The Spell of Flanders Part 14

It was her fortune, or rather misfortune, to rule over the Netherlands at a period when the seething forces of religious unrest and protest were becoming too violent to be restrained. Had Philip II, her half-brother, been less bigoted, less cruel, and less blind to the best interests of the country and of his own dynasty, it is possible that the great popularity of the d.u.c.h.ess--who was sincerely loved by the majority of her subjects and respected by all--might have enabled the Government to restrain the rising pa.s.sions of the people. If, instead of a policy of savage repression, the King of Spain had authorised Margaret to pursue a policy of moderation and conciliation, the fearful history of the next eighty years--the blackest page in human history--might never have been written. Unfortunately, moderation and conciliation were as foreign to the nature of that sombre monarch as to Torquemada himself, and fanaticism fought fanaticism with a fury that was as devoid of intelligence as it was of mercy.

The first act in the drama of blood was the sudden outbreak of the frenzy of the iconoclasts, or image-breakers, which swept over the greater part of the Spanish Netherlands in the month of August, 1566.

Scarcely a church, a chapel, a convent or a monastery, escaped the devastation that resulted from these fanatical attacks. Paintings, statuary, altars and chapels, even the tablets and monuments of the dead--the acc.u.mulated art treasures of centuries--were torn to pieces or carried bodily away. In some places the work of destruction was completed in a few hours, in others organised bands of pillagers worked systematically for days before the local authorities--taken completely by surprise--recovered their wits and put a stop to the work of desecration. The loss to art and civilisation effected by the iconoclasts in Flanders is beyond computation. The Regent acted with energy and decision, her spirited appeals to the magistrates finally bringing them to their senses and resulting in a speedy restoration of order. Philip, who had just cause for resentment, meditated vengeance, however, and in 1568 replaced the too gentle Margaret by the Duke of Alva.

For the Professor the Hotel de Ville contained still another room of inexhaustible interest. This was the museum of the commune which occupies the entire second floor. For some reason--certainly not from fear of the suffragette, which is a non-existent species in Belgium--this is closed to the public, but we were admitted by courtesy of the Secretary of the Commune. The collection is of the utmost value to the historian and archeologist, but is rather badly kept. Among the most interesting objects were four chairs once used by Charles V; the ancient keyboard of the _carillon_ which formerly hung in the belfry of the town hall but is now installed in the tower of Ste. Walburge, and some water-colour designs for tapestries. A large painting of the Last Judgment covered a considerable part of one wall.

This is attributed to Heuvick, and originally hung in the Salle des echevins. It was the ancient custom to have a painting of this subject, covered by curtains, in the olden justice halls. When a witness was about to be sworn the curtains were suddenly drawn back and the sight of the picture, which represented with great vividness the destruction of the d.a.m.ned, was intended to prevent false testimony. The collection also included a variety of ancient arms and coins, several curious mediaeval strong boxes, and two huge snakes which hung from the rafters overhead. There are no snakes in Belgium to-day, but our guide a.s.sured us that a crocodile had once been taken in the River Scheldt near Audenaerde, so the snakes may have been natives after all--a.s.suming, of course, that the crocodile story is correct.

Back of the Hotel de Ville proper is the still more ancient Cloth Hall, dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Its small, high windows were built slantingly, to prevent archers from sending arrows directly into the interior. At some comparatively recent period two large windows were cut through, the walls on each side, but a goodly number of the earlier windows still remain, and the beams that support the high, pointed roof are still as sound as the day they were laid in position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF STE. WALBURGE, AUDENAERDE.]

To the west of the Grande Place, and scarcely a stone's throw from Baldwin's Tower, rises the vast grey ma.s.s of Ste. Walburge, with ten or twelve tiny fifteenth or sixteenth century houses nestling snugly up against it. This splendid church dates from the very foundation of the city, an early chapel erected on this site having been sacked and burned by the Nors.e.m.e.n in 880. Twice after this the church was destroyed in the wars between Flanders and France, but in 1150 was begun an edifice of which some portions still remain. When John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, chose Audenaerde as his Flemish place of residence the burghers determined to enlarge and beautify their church and erected the semi-circular portion of the choir in 1406 to 1408.

Soon afterwards the great nave was begun, but was not completed for fully a century, in 1515. The tower, one of the finest in the world, advanced still more slowly and was not entirely finished until 1624.

Its original height was three hundred and seventy-three feet, but in 1804 the wooden spire was struck by lightning and burned. It has never been rebuilt, and the present height of the tower is two hundred and ninety-five feet. As it is, it dominates the little city and commands a wide view across the broad valley of the Scheldt in every direction. It was a stiff climb, up a perpetually winding stone stairway, to the top, but the view well repaid us for the exertion.

The interior of the edifice suggests a great metropolitan cathedral rather than the chief church of a small provincial town. The choir, which suffered severely from the ravages of the iconoclasts, has recently been restored with great skill, and is now one of the most beautiful in Europe. This church contains several paintings by Simon de Pape, a native of Audenaerde, whose father was the architect of the spire burned in 1804, also an "a.s.sumption of the Virgin Mary" by Gaspard de Crayer, a follower of Rubens, who painted more than two hundred religious pictures. This, like all the others, is of mediocre merit. To the student of history and of ancient art one of the most interesting treasures of the church is its collection of tapestries of Audenaerde. Three of the more important ones represent landscapes--in fact the majority of Audenaerde tapestries that I have seen may be thus described--with castles, churches, and farmhouses in the centre and roses, tulips and other flowers in the foreground. Like most Audenaerde tapestries also they are crowded with winged creatures--birds flying or singing in the trees and hens, turkeys and pheasants strolling in the gra.s.s. A tapestry of a different genre is one belonging to the Confrerie de la Ste. Croix, which shows an Oriental landscape with Jerusalem in the distance, and at the four corners the figures of Herod, Pilate, Anna and Caiphas.

Tapestry weaving was introduced into Flanders during the time of the Crusades, the reports of the returning crusaders regarding the splendid carpets and rugs of the Orient arousing a desire on the part of the Flemish weavers to imitate them. Castle walls, however thick and strongly built, were apt to be damp and cold and a great demand speedily sprang up for the new productions for wall coverings.

Starting at Arras and Tournai, the manufacture of tapestries spread to all the cities in the valley of the Scheldt and received a particularly important development at Audenaerde, which soon became the leading tapestry centre of Flanders. The weavers adopted Saint Barbara as their patron, and in 1441 were organised into a corporation. In their original charter it was stipulated that each apprentice must work three years for his first employer. Despite the severity of this regulation the manufacture of tapestries expanded with such rapidity that in 1539 no less than twenty thousand persons--including men, women and children--were employed as tapestry weavers at Audenaerde and its environs.

Among the famous Flemish artists who painted designs for the tapestry weavers of Audenaerde may be mentioned Floris, c.o.xcie, Rubens, David Teniers, Gaspar de Witte, Victor Janssens, Peter Spierinckx, Adolphus de Gryeff, and Alexander Van Bredael, while there were a host of others. Gradually, however, the artisans began to be discontented with their rate of pay, which the master tapestry makers kept at a low figure, and the advent of the religious wars found them eager to join any movement of revolt. After the outburst of the iconoclasts and the arrival of the Duke of Alva many fled to the Dutch provinces and to England, never to return. This emigration continued well into the seventeenth century, as various decrees pa.s.sed by the magistrates between 1604 and 1621, confiscating the possessions of such emigrants, testify.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLEMISH TAPESTRY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]

Another cause that contributed to the ruin of the tapestry industry at Audenaerde was the active effort made by the Kings of France, Louis XIII and Louis XIV, to induce the best weavers and master-workmen to emigrate to Paris. Philippe Robbins, one of the most celebrated master-weavers of Audenaerde, was invited to come to France in 1622 and was afterwards proclaimed at Beavais to be the _Chef de tous les tapitsers du Roy_. Many of the weavers who went to Paris and Brussels on their own account established ateliers where they manufactured what they proclaimed to be _veritables tapis d'Audenaerde_, and this compet.i.tion still further injured the industry which soon afterward disappeared entirely from the city that gave its name to this type of tapestry and has never since been re-established there. With the departure of its weavers the little city on the Scheldt rapidly declined in importance, and for the past two centuries has been the sleepy little market-town that it is to-day.

On the other side of the River Scheldt, which flows through the town and is crossed by several bridges, is the interesting Church of Notre Dame de Pamela, which dates from the thirteenth century, having been constructed in the remarkably short s.p.a.ce of four years and completed in 1239. It thus belongs to the transitional period between the Romanesque style and the pure Gothic and is of interest to the student of architecture as one of the most perfect examples of this period in Flanders. The general effect of the interior, especially when viewed from the foot of the organ loft, is n.o.ble and imposing in the highest degree. Our visit was during a sunny afternoon, and the effect of the long beams of light falling from the lofty windows of the nave across the stately pillars below was indescribably beautiful. Truly this masterpiece of stone expresses in its every line the truth of Montalembert's beautiful remark that in such a church every column, every soaring arch, is a prayer to the Most High.

One of the most curious of the paintings in Notre Dame de Pamela is a triptych by Jean Snellinck, a painter of Antwerp and a forerunner of Rubens who was greatly in vogue among the tapestry weavers of Audenaerde. This work represents the "Creation of Eve" in the central panel, the "Temptation" at the left and the "Expulsion from Eden" at the right. The figures are all finely painted, especially those in the left wing, and the entire work is an admirable example of early Flemish art. The church also possesses an interesting work by Simon de Pape representing the invention of the cross. Beneath the organ loft were three tapestries of Audenaerde workmanship which the caretaker obligingly spread out on the church floor for our inspection. All were in a poor state of preservation. One represented a woodland scene with three peasants on their way to market in the foreground. The second had a curious group of fowls in the foreground, while the third showed a sylvan scene with a mother and three daughters, each of the girls bearing a basket of flowers.

Both Ste. Walburge and Notre Dame de Pamela suffered severely from the fury of the iconoclasts, although the storm broke in Audenaerde at a later period than in the larger cities farther to the eastward. The cure of Ste. Walburge and four priests of Notre Dame de Pamela were thrown by the rioters into the Scheldt and drowned October 4th, 1572, while both churches were sacked.

On our way back from visiting the smaller church we paused on the quay named Smallendam to admire the superb view of Ste. Walburge across the river. A bit further on we entered a quaint little estaminet bearing the inviting name of _In der Groote Pinte_ which we freely translated as "the big pint." Apparently our Flemish was inexact, for the beverage with which we were served was not notable for quant.i.ty. It proved, moreover, to be exceedingly sour and unpleasant, and we left our gla.s.ses unfinished. In the course of a tour around the town we inspected what remains of the ancient Chateau de Bourgogne, the early residence of the Dukes of Burgundy. The princ.i.p.al building is now used by a Justice of the Peace, and we found little of interest save some old walls and a ma.s.sive inner courtyard. At the hospital of Notre Dame, opposite the great tower of Ste. Walburge, we found two more Audenaerde tapestries in an admirable state of preservation, while a dozen fine mediaeval doorways in different parts of the town attracted our attention. For so small a place there are a great many religious inst.i.tutions, many of them of great antiquity. Among these may be mentioned the Convents of the Black Sisters (Couvents des Soeurs-Noires), the Abbey of Maegdendale, the Convent of Notre Dame de Sion, and the Beguinage--the last an especially charming little spot with a delightful street entrance dating from the middle of the seventeenth century.

It is hard to believe, as one wanders about the half-deserted streets of this sleepy old Flemish town, that in its day of greatness it was a city of no mean power, holding its own st.u.r.dily against the greatest princes in the world. Of its ancient walls and towers not a single trace remains, yet those vanished ramparts four times in less than two centuries defied the armies of the neighbouring--but, alas, not always neighbourly--city of Ghent, even the redoubtable Philip Van Artevelde retiring from in front of them discomfited in 1382. Three centuries later, in 1684, Louis XIV was beaten off from an a.s.sault on these same walls, but in revenge he ordered the bombardment of the city. This resulted in a conflagration from which it had not fully recovered half a century later. In 1708 the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy won a great victory over the French under the walls of Audenaerde. To this day along the frontier between France and Flanders the peasant women lull their babies to sleep with a crooning ballad which begins:

Malbrook s'en va't en guerre, Mirlonton, mirlonton, mirlontaine; Malbrook s'en va't en guerre, Dieu sait quand il reviendra.

Il reviendra a Paques, Mirlonton, mirlonton, mirlontaine, _Il reviendra a Paques, Ou a la Trinite. (bis)_

Small wonder that even the nursery songs tell of war and chant the name of the great Duke two hundred years after the Battle of Audenaerde, for during three centuries the Flemish plains were the battlefield of Europe. Happily the present war has not as yet smitten Audenaerde with any serious damage, although Le Pet.i.t Guerrier, from his perch on the belfry of the Hotel de Ville, has no doubt looked down upon long lines of marching men and gleaming bayonets.

CHAPTER XVIII

OLD ANTWERP--ITS HISTORY AND LEGENDS

While Bruges and Ghent were in their prime as centres of Flemish commerce and industry a rival that was destined ultimately to supplant and eclipse them both was slowly growing up along the banks of the River Scheldt at a point where that important stream, which flows entirely across Flanders, becomes a tidal estuary. From the most ancient times the prosperity of Antwerp--which in French is called Anvers, in Flemish Antwerpen--has been closely connected with the river. According to the legends a giant named Antigonus once had a castle where the city now stands and exacted a toll of all who pa.s.sed up or down the river. Evasion of this primitive high tariff was punished by cutting off both the culprit's hands. Of course this giant just had to be killed by the hero, whose name was Brabo, and who was said to have been a lieutenant of Caesar. Brabo cut off the dead giant's right hand and flung it into the river in token that thenceforth it should be free from similar extortions. The visitor will find this legend recalled in the city's arms--which has two hands surmounting a castle--and in many works of art. Brabo is said to have become the first Margrave of Antwerp, and to have founded a line of seventeen Margraves, all bearing the same name, but the deeds and even the existence of these princes is as mythical as those of their ancestor--or the famous legend of Lohengrin, which belongs to this period of Antwerp's history.

Like London, Antwerp is situated sixty miles from the sea. In olden days commerce was rather inclined to seek the more inland ports, as being safer from storms and less exposed to sudden attacks. The size of ocean-going ships was, moreover, slowly but steadily increasing from generation to generation, and this increase favoured Antwerp, which had a deep, sure channel to the sea, as against its early rival Bruges, whose outlet, the little River Zwyn, was gradually silting up.

The fact that the town was situated just outside of the dominions of the Counts of Flanders probably helped its early growth, for the jealous men of Bruges might otherwise have obtained from the Counts decrees restricting, and perhaps prohibiting, its expansion. As it was, the great Counts ruled all of the left bank of the Scheldt from Antwerp to the sea, and also the waters of the river as far as one could ride into it on horseback and then reach with extended sword.

The Tete de Flandre, opposite the centre of the older part of the city, marks the end of Flanders proper in this direction. As already explained by the Professor, however, Antwerp is none the less essentially a Flemish city in its art and architecture, its language and literature, and for many centuries of its brilliant history, and for these reasons deserves a place in this book.

Like the County of Flanders, the region surrounding Antwerp was an outlying "march" or frontier district of the Empire, and its rulers therefore derived their feudal t.i.tle from the Emperor. About the year 1100 the Emperor bestowed the march on G.o.dfrey of the Beard, Count of Louvain and first Duke of Brabant. To the Dukes of Brabant it thereafter always belonged until that t.i.tle, with so many others, became merged in those acquired by the Dukes of Burgundy and united in their ill.u.s.trious descendant, Charles V. On the whole, the Dukes, being absentees, were easy rulers--the shrewd burghers seizing upon their moments of weakness to wrest new privileges from them, and relying upon their strength for protection in times of danger. From time immemorial the burghers claimed a monopoly right to trade in fish, salt and oats. Other trading privileges followed, and by the time of the first Duke of Brabant the town was already an important one, with a powerful Burg, or fortress, surrounding five acres of land and buildings. Among the latter was the Steen, or feudal prison, a part of which still stands close to the river and is used as a museum of antiquities.

The early Dukes greatly extended the commercial rights and privileges of the town, Henry III granting a charter that allowed its citizens to hold bread and meat markets and trade in corn and cloth. Duke John I granted rights in his famous Core van Antwerpen, dated nearly five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, that were remarkable for wisdom and liberality. "Within the town of Antwerp,"

the charter read, "all men are free and there are no slaves. No inhabitant may be deprived of his natural judges, nor arrested in his house on civil suit." In 1349 Duke John III granted a charter that not only confirmed all of its ancient privileges, but gave exceptional rights and liberties to foreigners--causing many of them to come and settle there. Among these was the right granted to any dweller within the city to sue: citizens according to local customs, foreigners according to the laws of their own lands. As at Bruges and Ghent all these precious charters were kept in a box having many locks, of which the keys were kept by delegates of the Broad Council of the city.

"This box," said Mr. Wilfred Robinson, in his valuable historical sketch of Antwerp, "might only be opened in the presence of all the civic authorities, while they stood around it bareheaded and holding lighted tapers in their hands. Truly it must have been a quaint and solemn scene!"

Some fifty years prior to the charter last mentioned Duke John II married one of the daughters of Edward I, King of England, and gave that monarch the city of Antwerp as a fief. Edward III used the city as a naval base, and in 1339 signed there with Jacques Van Artevelde a treaty of alliance with the communes of Brabant and Flanders. The Kings of England did not, however, retain their suzerainty over Antwerp very long, for it next pa.s.sed--once more by marriage--to the daughter of Louis of Maele, Count of Flanders. The city sought to resist, and Count Louis was obliged to besiege it and punished the burghers severely for their disobedience. On his death it pa.s.sed to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, along with the entire County of Flanders of which it was then a part, and thereafter remained under the Burgundian Dukes and their successors.

In 1446 Philip the Good--whose policy had proved so disastrous to Bruges and Ghent--laid the foundation for the commercial greatness of Antwerp by a liberal charter which he granted to the Merchant Adventurers of England. The English merchants had already left Bruges, where the River Zwyn was fast silting up, and now came to Antwerp and established there a most extensive trade. They were followed by the merchants of the other nations, and in less than seventy-five years after the granting of the charter the population of the city had doubled twice--from less than seventeen thousand to over forty--four thousand inhabitants.

It was during this period that many of the most interesting structures of "old Antwerp"--the portion of the city between the Steen and the cathedral and north of the Hotel de Ville--were built. We spent several interesting mornings tramping these quaint old winding streets, some of which are still as mediaeval in aspect as any to be seen in Europe. The _Vielle Boucherie_, recently restored, dates from the reign of Louis of Maele. In its time it contained stalls for fifty-three butchers. The streets surrounding this quaint structure of ragged brick are well nigh as ancient and interesting as the "monuments" which one encounters here and there while exploring them.

The Steen itself dates, as we have seen, from the very earliest period of the city's history, but is only a remnant of what it was. In the days of the Spanish Inquisition this grim old structure became a place of dread, and its gloomy dungeons--which the cheerful and smiling guide showed us by candlelight, for two cents a head--were in constant use for the entertainment of guests of the Margraves and their successors, the Burgundian Dukes, for nigh on to eight centuries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _VIELLE BOUCHERIE_, ANTWERP.]

In 1485 the rivalry between Antwerp and Bruges reached the point of open war. The men of Bruges built a fort commanding the River Scheldt at a point near Calloo, mounting on it no less than sixty cannon. The Antwerp burghers met this challenge by building a similar fort at Austruwel, and then attacked and captured the Flemish fort on April 23--St. George's Day. A yearly procession still commemorates this victory in the long contest to maintain the freedom of the river. A fleet of forty-nine merchant vessels that the Flemings had detained came triumphantly up the river, and the conflict for supremacy between the old sea gateway of the Netherlands and the new was settled once for all--as far as poor Bruges was concerned--in favour of Antwerp, the new maritime queen of the North.

The river itself seemed to favour the prosperity of Antwerp, as if proud and eager to become the handmaiden of so valiant and beautiful a city, for the western entrance of the Scheldt gradually deepened at about this period--from causes that in those days no one tried to understand. This gave the port a deep channel to the sea to accommodate the growing draught of ocean-going ships. The discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama helped the port also. Until then Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of the sugar trade of the East. Now it came sea-borne to Antwerp, and the formerly profitable overland sugar trade between Venice and Germany was ruined. This caused the Portuguese to establish a factory at Antwerp. The Spaniards followed, while the English and Italians enlarged their warehouses. Several great German trading houses opened premises in the city, although the Hanseatic League did not abandon Bruges for Antwerp until 1545--being the very last to go.

While the decline of Bruges led the painters of that city to desert it for its fast-growing rival on the Scheldt, Quentin Matsys, the greatest of the early Antwerp artists, does not seem to have derived much of his inspiration from the masterpieces of the Bruges school.

The early chronicles give a most romantic account of the life of this painter, who was born at Louvain about 1466. According to these more or less legendary stories he was at first a blacksmith, and changed to a painter through love for a damsel whose father was a great patron and admirer of that art. Another account has it that he took up painting owing to illness, first colouring images of the saints such as were then given to children during the carnival. Blacksmith he certainly was, as his father had been before him, and the wonderful cover for the well in front of the cathedral is his handiwork. It seems probable, however, that he first learned the art of painting at Louvain, probably as an apprentice to the son of Dierick Bouts. At Antwerp he soon fell in love with a beautiful girl, who may have been the model for some of his charming Madonnas. The story is told by one old chronicler that the maiden's father opposed the match because the young suitor was not a sufficiently skilful artist. On a certain occasion Matsys, finding his intended father-in-law out, painted a fly on one of the figures in a painting belonging to him. On his return the owner of the painting started to brush the fly off and, seeing his mistake, heartily admitted that the young artist who had painted it merited all praise and gave his consent to the nuptials.

The museum at Antwerp is rich in masterpieces by Matsys, including his greatest work, "The Entombment." This is a triptych, the panels showing Herod's banquet with the head of John the Baptist lying on the table, and St. John in the boiling oil. The "Madonna," in the same museum, is one of the sweetest faces ever painted among the hundreds of Madonnas that abound in mediaeval art, and one cannot but feel that it is the very face that won the heart of the artist and caused him to adopt painting as his profession. Its resemblance to the face of the Madonna now in the Berlin museum strengthens this theory. At Antwerp also there are to be seen "The Holy Face," a companion painting to the "Madonna" just mentioned, and the gruesome yet appealing "Veil of Veronica," showing the livid face of the Saviour with drops of blood from the cruel crown of thorns trickling down across it. The museum at Brussels possesses another masterpiece, and the oldest dated picture by this artist, "The Legend of St. Anne," which was completed in 1509 for the brotherhood of St. Anne at Louvain. He also painted several strong and striking portraits, of which the best is that of Erasmus at the Stadel Inst.i.tute at Frankfort. Matsys was one of the first Flemish artists to present subjects of every-day life as well as religious episodes and characters. "The Banker and his Wife," at the Louvre in Paris, is the finest example of this kind. There are authenticated works by this master in a number of European museums, while a considerable number of his pictures have become lost or have not as yet been identified.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE BANKER AND HIS WIFE."--MATSYS.]

Matsys is the greatest name in the history of Flemish art between the masters of Bruges and the school of Rubens. It was his success that made Antwerp the Florence of the North. Among Matsys' successors Frans de Vriendt, better known as Frans Floris, was one of the most notable.

He was a member of the Antwerp guild of St. Luke at the age of twenty-three, and produced a vast number of works, many of which can still be seen scattered among the churches and art collections of Flanders. He had over one hundred pupils, of whom Martin de Vos achieved the greatest fame. As this painter worked after the destruction of the image-breakers many of his religious subjects survive to this day. The Antwerp museum contains no less than twenty-three of his works, as against only four by his master. Both of these artists, however, were profound admirers of the Italian school, and the work of Floris especially--though vastly admired in his day--is now looked upon as more Italian than Flemish, more imitative than original.

This cannot be said of the next really great painter to appear in Flanders, Peter Breughel the Elder. Born at the little village of Breughel, near Breda in Brabant, about 1526, this artist studied for a time in Italy--as did all of his contemporaries--and then settled at Antwerp. Here he obtained the themes of many of his most famous compositions. "In the port, in the tavern, in the fairs of neighbouring villages," says Prof. A. J. Wauters, "meeting now a young couple in the giddy dance, or a drunkard stumbling in his path, he sought the humble spectacle of homely things, the noisy mirth of rustic festivities, and was always in quest of every-day subjects, which earned for him, at the hands of posterity, the surname of 'Breughel of Peasants.'" He later removed to Brussels, where he received many commissions, particularly from the Emperor Rudolph II, who greatly admired his work. Several of his chief masterpieces are therefore in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, but the Royal Museum at Antwerp contains four of his works, while several others are scattered about Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WINTER."--PETER BREUGHEL.]

To the lover of Flemish paintings Breughel is one of the most characteristic and charming of them all. His art is distinctively Flemish, in subject, treatment and inspiration. Somewhat influenced perhaps by Jerome Bosch, a Brabant painter of the previous century renowned for his weird and eccentric conceptions, Breughel is never conventional. His work is that of a humourist, a satirist who sees the follies of the world but laughs at them. His pictures are admirable in their colouring, execution and the grouping of the figures, and they are especially interesting in their vivid portrayal of the every-day Flemish life of the times in which he lived.

The visitor to Antwerp cannot fail to observe the images of the Virgin placed at the corners of nearly every street in the older quarter of the city. These are said to be due to the Long Wapper, a somewhat humorous but none the less grim and terrifying fiend who was wont, many centuries ago, to play weird pranks upon the good people of Antwerp after nightfall. He used to lie in wait for wayfarers upon deserted by-streets in the uncanny hours between midnight and dawn.

Pouncing upon his terrified victims, he would carry them off, sometimes never to return. Now and then he a.s.sumed the form of a lost baby, to which, being found by some charitable mother, the breast was given. Presently the good woman discovered to her horror that the foundling was swelling and becoming heavy, and when she put it down the Wapper a.s.sumed his own shape and ran off shrieking. At times he peered into church windows and howled and gibbered at the worshippers, and afterwards frightened them terribly as they went homeward, or, stretching his body to an incredible length, he peered into the upper windows of people's houses. Men feared to speak evil of the Long Wapper, for something terrible was certain to happen to those who did.

At last it was found that he would never pa.s.s an image of the Virgin, and that is why so many were erected that finally the evil fiend had no more streets left in which to play his mad pranks and left Antwerp for the lonely moors and dunes along the seacoast where he is still said to be seen.

The place most frequented by the Long Wapper was a little stream which came to be called the Wappersrui in consequence, and a bridge across it the Wappersbrucke. Here he often strode out of the water with his long thin legs extending far down into its dark depths like two black stilts. Once he had reached the embankment he shrank instantly to a diminutive size--usually taking the form of a schoolboy. These first appearances were generally between daylight and dark, when the twilight made it difficult to distinguish faces clearly, and he always took the place of some boy who happened to be absent. A favourite game of the boys, who were then returning from school, was called shove-hat. In this game one boy tossed his hat on the ground and the others shoved and kicked it about with their feet while its owner sought to regain it. When it came the turn of the Long Wapper to throw down his hat the first one to give it a kick broke his wooden shoe to pieces and fractured his toes, for the hat proved to be a heavy iron pot. Then the street echoed with a jeering "Ha, ha, ha!" but the Wapper had disappeared.

His pranks upon grown-up people were apt to be far more serious in their consequences than those just described. Often he paused at some tavern door and joined the party seated there in a game of cards, which invariably resulted in a violent quarrel in the course of which one or more of the players was usually killed. On another occasion he appeared in broad daylight selling mussels. Encountering four women sitting outside their door at work he opened a mussel and offered it to one of them. She tasted it, but it turned into dirt in her mouth.