BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is well to alight at Ghent for a few hours.  There are attractions enough to keep one for several days, but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or Sint Baafs) we did not stay more than the allotted time.  And an adventurous time it was.  The Ostend express landed its passengers at the St. Pierre station and that meant the loss of half an hour.  The Cathedral is reached by the tramway, and there we found that as an office was about to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its completion.  It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the choristers in surplices were filing into the choir.  Not a moment to be spared!  The sacristan was a practical man.  He hustled us into a side chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck.  A monk knelt in prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure.  We were hemmed in, but by angels and ministers of grace.  The chanting began.  Atmosphere was not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only more light.  Gradually the picture began to burn through the artificial dusk, gradually its glories became more perceptible.  Begun by Hubert in 1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine splendour has vanished; and the loss of the wings—­the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, the remaining volets in the Berlin Museum—­is irreparable despite the copies.  But this Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with its jewelled figures of the Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and the central panel with its mystical symbolism, painted in sumptuous tones, the lamb on the altar, the prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, the singing angels, is truly an angelic composition.

The rain had ceased.  A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which glowed supernally.  In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors.  The man turned the lock.  It was a return to the world as if one had participated in a sacred ceremony.

Bruges is invariably called Bruges-la-Morte, but it is far from being dead, or even desperately melancholy.  Delft, in Holland, after nine o’clock at night, is quieter than Bruges.  Bruges the Dead?  No, Bruges the Beautiful is nearer the truth.  After reading Rodenbach’s morbid romance of Bruges-la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would be like a holiday in a cemetery.  Our experience dispelled this unpleasant illusion.  Bruges is in daylight a bustling and in certain spots a noisy place.  Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of visage, but wideawake, practical people, close at a bargain, curious like all Belgians, and on fete days given to much feasting.  Bruges is infinitely more interesting than Brussels.  It is real, while modern Brussels is only mock-turtle.  And Bruges is more picturesque, the food is as well flavoured, there are several resorts where ripe old Burgundy may be had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk are less grasping, more hearty than in Brussels.