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_ There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than
those of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish
buildings, so naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs
of that excellent land. Before describing this house it may be well,
in the interest of other writers, to explain the necessity for such
didactic preliminaries,--since they have roused a protest from certain
ignorant and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing
the generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without
gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?
The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so
closely allied to architecture that the majority of observers can
reconstruct nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life,
from the remains of public monuments or the relics of a home.
Archaeology is to social nature what comparative anatomy is to
organized nature. A mosaic tells the tale of a society, as the
skeleton of an ichthyosaurus opens up a creative epoch. All things are
linked together, and all are therefore deducible. Causes suggest
effects, effects lead back to causes. Science resuscitates even the
warts of the past ages.
Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential
facts. The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the
past; and to man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him
what has been, and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is
rare indeed that the picture of a locality where lives are lived does
not recall to some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith.
The comparison between a present which disappoints man's secret wishes
and a future which may realize them, is an inexhaustible source of
sadness or of placid content.
Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given.
Why so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best
conclusion to man's uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its
family ties, and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its
comfortable well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to
beatitude; but, above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly
sensuous happiness, where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it.
Whatever value a passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life of
feeling, it never sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish
nature, where the throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that
superficial minds deny the heart's existence. The crowd prefers the
abnormal force which overflows to that which moves with steady
persistence. The world has neither time nor patience to realize the
immense power concealed beneath an appearance of uniformity.
Therefore, to impress this multitude carried away on the current of
existence, passion, like a great artist, is compelled to go beyond the
mark, to exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo, Bianca Capello,
Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini. Far-seeing minds
alone disapprove such excess, and respect only the energy represented
by a finished execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The
life of this essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions
of happiness which the masses desire as the lot of the average
citizen.
A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the old-
fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies no
weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan "far-
niente." Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most
essential condition), patience, and the element which renders its
creations durable, namely, conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character
lies in the two words, patience and conscience; words which seem at
first to exclude the richness of poetic light and shade, and to make
the manners and customs of the country as flat as its vast plains, as
cold as its foggy skies. And yet it is not so. Civilization has
brought her power to bear, and has modified all things, even the
effects of climate. If we observe attentively the productions of
various parts of the globe, we are surprised to find that the
prevailing tints from the temperate zones are gray or fawn, while the
more brilliant colors belong to the products of the hotter climates.
The manners and customs of a country must naturally conform to this
law of nature.
Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and
monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky
atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under
the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw it
into fraternal relations with Germany and Holland. From Spain it
acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and shimmering satins, tapestries
of vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and courtly bearing. In
exchange for its linen and its laces, it brought from Venice that
fairy glass-ware in which wine sparkles and seems the mellower. From
Austria it learned the ponderous diplomacy which, to use a popular
saying, takes three steps backward to one forward; while its trade
with India poured into it the grotesque designs of China and the
marvels of Japan.
And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of
all things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general
storehouse of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco
brought into one smoky outline the scattered features of its national
physiognomy. Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of
their territory, the Flemings became a people homogeneous through
their pipes and beer.[*]
[*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the
products and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country
of Flanders, by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for
itself an original existence, with characteristic manners and customs
which bear no signs of servile imitation. Art stripped off its
ideality and produced form alone. We may seek in vain for plastic
grace, the swing of comedy, dramatic action, musical genius, or the
bold flight of ode and epic. On the other hand, the people are fertile
in discoveries, and trained to scientific discussions which demand
time and the midnight oil. All things bear the ear-mark of temporal
enjoyment. There men look exclusively to the thing that is: their
thoughts are so scrupulously bent on supplying the wants of this life
that they have never risen, in any direction, above the level of this
present earth. The sole idea they have ever conceived of the future is
that of a thrifty, prosaic statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came
from a domestic desire to live as they liked, with their elbows on the
table, and to take their ease under the projecting roofs of their own
porches.
The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and
that of lace, a work of patient agriculture and still more patient
industry, are hereditary like their family fortunes. If we were asked
to show in human form the purest specimen of solid stability, we could
do no better than point to a portrait of some old burgomaster,
capable, as was proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way,
and without the incitements of glory, for the welfare of his Free-
town.
Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one
of the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of
Flemish life.
Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
buildings are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of a
venerable past are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and
fashions and modes of life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be
left of that ancient Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality,
its traditional Spanish courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of
Holland. Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick
buildings, and the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding
before the capricious elegance of Parisian novelties.
The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about
the middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more
than two centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly
one of the great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of
production, the Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has
never lost. For a long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and
were, from generation to generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild
of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound
to share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children,
and property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The
syndic's forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who
were excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though
he was, in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions
in the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of
martyrs gives the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who
punished revolt through two generations, stretched his iron sceptre
over Douai, the Claes preserved their great wealth by allying
themselves in marriage with the very noble family of Molina, whose
elder branch, then poor, thus became rich enough to buy the county of
Nourho which they had long held titularly in the kingdom of Leon.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which
are of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was
represented at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina,
Comte de Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of
the immense fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion
over a thousand looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand
francs a year from landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and
the house in the rue de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a
fortune. As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in
litigation between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family
which remained in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and
assumed the title of Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a
legal right to it. But the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to
the haughty arrogance of Castile: after the civil rights were
instituted, Balthazar Claes cast aside the ragged robes of his Spanish
nobility for his more illustrious descent from the Ghent martyr.
The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families
exiled under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth
century, the Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and
traditions of their ancestors. They married into none but the purest
burgher families, and required a certain number of aldermen and
burgomasters in the pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her
to the family. They sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or
in Holland; so that the time-honored domestic customs might be
perpetuated around their hearthstones. This social group became more
and more restricted, until, at the close of the last century, it
mustered only some seven or eight families of the parliamentary
nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and magisterial
gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of their
life.
The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that
was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty
of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made
them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,--
the House of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in
that mansion, which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a
type of the modest houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle
Ages constructed for their homes.
The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre
of which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of
the doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed
arch bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a
statuette of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left
its mark upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the
extreme care taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the
passers-by to note all its details.
The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white
stone ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above
the window in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a
cross, which divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the
transversal bar, placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made
the lower sashes of the window nearly double the height of the upper,
the latter rounding at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch
was ornamented with three rows of brick, placed one above the other,
the bricks alternately projecting or retreating to the depth of an
inch, giving the effect of a Greek moulding. The glass panes, which
were small and diamond-shaped, were set in very slender leading,
painted red. The walls of the house, of brick jointed with white
mortar, were braced at regular distances, and at the angles of the
house, by stone courses.
The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three,
while the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver's shuttle
threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something
like steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where
the rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the
jaws of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a
step at the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance,
between the two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands,
through which the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient
usages.
From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks,
the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings,
were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre.
The front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the
deepened color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well
preserved as a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an
amateur, which would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our
climate and the effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our
own health.
The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the
red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing,
gave the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which
would have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he
happened to take lodgings over the way.
When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung
from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-
door in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door
escaped from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a solemn,
ponderous sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved archway and
through the depths of the house, as though the door had been of iron.
This archway, painted to resemble marble, always clean and daily
sprinkled with fresh sand, led into a large court-yard paved with
smooth square stones of a greenish color. On the left were the linen-
rooms, kitchens, and servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house,
coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls, and windows were
decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading
its way between four red walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy
tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic
appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
Flanders the "back-quarter," stood at the farther end of the court-
yard, and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room
on the ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-
yard, and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same
size as the house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each
other, led at one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the
court-yard, and were in line with the archway and the street door; so
that a visitor entering the latter could see through to the greenery
which draped the lower end of the garden. The front building, which
was reserved for receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many
objects of art and accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in
the eyes of a Claes, nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the
treasures contained in the parlor, where for over two centuries the
family life had glided on.
The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by
the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,--
this Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of
Bruges. The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich
craftsman. Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van
Huysum, grown rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-
decoration in ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van
Artevelde,--that brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of
Flanders. This wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty
panels, contained about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was
held to be Van Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard
the burghers whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his
native town, proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if
he would give him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had already
despatched it to Douai.
The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving,
which Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr's memory, came to Douai
to frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is
therefore the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings
now sell for nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place,
Van Claes the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of
the Court of Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who
venerated him as their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in
stone with a very high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble
during the last century; on it now stood an old clock and two
candlesticks with five twisted branches, in bad taste, but of solid
silver. The four windows were draped by wide curtains of red damask
with a flowered black design, lined with white silk; the furniture,
covered with the same material, had been renovated in the time of
Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large squares of
white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of many
oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native
Dutch oak.
In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
silver fish were swimming about. The room was both brilliant and
sombre. The ceiling necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none.
Although on the garden side all was bright and glowing, and the
sunshine danced upon the ebony carvings, the windows on the court-yard
admitted so little light that the gold threads in the lapis-lazuli
scarcely glittered on the opposite wall. This parlor, which could be
gorgeous on a fine day, was usually, under the Flemish skies, filled
with soft shadows and melancholy russet tones, like those shed by the
sun on the tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes,
in other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at
present, it is enough to make known its general arrangement. _
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