The Spell of Flanders. Edward Neville Vose

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СКАЧАТЬ and go on to Brussels in the morning. As we emerged from the great Gare Centrale we found despite the lateness of the hour, about a dozen red-capped hotel runners, each of whom clamoured for our patronage. They all looked very much alike, the names on their caps meant nothing to us as we were not familiar with the Antwerp hotels, and we selected one at random. To our dismay we discovered, when it was too late, that, whereas most of them had hotel busses in waiting—into which they leaped and were driven off—our cicerone was not so provided. He attempted to reassure us by saying that the Grand Hotel de – was close by—a fact that produced the opposite effect from that intended, as we knew that the immediate vicinity of a large railroad station is seldom a desirable neighbourhood.

      “However, the other porters were now gone and, unless we were disposed to sleep in the station, there was nothing to do but follow along. To our further alarm our guide presently turned into a most unprepossessing street on which several drinking places were still open, or were only on the point of closing. Into one of these he led us. After a short conference with the proprietress, who was sitting behind the bar counting the day’s receipts, he took a candle and a huge key and led us out into the court, then up a flight of stairs placed on the outside of the house, and through several narrow passageways. But for the flickering candle everything was completely dark, and when he finally ushered us into an immense room with a mediæval four-post bed in its darkest corner we involuntarily looked for the trap-door down which the murderous inn-keepers of the stories were wont to cast their victims.

      “Lighting a pair of candles on the mantelpiece from his, and wishing us a civil ‘Bon soir,’ our red-capped guide now left us—to our great relief. Although we tried to dismiss our fears as childish, we both felt more insecure and helpless than we cared to admit, even to each other. None of our friends knew that we were in Antwerp. If we disappeared they would hardly think to look for us there—and still less on this shabby street, the very name of which we did not know.

      “We barricaded the door against a sudden surprise, inspected the walls with a candle for signs of the secret door (at the head of the winding stairway up which the wicked innkeeper so often creeps upon his prey, according to the chronicles) and at last, the fatigue of the day overcoming our fears, we slept. It was broad daylight when we awoke, and the street was alive with people—mostly cartmen and peasants it seemed. With some difficulty we found our way down to the room where we had seen the landlady the night before. She greeted us warmly, our fears of the night had fled—and we sat down and ordered, and enjoyed, a most excellent breakfast. The hotel was quite a popular one, we learned, much frequented by people from near-by towns, and we had never been safer in our lives. Yet, just the same, we both vowed firmly that ‘Never Again’ would we take similar chances—and we never have.”

      “I have thought of that incident more than once while talking over our Flemish tour with the Professor,” I observed, “and have decided upon this plan. When we find a hotel that suits us all, as regards cleanliness, cuisine and safety—or rather the sense of security, for I daresay we would be safe enough in many that we would hardly care to patronise—we will stay overnight in whatever town we may chance to be visiting. If, on the other hand, we have not had time to find such a place, we’ll take a train back to Antwerp or Brussels, where there are hotels that we know all about. We’ll get second-class billets d’abonnement every two weeks anyway, so the rail trip will only cost us our time.”

      “And are Antwerp and Brussels both in Flanders?” inquired Mrs. Professor. “Between you, you have given me an idea that I should like to visit Flanders, but you have none of you answered my question as to where it is.”

      “I think I can answer you, my dear,” replied her husband. “There are, as you probably know, two little provinces in the northern part of Belgium called East and West Flanders. 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. To my mind, therefore, they both belong to Flanders. Brussels, however, while its Hotel de Ville and Grande Place are splendid examples of Flemish architecture, is more French than Flemish, and belongs to the Walloon or French part of Belgium.

      “Now, as the Editor here has proposed a plan which seems to me a good one as regards our hotels, I will venture to suggest one as regards our itinerary. It will make comparatively little difference which towns we visit first, and as some are more closely identified with the early history of Flanders than the others I propose that we visit these older towns first. At the time of the Crusades Ypres, for example, had two hundred thousand inhabitants when the population of London was less than thirty-five thousand and Antwerp was an obscure little town. Nieuport and Furnes were, at that time, the chief seaports of Flanders. Now they are miles from the sea. Dixmude, near by, was another important city of those olden days. Now all these places are country villages—‘the dead cities of Flanders,’ they are called, and scarcely a tourist from America ever visits them, although they are fairly familiar to our English cousins.

      “If we start our pilgrimage in Flanders with Bruges, which was the first capital of the 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.”

      This plan was unanimously voted to be a capital one—in theory, at any rate—and thus it was that in our subsequent wanderings about Flanders, under the guidance of the indefatigable Professor, we often crossed our trail, and now and then visited the same place more than once. In practice it did not accomplish quite all that was expected of it by its learned originator—but what plan ever does, or ever will? That it enhanced the interest of the trip manyfold we all agreed; it often sustained our flagging zeal, and it helped us to know Flanders—the Flanders of the past especially—far better than we would have done in any other way.

      CHAPTER II

      VIEUX BRUGES AND COUNT BALDWIN OF THE IRON ARM

      It is not the purpose of this veracious chronicle to recount the doings and sayings, the incidents or lack of incident, on the voyage across. Suffice it to say that in due season the good ship Lapland turned its prow away from the white cliffs of Dover and straight toward the low-lying shores of Flanders. As she crossed the North Sea scores of fishing boats with brown sails hovered around her, while throngs of seagulls soared overhead, or now and then dashed madly into her foaming wake to grasp some morsel flung from deck or porthole, or fight fiercely with each other for its possession. Presently, in the haze ahead, a faint outline of land could be distinguished, and soon we could see through our glasses the heaped up dunes that mark the battle line between the North Sea and the fertile Flemish polders behind them. Here and there the shore was strengthened by rows of pilings to keep the waves of Winter from washing it away. As a “sight,” however, it was dreary and uninviting enough—not at all like the picturesque headlands of Merrie England we had been looking at only a few hours before.

      Now, for a time, the ship kept its course parallel to the shore, but at a distance of a mile or more. Gradually the coast became more inhabited, and soon we could see a row of stone and brick buildings facing directly on the beach which some one said was Blankenberghe. No doubt there were other rows of houses behind the first, but either they were lower, or in the haze our glasses could not distinguish them. Then the panorama of the Flemish coast unrolled a little further and we saw the long curved breakwater of Zee-Brugge, with its white lighthouse. This is an artificial port connected with the ancient capital of Flanders by a ship canal. Entrance СКАЧАТЬ