He lands us in due course at the Hotel Métropole, which I am almost tempted to call one of the finest hotels in Europe; but then there are so many finest hotels in Europe. This is one of the places, however, where you associate with bronze and marble statues and tire your neck out looking at frescoes on the ceilings; far grander than any hotel in London, but a little cold, with its marble walls, at 6 o'clock in the morning.
The polyglot clerk in the front office need not wait to hear you speak; your appearance tells him what language to use upon you. Whether you came from Russia or Germany, from India or Japan, he is ready, I am told, to converse in your own language.
Candles Used for Tips.
There are some things about this hotel of the Belgian capital which would excite comment in America, but which one soon grows used to in this part of the world. The notice tacked on the back of the door explains them all. The price of one of the statues would have put gas or electric lights in all the sleeping rooms, but there is neither when you get to the upper floors. In these lower rooms, however, there are electric lights, but not in such places that they can be utilized for reading or writing. If you are inclined for such unreasonable pursuits, you can have other lights, as the notice informs you:
Lamp, 2 francs per night.
Candle, 0.50 centimes.
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Maybe this is the hotel that I heard about from one of our Consuls, where a New Yorker was shown to a room in which twenty candles were stuck in a chandelier in the center. As it was dark, the attendant lighted them all; but the guest had been in European hotels before, and made him put them out immediately. It was of no avail, however. In his bill the next day he found them charged, "Twenty candles, 10 francs."
So he went back to the room and took them all out, wrapped them in a bit of paper and slipped them into his overcoat pocket. When he was about to leave he found the servants drawn up in two lines in the hall, in the European style—ten men-servants on one side, ten maid-servants on the other, all smiling and ready for the expected tip. Then he drew out his package and distributed the candles, one to each. "Allow me, Monseiur," said he, with a bow; "permit me, Madame. They are very superior candles, I assure you; I paid ten cents apiece for them"; and he left them all staring at their candles like so many altar boys.
But light alone is not enough; sometimes a little heat is required, and you can have it on these terms:
Heating by steam, per day, 1 franc. For the evening, 0.50 centimes.
Heating by gas, per day, 2 francs. For the evening, 1 franc.
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If a bath should be required, it could be had in various forms:
Large bath, hot or cold, towels included, 2 francs.
Hip bath or tub, 0.75 centimes. Footbath, 0.50 centimes.
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The list is incomplete, it will be observed, in several respects. It does not give the price of a bath without towels, nor mention the fact that you must carry your own soap. And while it includes bran, starch, and soda, it omits charcoal, ground phosphate, and other equally suitable bathing materials.
But while these little things are food for merriment, the fact remains that you pay three francs a day here for a room that would cost three dollars a day in New York, in an equally good hotel, or six francs for a five dollar room.
City of the Kiekenfretters.
The Government evidently has done everything possible for the improvement of its capital. The town was built on the edge of a swamp and took its original name, Broeksel, from that fact. And a little river, the Senne, ran through it. But the swamp has been filled in, and the river has been covered over. In driving through the inner boulevards you go over the top of the river without knowing it.
So good a drainage system has been invented that various European cities have copied it; and the water is said to be very pure, for Continental water, though few people drink it.
There are street cars running in all directions, by which any part of the city can be reached quickly and cheaply; and living is said to be better and cheaper here than in most places. Belgians call the natives of Brussels Kiekefretters, on account of their great fondness of chickens and other good things to eat.
The city, like many another, is divided into old and new towns, the old town being low and containing, of course, all of the quaint old buildings, and the new town occupying an adjoining plateau on which are the modern palaces and public offices and most of the fine residences.
"I don't know what France would do without this soft sandstone," a Brussels man said to me in pointing out some of the handsome buildings. "This place is built of it, and Paris and Lyons and Marseilles and most of the large cities. To be sure, this is out of France politically, but geographically and geologically there is very little difference. We have the same rocks and the same clays, and the sandstone seems to have been made specially for the climate.
"Look at any one of of these old buildings; see the immense amount of carving in stone. To do that in your country would cost you more millions than even America could afford, because you have to use much harder material. This cream-colored sandstone is very soft and almost as easy to carve as chalk.
"One of these buildings would hardly stand through a Winter in your climate, as the stone is very porous and the alternate freezing and thawing would knock it to pieces.
"Just imagine such carvings as these in the Town Hall or in one of your New York buildings. The snow would gather in the hollows and melt into water, the water would freeze, and in a few days the carving would be a wreck. Here it answers well because we have no extreme cold, and it is cheap and easily cut."
Stone Cutting With Saws.
We stopped in a stoneyard where some masons were preparing the blocks for a new building. Some were standing by the side of great cubes, sawing them to pieces with big saws more easily, apparently, than they could have sawed hard wood. Others were chiseling patterns in stones that had been planed down smooth with little hand planes.
The material looked exactly like the coral limestone used for buildings in Bermuda and Nassau. When I took up a fragment I found that I could cut it easily with my pocketknife.
This was sufficient explanation of the presence of so much ornamentation on both old and new buildings. With the artist's model before him, a good workman could produce two or three full-grown angels or a dozen cherubs in a single day.
The roofs of all these buildings, however, show that even in the absence of sandstone there would be an abundance of building material. The same red clay that makes the handsome red tiles of which the roofs are constructed would make excellent bricks...
The Town Hall I think is the victim of the engraver. It is the building of Brussels that most strangers are impatient to see, and that they feel acquainted with before they see it, because they have known it on paper all their lives. Undeniably it is a handsome building, but hardly equal to the impression created by the familiar pictures.
All over Europe pictures of this celebrated building hang in public and private places, making one believe it so vast that it would be useless to try to see more than one corner at a time. But the average eye can take in the whole structure without a strain.
The soiled condition of the lower story might be forgiven if they had put a tower in the centre; but the tower is considerably off to one side, giving something of the impression of a steamship with her funnel sprouting out close to the rail. The curious fact, however, adds somewhat to the pleasure of the sight, for it is not every day that one can see a fine, large building with its tower in the wrong place.
They tell the story here that when the architect discovered his error too late to remedy it he hanged himself in despair, but modern architects say, and this is much more likely, that the tower was originally at the end of the building, and that the part beyond it was added at a later period.
Town Hall and Its Neighbors.
If the Town Hall itself is a little disappointing, there is no disappointment in its surroundings. It forms one side of a large open square, on other sides of which are the King's House and the House of the Dukes of Brabant. Like many other European squares, this square is a triangle. And among and between these large buildings are the houses of the ancient guilds, some nearly as they were centuries ago, others carefully restored.
The Town Hall, built in the early fifteenth century, is the oldest of these buildings, but in apparent age there is not much difference, for the whole square was thrown into a state of innocuous desuetude [disuse] when Brussels was bombarded in 1695.
The House of the Dukes of Brabant is given over to trade and clubrooms and private occupancy; and it is well suited for division, being composed of seven houses, bearing such names as the Hermitage, the Crayfish, the Windmill, the Tin Pot, and so on.
The houses of the old guilds seem to me of greater interest than the larger buildings. The house of the Brewers, the Swan, the Comet; the house of the Wolf, the house of the Fox, the Bag, the Phenix, the Balance, the Rose, the Mole, are some of the names borne by these ancient structures.
"The most beautiful square in all the world," Victor Hugo called this triangle; but it is just possible that there were one or two other squares that he had not seen. My one day's stay here hardly entitles me to express an opinion on that point, nor yet to criticise the favorite saying of the inhabitants that Brussels is "a little Paris." It is a handsome city built of cream-white stone, with much life and much comfort, and many costly palaces, and a small river that runs unseen through a tunnel, and a population given to eating and drinking at little tables on the sidewalks.
There must be many things worth seeing and describing in these rare old buildings and in the churches which I have carefully abstained from mentioning. But so are there many places in Europe to be seen. Time presses, because out of this town there runs a railway, winding many miles in the path of the setting sun through the fertile farms and busy vineyards of La Belle France; and at the other end of that railway is Paris.
WILLIAM DRYSDALE.
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The Federal Reserve Bank's estimated consumer price index shows that $1 in 1897 was equivalent to $25.82 in 2008. Belgian francs were worth the same as French francs in the late 1800s: about 20 US cents, or a little over $5 in 2008 US currency.
The New York Times, November 19, 1893:
EFFECT OF CULTURE UPON DOGSBELGIUM'S EXPERIENCE WITH THEM AS DRAUGHT ANIMALS.
The dog of Belgium never feasts upon the farmer's mutton, but has his rations provided regularly, and is an honest and useful member of society. For every horse seen in harness on the streets or roads there are at least two dogs, and in some of the streets dogs have the entire monopoly of the business of drawing carts and carriages. Nor are they like the unhappy donkey of the English costermonger, poor and wretched, but, on the contrary, they are well fed and cared for and handsomely harnessed, often being accompanied by the picturesquely pretty milkmaids, who take the place in the Belgian cities of the uncouth and ill-savored boor, the American milkman, bringing with him the odors of the stable, and making even the honest milk suspicious.
No person can object to the milk brought to the door by the cleanly wholesome-looking maid, whose pleasant greeting is given free with the full measure of clean, sweet milk not long since drawn from the "sweet-breathed cows" by her own hands. Early in the morning the streets are alive with these little carts and neat maids, whose tinkling bell is heard instead of the hoarse yell of the American milkman...
Soon after the milkmaid comes the equally-pleasant flower girl, as fresh as her bouquets. She is as gorgeous in her coloring as her flowers...
[The dogs] move the vehicles with ease, and go about so noiselessly and inoffensively as to do the work with pleasure to all concerned and with profit to themselves and their owners. The disagreeable smell of the horses is conspicuous by its absence, and the clean streets fit well the neat little equipages and the girls who do so much of the work.
...these Belgian dogs do not fight or growl or bark or bite, but greet each other kindly, as one stands near the other and attends strictly to business...
A draught dog in Belgium costs only 5 cents a day to feed. The staple food is horseflesh and black bread...
The accompanying illustrations and much of the above interesting information are taken from a most valuable report by American Consulates on dairy cattle in Europe and other parts of the world. It is profusely illustrated by photographs, and may be procured of the Secretary of the Treasury.
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