The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 2

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The race-track (Longchamps, as it is called), broad and beautiful
springy turf, is not different from some others, except that the
inclosed oblong space is not flat, but undulating just enough for
beauty, and so framed in by graceful woods, and looked on by chateaux
and upland forests, that I thought I had never seen a sweeter bit of
greensward. St. Cloud overlooks it, and villas also regard it from
other heights. The day I saw it, the horse-chestnuts were in bloom;
and there was, on the edges, a cloud of pink and white blossoms, that
gave a soft and charming appearance to the entire landscape. The
crowd in the grounds, in front of the stands for judges, royalty, and
people who are privileged or will pay for places, was, I suppose,
much as usual,--an excited throng of young and jockey-looking men,
with a few women-gamblers in their midst, making up the pool; a pack
of carriages along the circuit of the track, with all sorts of
people, except the very good; and conspicuous the elegantly habited
daughters of sin and satin, with servants in livery, as if they had
been born to it; gentlemen and ladies strolling about, or reclining
on the sward, and a refreshment-stand in lively operation.

When the bell rang, we all cleared out from the track, and I happened
to get a position by the railing. I was looking over to the
Pavilion, where I supposed the Emperor to be, when the man next to me
cried, "Voila!" and, looking up, two horses brushed right by my face,
of which I saw about two tails and one neck, and they were gone.
Pretty soon they came round again, and one was ahead, as is apt to be
the case; and somebody cried, "Bully for Therise!" or French to that
effect, and it was all over. Then we rushed across to the Emperor's
Pavilion, except that I walked with all the dignitV consistent with
rapidity, and there, in the midst of his suite, sat the Man of
December, a stout, broad, and heavy-faced man as you know, but a man
who impresses one with a sense of force and purpose,--sat, as I say,
and looked at us through his narrow, half-shut eyes, till he was
satisfied that I had got his features through my glass, when he
deliberately arose and went in.

All Paris was out that day,--it is always out, by the way, when the
sun shines, and in whatever part of the city you happen to be; and it
seemed to me there was a special throng clear down to the gate of the
Tuileries, to see the Emperor and the rest of us come home. He went
round by the Rue Rivoli, but I walked through the gardens. The
soldiers from Africa sat by the gilded portals, as usual,--aliens,
and yet always with the port of conquerors here in Paris. Their
nonchalant indifference and soldierly bearing always remind me of the
sort of force the Emperor has at hand to secure his throne. I think
the blouses must look askance at these satraps of the desert. The
single jet fountain in the basin was springing its highest,--a
quivering pillar of water to match the stone shaft of Egypt which
stands close by. The sun illuminated it, and threw a rainbow from it
a hundred feet long, upon the white and green dome of chestnut-trees
near. When I was farther down the avenue, I had the dancing column
of water, the obelisk, and the Arch of Triumph all in line, and the
rosy sunset beyond.

AN IMPERIAL REVIEW

The Prince and Princess of Wales came up to Paris in the beginning of
May, from Italy, Egypt, and alongshore, stayed at a hotel on the
Place Vendome, where they can get beef that is not horse, and is
rare, and beer brewed in the royal dominions, and have been
entertained with cordiality by the Emperor. Among the spectacles
which he has shown them is one calculated to give them an idea of his
peaceful intentions,-a grand review of cavalry and artillery at the
Bois de Boulogne. It always seems to me a curious comment upon the
state of our modern civilization,

when one prince visits another here in Europe, the first thing that
the visited does, by way of hospitality is to get out his troops, and
show his rival how easily he could "lick" him, if it came to that.
It is a little puerile. At any rate, it is an advance upon the old
fashion of getting up a joust at arms, and inviting the guest to come
out and have his head cracked in a friendly way.

The review, which had been a good deal talked about, came off in the
afternoon; and all the world went to it. The avenues of the Bois
were crowded with carriages, and the walks with footpads. Such a
constellation of royal personages met on one field must be seen; for,
besides the imperial family and Albert Edward and his Danish beauty,
there was to be the Archduke of Austria) and no end of titled
personages besides. At three o'clock the royal company, in the
Emperor's carriages, drove upon the training-ground of the Bois,
where the troops awaited them. All the party, except the Princess of
Wales, then mounted horses, and rode along the lines, and afterwards
retired to a wood-covered knoll at one end to witness the evolutions.
The training-ground is a noble, slightly undulating piece of
greensward, perhaps three quarters of a mile long and half that in
breadth, hedged about with graceful trees, and bounded on one side by
the Seine. Its borders were rimmed that day with thousands of people
on foot and in carriages,--a gay sight, in itself, of color and
fashion. A more brilliant spectacle than the field presented cannot
well be imagined. Attention was divided between the gentle eminence
where the imperial party stood,--a throng of noble persons backed by
the gay and glittering Guard of the Emperor, as brave a show as
chivalry ever made,--and the field of green, with its long lines in
martial array; every variety of splendid uniforms, the colors and
combinations that most dazzle and attract, with shining brass and
gleaming steel, and magnificent horses of war, regiments of black,
gray, and bay.

The evolutions were such as to stir the blood of the most sluggish.
A regiment, full front, would charge down upon a dead run from the
far field, men shouting, sabers flashing, horses thundering along, so
that the ground shook, towards the imperial party, and, when near,
stop suddenly, wheel to right and left, and gallop back. Others
would succeed them rapidly, coming up the center while their
predecessors filed down the sides; so that the whole field was a
moving mass of splendid color and glancing steel. Now and then a
rider was unhorsed in the furious rush, and went scrambling out of
harm, while the steed galloped off with free rein. This display was
followed by that of the flying artillery, battalion after battalion,
which came clattering and roaring along, in double lines stretching
half across the field, stopped and rapidly discharged its pieces,
waking up all the region with echoes, filling the plain with the
smoke of gunpowder, and starting into rearing activity all the
carriage-horses in the Bois. How long this continued I do not know,
nor how many men participated in the review, but they seemed to pour
up from the far end in unending columns. I think the regiments must
have charged over and over again. It gave some people the impression
that there were a hundred thousand troops on the ground. I set it at
fifteen to twenty thousand. Gallignani next morning said there were
only six thousand! After the charging was over, the reviewing party
rode to the center of the field, and the troops galloped round them;
and the Emperor distributed decorations. We could recognize the
Emperor and Empress; Prince Albert in huzzar uniform, with a green
plume in his cap; and the Prince Imperial, in cap and the uniform of
a lieutenant, on horseback in front; while the Princess occupied a
carriage behind them.

There was a crush of people at the entrance to see the royals make
their exit. Gendarmes were busy, and mounted guards went smashing
through the crowd to clear a space. Everybody was on the tiptoe of
expectation. There is a portion of the Emperor's guard; there is an
officer of the household; there is an emblazoned carriage; and,
quick, there! with a rush they come, driving as if there was no
crowd, with imperial haste, postilions and outriders and the imperial
carriage. There is a sensation, a cordial and not loud greeting, but
no Yankee-like cheers. That heavy gentleman in citizen's dress, who
looks neither to right nor left, is Napoleon III.; that handsome
woman, grown full in the face of late, but yet with the bloom of
beauty and the sweet grace of command, in hat and dark riding-habit,
bowing constantly to right and left, and smiling, is the Empress
Eugenie. And they are gone. As we look for something more, there is
a rout in the side avenue; something is coming, unexpected, from
another quarter: dragoons dash through the dense mass, shouting and
gesticulating, and a dozen horses go by, turning the corner like a
small whirlwind, urged on by whip and spur, a handsome boy riding in
the midst,--a boy in cap and simple uniform, riding gracefully and
easily and jauntily, and out of sight in a minute. It is the boy
Prince Imperial and his guard. It was like him to dash in
unexpectedly, as he has broken into the line of European princes. He
rides gallantly, and Fortune smiles on him to-day; but he rides into
a troubled future. There was one more show,--a carriage of the
Emperor, with officers, in English colors and side-whiskers, riding
in advance and behind: in it the future King of England, the heavy,
selfish-faced young man, and beside him his princess, popular
wherever she shows her winning face,--a fair, sweet woman, in light
and flowing silken stuffs of spring, a vision of lovely youth and
rank, also gone in a minute.

These English visitors are enjoying the pleasures of the French
capital. On Sunday, as I passed the Hotel Bristol, a crowd,
principally English, was waiting in front of it to see the Prince and
Princess come out, and enter one of the Emperor's carriages in
waiting. I heard an Englishwoman, who was looking on with admiration
"sticking out" all over, remark to a friend in a very loud whisper,
"I tell you, the Prince lives every day of his life." The princely
pair came out at length, and drove away, going to visit Versailles.
I don't know what the Queen would think of this way of spending
Sunday; but if Albert Edward never does anything worse, he does n't
need half the praying for that he gets every Sunday in all the
English churches and chapels.

THE LOW COUNTRIES AND RHINELAND

AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES

They have not yet found out the secret in France of banishing dust
from railway-carriages. Paris, late in June, was hot, but not dusty:
the country was both. There is an uninteresting glare and hardness
in a French landscape on a sunny day. The soil is thin, the trees
are slender, and one sees not much luxury or comfort. Still, one
does not usually see much of either on a flying train. We spent a
night at Amiens, and had several hours for the old cathedral, the
sunset light on its noble front and towers and spire and flying
buttresses, and the morning rays bathing its rich stone. As one
stands near it in front, it seems to tower away into heaven, a mass
of carving and sculpture,--figures of saints and martyrs who have
stood in the sun and storm for ages, as they stood in their lifetime,
with a patient waiting. It was like a great company, a Christian
host, in attitudes of praise and worship. There they were, ranks on
ranks, silent in stone, when the last of the long twilight illumined
them; and there in the same impressive patience they waited the
golden day. It required little fancy to feel that they had lived,
and now in long procession came down the ages. The central portal is
lofty, wide, and crowded with figures. The side is only less rich
than the front. Here the old Gothic builders let their fancy riot in
grotesque gargoyles,--figures of animals, and imps of sin, which
stretch out their long necks for waterspouts above. From the ground
to the top of the unfinished towers is one mass of rich stone-work,
the creation of genius that hundreds of years ago knew no other way
to write its poems than with the chisel. The interior is very
magnificent also, and has some splendid stained glass. At eight
o'clock, the priests were chanting vespers to a larger congregation
than many churches have on Sunday: their voices were rich and
musical, and, joined with the organ notes, floated sweetly and
impressively through the dim and vast interior. We sat near the
great portal, and, looking down the long, arched nave and choir to
the cluster of candles burning on the high altar, before which the
priests chanted, one could not but remember how many centuries the
same act of worship had been almost uninterrupted within, while the
apostles and martyrs stood without, keeping watch of the unchanging
heavens.

When I stepped in, early in the morning, the first mass was in
progress. The church was nearly empty. Looking within the choir, I
saw two stout young priests lustily singing the prayers in deep, rich
voices. One of them leaned back in his seat, and sang away, as if he
had taken a contract to do it, using, from time to time, an enormous
red handkerchief, with which and his nose he produced a trumpet
obligato. As I stood there, a poor dwarf bobbled in and knelt on the
bare stones, and was the only worshiper, until, at length, a
half-dozen priests swept in from the sacristy, and two processions of
young school-girls entered from either side. They have the skull of
John the Baptist in this cathedral. I did not see it, although I
suppose I could have done so for a franc to the beadle: but I saw a
very good stone imitation of it; and his image and story fill the
church. It is something to have seen the place that contains his
skull.

The country becomes more interesting as one gets into Belgium.
Windmills are frequent: in and near Lille are some six hundred of
them; and they are a great help to a landscape that wants fine trees.
At Courtrai, we looked into Notre Dame, a thirteenth century
cathedral, which has a Vandyke ("The Raising of the Cross"), and the
chapel of the Counts of Flanders, where workmen were uncovering some
frescoes that were whitewashed over in the war-times. The town hall
has two fine old chimney-pieces carved in wood, with quaint figures,-
-work that one must go to the Netherlands to see. Toward evening we
came into the ancient town of Bruges. The country all day has been
mostly flat, but thoroughly cultivated. Windmills appear to do all
the labor of the people,--raising the water, grinding the grain,
sawing the lumber; and they everywhere lift their long arms up to the
sky. Things look more and more what we call "foreign." Harvest is
going on, of hay and grain; and men and women work together in the
fields. The gentle sex has its rights here. We saw several women
acting as switch-tenders. Perhaps the use of the switch comes
natural to them. Justice, however, is still in the hands of the men.
We saw a Dutch court in session in a little room in the town hall at
Courtrai. The justice wore a little red cap, and sat informally
behind a cheap table. I noticed that the witnesses were treated with
unusual consideration, being allowed to sit down at the table
opposite the little justice, who interrogated them in a loud voice.
At the stations to-day we see more friars in coarse, woolen dresses,
and sandals, and the peasants with wooden sabots.

As the sun goes to the horizon, we have an effect sometimes produced
by the best Dutch artists,--a wonderful transparent light, in which
the landscape looks like a picture, with its church-spires of stone,
its windmills, its slender trees, and red-roofed houses. It is a
good light and a good hour in which to enter Bruges, that city of the
past. Once the city was greater than Antwerp; and up the Rege came
the commerce of the East, merchants from the Levant, traders in
jewels and silks. Now the tall houses wait for tenants, and the
streets have a deserted air. After nightfall, as we walked in the
middle of the roughly paved streets, meeting few people, and hearing
only the echoing clatter of the wooden sabots of the few who were
abroad, the old spirit of the place came over us. We sat on a bench
in the market-place, a treeless square, hemmed in by quaint, gabled
houses, late in the evening, to listen to the chimes from the belfry.
The tower is less than four hundred feet high, and not so high by
some seventy feet as the one on Notre Dame near by; but it is very
picturesque, in spite of the fact that it springs out of a rummagy-
looking edifice, one half of which is devoted to soldiers' barracks,
and the other to markets. The chimes are called the finest in
Europe. It is well to hear the finest at once, and so have done with
the tedious things. The Belgians are as fond of chimes as the Dutch
are of stagnant water. We heard them everywhere in Belgium; and in
some towns they are incessant, jangling every seven and a half
minutes. The chimes at Bruges ring every quarter hour for a minute,
and at the full hour attempt a tune. The revolving machinery grinds
out the tune, which is changed at least once a year; and on Sundays a
musician, chosen by the town, plays the chimes. In so many bells
(there are forty-eight), the least of which weighs twelve pounds, and
the largest over eleven thousand, there must be soft notes and
sonorous tones; so sweet jangled sounds were showered down: but we
liked better than the confused chiming the solemn notes of the great
bell striking the hour. There is something very poetical about this
chime of bells high in the air, flinging down upon the hum and
traffic of the city its oft-repeated benediction of peace; but
anybody but a Lowlander would get very weary of it. These chimes, to
be sure, are better than those in London, which became a nuisance;
but there is in all of them a tinkling attempt at a tune, which
always fails, that is very annoying.

Bruges has altogether an odd flavor. Piles of wooden sabots are for
sale in front of the shops; and this ugly shoe, which is mysteriously
kept on the foot, is worn by all the common sort. We see long,
slender carts in the street, with one horse hitched far ahead with
rope traces, and no thills or pole.

The women-nearly every one we saw-wear long cloaks of black cloth
with a silk hood thrown back. Bruges is famous of old for its
beautiful women, who are enticingly described as always walking the
streets with covered faces, and peeping out from their mantles. They
are not so handsome now they show their faces, I can testify.
Indeed, if there is in Bruges another besides the beautiful girl who
showed us the old council-chamber in the Palace of justice, she must
have had her hood pulled over her face.

Next morning was market-day. The square was lively with carts,
donkeys, and country people, and that and all the streets leading to
it were filled with the women in black cloaks, who flitted about as
numerous as the rooks at Oxford, and very much like them, moving in a
winged way, their cloaks outspread as they walked, and distended with
the market-basket underneath. Though the streets were full, the town
did not seem any less deserted; and the early marketers had only come
to life for a day, revisiting the places that once they thronged. In
the shade of the tall houses in the narrow streets sat red-cheeked
girls and women making lace, the bobbins jumping under their nimble
fingers. At the church doors hideous beggars crouched and whined,--
specimens of the fifteen thousand paupers of Bruges. In the
fishmarket we saw odd old women, with Rembrandt colors in faces and
costume; and while we strayed about in the strange city, all the time
from the lofty tower the chimes fell down. What history crowds upon
us! Here in the old cathedral, with its monstrous tower of brick, a
portion of it as old as the tenth century, Philip the Good
established, in 1429, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the last
chapter of which was held by Philip the Bad in 1559, in the rich old
Cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent. Here, on the square, is the site
of the house where the Emperor Maximilian was imprisoned by his
rebellious Flemings; and next it, with a carved lion, that in which
Charles II. of England lived after the martyrdom of that patient and
virtuous ruler, whom the English Prayerbook calls that "blessed
martyr, Charles the First." In Notre Dame are the tombs of Charles
the Bold and Mary his daughter.

We begin here to enter the portals of Dutch painting. Here died Jan
van Eyck, the father of oil painting; and here, in the hospital of
St. John, are the most celebrated pictures of Hans Memling. The most
exquisite in color and finish is the series painted on the casket
made to contain the arm of St. Ursula, and representing the story of
her martyrdom. You know she went on a pilgrimage to Rome, with her
lover, Conan, and eleven thousand virgins; and, on their return to
Cologne, they were all massacred by the Huns. One would scarcely
believe the story, if he did not see all their bones at Cologne.

GHENT AND ANTWERP

What can one do in this Belgium but write down names, and let memory
recall the past? We came to Ghent, still a hand some city, though
one thinks of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and its
merchants were princes. On the shabby old belfry-tower is the gilt
dragon which Philip van Artevelde captured, and brought in triumph
from Bruges. It was originally fetched from a Greek church in
Constantinople by some Bruges Crusader; and it is a link to recall to
us how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the far East traded
up the Scheldt, and brought to its wharves the rich stuffs of India
and Persia. The old bell Roland, that was used to call the burghers
together on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower. What
fierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness centuries
ago! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a large square of
old-fashioned houses, with a statue of Jacques van Artevelde, fifteen
hundred corpses were strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guilds
of fullers and brewers; and here, later, Alva set blazing the fires
of the Inquisition. Near the square is the old cannon, Mad Margery,
used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde,--a hammered-iron hooped
affair, eighteen feet long. But why mention this, or the magnificent
town hall, or St. Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary; or try to put
you back three hundred years to the wild days when the iconoclasts
sacked this and every other church in the Low Countries?

Up to Antwerp toward evening. All the country flat as the flattest
part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals,
picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees in
rows. It has been all day hot and dusty. The country everywhere
seems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for a
storm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and take
rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which is
sharply defined against the red western sky.

Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its past, very
strongly. It is still the home of wealth. It has stately buildings,
splendid galleries of pictures, and a spire of stone which charms
more than a picture, and fascinates the eye as music does the ear.
It still keeps its strong fortifications drawn around it, to which
the broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mindful of the
unstable state of Europe. While Berlin is only a vast camp of
soldiers, every less city must daily beat its drums, and call its
muster-roll. From the tower here one looks upon the cockpit of
Europe. And yet Antwerp ought to have rest: she has had tumult
enough in her time. Prosperity seems returning to her; but her old,
comparative splendor can never come back. In the sixteenth century
there was no richer city in Europe.

We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, which begins in the
richest and most solid Gothic work, and grows up into the sky into an
exquisite lightness and grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt.
What traffic have not these high old houses looked on, when two
thousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one time, and
the commerce of Europe found here its best mart. Along the stream
now is a not very clean promenade for the populace; and it is lined
with beer-houses, shabby theaters, and places of the most childish
amusements. There is an odd liking for the simple among these
people. In front of the booths, drums were beaten and instruments
played in bewildering discord. Actors in paint and tights stood
without to attract the crowd within. On one low balcony, a
copper-colored man, with a huge feather cap and the traditional dress
of the American savage, was beating two drums; a burnt-cork black man
stood beside him; while on the steps was a woman, in hat and shawl,
making an earnest speech to the crowd. In another place, where a
crazy band made furious music, was an enormous "go-round" of wooden
ponies, like those in the Paris gardens, only here, instead of
children, grown men and women rode the hobby-horses, and seemed
delighted with the sport. In the general Babel, everybody was
good-natured and jolly. Little things suffice to amuse the lower
classes, who do not have to bother their heads with elections and
mass meetings.

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