Chapter I
On The Road In Flanders
[Illustration: Flanders]
There has been a noticeable falling off in touring in Belgium. There is no reason for this except the caprice of fashion, and the automobile and its popularizing influence will soon change all this, in spite of the abominable stretches of paved highroads, which here and there and everywhere, and most unexpectedly, crop up and shake one almost to pieces, besides working dire disaster to the mechanical parts of one's automobile. The authorities are improving things, but it will be some time yet before Belgium is as free from _pavé_ as is France.
The good roads of Belgium are as good as those anywhere to be found, and it is only the unlooked for and distressingly frequent stretches of paved highway which need give any concern.
The natives speak French--of a sort--here and there in Belgium, but they also speak Flemish and Walloon.
We left Paris by the Route de Belgique, crossed the frontier at Givet, and made our first stop at Rethel, 193 kilometres away, where we passed the night, at the Hôtel de France. For a town of less than six thousand people Bethel is quite a metropolis. It has a grand establishment known as the Société d'Automobiles Bauchet, which will cater for any and every want of the automobilist, and has a half-dozen sights of first rank, from the old Hôtel Dieu to the bizarre doubled-up Eglise St. Nicolas and the seventeenth-century, wood-roofed market-house.
Sorbon, four kilometres away, is the birthplace of Robert Sorbon, the founder of the Sorbonne at Paris, and is a classic excursion which is never omitted by true pilgrims who come to Rethel.
Fifty-three kilometres from Rethel is Rocroi, a name which means little to most strangers in France. It is near the Belgian frontier and saw bloody doings in the Franco-Prussian war.
Rocroi is a pompous little fortified place reached only by one road and a narrow-gauge railway--literally two streaks of iron rust--which penetrate up to the very doors of a pretentious Hôtel de Ville with a Doric façade, and not much else that is remarkable.
The town has a population of but two thousand, is surrounded by fortifications, contains a Caserne, a Sous-Préfecture, a Prison, and a Palais de Justice. All this officialdom weights things down considerably, and, what with the prospect of the custom-house arrangements at Givet, and the necessity of demonstrating to an over-zealous _gendarme_ at Rocroi that we really had a "Certificat de Capacité," and that the photograph which it bore (which didn't look the least like us) was really ours, we were considerably angered and delayed on our departure the next morning, particularly as we had already been three days _en route_ and the frontier was still thirty odd kilometres away.
As one passes Rocroi, Belgium and France blend themselves into an indistinguishable unit so far as characteristics go. Manners and customs here change but slowly, and the highroad must be followed many kilometres backward toward Paris before one gets out of the influence of Flemish characteristics.
We finally got across the Belgium frontier at Givet, at least we got our _passavant_ here, though the Belgian customs formalities took place at Heer-Agimont, formalities which are delightfully simple, though evolving the payment of a fee of twelve per cent. of the declared value of your automobile. You get your receipt for money paid, which you present at the frontier station by which you leave and get it back again--if you have not lost your papers. If you have you might as well prepare to live in Belgium the rest of your life, as a friend of ours told us he had done, when we met him unexpectedly on a café terrace at Ostende a week later.
There be those who are content to grovel in dark alleys, among a sordid picturesqueness, surrounded by a throng of garlic-sodden natives, rather than while their time away on the open mountainside or wide-spread lake or plain. All such are advised to keep away from Southern Belgium, the Ardennes, and the valley of the Meuse at Dinant and Namur.
We lunched at the Hôtel des Postes at Dinant on the Meuse, and so lovely was the town and its environs, and the twenty-eight kilometres of valley road to Namur (no _pavé_ here), that it took us eight hours of a long summer's day to get away from Dinant and get settled down again for the night in the Hôtel d'Harscamp at Namur.
The native declares there is nothing to equal the view from the fortress-height of the citadel of Namur, neither in Switzerland nor the Pyrenees; but though we climbed the three twisting kilometres to the fort, there was nothing more than a ravishing view of the charming river valley at our feet. The majesty of it all was in the imagination of the inhabitant, but all the same it was of a loveliness that few artists can describe in paint, few authors picture in words, and no kodakist reproduce satisfactorily in print. There is but one thing for the curious to do, and that is to go and see it for himself.
The rest of the journey across Belgium to Brussels the writer would like to forget. Oh, that terrible next day! Sixty kilometres of one of the worst and most destructive roads, for an automobile, in Europe, and through a most uninteresting country. Perhaps, if the road had been better, the landscape might not have had so oppressive an effect. As it was, an automobilist journeys along the road--which is practically across the kingdom--his eyes glued to it, his heart in his mouth, and he bumps and slides over the wearying kilometres until he all but forgets the beauties of the Meuse now so far behind. Kilometre after kilometre of this vile road is paved with blocks of stone as big as one's head, half of which are out of place. And when one's automobile sinks into the holes one can but shudder. One hears of a road that is paved with good intentions. It does not enjoy a good reputation, but it can't be worse than the road from Namur to Brussels!
We passed through what, for the want of a better and more distinctive name, may be called the Waterloo region; but, for the moment, we cared not a jot for battle-fields. Our battle with the ugly roads of Belgium was all-sufficient.
Southey's verses are so good, though, that they are here given in order that the writer may arrive the quicker at Brussels and take his well-earned rest:
"Southward from Brussels lies the field of blood, Some three hours' journey for a well-girt man; A horseman who in haste pursued his road Would reach it as the second hour began. The way is through a forest deep and wide, Extending many a mile on either side."
"No cheerful woodland this of antique trees, With thickets varied and with sunny glade; Look where he will, the weary traveller sees One gloomy, thick impenetrable shade Of tall straight trunks, which move before his sight, With interchange of lines of long green light."
"Here, where the woods receding from the road Have left on either hand an open space For fields and gardens, and for man's abode, Stands Waterloo; a little lowly place, Obscure till now, when it hath risen to fame, And given the victory its English name."
Finally we reached Brussels, still over cobblestones, the road growing worse every minute, and stopped at the Grand Central Hotel, in the Place de la Bourse, the correspondent of the Touring Club de France, and the only hotel of its class which serves its _table d'hôte_ "_vin compris._"
Brussels has ever been put down in the notebooks of conventional travellers as a little Paris; but this is by no means the case. It resembles Paris not at all, except that French francs pass current in its shops and the French tongue is the language of commerce and society.
What has less frequently been remarked is that Brussels has two contrasting elements of life, which, lying close, one upon the other, strongly exaggerate the French note of it all, and make the hotels, cafés, restaurants, etc., take on that boulevard aspect which we fondly think is Parisian.
French Brussels and Flemish Brussels are as distinct elements in the make-up of this doubleheaded city as are the ingredients of oil and water, and like the latter they do not mix.
When one descends from the hilltop on which is modern Brussels, past the cathedral of Ste. Gudule, he leaves the shops, the cafés, and the boulevards behind him and enters the past.
The small shopmen, and the men and women of the markets, all look and talk Flemish, and the environment is everywhere as distinctly Flemish as if one were standing on one of the little bridges which cross the waterways of Ghent or Bruges.
The men and women are broad-bodied and coarse-featured,--quite different from the Dutch, one remarks,--and they move slowly and with apparent difficulty in their clumsy _sabots_ and heavy clothing. The houses round about are tall and slim, and mostly in that state of antiquity and decay which we like to think is artistic.
Such is Flemish Brussels. Even in the Flemish part, the city has none of that winsome sympathetic air which usually surrounds a quaint mediæval bourg. Rather it gives one the impression that old traditions are all but dead and that it is mere improvidence and _laisser-aller_ that allows them to exist.
Flemish Brussels is picturesque enough, but it is squalid, except for the magnificent Hôtel de Ville, which stands to-day in all the glory that it did when Charles V. of Spain ruled the destinies of the country.
It was in the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville that Alva gloated over the flowing blood of his victims as it ran from the scaffold.
The churches of Brussels, as might be supposed from the historical importance of the city in the past, are numerous and celebrated, at least they are characteristically Flemish in much of their belongings, though the great cathedral of Ste. Gudule itself is Gothic of the unmistakable French variety.
Brussels, its cathedrals, its Hôtel de Ville, its Cloth Hall, and its Corporation or Guild Houses, and many more splendid architectural sites and scenes are all powerful attractions for sightseers.
We went from Brussels to Ghent, forty-eight kilometres, and still over _pavé_. The bicyclist is better catered for, he has cinder side-paths almost all over Belgium and accordingly he should enjoy his touring in occidental and oriental Flanders even more than the automobilist.
Ghent was one day a seaport of rank, much greater rank than that of to-day, for only a sort of sea-going canal-boat, a _chaland_ or a _caboteur_, ever comes up the canals to the wharves.
Ghent is a great big town, but it does not seem in the least like a city in spite of its hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Its churches, its belfry, its château, and its museum are the chief sights for tourists--automobilists and others. We visited them all after lunch, which was eaten (and paid for at Paris prices) at the Hôtel de la Poste, and covered another forty-six kilometres of _pavé_, before we turned in for the night at Bruges' Hôtel du Sablon. There are others, but the Hôtel du Sablon at Bruges was modest in its price, efficient in its service, and excellent in its catering. The chief delicacy of the menu here is the _mossel_. One eats mussels _(mossels)_ in Belgium--if he will--and it's hard for one to escape them. They are _moules_ in France, _mossels_ in Belgium and Holland, and mussels in England. They are a sea food which has never tickled the American palate; but, after many refusals and much resentment, we ate them--and found them good.
Bruges' sights are similar to those of Ghent, except that its belfry is more splendid and more famous and the Memlings of the Hôpital St. Jean draw crowds of art lovers to Bruges who never even stop at Ghent.
Our little run around Belgium, a sort of willy-nilly blowing about by the North Sea winds, drew us next to Ostende. If there is one place more splendidly _chic_ than Ostende it is Monte Carlo. The palm is still with Monte Carlo, but, for August at any rate, Ostende, with its Digue, its hotels and terrace cafés and restaurants, is the very glass of fashion and fashionables.
It was only on entering Ostende, over the last few kilometres of the road from Bruges, just where it borders the Slykens Canal, that we met anything deserving to be called a good road since leaving the neighbourhood of Namur. The roads of Belgium served a former generation very well, but _tempus fugit_, and the world advances, and really Belgium's highways are a disgrace to the country.
The chief attraction of Ostende--after the great hotels--is its Digue, or Dyke, a great longdrawn-out breakwater against whose cemented walls pound the furies of the North Sea with such a virulence and force as to make one seasick even on land. "See our Digue and die," say the fisherfolk of Ostende,--those that have not been crowded out by the palace hotels,--"See our Digue and eat our oysters."
Ostende is attractive, save on the August bank holiday, when the trippers come from London; then it looks like Margate or Southend so far as its crowds are concerned, and accordingly is frightful.
One should not leave Belgium without visiting Ypres, that is if he wants to know what a highly respectable and thriving small city of Belgium is like.
Ypres is typical of the best, though unfortunately, by whichever road you approach, you still make your way over granite blocks, none too well laid or cared for. The best and almost only way to avoid them is to take to the by-roads and trust to finding your way about. This is not difficult with the excellent map of the Automobile Club de Belgique, but it requires some ingenuity to understand the native who answers your inquiry in bad French and worse Walloon or Flemish.
At Ypres the Hôtel de la Chatellenie will care for you and your automobile very well, though its garage is nothing to boast of. Both meals and beds are good, and the rates are cheap, something less than nine francs a day for birds of passage. You must pay extra for wine, but beer is thrown in, thick, sticky, sugary beer, but it's better than England's "bitter," or the lager of Rotterdam.
[Illustration: Things Seen in Flanders]
Ypres is full of interesting buildings, but its Hôtel de Ville and its Cloth Hall, with its lacelike façade, are easily the best. Ypres has a museum which, like most provincial museums, has some good things and some bad ones, a stuffed elephant, some few good pictures, sea-shells, the instruments which beheaded the Comte d'Egmont, and some wooden sculptures; variety enough to suit the most catholic tastes.
From Ypres we continued our zigzag through Belgium, following most of the time dirt roads which, though not of superlative excellence, were an improvement on stone blocks. It took us practically all day to reach Antwerp, a hundred and thirty kilometres away.
Belgium is everywhere quaint and curious, a sort of a cross between Holland and France, but more like the former than the latter in its mode of life, its food and drink and its industries, except perhaps in the country between Tournai and Liège.
The country between Antwerp and Brussels affords a good general idea of Belgium. Its level surface presents, in rapid succession, rich meadows, luxuriant corn-fields, and green hedgerows, with occasional patches of woodland. The smallness of the fields tells amongst how many hands the land is divided, and prepares one for the knowledge that East Flanders is the most thickly peopled corner of Europe. The exception to this general character of the scenery is found in the valley of the Meuse, where the fruitful serenity of fertile meadows and pastoral hamlets is varied by bolder, more irregular, and move striking natural features. Hills and rocks, bluff headlands and winding valleys, with beautiful stretches of river scenery, give a charm to the landscape which Belgium in general does not display.
The geographical description of Antwerp is as follows:
Antwerp, in Flemish _Antwerpen_, the chief town of the province of that name, is situated in a plain 51° 13' 16" north latitude, and 2° 3' 55" east longitude, twenty leagues from the sea, on the right bank of the Scheldt.
The Hôtel du Grand-Laboureur was marked out for us as the automobile hotel of Antwerp. There was no doubt about this, when we saw the A. C. F., the A. C. B., and the M. C. B. signs on its façade. It is a very excellent establishment, but you pay extra for wine, or you drink beer instead.
[Illustration: Antwerp Street]
The sights of Antwerp are too numerous to be covered in the short time that was at our disposal on this occasion, but we gave some time to the works and shrine of the master Rubens, and the wonderful cathedral spire, and the Hôtel de Ville and the Guild Houses and all the rest, not forgetting Quentin Matsys's well. We were, however, a practical party, and the shipping of the great port, the gay cafés, and the busy life of Antwerp's marts of trade also appealed to us.
Antwerp is a wonderful storehouse of many things. "It is in the streets of Antwerp and Brussels," said Sir Walter Scott, "that the eye still rests upon the forms of architecture which appear in pictures of the Flemish school."
"This rich intermixture of towers and battlements and projecting windows highly sculptured produces an effect as superior to the tame uniformity of a modern street as the casque of the warrior exhibits over the slouch-brimmed beaver of a Quaker." This was true of Sir Walter Scott's time, and it is true to-day.
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