long low trollies,—apparently on only two wheels, so minute were the front pair,—piled high with bales and barrels, were jumbled in inextricable confusion.
THE WATERLOO PYRAMID
We were working away, thankful that every one was too full of his own business to care to look at us, when suddenly a pleasant smell of burning made us wonder whether the municipality were trying to fumigate the town and overpower the very unsavory odors around us. Presently blacks began to settle on our sketch-books. Then burning morsels flew through the air, and, turning round, we saw that a quantity of bales standing on the quay twenty yards behind us were on fire. Half a dozen bystanders looked on with true Flemish phlegm. A woman in blue and gray, with yellow sabots, stood watching on a fallen mast. Then others began to arrive, and as the flames rose higher some slight interest arose with them. The gray woman turned and ran for the pompiers. The interest grew and spread among the gathering crowd. Soldiers just landing from the Tête de Flandre caught sight of the crackling flames and rushed towards them. Stevedores left the lading of their steamer, and, leaping across masts and spars, with sacks over their heads and their blue blouses puffed into balloons by the wind, rushed to the scene of action. M—— and I thought it prudent to retire to a street-corner, away from the turmoil.
Such a street! all in warm shade, with rich reds and grays and browns among its high-roofed houses. Out of the Fish-Market close by poured a motley crowd,—men in blue jerseys, men in red jerkins, men in shirt-sleeves, little lads in sailor-clothes with bright yellow sabots, women with yellow sabots and blue stockings, or yellow stockings and black sabots, or black shoes and pink stockings, women in three-cornered shawls, women in long black cloaks. The tardily-awakened interest had grown into intense excitement. Every one ran,—soldiers, ladies, porters, priests; and as we left the Quai Vandyck to go home, and looked up at the stone lace-work of the cathedral tower against the bright blue sky, the pompiers raced past us with their little hand-engine, to find that the fire had burnt itself out.
Too tired by our long day to walk any more, but unwilling to waste the evening in our rooms, we chartered a comfortable little carriage and drove down to the Port just after sunset. The cathedral tower stood stately and sombre against a pale-pink sky. Against this delicate background, too, we caught fantastic irregular outlines of old houses at every turn of the streets. The busy Quai Vandyck we now saw under a completely changed aspect. The pink of the upper sky melted into yellow, the yellow into a heavy blue-purple blending with the farther shore of the river. The bands of color, intensified by black masts and sails rising from yet blacker hulls lying under the bank, were reflected in the opalescent water; while fluttering pennons on a forest of fishing-boats looked, as M—— said, “like a shoal of minnows.”
As we drove along in the growing darkness the scene was weird and strange. We caught glimpses of black figures, with heavy burdens on their shoulders, rushing up and down gangways of loading steamers like the demons of some Walpurgisnacht, lighted by oil-cans flaming from their two spouts. Then came a street of ancient houses,—we could see only the steps of their gables against the sky,—and, instead of a roadway below, the street was full of water and ships, sails half furled, lights, red, green, and yellow, repeating themselves in long reflections amid the black boats on the smooth surface of the canal. Across the river steamer-lights crept to and fro. Low carts, with huge horses that brought to mind Paul Potter’s etching of “The Friesland Horse,” grazed past us. Then came a black mass,—the house of the Hanseatic League. Then great docks like the sea, stretching away infinitely into the darkness, a mysterious confusion of masts, spars, cordage, chimneys, lights, water, black hulls. On shore a tangle of carts and trollies standing horseless, barrels, cotton-bales, wool-sacks. A locomotive snorted past us in dangerous proximity, appearing one knew not from whence, disappearing again into the gloom. Electric lights flashed on ahead far up the line. We passed more huge warehouses, more canals, more narrow streets. Then the Port and its strange life, its flaming oil-cans, its murky darkness, were left behind, and we found ourselves back in nineteenth-century civilization, driving down the new Frenchified boulevards, with only the statue of David Teniers and the Italian facade of Rubens’s house to remind us where we were.