Part 9

Thus prepared, I was not surprised at being roused at five in the morning by the clumping of sabots and clinking of hammers in the street below--my room is a corner one, looking from two windows on the Rue d’Eglise, the principal street of the place, and from the other two on the Rue des Pecheurs, or “Visschurs’ Straet,” which runs across the northern end of the Rue d’Eglise. A flight of broad steps here runs up on to the Digue, or broad terrace fronting the sea, and at the foot of these steps they were erecting a temporary altar, and over it a large picture of fishermen hauling in nets full of monsters of the deep. They had brought it from the parish church, and, as such pictures go, it was by no means a bad one. Presently tricoloured flags began to appear from the windows of most of the houses in both streets, and here and there garlands of bright-coloured paper were hung across from one side to the other. As the morning advanced the bells from the church and convent called the simple folk to mass at short intervals, six, half-past seven, nine, and grand mass at ten. The call seemed to be answered by more people than we had fancied the town could have held. At eleven there was to be a procession, and now miniature altars with lighted candles appeared in many of the ground-floor windows, both of shops and private houses; and the streets were strewed with rushes and diamond-shaped pieces of coloured paper. Punctual to its time the head of the procession came round the corner of “Visschurs’ Straet,” half a dozen small boys ringing bells leading the way. Then came the beadledom of Blankenberghe, in the shape of several imposing persons in municipal uniform, then three little girls dressed in white, with bouquets, more boys, including a diligent but not very skilful drummer, six or seven other maidens in white, somewhat older than their predecessors, of whom the centre one carried some ornament of tinsel and flowers. Then came the heavy silk canopy, supported by four light poles carried by acolytes, and surrounded by choristers, of whom the leader bore a large silver censer, and under the canopy marched a shaven monk in cream-coloured brocade satin, carrying the pyx, and a less gorgeously attired brother with an open missal. Around the whole of the procession, to protect it from the accompanying crowd, were a belt of bronzed fishermen in their best clothes, some carrying staves, some hymn-books, and almost all joining in the chant which was rolled out by the priest, in a powerful bass with a kind of metallic ring in it, as they neared the altar at the foot of the steps. Here the whole procession paused, and the greater part knelt, while the priest put incense in the censer, and made his obeisances and prayed in an unknown tongue, and the censer boy swung his sweet-smelling smoke about, and the fishermen and their wives and children prayed too, in their own tongue, I suppose, and their own way, probably for fair weather and plenty of fish, and let us hope for brave and gentle hearts to meet whatever rough weather and short commons may be in store for them by land or water, Then the procession rose, and passed down the Rue d’Eglise, pausing at the corner of the little market-place opposite a rude figure of the Madonna in a niche over some pious doorway, [Greek phrase] and so out of sight. And the _bourgeois_ blew out the candles and took away the chairs on which, while the halt lasted, they had been kneeling from their shop windows, putting back the bathing dresses, and the shell boxes, and other sea-side merchandise, while the whole non-shopkeeping population, and the neighbours from Bruges, and the strangers who fill the hotels and lodging-houses turned out upon the splendid sands and on the Digue to enjoy their _fête_-day. In the afternoon the _corps de musique_ of the communal schools of Bruges gave a gratuitous concert to us all by the permission of the communal administration of that town, as we bathed, or promenaded, or sipped coffee or liqueurs in the broad verandahs of the _cafés_ which line the Digue. Gaily dressed middle-class women (of upper classes, as we understand them, I see none), in many-coloured garments and immense structures of false back hair, such as these eyes have never before seen; a sprinkling of Belgian officers in uniform, Russians, Frenchmen, Germans a few, and two Anglo-Saxons, Englishmen I cannot say, for one is an American citizen and the other your contributor, who compose the only English-speaking males, so far as I can judge; groups of Flemish women of the people in long black cloth cloaks, with large hoods lined with black satin, more expensive probably, but not nearly so picturesque as the old red cloak which thirty years ago was the almost universal Sunday dress of women in Wiltshire, Berkshire, and other Western counties; little old-fashioned girls in nice mob caps, and the fishermen in excellent blue broad-cloth jackets and trousers, and well-blacked shoes or boots, instead of the huge sabots of their daily life; in short, every soul, I suppose, in Blankenberghe, from the Bourgmestre who sits on his throne, to the donkey-boy who drives along his Neddy under a freight of children, at half a franc an hour, whenever he can entice the small fry from the superior attraction of engineering with the splendid sand, spends his or her three or four hours on the Digue, enjoying whatever of the music, gossip, coffee, beer, or other pastimes they are inclined to or can afford; and in that whole crowd of pleasant holiday-making folk there is not one single trace of poverty, not a starved face, not a naked foot, not a ragged garment. It is the same on the week-days. The people, notably the fishermen and _baigneurs_, dress roughly, but they have all comfortable thick worsted stockings in their sabots, and their jerseys and overalls are ample and satisfactory. Why is it that in nine places out of ten on the Continent this is so, and that in England you shall never be able to find a watering-place which is not deformed more or less by poverty and thriftlessness? Right across the sea, there, on the Norfolk coast, lie Cromer and Sherringham. More daring sailors never manned lifeboat, more patient fishermen never dragged net, than the seafaring folk of those charming villages. They are courteous, simple, outspoken folk, too, singularly attractive in their looks and ways. But, alas! for the rags, and the grinding poverty, declaring itself in a dozen ways, in the cottages, in the children’s looks, in the women’s premature old age. When will England wake up, and get rid of the curse of her wealth and the curse of her poverty? When will an Englishman be able again to look on at a fête-day in Belgium, or Switzerland, or Germany, or France, without a troubled conscience and a pain in his heart, as he thinks of the contrast at home, and the bitter satire in the old, worn-out name of “Merry England?” It is high time that we all were heartsick over it, for the canker grows on us. Those who know London best will tell you so; those who know the great provincial towns and country villages will tell you so, except perhaps that the latter are now getting depopulated, and so contain less altogether of joy or sorrow. However, sir, there are other than these holiday times in which to dwell on this dark subject. I ought to apologise for having fallen into it unawares, when I sat down merely to put on paper, if I could in a few lines, and impart to your readers the exceeding freshness of the feeling which the feast-day at this little Belgian watering-place leaves on one. But who knows when he sits down, at any rate in the holidays, what he is going to write? However good your intentions, at times you can’t “get the hang of it,” can’t say the thing you meant to say.

You may wonder, too, at this sudden plunge into the _fête_ of the Assumption at Blankenberghe, when I have never warned you even that I had flitted from my round on the great crank which grinds for us all so ruthlessly in the parts about the Strand and the Inns of Court. Well, sir, I plead in my defence the test that a very able friend of mine applies to novels. He opens the second volume and reads a chapter; if that tempts him, on he goes to the end of the book; if it is very good indeed, he then goes back, and fairly begins at the beginning. So I hope your readers will be inclined to peruse in future weeks some further gossip respecting this place, which should perhaps have preceded the _fête_-day. If they should get to take the least interest in Blankenberghians and their works and ways, it is more than these latter can be said to do about them, for in the two or three cheap sheets which I find on the table here, and which constitute the press of this corner of Belgium, there is seldom more than a couple of lines devoted to the whole British Empire. The fact that there is not another Englishman in the place, and that the American above mentioned, the only other representative of our English-speaking stock here, went once to see the Derby, and got so bored by two o’clock that he left the Downs and walked back to Epsom station, enduring the whole chaff of the road, and finding the doors locked and the clerks and porters all gone up to the race, ought to be enough to make them curious--curious enough at any rate for long-vacation purposes. There are plenty of odds and ends of life a little out of our ordinary track lying about here to make a small “harvest for a quiet eye,” which I am inclined to try and garner for you, if you think well. And are not the new King and Queen coming next week to delight their subjects, and witness many kinds of fireworks, and a “_concours des joueurs de boule, dits pas baenbolders_,” whatever these may be?

Belgian Bathing

I should like to know how many grown Englishmen or Englishwomen, apart from those unfortunates who are preparing for competitive examinations, are aware of the existence of this place? No Englishman is bound to know of it by any law of polite education acknowledged amongst us, for is it not altogether ignored in Murray?

Even Bradshaw’s _Continental Guide_ is silent as to its whereabouts. This is somewhat hard upon Blankenberghe, sturdy and rapidly growing little watering-place that she is, already exciting the jealousy of her fashionable neighbour, Ostend. It must be owned, however, that she returns the compliment by taking the slightest possible interest in the contemporary history of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the place has certain recommendations to persons in search of a watering-place out of England. If you are content with an hotel of the country, of which there is a large choice, you may have three good meals a day and a bedroom for six and a half francs, with a considerable reduction for families. Even at the fashionable hotels on the Digue the price is only eight or nine francs; and when you have paid your hotel bill you are out of all danger of extravagance, for there is literally nothing to spend money upon. Your bathing machine costs you sixpence. There are no pleasure boats and no wheeled vehicles for hire in the place, and no excursions if there were; shops there are none; and the market is of the smallest and meagerest kind. There are no beggars and no amusements, except bathing and the Kursaal. These, however, suffice to keep the inhabitants and visitors in a state of much contentment.

But now for the geography. From Ostend harbour to the mouth of the Scheldt is a dead flat, highly cultivated, and dotted all over with villages and farmhouses, but somewhat lower than high-water mark. The sea is kept out by an ancient and dilapidated-looking dyke, some fifty feet high, on the slopes of which flourishes a strong, reedy sort of grass, planted in tufts at regular intervals, to hold the loose soil together. The fine sand drifts up the dyke and blows over it, lying just like snow, so that if you half-close your eyes and look at it from fifty yards’ distance, you may fancy yourself on a glacier in the Oberland. Blankenberghe is an ancient fishing village, lying just under the dyke, between eight and nine miles from Ostend. When it came into the minds of the inhabitants to convert it into a watering-place they levelled the top of their dyke for some 600 yards until it is only about twenty-five feet above high-water mark. They paved the sea face with good stone, and the fine flat walk on the top, thirty yards broad, with brick, and called it the Digue, in imitation of Ostend. They built a Kursaal, three or four great hotels, and half a dozen first-class lodging-houses, opening on to the Digue, with deep verandahs in front, and they brought a single line branch of the Flanders railway from Bruges, and the deed was accomplished. There is no such a sea-walk anywhere that I can remember as Blankenberghe Digue, from which you look straight away with nothing but sea between you and the North Pole. From the Digue you descend by a flight of twenty-four steps on one side to the sands, on the other into the town, the chief of these latter flights being at the head of the Rue d’Eglise, the backbone, as it were, of the place, which runs from the railway station to the Digue. There may be 1500 inhabitants out of the season, when all the Digue hotels and lodging-houses are shut up; at present, perhaps, another 1000, coming and going, and attracted by the bathing.

Of this institution an Englishman is scarcely a fair judge, as it is conducted on a method so utterly unlike anything we have at home at present. My American friend assures me that we are 100 years behind all other nations in this matter, that the Belgians conduct it exactly as they do in the States, and that theirs is the only decent mode of bathing. It may be so. One sees such rapid changes in these days, and advanced opinions of all kinds are being caught up so quickly by even such Philistines as the English middle classes, that he is a bold man who will assert that we shall not see the notions of Brighton and Dover yield to the new ideas of Newport and Blankenberghe before long. In one respect, indeed, it is well that they should, for the machines here are convenient little rooms on wheels, with plenty of pegs, two chairs, a small tub, a looking-glass, and everything handsome about them. But the wheels are broad, and very-low; consequently you are only rolled down to the neighbourhood of the water, thinking yourself lucky if you get within five or six yards of it. Now, as the occupants of the machine on your left and right are probably sprightly and somewhat facetious young Belgian or French women, and as the beach shelves so gently that you have at least a run of fifty yards before you can get into deep enough water to swim with comfort, the root difference between Blankenberghian and English habits discloses itself to you from the first. Of course, as men, women, and children all bathe together, costumes are necessary, but those in which the men have to array themselves only make bathing a discomfort, without giving one the consciousness of being decently clad. You have handed to you with your towels a simple jersey, with arms and legs six or eight inches in length, reaching perhaps to the middle of the biceps and femoral muscles. Into this apology for a dress you insert and button yourself up (it is well for you, by the way, if one or two buttons be not missing), and then are expected to walk calmly out into the water through groups of laughing girls in jackets and loose trousers. Having threaded your way through these, and avoided a quadrille party on the one hand, and an excellent fat couple, reminding you of the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Bubb in the one-horse “chay,” who are bathing their family on the other, you address yourself to swimming. As you descended from the Digue you read, “Bathers are expressly recommended to hold themselves at least fifteen yards from the breakers by buoys designed.” You do not see any breakers, but there is a line of buoys about eighty yards out to which you contemptuously paddle, and after all find that you are scarcely out of your depth. When you have had enough you return, poor, dripping, forked mortal, to a last and severest trial. For the universal custom is to sit about on chairs amongst the machines; and on one side of your door are perhaps a couple of nursemaids chatting while their children build sand castles, on the other a matron or two working and gossiping. Now, sir, a man who has been taking the rough and the smooth of life for a good many years within half a mile of Temple Bar is not likely to be oversensitive, but I would appeal to any contributor on your staff, sir, or to yourself, whether you would be prepared to go through such an ordeal without wincing? On my return from my first swim I recognised my American cousin in his element. He was clad in a blue striped jersey,--would that I could have sprinkled it with a few stars,--and was sauntering about with the greatest coolness from group to group, enjoying the whole business, and no doubt looking forward complacently to the time when differences of sex shall be altogether ignored in the academies of the future. He threw a pitying glance at me as I skedaddled to my machine, secretly vowing to abstain from all such adventures hereafter. Since that time I have taken my dip too early for the Belgian public to be present at the ceremony, but, like the rest of the world, I daily look on, and, unlike them, wonder. As to the morality of it, I can’t say that I think the custom of promiscuous bathing as practised here seems to me either moral or immoral. Occasionally when the waves are a little rough you see couples clinging together for mutual support more than the circumstances perhaps strictly require; but there is very little of this. The whole business seemed to me not immoral, but in our conventional sense vulgar, much like “kissing in the ring,” which I have seen played by most exemplary sets of young men and women on excursions in Greenwich or Richmond Park, but which would not do in Hamilton Gardens or a May Fair drawing-room. Meanwhile, I hope that as long at least as I can enjoy the water we shall remain benighted bathers in the eyes of our American cousins and of the brave Belgians. To a man the first requisite of a really enjoyable bath is surely deep water, and the second, no clothes, for the loss of either of which no amount of damp flirtation can compensate, in the opinion at least of your contributor, who, nevertheless in these Belgian parts, while obliged to record his opinion, has perhaps a great consciousness that he may be something of an old fogey.

I suppose that a man or nation is to be congratulated about whom their neighbours have nothing to say. If so, the position of England at this time is peculiarly enviable out here. I read the _Indépendance Belge_ diligently, but under the head “Nouvelles d’Angleterre,” for which that journal retains, as it would seem, a special correspondent, I never learn anything whatever except the price of funds. We occupy an average of perhaps twelve lines in its columns, and none at all in those of the _La Vigie de la Côte_, the special production of Blankenberghe, or of the Bruges and Ostend journals.

Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us,

To see oursels as ithers see us!

Certainly a short residence at Blankenberghe should be taken in conjunction with the volume of essays on international policy by Mr. Congreve and his fellow Comtists, which I happen to have brought with me for deliberate perusal, if one wants to feel the shine taken out of one’s native land. I don’t.

Belgian Boats

Blankenberghe has one branch of native industry, and one only. From time immemorial it has been a fishing station. The local paper declares that there has been no change in the boats, the costumes, or the implements of this industry since the sixteenth century, with the exception noticed below. One can quite believe it, as far as the boats are concerned. They are very strongly built tubs, ranging from twenty to thirty tons, flat-bottomed, the same breadth of beam fore and aft, built I should think on the model of the first duck which was seen off this coast, and a most sensible model too. They have no bowsprit, but a short foremast in the bows, carrying one small sail, and a strong mainmast amidships, carrying one big sail. Each of these sails is run up by a single rope, rigged through a pulley in the top of the masts, and of other rigging there is none. The boats are all of a uniform russet-brown colour, the tint of old age, looking as if they had been once varnished, in the time, let us say, of William the Silent, and had never been touched since. There is not a scrap of paint on the whole fleet. In short, I am convinced that the local paper by no means exaggerates their antiquity. Instead of finding it hard to believe that sixteenth-century men went to sea in them, I should not be startled to hear that our first parents were the original proprietors, or at any rate that the present fleet was laid down by Japhet, when the Ark was broken up. The habits of the fleet are as quaint as their looks. There is no scrap of anchorage or shelter of any kind here, the sands lie perfectly open to the north and west, and the surf seems about as rough as it is elsewhere. But the Blankenberghe fishermen are perfectly indifferent, convinced no doubt that neither sea nor sand will do anything to hurt them or their boats, for old acquaintance’ sake. To me, accustomed to the scrambling, and shouting, and hauling up above high-water mark, the running of naked-legged boys into the water, and the energetic doings of the crew when a fishing boat comes to land at home, there is something of the comically sublime in the contrast presented by these good Flemings. As one of the old brown tubs rolls towards the shore, looking as if she scarcely had made up her mind which end to send in first, you see a man quietly pitch a small anchor over the bows, and then down come the two sails. Sometimes the anchor begins to hold before the boat grounds, but just as often she touches before the anchor bites, but nobody cares. The only notice taken is to unship the rudder and haul it aboard; then comes a wave which swings her round, and leaves her broadside to the surf. Nobody moves. Bang comes the next breaker, lifting her for a moment, and bumping her down again on the sand, her bows perhaps a trifle more to sea, but the crew only smoke and hold on. And so it goes on, bang, bump, thump, till sooner or later she swings right round and settles into her place on the sand. When she has adjusted this to her own satisfaction one of the crew just drops over the stern with another anchor on his shoulder, which he fixes in the sand, and then he and the rest leave her and walk up to the Digue, and generally on to vespers at the church, which is often three parts filled with these jolly fellows. Getting off again is much the same happy-go-lucky business. The men shoulder the anchor which is out at the stern, or, as often as not, leave it on shore with their cable coiled, ready for their return. Then they clamber into their tub, which is bumping away, held only by the anchor out at the bows. They wait for the first wave that floats them, then up go the sails, on goes the rudder, they get a haul on the anchor, and after heading one or two different ways get fairly off.