Little Travels and Roadside Sketches by William Makepeace Thackeray

Author:William Makepeace Thackeray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

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II.--GHENT--BRUGES. GHENT. (1840.)

The Beguine College or Village is one of the most extraordinary sights that all Europe can show. On the confines of the town of Ghent you come upon an old-fashioned brick gate, that seems as if it were one of the city barriers; but, on passing it, one of the prettiest sights possible meets the eye: At the porter's lodge you see an old lady, in black and a white hood, occupied over her book; before you is a red church with a tall roof and fantastical Dutch pinnacles, and all around it rows upon rows of small houses, the queerest, neatest, nicest that ever were seen (a doll's house is hardly smaller or prettier). Right and left, on each side of little alleys, these little mansions rise; they have a courtlet before them, in which some green plants or hollyhocks are growing; and to each house is a gate, that has mostly a picture or queer- carved ornament upon or about it, and bears the name, not of the Beguine who inhabits it, but of the saint to whom she may have devoted it--the house of St. Stephen, the house of St. Donatus, the English or Angel Convent, and so on. Old ladies in black are pacing in the quiet alleys here and there, and drop the stranger a curtsy as he passes them and takes off his hat. Never were such patterns of neatness seen as these old ladies and their houses. I peeped into one or two of the chambers, of which the windows were open to the pleasant evening sun, and saw beds scrupulously plain, a quaint old chair or two, and little pictures of favorite saints decorating the spotless white walls. The old ladies kept up a quick, cheerful clatter, as they paused to gossip at the gates of their little domiciles; and with a great deal of artifice, and lurking behind walls, and looking at the church as if I intended to design that, I managed to get a sketch of a couple of them.

But what white paper can render the whiteness of their linen; what black ink can do justice to the lustre of their gowns and shoes? Both of the ladies had a neat ankle and a tight stocking; and I fancy that heaven is quite as well served in this costume as in the dress of a scowling, stockingless friar, whom I had seen passing just before. The look and dress of the man made me shudder. His great red feet were bound up in a shoe open at the toes, a kind of compromise for a sandal. I had just seen him and his brethren at the Dominican Church, where a mass of music was sung, and orange- trees, flags, and banners decked the aisle of the church.

One begins to grow sick of these churches, and the hideous exhibitions of bodily agonies that are depicted on the sides of all the chapels. Into one wherein we

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