Baedeker, the distinguished German writer, states that this Fifteenth Century Gothic church in Nieuport has "a modern timber roof." We looked for it.
His very next phrase puzzled me—"with 3500 inhabitants," he says.
And I didn't see one. There were dead people in the ruins of the houses. The soldiers used to unearth them from time to time. I remember that the poet speaks of "the poor inhabitant below," when he is writing of a body in a grave. It must be in that sense that Baedeker specifies those 3500 inhabitants. But he shouldn't do that kind of imaginative touch. It isn't in his line. And it might mislead people.
Think of a stranger getting into Nieuport after dark on a wet night, with his mind all set on the three hotels Baedeker gives him a choice of.
"All unpretending," he says.
Just the wrong word. Why, those hotels are brick dust. They're flat on the ground. There isn't a room left. He means "demolished." He doesn't use our language easily. I can see that. It is true they are unpretending, but that isn't the first word you would use about them, not if you were fluent.
Then he gives a detail that is unnecessary. He says you can sleep or eat there for a "franc and a half." That exactitude is out of place. It is labored. I ask you what a traveler would make of the "1½ fr. pour diner," when he came on that rubbish heap which is the Hotel of Hope—"Hotel de l'Espérance." That is like Baedeker, all through his volume. He will give a detail, like the precise cost of this dinner, when there isn't any food in the neighborhood. It wouldn't be so bad if he'd sketch things in general terms. That I could forgive. But it is too much when he makes a word-picture of a Flemish table d'hôte for a franc and a half in a section of country where even the cats are starving.
His next statement is plain twisted. "Nieuport is noted for its obstinate resistance to the French."
I saw French soldiers there every day. They were defending the place. His way of putting it stands the facts on their head.