Flemish people

“ The bewildered and amazed passivity of the Flemish civil population, the state as of people surprised by sudden ruffians, murderers, and thieves in the dead of night and hurled out, terrified and half clad, snatching at the few scant household gods nearest at hand, into a darkness mitigated but by flaring incendiary torches—this has been the experience stamped on our scores and scores of thousands, whose testimony to suffering, dismay, and despoilment silence alone, the silence of vain uncontributive wonderment, has for the most part been able to express. ”

“ In this last sad chapter of Flemish history, it is a pleasure to be able to record the fact that the people of the United States have for the first [Pg 483] time entered its pages—and in a work of mercy. To the American people have been given the opportunity, the means and the disposition to play a noble part in this later history of much troubled Flanders—to feed the starving, care for the widowed and orphaned non-combatants of the great war, to help bind up the nation’s wounds and restore hope and courage to its fearfully afflicted people. ”

“ I only know that while stolid, and unemotional ordinarily, they are intensely patriotic. They became highly excited during the struggle some years ago to have their Flemish tongue preserved and taught in the schools, and I remember the crowds of people thronging the streets of Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, with bands of music playing, and huge banners flying, bearing in large letters legends such as "Flanders for the Flemings." ”

“ One hears much in Belgium of the “Flemish Movement,” whose motto, adopted not long after the establishment of national independence, in 1830, is the Flemish sentence, “De taal is gansch het volk” (“The language is the whole people”) . This organized effort to foster Flemish traditions and literature had from the first the support of public men and writers, including Henri Conscience, Ledeganck, and Van Beers, who lent their voices and their pens to extol the heroic deeds of Flanders and to advance in every way possible the influence of the language in the kingdom. ”

“ The old people suppose he comes to us for the sake of my father's instruction. French people as we are become, we are still old Flemish, if not at heart, yet on the surface. Even in French Flanders, at Douai and Saint Omer, as I understand, in the churches and in people's houses, as may be seen from the very streets, there is noticeable a minute and scrupulous air of care-taking and neatness. Antony Watteau remarks this more than ever on returning to Valenciennes, and savours greatly, after his lodging in Paris, our Flemish cleanliness, lover as he is of distinction and elegance. ”

“ Even when moving the people all looked like wooden toys set in motion by strings—the strings in Flanders must be of gold: the Flemings seem to be all a money-making, money-loving people: they are fast recovering their activity after the Revolution.
The road to Bruges, fifty feet broad, solidly paved in the middle, seems, like all French and Flemish roads, to have been laid out by some inflexible mathematician: they are always right lines, the shortest possible between two points. ”

“ The Flemish artisans had been murdered or exiled, had quitted Flanders in thousands for England and Holland. These wealth-winning people were gone and their places were ill supplied, at least from a revenue-raising point of view, by Jesuits, monks, inquisitors, and bishops.
It is difficult to discover what he got from his possessions in the New and Old World. ”

“ Flanders was at that time the richest country in Europe. Its cities were numerous, and the whole land was populous and industrious. From England it received the wool used in its thriving manufactures. To England its people were attached. Philip loaded the Flemish people with imposts. They rose in revolt, and Robert d'Artois, Philip's brother, met with a disastrous defeat in a battle with the Flemish troops at Courtrai, in 1302. The Flemish burghers proved themselves too strong for the royal troops. Flanders was restored to its count, four towns being retained by France. ”

“ The boundaries of the Flanders of history and of art, however, cover a considerable wider area than these two provinces. Over in France a considerable part of the Department du Nord was for centuries subject to the Counts of Flanders. On the other side, to the eastward, the cities of Antwerp and Malines were for many centuries independent of the Counts of Flanders, but their people spoke Flemish, their houses, churches and town-halls were built in the best style of Flemish architecture, and they became famous centres of Flemish art and learning. ”

“ It is endeavoured by a proclamation of the Prince Sovereign to restore the Flemish language in all public acts and pleadings at law, to the exclusion of the French, which during the union of Belgium with France, was alone allowed to be used, and pains were taken that in all schools the French language only should be taught. But it is a difficult task, to overcome the partiality of a people for their ancient dialect, and the Flemish language is still used by the lower classes even in those parts of Flanders which have been united for above a century to France. ”

“ N.B.—Everywhere 6 francs for a bottle of Rhenish. Women generally pretty. Flemish face has no divinity—all pleasing more than beautiful—a sparkling eye in a full round. Their pictures of every age have the mark of their country.
As we went from Bruges, twilight softened all the beauty, and I do not know how to describe the feeling of pleasure we felt in going through its long roof-fretted streets, bursting on to spots where people were promenading amidst short avenues of trees. ”

“ One very seldom notices that Spanish type of face which is so common elsewhere—at Antwerp, for instance. Here the race is almost unmixed, and the peasants speak nothing but Flemish to each other. Many of them do not understand a word of French, though in Belgium French is, as everyone knows, the language of public life and of literature. The newspapers published in Flemish are small, and do not contain much beyond local news. The result is that the country people in West Flanders know very little of what is going on in the world beyond their own parishes. ”

“ 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 most vital interest in the estimate of Belgians of all classes is their home life. Certainly there are no people more industrious in the preservation of family traditions. Strangers are often surprised to learn that the old-time phrase, “East, West, Home’s Best,” originated, not with the Anglo-Saxons, but with the Flemish.
In Antwerp, quays are brisk with sailors, many of them in picturesquely uncouth costumes. At the Flemish Theater, subsidized by the Government, and at the Opera, the city’s rich betray the fondness of their race for jewels and brocaded dress stuffs. ”

“ As a result of the victory of democracy in most of the cities, Flemish became the language of the administration and was used for the registration of real estate and for accounts. Through existing relations with the merchants of the Hansa it became also the language of commercial affairs. Primary schools were established in all the cities, and instruction was given in the language of the people. The literary works of Van Maerlandt, whose influence has already been described, came freely into the possession of, and were read by, the humblest craftsmen. ”

“ As the Flemish cities depended upon England for the supply of the wool for their staple industry of weaving, he boldly came forward, as a tribune of the people, and at a great meeting at the monastery of Biloke unfolded his scheme of an alliance of the Flemish towns, with those of Brabant, Holland and Hainaut, to maintain an armed neutrality in the dynastic struggle between Edward III. and Philip VI. of France. ”

“ The English middle-eastern counties received frequent large migrations of Flemings during several centuries. Sometimes calamities due to the harshness of nature, sometimes persecutions and wars, sometimes adverse economic conditions, impelled companies of people from the Low Countries to cross the North Sea and try to make homes for themselves in a land which, despite intervals of distraction, offered greater security and a better reward than did the place whence they came. England derived much advantage from the infusion of this industrious, solid and dependable Flemish stock ”

“ Almost anywhere along this imaginary line, one can, by going a short distance south, be among people who nearly all speak French or the Walloon dialect of French, and, by going a little way north, be among people who, though they may write French and speak it as an acquired language, use Flemish as their native tongue. Nevertheless, in this densely populated, busy, rich, and closely unified kingdom, the various elements of the population were happily mingled. Thousands of Belgian families are part Walloon and part Flemish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The small shopmen, and the men and women of the markets, all look and talk Flemish, and the environment is everywhere as distinctly Flemish as if one were standing on one of the little bridges which cross the waterways of Ghent or Bruges.
The men and women are broad-bodied and coarse-featured,—quite different from the Dutch, one remarks,—and they move slowly and with apparent difficulty in their clumsy sabots and heavy clothing. The houses round about are tall and slim, and mostly in that state of antiquity and decay which we like to think is artistic.
Such is Flemish Brussels. ”

“ Conscience was eventually to make his greatest successes in the description of contemporary Flemish life, but his historical romances and his popular history of Flanders helped to give a popular basis to a movement which had been started by professors and scholars. ”

“ He is celebrated in Flemish history as the founder of ports and cities, the granter of charters of liberties, the maker of canals, the cultivator of sandy heaths and barren marshes, the strong administrator, the vigilant upholder of law, the friend and patron of poets and romancers. He also laboriously built up a great family connection, from which he hoped to establish a power such as might rival the aggregated fiefs of Blois or Anjou, and might well have anticipated the later unions of the Netherlands under the Bavarian and Burgundian houses. ”

“ His death opens the rule of the Burgundian dukes in the history of Flanders.
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The many years of internal struggle had seriously injured the prosperity of Flemish trade and industry. The finances of the communes were ruined; poverty was on the increase; the income from licenses had diminished; foreign merchants complained of the insecurity of their goods. Edward III invited many Flemish to emigrate to England, which they did, and the Flemish counts, by punishing the rebellious cities, had themselves cut off many sources of production and wealth. ”

“ It had reaped little benefit from the fifteen years of union with Holland, and there was a general belief, among the Flemings themselves, that it would never recover its ancient position. The Flemish literary Renaissance was initiated by a small group of intellectuals, headed by Jan Frans Willems (1793-1846) , who exerted all their energy to revive Flemish customs, collect folk songs and traditions, and obtain a liberal interpretation of the Constitution which proclaimed liberty of language. ”

“ Toward the close of the fifteenth century, the Dutch gained the ascendency over the others, which it has never since lost. This language is energetic and flexible, rich in synonyms and delicate shades, and from its fullness and strength, better adapted to history, tragedy, and odes, than to comedy and the lighter kinds of poetry. The Flemish, which still remains the literary language of the southern provinces, is inferior to the Dutch, and has been greatly corrupted by the admixture of foreign words. ”

“ The Flemish as a nation have never been renowned for loyalty to the princes who governed them, and the sturdy patriotism of this hard-headed race will most frequently be found to have been inspired less by motives of sentiment than by motives of self-interest. ”

“ In 1883 a law was passed rendering the teaching of Flemish (or “Netherlands,” as both Dutch and Belgians prefer to call it) obligatory in all intermediate schools. At Ghent University, moreover, all lectures are now delivered in that language, as well as some of the courses at the Universities of Brussels and Louvain. Straws show which way the wind blows; and, though a trifle, it is a significant one, that the streets of Antwerp are now labelled in Flemish, as well as French, and that public xxivnotices, advertisements, &c., when not bi-lingual, are usually Flemish. ”

“ Their navigators are the boldest, their mercantile marine the most powerful, their merchants the most enterprising in the world. Holland and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in the pursuits of civilization. The Flemish skill in the mechanical and in the fine arts is unrivalled. Belgian musicians delight and instruct other nations, Belgian pencils have, for a century, caused the canvas to glow with colors and combinations never seen before. Flemish fabrics are exported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. ”