



Produced by Donald Lainson





LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES


By William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA Titmarsh)




I. FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM

II. GHENT--BRUGES:--

Ghent (1840)

Bruges

III. WATERLOO




LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES




I.--FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM


... I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" at Richmond, one of the
comfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England, and
a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the "Star and Garter,"
whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his hair curled,
frightens you off the premises; and where, if you are bold enough to
brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle
of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view
which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor--a
view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter: I say, I
quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" with deep regret, believing that I
should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and
its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people
must go out of town, and so I got on the top of the omnibus, and the
carpet-bag was put inside.


If I were a great prince and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I
were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of
the best Havanas in my pocket--not for my own smoking, but to give them
to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poison
the air with the odor of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in his
circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above
simple precaution.

A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back and asked for a
light. He was a footman, or rather valet. He had no livery, but the
three friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and-salt
undress jackets with a duke's coronet on their buttons.

After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his cheroot,
the gentleman produced another wind-instrument, which he called a
"kinopium," a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a great inclination
to play. He began puffing out of the "kinopium" a most abominable
air, which he said was the "Duke's March." It was played by particular
request of one of the pepper-and-salt gentry.

The noise was so abominable that even the coachman objected (although
my friend's brother footmen were ravished with it), and said that it
was not allowed to play toons on HIS 'bus. "Very well," said the valet,
"WE'RE ONLY OF THE DUKE OF B----'S ESTABLISHMENT, THAT'S ALL." The
coachman could not resist that appeal to his fashionable feelings. The
valet was allowed to play his infernal kinopium, and the poor fellow
(the coachman), who had lived in some private families, was quite
anxious to conciliate the footmen "of the Duke of B.'s establishment,
that's all," and told several stories of his having been groom in
Captain Hoskins's family, NEPHEW OF GOVERNOR HOSKINS; which stories the
footmen received with great contempt.

The footmen were like the rest of the fashionable world in this
respect. I felt for my part that I respected them. They were in daily
communication with a duke! They were not the rose, but they had lived
beside it. There is an odor in the English aristocracy which intoxicates
plebeians. I am sure that any commoner in England, though he would die
rather than confess it, would have a respect for those great big hulking
Duke's footmen.

The day before, her Grace the Duchess had passed us alone in a
chariot-and-four with two outriders. What better mark of innate
superiority could man want? Here was a slim lady who required four--six
horses to herself, and four servants (kinopium was, no doubt, one of the
number) to guard her.

We were sixteen inside and out, and had consequently an eighth of a
horse apiece.

A duchess = 6, a commoner = 1/8; that is to say,

1 duchess = 48 commoners.

If I were a duchess of the present day, I would say to the duke my noble
husband, "My dearest grace, I think, when I travel alone in my chariot
from Hammersmith to London, I will not care for the outriders. In these
days, when there is so much poverty and so much disaffection in the
country, we should not eclabousser the canaille with the sight of our
preposterous prosperity."

But this is very likely only plebeian envy, and I dare say, if I were
a lovely duchess of the realm, I would ride in a coach-and-six, with a
coronet on the top of my bonnet and a robe of velvet and ermine even in
the dog-days.

Alas! these are the dog-days. Many dogs are abroad--snarling dogs,
biting dogs, envious dogs, mad dogs; beware of exciting the fury of
such with your flaming red velvet and dazzling ermine. It makes ragged
Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of-gold; and so
if I were a beauteous duchess... Silence, vain man! Can the Queen
herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of
"the Duke of B----'s establishment-- that's all."


ON BOARD THE "ANTWERPEN," OFF EVERYWHERE.

We have bidden adieu to Billingsgate, we have passed the Thames Tunnel;
it is one o'clock, and of course people are thinking of being hungry.
What a merry place a steamer is on a calm sunny summer forenoon, and
what an appetite every one seems to have! We are, I assure you, no less
than 170 noblemen and gentlemen together, pacing up and down under the
awning, or lolling on the sofas in the cabin, and hardly have we passed
Greenwich when the feeding begins. The company was at the brandy and
soda-water in an instant (there is a sort of legend that the beverage is
a preservative against sea-sickness), and I admired the penetration of
gentlemen who partook of the drink. In the first place, the steward WILL
put so much brandy into the tumbler that it is fit to choke you; and,
secondly, the soda-water, being kept as near as possible to the boiler
of the engine, is of a fine wholesome heat when presented to the hot and
thirsty traveller. Thus he is prevented from catching any sudden cold
which might be dangerous to him.

The forepart of the vessel is crowded to the full as much as the
genteeler quarter. There are four carriages, each with piles of
imperials and aristocratic gimcracks of travel, under the wheels of
which those personages have to clamber who have a mind to look at the
bowsprit, and perhaps to smoke a cigar at ease. The carriages overcome,
you find yourself confronted by a huge penful of Durham oxen, lying
on hay and surrounded by a barricade of oars. Fifteen of these horned
monsters maintain an incessant mooing and bellowing. Beyond the cows
come a heap of cotton-bags, beyond the cotton-bags more carriages, more
pyramids of travelling trunks, and valets and couriers bustling and
swearing round about them. And already, and in various corners and
niches, lying on coils of rope, black tar-cloths, ragged cloaks, or hay,
you see a score of those dubious fore-cabin passengers, who are never
shaved, who always look unhappy, and appear getting ready to be sick.

At one, dinner begins in the after-cabin--boiled salmon, boiled beef,
boiled mutton, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, and parboiled wine for
any gentlemen who like it, and two roast-ducks between seventy. After
this, knobs of cheese are handed round on a plate, and there is a talk
of a tart somewhere at some end of the table. All this I saw peeping
through a sort of meat-safe which ventilates the top of the cabin, and
very happy and hot did the people seem below.

"How the deuce CAN people dine at such an hour?" say several genteel
fellows who are watching the manoeuvres. "I can't touch a morsel before
seven."

But somehow at half-past three o'clock we had dropped a long way down
the river. The air was delightfully fresh, the sky of a faultless
cobalt, the river shining and flashing like quicksilver, and at this
period steward runs against me bearing two great smoking dishes covered
by two great glistening hemispheres of tin. "Fellow," says I, "what's
that?"

He lifted up the cover: it was ducks and green pease, by jingo!

"What! haven't they done YET, the greedy creatures?" I asked. "Have the
people been feeding for three hours?"

"Law bless you, sir, it's the second dinner. Make haste, or you won't
get a place." At which words a genteel party, with whom I had been
conversing, instantly tumbled down the hatchway, and I find myself one
of the second relay of seventy who are attacking the boiled salmon,
boiled beef, boiled cabbage, &c. As for the ducks, I certainly had
some pease, very fine yellow stiff pease, that ought to have been
split before they were boiled; but, with regard to the ducks, I saw the
animals gobbled up before my eyes by an old widow lady and her party
just as I was shrieking to the steward to bring a knife and fork to
carve them. The fellow! (I mean the widow lady's whiskered companion)--I
saw him eat pease with the very knife with which he had dissected the
duck!

After dinner (as I need not tell the keen observer of human nature who
peruses this) the human mind, if the body be in a decent state, expands
into gayety and benevolence, and the intellect longs to measure itself
in friendly converse with the divers intelligences around it. We ascend
upon deck, and after eying each other for a brief space and with a
friendly modest hesitation, we begin anon to converse about the weather
and other profound and delightful themes of English discourse. We
confide to each other our respective opinions of the ladies round about
us. Look at that charming creature in a pink bonnet and a dress of the
pattern of a Kilmarnock snuff-box: a stalwart Irish gentleman in a green
coat and bushy red whisk