It was on a pleasant morning in June that the Professor and I set forth on a little expedition to the famous town of the tapestry weavers, leaving the ladies to rest and shop at Brussels. The poplar-trees that line the country roads and canals in all parts of Belgium were in full bloom and their light cotton-clad seeds were drifting like snow in every direction. Moreover, contrary to our experience for some time past, the sun seemed likely to shine all day and our old friend J. Pluvius was in complete retreat. Our route lay for a considerable distance through a charming hop country, the plots being much smaller than one sees in Kent or in Central New York State, but very numerous, and, no doubt, aggregating a considerable acreage. Farther along we passed through a superb stretch of hilly country where many of the houses and barns had thatched roofs and were so picturesque, both in themselves and in their surroundings, that we would fain have descended at one of the little stations and spent the day exploring and photographing this charming corner of Flanders. The most beautiful spot of all bore the pretty name of Louise-Marie—the thatch-roofed houses nestling cosily together upon a hillside. This little station, by the way, is on the line from Blaton to Audenaerde (in Flemish Oudenaarde), as we were approaching our destination from the south instead of directly from Brussels. Presently the great tower of Ste. Walburge loomed up ahead on our right, and we could even catch a glimpse of the famous Hotel de Ville. Instead of stopping, however, our train went on past the church, past the town, past everything, until we began to fear that our faithful “omnibus” had suddenly gone crazy and fancied itself a “rapide” bound for goodness knows where. At last, however, the station came in sight, but we even sped past that, coming to rest finally some distance down the railroad yard. As we walked back toward the “Sortie-Ausgang” gateway we debated whether we would drive back to the town in a cab or take a tram. Emerging on the street we promptly decided to walk, since neither cab nor tram-car could be seen.

There was no danger of losing our way, for there, straight down the long street before us, we could see the huge mass of Ste. Walburge towering far above the little houses around it. After a leisurely walk of five or six minutes we arrived at a large bleak-looking square, called the Place de Tacambaro, at the centre of which stood a monument that—had we been in a carriage or on a tram-car—we would have passed without more than a passing glance. As it was, we paused to read the inscriptions and found that, for Americans, they told a story of no little interest. It appears that this is a memorial erected in honour of the volunteers from Audenaerde who died in Mexico in the service of the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian. The south side of the monument, which represents a reclining female figure by the sculptor, W. Geefs, bears the following inscription:

Proceeding along the street, which still led straight toward the great church, we discussed the strange fate that had led these valiant Flemings to give their lives in a war of conquest so many thousands of miles away—a futile sacrifice as the event proved, with this little monument as their sole reward.

Almost before we were aware of it we found ourselves at the Grande Place with the Hotel de Ville right in front of us. We were on the west side of the little structure, which on the rue Haute adjoins the ancient Halle aux Draps. An old doorway gives on the rue Haute, but is no longer used, the entrance being now through the Hotel de Ville.

While the two principal churches of the town have suffered severely from the fanatical ravages of the iconoclasts, or image breakers, the Hotel de Ville can be seen in almost its pristine magnificence. Architecturally this monument is generally considered as one of the finest, not only in Flanders, but in the whole of Europe. Little it undeniably is, although it towers up bravely above the low two-story buildings surrounding it, but its very smallness gives its marvellous faÇade the richness and delicacy of the finest lace. Begun in 1525, it was completed twelve years later at a cost of “65,754 livres parisis, 16 sols, 2 deniers.” Those who are curious can ascertain the modern equivalent of the “Paris pound” of 1537, but even when we add the 16 sols, 2 deniers, it seems as though the burghers got very good value for their money.

Late Gothic is the period to which this gem in the galaxy of splendid Flemish town halls belongs. It is considered the masterpiece of its architect, Henri Van PÉde, who also designed the superb Hotel de Ville at Brussels and that at Louvain. The many little niches on the front once contained statues of the noble lords and dames of Flanders, including no doubt several of the great house of Lalaing, the Count Philippe de Lalaing having laid the corner stone. Unfortunately these were all destroyed during the religious wars and the French Revolution and have never been replaced. This seems a great pity, as Flanders still possesses many stone-carvers of great skill, and the kindly hand of time would soon mellow the new work to harmonise with the old. As it is, every niche contains the iron projection that formerly held its statue in place, so that the work of restoration would consist of simply carving each of the little statues in the sculptor’s own atelier, wherever it might be, and afterwards placing them in position.

One of the original statues still remains in place, however, and is entitled to the honour of being styled the oldest citizen of Audenaerde. This is none other than Hanske ’t Krijgerke, Petit Jean le Guerrier, or Little John the Warrior, who, with his diminutive standard bearing the arms of the city, stands on the topmost pinnacle of the tower. His gaze is ever toward the South, with a far-away look in his eyes, across the Grande Place and toward the distant hills. During the three hundred and seventy-eight years that he has been standing there, braving the winter rains and the summer sunshine, how many changes have taken place in the great outside world while little Audenaerde has stood still!

Even without its statues the principal faÇade of the Hotel de Ville merits more than a passing glance. In the admirable harmony of its proportions, the delicate beauty of its details, in the excellence of the stone carvings—almost perfectly preserved—that form wreaths and festoons of stone about its Gothic windows, there is nothing finer to be seen in all Flanders. The high pointed roof, with its tiny dormer windows, is exactly as the architect intended it, and the charming little tower seems as perfect as the day the last of the sixteenth-century masons left it.

The interior is worthy of the exterior. On the first floor a large hall, called the Salle du Peuple—Hall of the People—extends from one side of the building to the other. This contains a fine stone fireplace surmounted by a splendidly carved Gothic mantelpiece with statues of Ste. Walburge in the centre and Justice and Power on either side. Below are the arms of Austria, Flanders, and of Audenaerde. This masterpiece was carved by Paul Van der Schelden. The walls on each side of the fireplace are decorated with modern mural paintings depicting Liederick de Buck, the first Forester of Flanders, Dierick of Alsace, Baldwin of Constantinople, and Charles the Fifth. Between the windows overlooking the Grande Place are the Arms of Castile and Aragon, while at the ends of each of the great beams that support the ceiling are carved the arms of the various kingdoms and principalities belonging to Charles V.

Already we perceive that the shadow of the great Emperor rests heavily on this little city of Audenaerde, and as we proceed further in our explorations the more dominating and omnipresent does his personality become. Even the very arms of the city bear a mute evidence to his generosity and sense of humour. It is related that on a certain occasion the Emperor and his stately train approached the city without being perceived by the sentinel stationed in the tower of this very Hotel de Ville to announce his arrival. On reaching the gates, therefore, the Imperial cortÈge found no one to welcome the great monarch. The Burgomaster and the members of the Council, who should have been there in their robes of state, were conspicuous by their absence. Had this happened to his ancestor Charles the Bold, whose fiery temper brooked no discourtesy, even when unintended, it might well have gone hard with the unfortunate officials. As it was, the Emperor overlooked the slight, but not long afterwards he maliciously inserted a pair of spectacles in the arms of the city, remarking that in future they would thus be able to see more clearly the approach of their sovereign.

Adjoining the Salle du Peuple is a smaller chamber, the Salle des Échevins, or the Council Chamber of the ancient commune. Here there is another stone fireplace slightly inferior to the one in the larger hall, but resembling it in general design. The statues here represent the Virgin Mary in the centre, with Justice and Hope on either side. The chief masterpiece in this room, however, is the wooden doorway carved by Van der Schelden, who was instructed by the burghers to make it as beautiful as possible. How faithfully the artist performed his task the result shows. Around its top stand wooden cupids surmounting a richly carved entablature containing the arms of Charles V in the centre with those of Flanders and of Audenaerde on either side. The first is supported by two griffins, the second by two lions and the last by two savages. The panels of the door itself and of the sidewalls forming the complete portal are richly carved, each design being different from all the others. For this bit of wood-carving the frugal burghers paid the sum of one thousand, eighteen livres parisis, or nine hundred and twenty-three francs—something over $175—and the artist furnished the wood!

Formerly the walls of this room were decorated with tapestries of Audenaerde, but at the time of Louis XIV these were all removed and taken to Paris. Most of the tapestries in the town overlooked by le Grande Monarque were subsequently taken away by Napoleon, so that the Hotel de Ville of the city that gave these treasures to the world, and that should possess the finest collection of them, has been stripped completely bare. In their stead the Council Chamber at present contains a collection of paintings of no special artistic merit but of great historical interest. There is, of course, a portrait of Charles V, wearing the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece. A portrait of Louis XIV on horseback and bearing a marshal’s baton, by Philippe de Champaigne, forms a poor substitute for the tapestries filched by His Majesty. This collection also comprises several portraits of personages famous in later Flemish history. Of these the most noteworthy is that of Margaret of Parma, which hangs close to that of her father, the Emperor.

Just across the Grande Place from the Hotel de Ville stands the Tower of Baldwin, undoubtedly the oldest structure in the city, and erected by Baldwin V, a Count of Flanders who died in 1067, making it date from the Norman Conquest. The concierge of the Hotel de Ville informed us that this little tower, which adjoins another ancient edifice now used as a brewery, was the birthplace of Margaret, but this does not appear to be altogether certain. Some authorities state that the honour belongs to a little two-story house with a high, steep-sloping roof that also faces the Place. If the walls of these old houses had the ears that proverbially belong to all walls, and were still further provided with lips to whisper the secrets they overheard, they could no doubt settle this question; and at the same time throw some additional light upon a famous bit of mediÆval romance and scandal.

Of all the natives of the ancient town of Audenaerde the most famous was Margaret, afterwards the Duchess of Parma, and for many years Regent of the Low Countries, over which she ruled with an almost imperial sway. Her father was the great Emperor, Charles V, who dallied here for several weeks as guest of the Countess de Lalaing, wife of the Governor of Audenaerde, while his soldiers were besieging Tournai in the year 1521. The attraction that kept him so far from his army was a pretty Flemish maiden named Jehanne or Jeanne Van der Gheynst. According to the none too trustworthy Strada, this young lady was a member of the Flemish nobility, but according to the city archives it appears that she belonged to a family of humble tapestry workers residing at Nukerke, a suburb of Audenaerde. At all events, her pretty face attracted the attention of the youthful Emperor—whether at a ball, as Strada says, or while she was serving as maid of the Countess de Lalaing, as many writers assume, or perhaps at a village Kermesse which Charles might well have attended incognito. After the little Margaret was born the mother received an annual income of twenty-four livres parisis from the Emperor. In 1525 she married the MaÎtre de Chambre extraordinaire of the Counts of Brabant, and died in 1541. Charles took his little daughter and had her brought up as a princess. In 1537, when she was only fifteen years old, she was married by the Emperor to Alexander, the Duke of Urbin, a cruel and dissolute Italian prince who, however, died the same year. The following year she was married to Octavio Farnese, a grandson of Pope Pius III, who was then only fourteen. She was herself strongly opposed to this marriage, but the Emperor was obdurate and she finally yielded. Her son, Alexander Farnese, was the famous Duke of Parma who became the foremost military leader on the Spanish side during the sanguinary war between Philip II and the Netherlands. On the death of her father, Margaret was made Regent of the Low Countries by her half-brother Philip II. She arrived at Ghent, July 25th, 1559, and on August 7th the King presented her to the States General, saying that he had chosen her as his representative because she was so close to him by birth and “because of the singular affection she has always borne toward the Low Countries where she was born and raised and of which she knew all the languages.” She retired from the Regency in 1567, but was called back once more in 1580 at the personal request of the King. As her son Alexander was then at the zenith of his power, and opposed to her resuming the regency, she finally declined the honour which was reluctantly given to him. She died in 1586 at the age of sixty-six.

It was her fortune, or rather misfortune, to rule over the Netherlands at a period when the seething forces of religious unrest and protest were becoming too violent to be restrained. Had Philip II, her half-brother, been less bigoted, less cruel, and less blind to the best interests of the country and of his own dynasty, it is possible that the great popularity of the Duchess—who was sincerely loved by the majority of her subjects and respected by all—might have enabled the Government to restrain the rising passions of the people. If, instead of a policy of savage repression, the King of Spain had authorised Margaret to pursue a policy of moderation and conciliation, the fearful history of the next eighty years—the blackest page in human history—might never have been written. Unfortunately, moderation and conciliation were as foreign to the nature of that sombre monarch as to Torquemada himself, and fanaticism fought fanaticism with a fury that was as devoid of intelligence as it was of mercy.

The first act in the drama of blood was the sudden outbreak of the frenzy of the iconoclasts, or image-breakers, which swept over the greater part of the Spanish Netherlands in the month of August, 1566. Scarcely a church, a chapel, a convent or a monastery, escaped the devastation that resulted from these fanatical attacks. Paintings, statuary, altars and chapels, even the tablets and monuments of the dead—the accumulated art treasures of centuries—were torn to pieces or carried bodily away. In some places the work of destruction was completed in a few hours, in others organised bands of pillagers worked systematically for days before the local authorities—taken completely by surprise—recovered their wits and put a stop to the work of desecration. The loss to art and civilisation effected by the iconoclasts in Flanders is beyond computation. The Regent acted with energy and decision, her spirited appeals to the magistrates finally bringing them to their senses and resulting in a speedy restoration of order. Philip, who had just cause for resentment, meditated vengeance, however, and in 1568 replaced the too gentle Margaret by the Duke of Alva.

For the Professor the Hotel de Ville contained still another room of inexhaustible interest. This was the museum of the commune which occupies the entire second floor. For some reason—certainly not from fear of the suffragette, which is a non-existent species in Belgium—this is closed to the public, but we were admitted by courtesy of the Secretary of the Commune. The collection is of the utmost value to the historian and archeologist, but is rather badly kept. Among the most interesting objects were four chairs once used by Charles V; the ancient keyboard of the carillon which formerly hung in the belfry of the town hall but is now installed in the tower of Ste. Walburge, and some water-colour designs for tapestries. A large painting of the Last Judgment covered a considerable part of one wall. This is attributed to Heuvick, and originally hung in the Salle des Échevins. It was the ancient custom to have a painting of this subject, covered by curtains, in the olden justice halls. When a witness was about to be sworn the curtains were suddenly drawn back and the sight of the picture, which represented with great vividness the destruction of the damned, was intended to prevent false testimony. The collection also included a variety of ancient arms and coins, several curious mediÆval strong boxes, and two huge snakes which hung from the rafters overhead. There are no snakes in Belgium to-day, but our guide assured us that a crocodile had once been taken in the River Scheldt near Audenaerde, so the snakes may have been natives after all—assuming, of course, that the crocodile story is correct.

Back of the Hotel de Ville proper is the still more ancient Cloth Hall, dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Its small, high windows were built slantingly, to prevent archers from sending arrows directly into the interior. At some comparatively recent period two large windows were cut through, the walls on each side, but a goodly number of the earlier windows still remain, and the beams that support the high, pointed roof are still as sound as the day they were laid in position.

To the west of the Grande Place, and scarcely a stone’s throw from Baldwin’s Tower, rises the vast grey mass of Ste. Walburge, with ten or twelve tiny fifteenth or sixteenth century houses nestling snugly up against it. This splendid church dates from the very foundation of the city, an early chapel erected on this site having been sacked and burned by the Norsemen in 880. Twice after this the church was destroyed in the wars between Flanders and France, but in 1150 was begun an edifice of which some portions still remain. When John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, chose Audenaerde as his Flemish place of residence the burghers determined to enlarge and beautify their church and erected the semi-circular portion of the choir in 1406 to 1408. Soon afterwards the great nave was begun, but was not completed for fully a century, in 1515. The tower, one of the finest in the world, advanced still more slowly and was not entirely finished until 1624. Its original height was three hundred and seventy-three feet, but in 1804 the wooden spire was struck by lightning and burned. It has never been rebuilt, and the present height of the tower is two hundred and ninety-five feet. As it is, it dominates the little city and commands a wide view across the broad valley of the Scheldt in every direction. It was a stiff climb, up a perpetually winding stone stairway, to the top, but the view well repaid us for the exertion.

The interior of the edifice suggests a great metropolitan cathedral rather than the chief church of a small provincial town. The choir, which suffered severely from the ravages of the iconoclasts, has recently been restored with great skill, and is now one of the most beautiful in Europe. This church contains several paintings by Simon de Pape, a native of Audenaerde, whose father was the architect of the spire burned in 1804, also an “Assumption of the Virgin Mary” by Gaspard de Crayer, a follower of Rubens, who painted more than two hundred religious pictures. This, like all the others, is of mediocre merit. To the student of history and of ancient art one of the most interesting treasures of the church is its collection of tapestries of Audenaerde. Three of the more important ones represent landscapes—in fact the majority of Audenaerde tapestries that I have seen may be thus described—with castles, churches, and farmhouses in the centre and roses, tulips and other flowers in the foreground. Like most Audenaerde tapestries also they are crowded with winged creatures—birds flying or singing in the trees and hens, turkeys and pheasants strolling in the grass. A tapestry of a different genre is one belonging to the Confrerie de la Ste. Croix, which shows an Oriental landscape with Jerusalem in the distance, and at the four corners the figures of Herod, Pilate, Anna and Caiphas.

Tapestry weaving was introduced into Flanders during the time of the Crusades, the reports of the returning crusaders regarding the splendid carpets and rugs of the Orient arousing a desire on the part of the Flemish weavers to imitate them. Castle walls, however thick and strongly built, were apt to be damp and cold and a great demand speedily sprang up for the new productions for wall coverings. Starting at Arras and Tournai, the manufacture of tapestries spread to all the cities in the valley of the Scheldt and received a particularly important development at Audenaerde, which soon became the leading tapestry centre of Flanders. The weavers adopted Saint Barbara as their patron, and in 1441 were organised into a corporation. In their original charter it was stipulated that each apprentice must work three years for his first employer. Despite the severity of this regulation the manufacture of tapestries expanded with such rapidity that in 1539 no less than twenty thousand persons—including men, women and children—were employed as tapestry weavers at Audenaerde and its environs.

Among the famous Flemish artists who painted designs for the tapestry weavers of Audenaerde may be mentioned Floris, Coxcie, Rubens, David Teniers, Gaspar de Witte, Victor Janssens, Peter Spierinckx, Adolphus de Gryeff, and Alexander Van Bredael, while there were a host of others. Gradually, however, the artisans began to be discontented with their rate of pay, which the master tapestry makers kept at a low figure, and the advent of the religious wars found them eager to join any movement of revolt. After the outburst of the iconoclasts and the arrival of the Duke of Alva many fled to the Dutch provinces and to England, never to return. This emigration continued well into the seventeenth century, as various decrees passed by the magistrates between 1604 and 1621, confiscating the possessions of such emigrants, testify.

Another cause that contributed to the ruin of the tapestry industry at Audenaerde was the active effort made by the Kings of France, Louis XIII and Louis XIV, to induce the best weavers and master-workmen to emigrate to Paris. Philippe Robbins, one of the most celebrated master-weavers of Audenaerde, was invited to come to France in 1622 and was afterwards proclaimed at Beavais to be the Chef de tous les tapitsers du Roy. Many of the weavers who went to Paris and Brussels on their own account established ateliers where they manufactured what they proclaimed to be veritables tapis d’Audenaerde, and this competition still further injured the industry which soon afterward disappeared entirely from the city that gave its name to this type of tapestry and has never since been re-established there. With the departure of its weavers the little city on the Scheldt rapidly declined in importance, and for the past two centuries has been the sleepy little market-town that it is to-day.

On the other side of the River Scheldt, which flows through the town and is crossed by several bridges, is the interesting Church of Notre Dame de Pamela, which dates from the thirteenth century, having been constructed in the remarkably short space of four years and[Pg 387]
[Pg 388] completed in 1239. It thus belongs to the transitional period between the Romanesque style and the pure Gothic and is of interest to the student of architecture as one of the most perfect examples of this period in Flanders. The general effect of the interior, especially when viewed from the foot of the organ loft, is noble and imposing in the highest degree. Our visit was during a sunny afternoon, and the effect of the long beams of light falling from the lofty windows of the nave across the stately pillars below was indescribably beautiful. Truly this masterpiece of stone expresses in its every line the truth of Montalembert’s beautiful remark that in such a church every column, every soaring arch, is a prayer to the Most High.

One of the most curious of the paintings in Notre Dame de Pamela is a triptych by Jean Snellinck, a painter of Antwerp and a forerunner of Rubens who was greatly in vogue among the tapestry weavers of Audenaerde. This work represents the “Creation of Eve” in the central panel, the “Temptation” at the left and the “Expulsion from Eden” at the right. The figures are all finely painted, especially those in the left wing, and the entire work is an admirable example of early Flemish art. The church also possesses an interesting work by Simon de Pape representing the invention of the cross. Beneath the organ loft were three tapestries of Audenaerde workmanship which the caretaker obligingly spread out on the church floor for our inspection. All were in a poor state of preservation. One represented a woodland scene with three peasants on their way to market in the foreground. The second had a curious group of fowls in the foreground, while the third showed a sylvan scene with a mother and three daughters, each of the girls bearing a basket of flowers.

Both Ste. Walburge and Notre Dame de Pamela suffered severely from the fury of the iconoclasts, although the storm broke in Audenaerde at a later period than in the larger cities farther to the eastward. The curÉ of Ste. Walburge and four priests of Notre Dame de Pamela were thrown by the rioters into the Scheldt and drowned October 4th, 1572, while both churches were sacked.

On our way back from visiting the smaller church we paused on the quay named Smallendam to admire the superb view of Ste. Walburge across the river. A bit further on we entered a quaint little estaminet bearing the inviting name of In der Groote Pinte which we freely translated as “the big pint.” Apparently our Flemish was inexact, for the beverage with which we were served was not notable for quantity. It proved, moreover, to be exceedingly sour and unpleasant, and we left our glasses unfinished. In the course of a tour around the town we inspected what remains of the ancient ChÂteau de Bourgogne, the early residence of the Dukes of Burgundy. The principal building is now used by a Justice of the Peace, and we found little of interest save some old walls and a massive inner courtyard. At the hospital of Notre Dame, opposite the great tower of Ste. Walburge, we found two more Audenaerde tapestries in an admirable state of preservation, while a dozen fine mediÆval doorways in different parts of the town attracted our attention. For so small a place there are a great many religious institutions, many of them of great antiquity. Among these may be mentioned the Convents of the Black Sisters (Couvents des Soeurs-Noires), the Abbey of Maegdendale, the Convent of Notre Dame de Sion, and the BÉguinage—the last an especially charming little spot with a delightful street entrance dating from the middle of the seventeenth century.

It is hard to believe, as one wanders about the half-deserted streets of this sleepy old Flemish town, that in its day of greatness it was a city of no mean power, holding its own sturdily against the greatest princes in the world. Of its ancient walls and towers not a single trace remains, yet those vanished ramparts four times in less than two centuries defied the armies of the neighbouring—but, alas, not always neighbourly—city of Ghent, even the redoubtable Philip Van Artevelde retiring from in front of them discomfited in 1382. Three centuries later, in 1684, Louis XIV was beaten off from an assault on these same walls, but in revenge he ordered the bombardment of the city. This resulted in a conflagration from which it had not fully recovered half a century later. In 1708 the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy won a great victory over the French under the walls of Audenaerde. To this day along the frontier between France and Flanders the peasant women lull their babies to sleep with a crooning ballad which begins:

Small wonder that even the nursery songs tell of war and chant the name of the great Duke two hundred years after the Battle of Audenaerde, for during three centuries the Flemish plains were the battlefield of Europe. Happily the present war has not as yet smitten Audenaerde with any serious damage, although Le Petit Guerrier, from his perch on the belfry of the Hotel de Ville, has no doubt looked down upon long lines of marching men and gleaming bayonets.