but i was not to have to part with stéphanie. when her flemish ears gathered from my french that i was starting for zele and the school founded three years ago, which had been the talk of the region ever since, her eyes fairly spoke her eager desire. seventy-eight and earning twenty cents a day, and yet consumed by a love for her art (for with her, lace-making is a true art), and a passion to learn more about it! i asked mme. coppens if stéphanie might not come along in the car. in answer she began bustling about, tears in her eyes, to help get her[266] ready, and stéphanie in her odd little woolen cap could scarcely tie her long black-hooded cape because she was constantly throwing up her hands, and exclaiming, and pressing them together, as she tried to make me understand that in all her seventy-eight years she had only twice ridden in a wagon and never had she dreamed of being in an automobile before she died. what would the neighbors say? we bundled her into the corner of the car and were off, but she could not sit still, leaning forward to exclaim over the beauty of the snow, or a windmill, or the children skating in their sabots, or huddling down to cover her face with her hands in swift shyness if some one had seemed to see her; no spirit was ever so bubbling and gay and eager and timid all at once as stéphanie’s as we rode through the snow toward zele.
nor so patient as hers after we arrived;[267] for instead of going to the school, i had to leave her in the car while i went to the house of the director, dr. armand rubbens, unfortunately ill with rheumatism, who is not only the founder of the school but the inspiration of all the unusual accomplishments of the lace-workers of this town, where his father is burgomaster. after her long wait, stéphanie’s only comment as she looked a little fearfully at the gathering dusk, was: “it is not yet too late to see the school.”
inside, dr. rubbens, who since taking his university degree has not been strong enough to follow his profession, and has devoted himself to the 800 lace-workers of his district, explained the organization of the zele “trade union lace school,” founded three years ago and the only one of its kind in belgium. i felt, as he talked, that he was reproducing in miniature a henry ford plant, and when i told him [268]this, he smiled. “i begin to think i should see one of mr. ford’s factories, for in reading an account of his system in the paris matin last week, i was astonished at the number of his ideas i had incorporated.”
the fifty advanced workers in the atelier (there are 140 apprentices) share the profit of the lace sales in proportion to their wages, and own part of the stock of the union. the best workers of this group make twenty-five centimes an hour, or two and a half francs (fifty cents) a day of eight hours, the highest pay i know of, so far, gained by a lace-maker. the girls may go four hours each week to a school of domestic science, without losing pay; there are illness and pension funds, and other provisions for the health and protection of the members of the school. dr. rubbens has seemed to accept every opportunity as a privilege.
at work on details of a needle-point scarf to be presented to queen elizabeth
needle lace class-room in the trade union lace school at zele
[269]
i looked over the files and photographs and records, for even tho zele is a remote town of but 6,000 inhabitants, this wide-awake director has made it provide for him a better set of records and announcement and advertising cards (some of them in english) than i have seen anywhere else in belgium. while i was inspecting the books, he opened a chest and spread on the table a finished model from his school—a needle point scarf or veil, sown with marguerites and varied by a bewildering succession of open-work stitches, each seemingly more exquisite than the preceding and some of them invented for this particular veil. the needle-workers who had made it had given about 9,000 hours to its flowers and gauze, and it would bring 3,000 francs to the trade union treasury.
needle-point illustration for the fable of the fox and the grapes
in the zele lace school; joining details of the needle-point scarf presented to queen elizabeth
i felt that i must fetch stéphanie to see this, but dr. rubbens advised hurrying now to the school, where there was something still more beautiful to be seen[270]—the scarf just completed that will be presented to queen elizabeth, and so far the chef-d’?uvre of the zele lace-makers. i told stéphanie about it on our way through the village.
once arrived, we went directly to the most advanced class, where stéphanie might find most to interest her. the young women were at work on needle point collars and medallions, a series of tableaux from the legend of the fox and the grapes, and she was all eyes and ears as she went eagerly from chair to chair, trying to see what these girls had been taught that she had missed learning, and to add to her lore, if she could. i believe it is only in such a modern school as this that an outsider would have been allowed to examine, as stéphanie did, the stitches and patterns, for the tradition of the locked door and the carefully guarded secret still prevails in the lace word.
[271]
i was impatient to see the school’s masterpiece, the royal scarf, and it was now brought from the safe and held before us by three young women, as the directress led us from point to point in the airy mesh spun between its rose garlands and medallions. on either side of the center medallion, the arms of belgium, were two others, in which human figures symbolized cities the war has made immortal. for nieuport a fisher-maiden stood on the shore with her basket, and about her the net took up a cockleshell motif; poperinghe had the graceful hop-vine as its device; for furnes there was a dairy-maid with her churn in the midst of blossoming butter flowers; while ypres was represented by a beautiful flamande sitting before a lace cushion heaped with bobbins—countless stitches, occupying 12,000 hours, and the entire weight 125 grammes! and yet, at the end, stéphanie tilted her dear old head [272]and said: “nevertheless, madame, for the queen, i should have made the mesh yet finer.”
this trade union is in a sense a professional school, since it teaches design, but there is the weak spot in an otherwise remarkable achievement. the designs executed by dr. rubbens and the school are often the kind that have led foreign lace-buyers to order through paris, which could furnish the drawings, rather than direct from belgium. they lack the lightness and grace that lace designs should unfailingly possess, just the qualities which the friends of lace have done so much to encourage and cultivate. if dr. rubbens can see his way to follow their suggestions, or to employing a french teacher, there seems no limit to what he may accomplish.
he is now attempting to establish a true needle-lace normal school, which will offer courses in commerce, english, history,[273] and all the branches necessary to a complete lace education. this will supplement the instruction of the bruges bobbin-lace normal, already well under way. he holds that the teaching of the fine needle points is more tedious and difficult than the teaching of the bobbin points, and that it takes more years to become expert in needle laces than in others.
on the way home, stéphanie asked what she might do for me. “you may pray for me, if you wish, stéphanie.” she was silent a moment. “but, madame, should i not make a pilgrimage to lourdes for you? on one of my trips in the wagon, i saw the sea, and for three years after that the sea was every day just before my eyes. and to-day will remain until i die just in front of my eyes. madame, should i not go to lourdes for you?”
the end
