The site of the old Abbey of Holy Cross was known in the sixth century as Anaurot, and became the refuge of one of the Breton Kings of Cambria, who, abdicating, came here and built a hermitage, which in time was converted into an abbey of Benedictines. This old Abbey of Holy Cross, as it exists to-day, has a ground-plan which more nearly follows that of a four-armed cross than any other extant in Christendom. The same motive doubtless inspired its builders as that which induced the architects of Charlemagne to erect that famous round church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which in reality it greatly resembles in general features; both went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem for their initial idea.
This church at Quimperlé is one of the three or four in all Brittany having a crypt, and it is more amply endowed with interior furnishings and fitments than many a grander edifice. Altogether it is an ecclesiastical monument of the first importance.
It has a companion, moreover, of no mean rank, either, in the Church of St. Michael, which sits high on the hilltop and dominates nearly every vista of the town.
After a tempestuous past extending from the monastic foundation of the sixth century, Anaurot, or Quimperlé as it had become meantime, surrendered to Duguesclin in 1373. Finally, when a treaty had been signed with the League as to future neutrality, the city walls were demolished (in 1680), and Quimperlé settled down to a peaceful existence, which is only broken on the year’s great feast-days, or on the days of the pardons,—that of the Passion in March, the Pardon of the Birds on Whit-Monday, the second day of May, or the last Sunday of July.
One or the other of these dates should be made to correspond with one’s itinerary, when one will see the real Lower Breton as he seldom appears outside a picture. Near Quimperlé is the little coast station of Pouldu, where figtrees, the hydrangea, and other plants of the Midi bloom throughout the year.
Needless to say that it may some day become a really popular and populous seaside resort, with casinos and alleged Hungarian bands, but that day may be far distant, and any one looking for an unspoiled seaside resting-place need not hesitate to go out of his way to give a glance to this altogether delightful little port of Pouldu. There is nothing like it, nothing so unaffected and unspoiled, on the whole Breton coast. On the way to Pouldu one passes the important ruins of the ancient Abbey of St. Maurice, founded in 1170 by the Duke Conan IV., and the place where Maurice—a monk of Langonnet since become sainted—was buried in 1191. In part, this fine ruin dates from the thirteenth century, to which period belong the chapter-room and the chapel, the principal features still remaining intact.
Near Quimperlé is St. Fiacre, whom some unknowing person has called the patron saint of the Paris cabman, an individual who has not much regard for anything saintly.
There is a beautiful fifteenth-century chapel at St. Fiacre, though to-day it is greatly marred by wind, weather, and barbarous customs. Each year, in June, there is an important fair held at St. Fiacre, at which the young men from round about offer themselves for employment. Each of them carries a rod or switch. To engage one who seems a likely person for your purpose, you, or the young man before your eyes,—after a parley,—break the rod, and he immediately becomes a member of your domestic establishment.
There seems something rather uncertain about all this, but surely the “matter of form” augurs as well for good and faithful service as the average written “character” with which one engages a servant in England.
The hair-cutter appears at St. Fiacre as at all Breton fairs. He is known as Gerard, and since the age of ten years he has been learned in the art of hair-cutting. For a long time he was the chief barber of a regiment of the line, and he will tell you (or he may not) that he has cut many hundreds of thousands of heads in his time, and has garnered enough of a crop to carpet the whole of the village of St. Fiacre a metre deep.
Faouët, not to be confounded with the place of the same name in the Côtes du Nord, is a small town with a great square, and a still more important old market-house, which, like that at Auray, strikes the stranger as being a marvellous construction of wooden beams, and quite impossible to duplicate to-day, whereas the construction is doubtless far less complex than the modern market-houses that one sometimes meets,—mere ugly sheds of brick and iron.
There is a never ceasing ebb and flow of peasant-folk at the Faouët market, the busiest of which come the Saturday of Holy Week, the Friday after Pentecost, the twentieth of June, and the sixth and twenty-sixth of July.
The scene is too dazzling to describe, and too active to snap-shot, and one can only feel its real significance by personal participation. The transactions are not of the stupendous order, and there is much good-natured chaffing and bartering, and it offers a scene as lively as if the fate of a nation were depending on the outcome.
The Breton peasant is not always the sad and superstitious individual he has been pictured, though both men and women think nothing of embracing the opportunity of saying a “Hail Mary” in the Chapel of St. Barbara, or before the great cross of stone beside the main road, as they go into town, taking to market a small calf or a brace or two of ducks, led at the end of a cord by their sides.
The Chapel of St. Barbara occupies an extraordinary position three hundred metres or more above the bed of the Elle, which bathes the lower walls of the town.
After tradition, the Sieur de Toulbodon was one day hunting in the valley of the Elle, when a terrific storm broke overhead, and a rock falling at his feet barred the way. He made a vow to St. Barbara to erect a chapel here, because of his merciful preservation from death. The rock exists to-day, and is shown to the credulous,—at least, a rock is shown which the credulous believe is the identical one, and accordingly it is venerated; though why it is not reviled, no one seems to know.
Near Faouët is the Abbey of Our Lady of Langonnet, founded in 1136 by Conan III. of Brittany. Its fortunes have been various; in Revolutionary times it served as quarters for a stud, but has since been turned over to religious uses again, and is now occupied by a congregation of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost.
The church, the chapter-room, and some other details still remain, admirably preserved, to illustrate the excellence of the early Gothic period of the buildings.
On the way to Rosporden, one passes the principal town of Bannalec, whose original name was Balaneck, meaning the place for planting the broom. It has not much interest for the stranger, unless perchance he happens to pass through it on the day of some local feast or celebration, when he will most likely see the young peasant-folk, men and women, dancing in the middle of the roadway, as they do in the operas. Brittany indeed is about the only place where one is likely to see such a phenomenon, and, if by chance it happen to be a wedding celebration, the diversion will be doubly interesting.
On the particular occasion when the builders of this book passed that way, a wedding dance was actually in progress, and so edifying was the ceremony that the bride and groom were invited into the tonneau of our motor-car, and whirled away to Rosporden for a little excursion, which was unpremeditated and unexpected to all concerned, and was probably also a unique experience.
Rosporden, on the shore of the great lake of Rosporden, as it was described to us, proved a disappointment. Not that so very much was expected of it, but that so little was found in it. The lake is a misnomer, though the water-weedy pond near the church serves the innumerable artists who flock to the region as a highly interesting foreground. The women of Rosporden wear the most immense bonnets and coifs to be seen in all Brittany, and wimples like those of the Sisters of Charity.
The church dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and is in every way an admirably preserved monument.
To Concarneau and the smell of the sea is a dozen or fourteen kilometres over a gently rising and falling road, with a tendency always to descend until finally one coasts down the long main street of the celebrated fishing port and artists’ sketching-ground (it would be hard to tell in which aspect it is the more famous), until one comes to that famous Great Travellers’ Hotel, where one eats of oysters, lobster, and fresh sardines and many other kinds of sea food to such an extent that one feels decidedly fishy, or at least thirsty.
This should make little difference, as the coffee-room of that most excellent hostelry is likewise excellent, and has a charming outlook upon the wharfs and fishing-boats, thus affording as delightful a method of accustoming oneself to strange sights as could be imagined.
The fishing-boats of Concarneau are one and all great brown-winged gulls that flit slowly over the great bay, going in and out with the rise and fall of the tide all through the round of the clock, depositing their cargoes on the wharfs, shifting crews, and starting off again in a continuous performance of coming and going which never ceases until their timbers, from some untoward cause, fall apart.
As the boats lie at the landing, sails come down and the delicate brown and blue nets go up for drying, for not all of the boats have so great a supply that they can shift to another set. The most curious effect is given by these blue and brown nets swinging masthead high, as if they were spider-web sails.
The picturesqueness of the Concarneau fishing-boats is undeniable. Nothing like them exists elsewhere, and when the sardine boats set out for the west, as the sun goes down, there are as wonderful combinations of golden yellow-browns, reds, and purples as the most imaginative painter could possibly conjure on his canvas.
On shore, the nets, spread for drying on the wharfs and on the racks beside the little fisherman’s chapel and the great stone crucifix which faces seawards, are of the deepest blues and purple-browns in a bewitching mixture.
Not a white-sailed boat is to be seen, unless it is an occasional yacht drifting in because its owner has tired of making the fashionable harbours where his guests can spend the night on shore dancing to the questionable music of a red or blue coated band.
It is a question as to whether Concarneau, were it not the centre of the sardine fishery, might not be the first seaside resort of the world. As it is, there are not a few who evidently think it far preferable to those pseudo-society watering-places, whose chief attractions are big casinos and little horses.
The hotels of the place are in no sense resort hotels, though they are fitted with a marvellous convenience and comfort, and feed one most bountifully and excellently on sea food, wherein fresh sardines and lobsters predominate,—those two great delicacies of the Paris restaurant which here are the common food of the people, for Concarneau is one of the few fishing centres of the world which keeps some of its products for the supply of its own table.
To-day the town is composed of two quarters, the new town, otherwise the faubourg Ste. Croix, modern, prosperous, and animated, and the walled town, the island fort of the middle ages.
In 1373, Concarneau was occupied by an English garrison, who fled before Duguesclin. In 1488, the Viscount of Rohan reduced it by order of Charles VIII., but the Marshal de Rieux retook it from the French the following year, and repaired and strengthened the old fortifications.
The religious wars played their part here most vividly, until finally it fell to the hands of Henry IV.
The walled town to-day is a remarkable example of an isolated fort or citadel, the islet upon which it is situated being of a confined area and wholly surrounded by a thick granite rampart, which, however invulnerable it may have been in a former day, would stand no chance against modern guns.
In part, these fortifications date from the fourteenth century, and at high water are entirely surrounded by the sea. The great bastion attributed to the former Duchess Anne—after she had become a queen of France—is a stupendous work of its time. For the most part, the other parts of the walls have been restored and built up anew in modern times.
Concarneau is the Ploudenec of Blanche Willis Howard’s charming Breton tale of “Guenn,” and Nevin, where the great pardon dance was held, may have been Pont Aven or Rosporden.
There is a wealth of charming colour in this sad tale, and not a little truth with regard to some of the characters, to which Americans, before now, have attempted to attach the names of real persons in the world of art and literature.
Opposite Concarneau is Beg-Meil, which in more respects than one is an anomaly. It has some pretence at being a watering-place, but there is no town there, save such as is built up around a few country-houses and hotels, catering only to summer folk; besides this, a few scattered and isolated farms form the sum total of the habitations of this little jutting point of land running out into the billowy Atlantic. For four-fifths of the year, the population of this salt meadow is composed only of sea-birds, which, like their fellows elsewhere, form an interesting colony of themselves.
The sea-birds of Brittany, like those of other rock-bound shores, are ever interesting to the traveller. Like the gulls of London Bridge, those near the great bay of Concarneau are wonderfully tame and singularly ravenous, and apparently eat all day. That is, when they are not sleeping or billing and cooing, as is the sea-birds’ way, for in this they would seem to rival the turtle-dove. When they are not courting or sleeping, they go a-fishing, and the seaweed-strewn rocks about Concarneau are their happy hunting-grounds. They will eat, say the fisherfolk of the sardine fleet, five pounds or more of fish in a day, which is considerably more than the weight of an individual bird.
From Concarneau one must perforce follow back along the coast-line to Pont Aven, for a trip to Brittany without having known the delights of this colony of artist-folk, in which Americans predominate, would be like the tragedy without Hamlet, or the circus without the elephant or the pink lemonade.
“Pont Aven, the Barbison of Bretagne! chosen home of the painters of all nations and all schools, with Americans predominating.” This is a faithful translation of the remark of an appreciative travelling salesman, one “who loved art,” if the description be credible. You will hear tales at Pont Aven of the time when artists found their accommodation at a roadside inn outside the town—now apparently vanished—for fifty-five francs per month, and paid a sou for a litre of milk, and four sous for a litre of cider.
These days have gone, and at Pont Aven, as elsewhere throughout the world, the prices of all things are apparently rising. Really, Pont Aven and its environs are delightful; its little river is busy and chattering with many mill-wheels, and the Lovers’ Wood—as many know—is well named.
Because of its many riverside mill-wheels, Pont Aven has been named Millers’ Town by the natives, and also “The famous town with fourteen mills and fifteen houses.”
Unquestionably, the fame of Pont Aven has been made, or, at least, furthered, by Mlle. Julia, the most capable landlady of the Travellers’ Hotel. The modest little country-house which formed the original hotel has now a more magnificent neighbour, built up with a steel frame,—like a Chicago skyscraper,—and resplendent with modern furniture, with chairs and sofas of the saddle-bag variety, electric lights, electric bells which actually do ring, ice-water, afternoon tea, Scotch whiskey, and all the super-refinements of a twentieth-century civilization.
It is all very comfortable,—too comfortable the artists will tell you,—but the eagle eye and strong will of Mlle. Julia still hover over all, and nothing of deterioration is to be noted in the fare, which is excellent, and served in the charmingly quaint and beautifully decorated dining-hall of the little old inn, the precursor of the more splendid addition.
All this is as it should be, of course, but the price has of late gone up, though it is still thought exceedingly modest by guests who have spent most of their time in big city or seaside hotels.
Painters are perhaps fewer here to-day than some years ago, and there are more of the questionable pleasures of society, such as bridge and ping-pong, which is a pity.
Another appendage to the Hotel Julia is found at the St. Nicolas Beach on the coast. St. Nicolas is hardly more than a bathing-place, but it is delightfully empty, and altogether Pont Aven, with its environs, is a charming centre from which to make a week’s, a month’s, or a summer’s excursion.
Of the young girls of Pont Aven, Anatole France has uttered many truthful phrases. Very gracious they are indeed with their great white quilled collars, their windmill coifs, and their black skirts plaited like an accordion.
Here at Pont Aven—as elsewhere—fashion reigns, and the costume as it is known to-day is quite different from that of fifty years ago, which was not so picturesque, one would say, judging from old prints.
The metropolis of these parts and the ecclesiastical capital, for it is a cathedral city, is Quimper, twenty odd kilometres west of Concarneau.
Quimper is a real city, though it owns to a trifle less than twenty thousand inhabitants, and was the ancient capital of the county of Cornouaille. From all points the marvellously beautiful spires of its Cathedral of St. Corentin dominate the place. It is one of the most characteristically Breton towns in the manners and customs of the people, the general aspect of its wharfs and streets, its shops and its markets.
The first establishment of a settlement here was in Roman times, when, in the eleventh century, it was known as the Civitas Aquilonia. After the expulsion of the Romans from the land, it became the capital and the home of the kings or hereditary Counts of Cornouaille, one of whom, Grollon, has left a legend of great vitality, telling of his emigration here from Britain across the seas, and the founding of the first bishopric.
The cathedral, dedicated to St. Corentin, was built between 1239 and 1515, and shows the marks of the best workmanship of its time. Its fine spires rival those of St. Pol de Léon and Tréguier in the north. The ground-plan of this fine church is not truly orientated, a detail which is supposed to indicate the inclining of the head of Christ on the cross. It is not unique, but the arrangement is so rarely found as to warrant remark.
The town hall encloses a library of some thirty-four thousand volumes, among them a copy of the first dictionary in the Breton tongue, published at Tréguier in 1499.
The museum contains some interesting archæological treasures and some good modern paintings, including examples of the work of Yan d’Argent, Joubert Lansyer, Dagnan, and Abram Duvau, mostly depicting Breton subjects. It also has an admirable collection of old Breton costumes, etc.
The Rue Kéréon is the chief street of the town, and, like the Kalverstraat of Amsterdam, is one of those narrow thoroughfares so overflowing with life that to observe and study the passing throng is to master the manners and customs of the people.
There are many quaint old houses scattered here and there, and like those old lean-to and tumble-down structures of Rouen and Lisieux, they continually reappear on the canvases shown in Paris each year at the two great exhibitions.
The Allées Locmaria form a series of magnificently shaded promenades; this is frequently a feature of French towns above a population of ten thousand, and a feature which might be imitated in America and England with considerable accruing advantage.
South from Quimper lie Pont l’Abbé and Penmarc’h, as characteristically Breton as anything to be seen in the whole province; the former has something over six thousand inhabitants, and the latter over four, and each has its own distinct characteristics.
Pont l’Abbé is a town of embroiderers. Everywhere one finds shops whose sole business it is to sell those fine braid embroideries—yellow on a black ground—which have made this part of Brittany famous.
The costumes of Pont l’Abbé are famous throughout all Brittany. The coif recalls those seen in the pictures of the ancient Gauls. It is virtually a little black velvet hood, and the coif itself is a “pignon de couleur,” as the hostess of the hotel described it, and then, man-fashion, the author felt he was wallowing in a strange subject. Locally this confection, taken entire, it is inferred, is known as a bigouden,—a picturesque but not precisely instructive word.
The men wear a hat with three great buckles, and some of them—though their numbers are few—may yet be seen in the culotte bouffante, that peculiarly Breton species of breeches known in their own tongue as “bragou-braz.”
With such an introduction, one might expect almost any fantastic costume to step out from a doorway, but, to realize the quaintness of it all to the full, one should see the inhabitants at the Fêtes de la Tréminou, held on the twenty-fifth of March, Whit-Monday, the third Sunday in July, and the fourth Sunday in September.
The dances of Pont l’Abbé are famous and are indescribable by any one but a dancing-master. Inasmuch as they invariably take place in the open air, they may be accepted as the free and spontaneous expression of an emotion, which stuffy ballroom cotillons most decidedly are not.
The church of Pont l’Abbé dates from a Carmelite foundation of the fourteenth century, and is a fine work of its era, though surmounted by a curious and modern bell-tower in wood. Within the church are the tombs of many of the ancient barons of Pont l’Abbé. The magnificent rose window is of modern glass, but so admirable that one stands before it with a certain respectful awe, as before that old thirteenth-century glass in Chartres cathedral. The ancient cloisters are still preserved and surround a fine garden.
Pont l’Abbé is only five kilometres from the coast, and Loctudy, also the possessor of a fine mediæval church, and Penmarc’h form a trio of Breton coast towns quite as worthy of one’s attention as many better known resorts.
Penmarc’h—which for some inexplicable reason is pronounced Penmar—is situated in the midst of a great bare peninsula terminating in the Pointe de Penmarc’h. Instead of a high cliff sheared off at the water’s edge, as one so frequently sees on the north coast, the point sinks gently into the blue waters of the Atlantic until it is swallowed up, with never so much as a line of breakers to indicate its presence from seaward. Penmarc’h in Breton signifies the “head of a horse,” and Benzec Capcaval, a village not far distant, means the same. An ingenious person will have no difficulty in following the etymology of the latter word, but the former is quite incomprehensible except to a Welshman.
Penmarc’h was for four centuries a city which kept pace with Nantes. Its early riches came from the traffic in “lenten meat,” which is simply codfish.
The Church of St. Nonna is a late Gothic edifice, with a great square tower which will be remarked by all who come near it. Its interior has two baptismal fonts, strangely decorated with stone carvings of fantastic shapes, depicting the history of Penmarc’h.
Three kilometres away is the town of St. Guénolé, a tiny fishing port with fine panoramic view of the Bay of Audierne. The chapel of St. Guénolé occupies the base of a great tower, now ruinous, but looking as though in a former day it must have belonged to some pretentious church.
“The Handle of the Torch” is one of the local sights. It is formed of a series of great rocks at some little distance from the mainland. That bearing the name of “The Torch” is separated from the mainland by the Monk’s Leap, which, according to legend, was the landing-place of St. Viaud, when he migrated from Hibernia to Brittany ages ago.
From Quimper to the Point of Raz is one long up and down hill pull of fifty kilometres, until one finally reaches Point or Cape Sizun, known to Ptolemy as the promontory of Gabœum. It is the extreme westerly point of the peninsula of Cornouaille, and, reckoning from the meridian of Paris,—for the French do not use the meridian of Greenwich,—is just on the line of the seventh degree of west longitude. The Léon country northward of Brest actually extends a trifle farther westward, at Point St. Mathieu, but most maps do not show it.
North of the Point of Raz is the great Bay of Douarnenez, with its sardine fisheries rivalling those of Concarneau, and southward lies the shallow bay of the Audierne, whose shores, in their own way, are quite as characteristically wild as those of any part of Northwestern France.
At the extreme end of the Point of Raz are two unpretentious hotels, which will please only those of simple tastes and lovers of the solitary; both are connected with more ambitious establishments at Audierne.
The Bay of the Dead, the Hell of Plogaff, and the rocky point itself, form the tourist attractions, but it will be enough for most lovers of solitude to bask in the sunlight amid the gentle breezes from the Gulf Stream, and to leave rock-climbing to those agile spirits who affect that sort of exercise.
Near Audierne is the Church of St. Tuglan, a fine fifteenth and sixteenth century edifice, with many a legend clinging to the name of its patron saint. It is all very vague, but there is hidden superstition in abundance, if one only had the patience to work it out. All that can be learned is, that the holy man was the Abbé of Primelin, near by, and that his feast is celebrated throughout all the Point of Raz. His statue represents him with a key in the hand, and there is a great iron key preserved in the church said to have once belonged to him. On the day of the pardon great quantities of little loaves are stamped with this key and, according to a popular belief, they will cure a mad dog of his madness, if he be given a morsel to eat, and possess many other virtues of a similar nature. In the sacristy of the church are preserved the teeth of St. Tuglan. The inhabitants of Primelin are known as paotret ar alc’houez, or servants of the key.
Audierne is a busy little Breton port of perhaps four thousand inhabitants, and opposite is the fishing village of Poulgoazec, with sardine factories and all the equipment of the trade. Up to the sixteenth century, Audierne was even more flourishing than it is to-day, for the codfish, which were its riches, had not left for other shores.
The vast Bay of Audierne has a wild and deeply embayed coast-line, with nothing but a population of sea-birds to add to the gaiety of the landscape.
Northward, toward Douarnenez, is Pont Croix, built in the form of an amphitheatre on the bank of the river Goayen.
Our Lady of Roscudon is an ancient collegiate church now turned into a little seminary. The peasant folk round about call it only the Virgin’s church. It is in many respects a remarkable fifteenth-century work.
From the Point of Raz in the south to Cape de la Chèvre in the north extends the great gulf known as the Bay of Douarnenez. Along its shores are innumerable little fishing villages, which seem almost of another world. Certainly they have not much in common with other sections of Brittany, to say nothing of the rest of Europe.
Douarnenez disputes with Concarneau the privilege of being considered the centre of the sardine industry, and, like it, has all the picturesque attributes of brown-sailed boats and of blue and brown nets hung masthead high for drying, as the craft lie at the quayside, after having unloaded their catch.
The delicate blues and purple-browns of these nets are irresistible to the artist, but few have caught the real tone; indeed, more than one painter of repute has given it up as a bad job, saying that it was impossible to transfer it to canvas.
The beauty of the Bay of Douarnenez has a fascination for artists and holds one spellbound under certain aspects of the westering sun, when lights and shadows intermingle in truly heavenly fashion.
During the civil wars of the sixteenth centuries, Douarnenez was taken by Jacques de Guengat, but was retaken by Fontenelle in 1595 and its houses for the most part demolished, and used to build up the fortifications of the Ile Tristan.
Douarnenez signifies, literally, the land of the isle. The Ile Tristan once contained a priory dedicated to St. Tutarn, but now the chief sights are the lighthouse and a sardine factory. An ancient tradition recounts that the Ile Tristan received its name from the valiant Tristan of Léonais, one of the knights of the Round Table.
Except for the view from the gallery of the great lighthouse, the trip to the island is hardly worth the making. The view from this vantage-point is, however, remarkable; indeed, it is unique, the writer is inclined to think, in all the world. Suffice to say of it that it is unworldly, and yet gay with the workaday coming and going of the sardine fleets, as such a paradoxical description will permit one to imagine. All is peaceful, and yet there is a steady inflow of industry that is in no wise detrimental to its unspoiled tranquillity. Perhaps if an artist lived by the shores of the deep blue and purple waters of this bay for a matter of two score of years, he might do it justice; until then—never.
Concarneau as a port is more interesting than Douarnenez, but the bay of Concarneau, delightful as it is, has not a tithe of the variations that are played upon the gently flowing waters of the bay of Douarnenez by the setting sun.
The peninsula of Crozon shelters the bay of Douarnenez on the north. At one pronged extremity is Roscanvel, jutting out into the roads of Brest, and at the other is Cape de la Chèvre. Between the two is a wonderful country of rock-strewn coast-line and poppy-covered inland fields.
Chateaulin, situated on the river Aulne, a little beyond the head of the peninsula, is the metropolis of these parts. It owes its name to an ancient hermitage of St. Idunet. Its present name grew from Nin or Castel Nin, then Castelin, and finally Chateaulin. The hermitage, in time, was succeeded by the priory of Locquidunet, and that in its turn became the parish church of the present town.
Hoël, Count of Cornouaille, who became Duke of Brittany, incorporated the town with the ducal domain, from which time on its history was one of partisan strife.
The Revolution elevated it to the rank of a market-town, and changed its name to “Cité sur Aulne” in an attempt to suppress the supposedly aristocratic prefix of Château. Ultimately, it reverted to its former name.
Near by are the Black Mountains, of which Mené Hom is the chief eminence, its summit rising to a height of 330 metres, with other peaks at the height of 299, 272, and 248 metres. The heights are not so very considerable, but their proximity to the sea exaggerates them, and travellers by road—bicycle riders and travellers in motor-cars—will think the process of crossing the Black Mountains, on the way from North to South Finistère, as formidable as the task of Hannibal.
Crozon is a much larger place than Chateaulin, isolated though it is from all direct communication with other parts. It is situated some 250 feet above the sea, on what the French call a wild table-land, and dominates the Bay of Douarnenez from the north. All around Crozon are innumerable grottoes and rock-cut caves and excavations, which always have a certain fascination for some folk, but will hardly interest the devotee to the beauties of landscape.
Camaret, at the very tip of the peninsula, is another safe port for artists. Here are fishing-boats and all the accessories, like those seen at Douarnenez and Concarneau, and with a landscape background and a foreground of blue water that many whose names are great in the world of art have painted and many more will paint. Cottets’s “Fishing-boats at Camaret,” in the Luxembourg Gallery, is perhaps the best known of these pictures, but the composition is always the same. The background never changes,—the tiny chapel with its dwindling spire, the beacon, and the tall, gaunt stone house on the little mole running seaward and protecting the port, group themselves willingly enough into the most charming view in all the town.
The fishing-boats of the foreground change their positions, but kaleidoscopically only, and one may return year after year and see practically the same groupings, with only trifling differences.
One makes his way from Camaret to the great military port and trading town of Brest—if one need to go there at all, which is doubtful—either by boat across the Goulet and the roads of Brest, some sixteen kilometres by a puffy little excursion-boat, which, on a Sunday or a feast-day, is anything but comfortable, or by road by way of Faou, which is a great fruit and vegetable market for Brest, and not much more.
There is a considerable display of costume here on market-days,—which appear to be every day,—and the town is picturesque enough of itself, though, strange to say, it smacks of suburbia,—a place where one gets his news second-hand from some neighbouring city.
CHAPTER VII.
FINISTÈRE—NORTH
THE northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistère has not the abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs.
Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its straight streets and rectangular blocks.
This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau, all within a radius of twenty kilometres or so.
The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships, torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably each in the wakes of all the others.
The entrance to this harbour is known as the Goulet, and is lighted by five lighthouses, which at night send out their twinkling rays of red, green, and white in most kaleidoscopic fashion,—all Greek to a landsman, but as clear as day to the Breton pilots who bring the great ships in and out of this narrow waterway. In the ninth century, Brest was already in existence, in spite of its modern aspect to-day, and belonged to the Counts of Léon. Its future was as varied as the history of Brittany.
It opened its ports to the army of Charles VIII. in 1489, in spite of the efforts of Duchess Anne to prevent such a proceeding. How far she succumbed will be recalled when one realizes that two years later her marriage with this prince was the first step which united the province of Brittany for ever with France. Brest from this time took on a new importance, until Cardinal Richelieu came to designate it as one of the principal arsenals of France, and then, in 1631, came the creation of the great dockyards.
Of architectural monuments, Brest still has the Church of St. Louis (1688-1778) and the twelfth and thirteenth century castle. As an ecclesiastical monument, the church is quite unworthy of attention, though it has some interesting tombs and monuments.
The castle is an admirable example of mediæval fortification, with some remarkable accessory details in its construction. The isolated donjon tower was in other days a sort of independent citadel, and formed a last refuge for the besieged occupants of the castle, should its outer walls give way to the invaders. The Tower of Azenor and the Tower of Anne of Brittany, so named for the respective princesses, are admirably preserved parts.
The local museum and library have fine collections. There are fifty-six thousand volumes in the library, and the collection of paintings contains many Breton subjects by modern masters.
The dockyard—navy-yard in the language of the United States, port militaire in French—is closed to the general public, but a marvellous detailed bird’s-eye view of the city, the docks, and the roads is obtained from the platform of the Pont Tournant.
Nineteen kilometres from Brest is Landerneau, and the junction of the railway lines to Kerlouan and Folgoët in the north, and to Quimper and Concarneau in the south. Landerneau from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries had a distinct feudal administration.
The folk of Landerneau have opinions of their own, as witness the remark, made at Versailles under the regency by a Breton noble hailing from this place: “The Landerneau moon is larger than that at Versailles.”
Again there is a Breton proverb which runs thus: “There will always be something to talk about in Landerneau.” Mostly this is used when a widow marries again, which may be taken to mean much or little, as one chooses.
Landerneau has a fine little tidal harbour, and its streets and wharfs are busy with the hum of coastwise traffic and river life, and, with its Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and its “best and cleanest inn in the bishopric” (Hôtel de l’Univers), as a traveller of a century or more ago once wrote, it has no lack of interest for travellers.
One is not likely to be met with a statement by his host, as was the century-old traveller, that a respectable man begs to know if he may eat at the same table, and accordingly one will not have to reply, “With all my heart,” for most likely there will be twenty at the common table, and all will sit down to a meal of all the good things of life, “sea food” and golden cider and apple sweetmeats predominating.
It is all excellent, however, and the abundance of deliciously cooked fish will make one think it were no hardship to make a lenten sojourn here. A great church and a good hotel are indeed all-sufficient attractions for a market-town of perhaps eight thousand souls.
The town borders upon a picturesque little river, the Elorn, which finally flows into the harbour of Brest. From the fifth century until the sixteenth, it was far and away a more important place than its now more opulent neighbour at the river’s mouth. Then it was the chief town of Léon, the domain of the De Rohans, one of the ancient Breton baronies.
At the entrance of one of the principal streets—Rue Plouedern—are two curious ancient pieces of sculpture,—a lion and a man armed with a sword, bearing the inscription “Tire Tve.” They came from an old house which existed here in the sixteen hundreds, and are fitting examples of that curious mediæval symbolism which so often crops out in domestic and religious architecture. Although the chief of Landerneau’s ecclesiastical monuments is the sixteenth-century edifice dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Church of St. Houardon is a contemporary work of some pretension; its base Renaissance portico was added at a later time. The arms and emblems of the De Rohans are conspicuous in both edifices.
July fifteenth is the great fête-day hereabout, when the horse-races, boat-races, and illuminations attract the peasantry from the inland country and the workmen from the dockyards at Brest.
Five kilometres away is the Chapel of St. Eloi of the sixteenth century. This sainted personage is represented throughout Finistère with the attributes of a bishop and of a horseshoer. Horses are placed under his protection, and the Pardon of St. Eloi is celebrated in various parts with much merrymaking, and always with much firing of guns. A motor-car is not beloved here, and if one incidentally or accidentally come upon a festival of St. Eloi, he had best forthwith make tracks in retreat. The actual religious ceremony consists of a mounted cavalier riding up to the chapel door and making a sort of salute or obeisance three times from the saddle without putting foot to the ground, after which he deposits on the altar a packet of horse-hair, or even the tail of a horse.
In the Forest of Landerneau, six kilometres southwest, is the Château of “La Joyeuse Garde,” celebrated in the romance of the chivalry of King Arthur’s time, wherein King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, and Tristan of Lyonnesse played so great a part.
Landivisiau, on the main railway line from Paris to Brest, has a remarkable church under the protection of St. Turiaff,—which in Breton is Tivisian,—who was Archbishop of Dol in the eighth century.
This fine church is a sixteenth-century work, and exhibits all the notes of the early period of the Renaissance, but, in spite of this, the richness of its portal, its bell-tower, its fine spire, and its nave and choir rebuilt in the best of late Gothic, make it a building to be remarked among the churches of Brittany, which, as a rule, have not the ornateness and luxuriance of ornament of those of Normandy and other parts of France.
The cemetery of Landivisiau has a remarkable ossuary, supported by most fantastic shapes, among them a skeleton armed with two arrows, a woman in an unmistakably Spanish costume, and a most diabolical Satan.
The fair-day at Landivisiau is the great celebration of these parts. It is not so ambitious as many of those held elsewhere, but it will give the visitor the opportunity of making an intimate acquaintance with the Bas Bretons in a manner not possible in the larger towns.
The dress of the people is peculiar, with the great baggy trousers of the men, the coifs of the women, and the general display and love of the finery of bright colours which seem inherent with a people living upon the seacoast.
In general, their features are heavy and their expression more or less sullen, although this does not often indicate bad temper. Unquestionably their carriage indicates hard labour, and the furrows and ridges of their countenances come only from continuous contact with the open air. Still, their bodies are stout and broad, and men and women alike have none of the softness and languor of the southern provinces, albeit the Armorican climate is mild throughout the year.