CHAPTER II.
ST. NICHOLAS—MECHLIN.
Quays of Antwerp—Peculiar mode of training young trees—The Scheldt—The flying bridge of Napoleon—Story of Van Speyk—Polder at the Tête de Flandres—Its catastrophe in 1837—Zwyndrecht—Different professions of the Belgian saints—Story of the curate of St. Joachim—Beveren—St. Nicholas—Dense population—A market—Flemish ballad-singers—Ancient drama of Flanders—Tamise—Ruinous condition of the cotton trade in Belgium since the revolution—Its causes—Inability of the government to afford relief—Diminution of exports since 1833—Remarkable petition of the trade to the legislature—Remedies suggested by them—Impracticability of any commercial union with France—Or the Zollverein—Dendermonde—Siege by the Duke of Marlborough—Description of its present state—Its manufactures—Mechlin—Curious old city—The Archbishop Sterckz—A political prelate—Mechlin lace—Flax—The Cathedral of St. Romoald—The tower—Carillon—Immense bells—The corporation of Mechlin—The tomb of the Bertholdi—Van Eyck’s paintings—Vandyke’s Crucifixion—Superiority of Rubens in composition—Church of Notre-Dame—“The miraculous draught of fishes”—Favourite paintings of Rubens in the Church of St. John—Hôtel de St. Jaques.
We started early this morning for St. Nicholas, the central town of one of the most important linen districts in Belgium, being the great mart for the produce of the Pays de Waes. Before leaving Antwerp, we took another walk through its principal squares and along the quay. The latter which is of great length, stretching up the banks of the Scheldt, is planted with tall trees, and well finished in every respect. These trees are trained in the nurseries of the Low Countries, specially for the purpose of planting in streets and squares. They are regularly pruned, like standard fruit trees for eight or ten years, till the stems, have attained ten or fifteen feet in height before they are removed, and having in the mean time, been frequently transplanted to render the roots fibrous and hardy, they are placed in their intended position, with scarcely any risk of failure or delay in the renewal of their growth.
The Scheldt is here about the breadth of the Mersey at Liverpool, and we crossed it by a steam ferry, to the Tête de Flandres. During the reign of Napoleon, this passage was made by a flying bridge, one of those ingenious contrivances, which are still seen upon the Rhine, in which a line of boats, attached to a large float, and sustaining the length of the cable by which it is moored in the centre of the river, are moved from side to side across the stream, accordingly as their heads and helms are adjusted, to allow the force of the current to impinge upon them. The river opposite Antwerp is so deep, as to allow the largest vessels to lie close along side the wharfs, but its waters, from the nature of the soil they traverse, are always yellow with sand and mud, and rush past between the city and the Tête de Flandres, with a rapidity that anything but justifies Goldsmith’s title of the “lazy” Scheldt.
In the river, nearly opposite the commercial basins, there occurred in 1831 an instance of heroic devotion in a young officer of the Dutch navy, for which it is rare to find a parallel. He was a Lieutenant, named Van Speyk, and in command of one of the gun boats, which had guard upon the citadel, whilst yet in the hands of the Dutch. It was in the month of February, and the little bark had been compelled to seek shelter from the drifting ice, by running into the harbour of Flushing. A storm, however, drove her from her moorings, and forced her on shore nearly opposite the city of Antwerp. The efforts of the crew to work her off were unavailing, and a crowd of the revolutionary canaille were already waiting on the quay, to secure the prize and their prisoners, when the young commander went below, and with the aid of one companion opened the powder magazine, gave his assistant a moment’s time to plunge into the sea, and then applying his match, blew up himself and thirty of his sailors, rather than fall into the hands of his enemies.
On landing at the Tête de Flandres, the little fortress which commands the level polder in front of Antwerp, we drove along a causeway raised several feet above the level of the plain. This vast alluvial district was laid under water in 1832, during the siege of Antwerp, and continued submerged till 1835, when the water was again expelled; but three years ago, the breach in the dyke, which had been imperfectly repaired, gave way during an extraordinary tide, inundated the whole plain, and swept away some thirty or forty peasants, who were passing along the road to the market of Antwerp. The view back upon the city from this point is one of the finest imaginable, all its bold and salient features coming into one coup-d’œil; the river, the noble line of quays, the citadel, the gigantic Hanseatic depôt, and rising far into the sky, above them all, the majestic and beautiful tower of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
The road passed through the little village of Zwyndrecht, a secluded little spot embowered in trees upon the verge of the great polder. The income of the curate, a comfortable and easy divine, who saluted us from the roadside, is thirty pounds a year, but the saint to whom the church is dedicated, St. Makuyt, being in high repute for the cure of weak limbs in children, brings in a handsome income in addition. The fame of the saint, is in fact, the main source of income to the incumbents of these miserable livings, many hundreds of which do not exceed that of Zwyndrecht. The first question of a priest, in fact, on being offered a benefice, is, what is the stipend? the second, who is the saint? The reason is this, that the whole contents of Pandora’s box, all the diseases of mankind have been parcelled out to the various saints of the calendar, each taking his or her own peculiar department of the pharmacopœia:—thus, Saint Blaize is consulted for the quinsey, St. Nicholas for barrenness, St. Apollonia for the tooth-ache, St. Dorothea of Alois for pining children, St. Œdilia for weak eyes, St. Cornelius for the hooping-cough, St. Joseph au besoin for ladies who are anxious for heirs, St. Wendelin for the murrain in cattle, and St. Gertrude to drive away rats. Of all the most valuable and money-making are the ladies who preside over the illnesses of infants; not only the frequency of the malady, but the alarm of the mother contributing to the fame and the profits of the saint. Not merely Roman Catholic ladies who laugh at the powers ascribed to the saint, but even protestants, who, in their calmer moments, despise the imposture, seldom fail in the last extremity to call in the aid of the priest; they distrust the profession, but they shrink from neglecting the last expedient, however, unpromising. If the patient sinks under the process, that arises from the parent having been too long in applying, and, if it revives, the faith of the mother receives a powerful inclination towards belief in the church.
Mons. D—— who was in the carriage with us, mentioned rather an amusing anecdote connected with the system. His uncle is a priest and incumbent of a parish, the patron saint of which, Saint Joachim has under his charge the department of deafness. The income of his living is small, but it is far more than exceeded by the profits of the saint, who has been gradually rising into repute during the last fifty years that the old gentleman has had him under his care. He came, however, a short time since to visit his nephew at Antwerp, and feelingly complained of a disaster, which was likely to ruin both the saint and his practice; he had completed his eightieth year, and had grown so deaf himself, that he could no longer make out the complaints of his patients!
Beveren, a beautiful village, half way between St. Nicholas and Antwerp, is the residence almost exclusively of rich families and retired citizens, most of whom are the proprietors of the lands of the district. Amongst them, one house was pointed out as that of M. Borlut, a lineal descendant of one of the leaders of Ghent, who distinguished himself at the battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302.