Chapter II: Part 2

The ancient corporations and brotherhood, formerly of such power and renown, had likewise long since vanished, and nought remained but here and there on the silent, grass-grown streets gray, ancient palaces with barred and shuttered windows. The very names of those who once dwelt there could be found only in the musty archives in Bruges or Brussels. A small _estaminet_ across the bridge bore the sign "In den Pape Gaei," and to this I fared and wrote my notes, while the crippled girl carrying the baby seated herself where she could watch me, and then lapsed into a sort of trance, with wide open eyes which evidently saw not.

In company with a large, black, savage-looking dog which traveled side-ways regarding me threateningly, I thought, and gloweringly refused my offers of friendship, I crossed the Grand' Place to the Hôtel de Ville, or Town Hall, the door of which stood open. Inside, no living soul responded to my knock. The rooms were rather bare of furniture, many of them of noble proportions, and a few desks and chairs showed that they were used by the town officers, wherever they were.

St. Martin's was closed, and I skirted its walls, hoping to find somewhere a door unfastened that I might enter and see the great _Jube_ or altar screen. In a small, evil-smelling alley-way, where there was a patch of green grass, I saw low down in the wall a grated window, which I fancied must be at the back of the altar. I got down on my knees and, parting the grass which grew there rankly, I put my face in against the iron bars that closed it. For a moment I could see nothing, then when my eyes became accustomed to the light I saw a tall candle burning on an iron ring on the wall; then a heavy black cross beside it, and finally a figure in some sort of heavy dark robe kneeling prostrate before it, only the tightly clasped white hands gleaming in the dim candle light; almost holding my breath I withdrew my head, feeling that I was almost committing sacrilege. Unfortunately for me, I dislodged some loose mortar, and I heard this rattle noisily into the chamber below. Then I fled as rapidly as I could down the dim alley-way to the silent sunlit Grand' Place. Here I found the verger, and he admitted me to the great old church, in return for a one-franc piece, and brought me a rush-bottom chair to a choice spot before the wondrous _Jube_, where I made my drawing.

In the silence of the great gray old church I labored over the exquisite Gothic detail, all unmindful of the passing time, when all at once I became conscious that a small green door beside the right hand low _retable_ was moving outward. I ceased working and watched it; then the solitary candle before the statue of the Virgin guttered and flared up; then the small door opened wide and forth came an old man in a priest's cassock, with a staff in his hand. The small, green, baize-covered door closed noiselessly; the old man slowly opened the gate before the altar and came down the step toward me. Without a word he walked behind my chair and peered over my shoulder at the drawing I was making of the great _Jube_.

He tapped the floor with his staff, placed it under his arm, sought his pocket somewhere beneath his cassock, from which he produced a snuff box. From this he took a generous pinch, and a moment later was blowing vigorously that note of satisfaction that only a devotee of the powder can render an effective adjunct of emotion.

"Bien faite, M'sieur," he exclaimed at length, wiping his eyes on a rather suspicious looking handkerchief. "T-r-r-r-r-es bien faite! J'vous fais mes compliments." "Admirable! You have certainly rendered the spirit of our great and wondrous altar screen."

A little later we passed out of the old church through a side door leading into a small green enclosure, now gloomy in the shade of the old stone walls. At one end was a tangle of briar, and here were some old graves, each with a tinsel wreath or two on the iron cross. And presiding over these was the limp figure of a one-legged man on two crutches, who saluted us. We passed along to the end of the inclosure, where lay a chance beam of sunshine like a bar of dusty gold against the rich green grass.

"Oui, M'sieur," said the priest, as if continuing a sentence he was running over in his mind. "Cassé! Pauvre Pierre, un peu cassé, le pauvre bonhomme, but then, he's good for several years yet; cracked he is, but only cracked like a good old basin, and (in the idiom) he'll still hold well his bowl of soup."

He laughed at his wit, became grave, then shook out another laugh.

"See," he added, pointing to the ground all about us strewn with morsels of tile; "the roof cracks, but it still holds," he added, pointing upwards at the old tower of St. Martin's. "And now, M'sieur, I shall take you to my house; _tenez_, figure to yourself," and he laid a fine, richly veined, strong old hand upon my arm with a charming gesture. "I have been here twenty-five years; I bought all the antique furniture of my predecessor. I said to myself, 'Yes, I shall buy the furniture for five hundred francs, and then, later I shall sell to a wealthy amateur for one thousand francs, perhaps in a year or two.' Twenty-five years ago, and I have it yet. And now it creaks and creaks and snaps in the night. We all creak and creak thus as we grow old; ah, you should hear my wardrobes. 'Elles cassent les dos,' and I lie in my warm bed in the winter nights and listen to my antiques groan and complain. Poor old things, they belonged to the 'Empire' Period; no wonder they groan.

"And when my friend the notaire comes to play chess with me, you should see him eye my antiques, ah, so covetously; I see him, but I never let on. Such a collection of antiques as we all are, M'sieur." Then he became serious, and lifting his cane he pointed to a gravestone at one side, "My old servant lies there, M'sieur; we are all old here now, but still we do not die. Alas! we never die. There is plenty of room here for us, but we die hard. See, myotis, heliotrope, hare bells, and mignonette, a bed of perfume, and there lies my old servant. A restless old soul she was, and she took such a long time to die. She was eighty-five when she finally made up her mind."

I had a cup of wine with the old man in his small _salle à manger_. His house was indeed a mine of wealth for the antiquary and collector, more like a shop than a house. I lingered with him for nearly an hour, telling him of the great world lying beyond Dixmude, of London and Paris, and of New York and some of its wonders, of which I fancied he was rather sceptical. And then I came away, after shaking hands with him at his doorstep in the dim alley-way, with the bar of golden sunlight shining at the entrance to the Grand' Place and the noise of the rooks cawing on the roof.

"_Au revoir_, M'sieur le Peintre, _et bon voyage_, and remember, 'Ask, and it shall be given, seek and you shall find,'" and with these cryptic words, he stood with uplifted hands, a smile irradiating his fine ascetic face glowing like that of a saint. Behind the faded black of his old _soutane_ I could see his treasures of blue china and ancient cabinets, and a chance light illumined a mirror behind his head, and aureoled him like unto one of the saints behind the great "Jube," and thus I left him.

And now Dixmude is in formless heaps of ashes and burnt timbers. Hardly one stone now remains upon another. There is no longer a Grand' Place--and the very course of the river Yser is changed.

Ypres

Ypres

Ypres as a town grew out of a rude sort of stronghold built, says M. Vereeke in his "Histoire Militaire d'Ypres," in the year 900, on a small island in the river Yperlee. It was in the shape of a triangle with a tower on each corner, and was known to the inhabitants as the "Castle of the three Turrets."

Its establishment was followed by a collection of small huts on the banks of the stream, built by those who craved the protection of the fortress. They built a rampart of earth and a wide ditch to defend it, and to this they added from time to time until the works became so extensive that a town sprang into being, which from its strategic position on the borders of France soon became of great importance in the wars that constantly occurred. Probably no other Flemish town has seen its defenses so altered and enlarged as Ypres has between the primitive days when the crusading Thierry d'Alsace planted hedges of live thorns to strengthen the towers, and the formation of the great works of Vauban. We have been so accustomed to regarding the Fleming as a sluggish boor, that it comes in the nature of a surprise when we read of the part these burghers, these weavers and spinners, took in the great events that distinguished Flemish history. "In July, 1302, a contingent of twelve hundred chosen men, five hundred of them clothed in scarlet and the rest in black, were set to watch the town and castle of Courtrai, and the old Roman Broël bridge, during the battle of the 'Golden Spurs,' and the following year saw the celebration of the establishment of the confraternity of the Archers of St. Sebastian, which still existed in Ypres when I was there in 1910. This was the last survivor of the famed, armed societies of archers which flourished in the Middle Ages. Seven hundred of these men of Ypres embarked in the Flemish ships which so harassed the French fleet in the great naval engagement of June, 1340."

Forty years later five thousand men of Ypres fought upon the battlefield with the French, on that momentous day which witnessed the death of Philip Van Artevelde and the triumph of Leliarts. Later, when the Allies laid siege to the town, defended by Leliarts and Louis of Maele, it was maintained by a force of ten thousand men, and on June 8, 1383, these were joined by seventeen thousand English and twenty thousand Flemings, these latter from Bruges and Ghent.

At this time the gateways were the only part of the fortifications built of stone. The ramparts were of earth, planted with thorn bushes and interlaced with beams. Outside were additional works of wooden posts and stockades, behind the dyke, which was also palisaded. The English, believing that the town would not strongly resist their numbers, tried to carry it by assault. They were easily repulsed, to their great astonishment, with great losses.

At last they built three great wooden towers on wheels filled with soldiers, which they pushed up to the walls, but the valiant garrison swarmed upon these towers, set fire to them, and either killed or captured those who manned them.

All the proposals of Spencer demanding the surrender of Ypres were met with scorn, and the English were repeatedly repulsed with great losses of men whenever they attempted assaults.

The English turned upon the Flemish of Ghent with fury, saying that they had deceived them as to the strength of the garrison of Ypres, and Spencer, realizing that it was impossible to take the town before the French army arrived, retired from the field with his soldiers. This left Flanders at the mercy of the French. But now ensued the death of Count Louis of Maele (1384) and this brought Flanders under the rule of the House of Burgundy, which resulted in prosperity and well nigh complete independence for the Flemings.

The Great Kermesse of Our Lady of the Garden (Notre Dame de Thuine) was then inaugurated because the townspeople believe that Ypres had been saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary--the word Thuin meaning in Flemish "an enclosed space, such as a garden plot," an allusion to the barrier of thorns which had so well kept the enemy away from the walls--a sort of predecessor of the barbed-wire entanglements used in the present great world war.

The Kermesse was held by the people of Ypres on the first Sunday in August every year, called most affectionately "Thuindag," and while there in 1910 I saw the celebration in the great square before the Cloth Hall, and listened to the ringing of the chimes; the day being ushered in at sunrise by a fanfare of trumpets on the parapet of the tower by the members of a local association, who played ancient patriotic airs with great skill and enthusiasm.

In the Place de Musée, a quiet, gray corner of this old town, was an ancient Gothic house containing a really priceless collection of medals and instruments of torture used during the terrible days of the Spanish Inquisition. I spent long hours in these old musty rooms alone, and I might have stolen away whatever took my fancy had I been so minded, for the _custode_ left me quite alone to wander at will, and the cases containing the seals, parchments, and small objects were all unfastened.

I saw the other day another wonderful panorama photograph taken from an aeroplane showing Ypres as it now is, a vast heap of ruins, the Cloth Hall gutted; the Cathedral leveled, and the site of the little old museum a vast blackened hole in the earth where a shell had landed. The photograph, taken by an Englishman, was dated September, 1915.

The great Hanseatic League, that extensive system of monopolies, was the cause of great dissatisfaction and many wars because of jealousy and bad feeling. Ypres, Ghent, and Bruges, while defending their rights and privileges against all other towns, fought among themselves. The monopoly enjoyed by the merchant weavers of Ypres forbade all weaving for "three leagues around the walls of Ypres, under penalty of confiscation of the looms and all of the linen thus woven."

Constant friction was thus engendered between the towns of Ypres and Poperinghe, resulting in bloody battles and the burning and destruction of much property. Even within the walls of the town this bickering went on from year to year. When they were not quarreling with their neighbors over slights or attacks, either actual or fancied, they fought among themselves over the eternal question of capital _versus_ labor. A sharp line was drawn between the workingman and the members of the guilds who sold his output. The artisans, whose industry contributed so greatly to the prosperity of these towns, resented any infringement of their legal rights. The merchant magistrates were annually elected, and on one occasion, in 1361, to be exact, because this was omitted, the people arose in their might against the governors, who were assembled in the Nieuwerck of the Hôtel de Ville. The Baillie, one Jean Deprysenaere, haughty in his supposed power, and trusting in his office, as local representative of the Court of Flanders, appeared before the insurgent weavers and endeavored to appease them. "They fell upon him and slew him" (Vereeke). Then, rushing into the council chamber, they seized the other magistrates and confined them in the belfry of the Cloth Hall.

"Then the leaders in council resolved to kill the magistrates, and beheaded the Burgomaster and two sheriffs in the place before the Cloth Hall in the presence of their colleagues" (Vereeke).

Following the custom of the Netherlands, each town acted for itself alone. The popular form of government was that of gatherings in the market-place where laws were discussed and made by and for the people. The spirit of commercial jealousy, however, kept them apart and nullified their power. Consumed by the thirst for commercial, material prosperity, they had no faith in each other, no bond of union, each being ready and willing to foster its own interest at its rival's expense. Thus neither against foreign nor internal difficulties were they really united. The motto of modern Belgium, "L'Union fait la Force," was not yet invented, and there was no great and powerful authority in which they believed and about which they could gather.

This history presents the picture of Ghent assisting an army of English soldiers to lay siege to Ypres. So the distrustful people dwelt amid perpetual quarreling, trade pitted against trade, town against town, fostering weakness of government and shameful submission in defeat. No town suffered as did Ypres during this distracted state of affairs in Flanders of the sixteenth century, which saw it reduced from a place of first importance to a dead town with the population of a village. And so it remained up to the outbreak of the world war in 1914.

This medieval and most picturesque of all the towns of Flanders had not felt the effect of the wave of restoration, which took place in Belgium during the decade preceding the outbreak of the world war, owing to the fact that its monuments of the past were perhaps finer and in a better state of preservation than those of any of the other ancient towns. Ypres in the early days had treated the neighboring town of Poperinghe with great severity through jealousy, but she in turn suffered heavily at the hands of Ghent in 1383-84 when the vast body of weavers fled, taking refuge in England, and taking with them all hope of the town's future prosperity.

Its decline thenceforward was rapid, and it never recovered its former place in the councils of Flanders. Its two great memorials of the olden times were the great Cloth Hall, in the Grand' Place, and the Cathedral of Saint Martin, both dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The Cloth Hall, begun by Count Baldwin IX of Flanders, was perhaps the best preserved and oldest specimen of its kind in the Netherlands, and was practically complete up to the middle of August, 1915, when the great guns of the iconoclastic invader shot away the top of the immense clock tower, and unroofed the entire structure. Its façade was nearly five hundred feet long, of most severe and simple lines, and presented a double row of ogival windows, surmounted by niches containing thirty-one finely executed statues of counts and countesses of Flanders. There were small, graceful turrets at each end, and a lofty belfry some two hundred and thirty feet in height in the center, containing a fine set of bells connected with the mechanism of a carillon.

The interior of the hall was of noble proportions, running the full length, its walls decorated by a series of paintings by two modern Flemish painters, which were not of the highest merit, yet good withal. At the market-place end was a highly ornate structure called the New Work (Nieuwerke), erected by the burghers as a guild-hall in the fifteenth century. This was the first part of the edifice to be ruined by a German shell.

The destruction of this exquisite work of art seems entirely wanton and unnecessary. It produced no result whatever of advantage. There were neither English, French, nor Belgian soldiers in Ypres at the time. The populace consisted of about ten thousand peaceful peasants and shopkeepers, who, trusting in the fact that the town was unarmed and unfortified, remained in their homes. The town was battered and destroyed, leveled in ashes. The bombardment destroyed also the great Cathedral of Saint Martin adjoining the Cloth Hall, which dated from the thirteenth century [although the tower was not added until the fifteenth century]. It formed a very fine specimen of late Gothic, the interior containing some fine oak carving and a richly carved and decorated organ loft. Bishop Jansenius, the founder of the sect of Jansenists, is buried in a Gothic cloister which formed a part of the older church that occupied the site.

Another interesting monument of past greatness was the Hôtel de Ville, erected in the sixteenth century, and containing a large collection of modern paintings by French and Belgian artists. Of this structure not a trace remains save a vast blackened pile of crumbled stones and mortar. In the market-place now roam bands of half-starved dogs in search of food; not a roof remains intact. A couple of sentries pace before the hospital at the end of the Grand' Place. A recent photograph in the _Illustrated London News_ taken from an aeroplane shows the ruined town like a vast honeycomb uncovered, the streets and squares filled with débris, the fragments of upstanding walls showing where a few months ago dwelt in peace and prosperity an innocent, happy people, now scattered to the four winds--paupers, subsisting upon charity. Their valiant and noble king and queen are living with the remnant of the Belgian army in the small fishing village of La Panne on the sand dunes of the North Sea.

The unique character of the half-forgotten town was exemplified by the number of ancient, wooden-faced houses to be found in the side streets. The most curious of these, perhaps, was that situated near the Porte de Lille, which I have mentioned in another page, and which noted architects of Brussels and Antwerp vainly petitioned the State to protect, or to remove bodily the façade and erect it in one of the vast "Salles" of the Cloth Hall. Both MM. Pauwels and Delbeke, the mural painters, then engaged in the decorations of the Cloth Hall, joined in protests to the authorities against their neglect of this remarkable example of medieval construction, but all these petitions were pigeonholed, and nothing resulted but vain empty promises, so the matter rested, and now this beautiful house has vanished forever.

The great mural decorations of the "Halles" were nearly completed by MM. Delbeke and Pauwels, when they both died within a few months of each other, in 1891. In these decorations the artists traced the history of Ypres from 1187 to 1383, the date of the great siege, showing taste and elegance in the compositions, notably in that called the "Wedding feast of Mahaut, daughter of Robert of Bethune, with Mathias of Lorraine (1314)."

One of the panels by M. Pauwels showed most vividly the progress of the "Pest," under the title of the "Mort d'Ypres" (_de Dood van Yperen_, Flemish). It represented the "Fossoyeur" calling upon the citizens upon the tolling of the great bell of St. Martin's, to bring out their dead for burial.

M. Delbeke's talent was engaged upon scenes illustrating the civil life of the town, the gatherings in celebration of the philanthropic and intellectual events in its remarkable history, a task in which he was successful in spite of the carping of envious contemporaries.

A committee of artists was appointed to examine his work, and although this body decided in his favor, it may be that the criticism to which he was subjected hastened his death. At any rate the panels remained unfinished, no other painter having the courage to carry out the projected work.

The original sketches for these great compositions were preserved in the museum of the town, but the detailed drawings, some in color, were, up to the outbreak of the war in 1914, in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Brussels, together with the cartoons of another artist, Charles de Groux (1870), to whom the decoration of the Halles had been awarded by the State in competition. A most sumptuous Gothic apartment was that styled the "Salle Echevinale," restored with great skill in recent years by a concurrence of Flemish artists, members of the Academy. Upon either side of a magnificent stone mantel, bearing statues in niches of kings, counts and countesses, bishops and high dignitaries, were large well executed frescoes by MM. Swerts and Guffens, showing figures of the evangelists St. Mark and St. John, surrounded by myriads of counts and countesses of Flanders, from the time of Louis de Nevers and Margaret of Artois to Charles the Bold, and Margaret of York, whose tombs are in the Cathedral at Bruges. The attribution of these frescoes to Melchior Broederlam does not, it would seem, accord with the style or the date of their production, M. Alph. van den Peereboom thinks, and he gives credit for the work to two painters who worked in Ypres in 1468--MM. Pennant and Floris Untenhoven.

In my search for the curious and picturesque, I came, one showery day, upon a passageway beneath the old belfry which led to the tower of St. Martin's. Here one might believe himself back in the Middle Ages. On both sides of the narrow street were ancient wooden-fronted houses not a whit less interesting or well preserved than that front erected in the chamber of the "Halles." This small dark street led to a vast and solitary square. On one side were lofty edifices called the Colonnade of the "Nieuwerck," at the end of which was a quaint vista of the Grand' Place. On the other side was a range of most wondrous ancient constructions; the _conciergerie_ and its attendant offices, bearing finials and gables of astonishing richness of character, and ornamented with _chefs-d'oeuvres_ of iron-work, marking the dates of erection, all of them prior to 1616. In this square not a soul appeared, nor was there a sound to be heard save the cooing of some doves upon a rooftree, although I sat there upon a stone coping for the better part of a half hour. Then all at once, out of a green doorway next the _conciergerie_, poured a throng of children, whose shrill cries and laughter brought me back to the present. One wonders where now are these merry light-hearted little ones, who thronged that gray grass-grown square behind the old Cloth Hall in 1912....

In this old square I studied the truly magnificent south portal and transept of St. Martin's, the triple portal with its splendid polygonal rose window, and its two graceful slender side towers, connecting a long gallery between the two smaller side portals. One's impression of this great edifice is that of a sense of noble proportions, rather than ornateness, and this is to be considered remarkable when one remembers the different epochs of its construction. That the choir was commenced in 1221 is established by the epitaph of Hugues, _prévôt_ of St. Martin's, whose ashes reposed in the church which he built: that the first stone of the nave transepts was laid with ceremony by Marguerite of Constantinople in 1254; that the south portal was of the fifteenth century and that a century later the chapel called the _doyen_ toward the south wall at the foot of the tower, was erected. The tower itself, visible from all parts of the town, was the conception of Martin Untenhoven of Malines, and replaced a more primitive one in 1433. Of very severe character, its great bare bulk rose to an unfinished height of some hundred and seventy feet, and terminated in a squatty sort of pent-house roof of typical Flemish character. It was flanked by four smaller, unfinished towers, one at each corner. This tower, one may recall, figures in many of the pictures of Jean van Eyck. It is not without reason that Schayes, in his "Histoire de l'Architecture en Belgique," speaks of the choir of St. Martin's as "one of the most remarkable of the religious constructions of the epoch in Belgium." Of most noble lines and proportion if it were not for the intruding altar screen in the Jesuit style, which mars the effect, the ensemble were well-nigh perfect.

Its decoration, too, was remarkable. A fresco at the left of the choir, with a portrait of Robert de Bethune, Count of Flanders, who died at Ypres in 1322 and was buried in the church, was uncovered early in the eighties during a restoration; this had been most villainously repainted by a local "artist"(?); and I mortally offended the young priest who showed it to me, by the vehemence of my comments.

The stalls of the choir, in two banks or ranges, twenty-seven above, twenty-four below, bore the date of 1598, and the signature of d'Urbain Taillebert, a native sculptor of great merit, who also carved the great _Jube_ of Dixmude (see drawing). Other works of Taillebert are no less remarkable, notably the superb arcade with the Christ triumphant suspended between the columns at the principal entrance. He was also the sculptor of the mausoleum of Bishop Antoine de Hennin, erected in 1622 in the choir.

In the pavement before the altar a plain stone marked the resting place of the famous Corneille Jansen (Cornelius Jansenius), seventh Bishop of Ypres, who died of the pest the 6th of May, 1638. One recalls that the doctrine of Jansen gave birth to the sect of that name which still flourishes in Holland.

Following the Rue de Lille one came upon the old tower of St. Pierre, massed among tall straight lines of picturesque poplars, its bulk recalling vaguely the belfry of the Cloth Hall. In this church was shown a curious little picture, representing the devil setting fire to the tower, which was destroyed in 1638, but was later rebuilt after the original plans. The interior had no dignity of style whatever. There were, however, some figures of the saints Peter and Paul attributed to Carel Van Yper, which merited the examination of connoisseurs. They are believed by experts to have been the "volets" of a triptych of which the center panel was missing.

The Place St. Pierre was picturesque and smiling. Following this route we found on the right at the end of a small street the hospital St. Jean, with an octagonal tower, which enshrined some pictures attributed to the prolific Carel Van Yper, comment upon which would be perhaps out of place here. On the corner of this street was a most charming old façade in process of demolishment, which we deplored.

Now we reached the Porte de Lille again and the remains of the old walls of the town. Again and again we followed this same route, each time finding some new beauty or hidden antiquity which well repaid us for such persistence. Few of the towns of Flanders presented such treasures as were to be found in Ypres. Following the walk on the ramparts, past the _caserne_ or infantry barracks, one came upon the place of the ancient château of the counts, a vast construction under the name of "de Zaalhof." Here was an antique building called the "Lombard," dated 1616, covered with old iron "ancres" and crosses between the high small-paned windows.

By the Rue de Beurre one regained the Grand' Place, passing through the silent old Place Van den Peereboom in the center of which was the statue of the old Burgomaster of that name.

The aspect of this silent grass-grown square behind the Cloth Hall was most impressive. Here thronged the burghers of old, notably on the occasion of the entry of Charles the Bold and his daughter Marguerite, all clad in fur, lace, and velvet to astonish the inhabitants, who instead of being impressed, so outshone the visitors, by their own and their wives' magnificence of apparel, that Marguerite was reported to have left the banquet hall in pique. The belfry quite dominated the square at the eastern angle, where were the houses forming the _conciergerie_.

Turning to the right by way of the Chemin de St. Martin, one found the ancient Beguinage latterly used by the gendarmerie as a station, the lovely old chapel turned into a stable! In this old town were hundreds of remarkable ancient houses, each of which merits description in this book. But perhaps in this brief and very fragmentary description the reader may find reason for the author's enthusiasm, and agree with him that Ypres was perhaps the most unique and interesting of all the destroyed towns in Flanders.

Commines

Commines

It was not hard to realize that here we were in the country of Bras-de-Fer, of Memling, of Cuyp, and Thierry d'Alsace, for, on descending from the halting, bumping train at the small brick station, we were face to face with a bizarre, bulbous-topped tower rising above the houses surrounding a small square, and now quite crowded with large, hollow-backed, thick-legged Flemish horses, which might have been those of the followers of Thierry gathered in preparation for an onslaught upon one of the neighboring towns.

It seemed as though any turning might bring us face to face with a grim cohort of mounted armed men in steel corselet and morion, bearing the banner of Spanish Philip, so sinister were the narrow, ill-paved streets, darkened by the projecting second stories of the somber, gray-stone houses. Rarely was there an open door or window. As we passed, our footsteps on the uneven stones awakened the echoes. A fine drizzle of rain which began to fall upon us from the leaden sky did not tend to enliven us, and we hastened toward the small Grand' Place, where I noted on a sign over a doorway the words, "In de Leeuw Van Vlanderen" (To the Flemish Lion), which promised at least shelter from the rainfall. Here we remained until the sun shone forth.

Commines (Flemish, Komen) was formerly a fortified town of some importance in the period of the Great Wars of Flanders. It was the birthplace of Philip de Commines (1445-1509). It was, so to say, one of the iron hinges upon which the great military defense system of the burghers swung and creaked in those dark days. To-day, in these rich fields about the small town, one can find no traces of the old-time bastions which so well guarded the town from Van Artevelde's assaults. Inside the town were scarcely any trees, an unusual feature for Flanders, and on the narrow waterways floated but few craft.

The only remarkable thing by virtue of its Renaissance style of architecture was the belfry and clock tower, although some of the old Flemish dwelling houses in the market square, projecting over an ogival Colonnade extending round one end of the square, and covering a sort of footway, were of interest, uplifting their step-like gables as a silent but eloquent protest against a posterity devoid of style, all of them to the right and left falling into line like two wings of stone in order to allow the carved front of the belfry to make a better show, and its pinnacled tower to rise the prouder against the sky.

One was struck with the ascendency of the religious element over all forms of art, and this was a characteristic of the Flemings. One was everywhere confronted with a curious union of religion and war, representations peopled exclusively by seraphic beings surrounded or accompanied by armed warriors. Everything is adoration, resignation, incense fumes, psalmody, and crusaders. The greatest buildings we saw were ecclesiastical, the richest dresses were church vestments, even "the princes and burghers accompanied by armed knights remind one of ecclesiastics celebrating the Mass. All the women are holy virgins, seemingly. The chasm between the ideal and the reality itself, however idealized, but by meditation manifested pictorially." ("The Land of Rubens," C.B. Huet).

We sat for an hour in the small, sooty, tobacco-smelling _estaminet_ (from the Spanish _estamento_--an inn), and then the skies clearing somewhat we fared forth to explore the belfry, which in spite of its sadly neglected state was still applied to civic use. Some dark, heavy, oaken beams in the ceiling of the principal room showed delicately carved, fancy heads, some of them evidently portraits. At the rear of the tower on the ground floor, I came upon a vaulted apartment supported on columns, and being used as a storehouse. Its construction was so handsome, it was so beautifully lighted from without, as to make one grieve for its desecration; it may have served in the olden time as a refectory, and if so was doubtless the scene of great festivity in the time of Philip de Commines, who was noted for the magnificence of his entertainments.

The Flemish burghers of the Middle Ages first built themselves a church; when that was finished, a great hall. That of Ypres took more than two hundred years to complete. How long this great tower of Commines took, I can only conjecture. Its semi-oriental pear-shaped (or onion-shaped, as you will) tower was certainly of great antiquity; even the unkempt little priest whom I questioned in the Grand' Place could give me little or no information concerning it. Indeed, he seemed to be on the point of resenting my questions, as though he thought that I was in some way poking fun at him. I presume that it was the scene of great splendor in their early days. For here a count of Flanders or a duke of Brabant exercised sovereign rights, and at such a ceremony as the laying of a corner-stone assumed the place of honor, although the real authority was with the burghers, and founded upon commerce. While granting this privilege, the Flemings ever hated autocracy. They loved pomp, but any attempt to exercise power over them infuriated them.

"The architecture of the Fleming was the expression of aspiration," says C.B. Huet ("The Land of Rubens").

"The Flemish hall has often the form of a church; art history, aiming at classification, ranges it among the Gothic by reason of its pointed windows. The Hall usually is a defenceless feudal castle without moats, without porticullis, without loopholes. It occupies the center of a market-place. It is a temple of peace, its windows are as numerous as those in the choirs of that consecrated to the worship of God.

"From the center of the building uprises an enormous mass, three, four, five stories high, as high as the cathedral, perhaps higher. It is the belfry, the transparent habitation of the alarm bell (as well as the chimes). The belfry cannot defend itself, a military character is foreign to it. But as warden of civic liberty it can, at the approach of domination from without, or autocracy uplifting its head within, awaken the threatened ones, and call them to arms in its own defence. The belfry is thus a symbol of a society expecting happiness from neither a dynasty nor from a military despotism, but solely from common institutions, from commerce and industry, from a citizen's life, budding in the shadow of the peaceful church, and borrowing its peaceful architecture from it. To the town halls of Flanders belonged the place of honor among the monuments of Belgian architecture. No other country of Europe offered so rich a variety in that respect.

"Courtrai replaces Arras; Oudenaarde and Ypres follow suit. Then come Tournai, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Louvain. Primary Gothic, secondary Gothic, tertiary Gothic, satisfying every wish. Flanders and Brabant called the communal style into life. If ever Europe becomes a commune, the communards have but to go to Ypres to find motifs from their architects."

Since this was written, in 1914, many, if not most, of these great buildings thus enumerated above, are now in ruins, utterly destroyed for all time!

Bergues

Bergues

A tiny sleepy town among the fringe of great willow trees which marked the site of the ancient walls. Belted by its crumbling ramparts, and like a quaint gem set in the green enamel of the smiling landscape, it offered a resting place far from the cares and noise of the world.

Quite ignored by the guide books, it had, I found, one of the most remarkable belfries to be found in the Netherlands, and a chime of sweet bells, whose melodious sounds haunted our memories for days after our last visit in 1910.

There were winding, silent streets bordered by mysteriously closed and shuttered houses, but mainly these were small and of the peasant order. On the Grand' Place, for of course there was one, the tower sprang from a collection of rather shabby buildings, of little or no character, but this did not seem to detract from the magnificence of the great tower. I use the word "great" too often, I fear, but can find no other word in the language to qualify these "Campanili" of Flanders.

This one was embellished with what are known as "ogival arcatures," arranged in zones or ranks, and there were four immense turrets, one at each corner, these being in turn covered with arcatures of the same character. These flanked the large open-work, gilded, clock face. Surmounting this upon a platform was a construction in the purely Flemish style, containing the chime of bells, and the machinery of the carillon, and topping all was a sort of inverted bulb or gourd-shaped turret, covered with blue slate, with a gilded weathervane about which the rooks flew in clouds.

The counterpart of this tower was not to be found anywhere in the Netherlands, and one is surprised that it was so little known.

Upon the occasion of our visit the town was given up to the heavy and stolid festivities of the "Kermesse," which is now of interest here only to the laboring class and the small farmers of the region. The center of attraction, as we found in several other towns, seemed to be an incredibly fat woman emblazoned on a canvas as the "Belle Heloise" who was seated upon a sort of throne draped in red flannel, and exhibited a pair of extremities resembling in size the masts of a ship, to the great wonder of the peasants. There were also some shabby merry-go-rounds with wheezy organs driven by machinery, and booths in which hard-featured show women were frying waffles in evil smelling grease. After buying some of these for the children who stood about with watering mouths, we left the "Kermesse" and wandered away down a silent street towards a smaller tower rising from a belt of dark trees.

This we found to be the remains of the ancient abbey of St. Winoc. A very civil mannered young priest who overtook us on the road informed us of this, and volunteered further the information that we were in what was undoubtedly the ancient _jardin-clos_ of the Abbey. Of this retreat only the two towers standing apart in the long grass remained, one very heavy and square, supported by great buttresses of discolored brick, the other octangular, in stages, and retaining its high graceful steeple.

We were unable to gain entrance to either of these towers, the doorways being choked with weeds and the débris of fallen masonry. [The invaders destroyed both of these fine historical remains in November, 1914, alleging that they were being used for military observation by the Belgian army.] These small towns of Flanders had a simple dignity of their own which was of great attraction to the tourist, who could, without disillusionment, imagine himself back in the dim past. In the wayside inns or _estaminets_ one could extract amusement and profit listening to the peasantry or admiring the sunlight dancing upon the array of bottles and glass on the leaden counters, or watch the peasants kneel and cross themselves before the invariable quaint niched figure of the Virgin and Child under the hanging lighted lantern at a street corner, the evidence of the piety of the village, or the throngs of lace-capped, rosy-cheeked milkmaids with small green carts drawn by large, black, "slobbering" dogs of fierce mien, from the distant farms, on their way to market.

Thus the everyday life of the region was rendered poetic and artistic, and all with the most charming unconsciousness.

Nieuport

Nieuport

In the midst of a level field to the east of the town of Nieuport in 1914 was a high square weather-beaten tower, somewhat ruinous, built of stone and brick in strata, showing the different eras of construction in the various colors of the brick work ranging from light reds to dark browns and rich blacks. This tower, half built and square topped, belonged to a structure begun in the twelfth century, half monastery, half church, erected by the Templars as a stronghold. Repeatedly attacked and set on fire, it escaped complete destruction, although nearly laid in ruins by the English and burghers of Ghent in 1383, the year of the famous siege of Ypres. During the Wars of 1600, it was an important part of the fortifications, and from the platform of its tower the Spanish garrison commanded a clear view of the surrounding country and the distance beyond the broad moat, which then surrounded the strong walls of Nieuport.

In plain view from this tower top were the houses of Furnes, grouped about the church of Saint Nicolas to the southwest, while to the north the wide belt of dunes, or sand hills, defended the plains from the North Sea. Nearer were the populous villages of Westende and Lombaerd-Zyde, connected with Nieuport by numerous small lakes and canals derived from the channel of the Yser river, which flowed past the town on its way to the sea.

The history of Nieuport, from the terrible days of the Spanish invasion down to these days of even worse fate, has been pitiable. Its former sea trade after the Spanish invasion was never recovered, and its population, which was beginning to be thrifty and prosperous up to 1914, has now entirely disappeared. Nieuport is now in ashes and ruins. When I passed the day there in the summer of 1910, it was a sleepy, quiet spot, a small fishing village, with old men and women sitting in doorways and on the waysides, mending nets, and knitting heavy woolen socks or sweaters of dark blue. In the small harbor were the black hulls of fishing boats tied up to the quaysides, and a small steamer from Ghoole was taking on a cargo of potatoes and beets. Some barges laden with wood were being pulled through the locks by men harnessed to a long tow rope, and a savage dog on one of these barges menaced me with dripping fangs and bloodshot eyes when I stopped to talk to the steersman, who sat on the tiller smoking a short, evil-smelling pipe, while his "vrouwe" was hanging out a heavy wash of vari-colored garments on a line from the staff on the bow to a sweep fastened upright to the cabin wall.

The ancient fortification had long since disappeared--those "impregnable walls of stone" which once defended the town from the assaults of Philip the Second. I found with some difficulty a few grass-grown mounds where they had been, and only the gray, grim tower of the Templars, standing solitary in a turnip field, remained to show what had been a mighty stronghold. In the town, however, were souvenirs enough to occupy an antiquary for years to his content and profit. There was the Cloth Hall, with its five pointed low arched doorways from which passed in and out the Knights of the Temple gathered for the first pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On this market square too was the great Gothic Church, one of the largest and most important in all Flanders, and on this afternoon in the summer of 1910, I attended a service here, while in the tower a bell ringer played the chime of famous bells which now lie in broken fragments amid the ashes of the fallen tower.

Here was fought the bloody "Battle of the Dunes," between the Dutch and the Spaniards in those dim days of long ago, when the stubborn determination of the Netherlanders overcame the might and fiery valor of the Spanish invaders.

From time to time the peasants laboring in the fields uncovered bones, broken steel breast-plates, and weapons, which they brought to the museum on the Grand' Place, and which the sleepy _custode_ showed me with reluctance, until I offered him a franc. It is curious that famous Nieuport, for which so much blood was shed in those early days, should again have been a famous battle ground between the handful of valiant soldiers of the heroic King Albert and a mighty Teutonic foe.

The dim gray town with its silent streets, the one time home of romance and chivalry, the scene of deeds of knightly valor, is now done for forever. It is not likely that it can ever again be of importance, for its harbor is well-nigh closed by drifting sand. But I shall always keep the vision I had of it that summer day, in its market place, its gabled houses against the luminous sky, its winding streets, and narrow byways across which the roofs almost touch each other. The ancient palaces are now in ruins, and the peaceful population scattered abroad, charges upon the charity of the world. Certainly a woeful picture in contrast to the content of other days.

The vast green plains behind the dunes, or sand hills, extend unbrokenly from here to the French frontier, spire after spire dominating small towns, and windmills, are the objects seen. To some the flatness is most monotonous, but to those who find pleasure in the paintings of Cuyp, the country is very picturesque. The almost endless succession of green, well-cultivated fields and farmsteads is most entertaining, and the many canals winding their silvery ways through the country, between rows of pollards; the well kept though small country houses embowered in woody enclosures; the fruitful orchards in splendid cultivation; the gardens filled with fair flowers and the "most compact little towns"--these give the region a romance and attraction all its own.

Here and there is a hoary church erected in forgotten times on ground dedicated to Thor or Wodin. This part of the country bordering the fifty mile stretch of coast line on the North Sea was given over latterly to the populous bathing establishments and their new communities, but the other localities, such as Tournai, Courtrai, Oudenaarde or Alost, were seldom visited by strangers, whose advent created almost as much excitement as it would in Timbuctoo. It was not inaccessible, but the roads were not good for automobiles; they were mainly paved with rough "Belgian" blocks of stone, high in the center, with a dirt roadway on either side, used by the peasants and quite rutty.

A walking tour for any but the hardiest pedestrian was out of the question, so I was told that the best way for a "bachelor" traveler was to secure transportation on the canal boats. This was the warning that our kind hearted landlord in Antwerp gave us, after vainly endeavoring to discourage us from leaving him for such a tour.

The canals, however, are not numerous enough in this region, I found, and besides there are various other disadvantages which I leave to the reader's imagination.

In addition to the main lines of the State Railway, there were what are called "Chemins-de-fer-vicinaux," small narrow gauge railways which traversed Belgium in all directions. On these the fares were very reasonable, and they formed an ideal way in which to study the country and the people. There were first, second and third class carriages on these, hung high on tall wheels, which looked very unsafe, but were not really so. The classes varied only in the trimming of the windows, and quality of the cushions on the benches. Rarely if ever, were those marked "I Klasse" used. Those of the second class were used sometimes; but the third class cars were generally very crowded with peasantry, who while invariably good humored and civil were certainly evil smelling, and intolerant of open windows and fresh air. The men and boys generally smoked a particularly vile-smelling black tobacco, of which they seemed very fond, and although some of the cars were marked "Niet rooken" (no smoking) no one seemed to object to the fumes.

Here one seldom saw the purely Spanish type of face so usual in Antwerp and Brabant. The race seemed purer, and the peasants used the pure Flemish tongue. Few of the elders I found spoke French fluently, although the children used it freely to each other, of course understanding and speaking Flemish also.

There were various newspapers published in the Flemish language exclusively. These, however, were very primitive, given over entirely to purely local brevities, and the prices of potatoes, beets and other commodities, and containing also a "feuilleton" of interest to the farmers and laborers.

There were several "organs" of the Flemish Patriotic party devoted to the conservation and preservation of the Flemish language and the ancient traditions, which were powerful among the people, although their circulation could not have been very profitable. The peasantry in truth were very ignorant, and knew of very little beyond their own parishes. The educational standard of the people of West Flanders was certainly low, and it was a matter of comment among the opponents of the established church, that education being in the hands of the clergy, they invariably defeated plans for making it compulsory. But nevertheless, the peasantry were to all appearances both contented and fairly happy.