Part 13

Bruges is also the depository of the earliest specimens of Dutch and Flemish art, for here nearly 500 years ago lived Jan Van Eyck, and he and his brother were the pioneers in the style of painting which is generally known as “Dutch.” They were followed a few years later by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, De Crayer, Jordaens, and their crowd, who went to Italy and learned a good deal, but who were really followers of the Van Eycks. I have spent some time in the art galleries at Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp and Brussels, and have picked up a smattering of knowledge of Dutch and Flemish art which I would like to unload. The “whole shooting-match,” as the Germans would say, is generally called Dutch, but there is a perceptible difference between the work in Holland and Belgium, although the artists lived so close together that they naturally formed one great school. Peter Paul Rubens, who generally gets first place, was a Belgian, although he was born out of that country when his parents were politically exiled. He lived at Antwerp and was brought up in a Jesuit school in a Catholic country. Rembrandt was a Dutchman, born at Leyden, Holland, and a politician as well as an artist in a Protestant country. If one will reflect upon the religious situation in Europe in the early seventeenth century, he will see that no matter if both used the same colors and the same rules for drawing, they were bound to treat different subjects, or have different conceptions of the same subject. Van Dyck, the third of the celebrated trio, was born in Antwerp, but went to London, and there did most of his work in portrait-painting, his specialty, because he was better paid by Englishmen. The Catholic Rubens and his followers painted for the churches and cathedrals, and for a Catholic constituency, and usually portrayed religious subjects, while Rembrandt and his pupils painted for the Dutch burghers, and their best pictures are of men, grouped in military companies or trade guilds. Rubens is more ideal and spiritual, Rembrandt more material and human. Therefore it is that people who like one often do not appreciate the other. I really like the Dutch art better than the Italian, although it is a good deal like a boy trying to decide whether he will have cherry pie or custard pie, and wanting both. The influence of environment and education is clearly seen in the fat Madonnas and the pictures of public-houses and drinking-bouts which are favorite subjects. The Dutch artists also lean to “realism,” and about nine times in ten a picture of the realist school is unpleasant and therefore to my mind inartistic. For example, one of Rubens’s great masterpieces represents the martyrdom of a saint who had his tongue torn out, and in the picture the executioner is handing the red, bleeding tongue to a dog. Another picture shows an execution, the axeman holding up the head, and the body with the stump of a neck the main feature of the foreground. Some people like this sort of thing, but I don’t. For a hundred years after Rubens and Rembrandt, the Netherlands produced no art, at the time the countries themselves were demoralized and the prey of the larger powers. Recently Dutch art has revived in the portraying of Dutch landscapes, windmills, canals and such, and to my mind it is the pleasantest and most effective art now alive in Europe, away ahead of the Italians, who persist in imitating the old masters and tackling subjects which have been thoroughly covered so much that there is hardly a chance for a new impression.

Every town of any size in Belgium and Holland has a public art gallery, and the people ought to be artists merely from association. But as a matter of fact three-fourths of the visitors to the galleries when I was there were Americans and English.

Speaking of art reminds me of hotels. Before leaving Europe I want to pay a tribute to the hotel-keepers of the continent. I must have been wrongly impressed by what I had read and heard, for I had looked forward with dread to the queer ways and the strange dishes I was to go against on the trip. As a matter of fact the hotels in Europe are better and cheaper than those of America. The management is more courteous, the service better, and the eating far surpasses the equivalent in the United States. The “tipping system” is not bad at all and the effort of the landlord to get at your money is concealed by a show of cordiality and hospitality which I have never experienced in a strange hostelry in my own country. I am overcharged and worked ten times more in Kansas City, Chicago and New York than in Rome, Cologne, Brussels, or any other European city.

When a traveler arrives at a continental hotel he is greeted at the entrance by the hall porter or clerk, and instead of being bulldozed over a counter by a gentleman with a diamond stud into paying twice the ordinary price for a room, he is quietly and pleasantly told what rooms are vacant, what are their rates, and allowed to make a selection. He does not have to tip a porter or a bell-boy for every little favor. From the proprietor to the “boots” everyone in the hotel is at your service and nothing to pay—not then. Of course you expect to do the right thing when you leave, but for the time this cordial service seems to be spontaneous and animated with a sincere desire for your comfort. In Germany the proprietor of the hotel keeps up the pretense that you are his guest, and every day he inquires after your welfare. In the German restaurants the proprietor walks around and speaks pleasantly to everyone and you feel that he is really glad to see you without associating that sensation with the payment of the bill. Everything and everybody in the hotel is at your service. There is always a reading-room with newspapers, often American papers, smoking-rooms, lounging-rooms, and comfortable parlors where it is a pleasure to spend the time. In nearly every hotel there is a free library, mostly books of the country, but always some in English. At the Parker House in Boston, my last stopping-place in America, I had been surprised and delighted to find a well-selected library for the use of the guests of the hotel. I supposed that was a Boston innovation and was prepared to brag about it, but I have found a similar library in nearly every hotel at which I have stayed in Europe. An American hotel does not give half the space to the general use and comfort of guests that a European hotel does, and what it does offer is usually only a big office and stiff parlors in which people stay only when they can find nowhere else to go.

European cooking is far ahead of American cooking. A cook in this country is not an accident, not a man or woman who is cooking until a better job offers. A cook is something between a professional man and a skilled mechanic, and young men learn the business as thoroughly as they do engineering or banking. Labor is cheap, so that in the kitchen as well as in the front rooms there is always plenty of service, and it is by people who are brought up to it and not by boys or men who are down on their luck. I expected to be “fussy” over the cooking and cookery, but I have hardly had a poor meal in Europe and not a bad one at all. There is not much difference in the stuff used or in the way of serving, but the work is better done, and all the good American dishes like beefsteak and eggs are found in Europe looking as natural as life. The Europeans do more with mutton, veal and fish and less with beef than our cooks, and the small farms raise vegetables that are delicious.

When one leaves the hotel the proprietor or manager always comes to see him off and say good-by. There isn’t such a crowd of servants waiting for tips as is generally alleged. Your porter, who has polished your shoes and carried your baggage, is on hand, and the chambermaid casually meets you on the stairs. The head waiter expects a tip and so does the hall porter, and there are usually a couple of other attendants ready to receive, but not obnoxiously so. I learned that the best way to do was to be as polite as the Europeans. A few minutes before time to leave I would say good-by to the head waiter, the smoking-room attendant, and any other who had rendered special service, giving each a small tip which he always took with many expressions of good-will and appreciation. That prevented any assemblage at the door when we left, and the last good-bys and tips were only expected by the man who brought the baggage and the hall porter who put us in the carriage and gave me full information as regards the coming journey and the next stop.

The rates at European hotels are much less than in ours. The prices for rooms are about half what they would be in America for similar accommodations in the same-sized places. The restaurant prices are a little less than ours. I should say that in Europe you pay about $2 to $3 a day for what would cost $3 to $4 in America. In small hotels and boarding-houses the same ratio is maintained, and there is no doubt in my mind that “room and board” on a European trip for an American is little more than half what it would be for a European in America. In these prices I include tips. The ordinary American will greatly enjoy life on the continent, provided, of course, he does not always eat at the “table d’hôte,” or regular meal-table, which is monotonous everywhere. And also he must not want a room with a bath, or an elevator. Very few buildings in Europe have elevators, and the natives do not use them. It is an inconvenience to walk up two or three flights of stairs to your room, but in the hotels that do not have “lifts” you must remember that is the way the nobility and everybody does in Europe, and quit kicking. You can get a bath in the bathroom or you can scrub yourself with the contents of the washbowl, after you have had some experience. That is the custom of the country, and the thing to do is not to be telling about the rooms with baths in America, but accept the situation, look pleasant, and you will get along all right. It is the same way in Europe that it is everywhere else in this vale of tears: if you look for trouble you easily find it, and if you are constantly talking and thinking of the conveniences which American customs have provided and which are not used in Europe, you can make yourself miserable and unpopular. But if you accept the ways of the country, enjoy the novelties even if they seem old-fashioned and strange, you will have a grand old time and will make yourself solid with the people.

In Europe the name “United States” is rarely used. We are “Americans.” The people of Canada are Canadians and the people of the United States have the sole use of the title of Americans. They consider us the whole thing, and we always admit it without argument. There is a general impression in the Old World that all Americans are rich. There is a general impression that sometime we will fight the rest of the world, and I think there is an impression that we will lick. So far as I can see, Americans are treated about as well as dukes, and the ways of traveling are greased for them by everybody along the line. (Grease to be paid for, of course.) In two months’ travel on the continent, usually not knowing the language, we have never missed a train or connection, been mistreated or imposed upon, allowed to suffer inconvenience or annoyance. That is a record it would be hard to equal in America.

ENGLAND.

IN OLD, OLD ENGLAND.

WARWICK, ENGLAND, June 12, 1905.

When the American tourist reaches old England he has a large and well-selected stock of emotions which he can feel, in addition to the thanks in his heart that the short but “nahsty” trip across the Irish sea is at an end. No matter where an individual’s ancestors may have come from, the mother country of America is England. Up to 1776 our history was only English history, our customs English customs, our laws English laws, and when the Continental army began shooting at the British soldiers, the Continental Congress accompanied every volley with a resolution declaring that the colonists had no desire to separate from England, but were only fighting in self-defense. Our laws, our language, our literature are English. The fight of the parliament against the crown has reached practically the same result in England that the revolution of Congress against King George did by a short cut.

This is the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens, who are just as much American as English, except for the accident of birthplace. This is the home of our heroes of medieval times, of Ivanhoe, Richard the Lion-hearted, and the Black Prince. This is the country which is familiar to us by name and history through Scott and Thackeray, Dickens and Lytton, and a hundred other authors whose works are read in the American homes. We are not strangers to such names as Kenilworth, York, Shrewsbury, Chester, Stratford, Oxford, Cambridge, and in fact nearly every town on the map of England. This is more like the visit to a long-absent friend and not an entrance into a foreign land. We are now going among places of which we have read and among the monuments and works of men whom we have held close to our hearts through the pictures painted for us by our authors. We are going to actually see the things we have so often read about and which we have so much dreamed about.

Instead of beginning at London, the great center of trade, we are going to begin here at Warwick, the center of the oldest Old England left on earth. In Warwick we are five miles from Kenilworth, the castle Scott made famous, seven miles from Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was born, and surrounded by beautiful rural England, with a fine old castle only five minutes walk away, and churches and buildings which were old when Columbus discovered America.

The first stop in England was at Chester, which was a town of importance when Julius Cæsar was doing business. The walls the Romans built were demolished by the Saxons but rebuilt, and Chester was the last place in England to surrender to William the Conqueror. During the Middle Ages it was the scene of more fights and sieges and the walls then completed are the same walls which we walked on this week. The walls are from ten to twenty feet wide at the top, twenty to thirty feet high, and little towers occupy the angles and corners. From the wall of Chester Charles the First saw the parliamentary army defeat his soldiers, and when Chester surrendered, Cromwell’s men had all of England.

There are two main streets in Chester, crossing each other at the center of the town and terminating in the four city gates. All the other streets of the old town are alleys from six to ten feet wide. But the curious part of Chester is “the Rows.” Along a good part of the main streets there is a second floor, or rather a stone roof over the sidewalks. On this upstairs street are stores and shops, and business is going on as briskly along the second story as on the ground floor. As there were originally but the two streets in Chester, the people simply doubled the street capacity,—a thousand years ago and they haven’t changed. In fact, I suppose a great many people in Chester who have never been out of the neighborhood, think that is the proper and usual way of arranging business streets in all towns.

The greatest place in England is Stratford-on-Avon, because Shakespeare was born there. A great many English towns have ancient cathedrals and are the birthplaces or the deathplaces of kings and queens, dukes and ministers, but Stratford is the only place where Shakespeare was born and there has been but one Shakespeare. Many great men have several birthplaces, or perhaps I should say, several towns claim to be the only birthplace. But Stratford-on-Avon is a thousand years old or more, and has never done anything for the world except to provide William Shakespeare, and the world says that is enough to last another thousand. I stood in the church and saw the slab which covers the dust of the great poet and man-knower. By his side are the graves of his wife and daughter. Around the chancel are the inscriptions and memorials which tell of the admiration and affection of the world.

The house where the poet was born is now owned by a public association, and great pains have been taken to gather all the relics of his lifetime that have been spared. The rooms are arranged just as they were when his father, a highly respected tradesman who reached the dignity of a justice of the peace, was running his little shop and William was poaching in the neighboring fields and streams and sparking Anne Hathaway, whose home was a mile away. The Hathaway cottage is kept in the same way as the Shakespeare house, and we wandered through the low rooms and up the narrow stairs just as they were nearly four centuries ago. In talking with an Englishman at Warwick he said he believed the Americans thought more of Shakespeare than the English did, for more of them went to Stratford. Of course that is hardly correct, for the English all love Shakespeare, but they probably do not visit his birthplace so much as American travelers do. Practically every American goes to Stratford, some of them perhaps just because the others do. Coming over on the ship I was being enlightened by an aggressive American on just what was what. “Going to Stratford?” he said. I assented. “Yes, you’ll go there and look around and wonder what in hell you went there for.” But that is not the sentiment which fills the hearts of most of the cousins from across the ocean, as is evidenced by the reverential awe and the thorough appreciation of every nook and corner shown by them when they are in the historic village.

The river Avon is about the size of Cow creek, and looks a good deal like it. The banks are low and the meadows and fields come right to them, without the timber that borders most American streams. The town of Stratford is old-fashioned and quaint. Just as in Warwick, the hotels or inns bear such names as “The Red Dog,” “The Bull and Cow,” “The Golden Lion,” a style of nomenclature which I had always half-way thought was imaginary with the great authors who have made such names familiar. Large, stately trees line the roads and stone walls and hedges conceal the fields and farms, revealing just enough to enhance the beauty of the landscape. One can dreamily think as he rides in the coach from Stratford to Warwick that he is back in the days of Queen Elizabeth and half expect ye knights and ladies to appear before the gate of Kenilworth, but as he does so there is a sudden whir-r-r, a cloud of dust and a smell, and the automobile of the twentieth century has rudely broken the dream.

We visited the castle of the earl of Warwick. The earl evidently did not know we were coming, for he was away, but a shilling admitted us through the big gate in the massive stone walls which surround the castle and inclose probably twenty acres of ground. It was originally built by a daughter of Alfred, about 915, and has been more or less knocked down and built up since. It is said to be one of the finest old castles in England. A regiment of soldiers could easily parade in the large court within the walls and be quartered in the building and towers. Many a time such a garrison has occupied the place, for the earls of Warwick have been fighters from the beginning and Shakespeare’s Warwick was a regular Cy Leland or a Stubbs in his day, and was known as the king-maker. The castle is about twice as large as the Hutchinson Reformatory, and the earl has to keep a good deal of hired help in these times of peace. Many of the great rooms are kept just as in the old days of chivalry and are filled with armor and weapons. The banquet-room is maintained as it was in the great earl’s time, and much of the castle is really a museum and gallery full of the pictures, portraits, furniture and tapestries of the long ago.

Kings and queens, earls and earlesses, have walked the halls and had their brief time upon the stage of life. The noble of to-day does not have the armor or the power he did then. His band of armed retainers has changed to a crowd of peaceful laborers. He does not lead his men to war, but presides at country fairs and acts as dignified as the spirit of the twentieth century will permit. He no longer fears a midnight assault from a neighboring baron, but only dreads the ravages of the American tourists and sensibly compromises by letting them ravage at a quarter apiece. The times of chivalry are gone.

“Their swords are rust; The knights are dust; Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”

Here in Warwick and at Kenilworth we take a long dream backward, and by working our imagination and our sentiment we see the England of Shakespeare, of Warwick, of Ivanhoe. It is a good dream, but it is a past that will never return, a past that is more nearly connected with the present in Warwick than at any other place. It is old England, which first learned to rule herself and then began to rule most of the rest of the world, and with the assistance of the American child will undoubtedly do the business in the future. We are going to London and Liverpool, the castles of commerce and industry which now command the trade of the globe. In the England of to-day the castles of the business man and the banker rule in the place of the castles of the baron and the earl, and old England has given place to a new England. But it will be this old England of Shakespeare, Warwick and Kenilworth that will live in the hearts of the English people, and will be the object of pilgrimage for Americans abroad.

THE GREATEST OF CITIES.

LONDON, Aug. 11, 1905.

We are “out of season” in London. “Everybody is out of town.” I suppose there are only about 7,000,000 people left within the limits of the city as laid out for police purposes. With only 7,000,000 people in this district twenty miles square, one naturally feels lonesome. I suppose it will strike me that way after I get used to it. But if as many of the inhabitants of London as there are people in the State of Kansas should go away, it is probable that I would not notice it at first. It is curious what funny first impressions one gets of things. My first of London was that it looked like a great big ant-heap with the ants excited over something and swarming in every direction. The long processions or streams of people which wind in and out, up and down, make the individual feel mightily insignificant. In comparison my memory of Chicago is that it looks like a deserted country town on Sunday afternoon, and New York a fairly large and busy village.

The streets of London are laid out with no regard for plan or regularity. None of them are straight, and in the course of a few blocks they will be intersected at every angle and possible curve by other streets, which in turn are cut into by more streets. Every now and then there is a “square,” or a “circus,” either meaning a place where different streets meet head-on and usually stop. A “circus” is a curved square and not a show. A map of London looks like a chicken-yard in which the hens have been very busy scratching. The stranger loses all idea of direction. When the sun shines, which is not often, I have seen it in the north, south, east and west on the same day.