and I knew that near them grandmothers, or mothers, or daughters (or
possibly all three together) were sitting before their cushions, and
from pin to pin were twisting and braiding Cluny and Duchesse, the
characteristic laces of this section. This was an excellent day for
lace-making with its sunshine of summer.
To the south and east of the badly shelled town of Thourout, I visited
the districts of Iseghem, Thielt and Wynghene, all celebrated for their
guipures. Guipure, a rather vague commercial term covering two widely
different groups of lace, may be loosely defined as bobbin lace without
a mesh base. One group of guipures includes the Clunys (named after
the Cluny museum in Paris because they employ many old Gothic designs)
which are made in one length or piece. They closely resemble the more
common Torchons, surpassing them, however, in fineness and firmness of
execution, and in brilliancy of design—the distinguishing connecting
bars of Cluny often throw the figures into conspicuous relief. While
this one-piece lace is usually made of the coarser threads, fine linen
or cotton, or even silk thread, is also employed. In the second group
of guipures are those made in separate small bits, or details, which
are afterward joined to make the flounce or piece, the most common of
these varieties being Flanders and Duchesse. In the schools of Thielt
and Wynghene all the kinds are taught. Because they are made of coarser
thread and therefore more quickly than such laces as Valenciennes or
Needle Point, are less taxing to the eyes, and pay better, these
guipures have gained ground in almost every lace center in Belgium, and
often threaten the very existence of the finer laces. If it had not
been for the leadership of the “Amies de la Dentelle,” of a few of the
more intelligent and disinterested dealers, and above all of certain
convents to whom Belgium owes the preservation of many of her finest
designs and varieties, it is a question if any but the few remaining
old women, who for forty or fifty years have preferred to follow one
pattern, would still produce the old meshes and points. Much hope now
centers in the corrective influence of the recently founded Normal
School at Bruges and of the other schools of Belgium, but, despite all
the efforts of these combined groups, delicate laces like the Malines
have been fast disappearing.
The little farmhouse, if one can call two rooms a house, I visited
on the edge of Thielt demonstrated clearly what is happening. It
was Saturday afternoon and the mother of the large family of boys at
play on the neat brick path outside, was scrubbing the tiled floor,
moving the small baskets of potatoes and heaps of tobacco leaves and
sabots and the winter sled from place to place as she proceeded. The
socks to be darned, each already a fantastic patchwork, were piled
on the window-sill, where there was room beside for a geranium and a
fern. The stove and the table were also crowded into this, the general
living-room, which despite all attempts to arrange things, boasted
scarcely one unincumbered foot of floor space. However, over near the
window with its two plants, were the customary chair and the cushion,
and the girl of sixteen, absorbed in her lace, quite oblivious of the
water her mother was splashing about her feet.
The adjoining room was similarly crowded; it had to serve as bedroom
for this large family. There was the mantel-piece with the familiar
row of bright plates and vases,—the place where the family’s art
sense finds concentrated expression. Fortunately, this room, too, had
a window with other plants, and before it sat the grandmother in her
black cap and shawl, who, as I entered, was just slipping her battered
eye-glasses into the little side drawer beneath her cushion. She
smiled a friendly greeting, and uncovered her lace, a filmy flounce of
Valenciennes about four inches wide, firm and regular, and of a good
old design. She had been making Valenciennes all her life; she would
make it to the end. She was delighted to show me how she twisted four
threads to form one side of the hexagon of the mesh, and four to form
the opposite, and the union points where the eight met. Then she held
up a length of her lace and told us that a facteur (neighborhood buyer
for a large business house) had been there just before we arrived,
to try to buy her flounce at nine francs the _aune_, which would be
roughly, about $2.50 a meter. The committee has been giving her 19 fr.
50 c. ($3.90) for the same amount, and she asked anxiously, tho still
smilingly, if she might not continue to hope for the committee price,
even tho the war had stopt. It is pathetic, day after day, to hear that
question repeated, and not yet to be certain of the answer. However,
one can always reply truthfully, that the women of the “Friends of the
Lace” will work unceasingly not only to hold wages where they are, but
to advance them.
I turned from this delicate lace to the granddaughter’s cushion—she
was making guipure de Cluny, of coarse linen thread. Marie’s pattern
happened to be a good one and she was working swiftly and evenly, sure
of a fair day’s wage.
Here, then, was a suggestive contrast, and however one may regret it,
it exists in the large majority of lace-making households in Belgium,
and is only to be expected. It is but the deserved penalty of a past
and present economic blindness or callousness. Where they are not
making Cluny, the younger women of this district give their time to
ordinary varieties of guipure which they call Bruges and Milan, or
Point de Bruges, and Point de Milan.
[Illustration: BOBBIN LACES
(1) Torchon (2) Cluny (3) Old Flemish (4) Binche]
[Illustration: TABLE CLOTH SHOWING ARMS OF THE ALLIES
Cut linen with squares of Venise surrounded by filet and cluny. Venise
made with the needle, cluny with bobbins]
While I had been watching the Valenciennes and Cluny, the mother of
the household, who had the mop of fuzzy dark red hair often seen in
this region, had hurried her scrubbing to an end, and wiping her hands
on her blue apron, was ready to uncover her own cushion. I looked
at the chapped, rough skin and the hands used to pulling weeds and
digging potatoes and scrubbing, and realized that they could not
possibly hold a piece of fine sewing—the thread would catch with
every stitch—and yet that she could turn from her scrubbing-brush to
the little wooden bobbins (her fingers need not touch the thread) and
proceed without difficulty on a snowy bit of Valenciennes—for happily
she was following her mother in Valenciennes.
There are three schools in Thielt, of which the convent schools de la
Charité and de l’Espérance are the more important. I went first to the
Convent de la Charité, with Mlle. van der Graeht, who has throughout
the war been devoted to the workers and the lace. Tho Thielt lay in the
danger zone, she refused to choose a safer city, remaining to share the
work of her father, who added to his arduous duties as administrator
of the _arrondisement_, those of the representative of the Brussels
Lace Committee. Two weeks before the end, however, the Germans drove
these patriots from their house (three bombs from Allied aeroplanes
had already fallen on it) and they were denied the experience they had
been waiting for throughout all the years, that of seeing the Allied
soldiers march into Thielt. One of the Germans was frank enough to
tell them that they were being forced away chiefly to prevent their
“assisting” at that deliverance.
Immediately after the armistice they returned, and installed themselves
comfortably once more on the first floor of their almost roofless
house. When I arrived they had not yet come in from their first
inspection trip of the communes just behind the lines, and I was
welcomed by pretty, brown-haired Flavia and her six-year-old Albert.
Flavia’s husband had been killed at the front during the first months
of the war, and she had served in this household throughout all its
terrible duration. As I looked from the windows of the drawing-room,
still intact, across the rear garden, to the mass of wreckage that was
once the neighboring house, I understood the feeling of the impotence
of all effort produced by the casualness of these bombs, that spare
here to strike there, and why in the war one inevitably becomes a
fatalist. And as I looked across the garden, Flavia told me something
of her experience with the thirteen Germans who took over the house
when they drove her master out and of how whenever the shelling was
severe they ran to the cellars, and several times tried to persuade her
to go with them but she always refused. “I preferred,” she said, “to
die alone with my little boy in the open, to risking being killed with
them in the cellar.” On Sunday, October 13, between 11 and 2 o’clock,
sixty shells fell on Thielt, and all day Monday and the following days
they continued to fall, until on Saturday the 19th, the French marched
into the town. To add to the horror of this period, people were dying
in large numbers of influenza. Flavia told me of the street-sweeper who
died at the corner with her broom in her hand. By some miracle she and
her little boy escaped both shell and pestilence, and when Monsieur
and his daughter returned they found her scrubbing and restoring as
best she could after the flight of the enemy. This was one of the
centers where during the four terror-years a bright beacon burned for
all the surrounding territory, for it was here that the people of the
villages and the convents could bring their laces for the committee,
knowing they would be accepted and paid for. In 1916, the Baron van
der Graeht was encouraging the work in no less than seventeen communes
and of as many as 3,500 lace-workers. Flavia smiled as she remembered
something—“What good luck, there will be a sister coming this very
day about 2 o’clock, with her laces.” As she said this, the door
opened—father and daughter were back from their pony-cart expedition
to the front-lines.
Monsieur was still visibly moved by what he had seen, even after his
own four years’ experience. “Madame,” he said, “I can not describe my
emotion on going about in those little shattered villages just behind
the lines, where the women have insisted on remaining, and where day
by day, and year after year, they have sat calmly before their cushions
making lace, while the shells burst before and behind them. After such
a victory as theirs, the lace industry of Belgium must live.”
Mademoiselle gave me the list of the badly destroyed villages, and
then the names of those which had suffered less and that, with Thielt,
produced the most lace. Among them were Pittham and Ardois (which
specializes in old Bruges); Ruysselede (with an excellent school for
Valenciennes), Aerseele, and Maria Loop. Thielt, itself, had at the
beginning of 1919 about 300 workers, of whom a hundred were in the
school of the convent de l’Espérance, and about 60 in the Convent
de la Charité. There had been times of great discouragement; in one
particularly dark hour in 1917 many of the workers had turned back to
the old facteurs, or village agents, for help, and unfortunately some
of these sold to the Germans, who were constantly trying to win them by
offering large sums for their laces. Since he was under no obligation
to turn over a fixt wage to the workers, the facteur might reap any
profit he could secure.
We abandoned this unpleasant subject to talk of the schools, the hope
of the future, and after lunch I went with Mlle. to visit one of these,
the Convent de la Charité, on the edge of the town, with its 60 girls,
who have supplied the committee with much old Flanders and Cluny. Even
tho this was a Saturday afternoon in winter, 45 of the 60 chairs were
occupied by girls between 12 and 16. One rarely finds a girl over 18
in the schools; once she has learned her trade, she prefers to work at
home with the mother and grandmother.
Unfortunately in this, which is considered a “good” school for
Flanders, I found the longest hours I had yet met, that is, summer
hours. In winter, because of the poor light, they are shorter. It seems
unbelievable, but the sisters told me that in summer the children come
at 5:30 o’clock and work until 8 at night—with only three half-hours
for recreation—one at 8:30 o’clock, one at 12, and one at 4. A day of
13 hours for growing children, and girls who are maturing! It is such
cruel conditions as these that the Committee have done their best to
ameliorate. In this case, tho the hours are still criminal, the wages
have been improved.
However, “improved wages” leave much still to be fought for. I talked
with a girl of twelve in the front row, an apprentice, and found that
she earns between 40 and 50 centimes a day, or about 10 cents for her
13 hours’ labor, which tho it is almost double what she could have
earned before the war, is nevertheless only 10 cents per day. The
Committee was able to add the war-time subsidy of 20 per cent. to this.
Naturally, the learner can not yet make what is called good lace, and
unfortunately her parents are often only too content to have her bring
home 10 cents a day. The older, more experienced girls, were earning
from one to two francs a day, or from 20 to 40 cents, that is, on a
summer’s day or full day.
Monsieur told me later that in his region if the wage of the good
worker can be raised to 50 cents per day, she will be able to live, and
will be content to remain at home before her lace cushion rather than
to go to the shoe and cotton factories of Thielt.
The advanced pupils were eager to uncover their treasure. Nearly all of
them had protected their round cushions with a circular piece of thick
blue glazed paper, with a hole in the middle. Through the hole they
worked with their rather heavy cherry wood bobbins, on the meshless
guipures of Cluny and Bruges and Flanders, which this school prefers.
Several were finishing the collar and cuff sets of rather coarse
but pretty Bruges with its characteristic rose and trefoil, seen so
commonly in shop windows, and which are especially effective when worn
with cotton or linen frocks. The Guipure de Flandres pupils were making
square insets for table and tray-cloths of simple, geometric designs.
Two girls were at work on what they called Guipure de Milan, of a wide
spreading branch and flower pattern.
However, the most interesting lace was not the guipure but the Point
de Flandres or Old Flanders, with its elaborate mesh base, just now
experiencing an interesting and encouraging revival, in which the
zealous Baron van der Graeht felt Thielt should assist. A half-dozen
older girls were executing doily and table center rounds in this lace,
after the Committee’s very popular Swan pattern. They were using a
fairly coarse linen thread, and working the rich, solid mesh with eight
bobbins. “Whoever would make the Old Flanders mesh must be willing
to play a game of patience,” Madame had once said to me. The dull,
plain woven parts of the pattern are brilliantly outlined by a still
coarser thread, and in the “jours” or open-work spaces are the much
loved snow-balls characteristic of Binche lace. Because of its combined
strength and beauty, there could hardly be a more successful lace for
general use than this Old Flanders, sometimes called Antik.
While it was once the most generally made and most celebrated of
Flemish bobbin laces (it was known in every part of Flanders in 1500),
it had been almost forgotten for generations, but even tho it has been
little remembered for some time, Old Flanders may be said never to have
died. In certain regions, that of Antwerp for instance, it is found
continuously on the garments of priests. It is the lace that remained
always at the base and from which the other bobbin laces, from time to
time, sprang. It is to be hoped that the Committee’s laudable effort to
revive it will bear increasing rewards.
Tho they could understand no French, and I knew only a few words
of Flemish, these little and big girls found much amusement in my
visit, and in my inability to follow their swift fingers. These were
fingers accustomed, too, to weed the fields and to dig potatoes, for
there is practically no lace made here during the weeks of August and
September when the potato-crop is gathered. The Sisters of Charity,
teachers in this school, were poor themselves, as their surroundings
testified. They had no fine carved oak armoire for their laces, but
brought from some safe place a tin box, like an ordinary bread-box, in
which were the dainty white packets ready to be sent to the Committee
at Brussels. As they were exhibiting piece after lovely piece, they
unfolded the swan pattern doily rounds of Old Flanders, and after a
moment’s hesitation, Sister A. ventured, “There is one thing you might
do for us, Madame; when you return to Brussels, could you not tell the
Committee that while the small swan doily rounds are sufficiently paid,
this large centerpiece round is not? It is our fault in estimating; we
did not realize how long it would take to make it.” I could not resist
teasing them a little and replied that I should be delighted to carry
the message were it not for the fact that it was precisely this set of
swan doilies (as it was) that the Committee had given me for Christmas.
“Should you like me to tell them,” I asked, “that they had not paid
enough for my present?” They were covered with confusion, as I expected
they would be, and then how they laughed, those frail little sisters.
“_Mais_, Madame, that would indeed be difficult; we will write; we had
forgotten. _Non_, Madame, you certainly could not tell them that! But
we can write letters now whenever we wish—can we not? One loses the
habit in four years.” And then they laughed again all together.
It was already late when I reached Wynghene. The shell-pitted roads of
western Flanders had made all my traveling difficult and I could not
see Mlle. Slock, one of the rare lace dealers who has looked beyond
her immediate purse and has taken time to revive old models and invent
new ones, seeking in every way to raise the standard of the present
production in all her region, which is chiefly devoted to Cluny. I had
not time to stop in the village, but hurried on beyond it to a cheerful
red brick manor house set in a forest, the home of the Burgomaster of
Wynghene, whose wife has been the untiringly devoted representative of
the Committee for this section.
As we sat at tea together, near the conservatory windows, where we
could look through the naked garden trees across a meadow to the
forest beyond, the Burgomaster told me of the morning when they stood
at these windows, after the shells had been falling for days all about
them, waiting and watching, scarcely daring to breathe, and of how as
they watched, he saw through the trees of the forest what looked like a
brown shadow, but the brown shadow moved, and then running across the
meadow, where he had always believed they must break through, came the
Belgian soldiers, the soldiers of deliverance. “I know our hearts stopt
beating; we stood choking, incapable of motion, as we watched them
come—still unable to believe after four years of waiting.”
We were silent for a few minutes, then we began to talk of the lace.
As his wife turned to get the list of her villages, I asked if the
Germans had attempted to get her workers away from her. “They had their
agents here, as everywhere,” she answered, “and I regret to admit that
one of their most successful ones was a Belgian woman, who had been a
facteur, or lace gatherer for larger houses, before the war. When the
Germans offered her large prices, she consented to serve them. If she
had been sacrificing herself for what she believed to be the good of
the workers, we might have forgiven her, but it was obvious that she
was not—she is pretty and likes pretty clothes—_Voilà tout!_ Along
with several other disloyal citizens, she was imprisoned the other day,
but unfortunately after only twenty-four hours, succeeded in freeing
herself. However, the people will never forget that she trafficked with
the enemy.”
I had known of the German lace organization first through seeing the
huge sign, “_Allgemeine Spitzen Centrale_” (Central lace depot), just
across from our C. R. B. offices. And as soon as I got in touch with
the loyal work of the women of the Belgian Lace Committee, I was
daily hearing of this or that attempt of their oppressors to capture
the designs and the output of the country. They might succeed with
the simpler, more helpless workers, who because of their great misery
may be forgiven for selling to them—and with the deserters and
activists—but they were daily defeated by the Committee patriots.
I was thoroughly interested to hear, now, from one of the patriots,
that the idea of the German “Lace Control” possibly had its birth in
Wynghene. In February, 1915, a certain Freiherr Von Rippenhausen was
stationed at Wynghene. He had with him his young American wife—they
had been married but a short time, and the people of the village were
kind enough to say they believed she was not German by conviction!
However that may be, the Von Rippenhausens requisitioned lodgings in
the house of one of the lace buyers of Wynghene, and in this house
they naturally discovered much regarding the lace situation, the lack
of thread, and the distress of the workers, and of the Belgian system
by which the facteur furnishes the thread to the worker and buys
the finished products, which he in turn sells to a big lace house,
reaping what profit he can as intermediary. Frau von Rippenhausen,
in particular, informed herself thoroughly, and together she and
her husband, it is said, organized the German “Lace Control,” with
headquarters at Brussels.
Since the Germans had requisitioned all the thread they could lay
their hands on, of which there were enormous stocks in Belgium, it was
not difficult for them to offer it to the workers. They sent German
soldier facteurs into every corner of the country to offer large prices
to native facteurs or to individual workers. On receiving a piece of
lace, they supplied an equal weight of thread to the workers, thus
establishing a continuing chain of material and product. And they
claimed to be selling their lace in America! They were clever enough to
profit, in 1917, by the Committee’s apparent inability to go on at that
moment, exercising every pressure they could, and naturally they gained
ground. No one can say yet how much lace they were able to buy, but the
amount of inferior lace was considerable.
Madame Van der Bruggen’s records show that before 1917 there were in
Wynghene, contributing to the Committee, 400 workers on Cluny and
Duchesse, about 200 on Cluny and Valenciennes in Beernem, 200 on
Valenciennes in Oedelem, and 350 in Oostcamp, all grateful to have the
Committee’s fixt minimum of three francs’ work a week insured to them.
Some of these villages, Beernem and Oostcamp for instance, are usually
included in the Bruges district.
She praised the Committee’s method of raising the wage by standardizing
the values of certain designs as executed by an average worker; the
poorer workers then gained less, the superior ones, more. “I thought
I realized,” she said, “how cruelly underpaid our women were, but it
was not until I saw their joy when the Committee promised them that at
least they should always have a minimum of ten centimes an hour for
their work, that I really understood. Ten centimes (two cents), just a
postage stamp, for a whole hour’s straining effort; and they were happy
because that was so much more than they had been sure of winning before
the war!”
IV
GRAMMONT
_Belgian Home of Chantilly_