The Spell of Belgium Part 14

"You melancholy fogs of winter roll Your pestilential sorrow o'er my soul, And swathe my heart with your long winding sheet, And drench the livid leaves beneath my feet, While far away upon the heaven's bounds, Under the sleeping plain's wet wadding, sounds A tired, lamenting angelus that dies With faint, frail echoes in the empty skies, So lonely, poor, and timid that a rook, Hid in a hollow archstone's dripping nook, Hearing it sob, awakens and replies, Sickening the woeful hush with ghastly cries, Then suddenly grows silent, in the dread, That in the belfry tower the bell is dead."

THE OLD MASTERS

"In smoky inns whose loft is reached by ladders, And with a grimy ceiling splashed by shocks Of hanging hams, black puddings, onions, bladders, Rosaries of stuffed game, capons, geese, and c.o.c.ks, Around a groaning table sit the gluttons Before the bleeding viands stuck with forks, Already loosening their waistcoat b.u.t.tons, With wet mouths when from flagons leap the corks-- Teniers, and Brackenburgh, and Brauwer, shaken With listening to Jan Steen's uproarious wit, Holding their bellies dithering with bacon, Wiping their chins, watching the hissing spit.

"Men, women, children, all stuffed full to bursting; Appet.i.tes ravening, and instincts rife, Furies of stomach, and of throats athirsting, Debauchery, explosion of rich life, In which these master gluttons, never sated, Too genuine for insipidities, Pitching their easels l.u.s.tily, created Between two drinking bouts a masterpiece."

Even amid the ruins of their country, Belgian writers, like the Belgian people, are indomitable. Verhaeren, from his retreat in London, sends out words that are a paean of victory, and the bugle note of "Chantons, Belges, chantons!" by another author, is a call to great deeds in the future.

CHAPTER XII

MOTORING IN FLANDERS

"O little towns, obscure and quaint, Writ on the map in script so faint, Today in types how large, how red, On battle scroll your t.i.tles spread!"

Brussels is ideally located for the motorist. From it both the Flemish and the Walloon districts could easily be reached. To be sure, the towns were paved with the famous Belgian blocks, but the roads outside the towns were in excellent condition. One of our favourite trips was to Antwerp, where we went often, either to meet people landing from steamers from America or to look up boxes s.h.i.+pped us from home.

A bit aside from the direct route between the two cities, but well worth going out of one's way to see, was Louvain. Baedeker speaks of it as "a dull place with 42,000 inhabitants," but we found it delightful. It was a pretty old town, with its richly fretted Hotel de Ville, the finest in Belgium, its university and library, its impressive church in the center of the city, and the innumerable other gray old churches with their long sloping roofs. The streets were narrow, picturesque and rather dirty. They were lined with the high walls and closed windows of convent after convent, and there were huge cl.u.s.ters of monastic buildings on the hills about, many of these newly built and modern. The whole town seethed with black-robed priests, brown-robed, bare-footed monks, and white-coped nuns.

In the Middle Ages Louvain had four times its present population; its once famous university had diminished in the same proportion. There was a time when no man might hold public office in the Austrian Netherlands who did not have a degree from the University of Louvain.

Of the two thousand cloth factories which made the city a hive of industry during the thirteen hundreds but little sign remained when we were there. During the fifteenth century it was the largest city west of the Alps. The walls were built at the period of greatest prosperity, and much of the land which they inclosed had been turned into gardens, showing how the population had decreased. It was said that however much outward change there had been, however, in the Abbey of the White Canons the spirit of "religious mediaevalism" was still to be found, untouched by modern thought.

Southey describes the town hall at Louvain as an "architectural bijou ... like a thing of ivory or filigree designed for a lady's dressing table." This building seems to have pa.s.sed through the war unscathed.

But the famous library of the university, which was one of the most noted in Europe, containing over a hundred thousand rare ma.n.u.scripts, was completely destroyed.

Not far from Brussels, and on the direct road to Antwerp, is Vilvorde, a small town, chiefly noted as the scene of the martyrdom of Tyndale, the famous Englishman who attempted the translation of the Bible, and for this was imprisoned and later burned at the stake by the Church. His last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" It seems as if his prayer must have been heard, because within a year--in 1537--the King ordered the publication of the Bible and its use in all the churches of the land.

Halfway between Brussels and Antwerp is Malines, perhaps better known to us by its Dutch name of Mechlin. Every house had its maker of lace; they could be seen on pleasant days sitting on low stools out of doors among the flowers, singing as they worked.

The tower of the beautiful old cathedral, which was erected in 1312, was intended to be the highest in all Christendom, but was never completed.

Its carillon, however, was second only to that of Bruges. The church was dedicated to St. Rombaut, who was supposed to have built it. The story was that in paying his workmen he never took from his pockets more than ten _cens_ at a time, and the men, thinking he must have a large number of the coins upon his person, murdered him for the booty. To their disappointment they found he had just one coin, for the saint, each time he needed money, had worked a miracle similar to that of Jesus and the fishes! A discrepancy of some three or four hundred years between the time of the good saint's life and the building of the church is a trifle confusing. This cathedral has been destroyed.

We set out for a direct trip to Antwerp one morning at eight, and reached there after a fine run of an hour and a half through the fair green country. All along the way the towns were gaily decorated and beflagged for a holiday. The city itself was alive with traffic, while the river and the ca.n.a.ls were crowded with moving boats.

Just opposite the station was the famous Zoo. A band concert was going on, and crowds sat drinking tea or beer beneath the trees, listening to the music, which was interrupted every once in a while by the raucous cry of some wild creature in its cage. All the animals were killed before the siege of the city in October.

A service was being held in the great cathedral. There was lovely music, and a solemn light fell on Rubens' great masterpiece. The church was two hundred and fifty years in building, and is the largest in the Low Countries. Fortunately we can still use the present tense in speaking of Antwerp Cathedral, for it survived both the bombardment and the conflagration that ensued.

Antwerp came into prominence only after Bruges, Ghent and Ypres entered upon their long decline. The architectural gem of the city was the Plantyn-Moretus Museum, once the printing works of Christopher Plantyn and his son-in-law Moretus, who did such notable work in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rooms of the old house had been restored quite in the old style, so that you felt the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of other days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORNER OF THE COURTYARD, PLANTYN-MORETUS MUSEUM, ANTWERP.]

The history of Antwerp goes back some thirteen hundred years, but it was not until the seventeenth century that it gained the right to be called the richest and most prosperous city in Europe. After that it, too, like so many of its sister cities, fell asleep; but these days were of brief duration, for in the middle of the nineteenth century the Belgian Government bought the right to use the Scheldt, and it awoke to new life. When the war broke out it was the greatest port on the continent, and surpa.s.sed only by London and New York in the world.

Its social life was a striking contrast to that of Brussels, for it was strongly Flemish in thought and feeling, as well as in speech, while the national capital was like a French city.

Antwerp was of great strategic importance, for the mouth of the Scheldt is opposite the mouth of the Thames. Napoleon realized this. "Antwerp might be made a pistol directed at the heart of England," he said.

Indeed, before it fell into the hands of the Germans a military expert prophesied that within two months of its fall the English would be suing for peace. The city had been made the chief a.r.s.enal of Belgium, and one of the strongest fortresses in Europe. At the beginning of the attack the suburbs, which were particularly beautiful, were destroyed and covered with pits and wire entanglements by the defenders. Tens of millions of dollars' worth of property was laid waste, and nothing gained, for the city was bombarded from a distance and no infantry attacks were made.

One summer day we started out in the motor for Ostend. Out across the flat country, through forests and fields and villages, we pa.s.sed through Termonde where, a few centuries before, they had opened the sluices and driven back the army of Louis XIV by flooding the country.

Ghent was our first stopping place. In the Cathedral of St. Bavon hung the Adoration of the Lamb, by the van Eycks--the most celebrated of Belgium's pictures. A few buildings still remained which recalled the former glory of the burghers of Ghent. Among them was the gray pile of the chateau of the counts of Flanders, a splendid specimen of the residences of the great lords in the magnificent Burgundian days. It was built for the purpose of overawing the headstrong citizens, and had on one side the moated river and on the other the square which saw so many tragedies of the Inquisition.

It is a picturesque city with its network of ca.n.a.ls. Its Beguinage, a religious home for older women with little means, is a small world in itself. It consists of a group of houses of different sizes, each with its own little garden in front, shut in by high brick walls. Through the community flows a stream where the women do their was.h.i.+ng from a boat, spreading the linen to dry in an open, park-like s.p.a.ce reserved for that use. The women who live there belong to a religious order, but are bound by no vows and are free to leave if they choose. Their special mission is to nurse the sick, whom they care for either in their own homes, or in the Beguinage. Because of its many gardens Ghent was often called the City of Flowers. Maeterlinck said of it, "It is the soul of Flanders, at once venerable and young. In its streets the past and present elbow each other." This may be due to the fact that while it is an ancient city, it had before the war experienced a return of its former prosperity, so that it was, in comparison with Bruges, for instance, quite lively and up-to-date. Its great ca.n.a.ls gave it access to the sea and to other cities, and its various industries were thriving. The story of Ghent is the usual tumultuous chronicle of Flemish towns. The weavers who early made their city famous were an independent lot, not easily governed against their will. When not fighting outsiders they were usually struggling for more rights and privileges for themselves. During the Middle Ages Ghent's great leader, van Artevelde, was treated as an equal by Edward III of England. The belfry was the symbol of their freedom, and it served as a watch-tower--a necessity in a country where there are no hills--and to give alarm at the approach of an enemy. On the great bell, Roland, is the inscription: "My name is Roland. When I toll there is fire. When I ring there is victory in Flanders." They tell you now how, shortly after the Germans entered Belgium, some one tried to ring the mighty bell and discovered that it was cracked.

We found the old town of Bruges, which lies between Ghent and Ostend, more attractive than we had expected. Indeed it was perhaps the most interesting town in Belgium, and the most picturesque. One doesn't easily forget the squares with their handsome facades, the ancient Beguinage with its tottering old women, or the lovely Lac d'Amour, which was once a harbour, with its pretty border of flowers and flotilla of white swans. I remember the walk through the little street of the "Blind Donkey," below the gilded bridge, to the town hall and the richly-fretted law court, into the square where the exquisite Chapel of the Holy Blood was tucked away in a corner. It dates from 1150, when it was built to enshrine some drops of the "_Saint Sang_" brought, according to the old legend, from the Holy Land by a count of Flanders.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAC D'AMOUR, BRUGES.]

People call Bruges the Venice of the North, on account of its many picturesque ca.n.a.ls, but here are trees everywhere, and the houses are of a wholly different style. It is very charming, really the most fascinating town in Belgium, with its mediaeval buildings and its people, who seemed to have a quaintness all their own. The old women in caps, sitting in their doorways making lace, looked as if they had just stepped out of an art gallery.

Bruges gets its name from the Dutch word for the many bridges which cross the ca.n.a.ls in every direction. These ca.n.a.ls connect it with Ghent and other inland cities and were once important highways of commerce. In those days Bruges had a harbour that was large enough to hold the whole French fleet, but this has long since been filled in by silt from the river.

The town was so sleepy and quiet, I found it hard to realize that it had once been one of the wealthiest, busiest cities in Europe, the commercial center of the whole continent. The famous Belfry of Bruges was originally built of wood, nearly a thousand years ago, but near the end of the thirteenth century it was replaced by the present tower. Like that of Ghent, it stood the townsfolk in good stead as a watch-tower from which they might see the approach of their warlike and envious neighbours. When Bruges was not at war with them, she was usually occupied in repelling attacks from foreign invaders.

It seems strange that in spite of her battles, not only her commerce but her intellectual life flourished and grew stronger. At one time merchants from seventeen countries lived there, which must have given the city a very cosmopolitan air. Laces, tapestries and woolen cloths were bartered for the treasures of the East and South and North. Art and letters gave it its chief renown, however, for Bruges was the home of Memling, and of the van Eycks. This was during the Golden Age of the city, in the reign of Duke Philip the Good, who was himself a patron of art while his wife was keenly interested in literature. It was for her that William Caxton, living at that time in Bruges, made the translation of his first book, which he later printed. Glorious old ma.n.u.scripts were still to be seen when we were there. In his book, "Some Old Flemish Towns," George Wharton Edwards describes his climb into the top of the belfry--an adventure which we did not undertake. After treading many flights of stone steps he reached at last "a leather-covered door and entered a room floored with plates of lead, and filled with iron rods, pulleys, and ropes.... Faint, clear, sweetly coming from afar, one hears the music of the bells subdued, soft, like harmony from an aeolian. But this is from the lower chamber. Very different will be the impression of the sounds if one is among the bells when the hour or the quarter is struck. Here, among the hanging bells is a sort of chamber, where lives a being who seems the very double of Caliban, so hairy and wild-looking is he. He is the watchman, and is forced to pull upon a rope every seven minutes before the bells sound. I shall not forget the fright he gave me when fancying myself alone in the tower I was examining the carillon, and he thrust his huge red, hairy face between the two bells under which I groped, and stood there staring while I froze with horror, while the bells row upon row, above and about us, clashed and clanged and boomed, swinging as if they would the next minute fall upon us and crush us.

Thus he stood in this turmoil of din and roar and finally when it ended he demanded--in the mousiest squeak of a voice imaginable, a small fee for beer money." These bell-ringers have appealed to other imaginations, too. Poe might well have had in mind the Belfry in Bruges when he wrote:

"And the people--ah, the people, They that dwell up in the steeple All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that m.u.f.fled undertone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone-- They are neither man nor woman-- They are neither brute nor human-- They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls."

In Ostend we found a watering place which during the last generation has more than doubled its population and become wealthy and important. This change was due to the efforts of the old King, who saw the possibilities of his sandy sea-coast if pleasure seekers could be induced to come in sufficient numbers. His dream was to build a road from one end of the sh.o.r.e to the other which should be one long, continuous summer resort.

At tremendous cost of money and labour strong sea-walls were built to protect the s.h.i.+fting dunes, and sections of the road as well. Hotels and casinos and villas sprang up all along the sh.o.r.e, among them the villa of the old King himself.

In the time of Charlemagne Ostend was a fis.h.i.+ng village, but only yesterday it was the Continental ideal of what a bathing place should be. The Digue, that famous walk by the sea, was thronged with an endless variety of men and women, of all nationalities and styles of raiment.

Thousands sat and watched them drift by. The heavy bathing machines--a city in themselves--went lumbering into the water, all so gay in pink and green and blue paint. Absurd looking old people were wading and children played everywhere in the sand. It was indeed a pa.s.sing show.

The weather was warm when we were there, and we saw the place at its best. Each night we dined inside the gla.s.sed-in terrace of the hotel, with gay people all about us and the crowds pa.s.sing up and down, outside. Then we went over to the Casino, a vast amphitheater where the orchestra played and throngs sat listening till the dancing began at half after ten.

In sad contrast to these lively scenes was that a few months later, just before the Kaiser's troops entered the town. A mournful procession of refugees moving to the quay, men with stolid faces guiding little dog-carts piled high with luggage, anxious women and weary children laden with bundles--all seeking the promised safety of England.

Every year there was held at Ostend a curious ceremony which drew excursionists from all corners of the country to witness. This was the benediction of the sea, which was performed by the more intelligent Belgians with all the decorum of a religious rite. The ceremony went back apparently at least to the early sixteenth century, for it is recorded that after a certain inundation of the coast the fishermen joined with s.h.i.+p-owners in contributing the sum of 271 francs to the Church, which was instructed to use it for the benefit of the fish in the North Sea. This was no doubt the beginning of the procession to the sh.o.r.e.

Running inland from Ostend one comes before long to Roulers, where there was a training convent for missionaries. We found the town an active, commercial place, and drove over rattling streets to the outskirts and our destination, the Convent of the Missionary Sisters of St. Augustine.

The Mother Superior had invited us to visit them because six of the little sisters were about to start for the Philippines, some to go to a convent in the Bontoc country among the headhunters, where L. had followed the trail on horseback with the Governor and the Secretary of War, a short time before. We wanted to show appreciation of their undertaking, for they have always spread good reports of the United States' government of the islands.

The buildings were neither large nor extensive, for the sisterhood is limited and the order comparatively new. There was an American flag--rather a queer one, for the little sisters had made it themselves--hanging with the Belgian flag above the door, and inside there were decorations of flags and paper flowers and streamers, all quite sweet and pathetic.

Mother Ursula, a nice looking woman, met us and conducted us into a room where the forty little sisters were huddled together, peering at us out of their headdresses, with the liveliest curiosity. It was natural enough that they should be curious, too, for during their two years of instruction they were never allowed to go out, and saw very few laymen.

At any rate, their eyes never left us all the time we were with them.

They seemed very docile and obedient, and were pretty and young, but they were rather ignorant, although they were taught a little English besides the native dialect of the savage places where they were to go, and a little music. They played and sang for us, so badly but so touchingly and anxiously--the Old Kentucky Home, in a way to make one cry, and the Star Spangled Banner--both in English.