The site of Antwerp, fifty miles inland from the North Sea, on a wide
curve of the Scheldt (skelt), has been coveted and assailed, built and
rebuilt upon since the dawn of European civilization. No city has a
more affluent history, nor one that contains gloomier chronicles of
siege and warfare. Its wharves and its narrow streets, bulked by the
over-watching citadel and the flamboyant tower of one of the finest
churches in Belgium, are teeming with wharfmongers and brokers, dealers
in diamonds and ivory, lace-makers, flower vendors, factory-workers.
One sees many artists, too, for the Academy of Antwerp is attended
by hundreds of students, attracted to the “city on the wharf” by the
unequaled opportunities presented for the study of Flemish masters,
ancient and modern, whose works are exhibited in the Cathedral of
Notre Dame and in the vast galleries of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN
Its store of irreplaceable manuscripts and books (230,000 in number)
were wantonly burned by the Germans. The University, also destroyed,
was revered for its association with the names of Erasmus, Justus
Lipsius, and other renowned scholars]
In the sixteenth-century rooms of the master printers, Christopher
Plantin and his son-in-law, John Moretus, we examine the yellowed
manuscripts of aspiring authors of that day; presses and proof-sheets;
wood-cut designs by Rubens, and the original shop where generations of
printers turned out excellent books by grant of the Crown, including
the precious and far renowned Polyglot Bible.
Of Ghent, “the City of Flowers,” Maurice Maeterlinck its poet-son has
written, “It is the soul of Flanders, at once venerable and young. In
its streets the past and present elbow each other.” The citizenry of
Ghent, from remote times, have been reputed for their independence
and impetuous resource to arms. Many of the branching canals which
connected it with Bruges, Courtrai, Tournai, Antwerp and Brussels have
now silted up, but a comparatively modern ship canal leading to the
Scheldt and the sea gives the bustling old city communication with the
ports of the world. Freed of the Germans, Ghent is once more treading
the looms of industry. Once more tourists will come to look upon one of
the chief glories of Flanders, a turreted stronghold of ninth-century
foundation, with towers and buttresses, winding stairs, dungeons,
donjon and banqueting hall associated with the exploits of crusading
knights and the patrician counts of Flanders. The most precious example
of primitive Flemish painting, “The Adoration of the Lamb,” by the
brothers Van Eyck, had for centuries hung in the noble Cathedral of St.
Bavon, before it was sent by the Germans to adorn the Berlin Museum.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, this masterpiece, with
all others stolen by the enemy, becomes once more the property of
the Belgians. Most attractive are the communities of white-coiffed,
blue-garbed nuns who live in spotless little houses, and devote their
lives to the making of fine lace and embroidery. And greatly revered by
native Ghenters is the soaring belfry tower from which Freedom’s alarms
have so often rung out across the Flemish Plain.
[Illustration: Copyright, Keystone View Co. Inc.