Part 9

We left by one of the steamers which ply daily from Caen to Havre. The run down the river is chiefly interesting from the quarries on its banks. They are not the principal quarries, but are of very considerable extent; and from the quantities of tip, heaped into moderate-sized grass-covered hills by the river side, it is plain that they must have been in work here for centuries. You see the stone in many places lying like rich Cheddar cheese, and cut as regularly in flakes as a grocer would cut his favourite cheeses. The stone is very soft when it comes first from the quarries, but gains its great hardness and sharpness after a short exposure. After passing the quarries we got between salt marshes haunted by abundance of jack snipe, and so we passed out to sea.

Gleanings from Boulogne

There is one large portion of the French people which has improved marvellously in appearance in the last few years, and that is the army. The setting up of the French soldier of the line used to be much neglected, but now you never see a man, however small and slight, who does not carry himself and move as if every muscle in his body had been thoroughly and scientifically trained. And this is the actual fact. They have the finest system of military gymnastics which has ever been seen. In every garrison town there is a gymnasium, in which the men have to drill as regularly as on the parade-ground. The one close to the gate of the old town of Boulogne is an admirable specimen, and well worth a visit. Our authorities are, I believe, slowly following in the steps of the French, but little has as yet been done. There is no branch of army reform which may more safely be pressed on. We have undoubtedly the finer material. The English soldier is a bigger and more muscular man than the French soldier, but is far behind him in his physical education, and must remain so until we provide a proper system of gymnastic training, which, by the bye, will benefit the general health of the men, and develop their intelligence as well as their muscles.

During our stay at Boulogne there was some very heavy weather. A strong sou’-wester came on one night, and by two o’clock next day, when I went down, was hurling the angry green waves against the great beams of the southern pier in fearful fashion. The entrance to the harbour, as most of your readers will remember, is quite narrow, not one hundred yards across between the two pier heads. The ebb-tide was sweeping down from the north, and, meeting the gale right off the harbour’s mouth, made a battling and raging sea which brought one’s heart into one’s mouth to look at. The weather was quite bright, and though the wind was so strong that I held my hat on with difficulty, the northern pier was crowded, as the whole force of the sea was spent against the southern pier, over which it was leaping every moment. We were in comparative shelter, and could watch, Without being drenched with spray, the approach of one of the fishing smacks of the port, which was coming home. I shall not easily forget the sight. We stood there, jammed together, rough sailors, fishwomen, Cockneys, weatherbound soldiers, well-dressed ladies, a crowd of all ranks, the wind singing through us so that we could scarcely make our nearest neighbours hear. Not that we wanted to talk. The sight of the small black hull and ruddy brown sail of the smack, now rising on the crest of a great wave, and the next moment all but disappearing behind it, took away the desire, almost the power, of speech. Two boats, manned with fishermen, pulled to the harbour’s mouth, and lay rolling in the comparatively still water just within the shelter of the southern pier head. It was comforting to see them there, though if any catastrophe had happened they could never have lived in that sea. But the gallant little smack needed no help. She was magnificently steered, and came dancing through the wildest part of the race without shipping a single sea, seeming to catch each leaping wave just in the spot where it was easiest to ride over. As she slid out of the seething cauldron into the smooth water past the waiting boats the crowd drew a long breath, and many of us hurried back to get a close view of her as she ran into her place amongst the other fishing boats alongside the quay. I envied the grizzly old hero at the helm, as he left his place, threw off his dreadnought coat, and went to help the two men and two boys who were taking in the sail and coiling away the ropes. There was much shouting and congratulation from above; but they made little answer, and no fuss. Their faces struck me very much, especially the boys’, which were full of that quiet self-contained look one sees in Hook’s pictures. There was no other boat in the offing then, so I went home; but within a few hours heard that a smack had capsized in the harbour’s mouth, with the loss of one man. I only marvel how the rest could have been saved.

On the 1st of October in every year there is a solemn festival of the seafaring people of Boulogne, and the sea is blessed by their pastors. I was anxious to wait for the ceremony, but was unable to do so. There seems to be a strange mixture of trust in God and superstition in all people who “occupy their business on the great waters.” There is a little chapel looking down on Boulogne port full of thank-offerings of the sailors’ wives, where the fishwomen go up to plead with God, and pour out the agony of their souls in rough weather. There are propitiatory gifts, too, by the side of the thank-offerings, and the shadow of a tyrannous power in nature, to be bought off with gifts, darkens the presence of the true Refuge from the storm. There are traces, too, of a more direct idolatry in the town. In the year 643 of our era the Madonna came to Boulogne in an open boat, so runs the story, and left an image with the faithful, which soon became the great religious lion of the neighbourhood, drawing largely, and performing a series of miracles all through the Middle Ages. When Henry VIII. took the town the English carried off the image, but it was restored in good condition when peace came, and as powerful as ever for wonder-working. The Huguenots got hold of it half a century later, and were supposed to have destroyed it; but an image, which at any rate did duty for it, was ultimately fished up out of a well. Doubts as to identity, however, having arisen, the matter was referred to the Sorbonne, and a jury of doctors declared in favour of the genuineness of the article which was forthcoming. And so it continued to practise with varying success until the Revolution, when the Jacobins laid hands on it, broke it up, and burnt it, thinking to make once for all an end of this and other idol-worships. But a citizen not so enlightened as his neighbours stayed by the fire, and succeeded at last in rescuing what he declared to be an arm of the original image, which remains an object of veneration still, and is said not to have lost all healing power. But it is far inferior in this respect to some drops of the holy blood, for the reception of which a countrywoman of ours has built a little chapel in the suburbs.

Boulogne has all the marks of rapidly increasing material prosperity which may be seen now in every French town, one of the many fruits of which is a wonderful improvement in the condition of the streets and thoroughfares. The fine new buildings, the look of the shops and of the people, all tell the same tale. In fact, one comes away from France now with a feeling that, so far as surface polish and civilisation are concerned, this is the country which is going to the front. Whether it goes any deeper is a matter upon which a traveller flitting about for a few weeks cannot venture an opinion.

I came back in one of the daily packets to London Bridge, which, besides carrying seventy passengers, was piled fore and aft with cargo. There were 400 cases of wine on deck, besides other packages, which sorely curtailed our walking privileges. But the boats are good boats, and the voyage past Dover, through the Downs, round the North Foreland, and up the Thames, is so full of life and interest that it is well worth making a long day of it, if one is a moderately good sailor. The advertisements call it eight and a half hours, which means eleven; but it is not a moment too long.

Blankenberghe

Yesterday (14th August) we were warned by meagre fare at the _table d’hôte_ of our hotel that it was the vigil of some saint’s day. Our gastronomic knowledge was enlarged by the opportunity of partaking of boiled mussels. A small and delicate species of this little fish--despised of Englishmen--is found in extraordinary quantities on this coast. The sand is dotted with the shells after every ebb. The wattles of the jetties are full of them. After the first shock of having a salad bowl full of small black shells presented to one, following immediately on a delicate _potage à l’oseille_, the British citizen may pursue his education in this direction fearlessly, with the certainty of becoming acquainted with a delicate and appetising morsel; and he will return to his native country with at least a toleration for “winks” and “pickled whelks,” when he sees them vended at corner stalls in Clare Market or in the Old Kent Road, for the benefit of the dangerous classes of his fellow-citizens who take their meals in the street. In these Flemish parts they are eaten with bread and butter, and even as whitebait, and by all classes.

After the meal I consulted the calendar in my pocket-book as to the approaching festival, not wishing to thrust my heretical ignorance unnecessarily on the notice of the simple folk who inhabit the _Lion d’Or_. That obstinately Protestant document, however, informed me simply that the Rev. E. Irving was born on this day in 1792, probably not the saint I was in quest of. A _Churchman’s Almanac_, with which the only English lady in the place was provided, was altogether silent as to the day. In the end, therefore, I was obliged to fall back upon the bright-eyed little _demoiselle de la maison_, who informed me that it was the vigil of the Assumption of the Virgin, and that the _fête_ was one greatly honoured by the community of Blankenberghe.

Thus prepared, I was not surprised at being roused at five in the morning by the clumping of sabots and clinking of hammers in the street below--my room is a corner one, looking from two windows on the Rue d’Eglise, the principal street of the place, and from the other two on the Rue des Pecheurs, or “Visschurs’ Straet,” which runs across the northern end of the Rue d’Eglise. A flight of broad steps here runs up on to the Digue, or broad terrace fronting the sea, and at the foot of these steps they were erecting a temporary altar, and over it a large picture of fishermen hauling in nets full of monsters of the deep. They had brought it from the parish church, and, as such pictures go, it was by no means a bad one. Presently tricoloured flags began to appear from the windows of most of the houses in both streets, and here and there garlands of bright-coloured paper were hung across from one side to the other. As the morning advanced the bells from the church and convent called the simple folk to mass at short intervals, six, half-past seven, nine, and grand mass at ten. The call seemed to be answered by more people than we had fancied the town could have held. At eleven there was to be a procession, and now miniature altars with lighted candles appeared in many of the ground-floor windows, both of shops and private houses; and the streets were strewed with rushes and diamond-shaped pieces of coloured paper. Punctual to its time the head of the procession came round the corner of “Visschurs’ Straet,” half a dozen small boys ringing bells leading the way. Then came the beadledom of Blankenberghe, in the shape of several imposing persons in municipal uniform, then three little girls dressed in white, with bouquets, more boys, including a diligent but not very skilful drummer, six or seven other maidens in white, somewhat older than their predecessors, of whom the centre one carried some ornament of tinsel and flowers. Then came the heavy silk canopy, supported by four light poles carried by acolytes, and surrounded by choristers, of whom the leader bore a large silver censer, and under the canopy marched a shaven monk in cream-coloured brocade satin, carrying the pyx, and a less gorgeously attired brother with an open missal. Around the whole of the procession, to protect it from the accompanying crowd, were a belt of bronzed fishermen in their best clothes, some carrying staves, some hymn-books, and almost all joining in the chant which was rolled out by the priest, in a powerful bass with a kind of metallic ring in it, as they neared the altar at the foot of the steps. Here the whole procession paused, and the greater part knelt, while the priest put incense in the censer, and made his obeisances and prayed in an unknown tongue, and the censer boy swung his sweet-smelling smoke about, and the fishermen and their wives and children prayed too, in their own tongue, I suppose, and their own way, probably for fair weather and plenty of fish, and let us hope for brave and gentle hearts to meet whatever rough weather and short commons may be in store for them by land or water, Then the procession rose, and passed down the Rue d’Eglise, pausing at the corner of the little market-place opposite a rude figure of the Madonna in a niche over some pious doorway, [Greek phrase] and so out of sight. And the _bourgeois_ blew out the candles and took away the chairs on which, while the halt lasted, they had been kneeling from their shop windows, putting back the bathing dresses, and the shell boxes, and other sea-side merchandise, while the whole non-shopkeeping population, and the neighbours from Bruges, and the strangers who fill the hotels and lodging-houses turned out upon the splendid sands and on the Digue to enjoy their _fête_-day. In the afternoon the _corps de musique_ of the communal schools of Bruges gave a gratuitous concert to us all by the permission of the communal administration of that town, as we bathed, or promenaded, or sipped coffee or liqueurs in the broad verandahs of the _cafés_ which line the Digue. Gaily dressed middle-class women (of upper classes, as we understand them, I see none), in many-coloured garments and immense structures of false back hair, such as these eyes have never before seen; a sprinkling of Belgian officers in uniform, Russians, Frenchmen, Germans a few, and two Anglo-Saxons, Englishmen I cannot say, for one is an American citizen and the other your contributor, who compose the only English-speaking males, so far as I can judge; groups of Flemish women of the people in long black cloth cloaks, with large hoods lined with black satin, more expensive probably, but not nearly so picturesque as the old red cloak which thirty years ago was the almost universal Sunday dress of women in Wiltshire, Berkshire, and other Western counties; little old-fashioned girls in nice mob caps, and the fishermen in excellent blue broad-cloth jackets and trousers, and well-blacked shoes or boots, instead of the huge sabots of their daily life; in short, every soul, I suppose, in Blankenberghe, from the Bourgmestre who sits on his throne, to the donkey-boy who drives along his Neddy under a freight of children, at half a franc an hour, whenever he can entice the small fry from the superior attraction of engineering with the splendid sand, spends his or her three or four hours on the Digue, enjoying whatever of the music, gossip, coffee, beer, or other pastimes they are inclined to or can afford; and in that whole crowd of pleasant holiday-making folk there is not one single trace of poverty, not a starved face, not a naked foot, not a ragged garment. It is the same on the week-days. The people, notably the fishermen and _baigneurs_, dress roughly, but they have all comfortable thick worsted stockings in their sabots, and their jerseys and overalls are ample and satisfactory. Why is it that in nine places out of ten on the Continent this is so, and that in England you shall never be able to find a watering-place which is not deformed more or less by poverty and thriftlessness? Right across the sea, there, on the Norfolk coast, lie Cromer and Sherringham. More daring sailors never manned lifeboat, more patient fishermen never dragged net, than the seafaring folk of those charming villages. They are courteous, simple, outspoken folk, too, singularly attractive in their looks and ways. But, alas! for the rags, and the grinding poverty, declaring itself in a dozen ways, in the cottages, in the children’s looks, in the women’s premature old age. When will England wake up, and get rid of the curse of her wealth and the curse of her poverty? When will an Englishman be able again to look on at a fête-day in Belgium, or Switzerland, or Germany, or France, without a troubled conscience and a pain in his heart, as he thinks of the contrast at home, and the bitter satire in the old, worn-out name of “Merry England?” It is high time that we all were heartsick over it, for the canker grows on us. Those who know London best will tell you so; those who know the great provincial towns and country villages will tell you so, except perhaps that the latter are now getting depopulated, and so contain less altogether of joy or sorrow. However, sir, there are other than these holiday times in which to dwell on this dark subject. I ought to apologise for having fallen into it unawares, when I sat down merely to put on paper, if I could in a few lines, and impart to your readers the exceeding freshness of the feeling which the feast-day at this little Belgian watering-place leaves on one. But who knows when he sits down, at any rate in the holidays, what he is going to write? However good your intentions, at times you can’t “get the hang of it,” can’t say the thing you meant to say.

You may wonder, too, at this sudden plunge into the _fête_ of the Assumption at Blankenberghe, when I have never warned you even that I had flitted from my round on the great crank which grinds for us all so ruthlessly in the parts about the Strand and the Inns of Court. Well, sir, I plead in my defence the test that a very able friend of mine applies to novels. He opens the second volume and reads a chapter; if that tempts him, on he goes to the end of the book; if it is very good indeed, he then goes back, and fairly begins at the beginning. So I hope your readers will be inclined to peruse in future weeks some further gossip respecting this place, which should perhaps have preceded the _fête_-day. If they should get to take the least interest in Blankenberghians and their works and ways, it is more than these latter can be said to do about them, for in the two or three cheap sheets which I find on the table here, and which constitute the press of this corner of Belgium, there is seldom more than a couple of lines devoted to the whole British Empire. The fact that there is not another Englishman in the place, and that the American above mentioned, the only other representative of our English-speaking stock here, went once to see the Derby, and got so bored by two o’clock that he left the Downs and walked back to Epsom station, enduring the whole chaff of the road, and finding the doors locked and the clerks and porters all gone up to the race, ought to be enough to make them curious--curious enough at any rate for long-vacation purposes. There are plenty of odds and ends of life a little out of our ordinary track lying about here to make a small “harvest for a quiet eye,” which I am inclined to try and garner for you, if you think well. And are not the new King and Queen coming next week to delight their subjects, and witness many kinds of fireworks, and a “_concours des joueurs de boule, dits pas baenbolders_,” whatever these may be?

Belgian Bathing

I should like to know how many grown Englishmen or Englishwomen, apart from those unfortunates who are preparing for competitive examinations, are aware of the existence of this place? No Englishman is bound to know of it by any law of polite education acknowledged amongst us, for is it not altogether ignored in Murray?

Even Bradshaw’s _Continental Guide_ is silent as to its whereabouts. This is somewhat hard upon Blankenberghe, sturdy and rapidly growing little watering-place that she is, already exciting the jealousy of her fashionable neighbour, Ostend. It must be owned, however, that she returns the compliment by taking the slightest possible interest in the contemporary history of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the place has certain recommendations to persons in search of a watering-place out of England. If you are content with an hotel of the country, of which there is a large choice, you may have three good meals a day and a bedroom for six and a half francs, with a considerable reduction for families. Even at the fashionable hotels on the Digue the price is only eight or nine francs; and when you have paid your hotel bill you are out of all danger of extravagance, for there is literally nothing to spend money upon. Your bathing machine costs you sixpence. There are no pleasure boats and no wheeled vehicles for hire in the place, and no excursions if there were; shops there are none; and the market is of the smallest and meagerest kind. There are no beggars and no amusements, except bathing and the Kursaal. These, however, suffice to keep the inhabitants and visitors in a state of much contentment.