Spiers: Memoranda of an autumn tour in 1836
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CONT AUG 13. SAT
& would suit our mob orators vastly. The park, & the fine streets & public buildings & king’s palace which surround it are very creditable to a modern capital. The shops seem superior to those of Paris because larger than those of the Palais Royal. –
Towards evening, all the world were out of doors promenading the streets, squares & avenues of the park. We had viewed the lions of the place with two Americans fellow passengers & berth occupiers in the steam packet. The heat of the day prevented our enjoying it so much as we might at any other time have done, but we saw enough to convince us that Mr Trollope might not be wrong in calling it a brilliant place & our handbook a Paris in miniature.
At 9 o’clock at night we put our knapsacks on our backs to trudge to the village of Chasseur but five miles towards Waterloo. We unluckily passed it & found it so difficult to procure a lodging that in company with a wagon & its master & 3 sons we continued our route, which was wearisome because slow to L’Espinette. Not until ½ past one did we get to our bedroom & then with 4 other beds in it occupied by peasants & our companions the wagoners who undressed not. It was very much like an adventure & perhaps I might have enjoyed it but that an excruciating toothache had tormented me since 11 o’clock & kept me awake all the 3 hours of our intended nights rest.
AUGUST 14TH SUNDAY. At ½ past four I quitted our bed of straw, covered with sheets no larger than the bedstead – & with a heavy heart walked back to Brussels to have my tooth & its pain extracted. Last night whilst walking the same route I thought of Sir Walter Scott’s “Thy wood, dark Soignies, holds us now” – but the darkness of night deprived us of its sombre beauty. Now however in spite of my tooth
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