The Exiles

The Weekly Machen

In the following report, Arthur Machen travels from London to experience the deluge of Belgian refugees as they reach the safety of English shores. Neutral Belgium was quickly overwhelmed by the German host as it hacked its path toward metropolitan France. The kingdom would remain under German control until the end of the Great War in late 1918. Machen captures well the confusion, bewilderment and anger that characterized the crowd. No doubt seeing such scenes influenced Machen’s war fiction. For more on this topic, refer to The Pitiful Army and Joy for Belgian Children.

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The Exiles
Folkestone in a French Guise
by
Arthur Machen
September 8, 1914

One of the first things that I saw on leaving Folkestone Station was an announcement in French to the effect that the Consulat Francais was in Julian-road, Radnor Park. Then, against a red brick building, a big poster blazed with big coloured letters:

AVIS
C’EST ICI
QUE SE DONNENT
LES
CONFERENCE EVANGLIQUES
POUR LES
REFUGIES BELGES.

Which is as much as to say that in this place Belgian Protestants would find Gospel meetings conducted in French.

Then in a shop window it was signified, still in French, that official news of the war could be seen within; and, finally, I came upon a score or so of people reading the local paper—not the Folkestone Herald—but La Franco-Belge de Folkestone, journal quotidian qui coute cinq centimes.

And every other group that you meet is speaking French, and in the evening I encountered a little party resting after a sad and weary journey of exile—and they were talking something very queer indeed. It sounded oddly like English, but it wasn’t English. I listened, and heard the word, “Ik,” and made no doubt that these were Flemish cousins of ours. When Mr. Hardy was a young man, the old people in Wessex used to say “Ik,” instead of “I.”

Twenty Thousand Refugees

We all know why Folkestone has become bilingual or—counting the Flemings—trilingual. The Belgians and the French have fled from the horror that is abroad, from that which destroyeth in darkness and from the foul fiend of noonday. Some of them have seen towns and villages laid waste amid circumstances of incredible cruelty, others have fled before the black legions have come upon them. There are 20,000 French and Belgian refugees now in Folkestone, and many of the exiles have passed on to London. They come, and yet more come each day and all the day. Boat follows boat, from Antwerp, from Flushing, from Dieppe, from Ostend, from Boulogne.

I went down by long flights of steps, through the old town, descending as one descends like steps in St. Peter Port, Guernsey. There before the harbour gates was a waiting crowd, decked, most of them, with the Belgian or French rosettes or bows or flags, and speaking French to one another in somewhat melancholy accents. The policeman who kept the gates spoke a French which was surprisingly easy in parts; he knew the arresting power of “dis donc!” but when it came to technicalities I observed in him a tendency to take refuge in English spoken very loud; and this is a time-honoured habit of our race.

A Trophy from the Front

Near the policeman was a Belgian studying a little book with a stern face. The book introduced foreigners to the English language, and the Belgian was tackling the “Isi frézeese” or something that looked like that.

There was a black coil of smoke from the sea; the Ostend boat had come in. Two nurses in khaki coats and riding breeches drove through to get on board; they, no doubt, were bound for the front. Belgians and Frenchmen passed in, also on their way back, and their friends who were remaining gave them letters to be given to people on the other side.

In a little while the head of the procession of refugees began to appear; straggling by ones and twos at first. Foreign clergy in their cassocks and broad, looped hats were waiting waiting for some of them.

There is a sudden shout; a taxi comes along, and one of the men holds up a trophy in triumph. It is a spiky German helmet, and it is cheered, and a truculent voice calls out: “A pity there isn’t a German head inside of it!”

The stream thickens, the exiles are of all sorts and all classes. Here are smart society women in extremely pretty frocks, here are family parties, father, mother, and baby, here are little black-eyed children walking solemnly along, one hand in the nurse’s, the other holding a scarlet sand-bucket. Many holidays by the sea have been sadly broken up over there by the terror of the Uhlans, the brave cavalrymen who kill children.

Three Generations

Here comes a workman carrying all that is left of his home in a canvas bag slung over his back. Here drives by an elderly, important-looking gentleman with a bit of coloured ribbons in his buttonhole; and now there comes a whole party, three generations, grandfather and grandmother, father and mother and children, looking about them in a kind of sad bewilderment, as if the old friendly world that they knew and loved had passed utterly away in the furnace wherein their country is being consumed.

There were many such parties; good, homely, friendly-looking folks. They came, no doubt, from snug and prosperous farmhouses, sat between the long canals and the long, straight avenues of trees. They came from cosy inhabitants in grave and pleasant old Flemish towns, wherein their families had lived quietly for generations; and then, in a moment, it was as if the earth had quaked beneath their feet, as if the whole of their old solid world had spouted fire at them. I looked at these poor people and thought how it would be if a fate like theirs fell upon our good folks in Wells and Woetten Bassett and Tewkesbury, and such worthy against places; how if our world turned to flame also in its turn.

“Full Up”

The refugees still came on; some with smart new luggage, some with old bags, parcels, with canvas sacks, with brown paper parcels, with broken hand boxes, kept together by a bit of string.

Outside the crowd, a big poster told the newly arrived that the “Rendezvous des Francais et des Belges” was on the Victoria Pier. Men with bands on their arms, marked “Renseignements,” stood ready to give any information to the refugees, at every little inn in the old town, at every big hotel up on the hill, people were asking for rooms. “Full up” was the answer in many cases, and I came upon parties wandering indecisively up and down, wondering to where to go.

And the Inns were crowded from end to end. The refugees paced up and down, sat on the chairs and the deck seats, read French papers. The lawns were like the terraces of a fashionable French watering place in the height of the season if there had been little tables, glasses of sirops, of aperitifs, the resemblance would have been complete.

 

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Introduction and supplementary material – Copyright 2025 by Christopher Tompkins. All rights reserved.