E-text prepared by Robert J. Hall
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 18670-h.htm or 18670-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/6/7/18670/18670-h/18670-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/6/7/18670/18670-h.zip)
BRUGES AND WEST FLANDERS
Painted by
AMÉDÉE FORESTIER
Described by
G. W. T. OMOND
[Illustration: A FLEMISH COUNTRY GIRL]
Preface
There is no part of Europe more wanting in what is known as 'scenery'
than Flanders; and those who journey there must spend most of their
time in the old towns which are still so strangely mediæval in
their aspect, or in country places which are worth seeing only
because of their connection with some event in history--Nature
has done so little for them. Thus the interest and the attraction
of Flanders and the Flemish towns are chiefly historical. But it
would be impossible to compress the history of such places as Bruges,
Ypres, Furnes, or Nieuport within the limits of a few pages, except
at the cost of loading them with a mass of dry facts. Accordingly
the plan adopted in preparing the letterpress which accompanies Mr.
Forestier's drawings has been to select a few leading incidents,
and give these at some length.
The Flemish School of Painting and Architecture has been so well
and frequently described that it would have been mere affectation
to make more than a few passing allusions to that topic.
Some space has, however, been devoted to an account of the recent
development of the Flemish littoral, which has been so remarkable
during the last quarter of a century.
Contents
CHAPTER I
THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY--EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES
CHAPTER II
BALDWIN BRAS-DE-FER--THE PLACE DU BOURG--MURDER OF CHARLES THE GOOD
CHAPTER III
THE BÉGUINAGE--CHURCHES--THE RELIC OF THE HOLY BLOOD
CHAPTER IV
THE BRUGES MATINS--BATTLE OF THE GOLDEN SPURS
CHAPTER V
DAMME--THE SEA-FIGHT AT SLUIS--SPLENDOUR OF BRUGES IN THE MIDDLE
AGES--THE FALL AND LOSS OF TRADE
CHAPTER VI
'BRUGES LA MORTE'
CHAPTER VII
THE PLAIN OF WEST FLANDERS--YPRES
CHAPTER VIII
FURNES--THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS
CHAPTER IX
NIEUPORT--THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES
CHAPTER X
THE COAST OF FLANDERS
CHAPTER XI
COXYDE--THE SCENERY OF THE DUNES
INDEX
List of Illustrations
1. A Flemish Country Girl
2. Bruges: A Corner of the Market on the Grand' Place
3. Bell-ringer Playing a Chime
4. Bruges: Porte d'Ostende
5. Bruges: Rue de l'Âne Aveugle (showing end of Town
Hall and Bridge connecting it with Palais de
Justice)
6. Bruges: Quai du Rosaire
7. Bruges: The Béguinage
8. Bruges: Quai des Marbriers
9. A Flemish Young Woman
10. A Flemish Burgher
11. Bruges: Quai du Miroir
12. Bruges: View of the Palais du Franc.
13. Bruges: Maison du Pélican (Almshouse)
14. Bruges: Vegetable Market
15. The Flemish Plain
16. Duinhoek: Interior of a Farmhouse
17. Adinkerque: At the Kermesse
18. A Farmsteading
19. Ypres: Place du Musée (showing Top Part of the
Belfry)
20. Ypres: Arcade under the Nieuwerk
21. Furnes: Grand' Place and Belfry
22. Furnes: Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice
23. Nieuport: Interior of Church
24. Furnes: Tower of St. Nicholas
25. Furnes: In Ste. Walburge's Church
26. Nieuport: A Fair Parishioner
27. Nieuport: Hall and Vicarage
28. Nieuport: The Quay, with Eel-boats and Landing-stages
29. Nieuport: The Town Hall
30. Nieuport: Church Porch (Evensong)
31. The Dunes: A Stormy Evening
32. An Old Farmer
33. La Panne: Interior of a Flemish Inn
34. La Panne: A Flemish Inn--Playing Skittles
35. Coxyde: A Shrimper on Horseback
36. Coxyde: A Shrimper
37. Adinkerque: Village and Canal
THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY--EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES
BRUGES AND WEST FLANDERS
CHAPTER I
THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY--EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES
Every visitor to 'the quaint old Flemish city' goes first to the
Market-Place. On Saturday mornings the wide space beneath the mighty
Belfry is full of stalls, with white canvas awnings, and heaped up
with a curious assortment of goods. Clothing of every description,
sabots and leathern shoes and boots, huge earthenware jars, pots
and pans, kettles, cups and saucers, baskets, tawdry-coloured
prints--chiefly of a religious character--lamps and candlesticks,
the cheaper kinds of Flemish pottery, knives and forks, carpenters'
tools, and such small articles as reels of thread, hatpins, tape,
and even bottles of coarse scent, are piled on the stalls or spread
out on the rough stones wherever there is a vacant space. Round
the stalls, in the narrow spaces between them, the people move
about, talking, laughing, and bargaining. Their native Flemish
is the tongue they use amongst themselves; but many of them speak
what passes for French at Bruges, or even a few words of broken
English, if some unwary stranger from across the Channel is rash
enough to venture on doing business with these sharp-witted, plausible
folk.
At first sight this Market-Place, so famed in song, is a disappointment.
The north side is occupied by a row of seventeenth-century houses
turned into shops and third-rate cafés. On the east is a modern
post-office, dirty and badly ventilated, and some half-finished
Government buildings. On the west are two houses which were once
of some note--the Cranenburg, from the windows of which, in olden
times, the Counts of Flanders, with the lords and ladies of their
Court, used to watch the tournaments and pageants for which Bruges
was celebrated, and in which Maximilian was imprisoned by the burghers
in 1488; and the Hôtel de Bouchoute, a narrow, square building
of dark red brick, with a gilded lion over the doorway. But the
Cranenburg, once the 'most magnificent private residence in the
Market-Place,' many years ago lost every trace of its original
splendour, and is now an unattractive hostelry, the headquarters
of a smoking club; while the Hôtel de Bouchoute, turned into a
clothier's shop, has little to distinguish it from its commonplace
neighbours. Nevertheless,
'In the Market-Place of Bruges stands the Belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.'
It redeems the Market-Place from mediocrity. How long ago the first
belfry tower of Bruges was built is unknown, but this at least
is certain, that in the year 1280 a fire, in which the ancient
archives of the town perished, destroyed the greater part of an
old belfry, which some suppose may have been erected in the ninth
century. On two subsequent occasions, in the fifteenth and eighteenth
centuries, the present Belfry, erected on the ruins of the former
structure, was damaged by fire; and now it stands on the south side
of the Market-Place, rising 350 feet above the Halles, a massive
building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, solemn,
weather-beaten, and majestic. 'For six hundred years,' it has been
said, 'this Belfry has watched over the city of Bruges. It has
beheld her triumphs and her failures, her glory and her shame,
her prosperity and her gradual decay, and, in spite of so many
vicissitudes, it is still standing to bear witness to the genius
of our forefathers, to awaken memories of old times and admiration
for one of the most splendid monuments of civic architecture which
the Middle Ages has produced.'[*]
[Footnote *: Gilliat-Smith, _The Story of Bruges_, p. 169 (Dent
and Co., London, 1901). Mr. Gilliat-Smith's book is a picturesque
account of Bruges in the Middle Ages. Of the English works relating
to Bruges, there is nothing better than Mr. Wilfrid Robinson's
_Bruges, an Historical Sketch_, a short and clear history, coming
down to modern times (Louis de Plancke, Bruges, 1899).]
In olden times watchmen were always on duty on the Belfry to give
warning if enemies approached or fire broke out in any part of the
town, a constant source of danger when most of the houses were
built of wood. Even in these more prosaic days the custom of keeping
watch and ward unceasingly is still maintained, and if there is a
fire, the alarum-bell clangs over the city. All day, from year's
end to year's end, the chimes ring every quarter of an hour; and
all night, too, during the wildest storms of winter, when the wind
shrieks round the tower; and in summer, when the old town lies
slumbering in the moonlight.
[Illustration: BRUGES. A corner of the Market on the Grand' Place.]
From the top of the Belfry one looks down on what is practically
a mediæval city. The Market-Place seems to lose its modern aspect
when seen from above; and all round there is nothing visible but
houses with high-pointed gables and red roofs, intersected by canals,
and streets so narrow that they appear to be mere lanes. Above
these rise, sometimes from trees and gardens, churches, convents,
venerable buildings, the lofty spire of Notre Dame, the tower of
St. Sauveur, the turrets of the Gruthuise, the Hospital of St. John,
famous for its paintings by Memlinc, the Church of Ste. Elizabeth in
the grove of the Béguinage, the pinnacles of the Palais du Franc,
the steep roof of the Hôtel de Ville, the dome of the Couvent des
Dames Anglaises, and beyond that to the east the slender tower which
rises above the Guildhouse of the Archers of St. Sebastian. The walls
which guarded Bruges in troublous times have disappeared, though
five of the old gateways remain; but the town is still contained
within the limits which it had reached at the close of the thirteenth
century.
Behind the large square of the Halles, from which the Belfry rises,
is the Rue du Vieux Bourg, the street of the Ouden Burg, or old
fort; and to this street the student of history must first go if
he wishes to understand what tradition, more or less authentic,
has to say about the earliest phases in the strange, eventful past
of Bruges. The wide plain of Flanders, the northern portion of the
country which we now call Belgium, was in ancient times a dreary
fenland, the haunt of wild beasts and savage men; thick, impenetrable
forests, tracts of barren sand, sodden marshes, covered it; and
sluggish streams, some whose waters never found their way to the
sea, ran through it. One of these rivulets, called the Roya, was
crossed by a bridge, to defend which, according to early tradition,
a fort, or 'burg,' was erected in the fourth century. This fort
stood on an islet formed by the meeting of the Roya with another
stream, called the Boterbeke, and a moat which joined the two. We
may suppose that near the fort, which was probably a small building
of rough stones, or perhaps merely a wooden stockade, a few huts
were put up by people who came there for protection, and as time
went on the settlement increased. 'John of Ypres, Abbot of St.
Bertin,' says Mr. Robinson, 'who wrote in the fourteenth century,
describes how Bruges was born and christened: "Very soon pedlars
began to settle down under the walls of the fort to supply the
wants of its inmates. Next came merchants, with their valuable
wares. Innkeepers followed, who began to build houses, where those
who could not find lodging in the fort found food and shelter.
Those who thus turned away from the fort would say, 'Let us go to
the bridge.' And when the houses near the bridge became so numerous
as to form a town, it kept as its proper name the Flemish word
_Brugge_."
[Illustration: BELL-RINGER PLAYING A CHIME.]
The small island on which this primitive township stood was bounded
on the south and east by the Roya, on the north by the Boterbeke,
and on the west by the moat joining these two streams. The Roya
still flows along between the site of the old burg and an avenue
of lime-trees called the Dyver till it reaches the end of the Quai
du Rosaire, when it turns to the north. A short distance beyond
this point it is vaulted over, and runs on beneath the streets
and houses of the town. The Rue du Vieux Bourg is built over the
course of the Boterbeke, which now runs under it and under the Belfry
(erected on foundations sunk deep into the bed of the stream), until
it joins the subterranean channel of the Roya at the south-east
corner of the Market-Place. The moat which joined these two streams
and guarded the west side of the island was filled up long ago,
and its bed is now covered by the Rue Neuve, which connects the
Rue du Vieux Bourg with the Dyver.
Thus the boundaries of early Bruges can easily be traced; but nothing
remains of the ancient buildings, though we read of a warehouse,
booths, and a prison, besides the dwelling-houses of the townsfolk.
The elements, at least, of civic life were there; and tradition
says that in or near the village, for it was nothing more, some
altars of the Christian faith were set up during the seventh and
eighth centuries. Trade, too, soon began to flourish, and grew
rapidly as the population of the place increased. The Roya, flowing
eastwards, fell into the Zwijn, an arm of the sea, which then ran
up close to the town, and on which stood Damme, now a small inland
village, but once a busy port crowded with shipping. The commercial
life of Bruges depended on the Zwijn; and that much business was
done before the close of the ninth century is shown by the fact
that Bruges had then a coinage of its own.[*] It was from such
small beginnings that this famous, 'Venice of the North' arose.
[Footnote *: Gilliodts van Severen, _Bruges Ancienne et Moderne_,
pp. 7, 8, 9.]
[Illustration: BRUGES. Porte d'Ostende.]
BALDWIN BRAS-DE-FRE--THE PLACE DU BOURG--MURDER OF CHARLES THE GOOD