England, reached its height in beauty and in favor during the
seventeenth century, when it occupied the talent and energy of all the
lace-workers of Brussels. It differs from Needle Point, in which both
flowers and mesh are made with the needle. It is one of the loveliest
of all laces, combining in rare beauty, rich bouquets and arabesques
and birds of finest bobbin work, with a frail transparent needle mesh,
the flowers themselves becoming frequently more light and delicate
through the introduction of charmingly varied needle-worked open
spaces. Certain workers make the flowers, and others the connecting
mesh. If one can imagine the softness of a kind of sublimated or
diaphanous velvet, added to the fragility of an airy and cobwebby lace,
one may have some idea of the effect of good Point d’Angleterre. And
if one would possess a collar or a flounce, one should buy it quickly,
for Point d’Angleterre is going the way of the other difficult and
exquisite points. Such villages as Kerxken, Liedekerke, Destelbergen
(near Ghent), and those of the Alost region still make occasional
pieces.
[Illustration: BOBBIN LACES
(1) Malines (2) Application, flowers sewn on tulle (3) Duchesse, with
needle-point insertions]
[Illustration: APPLICATION DETAILS TO BE SEWED ON TULLE
Upper flower shows open spaces left by bobbin worker for needle worker;
lower flower shows both bobbin and needle work completed]
The more ordinary Point de Flandres, or Flanders, so generally produced
to-day, has the same composition as Point d’Angleterre, since in it
bobbin-work flowers are joined by a needle-mesh. And even tho coarser
and less complicated than Point d’Angleterre, Point de Flandres
is also difficult to make, and should be much better paid. There are
innumerable differences in quality, and many ways in which this lace
may be employed. The Committee has used it chiefly in elegant table
centers and cloths, in lamp-shades and in various articles to embellish
a drawing-or dining-room. And this summer of 1919 it is being used
with much success by important French houses as trimming for dainty
_ninon_ underclothing. Nineteenth century Point de Flandres, then, is
little more than a commercial name for a very coarse kind of Point
d’Angleterre.
This Point de Flandres must not be confused with Old Flanders or Antik,
the ancient bobbin-lace experiencing a happy revival at present. Old
Flanders is, like Cluny, made entirely with bobbins and with uncut
threads; in other words, in single lengths, and not in separate or cut
details.
Liedekerke, then, first made Point d’Angleterre for which, after a
certain time, it substituted Application, changing again about two
years before the war to Rosaline, suddenly become a popular lace.
Rosaline is not very different in appearance from the finer varieties
of Bruges; in fact, it employs much the same technique, and is made
as is Bruges with bobbins, in small pieces, which are later joined by
special workers. A dentellière who can make fine Bruges can usually
make Rosaline. Each small piece is composed of elaborately interlacing
flowers and leaves and arabesques, without a connecting mesh, but
joined by _brides_ or bars, with a picot edge. Sometimes the tiny
incrustations called pearls, common to Burano lace, are added, to
further ornament the richly covered ground.
I watched a Rosaline cushion, on which the pattern of an arabesque
detail was pinned, and Sister A., as she began to shift in pairs the
fourteen bobbins needed to execute it; one pair, the _voyageurs_, were
continually traveling from right to left and back again as she wove
the flat parts of the leaves and blossoms. The Rosaline technique is
particularly difficult, since the pins must be continually and rapidly
changed as the worker, with a crochet-hook, lifts the thread to pass
her bobbin through in the characteristic loop stitch. This delicate
operation, constantly repeated, strains both eyes and nerves. The pins
are placed along the outside edge of the flowers, instead of inside, as
in Bruges, which produces the picot or looped-edge effect of Rosaline.
In Bruges the flower edges are even.
I turned from the arabesques just beginning to grow on the cushion,
to a lovely little finished detail, about four inches square, one of
several in a box which was to hold them till they could be joined to
make a scarf. It had taken seven days of thirteen hours each to make
this four by four piece, which meant that the maximum a skilled worker
could earn in executing it was about two francs a day.
The Liedekerke convent school does not accept children under twelve for
more than two complete afternoons a week and for more than one hour
each of the other days, these hours being lengthened gradually until
the girl of sixteen gives her entire time to her lace. The sisters
hope that once they find coal and thread and can put their class-room
in order, they may again have 100 pupils, and that the village may
continue to count at least 200 good dentellières.
X
HERZELE
_A Château of Refuge_
There are certain châteaux in Belgium that will be remembered
throughout this century as harbors of refuge; they dared not flare
beacons from their roofs, but during four dark years, people of the
nearby communes knew that day and night lights burned there for them.
The château of the Comte du Parc was such a one, a property lying
on the edge of the village of Herzele, south of Alost, which, tho
the house itself is unpretentious, embraces a lovely park and wood,
and from which, incidentally, the Germans cut 1,000 trees. It is no
longer only the estate of the du Parcs, it is the loved shelter of
every villager accustomed to hurry toward it in sad or perilous hours.
The morale of the entire region was sustained by the knowledge that
the people of the château had not left, as they easily might have,
for their safer Brussels home, in the zone of civil administration,
where if not free, they would at least have been less imprisoned, but
had chosen to remain in the military zone, utterly cut off from their
relatives and the rest of Belgium.
They might have considered several reasons sufficiently important to
call them away (the Bourgmestre of Herzele had found at least one, his
ill-health); among other things their château was as yet practically
uninhabitable. It had been begun only a short time before the war broke
out, and with the sounding of the first alarm the workmen had rushed
out to report to their officers, leaving electric cords dangling,
unmounted fixtures standing against the walls, and neither hot water
nor heating systems installed. Madame told me later of her desperate
and amusing efforts to fasten locks on the most important doors. As she
and her husband were debating how they might arrange one large room in
the left wing as their single general living-room they could already
see the villagers coming anxiously along the tree-lined avenue and
across the park to inquire if they were still there. “After the first
troubled questions,” Monsieur said, “even if we had not already decided
we must stay, it would have been quite impossible to go away.”
The soldiers of the village were leaving with scarcely time for
good-bys; Madame understood the fears of the women who came to the
château for comfort; her only son, too, a brave, handsome boy, was off
to join the colors—her brave, handsome boy, who now lies buried not
far from the Yser.
In October the victorious Germans pushed southward, and from the 14th
to the 18th, shrapnel fell like rain on the park, but the château
escaped unharmed. Then three officers of the occupying army rode up on
horseback, revolvers in hand, demanding that the Comte present himself
immediately. Madame followed her husband, not knowing what to expect.
To their first threat, Monsieur replied calmly, “I do not like those
objects,” and after a moment’s hesitation the officers lowered their
weapons. Then they demanded guaranties that they would be absolutely
safe from attack by any person, either of the château or the village.
“I can, of course, speak for my château,” Monsieur answered, “but I
can not be responsible for the villagers if they are pushed too far.”
These villagers themselves told me later that they were convinced it
was only the presence of the Comte (the bullies were frequently servile
before titles and powerless before fearlessness) that saved Herzele
from destruction. “We always expected the worst,” they said; “in the
early days, when the Boches lighted a great fire in the wood, we rushed
to the château, believing it was burning.”
From the beginning, Madame and her two daughters looked for some
constructive aid they might give their women, something more than the
general relief furnished by the Comité National.
Of the 2,500 inhabitants of the village, 1,700 were soon on the lists
of the helpless or destitute; among these were many tuberculosis
victims. The château living-room became first a clothing bureau, where
daily all sorts of garments, sent from America, were distributed.
Madame engaged some of the women of the village to patch and re-fashion
these, and with certain sums of money that succeeded in reaching her
from time to time from an American lady who had “adopted” Herzele, she
was able to purchase new materials and offer further saving employment.
I do not know the American lady, but if she could have seen Madame’s
eyes as she told me of what it meant, imprisoned as they were, to
receive these gifts from some one outside who remembered them, I do not
doubt she would have felt sufficiently rewarded.
In 1916, when I was in Belgium as a member of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, the Germans prevented my going near Herzele, or any point
in the zone of direct military preparation, so I could follow the
work of Monsieur and Madame only through the Brussels Lace Committee,
which had itself great difficulty in keeping connected with them. They
made their judgments from the ever increasing quantities and improved
quality of the laces that somehow came through.
The room in the château was the lace office not only for Herzele, but
for eleven additional villages, where between 2,500 and 3,000 girls
and women, encouraged by the Committee support—its designs and thread
and money—were busy with their needles and bobbins; for while this is
chiefly a needle-work district, large quantities of bobbin laces are
also made. To be sure, none of these laces is superior, but they are
good, and marketable. They include Cluny, Duchesse de Bruxelles, a kind
of coarse Flanders (where the flowers are made with bobbins and the
mesh with the needle), Venise, and Rosaline; and of these the Flanders
and Venise are most important. At times it was not difficult for the
dentellières to take or send their finished lace to the château, at
others they were threatened with fines and imprisonment if they were
discovered trying to get it there. To refer to but one instance, the
facteur of the village three miles distant was fined seventy-five
francs when caught on the way with his pieces. The Germans were doing
their utmost always, to attach lace-makers to their _Spitzen Centrale_,
and despite the international agreement which engaged their protection
of the work of the Brussels Lace Committee, they interfered with and
obstructed its work again and again. At one point they insisted that
all deliveries to the Committee should be made through them, and that
they be paid 1 per cent. on the value, in gold, for transmission, where
transmission, unfortunately, only too often spelled for them retention.
In the village Madame and her daughters went from house to house,
instructing and comforting. The days of the deportations were more
terrible than any others. In remembering that first hideous deportation
night in Herzele, one remembers, too, that early in the war Cardinal
Mercier said that while there was once a time, when to make people
believe, we felt we must heighten, or embellish the cold facts, that
now in order that they should believe, we must withhold part of the
truth. That first night, men and boys were torn from their beds and
herded into the school, from there to be carried off in cattle-cars
to Germany. There was neither light nor heat, and in the cold and
the darkness, the tortured little village broke into a great cry of
lamentation, while the château was filled with wives and mothers
seeking comfort.
Later, when the activist troubles became acute, the two daughters held
meetings even in the cabarets to urge loyalty to a united Belgium. They
believe that not one person in their entire village can be said to
have worked for the enemy, except when deported bodily, or otherwise
coerced.
Somehow the years passed, and then one day, the 16th of September,
1917, bits of white paper fell like snow from the clouds. The family
rushed out to gather them and found Lord Northcliffe’s celebrated
posters, “The First Million,” representing a vast multitude on the
march, the statue of liberty in the background, the fields of France in
the foreground, and a continuous bridge of ships connecting them. This
snowfall was followed by others, and each brought hope.
Finally, in October, 1918, the Germans, knowing the Allied Army of
Liberation was almost upon them, again pulled their guns up into the
château grounds, but in the final fighting, as in the earliest, the
house somehow escaped.
[Illustration: WEDDING GIFT OF MR. HOOVER TO MRS. PAGE
Executed in Venise and Flanders lace by 30 women working three months.
American eagles with outspread wings, protecting the Belgian Lion
enchained in the four corners]
[Illustration: FLANDERS—NEEDLE MESH, BOBBIN FLOWERS]
When I reached Herzele, in January, 1919, the wide park was beautiful
and still, green things were sprouting beneath the trees, there were a
few birds; to a stranger there was little evidence of the terrible
years. But inside, in the cold, unfinished hall, the electric cords
still dangled; everything was as the Belgian workmen had left it four
and a half years before. And in the single living-room at the left,
rudely furnished, but including through large windows the beauty of
the park, there were still the war-time desk and long table with the
piles of trousers and shirts at one end, and the rolls of white lace
at the other. I shook out a scarf of Duchesse de Bruxelles of flower
and leaf pattern, with insets in needle work, and several wide flounces
of Flanders lace, of the same pattern I had seen used in the charming
lamp-shades on sale in the Committee room at Brussels. There were also
rolls of Bruges, and Rosaline, Application, and Point d’Angleterre.
[Illustration: VENISE LACE CENTER, BORDER OF VALENCIENNES
Lace executed in Flanders by 40 women in two months; embroidery and
mounting in Brussels by four women in three months]
[Illustration: VALENCIENNES, SQUARE MESH]
As I examined them, Monsieur got out his records and discust the
future of his lace-workers. “I am convinced they will be happy to
continue in this district, if only they can be sure of a living wage.
And apart from other determining factors, to make that, they must
learn to execute laces of better quality. We need, above all, a school
which will offer along with its courses in practical lace-making,
training in design. During the war we had many beautiful designs from
the Committee, but each time we were cut off from them we realized
our helplessness. In one of the villages the patterns are drawn by a
furniture-maker. One reason for the wretched condition of the workers
before the war was their entire dependence on the particular lace
dealer who furnished them their patterns and their thread, and who,
of course, protected his models by copyright. The old, unprotected
designs, which may be copied by any one, are little in demand, and
during the process of generations of recopying, many of them have so
greatly deteriorated as to become scarcely recognizable. If our women
were trained they could restore these, and, what is more important,
some of them, at least, could invent new ones.”
I asked what it would cost to found a school and support it during its
first year. “Perhaps 20,000 or 25,000 francs; we might hope that the
State would undertake such a work, but with its present overwhelming
burden, it is a question if the Government can occupy itself with
lace needs. If it could be started by private initiative, and prove
successful, I believe there is no doubt that the Government would be
willing later to subsidize it.”
Madame brought a picture post-card from the mantel, of three brothers
who had been deported, two of whom had not returned. Other men were
drifting back from Metz, where most of the _déportés_ from Herzele
had been for over two and a half years, but these two would not
return, for they had been frozen to death. I understood at once, for
I remembered the sixty-five men with black arms and legs who had been
“returned” to the Brussels Hospital in 1917. “No”; Madame looked at
the portrait of her boy, with the Belgian colors above it and a vase
of flowers in front, and then again at the little post-card; “No,”
she said simply, “I have no desire yet to go to Brussels. I prefer to
remain here with my people, where we may still, from time to time, weep
together.”
XI
GHENT
_A Lace Queen of Long Ago_
Of the cities I visited during three months’ continuous travel in
Belgium following the armistice, Ghent appeared to me to be attacking
her problems with greatest speed and vigor. Brave old Burgher city of
canals and mellow buildings and bell-towers, this Flemish capital is at
the same time an active, modern, commercial center; which explains why
Bruges has been able to win from her the title she once proudly held of
“Queen of Lace Cities.”
The lace history of Ghent begins with the lace history of Belgium, in
the sixteenth century; but her great period dates from the seventeenth
century and the introduction of the epoch-making mesh of Valenciennes.
The activity of her women and girls, following the appearance of this
new lace, surpassed anything she had hitherto known; it was not long
before the music of 1,000,000 bobbins rose to meet the riotous pealing
of her bells. In the sixteenth century Malines had undisputed first
place in lace; Ghent now out-stript her. One wonders if part of the
fascination of this city for the men the United States sent there in
1814, to make peace with England, and who, after six months’ lingering,
had to be urged to return home, lay in its clicking bobbins and the
joyous garlands that blossomed under them.
There is a portrait in the Hôtel de Ville, where one may see the
Empress Marie-Thérèse, wearing the marvelous Valenciennes and the
Needle Point robe presented to her by the Canton de Gand in 1743. And
scarcely more than a century later, in 1853, the city made its last
gift of similar magnificence—another robe, valued at 20,000 francs,
on which 80,000 bobbins were employed unceasingly during six months,
and this time offered to the Duchess of Brabant, Marie-Henriette. There
were no succeeding world-stirring gifts of lace because Ghent had begun
to think of other things, of industrial and commercial development, and
as she advanced in these, the art of lace-making declined, until to-day
it has ceased to exist.
However, in the surrounding communes (the region counts fifty) there
are still perhaps 2,000 dentellières making most of the bobbin and
needle varieties, the best among them being Valenciennes, Flanders,
Duchesse, Needle Point, Bruges and Rosaline. The Comtesse de Bousies,
chairman of the Ghent Lace Committee during the war, did her best to
encourage the work in these outlying districts, and was able to help,
in addition, many needy women in the city itself.
In 1917, for instance, Celine appeared at the office to ask for thread.
She was twenty years old, and before the war had been one of the
10,000 women employed in the linen spinning mills; her mother was ill
with tuberculosis, her father without work, and also ill; there were
five younger children. “I know I have not proper fingers,” she said,
as she held out her rough hands, “but if you will only promise I may
bring my lace, I believe I can learn.” The Committee believed this,
too, and because she worked with intelligence and with almost feverish
eagerness, she was soon assured the minimum wage of three francs a
week, and later the larger sums made possible with the Committee’s
success. Shortly before the armistice, the mother died, and only last
week Celine came again to the desk to ask anxiously if the Committee
could not somehow arrange, that even after they had disbanded, she
might continue to make lace. Her father had found a little work; she
wanted to remain at home where she might at least direct the younger
children, and she could, if only she were sure of her war-time
wage. Could not the Committee promise the sale of her laces? Often
repeated question during these courage-testing days, when emergency
organizations are breaking up, and poor women do not yet see what is to
replace them.
Among the more important communes on the Ghent committee list, I found
Oosterzele, Baelegem, and Landsanter, all three producing a good
quality of Duchesse, Flanders, Needle Point and Venise, and counting
together about 160 lace-makers; Gysenzeele and Destelbergen, which make
fine Flanders, and Duchesse, Knesselars, with 250 Cluny workers; Asper
with 60 in Venise; the convents of Scheldewinkle and Eecke, the first
occupied with Venise, the second with Needle Point and Duchesse, which
it sells to an American house, and finally, the larger Deynze district,
including Vynck, Lootenhulle, Machelin, the Valenciennes convent school
at Ruysselede, and Bachte, with perhaps 400 lace-makers in all.
I got my orientation for this last southern district from the Comtesse
d’Alcantara, who has been indefatigable in her double rôle of chairman
of Deynze and vice-chairman of the regional committee. Constantly
throughout the war, she might have been seen starting from the handsome
château at Bachte—one of the most imposing in Belgium—on bicycle or
on foot on her way to one of the lace villages, with thread and money
for the workers, or at night returning with the rolls of lace which she
had then to get to Ghent and from there to Brussels. The Germans never
succeeded in obstructing her work, nor that of her father and mother,
for their villagers and for the orphans of the entire region. Women
came between shells to bring laces. It was a moral help just to be able
to talk about their work.
As I crossed the moat and passed under the archway, I saw the spot
where the last Allied shell exploded, killing nineteen Germans, while
the family and the 200 villagers in the cellars, where they had been
for two weeks, escaped unharmed. In fact, in all the Deynze country I
was in the midst of the destruction accompanying the final push of the
liberating army, and was vividly reminded of what would have happened
to the rest of Belgium had the armistice been further delayed.
But already in the partially wrecked villages many of the women had
gone back to their cushions—their reason-saving cushions, for they
furnished practically the only employment to be had, and however small
the earnings, they at least insured a few francs a week, and best of
all they proved that something of the past persisted.
In Vynck, a poor little town of 1,700 people, I found 40
Valenciennes-makers, and heard that 100 young girls were being taught
at home by their mothers. I talked with two maiden sisters—one 68, the
other 72—whom I spied hidden behind a window-screen of potted plants,
working, with 450 bobbins each, on a kind of Valenciennes one finds
only on the cushions of the past generation. They could not repeat
often enough their gratitude to the Committee, which had been paying
them 44 francs ($8.80) a meter for their lace, so much more than they
had received before the war from the Courtrai facteur to whom they had
sold. They counted on making about five meters during the winter ($44
worth), and they work from dawn sometimes till nine at night.
In a neighboring house was a grandmother of eighty-one and her
granddaughter, and on the grandmother’s cushion such a covering and
re-covering of bobbins and lace, to keep them spotless. Over all she
had spread a large towel, beneath it a worn napkin, then a piece of
pink gingham, and below that two remnants of white and blue cloth,
and it seemed appropriate that the snowy treasure, Valenciennes, too,
should be revealed to me only after such a ceremony of unveiling as
this bent old woman of Vynck performed.