<< XI. Husbands are so time-consuming.
Canon J.B. Van Buggenhout, professor emeritus (1875-1952)
Professor Van Buggenhout lodges with the Van Kerckhoven sisters in Leuven. A chapel is set up for Van Buggenhout. Only proud Elvire is allowed to look after the chapel. The aunts are devoted to their lodger, the canon.
The chapel in the aunts’ home
The crucifix on the altar was donated by Guy Van Kerckhoven to the church of Le Contadour in Provence.
Van Buggenhout teaches Chemistry to first-year students of the Faculty of Medicine. He is a great wine lover and regularly organises a wine evening at the Misses Van Kerckhoven’s. The well-known Leuven wine firm Boon-Hecking from the Vaartstraat supplies the wines. On these occasions he invites his colleagues from the Faculty of Medicine, including the eye specialist Professor Appelmans, nicknamed ‘the Apple of the Eye’. To his students as well as to the Misses Van Kerckhoven, ‘the Apple of the Eye’ keeps repeating: « Look in my eye. » His brother René, professor of Surgery, nicknamed ‘the Piss Apple’, is also invited. ( No distinction was made at the time between surgery and urology. It was a subordinate specialisation within Surgery). They visited regularly. The aunts’ ‘Weinstube’ is well known at the Faculty of Medicine in Leuven. Church dignitaries from Mechelen are also regular guests of Frie’s aunts.
“The men from Mechelen came driving up the Oude-Markt in limousines with chauffeurs, dressed in mauve. The neighbours were impressed every time.” – Elvire
“And so everything passes and so everything goes by, but a piece of cake can still be squeezed in!” or “La vie est amère et les pommes de terre sont chères!” jokes the key figure, ‘den Bug’. Does he mean “et les femmes sont chères”?
On everyone’s birthday, Aunt Elvire repeated the words of ‘den Bug’: “Twenty years of growing, twenty years of blooming, twenty years of standing still and twenty years of decline.”
The aunts’ powerful connections help Frie and his brother, who is studying medicine, to get ahead. The university was much smaller than it is today and at first French-speaking. Many of the professors were clergymen.
Margaretha , … ?… , Jos, Bertha , ..?.. , Maria, Clara, Sylvi, Canon Van Buggenhout, Paul, Frie, Arthur, Elvire.
Frie, Professor Van Buggenhout, Elvire, … ?…
In 1960 Elvire and Bertha return to the family home in Aarschot, where Josse remained after the death of their sister Margaretha. But what is in the barrel does not turn sour. Elvire hangs a portrait of herself to the right of the chimney and one of Professor Van Buggenhout to the left. Whenever Elvire bears a grudge against ‘den Bug’, his portrait is replaced by that of the pope. Between the sisters and their canon it had been like a tragicomedy of ego and envy. The church community had wheedled money, art and silverware out of them. But when the pope appears on television, her sister calls out in ecstasy to Elvire: “Elvire, come here quickly, the pope is on television!”
XIII. Studies.>>>