The great man of the village lived in a much larger baby house than any other person possessed; he had a larger court yard too, and more than an Acre of ground behind, which he had laid out as an English garden in the following style. A wood, a meadow, a labyrinth, a river, a lake, a shady lane, a grove, and a cottage residence. Meandering walks led to all these various beauties, and at different points, in appropriate attitudes, were placed stuffed figures of men, all supposed to be busy about different rural pursuits. At the edge of the wood was a stuffed image of a sportsman properly equipped with belts and bags and a real gun, accompanied by a stuffed dog pointing at a small covey of wooden partridges nestled under a shrub. On a pretty bridge that crossed the river, a stuffed fisher with a basket under his arm held a rod over the stream, while another image on the banks was taking a painted trout off the hook at the end of his line. Under a tree sat a stuffed elderly gentleman with a real book. On the lake were two large painted swans; and in the cottage down the shady lane there were seated by a fictitious kitchen fire an old couple properly dressed, the old man mending a net, the old woman spinning at her wheel, exact representations of the proprietor’s parents, in their identical clothing and their own abode, for in this hut they had passed their humble lives, and were thus commemorated by their prosperous son. All the furniture was preserved as it had been left: the bed, the heavy wardrobe, table, chairs, down to the whole kitchen utensils. It was the great man’s pleasure to visit this his birthplace constantly, and keep his parents and all around them in repair. The whole garden was the idol of Brock, spoke of with an exultation quite amusing; little nursery people three feet high might have had it for a play thing, but as a real honest pleasure ground to a man weighing fifteen stone, amply fitted out with broadcloth, the fact could hardly be realised.
After Amsterdam came Leyden, the same quaint style of town, where we slept in order to have time to walk over ground trodden, when its University was more famous, by my Grandfather. Then we went on to Haarlem, its environs blooming in their sandy plain, the florists here being the best in all Holland, both the soil and the water particularly suiting the gardener’s trade. The water of the famous mere, since partly drained, is equally prized by the laundress, the lime it contains whitening linen so perfectly trunks of clothes come from as far as Paris to undergo the good bleaching they get here. The banker, Mr Hope, has quite a noble villa near the mere, with wonderful gardens round it. Haarlem is a pretty open town, much more cheerful than the old cooped up Cities. It has a fine market place and a great Square, and a beautiful Cathedral, where we went to hear the Organ, once the boast of Europe; there are others, they say, modern ones, finer now, only I never heard them. The performing on this at Haarlem so exhausted the Organist, he requires a high bribe to play more than once a day. We thought he deserved whatever he chose to ask, his taste and his execution were so perfect, and the tones of the Organ, some of them, so exquisite. He told us the windows had been broken once when the full power of the instrument had been called out. Since then they blow more moderately, but a battle piece he gave us, and a storm, were really surprising, the trumpet stops glorious, and the vox humana actually from a Soprano chest.
We had much disturbed our host by choosing to arrive at his hotel, English fashion, near midnight. Every one was in bed, and to have to get up, light the stove, air linen, prepare so many chambers during the hours of natural sleep, considerably deranged the establishment. Mynherr was very cross, but there were two pretty vrowieins who, though disturbed a bit, kept their tempers that night, and gave us good counsel in the morning. They came in when Jane and I were brushing our hair, and said to us with great civility that these unseasonable arrivals were not the custom of the country, that travellers arranged their movements so as least to inconvenience other parties, and that we should find ourselves more comfortable by conforming to the habits we found established; the meals were better prepared for the regular times than when a chance repast was dished up hurriedly. After this they proposed to dress our hair. Mine, which reached to my Ankles and was too thick to hold in one hand, they admired in an extasy; and when it had been plaited in strands and wound about my head in their own beautiful fashion, a few ringlets only allowed to hang low upon the cheek and fall still lower behind the ear, I admired it myself abundantly; and so becoming was it thought to be, and so much more easily manageable did I find it, that till I took to caps some years after my marriage, fashion or no fashion, I never altered this most classical arrangement of my golden hair. We very faithfully reported the good advice of our obliging attendants, and found considerable advantage in ever after abiding by it.
Somewhere here we got to Zeist, and then to Utrecht, and so by some means to Araheim. My recollections of the order of our progress are indistinct. I remember the places we passed through and what we saw in them, and I remember the queer Cabriolets we sometimes travelled in, and the tiresomely slow trekshuyts we were condemned to at others, and that is all at this distance of time I can bring to mind: a sort of generalising of the journey. Zeist was pretty, fields and wood, a village, a good inn, and the curious establishment of the Herrnhuters or Moravians within a walking distance. One of the Laboucheres, with a pretty French wife, was living at the inn. The air hereabouts is thought to be particularly salubrious, and she was established here to recover her health after a long illness. We were amused at her English shyness about making the slightest approach to acquaintance with us till the two M.P.’s mutually recognised one another.10 My Mother thought it was finery, as we had arrived in two extraordinary post waggons, the horses harnessed with ropes, and we ourselves very dusty. It went off, whichever it was, and we found her both pleasant and useful. She directed us to what was best worth seeing at the Moravian Mission House, namely, their very ingeniously made toys; a whole country exhibited upon a table by means of miniature facsimiles of every article used in it, and the people in their national costume besides. We sent a large box full of Dutch representations to the Freres, unknowing of the heavy duty which made it an expensive although an amusing present.
The establishment was a sort of Mr Owen sociable affair;11 all goods in common, no private property, no homes. Buildings for all purposes were erected round spacious yards. There was a great hall where all assembled for every meal. A Chapel, Workshops, Storerooms, Bedrooms, Schoolrooms. At a certain age the young people were married, at proper time their children entered the School; they had no choice in matrimony, nor any power to bring up their offspring by their own sides; indeed the parents were otherwise employed in this true commonwealth, each person being at some work for a certain number of hours. The premises were scrupulously clean, but very plain, a sort of total abstinence system denying the beautiful and the agreeable. The married men had a peculiar dress all alike, so had the married women, and the old people of each sex, and the young, and the children; and all the private rooms were furnished alike, nothing in them that was not absolutely requisite. I don’t think the community were happy, certainly not cheerful, merely contented, and it was an uninteresting, unnatural whim altogether. They would be dull enough were they not kept constantly busy, they make every thing they use, spin, knit, weave, bake, etc., and have a large farm in high order.
Utrecht I forget. A large town with pleasant environs, I think. We took the boat there to Arnheim, and were amused for some miles by the neatness of the villas thickly succeeding each other along the level banks of the Canal. They were all very much alike, long houses with steep roofs, very brightly painted, tiles one colour, walls another, windows and doors a third. They all stand in pretty gardens, with a broad gravel walk leading to a summer house overhanging the water. In this summer house, as the day advanced, we saw many parties smoking and drinking beer out of tall glasses, with the gravity of red Indians—pictures of Dutch enjoyment. Conversation, most surely they never thought of, even a stray remark was rare among them. Words are not wasted in Holland. In our own boat a heavy looking man stood on the deck smoking; he puffed away in a
comfortable, composed manner, regardless of all around. Another heavy looking man came up to him with a countenance of exactly the same stolid cast: it was as if a thought of any kind had never crossed the mind of either; he had a pipe in his hand, too, but it was not lighted. The second heavy man approached the first, stood for a moment, not a word, not a sign passed between them; the cold pipe was raised, advanced towards the hot one—they touched—puff, puff, puff at both ends in grave silence. When the cold pipe had lighted, the owner moved away without even a bow passing between the smokers. How much this pair amused us.
Arnheim is beautiful, a pretty town in a very picturesque situation. Nimeguen still more striking; the journey between the two did not strike me sufficiently to be remembered. I recalled the bridge of boats though, by means of which we crossed the Maes, and so entered Flanders. Liège was our next stage, quite a fine city, full of handsome streets and squares and buildings, shops rivalling our own, and hotels very superiour to any we had yet met with. It is the Birmingham of Belgium, a busy manufacturing town, and thriving. I should have liked much to have visited some of the iron works, and we had time enough, for my Mother had caught a feverish cold and had to stay here three days to nurse herself; but none of the rest having my turn for details, they went on as usual hunting out the Hotel de Ville, the churches and pictures. There is an old Cathedral at Liège worth a visit, otherwise a walk about the town is all that need be attempted. We were returning home from rather a hot one when we found several Carriages crowding the yard, and were told a great English Milor had just arrived. It was the Duke and Duchess of Bedford on their way to one of the German Spas for his health, without any of their children, but with Upper Servants and Under Servants, and their Doctor, good Mr Wolridge. I had gone up to my Mother and did not see them, but the rest were glad to meet—at least there was great chattering.
Nothing could equal the dreariness of the drive the greater part of the way from Liège to Aix la Chapelle. A wild, barren heath after the first few miles, on which, at long intervals, we saw a few poor wretched creatures gathering the manure from the road to mix with clay and coal dust for fuel. They formed this composition into neat enough cakes the size of bricks, and said it made a good strong fire, but the perfume was the reverse of agreeable. About the middle of our journey we stopt to rest the horses at a more desolate inn than either Freeburn or Moulinearn in their worst days. We could get nothing for ourselves save a very greasy omelette fried in a bacon pan with lard, and not made of very fresh eggs; there was some horrible cake of rye flour, and schnapps, for this was Germany—Prussian Germany. Black eagles with two heads stuck up every where, and little round sticks girt with the three colours to mark the boundaries. The postillions were in long boots, queer hats, the orthodox colours, and they cracked for ever their thick handled whips, and kept in their mouths the amber head of the immense pipe they never ceased smoking. They fed their horses every now and then with slices of the same rye bread they ate themselves, and they were fine, tall, handsome men into the bargain. The gloom of Aix was excessive,‘’twas like some vast City of the dead,’ hardly a stir in it. Well built streets, broad, with handsome houses, all, as it were, shut up, for we never saw either exits or entrances, and, except the old Cathedral and the little chair in it on which the corpse of Charlemagne had been found seated, there was hardly any object of curiosity in the whole large town. The neighbourhood was equally uninteresting, there was nothing to recommend the place but the waters; they rise warm from the Springs, and are nauseous enough to drink; to bathe in they are delightful leaving a softness upon the skin and a suppleness among the bones that invigorate the whole frame. My third bath told upon my looks quite magically, and I felt so comfortably alive and alert, that dull as this odious place was, I should have liked to make the week out; but nobody else could have endured the monotony of fine summer days so lost behind those walls, so we moved again back to Liège, and on to Maestricht, and then to Spa, which pretty place suited us so well we remained there for ten days. It is a hilly country, not unlike Tun bridge Wells, great variety in the scenery, the town clean and cheerful, its one steep street filled with good houses, plenty of them being hotels.
We put up at the best, where we got excellent apartments, and we diverted ourselves by walking, driving, shopping, and drinking the waters, meeting very few of the numerous visitors except early in the morning at the fountains, the ladies and gentlemen mostly spending their day round the rouge et noir tables. It was frightful to see them, all pale and anxious except the few who were flushed from excitement, gathered for such an unholy purpose in the lovely Autumn weather. Dupes, sharpers, swindlers, all fermenting together. A son of old Blucher’s was undergoing the process of being ruined, and though he had no good looks to recommend him, his youth made one incline to pity him. There were gaming rooms in our hotel. I declare I never passed the green door leading to them without a shudder. As it swung noiselessly to and fro when pushed on either side, it seemed to me to be the barrier Dante sang of, cutting off every hope from all the doomed admitted beyond it.12 Peace brought all tins vice, and how much more, to England. There was evil enough in our country before, but not the open familiarity with degrading pursuits our Continental neighbours habitually indulge. It was then such a curse; it is only perhaps another phase of the guilt of ignorance, for in ignorance we may ascribe all the errours of our imperfect nature, errours that keep us morally and physically beneath what we might be, too frequently rendering an existence miserable that was intended to be all enjoyment. Little as I had accustomed myself to reflect at this time, those dreadful fables forced thought on me. I have ever had such an horrour of swerving from the right path.
We had a much more agreeable subject of contemplation across the street. From our sitting room windows, a rather lofty premier, we looked down into the quiet manage in a lower entresol of an elderly French gentleman and his much younger wife. As their curtains were generally drawn aside, their windows frequently opened, we had by good management the opportunity of investigating all details of their daily life, Madame got up first, rather early, threw on a wrapper, covered herself further with a shawl, slipt her bare feet into shufflers, and leaving her plain, unbordered skull night cap over her curl papers, without further ado began to prepare the coffee. When this was ready Monsieur rose, popt on a flowered robe de chambre, tossed away his night cap, stept into his slippers, and then sat down to his coffee. Madame opened the door, evidently to a knock; it was the gazette, which she received and handed to Monsieur. While he read she busied herself in clearing away the coffee tray and setting the room to rights. The beds were soon plumped up into sofas, the draperies drawn back, the chairs and tables put in order, and then the work seemed done. Another tap at the door, the gazette was handed out again, the window curtain was let down, and we were left to imagine the toilet of Monsieur. His appearance at the conclusion of his labours, in about an hour, was perfect; we knew him quite well under his metamorphosis issuing from the door of the house with shining hat, smart redingote,13 shirt front, cane, moustache, all in high order, and we watched him sauntering off to the Café with an air of easy negligence, quite an amusing contrast to the bustle of Madame, She, after one long look at the retiring form of her beloved, we supposed that they had been but lately married, and she was very pretty, pulled back her curtain and commenced her morning works. Sometimes she sewed, sometimes she clear starched, sometimes she ironed, folded, brushed the clothes. She was never idle. Towards the dinner hour her window was darkened for a while, and when she unveiled her chamber. Monsieur was already within sight, sauntering down the street again to receive a Lady worthy of him. The neatest little figure in the prettiest half dress tripped along the floor to meet him, and away they went together, as nice looking and as quiet and as happy a pair as could well be seen at the Spa. We could never detect the time of their return home in the evening. The casement, left open by Madame, was always closed at dusk by the maid of the lodging house; no light ever seemed to gle
am from within, yet we never failed in the early morning to see the fair lady in her wrapper and her curl papers, looking out for a breath of fresh air before preparing her coffee.
We went from Spa to Maestricht, a large garrison town of most agreeable aspect, and there we waited a couple of days, nothing loth, for letters. The Landlady of an excellent hotel kept a capital table d’hôte. Many of the Officers dined with her, lawyers, merchants, and a few others, her husband among them; he was a notary, with an office at a little distance, and quite as much a guest in his Wife’s salon as any of the rest of the company. Madame, short and fat and well dressed, and very obliging, sat at the head of the table, her pretty daughters dispersed along each side; one made the salad, another, who spoke a little English, attended to the travellers; a third, quite a child, seemed to be a pet with the acquaintance. It was quite a gay family party, and really very amusing to strangers; no very refined manners visible, but no ill breeding. Madame had been learning English from her school taught daughter, and had got very perfect two small words, which on every occasion she pronounced with a winning smile to my Mother—Ros bif —and next day we had two miserable ribs of lean beef at dinner, baked till quite black, out of compliment to our party. A Dutch naval Officer sat next to me, a very agreeable man, and so polite as to dress himself in his Uniform afterwards, because we had none of us seen what was worn by his countrymen. It was not very unlike our own, blue, but turned up, I think, with red. Two Dutch merchants I also got on with so well that the father gave my father his card with his address at Rotterdam, and begged we would let him know when we returned there, as he must give his family the advantage of an introduction to foreigners who had made two days pass so very agreeably to himself and his son. A Frenchman could not have made a neater speech.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 54