Part 3

While I was moving from one to another, a sister had gathered a group of seven to ten year olds nearer the stove—a company of Fra Angelico angels they looked, as I bent over them to watch their little hands. They placed brass pins in the holes pricked in the pattern to hold the rather coarse thread, twisted first two threads to the right, then two to the left, then braided them to form the familiar hexagon of the Point de Paris mesh. When they reached the pattern, a most simple conventional one, other bobbins had to be brought into play. They held the threads always from the top of the cushion vertically toward them, with the seam edge of the lace to the left and the border to the right. Even these babies had from 50 to 200 bobbins to keep in mind, rather long beech-wood bobbins, these for Point de Paris, with the thread tightly wound at the top, and a considerable pear-shaped bulge at the end. Each lace is supposed to require a particular bobbin, especially suited to the weight of thread employed, but workers often use them indifferently. Some fortunate ones pride themselves on their fine ebony or ivory sets. Of course, bobbins must be constantly resupplied with thread, and in a corner of the room I saw a white-haired grandmother with her _dévidoir_, or spindle, busily winding thread on the bobbins for the children. She made a beautiful picture there at her wheel with a dozen little girls with their cushions crowding near her. I asked if the beginners were able to earn something and found they were making about 10 and 15 cents a day.

In this model school, for all children under sixteen years of age the lace work alternates with regular lessons, as it should of course, in every school. Those above that age may give their entire day to the lace. The hours for girls between nine and thirteen are: from 8 to 11 o’clock, lessons; from 1:30 to 4 o’clock, lessons again; and from 4 to 6:30 o’clock, lace. This is still a sadly long day for growing children, but it nevertheless registers a most cheering improvement over the former cruelty of a far longer day. It has been the Committee’s hope that such a system as this might be instituted throughout Belgium, and that from it they might advance to still better conditions. Children from thirteen to sixteen come at 7:30 o’clock, make lace till 11:30, and again from 1:30 to 4:45 o’clock. From 5 until 6:30 o’clock they have regular school lessons—one wonders how much education can be crowded into one and a half hours at the end of a day that began at 7:30 o’clock! The girls over sixteen years of age make lace from 7:30 until 6:30 o’clock. One thing to remember always, in looking at these distressing figures, is the frequent number of holidays in Belgium; the children are saved by their numerous _fête_ days.

It was not easy to leave the tragic and marvelous primary room; the fairy-like fingers and the golden heads above the cushions. But I had to go on to room number one on the ground floor where there was another Point de Paris class, for girls about twelve years old. In the Abbé Berraly school the girls must pass through at least three classes in Point de Paris before they proceed to Point de Lille, to go on from there to the “spider-web,” or delicate and most difficult Malines.

The first striking difference between this room and the primary, was in the number of bobbins piled on the cushions—there were hundreds now instead of dozens. The cushions were larger, too, and most of them were round, for many of the pupils were working on collars and doily and handkerchief edgings. The designs were already complicated, one of them represented, for instance, the animal symbols of the allied nations. This class promotes to the advanced class in Point de Paris, where I found several cushions with over 500 bobbins heaped upon them, and girls of fourteen and fifteen years shifting that number with a swiftness not to be followed.

Since the heavy rain was making seeing difficult, the teachers moved a number of iron stands (resembling umbrella stands) to various points in the room, placing on top of each stand, in the middle, a small kerosene lamp, and, near the edge, a large globular carafe, filled with water. The light from the lamp passes through the bottle to fall with concentrated and magnifying effect directly on that spot on the cushion where the work is in progress. The rack may be turned, the bottle raised or lowered, and usually four girls profit by the light from one lamp. It is a picturesque and primitive system, which many still prefer to the more modern and expensive electricity, because it is an advantage to have the working spot on the cushion thrown into high relief, while at the same time the bottle light is softer and less tiring to the eyes than electricity. These iron stands and lamps were very practical and satisfactory, but I have often seen, in poor little rooms, the bottle set on the table on a rough wooden block, with a rude oil dip in a cup propped up on bits of stick or stone behind it to lift it to just the proper height; as the work progresses, the position of course must be altered.

While the girls were pulling their chairs closer to the bottles I talked with the teachers about the place of Point de Paris in the lace world. There is no fine lace, they told me, which is so much in demand to-day as Point de Paris, for no lace so successfully combines durability and beauty. It is more used for dainty lingerie than any other variety. Paris buyers seem never to be able to secure sufficient Point de Paris, which tho it was christened by that city and was largely produced there during the 17th century, must now be supplied by Belgium. Its strength depends on its solid hexagonal mesh, always the test of lace, which is made with eight cotton threads, usually of fairly coarse quality. From this substantial mesh may blossom a pattern of extreme grace and beauty, the closely woven flat parts or toile, being relieved by open-work spaces, or jours, and the whole design outlined and thus thrown into a kind of relief by a heavier thread. The roses of the Queen design, drawn for the Brussels Committee by Mlle. Brouhon (who has since died), is one of the loveliest of the recent ones. I saw, the other day, a box scented with lavender and filled with rolls upon rolls of this rose pattern lace, ready for the day when a château can be restored, and fine linen sheets and pillow slips with their Point de Paris edgings can once again be spread on the beds.

Point de Lille could never be successfully used for either lingerie or table or bed linen for it is not sufficiently durable. In room 3, girls from fourteen to sixteen years were beginning to execute this more difficult lace. Its clear, transparent mesh originated in the city from which it is named, where in 1788 there were as many as 16,000 women employed on it. Its fragility results from the fact that but four threads (instead of the customary eight of Point de Paris and Malines, and of the mother of them all, Valenciennes) are used in twisting and braiding the meshes. On its light, clear mesh, the designs are now often very elegant and free, tho the traditional Point de Lille edging has a straight border and rather rigid pattern. They are always outlined by a heavier thread, as are the flowers of the Point de Paris and Malines, but unlike these other laces, the Point de Lille is characterized by little _pois_, or peas or dots, scattered through the mesh. It is sometimes confused with Malines because of the transparency of its mesh, which, however, is not so delicate as that of Malines, nor so difficult to make, nor, because of its fewer threads, so solid.

One of the most popular and more solid varieties of Point de Lille is better known as Point d’Hollande, because it is chiefly sold to the well-to-do Dutch peasants for their handsome bonnets. It is wide and often of sumptuous design, a sole branch or flower frequently furnishing the entire wing of a bonnet.

In the class-room, I went directly to a dark-haired Josephine, whose cushion seemed to hold the largest mounds of bobbins—“Yes, there are over a thousand,” she admitted shyly and smilingly. The directress came to help her open the little drawer beneath her round cushion, and to shake from the blue paper a most lovely wide scarf with a charming flower design. “I began it last January,” she added, “and I hope to finish it this January of 1919.” One year with a thousand bobbins, and at best 50 cents a day for her work—which was so much more than she could have made before the war that she had no thought of complaining! I wondered if the woman who would throw this filmy flower-sown veil over her shoulders would care to know about the dark-eyed Josephine and her year with the 1,000 bobbins.

But there is much more beautiful lace than either Point de Paris or Point de Lille taught in the Turnhout school. The girls pass from the Lille room to Malines, known in the city of its birth as the “spider-web of Malines.” Nothing could be more airy and exquisite than its delicate hexagonal mesh, much more difficult to make than either of the preceding varieties because it must be worked without the aid of pins, with only the eye to guide in securing the requisite uniformity and exactness. No lace demands greater skill or greater patience; since in addition to the difficulty of working without supporting pins, is the difficulty of handling the extremely fine thread employed. The patterns are usually of delicate flowers and leaves, with open-work stitches introduced to add ever greater lightness to the whole.

The dentellières in the Malines room work chiefly on insertions and flounces to be used for handkerchiefs or fichus or dainty blouses, or perhaps for wedding gowns. The Committee has given them, too, many orders for inserts for table centers or doilies, so exquisite that one feels they should be used only under glass.

Scarcely an important family in Belgium but treasures a bit of old Malines. Among my rarest pleasures were those I enjoyed, when the conversation turning upon lace, a friend has said: “But would you care to see my mother’s Malines, or my great, great-grandmother’s?”—and she has brought from a brocade box a filmy, ivory-colored collar or flounce, or a scarf or bonnet, all of a breath-taking loveliness and delicacy never to be reproduced. I remember, too, a Christmas mass and the marvelous flounce that fell from beneath the white and gold chasuble worn by Cardinal Mercier over the scarlet of his robe.

It is only in Turnhout that any considerable quantity of Malines is yet made, and despite all the efforts of the Committee and of other lovers of beautiful lace, there is little hope that it will live much longer. When the old artists, for so they should be named, die, few young women are found willing still to sacrifice their years to the spider-web.

The women of the Lace Committee believe there is no future work more important than that of improving the 200 and more lace schools of their country. In the lace normal school at Bruges, in the national school of design at Brussels, the excellent Needle Point school at Zele, and in such schools as this one at Turnhout, they see the hope of the lace art; they urge that the Government increase its subsidies to these and other deserving institutions. Education and ever better education of the lace-woman is their watchword.

II

COURTRAI

_Early Home of Valenciennes_

For years I had heard of the blue flax fields of the valley of the Lys, and of the season between April and September, when along miles of its course, the river is filled with boxes floating the finest linen fiber of the world, the flax of Belgium, North France and Holland, which can be better prepared in its waters than anywhere else.

Unfortunately I could see it only under a January rain, but Monsieur de Stoop, a prominent weaver of Courtrai, the town of 36,000 inhabitants which is the valley center, made the Flanders fields bloom again as he described to me the successive steps which lead from them to the woven linen his factory produces—I should say, produced, for the Germans left his plant, along with seven others, an utter ruin. He was unable to explain and apparently no analysis has yet determined, just why the waters of the Lys river surpass all others in their power to rot the encasing straw and generally to cleanse the flax; but one thing is clear, they have established Courtrai as a world market for fine raw linen. Sometimes the stalks need be floated only two or three days, sometimes it requires very much longer to macerate them, the period depending chiefly on the weather, and particularly on the temperature.

After its soaking and cleansing, the linen fiber starts again on its journey, this time to the various countries where it is to be made into thread and woven into tissues. Much goes to England and to Ireland, to such firms as Beth and Cox. From there it returns to Belgium in the form of linen thread for fine laces, quite a different variety, of course, from that employed in sewing. Lace thread, both cotton and linen, may be used for sewing, but never sewing-thread for good lace. An outsider can scarcely estimate the importance of the quality of the thread to the lace-maker. Of two skeins bearing the same number, one may be supple and easily led, while the other is brittle and wayward. We hear many stories of how women used to spend their lives in damp cellars, in order to keep their thread moist and soft. I have been told several times, for instance, that a certain piece of lace had been made below ground, because only there was its marvelous technique possible. Whatever the degree of truth or legend in these assertions, it is known that the rarest laces require certain atmospheric conditions, and are, above all, dependent on a superior fineness and pliability of the thread.

The English and Irish spinneries lead the world; they produce most of its lace thread. One of them; the Coates firm of Paisley, has established in Belgium branches in which Belgian capital is interested,—at Gent are the _filteries_, which prepare thread for weaving, and at Alost and Ninove are the _filatures_ or spinneries which turn out the finished sewing and embroidery thread. The cottons and linens of these mills are too coarse for the delicate laces; however, during a single war year, the Brussels Committee was happy to be able to buy from Alost as much as 600,000 francs worth of thread. By some miracle, the Ghent filteries escaped the practically universal ruin visited on mills and factories, and should be operating before peace is signed, but for the spinneries of Alost and Ninove, the future is still dark.

During two years the enemy, feeling they might one day run the mills where they stood, left them intact, tho they requisitioned their stocks of thread. Then as they saw they might not perhaps be able to continue their beneficent occupation of Belgium, even if they won the war, they began to remove the mill machinery to Germany. They were especially ruthless when the mills were known to be of English or French ownership. They stole the secrets of the factories and finally they deported the workmen. These men are scattered everywhere. Even if the machines of the factories were not completely destroyed it would be impossible under a considerable time to reassemble the skilled workmen essential to the spinning industry. The Germans will undoubtedly try to capture the trade, and to market their goods, if they must, through such neutral countries as Denmark and Switzerland.

When I arrived at Courtrai, Monsieur and his family were just moving back into the house from which they had been ejected. They apologized for the room they so hospitably offered me, in which the original bed had been replaced by an iron one they recognized as having belonged to an English family of Courtrai. The brass trimmings were gone, and the mattress had of course been removed, but Madame had been able to find one stuffed with sea-moss for me. The curtains were slashed, blocks of wood nailed to the once handsome walls, there were no lights, no metal knobs or fixtures of any kind, no service wires left. Below, the cellar had been almost filled with concrete to provide the conqueror a safe refuge during danger periods. It requires a special kind of courage to take up life again in a place like this, but these good people said: “We can not complain, we are so much better off than others, and at least we have saved our health; with that we can be sure of being able to build again what they have destroyed.”

From there I went to Baron de Bethune, a connoisseur of laces, who had before the war opened a lace museum in Courtrai, chiefly for Valenciennes. I found him ill in a little house in the town; he had long before been driven from his château in the suburbs. His sister, who had with great difficulty made her way from Louvain, received me with apologies in the midst of a heterogeny of boxes and packages, the few personal possessions they had gathered together in the hope of some day having a home again. I was not to see the old Valenciennes and other specimens of the famous lace days of Courtrai; fortunately for his museum, Monsieur had succeeded in getting them to Brussels where they were still, to my personal regret, hidden away. However, I was not surprized, for I had been unable before starting for Flanders to see the celebrated collection of the Cinquantenaire Museum at Brussels, for that, too, had been successfully secreted. Museums are slow in rehanging their treasures. Even tho the presence of the three neutral Ministers, the Spanish, American and Dutch, in the capital, was supposed to be a guaranty of protection to the national collections, and undoubtedly it was only their presence that prevented in Belgium what happened to the Museums of Northern France, the Belgians with unwearying ingenuity concealed what they could. Whenever I hear of hidden laces, I am reminded of a morning at Malines and a sad little basket containing a fine collection of old Malines lace, I saw exhumed. It had been buried deep in a box, along with the family silver, and as the daughter of the mother who had worn it took its once lovely flowers and webs, now gray and earth-stained, between her fingers, they powdered to dust.

Monsieur suggested that I see Mlle. Mullie, a leading dealer of Courtrai, who still handles a large output of Valenciennes; tho Courtrai, which was once a brilliant production center, is no longer of great importance. After the French Revolution, which killed Valenciennes-making in its original home, it migrated to other parts of Northern France, and to the two Flanders; to Ypres, where it enjoyed an especially happy development, to Bruges, Ghent, Dixmude, Furnes, Menin, Nieuport, Poperinghe and elsewhere. For a long time Ghent led all these, with over 5,000 workers listed in 1756. But starvation wages and successful imitations have told against this, as against other laces. Nevertheless, in the census of 1896, Bruges was still credited with 2,000 Valenciennes workers, and Poperinghe with 500, while there were scattered groups of considerable importance in a great number of the villages of Western, and some of Eastern Flanders.

Courtrai and the nearby villages where the lace is actually made, still stand, tho many buildings have been destroyed, but while her people were not forced to become refugees, lace-making was seriously interrupted; workers were evicted from their homes and their schools. And they suffered further because there was scarcely any thread left, the dealers often asking as much as 20 cents for ¾ of a yard of lace thread, about the previous value of the same length in finished lace. Under these conditions it was especially easy to see the importance of the efforts of the Brussels Lace Committee, which furnished thread at the normal price, and gave more for the lace than was ever offered before the war.

Unfortunately the German facteurs (agents for lace dealers) worked cleverly here, too, as in other districts. They had always plenty of requisitioned thread to offer, and succeeded in buying considerable lace, for which they offered high and varying prices.

The younger women of the Courtrai region have been rapidly giving up Valenciennes to make Cluny, which pays better. A Valenciennes beginner, for example, must work a year as an apprentice, during which time she is able to earn scarcely more than five cents a day. The wages of the good workers have advanced, but unless they can be increased even more, there are few who will continue to make this difficult lace.

After 60 years’ experience in lace, and latterly she has employed 1,000 women, Mlle. Mullie says that one is fortunate, among 5,000 workers, to find five who can execute a sample from a drawing not already interpreted or pricked for the worker. Before the war there were two good piqueuses in Ypres to whom Courtrai sent her difficult patterns, but only one of these still lives.

In peace-time the greater part of this Courtrai lace goes to Paris (some is sent to New York), which is all one needs to say in tribute to its pattern and its quality. Paris knows lace better than any other city in the world; she accepts only the best. We were talking of the 60 per cent. duty the United States Government levies on imported laces, and the harm it works to the Belgian industry. “That is our greatest discouragement, but there are other Government stupidities,” Mlle. Mullie smiled. “France, for instance, charges 10½ francs on a kilo of Valenciennes, and the same amount on an equal weight of Cluny; the Valenciennes may be worth several thousand, and the Cluny three or four francs!”

The true old Valenciennes mesh, called “Rond,” is still made at Courtrai, as well as at Bruges; the modern Valenciennes commonly has a square mesh, which is preferred by many connoisseurs, since it is more transparent and sets the flowers off more strikingly. “Whether or not you prefer it to the square, you must see the traditional round Valenciennes mesh,” Mlle. Mullie said, and we started off in the rain for a group of tiny brick houses, the Gottshuisen (God’s houses) which the city furnishes free to certain old people.