The Spell of Flanders. Edward Neville Vose
loyally until 1516, when it removed its offices to Antwerp, by that time the acknowledged metropolis of the North.
The Minnewater, or Lac d’Amour, is—apart from its exquisite beauty—of interest as another memento of the city’s former commerce. This was the chief harbour for shipping, and, no doubt, was thronged with sailing craft, while its banks must have swarmed with merchants checking their arriving or departing cargoes, stevedores carrying bales and boxes to and fro, clumsy wagons and carts for transporting merchandise to the warehouses of the city and all the varied noise and bustle of a great seaport. It is strangely silent and deserted now, and the grass grows tall around the round tower built in 1398 by Jan van Oudenaarde, and the white swans float slowly and majestically beneath the black arches of the adjoining bridge which is eight years older than the tower. It is said that he, or she, who stands on the central arch of this bridge at midnight and expresses a desire will have the wish fulfilled, but we did not try it. Before leaving this charming spot, however, we went along the banks of the little lake to a point where, looking back, we had the round tower and the bridge in the middle distance, the lake in the foreground, and the towers of the city on the horizon. This view is, without doubt, the finest the old town affords.
The visitor to Bruges who is interested in the past should devote at least half a day to a pilgrimage to Damme, distant about an hour’s walk along the canal that leads from the new port of Bruges to the sea. In 1180 this now all but forgotten town was made an independent commune with two burgomasters, and for two centuries thereafter it enjoyed a great and increasing prosperity. It became the chief entrepôt for the great commercial city of Bruges during its period of splendour, and most of the leading merchants maintained offices there. Its warehouses were crowded with merchandise from every corner of Europe—wines from France and Spain, beer from England, wool from Scotland, silk from Italy, all manner of cloths and stuffs, spices of all kinds, metals of every variety known to the metal workers of those days, rare and precious goods of every description.
To-day the very scene of all this mercantile activity has vanished. Gone are the busy warehouses, the docks and wharves, even the very harbour in which—according to ancient chroniclers—a score of ships of the largest size then built could anchor easily. All that remains is a diminutive Grande Place surrounded by several ancient edifices, and the ruins of a huge church. In the centre of the Place is a modern statue of Jacob van Maerlant, called “the Father of Flemish Poets.” Fame has surely never played any more astounding trick than that out of the great host who lived in this busy commercial town in the days of its prosperity—portly burgomasters, skilled in winning the plaudits of the populace; shrewd, far-sighted merchants grown rich from the commerce with distant lands; skilled artisans and craftsmen in a hundred guilds—all, all are forgotten, while an obscure poet, whom very likely many of those who knew him derided as a fool, is alone remembered as the one great man of Damme.
Facing the Grande Place is the ancient Hotel de Ville, which, in addition to being the most notable monument of the dead town, is also an estaminet where the living can get a little refreshment. The main floor of this edifice is divided into three large rooms. The first one is the estaminet, with its array of bottles and its beer pump contrasting most incongruously with the remaining vestiges of its ancient grandeur.
Adjoining this is a large, irregular and unfurnished room, bare of ornamentation save for two corbels, or Gothic brackets, which support the main rafters of the ceiling. These are of wood, elaborately carved. One represents Van Maerlant in his study, seated at a desk, with what M. Havard calls a “chaste Suzanne” bathing in a tub over his head. The other shows King David with his harp, and is embellished with sundry other figures.
The remaining room is by far the most interesting, for it was here that Charles the Bold publicly betrothed Margaret of York. The room, which is officially termed the Salle des Délibérations, or Council Hall, has a fine old fireplace said to have been restored during the seventeenth century. It is decorated with two female figures in hoop skirts and bears the motto “Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.” This quotation from Vergil (Æneid 6:853) sounds rather pompous and out of place in the council chamber of this now completely vanquished and ruined city, and must have seemed so even in the seventeenth century, but it may have been a survival of an inscription placed over the original fireplace in the days when Damme dared to close its gates even against the men from Bruges itself, and the puissant Counts of Flanders had to use force to compel it to open them.
It was in the year 1468 that this room in which we are now standing had its one great day and became, for a brief space, the setting of one of those splendid mediæval scenes that bards and novelists so fondly recall, and that—in our age of up-to-date inventions—the moving-picture men are so busily reconstructing and re-enacting. The Princess had landed at Sluys, near the mouth of the River Zwyn, where the Duke of Burgundy paid her a brief visit in secret—possibly to see what she looked like, for this was a marriage of state and intended to further his far-reaching ambitions. Probably if she had been as homely as a witch the wedding would have taken place just the same, but as the reverse was the case the preliminary inspection must have been very gratifying. The following day the royal lady and her company rode to Damme in a fleet of barges gorgeously decorated with gold, rich velvets and rare silks. Here she was lodged in this very Council Chamber of the Hotel de Ville, and here the Duke came in great state to perform the public ceremony of betrothal. The wedding ring was given in the presence of the English Bishop who had accompanied the Princess, and Charles announced that he would await her presence on the morrow at Bruges, where the wedding itself was to be celebrated in the Cathedral.
The wedding procession as it departed for Bruges the next day must have been another brave sight for the proud citizens of Damme. The bride, reclining in a litter borne by four white horses, wore a magnificent gown of cloth of gold, a crown on her forehead, a jewelled necklace, and a mantle clasped with precious stones. Around her pranced her ladies of honour, mounted on white horses gaily bedecked with crimson satin. Immediately behind this picturesque group came five decorated chariots bearing a score of beautiful ladies from the English court, and following these came the guard of honour, or escort, provided by the Duke—a squadron of counts, barons and knights, with their faithful squires, their horses covered with gold and silver, the riders resplendent in bright coloured velvet and rich lace. The good people of the Middle Ages dearly loved a pageant, and this surely was one to rejoice the heart of every citizen of Damme, for here was the pride of the chivalry of all Europe—fair ladies and brave men from oversea and from every corner of the great Duke’s wide dominions—thronging the Grande Place as the procession formed, and then falling into their respective places as the long line passed out through the city gate and proceeded on the straight, tree-lined grande route that led to Bruges.
CHAPTER V
DIXMUDE AND FURNES
The tourist who desires to get away from the main thoroughfare of European travel, to explore out-of-the-way corners, and discover for himself wonders and beauties that the learned Mr. Baedeker never heard of, cannot do better than to turn away to the westward from the great Ostende-Brussels express route and visit the all but forgotten cities of Dixmude, Furnes and Nieuport. All but forgotten, that is, in June, 1914. The world has heard of them since, and it will be many hundreds of years before it forgets them again! These little places, which when we visited them were nothing but sleepy and quiet country towns, were great and prosperous cities in the period when Bruges was slowly rising toward its zenith, and the Professor therefore decreed that they must come next on our itinerary. We accordingly spent an evening studying the correspondences, or connections, of the State Railway and the chemin de fer vicinal, or local steam tramway, and started at daybreak the next morning.
Right here it may be said that the Belgian State Railway did its best to compensate us for whatever shortcomings we found in the weather or in the country generally. Perfect its service can hardly be said to have been, but it was excellent and amazingly cheap. Our party purchased every two weeks billets d’abonnement that cost us just forty-one francs each, or about $8.00, and entitled us to ride on any State-owned railway line in the country day or night for fifteen days. These were second-class, the third costing twenty-three francs, and first sixty francs. The last, by the way, is a useless luxury, as on the local lines the first-class compartments are identical with the second-class