The Henson Journals

[264]

Friday, August 18th, 1911. Ghent.

We paid our reckoning, and came away from Bruges by the 9.18 express, registering our luggage to Antwerp, but ourselves stopping off at Ghent, where we spent the day sight–seeing.

In the retrospect four things stand out of the mass of impressions. (1) The magnificent spectacle of that succession of great buildings – the Cathedral, the Belfry, S. Nicholas, & S. Michael. (2) The superb Van Eyck in the Cathedral. (3) The Castle of the Counts of Flanders. (4) the ruined Abbey of St Bavon. We visited also the Hotel de Ville, which is disappointing, & the Beguinage, which has a demure almost Quakerish aspect. We hired a carriage, & were driven into a creditable park.

We left Ghent by the 4.48 train, and reached Antwerp at 6.15. The line ran through a level & highly–cultivated land from which a various harvest of vegetables & corn was being gathered.

We put up at the Hotel de l'Europe, which we found to our annoyance was filled with gibbering lunaticks gathered for an Esperanto Conference.

I wrote to Westlake.

The sudden death of the Bishop of Salisbury is announced.

[265]

There is a large, long, low vaulted chapel in the Castle of the Counts of Flanders, originally used for stables, but since 1550: used for shambles i.e. as the torture chamber of the Inquisition. In 1904 two skeletons were found there in the earth which had been accumulated on the floor. These are now exhibited in situ, and add a ghastly illustration to the tradition of cruelty which invests the place.

We walked out after dinner, and bought an English newspaper. It is full of 'Strike news'. The whole army seems to be on duty, and special constables are to be sworn in. In fact, civil war is in progress, through the demented selfishness of a handful [sic] of ignorant and arrogant agitators, who are exploiting the newly born class–loyalty of the artisans. The "Christian Socialist” movement has long since become parasitic, adding a spurious consecration to ambitions & procedures which, in spite of their parade of altruism, are squalidly & cynically selfish. And the normal bulwarks against anarchy – the self–respect of the individual, the old–fashioned horror of violence, the sense of religious obligation – have been undermined by the windy sophistries of secularistic socialism. Add the incitement of the political situation, and one need look no farther for an explanation of the present crisis.

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