As the loiterer continues his afternoon stroll to the large and central Place de Commune, crosses into the chain of transverse boulevards, and returns riverward to that choicest spot of all, the tree-shaded, memory-haunted Place Verte, he is bound to reflect upon the vast changes that Antwerp, above all other Continental cities, has experienced in the last quarter-century. He will marvel, too, that Robert Bell should have lamented in his charming “Wayside Pictures” the paucity of gay life here and particularly the lack of theatrical entertainment. It may have been so when Bell wrote, fifty years ago, but it is decidedly otherwise to-day. So far as theatres go, they simply abound; nor could city streets be gayer than these, thronged with a merry, happy people and bright with the uniforms of artillery-men and fortress engineers, grenadiers of the line and the dashing chasseurs-à-cheval. Every hotel and café has its orchestra; and in the early evening practically every square of the city has its concert by a band from a regiment or guild. There is no suburb, they say, but has its own band or orchestra, or both. Indeed, Antwerp is nearly as music-mad as art-mad.
The shady aisles of poplars in the cozy Place Verte, the perfumes and peaceful sounds, the music of the cathedral bells, the homelike hotels and cafés and the drowsy, nodding Old-World house-fronts combine to produce a sense of comfort and satisfaction peculiar to this favored little square. There is, besides, a special and impressive feeling of something like the personal presence of the great Rubens; partly, perhaps, from the fact that the city’s chief statue of him, a lifelike bronze of heroic size, stands at the centre of the Place. Twice the normal stature of man it is, and its pedestal is five times as high as one’s head, and the great palette, book, and scrolls are all of more generous proportions than such things actually ever are;—but there seems nothing at all disproportionate in that, considering what he was and what the average man is. The memory of one who could paint a masterpiece in a day, who stood head and shoulders above every living artist of his time, and whose work has inspired and delighted mankind for three hundred years, becomes, like all great objects, positively prodigious from actual proximity. Such is the inevitable attitude towards Rubens when one touches the things he touched, walks the streets of the city where he was born, lived, and lies buried, where he wrought his greatest artistic triumphs, and where his finest work is still preserved and reverenced. The most admired cathedral in the whole of the Netherlands rises out of the fluttering tree-tops of the square, and the greatest treasures it contains are the product of this man’s genius. Every one feels the Rubens influence in the Place Verte; Eugène Fromentin, fresh from his pictorial triumphs of Algerian life, observed in “Les Maîtres d’Autrefois”: “Our imagination becomes excited more than usual when, in the centre of Place Verte, we see the statue of Rubens and further on, the old basilica where are preserved the triptychs which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it.” Such are the privileged emotions of the wise and fortunate visitors who pitch their passing tent in this fair and favored nook.
Reflections over Rubens naturally arouse thoughts of the many sons of Flanders who won preëminence in the domain of art. No other city, inexplicable as it is, has, in modern times, seen so large a proportion of its citizens achieve the loftiest heights of fame in this glorious activity; nor has any other honored art so unaffectedly in memorializing their triumphs. In Antwerp there are scores of streets and squares, and even quays, named after its artists. There are also fine statues to Rubens, Van Dyck, David Teniers, Jordaens, Quinten Matsys, and Hendrik Leys, and other memorials to the brothers Van Eyck, to Memling, Wappers, Frans Hals, Van der Heyden, De Keyser, and Verboekhoven. In private and public collections the people have jealously kept possession of the masterpieces of their fellow countrymen. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, on the Place du Musée, is as much a treasure-house of Flemish art as the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam is of Dutch art. Again Place Verte plumes itself, for just around the corner was born the great Teniers, wizard depicter of tavern life and kermesses, and on one side is that tourists’ delight, the graceful, feathery well-top that Quinten Matsys wrought out of a single piece of iron, before the days when love inspired him to win the most coveted laurels of the painter.
However, art aside, Place Verte has distinctions of its own. Something of interest is always occurring here. Suburban bands hold weekly competitions in its artistic pavilion and the most skillful musicians hold concerts here each evening. The sidewalks then are crowded with chairs and tables, and at the close the people rise and join in the national hymn “La Brabançonne,” with its out-of-date lament to the men of Brabant that “the orange may no longer wave upon the tree of Liberty.” Of an afternoon a regiment may swing through in full regalia, the red, yellow, and black flag snapping in the van, and the band crashing out the ancient war-song “Bergen-op-Zoom.” If to-day were July 21 there would be tremendous enthusiasm and cheering celebrating the Fêtes Nationales in honor of the Revolution of 1830; as well there should, for Belgium is the smallest and one of the most desirable little kingdoms of all Europe, and the national motto, “L’Union fait la Force,” has to be closely adhered to if the Lion of Brabant would stand up under the baiting of his powerful and covetous neighbors.
The passing of a Sister of the Béguinage, in sombre black garb and an extraordinary creation of immaculate white linen on her head, recalls the many things one has read of this interesting and noble order which is peculiarly Belgium’s own. Their neat little settlements are a source of endless admiration to strangers, and quite as fascinating is their beautiful vesper service which bears the pretty name of the “salut des Béguines.” Readers of Laurence Sterne, who should be legion, promptly recall the curious story of “The Fair Béguine” that Trim told Uncle Toby in “Tristram Shandy,” and the valiant Captain’s comment: “They visit and take care of the sick by profession—I had rather, for my own part, they did it out of good nature.”
It is one of the proud distinctions of Place Verte to be at the very portals of Antwerp’s glorious cathedral, the largest, richest, and most beautiful in the Netherlands. From his café chair the visitor watches its great shadow steal over him as the afternoon wanes, while at any moment by merely raising his eyes he may revel in the graceful outlines of its sweep of ambulatory chapels and let the aspiring tips of delicate pinnacles and arches entice his vision to the loftiest point of its one finished and matchless tower. Never was Napoleon so pat in “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase” as when he compared this tower to Mechlin lace. It is delightful to look up above the trees of the Place at the enormous bulk of this tremendous structure, stained and darkened by the vapors of river and canals, study its rich carvings and stained-glass windows centuries old, and note how the blue sky, in patterns of delicate foliation and fragile arch, shines like mosaics through the clustered apertures of the filmy openwork of the lofty tower. A hundred bells drip mellow music from that exquisite belfry every few minutes all day long. You listen, perhaps, to detect the impression they gave Thackeray of a new version of the shadow-dance from “Dinorah,” conscious that they are going to haunt you as they did him for days after you have left Antwerp far behind. It is peculiarly appropriate that the Lohengrin Wedding March should be a favorite on the bells of the very cathedral where Lohengrin, according to the story, was married. Indeed, so many and so varied are the clear bell-voices of this great carillon that their music seems, as the neighboring bells of Bruges did to Longfellow,—
“Like the psalms from some old cloister,
When the nuns sing in the choir;
And the great bell tolled among them,
Like the chanting of a friar.”