CHAPTER IX.
A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
To Brussels.—The old and new city.—The paradise and purgatory of dogs.—The Hôtel de Ville and Grand Place.—St. Gudule.—The picture galleries.—Wiertz and his odd paintings.—Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte Brontë's school.—The scene of "Villette."
THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle, their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the —— family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.
Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is passed, the low hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for, coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Müller leaned upon her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields beneath a level sky, the windmills began to appear in the distance, slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly resolved into our original element—dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.
The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but joined to it—like an old man with a gay young wife—is the beautiful Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that passes upon the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed puff-balls to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine which is the most forlorn—the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray, barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family of friends. With them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop window,—straggling along one after another in a way that would have been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here, where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of the old city—a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,—who lost their heads while striving to gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish Inquisition,—and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hôtel de Ville, with its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows. It comes to me like a picture now—the gathering shadows of a summer night, the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of the old women nodding over their flowers.
Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome, and dimensions nobody reads. If I could only tell you how far extending they are, both upon earth and towards heaven—how they seem not so much to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,—one, far above the grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before the altar—workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers, echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust—whose works have followed him.
After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture galleries in the old palaces of the city,—galleries of modern Belgian art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one, Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through peep-holes—one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window, an old concierge leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed upon the walls.
Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its laces. We visited one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny, cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle and thread, for the point lace, or twisting the bobbins among the innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for the point appliqué. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome labor—coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot, handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, barbes that fairly pierced our hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm—that as we turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.
Table-d'hôte over, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?" queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now escaped from the thraldom of a French pensionnat.