MOTORING IN FLANDERS
"O little towns, obscure and quaint,
Writ on the map in script so faint,
Today in types how large, how red,
On battle scroll your titles spread!"
Brussels is ideally located for the motorist. From it both the Flemish
and the Walloon districts could easily be reached. To be sure, the towns
were paved with the famous Belgian blocks, but the roads outside the
towns were in excellent condition. One of our favourite trips was to
Antwerp, where we went often, either to meet people landing from
steamers from America or to look up boxes shipped us from home.
A bit aside from the direct route between the two cities, but well worth
going out of one's way to see, was Louvain. Baedeker speaks of it as "a
dull place with 42,000 inhabitants," but we found it delightful. It was
a pretty old town, with its richly fretted Hôtel de Ville, the finest
in Belgium, its university and library, its impressive church in the
center of the city, and the innumerable other gray old churches with
their long sloping roofs. The streets were narrow, picturesque and
rather dirty. They were lined with the high walls and closed windows of
convent after convent, and there were huge clusters of monastic
buildings on the hills about, many of these newly built and modern. The
whole town seethed with black-robed priests, brown-robed, bare-footed
monks, and white-coped nuns.
In the Middle Ages Louvain had four times its present population; its
once famous university had diminished in the same proportion. There was
a time when no man might hold public office in the Austrian Netherlands
who did not have a degree from the University of Louvain.
Of the two thousand cloth factories which made the city a hive of
industry during the thirteen hundreds but little sign remained when we
were there. During the fifteenth century it was the largest city west of
the Alps. The walls were built at the period of greatest prosperity, and
much of the land which they inclosed had been turned into gardens,
showing how the population had decreased. It was said that however much
outward change there had been, however, in the Abbey of the White Canons
the spirit of "religious mediævalism" was still to be found, untouched
by modern thought.
Southey describes the town hall at Louvain as an "architectural bijou
... like a thing of ivory or filigree designed for a lady's dressing
table." This building seems to have passed through the war unscathed.
But the famous library of the university, which was one of the most
noted in Europe, containing over a hundred thousand rare manuscripts,
was completely destroyed.
Not far from Brussels, and on the direct road to Antwerp, is Vilvorde, a
small town, chiefly noted as the scene of the martyrdom of Tyndale, the
famous Englishman who attempted the translation of the Bible, and for
this was imprisoned and later burned at the stake by the Church. His
last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" It seems as if
his prayer must have been heard, because within a year--in 1537--the
King ordered the publication of the Bible and its use in all the
churches of the land.
Halfway between Brussels and Antwerp is Malines, perhaps better known to
us by its Dutch name of Mechlin. Every house had its maker of lace;
they could be seen on pleasant days sitting on low stools out of doors
among the flowers, singing as they worked.
The tower of the beautiful old cathedral, which was erected in 1312, was
intended to be the highest in all Christendom, but was never completed.
Its carillon, however, was second only to that of Bruges. The church was
dedicated to St. Rombaut, who was supposed to have built it. The story
was that in paying his workmen he never took from his pockets more than
ten _cens_ at a time, and the men, thinking he must have a large number
of the coins upon his person, murdered him for the booty. To their
disappointment they found he had just one coin, for the saint, each time
he needed money, had worked a miracle similar to that of Jesus and the
fishes! A discrepancy of some three or four hundred years between the
time of the good saint's life and the building of the church is a trifle
confusing. This cathedral has been destroyed.
We set out for a direct trip to Antwerp one morning at eight, and
reached there after a fine run of an hour and a half through the fair
green country. All along the way the towns were gaily decorated and
beflagged for a holiday. The city itself was alive with traffic, while
the river and the canals were crowded with moving boats.
Just opposite the station was the famous Zoo. A band concert was going
on, and crowds sat drinking tea or beer beneath the trees, listening to
the music, which was interrupted every once in a while by the raucous
cry of some wild creature in its cage. All the animals were killed
before the siege of the city in October.
A service was being held in the great cathedral. There was lovely music,
and a solemn light fell on Rubens' great masterpiece. The church was two
hundred and fifty years in building, and is the largest in the Low
Countries. Fortunately we can still use the present tense in speaking of
Antwerp Cathedral, for it survived both the bombardment and the
conflagration that ensued.
Antwerp came into prominence only after Bruges, Ghent and Ypres entered
upon their long decline. The architectural gem of the city was the
Plantyn-Moretus Museum, once the printing works of Christopher Plantyn
and his son-in-law Moretus, who did such notable work in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The rooms of the old house had been restored
quite in the old style, so that you felt the quiet, peaceful atmosphere
of other days.
[Illustration: CORNER OF THE COURTYARD, PLANTYN-MORETUS MUSEUM,
ANTWERP.]
The history of Antwerp goes back some thirteen hundred years, but it was
not until the seventeenth century that it gained the right to be called
the richest and most prosperous city in Europe. After that it, too, like
so many of its sister cities, fell asleep; but these days were of brief
duration, for in the middle of the nineteenth century the Belgian
Government bought the right to use the Scheldt, and it awoke to new
life. When the war broke out it was the greatest port on the continent,
and surpassed only by London and New York in the world.
Its social life was a striking contrast to that of Brussels, for it was
strongly Flemish in thought and feeling, as well as in speech, while the
national capital was like a French city.
Antwerp was of great strategic importance, for the mouth of the Scheldt
is opposite the mouth of the Thames. Napoleon realized this. "Antwerp
might be made a pistol directed at the heart of England," he said.
Indeed, before it fell into the hands of the Germans a military expert
prophesied that within two months of its fall the English would be suing
for peace. The city had been made the chief arsenal of Belgium, and one
of the strongest fortresses in Europe. At the beginning of the attack
the suburbs, which were particularly beautiful, were destroyed and
covered with pits and wire entanglements by the defenders. Tens of
millions of dollars' worth of property was laid waste, and nothing
gained, for the city was bombarded from a distance and no infantry
attacks were made.
One summer day we started out in the motor for Ostend. Out across the
flat country, through forests and fields and villages, we passed through
Termonde where, a few centuries before, they had opened the sluices and
driven back the army of Louis XIV by flooding the country.
Ghent was our first stopping place. In the Cathedral of St. Bavon hung
the Adoration of the Lamb, by the van Eycks--the most celebrated of
Belgium's pictures. A few buildings still remained which recalled the
former glory of the burghers of Ghent. Among them was the gray pile of
the château of the counts of Flanders, a splendid specimen of the
residences of the great lords in the magnificent Burgundian days. It was
built for the purpose of overawing the headstrong citizens, and had on
one side the moated river and on the other the square which saw so many
tragedies of the Inquisition.
It is a picturesque city with its network of canals. Its Béguinage, a
religious home for older women with little means, is a small world in
itself. It consists of a group of houses of different sizes, each with
its own little garden in front, shut in by high brick walls. Through the
community flows a stream where the women do their washing from a boat,
spreading the linen to dry in an open, park-like space reserved for that
use. The women who live there belong to a religious order, but are bound
by no vows and are free to leave if they choose. Their special mission
is to nurse the sick, whom they care for either in their own homes, or
in the Béguinage. Because of its many gardens Ghent was often called the
City of Flowers. Maeterlinck said of it, "It is the soul of Flanders, at
once venerable and young. In its streets the past and present elbow each
other." This may be due to the fact that while it is an ancient city, it
had before the war experienced a return of its former prosperity, so
that it was, in comparison with Bruges, for instance, quite lively and
up-to-date. Its great canals gave it access to the sea and to other
cities, and its various industries were thriving. The story of Ghent is
the usual tumultuous chronicle of Flemish towns. The weavers who early
made their city famous were an independent lot, not easily governed
against their will. When not fighting outsiders they were usually
struggling for more rights and privileges for themselves. During the
Middle Ages Ghent's great leader, van Artevelde, was treated as an equal
by Edward III of England. The belfry was the symbol of their freedom,
and it served as a watch-tower--a necessity in a country where there are
no hills--and to give alarm at the approach of an enemy. On the great
bell, Roland, is the inscription: "My name is Roland. When I toll there
is fire. When I ring there is victory in Flanders." They tell you now
how, shortly after the Germans entered Belgium, some one tried to ring
the mighty bell and discovered that it was cracked.
We found the old town of Bruges, which lies between Ghent and Ostend,
more attractive than we had expected. Indeed it was perhaps the most
interesting town in Belgium, and the most picturesque. One doesn't
easily forget the squares with their handsome façades, the ancient
Béguinage with its tottering old women, or the lovely Lac d'Amour, which
was once a harbour, with its pretty border of flowers and flotilla of
white swans. I remember the walk through the little street of the "Blind
Donkey," below the gilded bridge, to the town hall and the
richly-fretted law court, into the square where the exquisite Chapel
of the Holy Blood was tucked away in a corner. It dates from 1150, when
it was built to enshrine some drops of the "_Saint Sang_" brought,
according to the old legend, from the Holy Land by a count of Flanders.
[Illustration: LAC D'AMOUR, BRUGES.]
People call Bruges the Venice of the North, on account of its many
picturesque canals, but here are trees everywhere, and the houses are of
a wholly different style. It is very charming, really the most
fascinating town in Belgium, with its mediæval buildings and its people,
who seemed to have a quaintness all their own. The old women in caps,
sitting in their doorways making lace, looked as if they had just
stepped out of an art gallery.
Bruges gets its name from the Dutch word for the many bridges which
cross the canals in every direction. These canals connect it with Ghent
and other inland cities and were once important highways of commerce. In
those days Bruges had a harbour that was large enough to hold the whole
French fleet, but this has long since been filled in by silt from the
river.
The town was so sleepy and quiet, I found it hard to realize that it had
once been one of the wealthiest, busiest cities in Europe, the
commercial center of the whole continent. The famous Belfry of Bruges
was originally built of wood, nearly a thousand years ago, but near the
end of the thirteenth century it was replaced by the present tower. Like
that of Ghent, it stood the townsfolk in good stead as a watch-tower
from which they might see the approach of their warlike and envious
neighbours. When Bruges was not at war with them, she was usually
occupied in repelling attacks from foreign invaders.
It seems strange that in spite of her battles, not only her commerce but
her intellectual life flourished and grew stronger. At one time
merchants from seventeen countries lived there, which must have given
the city a very cosmopolitan air. Laces, tapestries and woolen cloths
were bartered for the treasures of the East and South and North. Art and
letters gave it its chief renown, however, for Bruges was the home of
Memling, and of the van Eycks. This was during the Golden Age of the
city, in the reign of Duke Philip the Good, who was himself a patron of
art while his wife was keenly interested in literature. It was for her
that William Caxton, living at that time in Bruges, made the translation
of his first book, which he later printed. Glorious old manuscripts were
still to be seen when we were there. In his book, "Some Old Flemish
Towns," George Wharton Edwards describes his climb into the top of the
belfry--an adventure which we did not undertake. After treading many
flights of stone steps he reached at last "a leather-covered door and
entered a room floored with plates of lead, and filled with iron rods,
pulleys, and ropes.... Faint, clear, sweetly coming from afar, one hears
the music of the bells subdued, soft, like harmony from an æolian. But
this is from the lower chamber. Very different will be the impression of
the sounds if one is among the bells when the hour or the quarter is
struck. Here, among the hanging bells is a sort of chamber, where lives
a being who seems the very double of Caliban, so hairy and wild-looking
is he. He is the watchman, and is forced to pull upon a rope every seven
minutes before the bells sound. I shall not forget the fright he gave me
when fancying myself alone in the tower I was examining the carillon,
and he thrust his huge red, hairy face between the two bells under which
I groped, and stood there staring while I froze with horror, while the
bells row upon row, above and about us, clashed and clanged and boomed,
swinging as if they would the next minute fall upon us and crush us.
Thus he stood in this turmoil of din and roar and finally when it ended
he demanded--in the mousiest squeak of a voice imaginable, a small fee
for beer money." These bell-ringers have appealed to other imaginations,
too. Poe might well have had in mind the Belfry in Bruges when he wrote:
"And the people--ah, the people,
They that dwell up in the steeple
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled undertone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone--
They are neither man nor woman--
They are neither brute nor human--
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls."
In Ostend we found a watering place which during the last generation has
more than doubled its population and become wealthy and important. This
change was due to the efforts of the old King, who saw the possibilities
of his sandy sea-coast if pleasure seekers could be induced to come in
sufficient numbers. His dream was to build a road from one end of the
shore to the other which should be one long, continuous summer resort.
At tremendous cost of money and labour strong sea-walls were built to
protect the shifting dunes, and sections of the road as well. Hotels and
casinos and villas sprang up all along the shore, among them the villa
of the old King himself.
In the time of Charlemagne Ostend was a fishing village, but only
yesterday it was the Continental ideal of what a bathing place should
be. The Digue, that famous walk by the sea, was thronged with an endless
variety of men and women, of all nationalities and styles of raiment.
Thousands sat and watched them drift by. The heavy bathing machines--a
city in themselves--went lumbering into the water, all so gay in pink
and green and blue paint. Absurd looking old people were wading and
children played everywhere in the sand. It was indeed a passing show.
The weather was warm when we were there, and we saw the place at its
best. Each night we dined inside the glassed-in terrace of the hotel,
with gay people all about us and the crowds passing up and down,
outside. Then we went over to the Casino, a vast amphitheater where the
orchestra played and throngs sat listening till the dancing began at
half after ten.
In sad contrast to these lively scenes was that a few months later, just
before the Kaiser's troops entered the town. A mournful procession of
refugees moving to the quay, men with stolid faces guiding little
dog-carts piled high with luggage, anxious women and weary children
laden with bundles--all seeking the promised safety of England.
Every year there was held at Ostend a curious ceremony which drew
excursionists from all corners of the country to witness. This was the
benediction of the sea, which was performed by the more intelligent
Belgians with all the decorum of a religious rite. The ceremony went
back apparently at least to the early sixteenth century, for it is
recorded that after a certain inundation of the coast the fishermen
joined with ship-owners in contributing the sum of 271 francs to the
Church, which was instructed to use it for the benefit of the fish in
the North Sea. This was no doubt the beginning of the procession to the
shore.
Running inland from Ostend one comes before long to Roulers, where there
was a training convent for missionaries. We found the town an active,
commercial place, and drove over rattling streets to the outskirts and
our destination, the Convent of the Missionary Sisters of St. Augustine.
The Mother Superior had invited us to visit them because six of the
little sisters were about to start for the Philippines, some to go to a
convent in the Bontoc country among the headhunters, where L. had
followed the trail on horseback with the Governor and the Secretary of
War, a short time before. We wanted to show appreciation of their
undertaking, for they have always spread good reports of the United
States' government of the islands.
The buildings were neither large nor extensive, for the sisterhood is
limited and the order comparatively new. There was an American
flag--rather a queer one, for the little sisters had made it
themselves--hanging with the Belgian flag above the door, and inside
there were decorations of flags and paper flowers and streamers, all
quite sweet and pathetic.
Mother Ursula, a nice looking woman, met us and conducted us into a room
where the forty little sisters were huddled together, peering at us out
of their headdresses, with the liveliest curiosity. It was natural
enough that they should be curious, too, for during their two years of
instruction they were never allowed to go out, and saw very few laymen.
At any rate, their eyes never left us all the time we were with them.
They seemed very docile and obedient, and were pretty and young, but
they were rather ignorant, although they were taught a little English
besides the native dialect of the savage places where they were to go,
and a little music. They played and sang for us, so badly but so
touchingly and anxiously--the Old Kentucky Home, in a way to make one
cry, and the Star Spangled Banner--both in English.
Their days were filled with offices of the Church, with a little
recreation in the small garden. When an extra holiday hour was allowed
them for the time we were there, the first thing they did was to go in
procession to the garden and fall upon their knees before the crucified
Christ. That was evidently their idea of a holiday hour.
The Flemish roads themselves were always interesting, even here where
the country was so level. We passed an endless succession of wonderfully
tilled fields in which the peasants were working with their primitive
implements, and little red-roofed stone farmhouses with innumerable
tow-headed children playing about them. I shall never forget how lovely
were the apple trees about the farmhouses and in the orchards. They all
had white blossoms, and while we missed the more varied pinks and mauves
which we see at home, the effect was charming. Every now and then we
would catch a glimpse of a château in its park, usually just beyond a
lagoon and with a moat about it. We traversed the streets of the little
towns, so quiet in spite of the factories that sometimes girdled
them, and wondered how the people lived behind the quaint façades of
their ancient houses. We stopped at the little village of Herzèle, on
the road to Courtrai, to see its ruined tower, once the property of
Count Egmont, in which he sustained a siege for six months. It was quite
picturesque, built of slabs of rough gray stone. Its history reminded us
of the great Flemish primitives, for its first owner was Jean de
Roubaix, the friend of Jan van Eyck.
[Illustration: COUNT EGMONT'S TOWER, HERZÈLE.]
On another occasion we made a circuit of the now historic places in the
neighbourhood of the Yser River. To be sure, they were historic enough
then, but so remote from the lines of tourist travel that few realized
what treasures they contained. Now, when nearly everything has been
swept away, hordes of people are waiting eagerly for a chance to see
even the ruins.
At that time Dixmude had a population of about a thousand, although it
was built for thirty thousand. Its deserted Grande Place was large
enough to hold every man, woman and child in the place--and if they kept
quiet I doubt if you would have noticed them! In the church was one of
the finest altar screens in Europe. Because of repeated bombardments
Dixmude is now completely off the map--church and all. I wonder what is
left of the ancient windmill on its grassy hillock overlooking the town;
it had been there since the Middle Ages.
Nearer the mouth of the Yser was Nieuport, the "new port" made when the
harbour of Lombaertzyde across the river filled with sand during a
terrific storm in the twelfth century. Part of the way the road along
the embankment ran just over the sea, and the rest of the time behind
the dunes. It was a quaint old town with some really fine Gothic
buildings, hidden by its sheltering mounds of sand from the hotels and
villas of the beach, which is called Nieuport-Bains to distinguish the
resort from its moribund neighbour.
This is far from being Nieuport's first experience of war. It was
destroyed in 1383, after withstanding nine sieges. A hundred years later
it was successfully defended against the French, the women and even the
children fighting side by side with the men. It was destroyed again in
the seventeen hundreds--three times, in fact. Whether it will rise
again, the world will wait to see. A brave little town among its
gray-green sand dunes, with its ancient lighthouse and its empty,
echoing square.
A few miles west along the coast was Furnes, whose history begins
in the Dark Ages and finishes--in 1914. It was quite of a piece with the
other dead little towns of the Yser country, so far as one could see,
but distinguished from them all by its strange celebration, the
Procession of Penance.
[Illustration: _Sand Dunes, Nieuport_]
This was held every year on the last Sunday in July, and was one of the
last remaining Christian mysteries. The procession represented the life
of Jesus. It is supposed to have been instituted by that Count of
Flanders who was also King of Jerusalem, for the purpose of carrying
about the streets of Furnes a splinter from the Cross, which he had
brought back from the Holy Land.
For a while other mysteries were added, but it finally began to
degenerate until by the seventeenth century it had become a sort of
burlesque. A brotherhood was founded to restore it to its primitive
form, but a new motive entered into it when two soldiers profaned some
concentrated wafers and had to do penance in public. In this manner the
modern penitential procession originated.
The procession formed within the church of Sainte Walburge. Outside, the
horses of the Roman soldiers pranced about while Mary sat on an ass
waiting for the flight to Egypt. Then slowly forth from the church came
the penitents, robed and cowled in brown, their faces masked, dragging
after them the carts bearing the stable of Bethlehem, the Holy
Sepulcher, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. Following them came many
rosy-cheeked girls veiled in white.
As the long lines of the procession unfolded themselves before the
spectator there was a general impression of a variegated river of gold,
purple and blue. First came chariots representing Old Testament scenes,
followed by the scourges--War, Pestilence and Famine, a prophetic trio.
Then appeared St. John, the Hermits and the Shepherds, and the Stable,
which was preceded by an angel and bore Mary and Joseph seated inside.
When, after various scenes from the story of the Passion, Jesus passed
by, dragging the cross, with the soldiers and executioners following
behind, a tense silence fell upon the crowd of onlookers. Not a sound
was heard, save here and there the low muttering of the men, women and
children kneeling on the pavement, praying over their rosaries. At every
window along the route were lighted candles. It was no uncommon sight to
see some poor old woman, carried away by her religious fervour, throw
coins in front of the cross. This was indeed one of the characteristic
incidents of the Furnes festival.
Following this came the penitents, marching in close ranks, torches in
hand and weighed down by the heavy crosses that they dragged along. The
men's faces were hidden by their masks and hoods, the women's by their
veils. All were barefooted.
Every position in the procession was sought for as eagerly as if it had
been a public office. Some of the principal parts were hereditary in
certain families. They say that the festival as given the last time was
unchanged from its original form, centuries ago, thanks to the care of
"La Sodalité," the brotherhood having it in charge.
Ypres we saved for the last. Poor Ypres! Remains of its ancient ramparts
still were to be seen, and moats with lilies floating on their dark
waters, and the vast Grande Place, with the glorious Cloth Hall
occupying one side of the huge square, rivaled only by that of Brussels.
Through the crooked streets of the town, with their sagging, gabled
houses whose upper stories often projected over the tiny sidewalks, one
caught now and then a glimpse of a quiet courtyard beyond a vaulted
gateway.
In the quotation which follows, Pierre Loti refers to the "little
children" in Ypres. Until recently their presence there in what
eventually became a deserted city was not explained, nor indeed
specially noticed. But it has been discovered that when the last train
left the interior of Belgium, supposedly for France, just in front of
the advancing Germans, frantic mothers pushed their children into the
already crowded cars, hoping that some one would care for them at their
destination. This proved to be Ypres, where for months the motherless
little ones wandered about the deserted streets, living in cellars and
abandoned houses, the older ones caring for the younger, all living on
what they could pick up in the streets. At last accounts they were being
brought together by the French Government and cared for in a convent
until the war is over, when every effort will be made to find their
parents.
Pierre Loti has written of Ypres as he saw it not long ago, and it gives
us a vivid glimpse of the city in war times. "The squares around these
tall ruins are filled with soldiers who stand still, or who move slowly
about in silent little groups a trifle solemnly, as though awaiting
something of which every one knows, but about which no one speaks. There
are also poorly dressed women with haggard faces, and little
children; but the lowly civil population is completely swallowed up in
the mass of rough uniforms, almost all soiled and earthy, having
evidently witnessed many a long battle. The graceful khaki yellow
uniform of the English and the slender black regimentals of the Belgians
mingle with the sky blue military cloaks of our French soldiers, who
make up the majority. All this taken together results in an almost
neutral shade, and two or three red cloaks of Arab chieftains form a
sharp and unexpected contrast to this universal monotony of a gloomy
winter evening. The thousands of soldiers glance instinctively at these
ruins, as they take their melancholy evening strolls, but usually they
remain at a distance, leaving both hall and church in their majestic
isolation.... And now the night is almost here, the true night which
will put an end to every trace of life. The crowd of soldiers retires
gradually into the streets, already dark, but which surely will not be
lighted. Far away a bugle is calling them to their evening meal, in the
houses or the barracks where they sleep insecurely.... Now the
silhouettes of the cathedral and the great belfry are all that are
pictured against the sky--like the gesture of a shattered arm now turned
into stone. As the night gradually closes in on you under the weight of
its clouds, you recall with increasing vividness the mournful
surroundings in the midst of which Ypres is now lost, the vast,
tenantless plain, now almost black, the mutilated roads, over which none
would know how to flee, the fields flooded with water or blanketed with
snow, the lines of trenches, where, alas! our soldiers are cold and
suffering."
[Illustration: CLOTH HALL, YPRES, AFTER BOMBARDMENT.]