What can one do in this Belgium but write down names, and let memory
recall the past? We came to Ghent, still a hand some city, though
one thinks of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and its
merchants were princes. On the shabby old belfry-tower is the gilt
dragon which Philip van Artevelde captured, and brought in triumph
from Bruges. It was originally fetched from a Greek church in
Constantinople by some Bruges Crusader; and it is a link to recall to
us how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the far East traded
up the Scheldt, and brought to its wharves the rich stuffs of India
and Persia. The old bell Roland, that was used to call the burghers
together on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower. What
fierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness centuries
ago! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a large square of
old-fashioned houses, with a statue of Jacques van Artevelde, fifteen
hundred corpses were strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guilds
of fullers and brewers; and here, later, Alva set blazing the fires
of the Inquisition. Near the square is the old cannon, Mad Margery,
used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde,--a hammered-iron hooped
affair, eighteen feet long. But why mention this, or the magnificent
town hall, or St. Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary; or try to put
you back three hundred years to the wild days when the iconoclasts
sacked this and every other church in the Low Countries?
Up to Antwerp toward evening. All the country flat as the flattest
part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals,
picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees in
rows. It has been all day hot and dusty. The country everywhere
seems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for a
storm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and take
rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which is
sharply defined against the red western sky.
Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its past, very
strongly. It is still the home of wealth. It has stately buildings,
splendid galleries of pictures, and a spire of stone which charms
more than a picture, and fascinates the eye as music does the ear.
It still keeps its strong fortifications drawn around it, to which
the broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mindful of the
unstable state of Europe. While Berlin is only a vast camp of
soldiers, every less city must daily beat its drums, and call its
muster-roll. From the tower here one looks upon the cockpit of
Europe. And yet Antwerp ought to have rest: she has had tumult
enough in her time. Prosperity seems returning to her; but her old,
comparative splendor can never come back. In the sixteenth century
there was no richer city in Europe.
We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, which begins in the
richest and most solid Gothic work, and grows up into the sky into an
exquisite lightness and grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt.
What traffic have not these high old houses looked on, when two
thousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one time, and
the commerce of Europe found here its best mart. Along the stream
now is a not very clean promenade for the populace; and it is lined
with beer-houses, shabby theaters, and places of the most childish
amusements. There is an odd liking for the simple among these
people. In front of the booths, drums were beaten and instruments
played in bewildering discord. Actors in paint and tights stood
without to attract the crowd within. On one low balcony, a
copper-colored man, with a huge feather cap and the traditional dress
of the American savage, was beating two drums; a burnt-cork black man
stood beside him; while on the steps was a woman, in hat and shawl,
making an earnest speech to the crowd. In another place, where a
crazy band made furious music, was an enormous "go-round" of wooden
ponies, like those in the Paris gardens, only here, instead of
children, grown men and women rode the hobby-horses, and seemed
delighted with the sport. In the general Babel, everybody was
good-natured and jolly. Little things suffice to amuse the lower
classes, who do not have to bother their heads with elections and
mass meetings.
In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy of
iron-work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some of
whose pictures we saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of the
finest pictures of the Dutch school,--the "Crucifixion" of Rubens,
the "Christ on the Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, Otto
Vennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of his
wife,--a picture whose sweet strength and wealth of color draws one
to it with almost a passion of admiration. We had already seen "The
Descent from the Cross" and "The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in
the cathedral. With all his power and rioting luxuriance of color, I
cannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt. Doubtless he painted what
he saw; and we still find the types of his female figures in the
broad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of Antwerp. We walked down to his
house, which remains much as it was two hundred and twenty-five years
ago. From the interior court, an entrance in the Italian style leads
into a pleasant little garden full of old trees and flowers, with a
summer-house embellished with plaster casts, and having the very
stone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet place, and fit
for an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city, and lived the
life of a man who took a strong hold of the world.