Tower of the Grand' Place: Nieuport
Here one seldom saw the purely Spanish type of face so usual in Antwerp and Brabant. The race seemed purer, and the peasants used the pure Flemish tongue. Few of the elders I found spoke French fluently, although the children used it freely to each other, of course understanding and speaking Flemish also.
There were various newspapers published in the Flemish language exclusively. These, however, were very primitive, given over entirely to purely local brevities, and the prices of potatoes, beets and other commodities, and containing also a "feuilleton" of interest to the farmers and laborers.
There were several "organs" of the Flemish Patriotic party devoted to the conservation and preservation of the Flemish language and the ancient traditions, which were powerful among the people, although their circulation could not have been very profitable. The peasantry in truth were very ignorant, and knew of very little beyond their own parishes. The educational standard of the people of West Flanders was certainly low, and it was a matter of comment among the opponents of the established church, that education being in the hands of the clergy, they invariably defeated plans for making it compulsory. But nevertheless, the peasantry were to all appearances both contented and fairly happy.
As their wants were few and primitive, their living was cheap. Their fare was coffee, of which they consumed a great deal, black bread, salt pork and potatoes. The use of oleomargarine was universal in place of butter. They grew tobacco in their small gardens for their own use, and also, it is whispered, smuggled it [and gin] over the border into France. They worked hard and long from five in the morning until seven or eight in the evening.
The Flemish farmhouse was generally well built, if somewhat untidy looking, with the pigstys and out buildings in rather too close proximity for comfort. There was usually a large living room with heavy sooty beams overhead, and thick walls pierced by quaint deeply sunken windows furnished often with seats. These picturesque rooms often contained "good finds" of the old Spanish furniture, and brass; but as a rule the dealers had long since bought up all the old things, replacing them by "brummagem,"—modern articles shining with cheap varnish.
The peasants themselves in their everyday clothes certainly did not impress the observer greatly. They were not picturesque, they wore the sabôt or "Klompen," yellow varnished, and clumsy in shape. Their stockings were coarse gray worsted. Their short trousers were usually tied with a string above the calf, and they wore a sort of smock, sometimes of linen unbleached, or of a shining sort of dark purple thin stuff.
The usual headgear was for the men a cap with a glazed peak and for the women and girls a wide flapped embroidered linen cap, but this headgear was worn only in the country towns and villages. Elsewhere the costume was fast disappearing. On Sundays when dressed in their holiday clothes these peasants going to or returning from mass, looked respectable and fairly prosperous, and it was certainly clear that although poor in worldly goods, these animated and laughing throngs were far from being unhappy or dissatisfied with life as they found it in West Flanders.