CALAIS
Calais will merit to be described by every Englishman who visits it, and to be read of by every one who does not—so long as Hogarth, and "Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England!" shall be remembered, and—which will be longer still—till the French and English become one people, merely by dint of living, within three hours' journey of each other. Calais has been treated much too cavalierly by the flocks of English, who owe to it their first, and consequently most fixed impressions of French manners, and the English want of them. Calais is, in fact, one of the most agreeable and characteristic little towns in France. It is "lively, audible, and full of vent"—as gay as a fair, and as busy as a bee-hive—and its form and construction as compact.
Calais, unlike any English town you could name, is content to remain where it is—instead of perpetually trying to stretch away towards Paris, as our's do towards London, and as London itself does towards them. Transporting you at once to the "Place" in the centre of the town (an entirely open square, of about 150 paces by 100,) you can scarcely look upon a more lively and stirring scene. The houses and their shops (they have all shops) are like nothing so much as so many scenes in a pantomime—so fancifully and variously are they filled, so brightly and fantastically painted, and so abruptly do they seem to have risen out of the ground! This last appearance is caused by the absence of a foot-path, and of areas, porticoes, railings, &c.—such as, in all cases, give a kind of finish to the look of our houses. The houses here seem all to have grown up out of the ground—not to have been built upon it. This is what gives to them their most striking effect of novelty at the first view. Their brilliant and various colourings—so unlike our sombre brick-work—is the next cause of the novel impression they produce. The general strangeness of the effect is completed by the excellence of the pavement, which is of stones, shaped like those of our best London carriage-ways, but as white as marble in all weathers, and as regular as the brick-work of a house-front. The uniformity of the "Place" is broken (not very agreeably) by the principal public edifice of Calais—the Town Hall; a half-modern, half-antique building, which occupies about a third of the south side, and is surmounted at one end by a light spiring belfry, containing a most loquacious ring of bells, which take up a somewhat unreasonable proportion of every quarter of an hour in announcing its arrival; and, in addition, every three hours they play "Le petit chaperon rouge" for a longer period than (I should imagine) even French patience and leisure can afford to listen to it. Immediately behind the centre of this side of the "Place" also rises the lofty tower, which serves as a light-house to the coast and harbour, and which at night displays its well-known revolving lights. Most of the principal streets run out of this great Square. The most busy of them—because the greatest thoroughfare—is a short and narrow one leading to the Port—(Rue du Havre:) in it live all those shopkeepers who especially address themselves to the wants of the traveller. But the gayest and most agreeable street is one running from the north-east corner of the "Place" (Rue Royale.) It terminates in the gate leading to the suburbs (Basse Ville,) and to the Netherlands and the interior of the country. In this street is situated the great hotel Dessin—rendered famous for the "for ever" of a century or so to come, by Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The only other street devoted exclusively to shops is one running parallel with the south side of the "Place." The rest of the interior of Calais consists of about twenty other streets, each containing here and there a shop, but chiefly occupied by the residences of persons directly or indirectly connected with the trade of Calais as a sea-port town.
If you believe its maligners, Calais is no better than a sort of Alsatia to England, a kind of extension of the rules of the King's Bench. The same persons would persuade you that America is something between a morass and a desert, and that its inhabitants are a cross between swindlers and barbarians; merely because its laws do not take upon them to punish those who have not offended against them! If America were to send home to their respective countries, in irons, all who arrive on her shores under suspicion of not being endowed with a Utopian degree of honesty—or, if (still better) she were to hang them outright, she would be looked upon as the most pious, moral, and refined nation under the sun, and her climate would rival that of Paradise. And if Calais did not happen to be so situated, that it affords a pleasant refuge to some of those who have the wit to prefer free limbs and fresh air to a prison, it would be all that is agreeable and genteel. It seems to be thought, that a certain ci-devant leader of fashion has chosen Calais as his place of voluntary exile, out of a spirit of contradiction. But the truth is, he had the good sense to see that he might "go farther and fare worse;" and that, at any rate, he would thus secure himself from the intrusions of that "good company," which had been his bane. By-the-by, his last "good thing" appertains to his residence here. Some one asked him how he could think of residing in "such a place as Calais?" "I suppose," said he, "it is possible for a gentleman to live between London and Paris."
The interior of Calais I need not describe further, except to say that round three-fourths of it are elevated ramparts, overlooking the surrounding country to a great extent, and in several parts planted with trees, which afford most pleasant and refreshing walks, after pacing the somewhat perplexing pavements of the streets, and being dazzled by the brilliant whiteness which reflects from that, and from the houses. The port, which occupies the other fourth, and is gained by three streets parallel to each other, and leading from the "Place," is small, but in excellent order, and always alive with shipping, and the amusing operations appertaining thereto; and the pier is a most striking object, especially at high water, when it runs out, in a straight line, for near three quarters of a mile, into the open sea. It is true our English engineers—who ruin hundreds of their fellow citizens by spending millions upon a bridge that nobody will take the trouble to pass over, and cutting tunnels under rivers, only to let the water into them when they have got all the money they can by the job—would treat this pier with infinite contempt as a thing that merely answers all the purposes for which it was erected! as if that were a merit of any but the very lowest degree. "Look at Waterloo Bridge!" they say; "we flatter ourselves that was not a thing built (like the pier of Calais) merely for use. Nobody will say that any such thing was wanted! But, what a noble monument of British art, and what a fine commemoration of the greatest of modern victories!" True: but it would have been all this if you had built it on Salisbury Plain; and in that case it would have cost only half the money. The pier of Calais is, in fact, every thing that it need be, and what perhaps no other pier is; and yet it is nothing more than a piece of serviceable carpentery, that must have cost about as much, perhaps, as to print the prospectuses of some of the late undertakings, and pay the advertisements and the lawyer's bill.