Part 6

The State is the sole proprietor of nearly all the Belgian railways; and while it paternally confers on its subjects the benefit of cheap circulation and traffic, it might also modify an arrangement which is no other than unfeeling, and is deficient in that humanity which a government ought to exercise towards all under its protecting sway, without reference to wealth or rank. The second-class carriages are tolerable, with stuffed seats and a little horizontal stripe of stuffing to ease the back, and ladies may travel in them; but they are of scant dimensions, very naked inside, and unprovided with any hooks for hats or caps, or with receptacles for sticks and umbrellas. The seats are fancifully arranged with a sort of passage left between them, to give the means of stepping from one to the other, as if you were occupying a little parlour; but the result is no addition to comfort. The signal for starting is given, not by the whistle of the engine, but by a little musical flourish, a tir-ely, consisting of three notes, blown on his bugle by the conductor of the train. Of the officials, general civility and obliging behaviour is the rule. The passengers’ luggage department would be improved by assimilation with the system adopted in France. But nations are often like wilful children; they are determined to have a way of their own, for the sake of having it. They refuse to attend to good advice, because it is counsel given by another; and they persist in some evidently inconvenient mode of doing things, merely to show that they are independent agents, and that they can and will follow their own devices.

Ghent, with its hundred thousand inhabitants and its considerable trade, has still the air of a town half-asleep, as if you had caught it yawning and stretching at half-past three on a summer’s morning. Its extent is much exaggerated in the current printed descriptions. Charles the Fifth’s time-honoured pun--“I could put Paris into my Gand” (that is, my glove)--is apocryphal and highly improbable. If you doubt it, mount the tower of the beffroi. People who lose their way in a labyrinth of lanes, always fancy they have travelled over an enormous area. Now, the map of Ghent puts you in mind of a Medusa’s head, or of the clustered worms that are taken out into the country, on a sultry day, to participate in the pleasures of a fishing party. Buy a map of Ghent, colour the streets blue, the river Escaut yellow, the river Lys red, and you will have a faithful representation of the famous Gordian knot, if you happen never to have seen one before. I long wandered about the streets of Ghent, trying to find the city, and could not. It is a town made up of bits of west-ends, Faubourg St. Germains, and fashionable suburbs, with no heart or kernel to it--no Cheapside, no Ludgate Hill, no Rue de Rivoli, no Rue St. Honoré. There is a slight recovery of suspended animation in the Marché-aux-Grains and the Rue des Champs; but the pulse, even there, beats very feebly. The market tries (when it is not market-day) to manifest its vitality in an unhealthy, spasmodic way, by book-stalls of amatory literature, over which a little censorship would be no great tyranny. In the street, to enter a fashionable lace and embroidery shop, we had to ring at the glass-door, as if it had been a private house. After waiting, while the lady up-stairs gave a touch of arrangement to her cap and her hair, we were duly admitted to make our purchase, much in the style of a morning call. Elsewhere, in the modern quarters, you see unbroken lines of large, handsome, well-painted houses, hybrids between a palace and a ladies’ boarding-school. Business may be transacted therein, but it is done in the quietest possible way. You see dentelles (lace), or calicots (calicos), engraved on a neat brass-plate on a house-door, as if some private individual,--Monsieur Dentelles, or Madame Veuve Calicots,--were living there on their property, in great state and dignified retirement. The older portions of the town are decorated with houses built before the window-tax was born or thought of,--with quaint, pointed gable ends, as if a child had been trying to cut fancy conic sections out of a red brick wall. But in whatever direction you wend your way, you can’t go twenty steps without crossing a bridge. For the convenience at once of the land-carriage and the canal navigation, these are swing bridges; often you have to wait while a barge, laden perhaps with vegetable mould for the pot-plants in training by one of the Vans,--Van Houtte, Van Schaffelt, or Van Geert,--intercepts the passage. The time is not exactly lost, because it allows you to stare about you without rudeness. But soon, the bridge-swinger takes his toll from the barge, which he collects by means of a wooden shoe at the end of a string fastened to a fishing-rod; the isthmus of planks is then replaced, and resounds with the pattering of gros sabots. Certainly, the popular costume is droll, in its extremes. At top, the women wear a close-worked cottage hat of straw, with three dabs of blue ribbon stuck on behind; at foot, they are garnished with masses of hollow timber, which must be a serious drain on the Belgian forests. But hats worn by women at the same time with sabots, are, in French eyes, or in eyes accustomed to France, as utterly anomalous a combination as a fish-tailed mermaid, or a man-headed centaur are considered, on cool reflection, by Professor Owen. Conspicuous in the air rise the portly towers of St. Nicholas, St. Michel, and St. Bavon, around which, and the lofty houses, multitudinous swifts, whirl and scream, in delight at the abundance of their insect game. The canals are propitious to the propagation of gnats. Where is the carcase, there are the vultures; and where are the gnats, there flock the swifts.

That the quietude of the town is more apparent than real, and that busy life is going on within, is plain from the Belgian fashion of sticking looking-glasses outside the houses, at angles (sometimes they glance in three directions) which allow the inmates to catch a glimpse of passers-by, without being seen themselves. “Au Nouveau Miroir,” (the new looking-glass) is occasionally used as the sign of an inn. The mirrors are generally on a level with the first-floor; and a smaller one receives the rays it reflects straight from the entrance door; so that Not at home is easily responded to the inquiries of a dun, or worse, a bore. It is not one city alone which adopts the system of quicksilvered peepers; nor is the custom new, but was probably first introduced by peculiarities of historical and political situation. In Belgium, it has not always been convenient to open the door to every new-comer.

“If you please, monsieur,” we politely ask, “have the goodness to tell us which is the way to the Botanic Garden?”

“N’entends Français,” is the reply, accompanied by a disclamatory shake of the head. It is a reminder that the Flemish tongue is master here, in actual fact, if not by legal right. Even the government is obliged to come to a compromise, and affix the names of the streets to their corners both in Flemish and in French. The railway porter, who handed us our luggage, was deaf and dumb as far as we were concerned, and signed us over to a brother medium. The coachman who drove us to our inn just comprehended the words “Hôtel de Flandre”--and a capital and recommendable hotel it is--but he comprehended no more of the further clever remarks addressed to him. Many of the Gantois who do speak French manage it so badly, and are so decidedly not at home in it, that you feel quite delighted at your own superiority to them, born Belgians though they be. But Flemish has so close a relationship to our own vernacular, that the names of trades over the shops, the bills, and the public notices, are as amusing to read as it is to hear a foreigner speak broken English. Drap Straet is Cloth, or Draper’s Street. One man sells alle soorte of wares; another offers you cart-grease under the name of wagen smeer; kelder te huren is cellar to hire; kamer te huren is chamber to hire. A koperslager is a coppersmith. Professions which require no interpreter are the bakker, the matte-maeker, the timmerman, the apotheker en drogiste, and the boekhandlaer. The three grand literary elements are announced for sale as pennen, inkt, en papier. If your family is small, you may be content with securing Een Huis to let; but should you be expecting a large and sudden increase, you had better engage Twee Huyzen, if adjacent. In the Apelmerkt, you could hardly mistake the fruit that is sold there. When thirsty, you may go and drink a glass of dobbel-bier at the hospitable sign of De Roose; or you may prefer to patronise the Oliphant (without a castle), or the Bruyn Visch,--that is to say, the Red Herring. Good little boys and girls punctually attend a zondagschool. Booksellers’ windows invite you to the perusal of Flemish novels; such as Een Zwanenzang (a swan’s song), by Jan Van Beers, and De Zending der Vrow (Woman’s Mission), by Hendrik Conscience.

“How triste, how sad it is for you not to be able to speak Flemish!” ejaculated a dame who sold goeden drank, but who could not, though she would, converse with me. In such cases, it rarely strikes the tongue-tied Flemings belonging to the portion of society below the middle-class, that they are like the fox who was minus a tail. They are content with, and would have other people learn, a language which confines them, as tightly as a tether fastens a cow, to a few score square leagues of the earth’s vast superficies. But a striking point in Flemish popular manners, is the forming themselves into bands and societies. These little close corporations are perhaps, in some degree, the result of their narrowly-diffused tongue. And so the blue-bloused archers of one town go and shoot against the black-capped long-bows of another, distant a quarter-of-a-day’s pedestrian journey; the chorus-club of Schoutenhoul will pay a fraternal visit to the orpheonists of Raspenscraep. In the French army, the French Flemings hang together like bees at swarming-time. Here at Ghent, the workmen, even at leisure hours and meal-times, form themselves into companies. Young people, both girls and boys, run together in distinct and closely-grouped herds, like flocks of young lambs at the same age. One would think that babies in Flanders came all at once, in falls, in imitation of the lambing season with Southdowns and Leicesters.

But the Botanic garden--where is it? Let us first look at our map, and then at the corner of the street, and endeavour to pilot our way thither. In Belgian towns, generally, if you use your eyes with the slightest expression of inquiring curiosity, up starts a phantom before you, like a most impertinent Jack-in-the-box, calling himself a commissionaire, but who must not be confounded with a superior being, the French commissionaire. Where these creatures come from, I cannot tell. They suddenly appear before you, as if the air had curdled itself into human form. Peep into a shop window, and you have one at your elbow; gaze up at a steeple, and, when you look down, you will find a commissionaire between your legs; turn the angle of a street, on a walk of discovery, and round the corner you knock your nose against a commissionaire. They start from behind doors, down staircases, out of cellars, from the dark mouths of narrow lanes; and I believe that, upon inquiry, they would be found now and then to drop from the roofs. They follow you about with the hungry look of a beast of prey, regarding you as the game on their preserve, and themselves as very forbearing to spare you a little while. I do not say that no respectable man exercises the calling of commissionaire; but, whenever such jewels are found, they ought to be set in sterling gold. In age, they vary from sixteen to sixty. They deal in cigars, and have often a select female acquaintance. They are mostly seedy in garment, cloudy in complexion, uncleanly in person, offensive in breath, jargonic in speech, forward in manner, and given to drink. Commissionaires attach themselves to every hotel, as leeches hang to the side of their vessel, ready to fix on anything that has blood or money to yield; and these consider themselves the head of their profession. But there are wandering commissionaires who prowl about the streets, willing to make themselves useful in any way--too useful, at times, many people might think.

One fellow, who pleaded his large family at home, and whom I took for an hour or two to get over the ground more quickly, disappeared every time we came to anything that required more than a minute to examine. Each disappearance had for its object the injection of a dram into his weakly stomach, which relieved me from listening to his account of the lions. But, after a little unsteadiness, he tripped and tumbled on the ground, and concluded by running into an iron post with a violence that must have done serious damage to the post. I confess to a prejudice against Belgian commissionaires, and never employ them when I can help it. They attack you in the very churches. “You won’t leave the cathedral without paying the concièrge,” was the parting remark of a young commissionaire whose services I persisted in declining; and, while hunting for the Botanic garden, I can’t proceed without interruption, but am obliged to say to a person who continually crosses my path, “I have already told you three times I do not want you. Cannot you take an answer, and leave me to myself?”

The garden, when found at last, is a painful instead of a pleasurable sight, and must be far from gratifying to the citizens of Ghent. It is a warning to avoid, and not an example to follow, as all botanic gardens ought to be. The hardy perennials are the only plants in good condition; among these is a remarkable Andromeda arborea. The enormous carp, rising and sinking in their pond, are a lingering remnant of former prosperity. In the houses, dirt, dust, thrips, scale, red spider, and aphis, threaten to get the upper hand, and to establish their dynasty on a permanent footing. A fine Doum palm, in a handsome but filthy cage of glass, excites pity by its wretched want of comfort. Other unhappy captives, lank and lean, bald and mangy, beg hard for some one to have compassion on them. There are many noble specimens in a deplorable way.

Two small-leaved standard myrtles, in boxes, cannot be less than a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old. Their trunks measure thirteen or fourteen inches in circumference; it would be difficult to find many such in Europe. A leading English nurseryman has endeavoured to get them across the water; it is a pity he cannot, for they would be properly cared for here. There are many other far-from-every-day myrtles, which the head of the establishment seems trying hard to kill. He is the Celestine Doudet of greenhouse evergreens; his pupils do not thrive; his oleanders are in the last stage of suffering. The alleged excuse is want of sufficient accommodation and hands; but when a thing is to be done, it is not a bad plan to do it yourself. Had I such handsome orange trees, so neglected, so begrimed with soot, I would get up at three in the morning, and, in my shirt-sleeves, with an apron on, with a bucket of soapsuds and a sponge in hand, would mount an A ladder and work away, day after day, till the task was done. But are there no such things as garden engines in Ghent? A Victoria, in a tank, contrives to wash itself partially, though tattered and torn about the leaves; but it is not clear what business a pit of pine-apples has in a place for study, where scantiness of room is complained of. One plant, or two, are all right and proper, but a botanical lecturer does not want a crop of anything.

Near the entrance of the garden stands a vase, conspicuously mounted on a pedestal, in which grows what the official who did the honours was pleased to point out as a rose-bush grafted on an oak-tree. I shook my head in disgust at the falsehood. “Look,” he insisted, “the stem is an oak-stem, the side branches are covered with oak-leaves, and the central twig is the rose which has been grafted in the middle. You can see that its leaves are rose-leaves, can’t you?--and it is full of buds coming into flower.”

“No, no; it is only a trick,” I answered, without apologising for flatly contradicting him. “You have perforated the stem of the oak from the root to the top; through the tube thus made you have inserted the stem of a rooted rose-bush; but there is no union between the two, like the junction of a scion with the stock. It grows independently in the earth, as the oak-plant does, although encased within it; and you call that grafting a rose on an oak, which I am gardener enough to know to be impossible.”

“Ah! you know that. You have found it out. And yet, many people, when they see this specimen, go away persuaded that we have succeeded in grafting a rose on an oak.”

I made no further remark than my looks expressed; but I thought that botanic gardens were instituted for the teaching of accurate information and useful facts, and not to mislead ignorant persons and to propagate error. An educational establishment, subsidised partly by the government and partly by the town, forgets its duties when it blazons forth a charlatanism which would upset the principles of vegetable physiology and stultify the hard-earned acquirements of science.

On the 18th of July was published, price Five Shillings and Sixpence, neatly bound in cloth,

THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS,

Containing the Numbers issued between the Nineteenth of January and the Twelfth of July, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-six.

Complete sets of Household Words may always be had.

_The Right of Translating Articles from_ HOUSEHOLD WORDS _is reserved by the Authors_.

Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

This is from Volume XIV of the series.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

Transcriber has generated a Table of Contents.

This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.

This file uses =equal signs= to indicate boldface text.

Itemized changes from the original text:

On page 1, changed “for” to “for.”, near “morsel of luck to be thankful” On page 1, changed “bed-side” to “bedside”, near “the chair by her” On page 4, changed “sweet-heart” to “sweetheart”, near “with a farthing. My” On page 8, changed “be” to “he”, near “wrings from poor people” On page 20, changed “bird” to “Bird”, near “or The Bird of St. Martin” On page 29, changed “melody!"” to “melody!”, near “and an echo of” On page 29, changed “again!"” to “again!”, near “reap but tears and griefs” On page 42, changed “third class” to “third-class”, near “chars-à-bancs are open at the side”