Little Travels and Roadside Sketches

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Steam-engines and their accompaniments, blazing forges, gaunt manufactories, with numberless windows and long black chimneys, of course take away from the romance of the place but, as we whirled into Brussels, even these engines had a fine appearance. Three or four of the snorting, galloping monsters had just finished their journey, and there was a quantity of flaming ashes lying under the brazen bellies of each that looked properly lurid and demoniacal. The men at the station came out with flaming torches—awful-looking fellows indeed! Presently the different baggage was handed out, and in the very worst vehicle I ever entered, and at the very slowest pace, we were borne to the "Hotel de Suede," from which house of entertainment this letter is written.

We strolled into the town, but, though the night was excessively fine and it was not yet eleven o'clock, the streets of the little capital were deserted, and the handsome blazing cafes round about the theatres contained no inmates. Ah, what a pretty sight is the Parisian Boulevard on a night like this! how many pleasant hours has one passed in watching the lights, and the hum, and the stir, and the laughter of those happy, idle people! There was none of this gayety here; nor was there a person to be found, except a skulking commissioner or two (whose real name in French is that of a fish that is eaten with fennel-sauce), and who offered to conduct us to certain curiosities in the town. What must we English not have done, that in every town in Europe we are to be fixed upon by scoundrels of this sort; and what a pretty reflection it is on our country that such rascals find the means of living on us!

Early the next morning we walked through a number of streets in the place, and saw certain sights. The Park is very pretty, and all the buildings round about it have an air of neatness—almost of stateliness. The houses are tall, the streets spacious, and the roads extremely clean. In the Park is a little theatre, a cafe somewhat ruinous, a little palace for the king of this little kingdom, some smart public buildings (with S. P. Q. B. emblazoned on them, at which pompous inscription one cannot help laughing), and other rows of houses somewhat resembling a little Rue de Rivoli. Whether from my own natural greatness and magnanimity, or from that handsome share of national conceit that every Englishman possesses, my impressions of this city are certainly anything but respectful. It has an absurd kind of Lilliput look with it. There are soldiers, just as in Paris, better dressed, and doing a vast deal of drumming and bustle; and yet, somehow, far from being frightened at them, I feel inclined to laugh in their faces. There are little Ministers, who work at their little bureaux; and to read the journals, how fierce they are! A great thundering Times could hardly talk more big. One reads about the rascally Ministers, the miserable Opposition, the designs of tyrants, the eyes of Europe, &c., just as one would in real journals. The Moniteur of Ghent belabors the Independent of Brussels; the Independent falls foul of the Lynx; and really it is difficult not to suppose sometimes that these worthy people are in earnest. And yet how happy were they sua si bona norint! Think what a comfort it would be to belong to a little state like this; not to abuse their privilege, but philosophically to use it. If I were a Belgian, I would not care one single fig about politics. I would not read thundering leading-articles. I would not have an opinion. What's the use of an opinion here? Happy fellows! do not the French, the English, and the Prussians, spare them the trouble of thinking, and make all their opinions for them? Think of living in a country free, easy, respectable, wealthy, and with the nuisance of talking politics removed from out of it. All this might the Belgians have, and a part do they enjoy, but not the best part; no, these people will be brawling and by the ears, and parties run as high here as at Stoke Pogis or little Pedlington.

These sentiments were elicited by the reading of a paper at the cafe in the Park, where we sat under the trees for a while and sipped our cool lemonade. Numbers of statues decorate the place, the very worst I ever saw. These Cupids must have been erected in the time of the Dutch dynasty, as I judge from the immense posterior developments. Indeed the arts of the country are very low. The statues here, and the lions before the Prince of Orange's palace, would disgrace almost the figurehead of a ship.

Of course we paid our visit to this little lion of Brussels (the Prince's palace, I mean). The architecture of the building is admirably simple and firm; and you remark about it, and all other works here, a high finish in doors, wood-works, paintings, &c., that one does not see in France, where the buildings are often rather sketched than completed, and the artist seems to neglect the limbs, as it were, and extremities of his figures.

The finish of this little place is exquisite. We went through some dozen of state-rooms, paddling along over the slippery floors of inlaid woods in great slippers, without which we must have come to the ground. How did his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange manage when he lived here, and her Imperial Highness the Princess, and their excellencies the chamberlains and the footmen? They must have been on their tails many times a day, that's certain, and must have cut queer figures.

The ball-room is beautiful—all marble, and yet with a comfortable, cheerful look; the other apartments are not less agreeable, and the people looked with intense satisfaction at some great lapis-lazuli tables, which the guide informed us were worth four millions, more or less; adding with a very knowing look, that they were un peu plus cher que l'or. This speech has a tremendous effect on visitors, and when we met some of our steamboat companions in the Park or elsewhere—in so small a place as this one falls in with them a dozen times a day—"Have you seen the tables?" was the general question. Prodigious tables are they, indeed! Fancy a table, my dear—a table four feet wide—a table with legs. Ye heavens! the mind can hardly picture to itself anything so beautiful and so tremendous!

There are some good pictures in the palace, too, but not so extraordinarily good as the guide-books and the guide would have us to think. The latter, like most men of his class, is an ignoramus, who showed us an Andrea del Sarto (copy or original), and called it a Correggio, and made other blunders of a like nature. As is the case in England, you are hurried through the rooms without being allowed time to look at the pictures, and, consequently, to pronounce a satisfactory judgment on them.

In the Museum more time was granted me, and I spent some hours with pleasure there. It is an absurd little gallery, absurdly imitating the Louvre, with just such compartments and pillars as you see in the noble Paris gallery; only here the pillars and capitals are stucco and white in place of marble and gold, and plaster-of-paris busts of great Belgians are placed between the pillars. An artist of the country has made a picture containing them, and you will be ashamed of your ignorance when you hear many of their names. Old Tilly of Magdeburg figures in one corner; Rubens, the endless Rubens, stands in the midst. What a noble countenance it is, and what a manly, swaggering consciousness of power!

The picture to see here is a portrait, by the great Peter Paul, of one of the governesses of the Netherlands. It is just the finest portrait that ever was seen. Only a half-length, but such a majesty, such a force, such a splendor, such a simplicity about it! The woman is in a stiff black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is behind her—the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to the vice-Queen. A common bungler would have painted her in her best clothes, with crown and sceptre, just as our Queen has been painted by—but comparisons are odious. Here stands this majestic woman in her every-day working-dress of black satin, LOOKING YOUR HAT OFF, as it were. Another portrait of the same personage hangs elsewhere in the gallery, and it is curious to observe the difference between the two, and see how a man of genius paints a portrait, and how a common limner executes it.