Part 5

I had known of the German lace organization first through seeing the huge sign, “_Allgemeine Spitzen Centrale_” (Central lace depot), just across from our C. R. B. offices. And as soon as I got in touch with the loyal work of the women of the Belgian Lace Committee, I was daily hearing of this or that attempt of their oppressors to capture the designs and the output of the country. They might succeed with the simpler, more helpless workers, who because of their great misery may be forgiven for selling to them—and with the deserters and activists—but they were daily defeated by the Committee patriots. I was thoroughly interested to hear, now, from one of the patriots, that the idea of the German “Lace Control” possibly had its birth in Wynghene. In February, 1915, a certain Freiherr Von Rippenhausen was stationed at Wynghene. He had with him his young American wife—they had been married but a short time, and the people of the village were kind enough to say they believed she was not German by conviction! However that may be, the Von Rippenhausens requisitioned lodgings in the house of one of the lace buyers of Wynghene, and in this house they naturally discovered much regarding the lace situation, the lack of thread, and the distress of the workers, and of the Belgian system by which the facteur furnishes the thread to the worker and buys the finished products, which he in turn sells to a big lace house, reaping what profit he can as intermediary. Frau von Rippenhausen, in particular, informed herself thoroughly, and together she and her husband, it is said, organized the German “Lace Control,” with headquarters at Brussels.

Since the Germans had requisitioned all the thread they could lay their hands on, of which there were enormous stocks in Belgium, it was not difficult for them to offer it to the workers. They sent German soldier facteurs into every corner of the country to offer large prices to native facteurs or to individual workers. On receiving a piece of lace, they supplied an equal weight of thread to the workers, thus establishing a continuing chain of material and product. And they claimed to be selling their lace in America! They were clever enough to profit, in 1917, by the Committee’s apparent inability to go on at that moment, exercising every pressure they could, and naturally they gained ground. No one can say yet how much lace they were able to buy, but the amount of inferior lace was considerable.

Madame Van der Bruggen’s records show that before 1917 there were in Wynghene, contributing to the Committee, 400 workers on Cluny and Duchesse, about 200 on Cluny and Valenciennes in Beernem, 200 on Valenciennes in Oedelem, and 350 in Oostcamp, all grateful to have the Committee’s fixt minimum of three francs’ work a week insured to them. Some of these villages, Beernem and Oostcamp for instance, are usually included in the Bruges district.

She praised the Committee’s method of raising the wage by standardizing the values of certain designs as executed by an average worker; the poorer workers then gained less, the superior ones, more. “I thought I realized,” she said, “how cruelly underpaid our women were, but it was not until I saw their joy when the Committee promised them that at least they should always have a minimum of ten centimes an hour for their work, that I really understood. Ten centimes (two cents), just a postage stamp, for a whole hour’s straining effort; and they were happy because that was so much more than they had been sure of winning before the war!”

IV

GRAMMONT

_Belgian Home of Chantilly_

The Committee was discouraging about Grammont. When I told Madame de Beughem of my plan to go there to see Chantilly lace in the making, she answered, “But that will be a futile journey; the women have had practically no black or white silk thread since the war, and the few who were still working in 1914 will have stopt; that one-time important branch of the industry has almost ceased to exist.” I decided, however, to visit the tomb of Chantilly, the lace so closely identified with Grammont that in Belgium it takes its name from that city, rather than from its original French home.

And Grammont itself, a town of 13,000 inhabitants, was well worth the journey, situated as it is in a lovely region of rolling hills, and deriving its name from the steep slope (Grand Mont) to which part of the city clings. The surrounding undulating country is dotted with quaint, clustered villages, some with thatched, some with tiled roofs, and only twenty miles away is the charming town of Audenarde—poor Audenarde, so cruelly wounded by the war!

I reached Grammont about noon, having lost an hour on the way through the difficulty of passing camions and artillery and marching companies of Canadian soldiers. Between Ninove and Grammont, too, were many squads of German prisoners at work on the ruined road. They were guarded by the French, but it was a rather lenient surveillance, at any rate the sullen groups in their trailing gray capes appeared to be casually tapping the mud with their spades instead of being genuinely at work.

My Belgian chauffeur, whose health is broken after three years of forced labor in Germany, would have been delighted to run them down, and at one point did succeed in splashing a group with mud, as he called “Boches” and something I did not catch. I began to understand the ruling that released Belgian prisoners shall not be placed over Germans still held here.

After lunch I started with Madame Cuseners to the little lace school whose director has courageously carried on during the four years. We walked through a narrow arched passageway beside a brick building and into a large hall at the rear which was at one time the lace class-room. Instead of lace-workers, however, we found Scotch and Canadian soldiers busy tacking the Union Jack and Belgian flags on the wall, and hanging boughs and festoons of colored paper rings—they were making ready for a “grand” New Year’s Eve dancing party. In the courtyard still farther back a half-dozen Scotchmen had built a campfire, protecting it with a low canvas roof, and it was burning brightly despite the dismal rain.

It shone on the windows of the long, narrow room at the side of the court, which looked like a conservatory, but which had become the refuge of the lace-workers, when because of lack of thread and fuel, they could no longer occupy their hall. I found fifty sweet-faced girls between thirteen and fifteen busy over their cushions, a faithful, tired-looking old Abbé and an enthusiastic young woman teacher. They were not making black nor the less important white silk Chantilly, for they had long been entirely without silk thread. Nevertheless, they were preserving the art of making it, since they had been kept at work on Chantilly designs executed with bobbins and the white cotton thread furnished by the Committee. They had some fine flounces, which were not, however, to be compared with the traditional black silk ones of the great Chantilly days.

For Chantilly has seen great days. It appeared first in France about 1740, where it achieved a phenomenal popularity, which was unfortunately rudely ended by the Revolution, for since it was a favorite lace at court, the Revolutionists made it a crime to appear in Chantilly. Later, under the Empire, it enjoyed a revival, the fabrication of the silk laces spread in France; Bayeux became a celebrated center; and, finally, toward 1835, it crossed to Belgium, where Grammont was early recognized as its home. In 1851 all of the forty-nine schools of that province taught the technique of this lace. Then toward 1870 true Chantilly seemed doomed a second time to extinction by the success of the machine imitations of St. Pierre des Calais, and also because the vogue for black lace had passed. But again the pendulum has swung back; the imitations are now greatly in favor and there is a cheering increase in the demand for the true lace flounces.

The Abbé brought out from dusty drawers the school’s stock of designs, elegant groupings of bouquets and foliage, with occasional striking geometrical details introduced, all joined by a fine hexagonal mesh, which resembled at first that of Malines, and later, more closely, the Point d’ Alençon mesh. The fact that this lace is often used for scarfs and gowns, and that the customary flounce is of generous width, has encouraged the development of elaborate patterns. Some of the sketches were divided by heavy pencil lines into the separate narrow strips on which the lace-maker actually works. To achieve the wide flounce, these strips are attached one to another by special workers who employ a joining stitch that defies detection. The individual pattern strips include both mesh and flowers and follow irregular lines, curving, it may be, to include a full-petaled rose. When one examines the fineness of the clear hexagonal mesh that forms the base of Chantilly, it seems all the more remarkable that the division lines are not visible. This Chantilly mesh has differed during various periods and besides there are always almost as many varieties as there are workers, for one weaves more closely or more firmly than another. I came soon to realize how great a difference in effect results from a practically invisible variation in the thickness of the thread, or in the manner of twisting or looping it or in the placing of the pins. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Chantilly is the relief produced by a heavier thread that outlines the pattern and forms the twigs and veins of the leaves. In securing a brilliant relief, the French have always succeeded better than the Belgians.

These Grammont pupils were also making Blonde, a favorite lace with the Spanish people, and introduced into Belgium from France at the same time as Chantilly. Its processes are very similar, tho it is easily differentiated from its sister by the heavy glossy petals of its flowers and their conspicuous open-work centers in the Point de Paris stitch. The name Blonde is derived from the écru silk which was first employed in its making; now it is made of white or of black silk, and chiefly in the form of scarfs or mantillas. The girls were making their war-time Blonde of cotton, the good Peat cotton of Nottingham, brought in by the C. R. B. for the Lace Committee. It is practically only in the Grammont and Turnhout regions that Blonde is still made.

The instructress showed me the little bundles of poor, crooked brass pins that were all that remained after four years of the occupation, explaining what harm poor pins can work in a fine mesh like that of Chantilly. Then she asked if I could not tell them when they might expect new ones. Alas, these disheartening months of the winter of 1918–1919 when one hope after another has been deferred; so many things to be done at once, and all depending on the re-establishment of a system of transportation utterly destroyed.

I went from the school-room, past the fire in the courtyard, back to the large hall where the Canadians were still decorating for their party, and where we wished one another a Happy New Year—brave Canadian boys well loved by the Belgians—then on to the house of Madame’s mother, who for a half-century has been a lace _fabricant_, or dealer, and whose front room served easily as combined salon and office. Precious laces need very little space; they can be stored in a handsome carved oak armoire, which is at once a safe and a beautiful article of furniture. This old lady’s hair was still dark and glossy, as is so often the case with grandmothers in Europe, and her brown eyes were bright and keen. She talked of the time when there were more than twenty dealers employing over 2,000 workers on Chantilly in the Grammont region, and of the gradual decline of the industry. “Certain empty houses on the heights above the town tell the story. Long ago the lace-makers left the valley at the foot of the slope, and seeking the brighter light on the hill, formed a lace colony there; but they have come down again, the houses on the hill are deserted. One by one the skilled old workers have died, and their secrets with them. There is only one really excellent piqueuse left and she is a baker-woman who exercises her talent of pricking patterns between baking! And I believe that instead of the former thousands, we have not more than eight hundred dentellières to-day. Here, as elsewhere, factories have come, and the lace has fled. With us it is the cigar and the match that have banished it, they furnish better wages and our women follow. However, if we can win a higher pay for the lace, and can but develop the little school you have just visited, and continue to train our girls, we shall yet be able to restore Chantilly. Especially,” she added, “if we can be helped by that fickle Mistress Fashion, who last year smiled again on the black lace gown. Some of our patterns for robes can be made in a few weeks, but the truly fine ones take months, even a year to make. All depends on the design and the number of threads. We have had much to combat in the success of the marvelous Calais machine imitations of Chantilly, but true lovers of lace will never be content with them, however clever they are.”

She shook out a folded triangular shawl. “There is no lace in the world more beautiful than this,” she said, as she spread it on the white tablecloth, the better to display the wealth of its black flower clusters and long fronds, and then had me squeeze the delicate mesh in my hand to test its resiliency. I could not but agree with her. Her daughter brought out an exquisite collar, a tendril and flower pattern, with long tabs that could be crossed in front and let fall like a sash behind, a “Marie Antoinette” of most tempting loveliness; then a dainty parasol and a fan and a few filmy winged butterflies—all pieces made before the war, before the Germans set a wall of fire between the women of Grammont and the silk thread (Grenadine d’Alays) which meant their bread.

I was glad to have a few hours of sweeping hill country between these elegant black laces and the Valenciennes I was next to see; for the moment all white lace seemed negligible.

V

BRUGES

_Queen of Lace Cities_

After a day beside the graves of Nieuport and Dixmude and Ypres, the first glimpse of the singing towers of Bruges against the evening sky seems an unearthly vision. During four years no one had known that Bruges would not perish as her sisters had perished. One must have come direct from the desolation of Nieuport, to her pignons and bridges, from the skeleton of Les Halles of Ypres to her Hôtel de Ville, to estimate her incomparable beauty. Since Ypres is dead, only Bruges and Turnhout remain as true lace cities of Belgium; Ghent, the elegant neighbor of Bruges, and herself once a Queen in the lace world, has turned to her factories and no longer counts. Except Turnhout, then, with its famous schools for fine laces, no Belgian city to-day challenges the leadership of Bruges, and beyond Belgium, she has but one great rival—Venice.

This claim to leadership rests on a solid foundation. Bruges is of ancient lineage in the lace world; she has preserved unbroken, through at least four centuries, the traditions of that world. There are those even who believe that mediæval bobbin lace had its origin in her territory, and they are at least supported by legend. A pretty story tells of a poor and infirm widow, who with her many children lived in a little street of Bruges. The entire family depended only on the work of Serena, the eldest, who from dawn till dark turned her wheel. She had long been loved by a neighbor, Arnold, the son of a great merchant, and she did not view him with disfavor. But as winter and misery settled again on the poor little hut, and Serena saw that all her efforts appeared vain, she vowed to the Virgin never to marry unless her family could be rescued from their suffering. Then one day when near the Minnewater, as she was making sad thoughts, suddenly she saw a light, and from the Virgin threads descended toward her, which, skipping the branches, dropt in her lap, where they by chance designed lovely patterns. Serena understood this to be the response to her prayer, and she tried at once to reproduce the arabesques in linen thread. She ended by attaching little woods to them and by aiding them with pins. And thus to the great emotion of Bruges bobbin-lace was born. And all the rich seigneurs and bourgeois wished to possess it. Ease came and Serena married Arnold, and they had many daughters, all of whom she taught to make lace.

The often quoted picture in the Louvre Gallery, painted by Hans Memling (14—to 1494) and representing the Virgin and the Infant Christ surrounded by gift-bearers, among whom is a rich Brugeois wearing a gray costume trimmed with a bobbin-lace edging, certainly indicates that the industry existed in this epoch, and possibly had its center at Bruges, then the principal city in Flanders and the seat of the court. Furthermore, records prove that already at the opening of the 16th century, lace-making was included as a necessary part of the education of women. The edicts of Charles V requiring that it should be taught in all the schools and convents, greatly stimulated its development in Bruges, as well as throughout the entire Flanders and the provinces of Hainaut, Brabant and Antwerp. It became so popular an occupation for women that Charles’s successor, Philip II, required that the magistrates of Ghent and Bruges restrict the number of lace-workers in their cities, in order that the rich might find some women left willing to serve them. Another enlightening document shows that in 1544 Bruges counted 7,696 poor among her population, and that the department of public charity required of the young women among them that they should cease to walk the streets and should learn the lace industry. There were at that time many lace schools. During the following centuries, Bruges maintained her position as a lace center and was able to survive the death-blow the French Revolution dealt the industry. For we find, about the middle of the 19th century, the city still counted seventy-nine schools, attended by 2,722 pupils, while in Valenciennes, for example, lace-making no longer existed.

There is, then, a rich and ancient past back of the clicking bobbins of the Bruges of to-day. After four years of German rule it is still difficult to give accurate statistics, but generally speaking, in this city of 54,000 inhabitants, as many as 5,000 women and girls make lace of some sort. If you question the average woman, she will probably look at you in surprize and say: “How many lace-makers? Why, everybody; there is hardly a house in Bruges without its cushion and bobbins.” While if you put the same question to such a celebrated lace dealer as M. Gillemont de Cock, who counts gold and silver medals from many nations, he will be very apt to answer: “Madame, before the war I knew of about thirty, now I can not say!” The Lace Committee at Brussels considers 5,000 a fair estimate for Bruges and her contributing villages, which is the number given, too, by Professor Maertens of the Normal School.

By the Bruges district is meant chiefly Bruges, quite the contrary of the usual situation. One hears of the Alost region, for instance, and finds that while the villages of the surrounding area count thousands of workers, in the city of Alost itself very few are left. However, Bruges, too, counts some few outlying villages. Madame Ryeland, representative during the war of the Brussels Lace Committee, told me that forty communes contributed to her committee, the most important being Syssele (where Valenciennes is the favorite lace), Maldeghem (applications and filet), Saint Andre (Cluny and Valenciennes), Oostcamp and Lophem (Valenciennes), Saint Croix (Cluny and other guipures), and Saint Michele (an unusually beautiful Duchesse de Bruges).

In Bruges itself there are three important convent lace schools, working largely for the shops, but which also execute private commands; the convent school of the Apostolines, typical of those where the children learn a little Flemish, a little French, much catechism, and for the rest make the laces of the region from morning till evening; the school Defoere, and the well-known school Josephine. Each has between 100 and 200 dentellières, who make the popular Torchons and Clunys and Valenciennes, and also the more difficult Binche, with its mesh characterized by the airy “_boules de neige_,” snow-balls. They make, too, Old Flanders, which has a particularly strong and elaborate mesh; and of course the Duchesse de Bruges, or Bruges, for which the city is famous. In addition to the convent schools and a few other less important laique schools and some work-rooms, one finds in the Hospices, or free homes for the old, another goodly company working together. In their picturesque retreats some 200 old women pass their days making lace, chiefly Valenciennes.

There remain the individual households; to the common statement that in each one, some member makes some kind of lace, one might add, at some time during the year. If the children from these homes do not go to the schools to learn, they are taught by their mothers and grandmothers. A favorite Christmas gift to children is a cushion and set of bobbins, with which they soon learn to produce simple patterns. For example, Madame Roose, the daughter of the concierge of the Groothuis Museum, which houses the marvelous Baron Liedts collection of old laces, accustomed from childhood to see and hear of these laces, became herself a lace-maker and later a successful dealer and now has five daughters of her own, all of whom she has herself taught to ply their bobbins. The Lace Committee told me that during the war the clothing committee had difficulty in finding young girls and women who could darn and sew even moderately well; since childhood they had given all their time to lace-making. Conscious of the danger in this situation, the Lace Normal School preaches that until she has learned other necessary things, no young girl should be allowed to spend more than half a day over her cushion.