The Terminus of the Continent. The Life and Times of Ostend

he Terminus of the Continent The Life and Times of Ostend

`Ostend has suffered more than any other town from destruction by land, by sea and by air. It is indeed "la ville de martyrs" as M. Chack names it in "Sur les banes de Flandres" But "toujours vainqueur et jamais vaincu" writes M. Pasquini of the Ostendais. After every debacle Ostend has risen again like a Phoenix renewed in vigour and youth.'

So wrote the Reverend H.J. Hillyard, Ostend' s English Chaplain, in his book A Souvenir of Ostend, being An Historical Record of the Town and the English Church, published in 1935 by Unitas Publishers in Ostend, and sold at the time for 3 Francs or Six Pence' . The reader who skims through the book will find much that confirms Ostend' s reputation as the 'most British town in Europe'. Almost all the left-hand pages of Hillyard's little book are filled with advertisements. Among them, there is one for the Hotel Europe (`British owned and managed'), one for the English Tea Room, and one for the Wipers Auto Service (`Motor coach and private excursions to Battlefields, BRUSSELS, HOLLAND etc., run entirely by British ex-servicemen').

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The old town centre: the Wapenplein with its belfry and carillon. The Church of St Peter and St Paul is in the background.

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In addition, Belgian merchants also address their advertisements in A Souvenir of Ostend to the many English visitors.

In his short historical sketch (A Souvenir of Ostend only runs to about twenty pages), Hillyard also seeks to further mutual understanding between the British and the Belgians. He pays particular attention to the part played by the British in Ostend's history. His final judgment, expressed in the final line of his text, is unreservedly positive: 'Belgium floreat, Angleterre floreat.'

No matter how subjective the product of Hillyard's writing zeal, he is indeed right to compare Ostend to a phoenix. Every town has periods of prosperity and decay in its history, but the history of this Flemish coastal town is indisputably a remarkable story, with many ups and downs. At the beginning of the ninth century, today's Ostend was a mere speck on the map of Flanders. It was an insignificant fishing village on the easternmost point of the sandbank Ter Streep, first mentioned in 1072. Medieval Ostend was little more than a hamlet that was sometimes used as a harbour at the time of the crusades. But in 1267 Margaretha of Constantinople, Countess of Flanders and Hainault, issued a decree granting Ostend new freedoms and privileges. Thus the fishing village was, in Hillyard's words, 'raised to the rank of a town'.

Yet the territory of that thirteenth-century town suffered the fate of Atlantis. The 1394 storms, the last in a series of violent storms that had caused a great deal of damage in the course of the fourteenth century, wrought untold havoc. When they were over, so much land had vanished into the sea that the inhabitants were given new plots. Reconstruction could proceed, and a new city plan was drawn in 1401. Later still, in 1446, the old south walls were deepened and built up as a safe fishing harbour. Ostend started a new life and the town would soon be known as far as France and Spain for its barrelled-herring trade.

The sea was not the only threat. As early as 1382, the town was looted and wrecked by English troops, a fact Hillyard wisely leaves unmentioned in his story. In 1489, when Ostend had become a relatively prosperous fishing harbour, Maximilian of Austria, regent of the Burgundian Netherlands, appeared before its walls. The citizens refused to submit and Maximilian's troops burnt the town down. Ostend had participated in the rebellion of the Flemish towns and lost all its privileges as a result. But they were soon restored by Maximilian's son, Philip the Fair, in 150o.

Even though a new flood destroyed the city and its dikes in 1503, Ostend managed to maintain its position as a prosperous fishing harbour through most of the sixteenth century. By 158o the number of inhabitants had even risen to about 6,000.

The year 1568 marked the beginning of the Eighty Years' War between King Philip II of Spain and the Low Countries. Ostend became involved in the war; after the fall of Antwerp it was the rebels' last stronghold in the Southern Netherlands. By around 1600 the town, occupied by Dutch troops loyal to Maurits of Nassau, had developed into an almost impregnable Protestant robbers' lair. At that time Ostend consisted of both an old and a new town, separated from each other by a moat and surrounded by double walls reinforced by bastions and artillery positions. The garrison went on looting expeditions several times, to the detriment of cities like Bruges, 26

The Terminus of the Continent

Ypres and Ghent. Small wonder, then, that these Flemish cities eventually gave Philip II the necessary funds to undertake a siege of the town. Archduke Albert had the city surrounded by seventeen forts, and on 5 July I6oi it was invested by an army of 12,000 soldiers. The taking of the city was so important to the Spanish side that Albert's wife, the Archduchess Isabella, promised the Lord that she would build a church in Ostend if the city should indeed fall. In addition, she vowed not to change her clothes as long as the rebels held the town.

Shortly before this, Queen Elizabeth had promised her support to the threatened Ostend, which had been given as a 'buffer town' to the English Crown by the Dutch. As a result, the Dutch garrison came under the command of Sir John Ogle and was reinforced by the Highlanders and a few other regiments under General Holcroft and the Earl of Leicester. The English also took over all administrative and military power in the town. Horace Vere became governor of the town and his brother Francis was in command of the troops, about 5,000 in all.

Initially, Ostend did well against the forces besieging it. But the siege entered a new phase when Francis Vere left in March 1602 and when Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. English support for the besieged town dwindled, and its enemies were given a new commander, the Genoan nobleman Ambrosio de Spinola. After a few new attacks, which led among other things to the capture of the southwestern bastion, the final offensive began on 13 September 1604. The first negotiations took place a week later, and on 22 September the garrison, having been given free passage to Zeeland, surrendered to Spinola. The town was left a heap of rubble. According to some sources, both sides together lost 100,000 dead, but other chroniclers put the number at 30,000. The fact remains that Ostend suffered one of the longest sieges in world history. A.H. Burne had good reason indeed to give the article he

The victorious archducal couple Albert and Isabella among the smoking rubble after the fall of Ostend in 1604.

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published in the Journal of the Royal Artillery in July 1938 the title 'The horrible bloudie and unheard of siege of Ostend'. The experience cannot have been altogether pleasant for Archduchess Isabella either : she really did wear the same clothes for three consecutive years. Tradition has it that the description 'izaber or the phrase 'Isabella' s colour' for the yellowish-grey colour of some horses goes back to this episode.

The Twelve Years' Truce ( 609-162 1) between the warring sides in the Low Countries gave the town of Ostend a breathing space that was used for reconstruction. The medieval hamlet had now grown into a feared pirate' s nest, with many captured British ships in its harbour. The chronicler J.J. Bouwens wrote that the activities of the Ostend pirates in 1702 were such that 'the enemies, namely the Dutch and the British, lost so much by this that one should not wonder to see the roofs and the doors of the houses in this city trimmed with gold and silver.'

The British, pushed too far, responded in 17036. General John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, attacked and conquered Ostend. A number of buildings were destroyed by the British navy's artillery fire. The British later used the town as a port of disembarkation for their military transports to the continent. Ostend also began to play a part in the distribution of English manufactures in Europe. In addition to this, a fairly regular packet boat service had been running between Ostend and Dover since 1689.

After the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), which devastated half of Europe, the Southern Netherlands came under the rule of the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg. In 1723 the Emperor Charles vi granted a patent that led to the founding of the so-called 'Oostendsche Compagnie'.

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The company was given a monopoly on trade with Africa and the West and East Indies for thirty years, in addition to the right to found colonies and to enter into treaties with native rulers on the emperor' s behalf. Since Ostend was the only free port in the Southern Netherlands at that time, it became the home port to this company, which had its head office in Antwerp. The company's everyday management was in the hands of the English trader John Kerr. Between 1724 and 1729 the company made astronomical profits by importing Indian cloth and Chinese tea. When the British tea trade was halted temporarily in 1725, 58% of continental tea imports were auctioned in Ostend. These successes were a thorn in the side of great naval powers like England and the Dutch Republic. They saw to it that the emperor withdrew the patent in exchange for their recognition of his daughter Maria Theresa as his successor. More than 2,000 people left Ostend and the port began to decline. The winding-up of the company would drag on until 1774.

After a period of confusion, which left the town in French hands for a while, a new period of prosperity began in 1748. The harbour's infrastructure was extended and improved, which led to a revival of the fishing trade.

Ostend also became a centre for the import of oysters. The first oyster ponds were dug by the firm of Claeys & Cie. The oysters came from Colchester and were sold as far afield as Trier, Mainz, and Strassbourg.

In 1781 Ostend was proclaimed a free port by a decree of the emperor Joseph II. But its harbour had been the scene of considerable activity for some years before – activity which was based on the 'neutral flag, neutral port' principle. This meant, in practice, that Ostend could trade with all nations, even if some of them were at war with others. The Liege metalworks, for instance, sold arms and ammunition to the American revolutionaries, while at the same time the city maintained excellent contacts with British traders. Around 1785 the town had almost 7,000 inhabitants, of whom 2,000 were foreigners. Among these immigrants the British were the largest and most influential group. The existence of this flourishing community, which was mainly of the Protestant faith, was the direct cause of the Edict of Tolerance promulgated by Joseph II in 1781. This enabled the British to have their own place of worship in Ostend. In the first half of the nineteenth century an 'English Church', which is still in existence and active to the present day, was founded in Langestraat. But the Freemasons were not far behind. The Imperial Lodge of Austrian Flanders was founded in 1783, and it was immediately recognised by the Grand Lodge of England. The British example would also inspire Ostend to found its own masonic lodge, the so-called 'Les Trois Niveaux', characterised by both a strong religious diversification and a highly cosmopolitan outlook. It was a typically bourgeois group that recruited its members primarily from the well-to-do middle class.

At the end of the eighteenth century social and economic life in Ostend was heavily dominated by the British. The town was not only the home port of a great number of British merchants, commercial agents, shopkeepers and craftsmen; it also had a few British mayors, Thomas Ray and Thomas Blake among them. When the German philosopher Georg Foster visited Ostend in 1790, he rightly remarked that the town was 'an English coastal town': even the furniture, the food, and the table manners of his Ostend hosts seemed to have been directly imported from England. The first Ostend

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discount house was also opened during this period of prosperity, in 1782, founded by George Herries, a businessman of Scottish origin. Together with the Brussels banker Walkiers, Herries established a flourishing triangular trade in the same year, to ship slaves from Angola to America.

But Ostend's economic expansion began to stagnate only three years later.

The 1785 Treaty of Paris rescinded free navigation on the River Scheldt, and Ostend' s harbour was dismantled. The town's once flourishing trade declined further under French (1794-1813) and Dutch rule (I814-1830).

The first seeds of Ostend's future as a seaside resort had already been sown under Austrian rule. The standard of living doubled in England between 175o and 1850. As a result, the British could travel farther afield. In addition to this, bathing in the sea became a very popular remedy for all kinds of illnesses. The first bathing machines appeared on the English coast, in towns like Brighton and Margate. They were soon imitated on the continent.

Blankenberge was the first town on the North Sea coast to have them. These little wheeled huts were a common sight on the beaches of the North Sea and the Baltic until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1851 the Groningen preacher A.M. Amshoff paid a visit to the island of Norderney in the Baltic.

In one of his letters, which were later published, we read the following: ' You probably know bathing machines from descriptions or because you have seen them yourself.. a small wooden room, a vaulted roof a small window on the right and another one on the left, and a door that opens out on the sea (...)! You find a few hooks inside to hang your clothes and watch on, a couple

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Bathing machines in Ostend (c.1865-187o).

A poster by Alfred Ost (1913). The French text reads in English: 'Ostend.

I am the Queen of the Seaside Resorts'.

of benches, a mirror, a small mat, and a rope that is connected to a bell that hangs outside — a very necessary implement, this, to signal that one wants to leave the sea again, after one's bath.'

From 1784 on, Ostend too had these mobile changing rooms rolling down the beach to the edge of the waves, where well-off young people, sometimes assisted by a bathing attendant of the appropriate sex, would venture into the water in suitable attire. The custom was started in Ostend by William Hesketh, an English Protestant and Freemason, who had been given permission by the town council to install une loge ou cabane temporaire' on the beach, where he sold drinks to bathers.

A sizable number of Ostend' s bathers came from England, even as early as the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Until about 1830, a few wooden sheds and the bathing machines were the only indication of Ostend's function as a seaside resort. Beach tourism was also interrupted, now and then, by important events on the European political stage. Between 1804 and 1812, for instance, Ostend was heavily fortified by the French for use as a bridgehead in the war against England.

In spite of the French occupation, around 1815 the town still had its obviously British character. This was further reinforced by the fact that British troops passed through the town, and were even stationed there after 1813. Robert Hills notes in Sketches in Flanders and Holland (subtitled with some account of a TOUR Through Parts of Those Countries shortly after the Battle of Waterloo, 1816) that ' one might have supposed one's self in an English garrison town'. For the rest he does not have a good word to say about Ostend, and definitely not about the local restaurants: the waiters are rude, the food is bad, expensive, and served ' at an hour so unseasonable to English appetites, every dish wanted the most essential of all sauces... hunger'.

The poet Robert Southey is more generous in his description of the `terminus' of the continent in his Journal of a Tour in the Netherlands in the Autumn of 1815 (published posthumously in 1903). He is most surprised by `how commonly English is spoken and understood'. We read in the Letters of Thomas Hood, published posthumously in 1973, the praise the writer lavished on the hospitality of the people of Ostend during his stay in the town in June 1837: 'Indeed we live quite in the English style (...), the natives are generally well disposed to the English, and all speak English more or less — some you would not know were Flemings.'

When Hood recorded his thoughts, the later Queen of the Seaside Resorts was still a somewhat shy little princess. The Belgian state, too, was still in its infancy. When the Belgians had freed themselves of Dutch rule in 1830, they needed a king. They themselves would have preferred a scion of the French royal house, but the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was eventually installed as king under pressure from the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. The prince was an uncle of Queen Victoria, and he had already refused similar offers from Greece and Mexico.

Leopold I frequently visited Ostend and liked to stay in the town. He even had a small palace in Langestraat. He was the driving force behind two initiatives that were to turn Ostend into an important transit point. In 1838 Ostend was linked to the interior by means of the Ostend-Ghent-Brussels railway, and in 1846 a regular ferry service to England was started. This

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service was the logical successor to the packet boat service between Dover and Ostend that had existed on a more or less regular basis since the end of the seventeenth century. The agreement concluded between the Dutch and British governments in 1683 was even renewed in 1818: a sailing ship was to carry the mail between Dover and Ostend every two weeks.

The Belgian state began to run this line in 1846, and the first official mail boat flying the Belgian flag sailed on March 3 of that year. The ship, a wooden packet boat with paddle wheels and one funnel, had been built on the Thames by Ditchum & Mare. When the treaty between the British and Belgian governments regulating the running of the line lapsed, Belgium decided to take over the Ostend-Dover service itself. Twenty years later there were already three crossings every day in each direction. The service was soon famous for its short duration, its good train connections, its high safety standards, its advantageous prices, and – of the utmost importance at that time – the special attention given to female passengers. The ships' accommodation and equipment were also very modern. In 1903 wireless telegraphy was used for the first time in history on the Dover-Ostend line, and a mere two years later the Princesse Elisabeth, the first Belgian turbinepowered packet boat, set a world speed record of 24 knots.

The ferry service also played a not inconsiderable role during the two world wars. In 1914 the packet boats were used to transport a large number of citizens to England (during the First World War, the population of Ostend dwindled from 50,00o to 1 o,000). The Germans converted Ostend into a base for their submarines. They were assembled in Bruges and brought to the coast via a canal. Reacting to this permanent threat, the British tried to block the entrance to Ostend harbour on to May 1918, by scuttling H.M.S. Vindictive there. They only partially succeeded: the ship capsized at an angle between the piers and blocked half of the channel. During the Second World War the packet boats were put at the disposal of the British Admiralty and they took an active part in landing operations on various fronts.

After 1945 the ferry service was again modernised. The car ferry Princesse Josephine Charlotte made its maiden trip on 3 June 1949, and later still mobile bridges were constructed to allow drivers to drive their own cars on and off the ships. In the mid-fifties the Brussels-Ghent-Bruges-Ostend motorway (now the E4o) was opened, partly to improve connections for the ferry service to England. After 1971 the Ostend-Dover service was run by the Regie voor Maritiem Transport, as an independent company. Since then Ostend harbour's infrastructure has been radically modernised a number of times, and the fleet has been supplemented with polyvalent ships (a combination of car ferry and packet boat) and with hydrofoils. In spite of all these efforts the number of passengers on the line – which now sails between Ostend and Ramsgate – has decreased over the last few years, partly because of the building of the Channel tunnel and the start of the Chunnel service between England and the Continent. At the beginning of 1996 Oostende Lines revealed that the number of passengers had declined by 4% compared to 1994, though the number of cars and the volume of freight had increased significantly. Still, the murderous price war between the various ferry operators and the drop in the value of the pound have undoubtedly caused serious problems for the line. The company may be split up and sold.

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After the attempts of William Hesketh and other members of the British community to turn Ostend into a seaside resort, beach tourism declined to some extent because of the confused political situation in Europe. But once the gunsmoke had cleared and Belgium had become an independent kingdom in 1831, Ostend' s future as a bathing resort was assured. By the end of the century the town would be the uncontested queen of watering-places.

The English edition of the 1905 Baedeker for Belgium and Holland describes Ostend's reputation as a resort town as follows: 'Ostend's career as a watering-place began in 1831 with the opening of the E. bathing place and of the Kurhaus beside the old lighthouse. Recently, however, the trend of fashion has been towards the W. beach (...). Ostend is now one of the most fashionable and cosmopolitan watering-places in Europe.'

In the course of the nineteenth century Belgian coastal towns like Blankenberge and Ostend became places of entertainment, rather than mere watering-places, sooner than other coastal towns in Europe. An additional attraction was the absence of so-called 'neutral beaches' on the Belgian coast; here there was no separation between ladies' and gentlemen' s bathing places. The British especially, finding the Victorian social climate somewhat stifling, flocked en masse to the Belgian beaches. But tourists of other nationalities were also charmed by the possibilities offered by Ostend's beaches. As early as 1810 a chance visitor from France wrote in a letter: 'To my great surprise I witnessed women, girls, and men bathing together. I profited from the occasion and jumped into the water myself ' Incidentally, the segregation of the sexes on British, Dutch and German beaches led to the appearance of all kinds of weird gentlemen armed with field glasses in the dunes behind those beaches. These daredevils were prepared to risk a heavy fine to catch a glimpse of female flesh.

From 1831 onward beach tourism began to define the image of Ostend as a town. The ten metre high dike that protected the fortress town from the sea soon became more and more of a promenade, which kept increasing in length and width with the active support of the town council. A number of The first kursaal, built in 1851.

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cafĂŠ-restaurants opened their doors along the promenade. They were located in wooden pavilions along the dike: since Ostend was still a fortified town, no new stone buildings could be erected there. The first kursaal, built in 1851 in the middle of the dike, was also a wooden building. It consisted of a concert hall and modest hotel facilities.

Ostend owed its beach tourism originally to British initiative, but Belgian investors soon got into the act. They built the kursaal and the pavilions, and founded a Societe des Bains, which was given the task of regulating the town's night life. The town council, in the meantime, saw to it that Ostend' s infrastructure as a resort town was further improved. A new promenade was built on the west side of town, where the much bigger beach kept attracting more and more visitors, until by 1862 the total length of the Ostend promenade amounted to ,000 metres.

Leopold i put Ostend on the maps of both Belgium and Europe by making it into a hub for national and international traffic. His regular visits there had, moreover, made the town rather 'the place to be' for the fashionable and aristocratic flower of Europe. But his son, Leopold II, intended to make Ostend the 'Queen of Resorts' in actual fact, or, as the Reverend Hillyard wrote in his little book: 'Leopold rr (...) desired to make Ostend a grand ville de luxe.'

An anecdote has it that Leopold II, when still a very young prince, picked up a handful of sand during a walk on the Ostend beach, and told his tutor : ' one day this sand will turn into gold.' The future king himself saw to the fulfilment of his prophecy. His good intentions were greatly helped by the social and economic climate of his times. As soon as Leopold II became king in 1865, Ostend' s status as a fortress town was rescinded; in fact it had ceased to be one years before. The moat that divided the old town was filled in, making new building land available. In addition, the construction of new stone buildings on the dike was now allowed.

Initially there was a difference of opinion between the state and the town about the way the new Ostend should look. The state' s plans (which were the king' s), called for the intensive building of hotels and villas, and for the resort to be greatly extended toward the West. The town council thought these plans neglected the old city centre too much, but lost out in the end.

A new kursaal was built in 1878 at the edge of the old city, where the old dike and the more recent Western promenade met. The building was designed around a gigantic ballroom cum concert hall in a so-called 'Moorish' style, decorated in azure blue and many other exotic colours. It was a real temple of entertainment, where the guest could not only watch plays and operas, or shuffle elegantly around the dance floor, but also take his chances in the casino, playing faro and roulette. The last two activities proved especially auspicious for the town's finances.

The Ostend kursaal, extended around 1905 to provide a circular banquet hall holding 6,000 people, panoramic terraces and various other amenities, was partially dismantled by German military engineers in 1942 to be used in the construction of the Atlantic Wall. The new kursaal, with a total floor space of10,000 square metres, was built between 195o and 1952. Post-war stars like Edith Piaf, Louis Armstrong and Josephine Baker performed on its stage in the footsteps of Enrico Caruso, who wrote to the then artistic director Marguet in 1909 that ces jours a Ostende resteront dans ma memoire

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Leopold II (1.) on the beach of Ostend.

The present kursaal, built between 1950 and 1952.

Koninginnelaan, commissioned by Leopold it and finished in 1892, which links Maria Hendrika Park with the Royal Villa.

accompagnes par le souvenir plus doux entre les doux de ma vie artistique' ( `these days in Ostend will remain in my memory together with the sweetest of sweet remembrances of my life as an artist').

One of Leopold It's most important 'Ostend' initiatives was the construction of a large public park on many levels, that would also incorporate fountains and pools. He called the park after his wife, Maria Hendrika, even though he spent much more of his time in Ostend with his many mistresses than with his queen. After the construction of the Royal Villa (Chalet Royal) was completed in 1874, Leopold II came and stayed in Ostend every year. He had a gallery added to the villa on the town side. From the villa a subterranean passage led to the house opposite, where the king had installed his mistress.

Thus he was able to enjoy her company discreetly and when required. The year 1892 saw the completion of both Maria Hendrika Park and Koninginnelaan that links the park with the Royal Villa.

Leopold stinted neither money nor effort in his plan to transform Ostend into a resort town of international standing. He called in well-known city-

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planners and architects and explained his intentions to them using photographs of Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. Nor did he hesitate to expropriate property for his plans. When land became available in this way on the southwestern side of the dike, Leopold managed to interest the 'Nitrate King' , Colonel J.T. North, an important British developer, in his plans for dividing it into lots. This led to an agreement between North and the Belgian state for the sale of 23 acres of dunes in 1895. In 1900 the Royal Palace Hotel was opened under the supervision of the heirs of the by then deceased North. With its 40o rooms it was the biggest and most luxurious hotel on the North Sea coast.

Another of Leopold's achievements, which he even half paid for himself, is the neoclassical gallery linking the Chalet Royal with the Wellington race track which opened in 1883. These 'Royal Galleries' consist of two walkways divided by a glass wall, with a total length of over 35o metres. At the same time Leopold had the Royal Park constructed behind the gallery. The harbour was also further improved around this time.

Needless to say, Leopold II personally took part in the society life of 'his' resort. He was the adored host of many high-placed people from all over the world. One of the most remarkable guests he was able to receive in Ostend was Mousaffir Ed Din, the then Shah of Persia. The Eastern ruler visited Ostend three times. The extravagant appearance of the Shah with his moustache and eternal fur hat gave rise to all kinds of anecdotes. He is said to have won 675 francs during his first visit to the Wellington race track, in 190o. He distributed 67o francs among the race track's attendants and took the remaining five franc piece, which he evidently liked the look of, home with him as a souvenir.

Clive Holland's Belgium the Glorious (the book appeared during the First World War with the telling subtitle The Little Country that Saved Europe) gives a good picture of the social life of visitors to Ostend at the beginning of this century. About the bathing itself Holland writes: 'It might be said of bathing at Ostend that it is "magnificent, but not bathing". (...) Ostend society bathes not so much from love of the sea as from obedience to fashion.'

The kursaal is, in his opinion, 'the resort of the fashionable people of Ostend, thronged with gay society folk from half the capitals of Europe, and a sprinkling of less reputable people'. Finally, Holland calls Ostend 'the summer gathering point of wealthy Europe', adding 'in modern Ostend there is little of history, and its romance is the romance of extravagance'.

The First World War put an end to the high life in Ostend. The destruction was soon repaired, and Ostend could again function as a fully fledged seaside resort. High-class tourism even made a short-lived comeback between the world wars, especially between 193o and 1933, when the Thermal Institute was founded as a health spa.

Ostend was rebuilt again after the Second World War. But the time of popular tourism had come, as became clear from new development in the town: a number of hotels were converted to apartment buildings. Together with the Europacentrum (the tallest coastal building between Gibraltar and the North Cape), and the neo-Gothic Church of St Peter and St Paul (19051907), these buildings now dominate the skyline of Ostend, the only real coastal town in Belgium. The town functions as a centre for its hinterland. It has industry (mainly companies engaged in the chemical industry), a fishing

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OOSTENDE BELOIQUE-*BEIGIE*BELGIUM

The Blue Room in James Ensor's house.

harbour and even an airport (traffic increased here by 4o% in 1995). For tourists Ostend has five beaches to offer, a long sea promenade, a pier that stretches 625 metres into the sea and some other not insignificant assets.

Despite the heavy damage the town sustained in both world wars, one can still admire a fair number of Leopold II' s architectural achievements. The war itself has recently become an attraction as well: in July 1995 guided tours of the remnants of the Atlantic Wall were started.

This 'open air museum' dedicated to the two world wars is not the only attraction Ostend has to offer the tourist who wants to do more than stick his feet in the sea. Ostend has a modest Art Museum with a rather heterogeneous collection of mainly twentieth-century works of art. In spite of the somewhat cluttered impression the museum makes at first sight, the visitor is able to discover work by two important Ostend artists within its walls. The section with paintings by Leon Spilliaert, which exhibit many similarities to Edvard Munch's early expressionistic paintings, is well worth a visit. As for James Ensor (see The Low Countries 1994-1995: 156-167): apart from his well-known Self Portrait with Flowered Hat (1883), better and more important work of his is to be found in Antwerp and Brussels, among other places. But for anyone who wants to learn more about Ensor' s background (he was the son of an Ostend mother and an English father), Ostend is the right place indeed. He was born in Ostend in 186o, and lived there all his life. The house in Vlaanderenstraat, where he died in 1949, has been turned into a museum, and there one can see carnival masks, dolls, oddly-shaped sea-shells and other curiosities that activated Ensor' s fantasy. Ensor was also one of the founders of the Bal du Rat Mort, the extravagant carnival still

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celebrated every year in the kursaal on the first weekend in March.

But Ostend does not just live off its artistic past, as witness the considerable enlargement of the Provincial Modern Art Museum in 1995. This white labyrinth of art, housed in an old forties department store, was opened in December 1986. It exhibits works by Panamarenko, Jose Vermeersch, Roger Raveel and Paul van Hoeydonck, among others. Van Hoeydonck' s sculpture Fallen Astronaut was put on the moon by the crew of Apollo xv..

In spite of all these attractions, contemporary Ostend cannot really be called a beautiful town. It is still a lively coastal town, though, if somewhat less fashionable than before, and every year it still attracts great numbers of visitors from Belgium and abroad. The town' s chief attraction is, therefore, its function as a seaside resort. As early as 1881, the Dutch writer Conrad Busken Huet wrote in The Land of Rubens: a Memoir of Travels in Belgium (Het land van Rubens: Belgische reisherinneringen) that 'whoever comes from the sea will soon think he shall be able to greet a new northern city of palaces in Ostend. Its modern architecture exhibits a variety approaching the fantastic (...) A street built like this fails to charm in a city, even though one realises it must have cost millions to build. (...) But the whole town shows a pleasant and laughing face in the beautiful summer time; in one's thoughts one wishes Ostend every happiness with the power of attraction it is able to exert on abundance from abroad. One feels and recognises that the ideal cannot be realised unless a certain amount of bad taste is mixed in with it.'

FILIP MATTHIJS

Translated by Andre Lefevere.

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The Terminus of the Continent

Leon Spilliaert, The Dike.

1907. Water colour, 51 x 41 cm. Private collection.