Beughem of my plan to go there to see Chantilly lace in the making,
she answered, “But that will be a futile journey; the women have had
practically no black or white silk thread since the war, and the few
who were still working in 1914 will have stopt; that one-time important
branch of the industry has almost ceased to exist.” I decided, however,
to visit the tomb of Chantilly, the lace so closely identified with
Grammont that in Belgium it takes its name from that city, rather than
from its original French home.
And Grammont itself, a town of 13,000 inhabitants, was well worth the
journey, situated as it is in a lovely region of rolling hills, and
deriving its name from the steep slope (Grand Mont) to which part of
the city clings. The surrounding undulating country is dotted with
quaint, clustered villages, some with thatched, some with tiled roofs,
and only twenty miles away is the charming town of Audenarde—poor
Audenarde, so cruelly wounded by the war!
I reached Grammont about noon, having lost an hour on the way through
the difficulty of passing camions and artillery and marching companies
of Canadian soldiers. Between Ninove and Grammont, too, were many
squads of German prisoners at work on the ruined road. They were
guarded by the French, but it was a rather lenient surveillance, at any
rate the sullen groups in their trailing gray capes appeared to be
casually tapping the mud with their spades instead of being genuinely
at work.
[Illustration: A “MARIE ANTOINETTE” IN CHANTILLY LACE, MADE WITH
BOBBINS, NEAR GRAMMONT]
[Illustration: CUSHION COVER
Center Venise, borders Valenciennes, lace executed by 12 workers in one
month, embroidery and mounting by four women in two months, design by
M. de Rudder]
[Illustration: TEA CLOTH
Point de Paris, cock design]
My Belgian chauffeur, whose health is broken after three years of
forced labor in Germany, would have been delighted to run them down,
and at one point did succeed in splashing a group with mud, as he
called “Boches” and something I did not catch. I began to understand
the ruling that released Belgian prisoners shall not be placed over
Germans still held here.
After lunch I started with Madame Cuseners to the little lace school
whose director has courageously carried on during the four years. We
walked through a narrow arched passageway beside a brick building
and into a large hall at the rear which was at one time the lace
class-room. Instead of lace-workers, however, we found Scotch and
Canadian soldiers busy tacking the Union Jack and Belgian flags on
the wall, and hanging boughs and festoons of colored paper rings—they
were making ready for a “grand” New Year’s Eve dancing party. In
the courtyard still farther back a half-dozen Scotchmen had built a
campfire, protecting it with a low canvas roof, and it was burning
brightly despite the dismal rain.
It shone on the windows of the long, narrow room at the side of the
court, which looked like a conservatory, but which had become the
refuge of the lace-workers, when because of lack of thread and fuel,
they could no longer occupy their hall. I found fifty sweet-faced girls
between thirteen and fifteen busy over their cushions, a faithful,
tired-looking old Abbé and an enthusiastic young woman teacher. They
were not making black nor the less important white silk Chantilly, for
they had long been entirely without silk thread. Nevertheless, they
were preserving the art of making it, since they had been kept at work
on Chantilly designs executed with bobbins and the white cotton thread
furnished by the Committee. They had some fine flounces, which were
not, however, to be compared with the traditional black silk ones of
the great Chantilly days.
For Chantilly has seen great days. It appeared first in France
about 1740, where it achieved a phenomenal popularity, which was
unfortunately rudely ended by the Revolution, for since it was a
favorite lace at court, the Revolutionists made it a crime to appear
in Chantilly. Later, under the Empire, it enjoyed a revival, the
fabrication of the silk laces spread in France; Bayeux became a
celebrated center; and, finally, toward 1835, it crossed to Belgium,
where Grammont was early recognized as its home. In 1851 all of the
forty-nine schools of that province taught the technique of this
lace. Then toward 1870 true Chantilly seemed doomed a second time
to extinction by the success of the machine imitations of St. Pierre
des Calais, and also because the vogue for black lace had passed. But
again the pendulum has swung back; the imitations are now greatly in
favor and there is a cheering increase in the demand for the true lace
flounces.
The Abbé brought out from dusty drawers the school’s stock of designs,
elegant groupings of bouquets and foliage, with occasional striking
geometrical details introduced, all joined by a fine hexagonal mesh,
which resembled at first that of Malines, and later, more closely, the
Point d’ Alençon mesh. The fact that this lace is often used for scarfs
and gowns, and that the customary flounce is of generous width, has
encouraged the development of elaborate patterns. Some of the sketches
were divided by heavy pencil lines into the separate narrow strips
on which the lace-maker actually works. To achieve the wide flounce,
these strips are attached one to another by special workers who employ
a joining stitch that defies detection. The individual pattern strips
include both mesh and flowers and follow irregular lines, curving, it
may be, to include a full-petaled rose. When one examines the fineness
of the clear hexagonal mesh that forms the base of Chantilly, it seems
all the more remarkable that the division lines are not visible. This
Chantilly mesh has differed during various periods and besides there
are always almost as many varieties as there are workers, for one
weaves more closely or more firmly than another. I came soon to realize
how great a difference in effect results from a practically invisible
variation in the thickness of the thread, or in the manner of twisting
or looping it or in the placing of the pins. One of the distinguishing
characteristics of Chantilly is the relief produced by a heavier thread
that outlines the pattern and forms the twigs and veins of the leaves.
In securing a brilliant relief, the French have always succeeded better
than the Belgians.
These Grammont pupils were also making Blonde, a favorite lace with
the Spanish people, and introduced into Belgium from France at the
same time as Chantilly. Its processes are very similar, tho it is
easily differentiated from its sister by the heavy glossy petals of its
flowers and their conspicuous open-work centers in the Point de Paris
stitch. The name Blonde is derived from the écru silk which was first
employed in its making; now it is made of white or of black silk, and
chiefly in the form of scarfs or mantillas. The girls were making their
war-time Blonde of cotton, the good Peat cotton of Nottingham, brought
in by the C. R. B. for the Lace Committee. It is practically only in
the Grammont and Turnhout regions that Blonde is still made.
The instructress showed me the little bundles of poor, crooked brass
pins that were all that remained after four years of the occupation,
explaining what harm poor pins can work in a fine mesh like that of
Chantilly. Then she asked if I could not tell them when they might
expect new ones. Alas, these disheartening months of the winter of
1918–1919 when one hope after another has been deferred; so many things
to be done at once, and all depending on the re-establishment of a
system of transportation utterly destroyed.
I went from the school-room, past the fire in the courtyard, back to
the large hall where the Canadians were still decorating for their
party, and where we wished one another a Happy New Year—brave
Canadian boys well loved by the Belgians—then on to the house of
Madame’s mother, who for a half-century has been a lace _fabricant_,
or dealer, and whose front room served easily as combined salon and
office. Precious laces need very little space; they can be stored in a
handsome carved oak armoire, which is at once a safe and a beautiful
article of furniture. This old lady’s hair was still dark and glossy,
as is so often the case with grandmothers in Europe, and her brown
eyes were bright and keen. She talked of the time when there were more
than twenty dealers employing over 2,000 workers on Chantilly in the
Grammont region, and of the gradual decline of the industry. “Certain
empty houses on the heights above the town tell the story. Long ago the
lace-makers left the valley at the foot of the slope, and seeking the
brighter light on the hill, formed a lace colony there; but they have
come down again, the houses on the hill are deserted. One by one the
skilled old workers have died, and their secrets with them. There is
only one really excellent piqueuse left and she is a baker-woman who
exercises her talent of pricking patterns between baking! And I believe
that instead of the former thousands, we have not more than eight
hundred dentellières to-day. Here, as elsewhere, factories have come,
and the lace has fled. With us it is the cigar and the match that have
banished it, they furnish better wages and our women follow. However,
if we can win a higher pay for the lace, and can but develop the little
school you have just visited, and continue to train our girls, we shall
yet be able to restore Chantilly. Especially,” she added, “if we can
be helped by that fickle Mistress Fashion, who last year smiled again
on the black lace gown. Some of our patterns for robes can be made in
a few weeks, but the truly fine ones take months, even a year to make.
All depends on the design and the number of threads. We have had much
to combat in the success of the marvelous Calais machine imitations of
Chantilly, but true lovers of lace will never be content with them,
however clever they are.”
She shook out a folded triangular shawl. “There is no lace in the
world more beautiful than this,” she said, as she spread it on the
white tablecloth, the better to display the wealth of its black flower
clusters and long fronds, and then had me squeeze the delicate mesh in
my hand to test its resiliency. I could not but agree with her. Her
daughter brought out an exquisite collar, a tendril and flower pattern,
with long tabs that could be crossed in front and let fall like a sash
behind, a “Marie Antoinette” of most tempting loveliness; then a dainty
parasol and a fan and a few filmy winged butterflies—all pieces made
before the war, before the Germans set a wall of fire between the women
of Grammont and the silk thread (Grenadine d’Alays) which meant their
bread.
I was glad to have a few hours of sweeping hill country between these
elegant black laces and the Valenciennes I was next to see; for the
moment all white lace seemed negligible.
V
BRUGES
_Queen of Lace Cities_
After a day beside the graves of Nieuport and Dixmude and Ypres, the
first glimpse of the singing towers of Bruges against the evening sky
seems an unearthly vision. During four years no one had known that
Bruges would not perish as her sisters had perished. One must have come
direct from the desolation of Nieuport, to her pignons and bridges,
from the skeleton of Les Halles of Ypres to her Hôtel de Ville, to
estimate her incomparable beauty. Since Ypres is dead, only Bruges and
Turnhout remain as true lace cities of Belgium; Ghent, the elegant
neighbor of Bruges, and herself once a Queen in the lace world,
has turned to her factories and no longer counts. Except Turnhout,
then, with its famous schools for fine laces, no Belgian city to-day
challenges the leadership of Bruges, and beyond Belgium, she has but
one great rival—Venice.
[Illustration: LACE-MAKERS OF BRUGES]
This claim to leadership rests on a solid foundation. Bruges is of
ancient lineage in the lace world; she has preserved unbroken, through
at least four centuries, the traditions of that world. There are
those even who believe that mediæval bobbin lace had its origin in
her territory, and they are at least supported by legend. A pretty
story tells of a poor and infirm widow, who with her many children
lived in a little street of Bruges. The entire family depended only
on the work of Serena, the eldest, who from dawn till dark turned her
wheel. She had long been loved by a neighbor, Arnold, the son of a
great merchant, and she did not view him with disfavor. But as winter
and misery settled again on the poor little hut, and Serena saw that
all her efforts appeared vain, she vowed to the Virgin never to marry
unless her family could be rescued from their suffering. Then one day
when near the Minnewater, as she was making sad thoughts, suddenly
she saw a light, and from the Virgin threads descended toward her,
which, skipping the branches, dropt in her lap, where they by chance
designed lovely patterns. Serena understood this to be the response to
her prayer, and she tried at once to reproduce the arabesques in linen
thread. She ended by attaching little woods to them and by aiding them
with pins. And thus to the great emotion of Bruges bobbin-lace was
born. And all the rich seigneurs and bourgeois wished to possess it.
Ease came and Serena married Arnold, and they had many daughters, all
of whom she taught to make lace.
[Illustration: BRUGES AND SIMILAR BOBBIN LACES
First column: Bruges
Middle column: Bruges, Bruges, Bruges, Rosaline
Third Column: Rosaline, Old Flanders, Old Flanders, Duchesse]
The often quoted picture in the Louvre Gallery, painted by Hans Memling
(14—to 1494) and representing the Virgin and the Infant Christ
surrounded by gift-bearers, among whom is a rich Brugeois wearing a
gray costume trimmed with a bobbin-lace edging, certainly indicates
that the industry existed in this epoch, and possibly had its center at
Bruges, then the principal city in Flanders and the seat of the court.
Furthermore, records prove that already at the opening of the 16th
century, lace-making was included as a necessary part of the education
of women. The edicts of Charles V requiring that it should be taught
in all the schools and convents, greatly stimulated its development in
Bruges, as well as throughout the entire Flanders and the provinces
of Hainaut, Brabant and Antwerp. It became so popular an occupation
for women that Charles’s successor, Philip II, required that the
magistrates of Ghent and Bruges restrict the number of lace-workers in
their cities, in order that the rich might find some women left willing
to serve them. Another enlightening document shows that in 1544 Bruges
counted 7,696 poor among her population, and that the department of
public charity required of the young women among them that they should
cease to walk the streets and should learn the lace industry. There
were at that time many lace schools. During the following centuries,
Bruges maintained her position as a lace center and was able to
survive the death-blow the French Revolution dealt the industry. For
we find, about the middle of the 19th century, the city still counted
seventy-nine schools, attended by 2,722 pupils, while in Valenciennes,
for example, lace-making no longer existed.
There is, then, a rich and ancient past back of the clicking bobbins
of the Bruges of to-day. After four years of German rule it is still
difficult to give accurate statistics, but generally speaking, in this
city of 54,000 inhabitants, as many as 5,000 women and girls make lace
of some sort. If you question the average woman, she will probably look
at you in surprize and say: “How many lace-makers? Why, everybody;
there is hardly a house in Bruges without its cushion and bobbins.”
While if you put the same question to such a celebrated lace dealer
as M. Gillemont de Cock, who counts gold and silver medals from many
nations, he will be very apt to answer: “Madame, before the war I knew
of about thirty, now I can not say!” The Lace Committee at Brussels
considers 5,000 a fair estimate for Bruges and her contributing
villages, which is the number given, too, by Professor Maertens of the
Normal School.
By the Bruges district is meant chiefly Bruges, quite the contrary of
the usual situation. One hears of the Alost region, for instance, and
finds that while the villages of the surrounding area count thousands
of workers, in the city of Alost itself very few are left. However,
Bruges, too, counts some few outlying villages. Madame Ryeland,
representative during the war of the Brussels Lace Committee, told me
that forty communes contributed to her committee, the most important
being Syssele (where Valenciennes is the favorite lace), Maldeghem
(applications and filet), Saint Andre (Cluny and Valenciennes),
Oostcamp and Lophem (Valenciennes), Saint Croix (Cluny and other
guipures), and Saint Michele (an unusually beautiful Duchesse de
Bruges).
In Bruges itself there are three important convent lace schools,
working largely for the shops, but which also execute private commands;
the convent school of the Apostolines, typical of those where the
children learn a little Flemish, a little French, much catechism, and
for the rest make the laces of the region from morning till evening;
the school Defoere, and the well-known school Josephine. Each has
between 100 and 200 dentellières, who make the popular Torchons and
Clunys and Valenciennes, and also the more difficult Binche, with its
mesh characterized by the airy “_boules de neige_,” snow-balls. They
make, too, Old Flanders, which has a particularly strong and elaborate
mesh; and of course the Duchesse de Bruges, or Bruges, for which the
city is famous. In addition to the convent schools and a few other
less important laique schools and some work-rooms, one finds in the
Hospices, or free homes for the old, another goodly company working
together. In their picturesque retreats some 200 old women pass their
days making lace, chiefly Valenciennes.
There remain the individual households; to the common statement that in
each one, some member makes some kind of lace, one might add, at some
time during the year. If the children from these homes do not go to the
schools to learn, they are taught by their mothers and grandmothers. A
favorite Christmas gift to children is a cushion and set of bobbins,
with which they soon learn to produce simple patterns. For example,
Madame Roose, the daughter of the concierge of the Groothuis Museum,
which houses the marvelous Baron Liedts collection of old laces,
accustomed from childhood to see and hear of these laces, became
herself a lace-maker and later a successful dealer and now has five
daughters of her own, all of whom she has herself taught to ply their
bobbins. The Lace Committee told me that during the war the clothing
committee had difficulty in finding young girls and women who could
darn and sew even moderately well; since childhood they had given all
their time to lace-making. Conscious of the danger in this situation,
the Lace Normal School preaches that until she has learned other
necessary things, no young girl should be allowed to spend more than
half a day over her cushion.
[Illustration: LACE NORMAL SCHOOL, BRUGES, BEGINNER’S CLASS
Symbolic color pattern on left-hand easel; demonstration bobbins
attached to colored threads at right]
By far the greater number working at home make Torchon, Cluny and
Valenciennes, tho the Bruges district is celebrated, too, for Rosaline
and Binche and Old Flanders, and above all for the Duchesse de Bruges,
once so named because it was thought worthy to adorn a Duchess. Bruges
lace has always been made entirely with bobbins, in separate flowers,
or details that are united not by mesh, but by little picot-edged cords
or bars. There are many varieties of this familiar lace; between the
coarse, much marketed modern Bruges, with its well-known roses and
trefoils, sometimes scarcely meriting the name of lace, and the Bruges
of the robe presented in 1901 to Queen Elizabeth, then the Princess
Elizabeth, there is a deplorable distance. The individual trefoils
and arabesques and roses of the coarser kinds are made very quickly
on the round cushion, which can be readily turned, and are produced
in great quantities in many of the communes of the Bruges region,
while fortunately in such a village as Saint Michel one can still see
exquisite examples of the finer Bruges in the making.
[Illustration: BED COVER IN DUCHESSE, OR BRUSSEL’S LACE
Made with bobbins; executed in Flanders by 30 women in three months;
design by The Lace Committee]
Rather than be introduced to the lace-making of Bruges by the younger
workers in the schools, or in one of the thousand homes given over to
it, I preferred to go first to the place where probably more strangers,
especially English and Americans, have been initiated into the
mysteries of the cushion and its bobbins than anywhere else in the
world. There have been other famous Béguinages in Belgium—congeries
of houses maintained by private endowment, for women, who, while
they object to taking the vows of the convent, yet wish to live in
a kind of partial retreat from the world and under the protection
of the church—but none lovelier than this one of Bruges, with its
sixteenth century buildings of pure Flemish architecture, grouped
about a wide green court shaded by elm trees. Naturally the Béguinage
has not been a mecca for travelers and artists merely because several
of the gentle old ladies in retreat there made beautiful lace; they
have come in search of its quaint pignons and doorways, its inner
gardens, the bridges that span the surrounding canals where the swans
paddle peacefully. And they have been delighted to find included
in the picture the white-capped women before their lace cushions,
intent (doubtless unconsciously) on perpetuating other beauties, as
old as those of the buildings encircling the court, the designs of
Valenciennes that have been handed down by French and Belgian mothers
to their children through generations. These ladies of the Béguinage
may keep their private fortunes and pay for the privileges of the
retreat. They are supposed, however, to live austerely; their charming
brick houses are white inside—wall-papers (as being too gay) are
forbidden—while the floors are covered with a kind of pretty, rude
rush carpet. They may not go on journeys, and no man outside, except
the clergy, may enter the sacred precincts of the court, the gates
of which are closed at 8 o’clock. Can one imagine an atmosphere more
encouraging to hours spent patiently in lace-making? It is recorded
that in the Béguinage of Ghent, in 1756, there were as many as 5,000
women engaged in making the Valenciennes for which that city was
famous. But the day of this particular kind of retreat has passed, and
even at Bruges many of the houses are vacant; when the old die, there
are few who wish to take their places. And it is only because those few
who remain preserve the best traditions of the lace that they count
in the lace-world of to-day; the quantity produced is negligible.
Nevertheless, I was delighted that my first knowledge of Bruges lace
should come through the few wide Valenciennes flounces of exquisite
flower and vine pattern and firm and even workmanship that I found
still pinned to the cushions of the Béguinage.