Pierrots,with frozen hands,were blowing blue noses.An elderly Cupid had borrowed an umbrella from a cafe and was waiting for a tram.A very little devil was crying with the cold,and wiping his eyes with the end of his own tail.Every doorway was crowded with shivering maskers.The diver alone walked erect,the water streaming from him.
February is not the month for open air masquerading.The "confetti,"which has come to be nothing but coloured paper cut into small discs,is a sodden mass.When a lump of it strikes you in the eye,your instinct is not to laugh gaily,but to find out the man who threw it and to hit him back.This is not the true spirit of Carnival.The marvel is that,in spite of the almost invariably adverse weather,these Carnivals still continue.In Belgium,where Romanism still remains the dominant religion,Carnival maintains itself stronger than elsewhere in Northern Europe.
At one small town,Binche,near the French border,it holds uninterrupted sway for three days and two nights,during which time the whole of the population,swelled by visitors from twenty miles round,shouts,romps,eats and drinks and dances.After which the visitors are packed like sardines into railway trains.They pin their tickets to their coats and promptly go to sleep.At every station the railway officials stumble up and down the trains with lanterns.The last feeble effort of the more wakeful reveller,before he adds himself to the heap of snoring humanity on the floor of the railway carriage,is to change the tickets of a couple of his unconscious companions.In this way gentlemen for the east are dragged out by the legs at junctions,and packed into trains going west;while southern fathers are shot out in the chill dawn at lonely northern stations,to find themselves greeted with enthusiasm by other people's families.
At Binche,they say--I have not counted them myself--that thirty thousand maskers can be seen dancing at the same time.When they are not dancing they are throwing oranges at one another.The houses board up their windows.The restaurants take down their mirrors and hide away the glasses.If I went masquerading at Binche I should go as a man in armour,period Henry the Seventh.
"Doesn't it hurt,"I asked a lady who had been there,"having oranges thrown at you?Which sort do they use,speaking generally,those fine juicy ones--Javas I think you call them--or the little hard brand with skins like a nutmeg-grater?And if both sorts are used indiscriminately,which do you personally prefer?""The smart people,"she answered,"they are the same everywhere--they must be extravagant--they use the Java orange.If it hits you in the back I prefer the Java orange.It is more messy than the other,but it does not leave you with that curious sensation of having been temporarily stunned.Most people,of course,make use of the small hard orange.If you duck in time,and so catch it on the top of your head,it does not hurt so much as you would think.If,however,it hits you on a tender place--well,myself,I always find that a little sal volatile,with old cognac--half and half,you understand--is about the best thing.But it only happens once a year,"she added.
Nearly every town gives prizes for the best group of maskers.In some cases the first prize amounts to as much as two hundred pounds.
The butchers,the bakers,the candlestick makers,join together and compete.They arrive in wagons,each group with its band.Free trade is encouraged.Each neighbouring town and village "dumps"its load of picturesque merry-makers.
It is in these smaller towns that the spirit of King Carnival finds happiest expression.Almost every third inhabitant takes part in the fun.In Brussels and the larger towns the thing appears ridiculous.
A few hundred maskers force their way with difficulty through thousands of dull-clad spectators,looking like a Spanish river in the summer time,a feeble stream,dribbling through acres of muddy bank.At Charleroi,the centre of the Belgian Black Country,the chief feature of the Carnival is the dancing of the children.Aspace is specially roped off for them.