Flanders

“ Like rare wine, Flanders has mellowed with age, the storms and sunshine of succeeding [Pg 482] centuries touching its fine old houses, its noble churches and splendid town halls and guild houses but lightly—imparting the majesty of antiquity without the sadness of decay. Its dramatic and tragic history—some of which was so terrible in the making—lives again, without the old-time rancour and hatred, as the foundation upon which artists with chisel, brush or pen have created some of the finest of the world’s masterpieces. ”

“ The land, and powers invisible drive to its deep returning?
On the grey field of Flanders again and yet again
The Huns beheld the Great Reserves on the old battle-plain,
The blood-red field of Flanders, where all the skies were mourning.
The fury of their marshalled guns might plough no dreadful lane
Through those Reserves that waited in the ambush of the rain,
On the riven plain of Flanders, where hills of men lay moaning. ”

“ Flanders, this most beautiful and pleasant country, upon which, from of old, the gracious blessing of the Lord descended as a refreshing shower and morning dew, is utterly ungrateful to the Lord, and acknowledges none of the benefits enjoyed; but there God is touched in the apple of his eye. O awful matter! the pious witnesses of God are placed alive into the fiery flames. ”

“ And when the great war is over let no American tourist omit Flanders from his or her European itinerary. Its churches and town halls, its quaint crooked streets and sixteenth-century houses, have received a new and greater baptism of fire that has made them, one and all, shrines to which every lover of liberty should make a pilgrimage. ”

“ But this sort of sublime deformity is characteristic of the whole fancy and energy of these Flemish cities. Flanders has the flattest and most prosaic landscapes, but the most violent and extravagant of buildings. Here Nature is tame; it is civilisation that is untamable. Here the fields are as flat as a paved square; but, on the other hand, the streets and roofs are as uproarious as a forest in a great wind. ”

“ These two comfortable deities have, I believe, taken Flanders under their especial protection; every step one advances discovering some new proof of their influence. The neatness of the houses, and the universal cleanliness of the villages, show plainly that their inhabitants live in ease and good humour. All is still and peaceful in these fertile lowlands: the eye meets nothing but round, unmeaning faces at every door, and harmless stupidity smiling at every window. ”

“ The change which has taken place on the littoral during the last fifteen or twenty years is extraordinary, and the contrast between the old Flanders and the new, between the Flanders which lingers in the past and the Flanders which marches with the times, is brought vividly before us by the difference between such mediæval towns as Bruges, Furnes, or Nieuport, and the bright new places which glitter on the sandy shores of the Flemish coast. ”

“ Flanders is not a lovely land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and dreary level. ”

“ The face of Belgium shows us many moods. Fisher villages and attractive seaside resorts give color to the long ribbon of sand that reaches for forty miles from the French to the Dutch border. To the east is the low-lying country from which Flanders—“the low land”—has its name. Beyond this expanse resembling the dike-protected regions of Holland is a naturally sterile sandy plain that Flemish farmers have by centuries of toil brought to a high state of productivity. ”

“ In West Flanders
With the names of many places in the province of West Flanders, the despatches of war have acquainted us. Battered Audenarde; proud Ypres, held first by the Germans and then so long and so stubbornly by Haig’s men; Dixmude; the Yser Canal that flowed crimson to the sea; Nieuport, Westende, Middelkerke, leveled like wheat before the mower; Ostend, whose leisurely crowds were scattered before the gray tidal wave that swept across these lowlands, leaving a swath 70,000 acres broad of ruined farms and villages. ”

“ On the 8th November I left Antwerp for Rotterdam in Holland. But before concluding my account of Belgium I must not forget to make mention of the wooden shoes of Flanders with which boys and girls, and men and women too love to clatter over the rough paved stone streets,—nor of the dogs of Flanders which in every town here draw small carts and tradesmen's waggons like ponies,—nor of the famous lace for the manufacture of which Brussels is famous all over the world. ”

“ Pursuing our journey northwards, we might pause in Flanders and Holland and mark how closely associated with local conditions of life and climate are their forms of art, more especially as illustrated in the art of their past days—the pictures of rich Flemish burgher life of the Middle Ages, the knights and ladies with a certain sternness and stiffness of demeanour, as of an energetic and yet patient people accustomed to contend with difficulties, proud, yet devotional, and fond of comfort, kneeling, well-clad in velvets and rich furs against a northern climate. ”

“ What did it profit that the wind turned daily the sails of our three hundred mills if we limited ourselves to common burgher wares and the narrow northern markets? We sent emissaries up the Rhine and beyond the Alps to the Venice princes, and brought hither the spices and confections of Egypt and the fruits and wines of Greece, and the woven stuffs of Asia till the marts of Flanders had the savour of Araby. ”

“ To those who take an interest in the delightful study of political economy, and who have examined the condition of the people in different countries, with a view to discover the causes of their welfare or their suffering, there is no spectacle so interesting as that which the situation of the people in Flanders affords. ”

“ As colour decoration the tapestries of Flanders come near being the very finest things in the world, although we must judge them from a few examples only, the admittedly greatest having long since fallen victims to greed, fanaticism, and the stolid ignorance of the eighteenth century. ”

“ The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in the defence of their rights. ”

“ County of Flanders, and with these old towns—all of which are hard by—we can plan our journeys chronologically, so to speak, visiting first the monuments that date from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, then those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and so on. In that way we not only can keep the little history we know straight, but we can trace with our own eyes the gradual development of Flemish architecture and art. ”

“ Served in the true Belgian style—customary alike in Flanders and in the Walloon provinces—it occupied our attention for the greater part of the afternoon, the courses following one another leisurely, with intervals between during which the men folk strolled about the garden and smoked. Two days later we started on the Professor’s itinerary, completely refreshed after the fatigue of our voyage; and after a bit of shopping at Brussels, our pilgrimage into the heart of Flanders began. ”

“ When the sun shines and the fluffy yellow catkins are coming out on the willow trees down by the brook, and the garden is beginning to be beautiful I can’t realize that such dreadful things are happening in Flanders. ”

“ Furnes—in Flemish Veurne—is an excellent centre from which to explore the extreme west point of Belgian Flanders, which is also the extreme west point of Belgium as a whole. Flanders, be it always remembered, does not terminate with mere, present-day, political divisions, but spreads with unbroken character to the very gateways of Calais and Lille. ”

“ Your house and that of my uncle des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing; furniture is made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets, lances, shields, and bows and arrows! ”

“ Much as these two books are marked by the effort to describe Flanders as it actually is, stronger than this effort is the yearning at the heart of them to escape from the present to the past. Every temperament exceeds reality. Flanders was here described in the sense of an ideal; but the ideal in both cases was projected on the past. Beauty young Verhaeren had sought in the monks, the symbols of the past; strength and the fire of life he had sought in the old Flemish masters. ”

“ I hastened to reply, seeing that the Professor was much disturbed at this unexpected result of all our eloquence, “Flanders has a lot of things to interest the ladies. Think of its famous laces and lacemakers—we can still find the latter at work in places like Bruges, Malines and Turnhout—of its rare old tapestries from Audenaerde and Tournai, and the fine linens of Courtrai. Then [Pg 6] there are wood carvings the like of which you will travel far to see, and old Flemish furniture everywhere.” ”

“ The world, I grant you, has never seen so many men of Britain arrayed for battle on their own or any other soil. Yet we were once a military nation. The whole history of these lands of Picardy and Flanders, where our army is now fighting, during the past six centuries proclaims it. Since the days of the third Edward to the present time Englishmen have fought at intervals in these richly cultivated fields. The bones of many a fair-haired, straight-backed bowman of England are crumbling beneath the smiling plains through which our trenches run in a long winding line. ”

“ We welcomed at our tables the vanguard of the German army of invasion, the charming, salaried spies of the Embassy who made their way everywhere in that loose-tongued, light-thinking cosmopolitan crowd that in London passes for society, and the humbler secret agents, the waiters who in the trenches in Flanders are now turning their knowledge of our tongue to profitable account. ”

“ For although on the north and east they did not include Friesland, the bishopric of Utrecht, Guelders, or the province of Liege, still on the south and west they comprised French Flanders, the Boulonnais, Artois, and a part of Picardy, besides Burgundy. But it has been already seen how limited an authority was possessed by the rulers of the maritime provinces. Flanders in particular, the most populous and wealthy, strictly preserved its republican institutions. ”

“ But it is principally in the condition, manners, and comfort of the people, that the difference between the French and Flemish provinces consists. Every thing connected with the lower orders, indicates the influence of long-established prosperity, and the prevalence of habits produced by the uninterrupted enjoyment of individual opulence. The population of Flanders, both French and Austrian, is perfectly astonishing; the villages form an almost uninterrupted line through the country ”

“ The example of the freedom and superior comfort in towns stimulated the inhabitants of the country to grasp at equal benefits.
Flanders, as the earliest manufacturing and trading country, had, as we have seen, speedily become democratic; had expelled its ruler, and had now maintained a long career of independence. At this moment it was waging a most sanguinary and determined war, not only against its own earl, but against the whole forces of Burgundy and France, led by Philip van Artavelde—the son of Jacob, the stout old brewer of Ghent—and by a relentless citizen, Peter Dubois. ”

“ Flanders at this period was the most important trading and manufacturing country in western Europe. Ghent was a great manufacturing town, like Manchester to-day, and Bruges a busy port, like modern Antwerp or Liverpool. All this prosperity was largely dependent upon England, for it was from there that the Flemish manufacturers procured the fine, long wool which they wove on their looms into cloth and spun into [Pg 284] yarn. In 1336 the count of Flanders, perhaps at Philip's suggestion, ordered the imprisonment of all the Englishmen in Flanders. ”

“ If the communes of Flanders had been at one with themselves, and if their burghers had been agreed together, the timely concessions of their new Sovereign would perhaps have enabled the Flemish people to withstand the machinations of the feeble tyrant whom we shall presently see compassing their destruction. ”

“ Bred in the traditions of feudalism, Guy mistrusted Flanders, the land of all others where freedom had made most headway, and the Flemish in their turn hated him because his dynasty had been forced on them by France. ”