lace work alternates with regular lessons, as it should of course,
in every school. Those above that age may give their entire day to
the lace. The hours for girls between nine and thirteen are: from
8 to 11 o’clock, lessons; from 1:30 to 4 o’clock, lessons again;
and from 4 to 6:30 o’clock, lace. This is still a sadly long day
for growing children, but it nevertheless registers a most cheering
improvement over the former cruelty of a far longer day. It has been
the Committee’s hope that such a system as this might be instituted
throughout Belgium, and that from it they might advance to still better
conditions. Children from thirteen to sixteen come at 7:30 o’clock,
make lace till 11:30, and again from 1:30 to 4:45 o’clock. From 5
until 6:30 o’clock they have regular school lessons—one wonders how
much education can be crowded into one and a half hours at the end of
a day that began at 7:30 o’clock! The girls over sixteen years of age
make lace from 7:30 until 6:30 o’clock. One thing to remember always,
in looking at these distressing figures, is the frequent number of
holidays in Belgium; the children are saved by their numerous _fête_
days.
It was not easy to leave the tragic and marvelous primary room; the
fairy-like fingers and the golden heads above the cushions. But I had
to go on to room number one on the ground floor where there was another
Point de Paris class, for girls about twelve years old. In the Abbé
Berraly school the girls must pass through at least three classes in
Point de Paris before they proceed to Point de Lille, to go on from
there to the “spider-web,” or delicate and most difficult Malines.
The first striking difference between this room and the primary, was
in the number of bobbins piled on the cushions—there were hundreds
now instead of dozens. The cushions were larger, too, and most of them
were round, for many of the pupils were working on collars and doily
and handkerchief edgings. The designs were already complicated, one
of them represented, for instance, the animal symbols of the allied
nations. This class promotes to the advanced class in Point de Paris,
where I found several cushions with over 500 bobbins heaped upon them,
and girls of fourteen and fifteen years shifting that number with a
swiftness not to be followed.
Since the heavy rain was making seeing difficult, the teachers moved a
number of iron stands (resembling umbrella stands) to various points
in the room, placing on top of each stand, in the middle, a small
kerosene lamp, and, near the edge, a large globular carafe, filled
with water. The light from the lamp passes through the bottle to fall
with concentrated and magnifying effect directly on that spot on the
cushion where the work is in progress. The rack may be turned, the
bottle raised or lowered, and usually four girls profit by the light
from one lamp. It is a picturesque and primitive system, which many
still prefer to the more modern and expensive electricity, because it
is an advantage to have the working spot on the cushion thrown into
high relief, while at the same time the bottle light is softer and less
tiring to the eyes than electricity. These iron stands and lamps were
very practical and satisfactory, but I have often seen, in poor little
rooms, the bottle set on the table on a rough wooden block, with a rude
oil dip in a cup propped up on bits of stick or stone behind it to lift
it to just the proper height; as the work progresses, the position of
course must be altered.
While the girls were pulling their chairs closer to the bottles I
talked with the teachers about the place of Point de Paris in the
lace world. There is no fine lace, they told me, which is so much in
demand to-day as Point de Paris, for no lace so successfully combines
durability and beauty. It is more used for dainty lingerie than any
other variety. Paris buyers seem never to be able to secure sufficient
Point de Paris, which tho it was christened by that city and was
largely produced there during the 17th century, must now be supplied
by Belgium. Its strength depends on its solid hexagonal mesh, always
the test of lace, which is made with eight cotton threads, usually of
fairly coarse quality. From this substantial mesh may blossom a pattern
of extreme grace and beauty, the closely woven flat parts or toile,
being relieved by open-work spaces, or jours, and the whole design
outlined and thus thrown into a kind of relief by a heavier thread. The
roses of the Queen design, drawn for the Brussels Committee by Mlle.
Brouhon (who has since died), is one of the loveliest of the recent
ones. I saw, the other day, a box scented with lavender and filled with
rolls upon rolls of this rose pattern lace, ready for the day when a
château can be restored, and fine linen sheets and pillow slips with
their Point de Paris edgings can once again be spread on the beds.
Point de Lille could never be successfully used for either lingerie
or table or bed linen for it is not sufficiently durable. In room 3,
girls from fourteen to sixteen years were beginning to execute this
more difficult lace. Its clear, transparent mesh originated in the city
from which it is named, where in 1788 there were as many as 16,000
women employed on it. Its fragility results from the fact that but four
threads (instead of the customary eight of Point de Paris and Malines,
and of the mother of them all, Valenciennes) are used in twisting
and braiding the meshes. On its light, clear mesh, the designs are
now often very elegant and free, tho the traditional Point de Lille
edging has a straight border and rather rigid pattern. They are always
outlined by a heavier thread, as are the flowers of the Point de Paris
and Malines, but unlike these other laces, the Point de Lille is
characterized by little _pois_, or peas or dots, scattered through the
mesh. It is sometimes confused with Malines because of the transparency
of its mesh, which, however, is not so delicate as that of Malines, nor
so difficult to make, nor, because of its fewer threads, so solid.
One of the most popular and more solid varieties of Point de Lille
is better known as Point d’Hollande, because it is chiefly sold to
the well-to-do Dutch peasants for their handsome bonnets. It is wide
and often of sumptuous design, a sole branch or flower frequently
furnishing the entire wing of a bonnet.
[Illustration: POINT DE LILLE, OR POINT D’HOLLANDE; MESH SHOWING
“ESPRITS” OR DOTS CHARACTERISTIC OF THIS BOBBIN LACE]
[Illustration: END OF A POINT DE PARIS SCARF ABOUT 2½ YARDS LONG ON
WHICH COLETTE WORKED ONE YEAR]
In the class-room, I went directly to a dark-haired Josephine, whose
cushion seemed to hold the largest mounds of bobbins—“Yes, there are
over a thousand,” she admitted shyly and smilingly. The directress came
to help her open the little drawer beneath her round cushion, and
to shake from the blue paper a most lovely wide scarf with a charming
flower design. “I began it last January,” she added, “and I hope to
finish it this January of 1919.” One year with a thousand bobbins, and
at best 50 cents a day for her work—which was so much more than she
could have made before the war that she had no thought of complaining!
I wondered if the woman who would throw this filmy flower-sown veil
over her shoulders would care to know about the dark-eyed Josephine and
her year with the 1,000 bobbins.
[Illustration: IN THE ABBÉ BERRALY SCHOOL, COLETTE, 16 YEARS OLD, WORKS
WITH 1,000 BOBBINS]
But there is much more beautiful lace than either Point de Paris or
Point de Lille taught in the Turnhout school. The girls pass from
the Lille room to Malines, known in the city of its birth as the
“spider-web of Malines.” Nothing could be more airy and exquisite than
its delicate hexagonal mesh, much more difficult to make than either of
the preceding varieties because it must be worked without the aid of
pins, with only the eye to guide in securing the requisite uniformity
and exactness. No lace demands greater skill or greater patience; since
in addition to the difficulty of working without supporting pins, is
the difficulty of handling the extremely fine thread employed. The
patterns are usually of delicate flowers and leaves, with open-work
stitches introduced to add ever greater lightness to the whole.
The dentellières in the Malines room work chiefly on insertions and
flounces to be used for handkerchiefs or fichus or dainty blouses, or
perhaps for wedding gowns. The Committee has given them, too, many
orders for inserts for table centers or doilies, so exquisite that one
feels they should be used only under glass.
Scarcely an important family in Belgium but treasures a bit of old
Malines. Among my rarest pleasures were those I enjoyed, when the
conversation turning upon lace, a friend has said: “But would you care
to see my mother’s Malines, or my great, great-grandmother’s?”—and
she has brought from a brocade box a filmy, ivory-colored collar or
flounce, or a scarf or bonnet, all of a breath-taking loveliness and
delicacy never to be reproduced. I remember, too, a Christmas mass
and the marvelous flounce that fell from beneath the white and gold
chasuble worn by Cardinal Mercier over the scarlet of his robe.
It is only in Turnhout that any considerable quantity of Malines is yet
made, and despite all the efforts of the Committee and of other lovers
of beautiful lace, there is little hope that it will live much longer.
When the old artists, for so they should be named, die, few young women
are found willing still to sacrifice their years to the spider-web.
The women of the Lace Committee believe there is no future work more
important than that of improving the 200 and more lace schools of their
country. In the lace normal school at Bruges, in the national school
of design at Brussels, the excellent Needle Point school at Zele, and
in such schools as this one at Turnhout, they see the hope of the lace
art; they urge that the Government increase its subsidies to these and
other deserving institutions. Education and ever better education of
the lace-woman is their watchword.
II
COURTRAI
_Early Home of Valenciennes_
For years I had heard of the blue flax fields of the valley of the Lys,
and of the season between April and September, when along miles of its
course, the river is filled with boxes floating the finest linen fiber
of the world, the flax of Belgium, North France and Holland, which can
be better prepared in its waters than anywhere else.
Unfortunately I could see it only under a January rain, but Monsieur de
Stoop, a prominent weaver of Courtrai, the town of 36,000 inhabitants
which is the valley center, made the Flanders fields bloom again as he
described to me the successive steps which lead from them to the woven
linen his factory produces—I should say, produced, for the Germans
left his plant, along with seven others, an utter ruin. He was unable
to explain and apparently no analysis has yet determined, just why the
waters of the Lys river surpass all others in their power to rot the
encasing straw and generally to cleanse the flax; but one thing is
clear, they have established Courtrai as a world market for fine raw
linen. Sometimes the stalks need be floated only two or three days,
sometimes it requires very much longer to macerate them, the period
depending chiefly on the weather, and particularly on the temperature.
[Illustration: BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate I)
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge”
All meshes made with bobbins: 1 and 4, Valenciennes, round mesh; 2,
Valenciennes, square mesh; 3, Valenciennes, mesh almost round; 5,
Chantilly; 6, Old Flanders; 7, Point de Paris]
[Illustration: BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate II)
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge”
Meshes, 8 to 12, made with bobbins: 8, Binche; 9, Malines; 10, Point de
Lille, made for France; 11, Point de Lille, destined for Holland; 12,
Gauze Point, made with needle, used in Point d’Angleterre; 13, Brussels
machine-made net; 14, Ordinary machine-made net.]
After its soaking and cleansing, the linen fiber starts again on its
journey, this time to the various countries where it is to be made into
thread and woven into tissues. Much goes to England and to Ireland,
to such firms as Beth and Cox. From there it returns to Belgium in
the form of linen thread for fine laces, quite a different variety,
of course, from that employed in sewing. Lace thread, both cotton and
linen, may be used for sewing, but never sewing-thread for good lace.
An outsider can scarcely estimate the importance of the quality of the
thread to the lace-maker. Of two skeins bearing the same number, one
may be supple and easily led, while the other is brittle and wayward.
We hear many stories of how women used to spend their lives in damp
cellars, in order to keep their thread moist and soft. I have been told
several times, for instance, that a certain piece of lace had been made
below ground, because only there was its marvelous technique possible.
Whatever the degree of truth or legend in these assertions, it is known
that the rarest laces require certain atmospheric conditions, and are,
above all, dependent on a superior fineness and pliability of the
thread.
The English and Irish spinneries lead the world; they produce
most of its lace thread. One of them; the Coates firm of Paisley,
has established in Belgium branches in which Belgian capital is
interested,—at Gent are the _filteries_, which prepare thread for
weaving, and at Alost and Ninove are the _filatures_ or spinneries
which turn out the finished sewing and embroidery thread. The cottons
and linens of these mills are too coarse for the delicate laces;
however, during a single war year, the Brussels Committee was happy to
be able to buy from Alost as much as 600,000 francs worth of thread.
By some miracle, the Ghent filteries escaped the practically universal
ruin visited on mills and factories, and should be operating before
peace is signed, but for the spinneries of Alost and Ninove, the future
is still dark.
During two years the enemy, feeling they might one day run the mills
where they stood, left them intact, tho they requisitioned their
stocks of thread. Then as they saw they might not perhaps be able to
continue their beneficent occupation of Belgium, even if they won the
war, they began to remove the mill machinery to Germany. They were
especially ruthless when the mills were known to be of English or
French ownership. They stole the secrets of the factories and finally
they deported the workmen. These men are scattered everywhere. Even if
the machines of the factories were not completely destroyed it would be
impossible under a considerable time to reassemble the skilled workmen
essential to the spinning industry. The Germans will undoubtedly try
to capture the trade, and to market their goods, if they must, through
such neutral countries as Denmark and Switzerland.
When I arrived at Courtrai, Monsieur and his family were just moving
back into the house from which they had been ejected. They apologized
for the room they so hospitably offered me, in which the original bed
had been replaced by an iron one they recognized as having belonged to
an English family of Courtrai. The brass trimmings were gone, and the
mattress had of course been removed, but Madame had been able to find
one stuffed with sea-moss for me. The curtains were slashed, blocks of
wood nailed to the once handsome walls, there were no lights, no metal
knobs or fixtures of any kind, no service wires left. Below, the cellar
had been almost filled with concrete to provide the conqueror a safe
refuge during danger periods. It requires a special kind of courage to
take up life again in a place like this, but these good people said:
“We can not complain, we are so much better off than others, and at
least we have saved our health; with that we can be sure of being able
to build again what they have destroyed.”
From there I went to Baron de Bethune, a connoisseur of laces, who
had before the war opened a lace museum in Courtrai, chiefly for
Valenciennes. I found him ill in a little house in the town; he had
long before been driven from his château in the suburbs. His sister,
who had with great difficulty made her way from Louvain, received me
with apologies in the midst of a heterogeny of boxes and packages, the
few personal possessions they had gathered together in the hope of
some day having a home again. I was not to see the old Valenciennes
and other specimens of the famous lace days of Courtrai; fortunately
for his museum, Monsieur had succeeded in getting them to Brussels
where they were still, to my personal regret, hidden away. However, I
was not surprized, for I had been unable before starting for Flanders
to see the celebrated collection of the Cinquantenaire Museum at
Brussels, for that, too, had been successfully secreted. Museums are
slow in rehanging their treasures. Even tho the presence of the three
neutral Ministers, the Spanish, American and Dutch, in the capital, was
supposed to be a guaranty of protection to the national collections,
and undoubtedly it was only their presence that prevented in Belgium
what happened to the Museums of Northern France, the Belgians with
unwearying ingenuity concealed what they could. Whenever I hear of
hidden laces, I am reminded of a morning at Malines and a sad little
basket containing a fine collection of old Malines lace, I saw exhumed.
It had been buried deep in a box, along with the family silver, and as
the daughter of the mother who had worn it took its once lovely flowers
and webs, now gray and earth-stained, between her fingers, they
powdered to dust.
Monsieur suggested that I see Mlle. Mullie, a leading dealer of
Courtrai, who still handles a large output of Valenciennes; tho
Courtrai, which was once a brilliant production center, is no longer
of great importance. After the French Revolution, which killed
Valenciennes-making in its original home, it migrated to other parts of
Northern France, and to the two Flanders; to Ypres, where it enjoyed an
especially happy development, to Bruges, Ghent, Dixmude, Furnes, Menin,
Nieuport, Poperinghe and elsewhere. For a long time Ghent led all
these, with over 5,000 workers listed in 1756. But starvation wages and
successful imitations have told against this, as against other laces.
Nevertheless, in the census of 1896, Bruges was still credited with
2,000 Valenciennes workers, and Poperinghe with 500, while there were
scattered groups of considerable importance in a great number of the
villages of Western, and some of Eastern Flanders.
Courtrai and the nearby villages where the lace is actually made,
still stand, tho many buildings have been destroyed, but while her
people were not forced to become refugees, lace-making was seriously
interrupted; workers were evicted from their homes and their schools.
And they suffered further because there was scarcely any thread left,
the dealers often asking as much as 20 cents for ¾ of a yard of lace
thread, about the previous value of the same length in finished lace.
Under these conditions it was especially easy to see the importance
of the efforts of the Brussels Lace Committee, which furnished thread
at the normal price, and gave more for the lace than was ever offered
before the war.
[Illustration: BOBBIN LACES
First column: Malines, Malines, Point de Paris, Point de Paris,
Valenciennes (square mesh)
Middle column: Point de Paris
Third column: First three, Valenciennes; fourth, Point de Paris]
[Illustration: CUSHION COVER REPRESENTING BELGIUM’S GRATITUDE TO
AMERICA FOR BREAD
Point de Paris lace combined with linen. The lower right-hand
centerpiece shows the rose design, emblem of Queen Elizabeth]
Unfortunately the German facteurs (agents for lace dealers) worked
cleverly here, too, as in other districts. They had always plenty of
requisitioned thread to offer, and succeeded in buying considerable
lace, for which they offered high and varying prices.
The younger women of the Courtrai region have been rapidly giving up
Valenciennes to make Cluny, which pays better. A Valenciennes beginner,
for example, must work a year as an apprentice, during which time she
is able to earn scarcely more than five cents a day. The wages of the
good workers have advanced, but unless they can be increased even more,
there are few who will continue to make this difficult lace.
After 60 years’ experience in lace, and latterly she has employed 1,000
women, Mlle. Mullie says that one is fortunate, among 5,000 workers,
to find five who can execute a sample from a drawing not already
interpreted or pricked for the worker. Before the war there were two
good piqueuses in Ypres to whom Courtrai sent her difficult patterns,
but only one of these still lives.
In peace-time the greater part of this Courtrai lace goes to Paris
(some is sent to New York), which is all one needs to say in tribute
to its pattern and its quality. Paris knows lace better than any other
city in the world; she accepts only the best. We were talking of the 60
per cent. duty the United States Government levies on imported laces,
and the harm it works to the Belgian industry. “That is our greatest
discouragement, but there are other Government stupidities,” Mlle.
Mullie smiled. “France, for instance, charges 10½ francs on a kilo
of Valenciennes, and the same amount on an equal weight of Cluny; the
Valenciennes may be worth several thousand, and the Cluny three or four
francs!”
The true old Valenciennes mesh, called “Rond,” is still made at
Courtrai, as well as at Bruges; the modern Valenciennes commonly has
a square mesh, which is preferred by many connoisseurs, since it is
more transparent and sets the flowers off more strikingly. “Whether or
not you prefer it to the square, you must see the traditional round
Valenciennes mesh,” Mlle. Mullie said, and we started off in the rain
for a group of tiny brick houses, the Gottshuisen (God’s houses) which
the city furnishes free to certain old people.
Before we reached the first, I saw two white heads near a window,
bending over cushions; and once inside, on those cushions, lengths of
snowy Valenciennes of the old round mesh, of an admirable regularity
and loveliness. These two women were both over 70 years old, and they
sat before their bobbins, twisting and braiding the eight threads of
the mesh as they had twisted and braided them for over a half century,
and still cheerfully hoping that they might some day win more than 15
or 20 cents a day for their work. “Now we must have more,” they said
gently, “because thread and oil are so much more expensive than they
were before the war.”
In the next house, the old woman whose sister was ill could afford no
light at all; when dusk fell she had to leave her bobbin mounds and her
mesh and flowers and go to bed—what else could she do without coal or
oil?
It was the last day of 1918, and I decided that Mrs. Bayard Henry of
Philadelphia, who had sent me a little money to use as I chose, would
be happy to give to these sweet, faithful women and their thirteen
neighbors, candles and oil as hope symbols for the New Year. I left her
gift with Mlle. Mullie.
It was already very late, and I had not time to go to Wevelghem and
Gulleghem, two of the most important lace-villages contributing to
Courtrai. Mlle. Mullie was facing the future with courage. “I am sure,”
she said, “that Peat, from whom I have bought thread for forty years,
will not forget me, and that I may be able to count on a shipment
from England at a just price as soon as anything can come through.
That I have been cut off during four years will make no difference.
I shall write, too, to a friend in France, and from Puy I may have a
few skeins. The question of pins and bobbins is serious—they seem to
have disappeared, and one can not start a worker on less than a dozen
bobbins. Those I have thus far succeeded in finding cost 95 centimes
the dozen, as against the 28 centimes of pre-war times. There seem
literally to be no pins. However, despite everything, I, at least, hope
to see my thousand women at some not too distant time again busy over
their cushions. A few have already sought me out to let me know they
are ready, waiting only for the precious thread. I regret infinitely
the passing of the fine ‘Val,’ but we shall continue to produce as
much as we can, and at any rate we shall try unceasingly to raise the
standard of the Clunys and Torchons.”
III
THOUROUT-THIELT-WYNGHENE
_In the Important Bobbin Lace Area_
On a spring-like Saturday in early January, I left Bruges by the
Thourout road for Thielt. As I turned beyond the Porte, I found myself
speeding toward the great arms of one of those Dutch windmills that
so frequently, in the lowlands, close the long vista. The farther I
rode into the Thourout region, the more it seemed the loveliest bit
of Western Flanders I had yet seen. The gentle outlines of the low
red brick farmhouses followed with satisfying harmony the landscape
contours. Farm succeeded farm in swift succession, small farms, where
every square foot of soil was green with sprouting grain or vegetables,
and in the morning sunlight the thickly sown cottages shone like jewels
on the plain.