1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [110]
We slept or lazed in the forenoon, and in the afternoon we strolled in the town. Walks by the canal, omelette and chip teas, shopping, patisserie-tasting, lace-buying, exploring the Cloth Hall ruins – all these we found time for in glorious weather, and very homely and pleasant it all was. We thought a lot of the gay little town where we had our happiest days since leaving home. For it was gay and full of people, the market square lined with booths on one side in front of the larger shops, although in the back streets there were shell-torn roofs and battered houses. And the Cloth Hall towering over it all, a gaunt and empty ruin, but every chipped and battered stone was eloquent, and its pinnacles still proudly cut into the sky.
In its symbolically battered state the Cloth Hall seemed to take on a grandeur it had not enjoyed since the days when Ypres was the centre of the rich Flanders wool trade, and since the wool trade had diminished lacemaking had taken its place. On fine summer days before the war, at open doors and windows all over the town, the ladies of Ypres, lace cushions on their laps, gossiped in the sun as their nimble fingers and flying bobbins worked the fine lace whose beauty rivalled even the coveted lace of Brussels. Their work was in demand all over the world and there were no fewer than twelve lace brokers in Ypres who bought up the lace, distributed it, and grew rich on the proceeds. One of them was Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
This gentleman was not a native of Ypres. He had started his career as a dashing young cavalry officer but fate had brought him to Ypres to its famous cavalry school and there he had met and married Clotilde Brunfaut, daughter of a prosperous lace merchant. Now he was a prosperous lace merchant himself, owner of a fine old house on the Rue de Lille which he had painstakingly renovated over the years, the father of two children, a prominent citizen of the town, a local politician, and one of the public-spirited men who had been co-opted on to the Comité Provisoire to safeguard the welfare of Ypres after the town council was evacuated. Long ago, when things had looked bad at the end of the previous October, he had sent his own wife and family to safety in Paris. But van Nieuwenhove himself stayed on and conscientiously recorded in his daily diary the trials that befell the little town he had come to love. On 20 April, the Germans began to range their heavy guns on Ypres.
Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
20 April Calm until 11 a.m. While I was at the post office counter a dozen shells fell all of a sudden. I took shelter right away in the cellars and went out at mid-day to see what had happened. When I got to the garden I ascertained that a shell had fallen in Lapierre’s shops and had destroyed part of the wall that separated them from my garden. A second and third had landed in the garden of M. Desaegher, one against the wall of Mlle Duval’s kitchen, the other beneath the carriage porch. When the first shell arrived Marie our washerwoman was in the wash house and dived into our cellar for shelter, where I found her very upset when I got back. The damaged wall belonged to Lapierre, but until it could be repaired, I was obliged myself to block up the hole with planks in order to prevent the English soldiers from getting into our premises.
At two o’clock in the afternoon I attended a meeting of the commission charged with paying the indemnity to support the refugees in the town. We met in the police headquarters building until 4.30, during which time eight huge shells fell on the town. When I came out of the meeting, our uncle, Auguste Liebaert, came to tell me that one of the shells that fell this morning hit the roof of his house and had destroyed one of the rooms. He was terribly upset and emotional.