Читать книгу Pencillings by the Way - Nathaniel Parker Willis - Страница 8

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Havre.—This is one of those places which scribbling travellers hurry through with a crisp mention of their arrival and departure, but, as I have passed a day here upon customhouse compulsion, and passed it pleasantly too, and as I have an evening entirely to myself, and a good fire, why I will order another pound of wood (they sell it like a drug here), and Monsieur and Mademoiselle Somebodies, "violin players right from the hands of Paganini, only fifteen years of age, and miracles of music," (so says the placard), may delight other lovers of precocious talent than I. Pen, ink, and paper for No. 2!

If I had not been warned against being astonished, short of Paris, I should have thought Havre quite an affair. I certainly have seen more that is novel and amusing since morning than I ever saw before in any seven days of my life. Not a face, not a building, not a dress, not a child even, not a stone in the street, nor shop, nor woman, nor beast of burden, looks in any comparable degree like its namesake the other side of the water.

It was very provoking to eat a salt supper and go to bed in that tiresome berth again last night, with a French hotel in full view, and no permission to send for a fresh biscuit even, or a cup of milk. It was nine o'clock when we reached the pier, and at that late hour there was, of course, no officer to be had for permission to land; and there paced the patrole, with his high black cap and red pompon, up and down the quay, within six feet of our tafferel, and a shot from his arquebuss would have been the consequence of any unlicensed communication with the shore. It was something, however, to sleep without rocking; and, after a fit of musing anticipation, which kept me conscious of the sentinel's measured tread till midnight, the "gentle goddess" sealed up my cares effectually, and I awoke at sunrise—in France!

It is a common thing enough to go abroad, and it may seem idle and common-place to be enthusiastic about it; but nothing is common or a trifle, to me, that can send the blood so warm to my heart, and the color to my temples as generously, as did my first conscious thought when I awoke this morning. In France. I would not have had it a dream for the price of an empire.

Early in the morning a woman came clattering into the cabin with wooden shoes, and a patois of mingled French and English—a blanchisseuse—spattered to the knees with mud, but with a cap and 'kerchief that would have made the fortune of a New York milliner. Ciel! what politeness! and what white teeth and what a knowing row of papillotes, laid in precise parallel, on her clear brunette temples.

"Quelle nouvelle!" said the captain.

"Poland est a bas!" was the answer, with a look of heroic sorrow, that would have become a tragedy queen, mourning for the loss of a throne. The French manner, for once, did not appear exaggerated. It was news to sadden us all. Pity! pity! that the broad Christian world could look on and see this glorious people trampled to the dust in one of the most noble and desperate struggles for liberty that the earth ever saw! What an opportunity was here lost to France for setting a seal of double truth and splendor on her own newly-achieved triumph over despotism. The washerwoman broke the silence with "Any clothes to wash, Monsieur?" and in the instant return of my thoughts to my own comparatively-pitiful interests, I found the philosophy for all I had condemned in kings—the humiliating and selfish individuality of human nature! And yet I believe with Dr. Channing on that dogma.

At ten o'clock I had performed the traveller's routine—had submitted my trunk and my passport to the three authorities, and had got into (and out of) as many mounting passions at what seemed to me the intolerable impertinencies of searching my linen, and inspecting my person for scars. I had paid the porter three times his due rather than endure his cataract of French expostulation; and with a bunch of keys, and a landlady attached to it, had ascended by a cold, wet, marble staircase, to a parlor and bedroom on the fifth floor: as pretty a place, when you get there, and as difficult to get to as if it were a palace in thin air. It is perfectly French! Fine, old, last-century chairs, covered with splendid yellow damask, two sofas of the same, the legs or arms of every one imperfect; a coarse wood dressing-table, covered with fringed drapery and a sort of throne pincushion, with an immense glass leaning over it, gilded probably in the time of Henri Quatre; artificial flowers all around the room, and prints of Atala and Napoleon mourant over the walls; windows opening to the floor on hinges, damask and muslin curtains inside, and boxes for flower-pots without; a bell-wire that pulls no bell, a bellows too asthmatic even to wheeze, tongs that refuse to meet, and a carpet as large as a table-cloth in the centre of the floor, may answer for an inventory of the "parlor." The bedchamber, about half as large as the boxes in Rattle-row, at Saratoga, opens by folding doors, and discloses a bed, that, for tricksy ornament as well as size, might look the bridal couch for a faery queen in a panorama; the same golden-sprig damask looped over it, tent-fashion, with splendid crimson cord, tassels, fringes, etc., and a pillow beneath that I shall be afraid to sleep on, it is so dainty a piece of needle-work. There is a delusion about it, positively. One cannot help imagining, that all this splendor means something, and it would require a worse evil than any of these little deficiencies of comfort to disturb the self-complacent, Captain-Jackson sort of feeling, with which one throws his cloak on one sofa and his hat on the other, and spreads himself out for a lounge before this mere apology of a French fire.

But, for eating and drinking! if they cook better in Paris, I shall have my passport altered. The next prefet that signs it shall substitute gourmand for proprietaire. I will profess a palate, and live to eat. Making every allowance for an appetite newly from sea, my experience hitherto in this department of science is transcended in the degree of a rushlight to Arcturus.

I strolled about Havre from breakfast till dinner, seven or eight hours, following curiosity at random, up one street and down another, with a prying avidity which I fear travel will wear fast away. I must compress my observations into a sentence or two, for my fire is out, and this old castle of a hotel lets in the wind "shrewdly cold," and, besides, the diligence calls for me in a few hours and one must sleep.

Among my impressions the most vivid are—that, of the twenty thousand inhabitants of Havre, by far the greater portion are women and soldiers—that the buildings all look toppling, and insecurely antique and unsightly—that the privates of the regular army are the most stupid, and those of the national guard the most intelligent-looking troops I ever saw—that the streets are filthy beyond endurance, and the shops clean beyond all praise—that the women do all the buying and selling, and cart-driving and sweeping, and even shoe-making, and other sedentary craftswork, and at the same time have (the meanest of them) an air of ambitious elegance and neatness, that sends your hand to your hat involuntarily when you speak to them—that the children speak French, and look like little old men and women, and the horses, (the famed Norman breed) are the best of draught animals, and the worst for speed in the world—and that, for extremes ridiculously near, dirt and neatness, politeness and knavery, chivalry and petitesse, of bearing and language, the people I have seen to-day must be pre-eminently remarkable, or France, for a laughing philosopher, is a paradise indeed! And now for my pillow, till the diligence calls. Good night.