t is just eleven o'clock, and here we are coming to a charming town, which few travellers have probably visited, and of which that genial and experienced traveller, Charles Dickens, wrote in astonished delight, and where in 1862 he spent his birthday. 'Here I find,' he says, 'a grand place, so very remarkable and picturesque, that it is astonishing how people miss it.' This is old Arras; and I confess it alone seems worth a long day's, not to say night's, journey, to see. It is fortified, and, as in such towns, we have to make our way to it from the station by an umbrageous country road; for it is fenced, as a gentleman's country seat might be, and strictly enclosed by the usual mounds, ditches, and walls, but all so picturesquely disguised in rich greenery as to be positively inviting. Even low down in the deep ditches grew symmetrical avenues of straight trees, abundant in their leaves and branches, which filled them quite up. The gates seem monumental works of art, and picturesque to a degree; while over the walls—and what noble specimens of brickwork, or tiling rather, are these old Vauban walls!—peep with curious mystery the upper stories and roofs of houses with an air of smiling security. I catch a glimpse of the elegant belfry, the embroidered spires, and mosque-like cupolas, all a little rusted, yet cheerful-looking. Dickens's place, or two places rather—for there is the greater and the less—display to us a really lovely town-hall in the centre, the roof dotted over with rows of windows, while an airy lace-work spire, with a ducal crown as the finish, rises lightly. On to its sides are encrusted other buildings of Renaissance order, while behind is a mansion still more astonishingly embroidered in sculptured stone, with a colonnade of vast extent. Around the place itself stretches a vast number of Spanish mansions, with the usual charmingly 'escalloped' roof, all resting on a prolonged colonnade or piazza, strange, old-fashioned, and original, running round to a vast extent, which the sensible town has decreed is never to be interfered with. A more pleasing, refreshing, and novel collection of objects for the ordinary traveller of artistic taste to see without trouble or expense, it would be impossible to conceive. Yet everyone hurries by to see the somewhat stale glories of Ghent and Brussels.
There was a general fat contented air of bourgeois comfort about the sleepy old-fashioned, handsome Prefecture—in short, a capital background for the old provincial life as described by Balzac. But the place, with its inimitable Spanish houses and colonnades—under which you can shop—and that most elegant of spires, sister to that of Antwerp, which it recalls, will never pass from the memory. A beautiful object of this kind, thus seen, is surely a present, and a valuable one too.
A spire is often the expression of the whole town. How much is suggested by the well-known, familiar cathedral spire at Antwerp, as, of some fresh morning, we come winding up the tortuous Scheldt, the sad, low-lying plains and boulders lying on either hand, monotonous and dispiriting, yet novel in their way; the cream-coloured, lace-worked spire rising ever before us in all its elegant grace, pointing the way, growing by degrees, never for an instant out of sight. It seems a fitting introduction to the noble, historical, and poetical city to which it belongs. It is surely Antwerp! We see Charles V., and Philip, and the exciting troubles of the Gueux, the Dutch, the Flemings, the argosies from all countries in the great days of its trade. Such is the mysterious power of association, which it ever exerts on the 'reminiscent.' How different, and how much more profitable, too, is this mode of approaching the place, than the other more vulgar one of the railway terminus, with the cabs and omnibuses waiting, and the convenient journey to the hotel.
These old cities—Lille, Douai, and Valenciennes—all boast their gateways, usually named after the city to which the road leads. Thus we have 'Porte de Paris,' 'Porte de Lille,' etc. I confess to a deep interest in all gateways of this kind; they have a sort of poetry or romance associated with them; they are grim, yet hospitable, at times and seasons having a mysterious suggestion. There are towns where the traveller finds the gate obdurately closed between ten o'clock at night and six in the morning. These old gates have a state and flamboyant majesty about them, as, in Lille, the Porte de Paris is associated with the glories of Louis XIV.; while in Douai there is one of an old pattern—it is said of the thirteenth century—with curious towers and spires. Even at Calais there is a fine and majestic structure, 'Porte de Richelieu,' on the town side, through which every market cart and carriage used to trundle. There are florid devices inscribed on it; but now that the walls on each side are levelled, this patriarchal monument has but a ludicrous effect, for it is left standing alone, unsupported and purposeless. The carts and tramcars find their way round by new and more convenient roads made on each side.
How pleasant is that careless wandering up through some strange and unfamiliar place, led by a sort of instinct which habit soon furnishes! In some of the French 'Guides,' minute directions are given for the explorer, who is bidden to take the street to right or to left, after leaving the station, etc. But there is a piquancy in this uncertainty as compared with the odious guidance of the laquais de place. I loathe the tribe. Here was to be clearly noted the languid, lazy French town where nothing seemed to be doing, but everyone appeared to be comfortable—'the fat, contented, stubble goose'—another type of town altogether from your thriving Lilles and Rouens.
The pleasure in surveying this extraordinary combination of beautiful objects, the richness and variety of the work, the long lines broken by the charming and, as they are called, 'escalloped' gables, the Spanish balconies, the pillars, light and shade, and shops, made it almost incredible that such a thing was to be found in a poor obscure French town, visited by but few travellers. On market-day, when the whole is filled up with country folks, their wares and their stalls sheltered from the sun by gaily-tinted awnings, the bustle and glinting colours, and general va et vient, impart a fitting dramatic air. Then are the old Spanish houses set off becomingly.
This old town has other curious things to exhibit, such as the enormous old Abbey of St. Vaast—with its huge expansive roof, which somehow seems to dominate the place, and thrusts forward some fragment or other—where a regiment might lodge. Its spacious gardens are converted to secular uses. Then I find myself at the old-new cathedral, begun about a century ago, and finished about fifty years since—a 'poorish' heartless edifice in the bald Italian manner, and quite unsuited to these old Flemish cities. I come out on a terrace with a huge flight of steps which leads to a lower portion of the city. This, indeed, leads down from the haute to the basse ville; and it is stated that a great portion of this upper town is supported upon catacombs or caves from which the white stone of the belfry and town-hall was quarried. It is a curious feeling to be shown the house in which Robespierre was born, which, for the benefit of the curious it may be stated, is to be found in the Rue des Rapporteurs, close to the theatre. Arras was a famous Jacobin centre, and from the balcony of this theatre, Lebon, one of the Jacobins, directed the executions, which took place abundantly on the pretty place.
Thus much, then, for Arras, where one would have liked to linger, nay, to stay a week or a few days. But this wishing to stay a week at a picturesque place is often a dangerous pitfall, as the amiable Charles Collins has shown in his own quaint style. Has anyone, he asks, ever, 'on arriving at some place he has never visited before, taken a sudden fancy to it, committed himself to apartments for a month certain, gone on praising the locality and all that belongs to it, ferreting out concealed attractions, attaching undue importance to them, undervaluing obvious defects: has he gone on in this way for three weeks,' or rather three days, 'out of his month, then suddenly broken down, found out his mistake, and pined in secret for deliverance?' So it would be, as I conceive, at Bruges, or perhaps at St. Omer. There you indeed appreciate the dead-alive city 'in all its quiddity.' But a few days in a 'dead-alive' city, were it the most picturesque in the world, would be intolerable.