THE “SALLE DES JEUX” IN THE KURSAAL, OSTENDE
THE “SALLE DES JEUX” IN THE KURSAAL, OSTENDE
At about this period of the evening the Madame raised a commotion by discovering that her reticule was open and a piece of money had fallen out onto the thick carpet. The Professor and I instantly got down to look for it, and even the croupiers at the adjoining gaming table paused to take in the incident. Two or three attendants and waiters hurried up to help when the Madame spied her lost coin and triumphantly seized it. It was a one centime piece—worth a fifth of a cent! I have never seen a more disgusted-looking group of attendants, and doubt if so small a coin had ever been seen before in this northern Monte Carlo. The Madame, however, was serenely indifferent to their opinion. This was the nearest, I may add, that we came to losing any money there.
At the end of the Esplanade is the Estacade, a pier that extends well out to sea. Pleasuresteamers start here for short trips along the coast, and turning to the right at this end of the town one comes to the harbour and the broad basin where hundreds of little brown-sailed shrimp fishing-boats congregate. Several of these came in while we were there and sold their cargoes, almost as soon as they were tied up, to groups of eager market-women with big baskets. Several girls sat along the quay wall mending huge nets also used in the shrimp fishery. The little back streets in this vicinity, and around the quaint fish-market, are the oldest in the town—and the most crooked.
The principal business street of the little city is the rue de Flandre and its continuation, the rue de la Chapelle, which together take one from the Digue de Mer straight to the railway and boat stations. On one side of this street is the Place d’Armes, where a military band played every evening, and facing which is the Hotel de Ville. Our last day was spent poking about this part of the town in a pouring rain, with an occasional peep into huge cafés designed to accommodate a thousand guests, but which were then almost deserted. The rain ceased suddenly toward nightfall and we returned to the Digue for a farewell look at the crowds and the long beach. It was night beforewe had seen enough, and then, after ordering and enjoying to the utmost our last Flemish dinner, we made our way to the Gare Maritime to take the night boat for Dover. As we steamed out past the long Estacade and looked back upon the gleaming lights along the Digue we saw the moon rising redly above the masts in the little harbour. This was our last view of Flanders, and, as we regretfully saw the lights of the city sink out of sight behind the tossing waves that gleamed brightly under the moonbeams, we knew that our pilgrimage was over.
Inthis little book the author has endeavoured to portray as clearly as his limited powers of expression permitted, some of the many elements that make the spell that Flanders lays upon the minds and hearts of those who know it and love it well. It is a complex influence, composed of many and widely diverse factors. If in the narrative a thread of history has been permitted to obtrude itself, sometimes perhaps at undue length, it is because before all else Flanders is a land whose interest lies in its long and romantic history, and in the marvellous manner in which its artists and sculptors have portrayed its famous past. As Mr. Griffis in “Belgium, the Land of Art,” has well expressed it, “No other land is richer in history or more affluent in art than is Belgium. In none have devout, industrious, patriotic and gifted sons told their country’s story more attractively. By pen and in print, on canvas, inmural decoration, in sculpture, in monuments of bronze and marble, in fireplaces and in wood-carving, the story may be read as in an illuminated missal. Belfries, town halls, churches, guild houses, have each and all a charm of their own.” If these pages have caught ever so little of that charm they have served their purpose.
To the student of history, of art and architecture, of tapestry and lace-making, of the origin of the great woollen and linen industries, of guilds and the organisation of labour, of the commune or municipal republic in its earliest and finest development, and—before all else—of liberty in its age-long conflict with tyranny and oppression, Flanders is a land of endless interest and inspiration. Nowhere else in the world can there be found within so small a compass so many monuments of the past, so many of the milestones of human progress. That some of these relate to a past so remote as to be all but forgotten, while others are hidden away in spots where few tourists ever penetrate, only enhances the pleasure of those who are so persevering or so fortunate as to find them.
Like rare wine, Flanders has mellowed with age, the storms and sunshine of succeedingcenturies 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.
That to-day Flanders has once more, as so often in the past, become the battleground of warring Europe gives an element of inexpressible sadness to these feeble attempts to sketch its glories as they were only a few short months ago. Already some of the splendid monuments described in these pages have been shattered by engines of war more destructive than all those of all former wars taken together. The noble Hotel de Ville at Ypres, the fine old church of St. Nicholas at Dixmude, the incomparable cathedral of Malines—we know that these at least have suffered fearfully, that they may have been injured beyond any hope of restoration.
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 firsttime 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. This is our part in the history of Flanders—our duty to the people of the brave nation of which Flanders forms so important and so famous a part. May all of those on whom the spell of Flanders falls do their share, however small, to help in this great work so long as the need lasts!
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. Even the pleasant Belgian fields, with their bright poppies and corn flowers, have a more profound interest now that so many of them have been stained with a deeper red than the poppies ever gave.
THE END
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