CHAPTER V
THE LOW COUNTRIES
Dutch arks—Walcheren memories—Earth-covered ships—Cossacks and keys—Brother alleys—Bergen op Zoom—Cossack shopping—Goat curricles—Treckschuyt travelling—Booksellers' shops.
AFTER Brussels the travellers proceeded to Holland, and saw Antwerp on their way. They had now gone beyond the country which Napoleon's victories had made famous, and the chief military interest of the country through which they passed, just eleven months before Waterloo, was derived from two very melancholy events for an Englishman to record—the Walcheren Expedition and the storming of Bergen op Zoom.
Letter XII
Bergen op Zoom, July 31st.
...On leaving Bruxelles the country immediately loses its character, and becomes entirely Dutch, by which we exchange for the better, leaving dirty floors, houses, and coaches for as[200] much cleanliness as soap and water can produce; I only regret from my experience of last night that they should be so much occupied in washing as to forget that drying is also a luxury, but there is no such novelty in this country, and so much to be seen that I have no time to catch cold. Our Diligence from Bruxelles held 10 people inside and 3 in front, and we had all ample elbow room; it was large, as you may suppose, as everything else in Holland is from top to bottom. Hats, Coats, breeches, pipes, horns, cows—are all gigantic, and so are the dogs, and because the poor things happen to be so, they harness a parcel of them together and breed them up to draw fish-carts. I yesterday met a man driving four-in-hand; in turning a corner and meeting three of these open-mouthed Mastiffs panting and pulling, you might almost fancy it was Cerberus drawing the Chariot of Proserpine—but I am wandering from the Diligence, which deserves some description. It resembled a little Theatre more than a coach, with front boxes, pit, &c., lined with common velvet. We had a curious collection of passengers. Opposite to me sat a prize thoroughbred Dutch woman as clean and tidy as she was ugly and phlegmatic, with a close-plaited cap, unruffled white shawl, and golden cross suspended from her neck. I took a sketch while she stared me in the face unconscious of the honor conferred. By her side sat a French woman crowned with the lofty towers of an Oldenburg Bonnet. By my side a spruce, pretty, English[201]woman, whom I somehow or other suspected had been serving with his Britannic Majesty's troops now occupying Belgium. She had on her right hand a huge Brabanter who spoke English, and had acquired, I have no doubt, a few additional pounds of fat by living in London. Edward sat behind me in a line with the Brabanter's wife and a Dutch peasant. These, with two or three minor characters, completed our cargo, and away we went on the finest road in the world towards Antwerp between a triple row of Abeles and poplars, and skirting the bank of a fine canal upon which floated a fleet of Kuyp's barks, and by which grazed Paul Potter's oxen—the whole road was, in truth, a gallery of the Flemish school. By the door of every ale-house a living group from Teniers and Ostade, with here and there bits from Berghem and Hobbema, &c. Halfway between Bruxelles and Antwerp is Malines. I had began to fear that I had lost my powers of observation, and was, therefore, no longer struck with the external appearance of the towns—in fact, that the novelty was gone, and that my eyes were too much familiarised with such objects to notice them. Happily Malines undeceived me, and convinced me I was still fully alive to whatever had any real peculiarity of character to entitle it to notice. With the exception of the villages on the Rhine, all the towns and houses I had seen lately had little to recommend them, and were like half the people in the world, possessed of no character of their own, their doors[202] and windows like all other doors and windows, but Malines had doors and windows of its own, and seemed to take a pride in exhibiting its own little queer originalities; in every house was a different idea. The people were of a piece with their dwellings; I could almost fancy I was permitted to inspect the toys of some Brobdignag baby who washed, cleaned, and combed the beings before me every morning and locked them up in their separate boxes every evening. When the nice green doors of the nice painted houses opened, I bethought me of the Dutch ark you bought for Owen, and was prepared to make my best bow to Noah and his wife, who I expected to step forth with Ham and Japhet, and all the birds and beasts behind them.