Pass Beneath The
Archway Of The Maison De L'Ancien Greffe, Cross The Sluggish
Canal, And Turn Sharply To The Left, And Follow, First The Cobbled
Quai Des Marbriers, And Afterwards Its Continuation, The Quai
Vert.
Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble
cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from
The
adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and
gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in
mellow charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford
whose presence Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet,
to overpower his "soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says
elsewhere in his journal, "the modern taste in costume,
architecture, etc., has got the mastery; in Ghent there is a
struggle; but in Bruges old images are still paramount, and an air
of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a thinly-peopled
city is inexpressibly soothing. A pensive grace seems to be cast
over all, even the very children." This estimate, after the lapse
of considerably more than half a century, still, on the whole,
stands good.
"In Ghent there is a struggle." Approaching Ghent, indeed, by
railway from Bruges, and with our heads full of old-world romance
of Philip van Artevelte, and of continually insurgent burghers
(for whom Ghent was rather famous), and of how Roland, "my horse
without peer," "brought good news from Ghent," one is rather
shocked at first, as we circle round the suburbs, at the rows of
aggressive new houses, and rather tempted to conclude that the
struggle has now ended, and that modernity, as at Brussels, has
won the day at Ghent. Luckily the doubt is dissipated as we quit
the splendid Sud station - and Belgium, one may add in parenthesis,
has some of the most palatial railway-stations in the world - and
find ourselves once again enmeshed in a network of ancient
thoroughfares, which, if they lack wholly the absolute quiet, and
in part the architectural charm, of Bruges, yet confront us at
every corner with abundance of old-world charm. I suppose the six
great things to be seen in Ghent are the cathedral of St. Bavon
(and in the cathedral the great picture of the "Adoration of the
Lamb," by Hubert and Jan van Eyck); the churches of St. Michel,
with a "Crucifixion" by Van Dyck, and St. Nicholas; the wonderful
old houses on the Quai des Herbes; the splendidly soaring Belfry;
and possibly the Grande Beguinage, on the outskirts of the town.
The cathedral has the usual solitary west tower, as at Ely, that
we have now come to associate - at Ypres and Bruges - with typical
Belgian churches. The great Van Eyck is hung in a chapel on the
south of the choir, and the services of the verger must be sought
for its exhibition. The paintings on the shutters are merely
copies by Coxie, six of the originals being in the Picture Gallery
in Berlin. Their restoration to Ghent, one hopes, will form a
fractional discharge of the swiftly accumulating debt that Germany
owes to Belgium. The four main panels, however, are genuine work
of the early fifteenth century, the reredos as a whole having been
begun by Hubert, and finished by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The centre-
piece is in illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12):
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches,
and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing."
One may question, indeed, if figurative language of the kind in
question can ever be successfully transferred to canvas; whether
this literal lamb, on its red-damasked table, in the midst of
these carefully marshalled squadrons of Apostles, Popes, and
Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something ludicrous. One
may question all this, yet still admire to the full both the
spirit of devotion that inspired this marvellous picture and its
miracle of minute and jewel-like execution. There are scores of
other good pictures in Ghent, including (not even to go outside
St. Bavon's) the "Christ among the Doctors" by Francis Pourbus,
into which portraits of Philip II. of Spain, the Emperor Charles
V., and the infamous Duke of Alva - names of terrible import in
the sixteenth-century history of the Netherlands - are introduced
among the bystanders; whilst to the left of Philip is Pourbus
himself, "with a greyish cap on which is inscribed Franciscus
Pourbus, 1567." But it is always to the "Adoration of the Mystic
Lamb" that our steps are first directed, and to which they always
return.
It is hard, indeed, that necessities of space should
compel us to pass so lightly over other towns in Flanders - over
Courtrai, with its noble example of a fortified bridge, and with
its great picture, by Van Dyck, of the "Raising of the Cross" that
was stolen mysteriously a few years ago from the church of Notre
Dame, but has since, like the Joconde at the Louvre, been
recovered and replaced; over Oudenarde, with its two fine
churches, and its small town hall that is famous for its splendour
even in a country the Hotels de Ville of which are easily the most
elaborate (if not always the most chaste or really beautiful) in
Europe; and over certain very minor places, such as Damme, to the
north-east of Bruges, whose silent, sunny streets, and half-
deserted churches, seem to breathe the very spirit of Flemish
mediaevalism. Of the short strip of Flemish coast, from near
Knocke, past the fashionable modern bathing-places of Heyst,
Blankenberghe, and Ostende, to a point beyond La Panne - from
border to border it measures roughly only some forty miles, and is
almost absolutely straight - I willingly say little, for it seems
to me but a little thing when compared with this glorious inland
wealth of architecture and painting. Recently it has developed in
every direction, and is now almost continuously a thin,
brilliantly scarlet line of small bungalows, villas, and lodging-
houses, linked up along the front by esplanades and casinos, where
only a few years ago the fenland met the sea in a chain of rolling
sand-dunes that were peopled only by rabbits, and carpeted only
with rushes and coarse grass.
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