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“The next day is still wet, and there are many people again in the
streets, some from far away. The races come off on the high-road. I
go to see the finish of one; four horses, strong and about fourteen
hands high, gallop up a hilly length of a high-road; a pink, a red, a
yellow, and a green and white jacket, dash by with a flourish of gaily
tied up tails. I join the admiring crowd which encircles the winner,
and we all go in procession to the Hôtel de Ville. I notice as the rider
dismounts and enters the building to receive the prize (twenty
francs) that he uses no saddle, wears his usual trousers, and has his
coloured cap and jacket made of calico.
“In the large timber-built market-hall is a vast crowd of extensively
linened, many-buttoned men—some with rosettes, the stewards of
the fête—joined hand in hand in one long serpentine line with clean,
red-faced, large-capped, big-collared girls. They jig along the
earthen floor in shoes, clogs, and sabots to the music of a flageolet
and a bag-pipe, varied by an occasional few bars of the voice. This is
called the ‘gavotte,’ as the waitress of the hôtel, who is dancing,
informs me. A farmer in blouse, with a collar (sketched overleaf),
beats time with his sabots. One soldier, two town bonnets, and a few
gendarmes relieve the costume of the peasants, which is, however,
full of variety.”
The Breton ronde or round dance, of which the gavotte is a good
example, is one of the most characteristic scenes to be witnessed in
Brittany. At nearly every fête and gathering—in the streets, in the
fields, or in the town-hall—we see the peasants
dancing the gavotte, the musicians being generally
two, one with the ancient Armorican bag-pipe
(biniou), the other with a flageolet. Frequently, as in
the sketch, one of the musicians puts down his
instrument to sing.

The dancers keep good time, going through a variety of figures, but
always returning to the ronde, dancing together, hand in hand, with
great precision and animation, and a certain kind of grace. The
gravity of manner and the downward look of the women in certain
figures, as they advance and retire with hands down, give a peculiar
quaintness to the gavotte, which, apparently rollicking and
unrestrained, is, in fact, orderly and regular in every movement. The
circular motion of the dancers, now revolving in several circles, now
in one grande ronde, is traced by M. Emile Souvestre, and other
writers, to Druidic origin and the movements of the stars.

But as the dancers come swinging down the centre of the hall, hand
in hand, now meeting, now parting; as fresh couples join and others
fall into the rear; as we hear the measured tread and the voices
which never seem to tire, we should be content to describe the
“gavotte” as a good old country dance of singular animation and
picturesqueness; a scene of jollity and at the same time of good
order, of which the sketch gives an admirable idea.
There is one figure dressed in the latest fashion of
Quimper, who is looked upon with doubtful
admiration by the other dancers, but who will serve
to remind us that distinctive costume, even in these
out-of-the-way places, is a flickering flame, and that
in a few years such scenes as the above will have
lost their character.
We give a few bars of a favourite air, played with
great spirit, which seemed to give the performers
intense enjoyment, for they returned to it again and again.

At dusk oil lamps are lighted, a crowd fills the hall, and, when far
away down the wet streets of Châteauneuf du Faou, we can see the
steam rising between the rafters and hear the clatter of the dancers.

Four years later, on the 8th of August 1878, we arrive on a quiet,

sultry evening at the same little inn at Châteauneuf. There is no one
in the house but two little children and some fowls, and the streets
are silent and almost deserted; but at a little distance from the inn
we hear the heavy thud of flails, and going up a little green pathway
across the road, where a grey cloud of dust rises between the trees,
we come upon a scene of energy and determination which defies
description. It is the last evening for threshing out a little patch of
corn, and the whole strength of the establishment has been enlisted
in the service, including the waiter, chef de cuisine, stable-boy, a
farm labourer, and one or two professional “batteurs”; four on one
side, five on the other, swinging and letting fall their heavy flails in
turn, close to each others’ heads, with a precision and desperate
energy wonderful to behold. Mr. Caldecott’s sketches, taken at the
moment, in a cloud of dust, bring the scene before us most vividly;
the garçon of the inn, the second in the row, all energy and
excitement, putting his face into his work so to speak, urging on the
rest by shouts and gestures, but still keeping steady time with his
flail; opposite to him, last but one, is “Madame,” her face tied tightly
over with a veil, as a protection from the dust; and, last in the line,
the chef de cuisine, working as hard as the rest.
In the second sketch the leaders have changed position, the pace is
quickened, and, from where we stand, the flails seem to fly
dangerously close to the heads of the women. But no one flinches,
and the strokes come down together as if from two operators
instead of nine.
The grain is beaten out wastefully on the ground, and gathered into
sacks by two old women, who put the straw afterwards into the
pillows of the Hôtel du Midi.
 CHAPTER VIII.

Quimper—Pont l’Abbé—Audierne—Douarnenez.

I n the fruitful valley of the Odet and the Steir,

where two rivers join in their southern course to
the sea, there rise the beautiful spires of Quimper,
the present capital of Finistère; a town containing
about 13,000 inhabitants, now the centre of the
commerce and industry of southern Finistère, and, it
may be added, the most pleasant resting-place on
our travels. If we approach Quimper for the first
time by road over the hills, we shall form the best idea of the beauty
of its situation and of the picturesqueness of its buildings. The first
impression of the traveller who arrives by train, and is hurried in an
omnibus along the straight quays lined with trees, to the Hôtel de
l’Épée, on the right bank of the river Odet, is one of slight
disappointment at the modern aspect of the town; but let him
glance for one moment from above out of one of the back windows
of the inn (opened for him by the bright-faced maiden sketched on
page 104), and the view of old roofs and cathedral towers will
reassure his mind that neither in architecture nor in costume is this
city likely to be wanting in interest. Quimper, the ancient capital of
Cornouaille, with its warlike and romantic history of the middle ages,
the centre of historic associations in the times of the War of the
Succession, preserves many landmarks and monuments that will
interest the traveller and the antiquarian. The fine Gothic cathedral
has a richly sculptured porch with foliated carving of the fourteenth
century, such as we saw at Le Folgoet. Above and between the two
towers is an equestrian statue of the somewhat mythical King
Gradlon, who held a court at Kemper in the fifth century, whose
prowess is recorded in the early chronicles of Brittany, and in the
romances of the Round Table. The episode of his hunting in the
neighbouring forests, being miraculously fed by one Corentin, a
hermit, and finally converted to Christianity, is recorded continually
in song and story; and from this incident (related by Souvestre and
sung by Brizeux) dates the foundation of the ancient bishopric of St.
Corentin. The statue, like nearly every monument in Brittany, was
partly destroyed during the Revolution in 1793.

In spite of railways, telegraphs, and newspapers,

and the bustle of commerce that fills the streets and
market of Quimper, some of the inhabitants of the
neighbouring valleys find time, on St. Cecilia’s Day,
to perform a pilgrimage to the cathedral and to sing
songs in honour of St. Corentin. Thus we see how
lovingly conservative Brittany clings to its
monuments and legends, and how its people still
dwell in the past. The story of King Gradlon may be a myth, but, like
all legends and traditions, it has its origin in fact; and we who are
not historians may be fascinated with the thought that the battered
horseman, the object of so much interest to pilgrims in the past and
to tourists in the present, is a link in a chain of facts, pointing
backwards to a far-off time when, a little westward of the site of the
present city of Quimper, on a promontory near Pont Croix, stood the
ancient Celtic city of Is, remains of which are to be found to this day
upon the shore.
The cathedral of Quimper was founded in the thirteenth century, but
was principally built in the fourteenth and fifteenth. It has no very
remarkable architectural features, but there is a grandeur in the lofty
aspect of the interior, lighted by some fine stained glass, which
leaves an impression of beauty on the mind. It is the centre and
rallying-point for all the country round, the home of Catholicism, the
“one church” to the inhabitants of Finistère. No picture of the wide
Place by the river, where the great gatherings take place on fête-
days, and where so many curious costumes are to be seen together,
is complete without the two modern spires of the cathedral rearing
high above the town. The procession of people passing up the wide
street on a Sunday morning leading to its doors—a dense mass of
figures, fringed with white caps, like foam on a heaving sea, the
figures framed by projecting gables nearly meeting overhead—forms
another picture which has also for its background the two noble
spires.[7] The old houses in the market-place in the cathedral square,
and the old inn, the Hôtel du Lion d’Or (this last well worthy of a
sketch), are overshadowed by the pile. The people that come in by
the old-fashioned diligences and the country carts and waggons go
straight to the cathedral on arrival in the square.

7. We believe it was to M. Viollet Le Duc, whose architectural

taste and energy are so well known in France, that the
completion of these towers is principally due.
The interior of the cathedral, which is the largest in Brittany, is very
striking; there is a handsome chapel dedicated to Ste. Anne, the
patron saint of Brittany, to St. Roch, and other saints. There is high-
mass at half past ten, and a sermon by an ancient ecclesiastic
preached from the handsome carved pulpit in the nave. It is an
eloquent discourse, apparently, for along the aisles and between the
pillars familiar-sounding phrases are poured fluent and fast. But the
dense crowd of men and women with upturned faces on the
pavement near the door can hear little of what is passing; the words
take an upward curve of sound, and are heard more distinctly by the
spiders and the flies. The loss may not have been great if we take
the testimony of a writer[8] in 1877, who says:—“I attended mass
one morning at Quimper, and the following is the substance of a
sermon preached to a large and attentive congregation mostly of
working men and women: ‘There are three duties,’ said the preacher,
‘imposed by the church on the faithful: first, to confess at least once
a year; secondly, to confess in one’s own parish; thirdly, to confess
within the fifteen days of Easter.’ The omission of the first of these is
regarded by the church as a sin of such gravity that it is condemned
to be punished by the withholding of Christian burial. Not one word,
throughout a long discourse to simple, devout, careworn peasant
folk, of moral teaching, religious counsel, or brotherly love!”

8. A Year in Western France, by M. Betham-Edwards.

 In some of the chapels there are services during the
day, and there is a continual movement of white
caps in and out of the confessionals; and,
occasionally during the day, some poor, weather-
worn man is doing penance, going round and round
the cathedral on his knees, making a curious
slouching sound on the pavement (as grotesque a
figure as sketched on page 106). He is dressed in
rags, and carries his sabots under his arm during his
long journey; thus, several times round the pavement, dragging his
weary limbs and—according to the enormity of his sins—paying his
sous as he goes.
The character of the people of this part of Cornouaille seems less
reserved, and there is a gay, genial aspect about them which is
refreshing when coming from the north. The bright face and figure
of the girl whose portrait Mr. Caldecott has caught exactly is one of a
flutter of five, who wait at table at the Hôtel de l’Épée in the
costume of the country, which, by the way, is worn here for the
especial benefit of travellers. It is probable that every one of these
bright-faced women would discard it to-morrow if they had the
chance (as their mistress and her children have done); but there is
still plenty of local costume to be seen in Quimper. We have only to
go out into the gardens, to visit the farms, by-roads, and lanes, and
we shall come upon some of the most picturesque scenes in our
travels.
In the corner of a field just outside the town, where a lively
discussion is going forward between a farm labourer and three girls
at a well, there is a picture which for colour alone is worth
remembering. It is one of those everyday scenes in which costume
and the surrounding landscape harmonise delightfully. We give few
sketches of architecture because photographs of the best examples
may always be obtained, preferring rather to give the life of the
people. There are more figure subjects in the streets of Quimper
than there is time to note. Thus, for instance, as we pass through a
poor, dirty suburb at the lower end of the town, a woman comes to
the door of a dark dwelling, and gives alms to a professional beggar,
so grotesque and terrible in aspect that he hardly seems human; but
the woman standing at the stone doorway wears a costume that
might have been copied from an Elizabethan missal. She gives, as
every one gives, to the poor in Brittany, but her husband’s small
wages at the pottery works hard by leave little margin for charity,
and he will want all his spare money at this time of year for the
fêtes. The fêtes are an occasion for universal feasting and rejoicing,
in which the drinking propensities of the holiday makers are only too
apparent in the streets, leading in the evening, sometimes, to
domestic interviews like the one sketched below.

At the time of the Fête of the Assumption there is a crowd at

Quimper from all parts of Finistère, and there is an amount of
festivity which must be bewildering to the quiet inhabitants; it is
then that we may see sometimes in the streets the splendid type of
Breton woman sketched at the head of this chapter, and, by
contrast, some others much more grotesque.
But perhaps the most interesting group of all, and the most
complete and characteristic of Mr. Caldecott’s sketches, is the one
which forms the frontispiece to this volume—a scene in a cabaret, or
wineshop, where the farmers who have come in to market, whose
carts we may see on the cathedral square, meet and discuss the
topics of the day, amongst which, after the state of trade and the
crops, the term of Marshal McMahon’s government and the results of
the annual levy of “les conscrits” are uppermost. Soon after harvest-
time, generally early in September, the annual levy of reserves for
the army takes place, and Quimper, being the centre of a populous
district, is the rallying-point for lower Finistère.
It is the nearest approach to an open political
discussion that we may witness on our travels, and a
good opportunity to see the conservative Breton
farmer, the “owner of the soil,” one who troubles
himself little about “politics” in the true sense of the
word, and is scarcely a match in argument for the
more advanced republican trader and manufacturer
of Quimper, but who, from hereditary instinct, if from no other
motive, is generally an upholder of legitimist doctrines and a royalist
at heart.
Seated on the carved oak bench on the left is a young Breton
clodhopper or farm help, whose ill-luck it has been to be drawn this
year; who leaves his farm with regret—a home where he worked
from sunrise to sunset for two francs a week, living on coarse food
and lodging in the dark with the pigs. As he sits and listens with
perplexed attention to the principal speaker, and others gather round
in the common room to hear the oracle, we have a picture which
tells its story with singular eloquence, and presents to us the
common everyday life of the people of lower Brittany with a
truthfulness and vivacity seldom, if ever, exceeded. The only bright
colour in the picture is in the red sashes of the men and in one or
two small ornaments worn by the women.
Other scenes should be recorded if only to show, by way of contrast,
that Quimper is very like other parts of France. At one of the lycées
the annual prize-giving is going forward, and there is a fashionable
gathering, in which military uniforms are prominent. It is an
opportunity for seeing some of the élite of Quimper both on the
platform and in the crowded hall, and a great chance for a sketch.
The boys come up one by one, and stand on a raised platform to be
decorated with a paper wreath, to receive a book and a salutation
on both cheeks. It is interesting to note that, before joining his
applauding friends in the hall, the boy takes off his wreath and
throws it away. There is scarcely a Breton costume in the hall.
In Quimper we are in a pleasant valley,
surrounded by gardens, orchards, and
fields, and sheltered from the wind by
clustering woods. The sun shines so
warmly here that it is difficult to realise
that a few miles to the west and south
there are stretches of broad moorland
leading to the boldest coast on the
west of France. It is true that the people that come in from Pont
l’Abbé, Audierne, and Douarnenez bear the impress of a seafaring
life, and are different in style and costume to any that we have yet
seen.
It is worth while for every one who stays in Quimper to see
something of the coast, and to make a tour of at least two or three
days to Pont l’Abbé, Penmarc’h, Pont Croix, the Pointe du Raz, and
Douarnenez. In this short journey the traveller will see some of the
finest coast scenery in Brittany, and people differing in character and
costume from other parts of Finistère; a hardy fishing population,
tempted to dangers and hardships by the riches to be found in the
sea.
If the scenery which we have passed through on our way to
Quimper resembled Wales, the district west of Quimper will remind
us of Cornwall. We are, in fact, on the extreme edge of Brittany,
corresponding to the Cornwall of England, Cornouaille, the Cornn
Galliæ of the ancients, a dangerous, storm-blown coast, wild,
desolate, and picturesque. We may go down the river from Quimper
to Pont l’Abbé, or a shorter route by road a distance of twelve miles,
the first part over hills and through cultivated lands, in the latter part
over wide moorland, covered with gorse and edged with pines. This
is a beautiful drive, but, to judge of the quiet, almost mediæval
stillness of Pont l’Abbé, it should be approached by water on a
summer’s evening, when, after a long and sometimes rather
boisterous passage from the mouth of the river Odet, the little
fishing-boat is rowed up the Pont l’Abbé river under the tower of its
ancient castle. On the left, before entering the river, the little port of
Loctudy is passed, where there is an ancient Romanesque church,
well preserved, said to have been built by the Knights Templars in
the twelfth century.
Pont l’Abbé with its dull, straight streets and deserted-looking
houses, has no striking architectural features; but the costumes of
the people are altogether unique in Brittany, and the interiors of
their dwellings are as quaint and curious as any painter would
desire. The women wear close-fitting caps of red or green,
embroidered with gold thread, the hair being turned up at the back
and fastened at the top; they wear skirts of blue or green with a
border of yellow, and the men, short blue jackets and sashes.
In Pont l’Abbé we may see, what is so rare in these days, an old
street in which the costume of the people harmonises with the date
of the buildings, and in which the quiet of a past century seems
never to have been disturbed. Walk down a narrow grass-grown
street to the open square above the river, at the end of which is the
western porch of the fine church of Pont l’Abbé, and the only two
figures visible in the afternoon are a girl carrying a basket coming
from the Carmelite convent, and a priest in black robes crossing the
square. The church and convent were founded in 1383, and there is
little here to mark the passage of years. The church has been
completed and beautified since those early times, and afterwards
wrecked by the Revolution; but the aspect of the square and of the
cloisters of the convent are little altered. The interior of the church is
remarkable for the grace and lightness of its pillars, and for the
richness of its stained glass; the rose windows are said to rival in
beauty those of Rouen. Notwithstanding that the church has but one
aisle, that the ceiling is now painted blue, and that the carvings in
stone and wood are sadly mutilated, it is an architectural monument
of great interest.

Six miles south-west of Pont l’Abbé, across a dreary, marshy plain is

the poor fishing town of Penmarc’h, built upon the dark rocks that
form a barrier against the sea, on one of the wildest promontories of
Cornouaille; a city whose riches in the fifteenth century were so
great that, according to historians, “she could equip her three
thousand men-at-arms, and shelter behind her jetties a fleet of eight
hundred craft.” The original prosperity of Penmarc’h arose from the
cod-fisheries, which were the source of immense wealth before the
discovery of Newfoundland. The history of its invasion by the English
in 1404, and the disasters in the sixteenth century, when the town
was partly destroyed by an inroad of the sea, and afterwards sacked
by Guy Eder Fontenelle at the time of the Wars of the League, is one
of the most romantic and terrible in the history of Brittany. It is a
place to see if only to mark the traces of this wonderful city, once
containing 10,000 inhabitants. A few ruined towers and the
foundations of streets mark the site of the ancient city, which is now
inhabited by a scattered fishing population numbering in all about
2000, the men braving the elements in their little fishing-boats, the
women and children collecting seaweed and tilling the poor soil.
There is a mass of rocks separated from the land, called the Torche
de Penmarc’h, which all visitors are taken to see, and where the
waves break upon the shore with the sound of thunder.
We have said little of the ruins of the church of St. Guénolé and of
the parish church of Ste. Nonna at Penmarc’h, with its stained glass
and quaint stone carving, or of other relics of the ancient city,
because in nearly every town in Cornouaille there is some object of
interest to examine. Antiquarian travellers should stay at the Hôtel
des Voyageurs at Pont l’Abbé, where they will be very comfortably
housed, and can explore this district, interesting not only for the
historic associations connected with Penmarc’h, but for Druidical
remains which the winds of the Atlantic are laying bare every year
on this coast. It is a dreary, wind-swept promontory, from which the
quiet superstitious inhabitants are only too glad to retreat. No
wonder they flock into Quimper, and sun themselves on the Place
during the summer days!
On the road between Pont l’Abbé and Audierne we obtain fine views
of the open landscape, with solitary figures here and there working
in the fields, and occasional glimpses of the sea. It is a windy drive;
the colour is sombre, and the clouds which come up in heavy
masses from the sea cast deep shadows over the land.

If we try to recall the impression of the scene, it is principally of

clouds, as in landscapes by Ruysdael or Géricault. The land for miles
is without sign of habitation, the highest point of interest is a bank
of furze, a stunted tree, or a heap of broken stones, chipped
perhaps from a fallen menhir; a solitude that seems more hopeless
and remote from the tumultuous aspect of the heavens.
But as we approach the town of Pont Croix, and, turning westward,
descend the hills to cross the estuary of Audierne, the view over the
bay is more luxuriant. Below us, through the stems of pine trees that
line the steep road, cut in granite rocks—as we descend to the right
bank of the river Goayen where it widens into an estuary—is the
little fishing village of Audierne, consisting of two or three straight
streets of granite houses, one or two large wharves and
warehouses, a lighthouse, and nearly a mile of protecting sea-wall.
The evening is now fine and calm, and the tide is coming in without
a ripple, bringing a few fishing-boats up to the quay, and attracting
the inhabitants on to the Place in front of the principal inn, the Hôtel
du Commerce, where the portly Père Batifoulier receives us, and
provides us with excellent accommodation. It is a sheltered, sunny
spot, surrounded by cultivated hills, where people come from
Quimper to bathe in summer; but if we walk upon the downs behind
the town, we shall get glimpses of a coast almost as exposed and
dangerous to mariners as at Penmarc’h, where the sardine
fishermen are spreading their nets on the grass.
Audierne is within six miles of the famous Pointe du Raz, the Land’s
End of Brittany, beyond which, stretching out into the Atlantic, is the
Île de Sein, inhabited by a poor population of fishermen and
seaweed gatherers. A glance at the map will show the position of
the island, and the “Bec du Raz,” the dangerous channel which
divides it from the shore, through which the fishermen of Audierne
and Douarnenez, with many prayers and crossings of the breast,
pass and re-pass in their frail boats.
It is a dreary road from Audierne to the Pointe du Raz, passing the
villages of Plogoff and Lescoff. At this point the rocks are higher
above the sea than at Penmarc’h, and the scene is altogether more
extensive and magnificent. We are on an elevation of eighty or
ninety feet, and almost surrounded by the sea. To the south and
east is the wide bay of Audierne, to the west the Île de Sein, the
ancient home of Druidesses, and the horizon line of the Atlantic; to
the north and east the bay of Douarnenez, across which is the
jutting headland of La Chèvre.
A cloud of sea-birds rises from the rocks below, and floats away like
a puff of steam, there is an orange tint in the seaweed piled upon
the shore, and a purple tinge upon the distant hills across the bay of
Douarnenez; but the green upon the scanty grass in the foreground
is cold in colour, and almost the only flowers are yellow sea-poppies
and the little white bells of the convolvulus. On every side are piles
of rocks stretching out seaward as barriers against the waves of the
Atlantic; a dangerous, desolate shore, on which many a vessel has
been wrecked. To the north is the Druids’ “Baie des Trépassés,”
where, according to ancient legends, the spirits of the departed wait
on the shore to be taken in boats to the Île de Sein. It is a Celtic
legend, recounted in every history of Brittany.

The exposed position of the Pointe du Raz, the strange, fantastic

grandeur of the rocks, and the wildness of the waves that beat upon
the shore in almost all weathers, are alone worth a visit. The
numerous artists who stay at Quimper, Douarnenez, and Pont-Aven,
in the summer months would do well to pitch their tents for a time
near the Pointe du Raz, if only to watch from this elevation the
changing aspects of sea and sky, to see the sea, calm and blue in
the distance, but dashing spray in sunshine over walls of rock, and
seaweed gatherers on a summer evening getting in their harvest, as
deep in colour as the corn.

Leaving Audierne, and turning eastward towards Douarnenez,

following the course of the river Goayen, we come in about an hour
to Pont Croix, an ancient town of 2500 inhabitants. The church is a
fine Romanesque building of the fifteenth century, with a curious
porch and some good carving in the interior. It is a quiet, rather
deserted-looking town, on an eminence above the river, reminding
one in its position and its air of faded importance of the ecclesiastical
city of Coutances, in Normandy.

It is a fine drive over undulating hills to Douarnenez, with views of

landscape more fertile than any we have seen since leaving
Quimper; landscape with open moorland, interspersed with fields of
corn, where harvesting is being actively carried on, as in the sketch.
Here we get a glimpse of one of the old farmhouses of Finistère, and
(on a very small scale) of the farmer himself approaching in the
distance to superintend operations.
A few miles farther, and the landscape is again bare and
uncultivated, we see peasants in the fields at rare intervals; flocks of
black and brown sheep feeding on the open land. There is a charm
of wildness and a peculiar beauty about the scenery here that we
who write for artists should insist upon with all the power of the
pen. It is the fashion to stay at Douarnenez and at Pont-Aven, but
we have few records of the best scenery in Cornouaille.
 Harvesting in Finistère.

Douarnenez, the headquarters of the sardine-fisheries, has a

population of about 9000, almost entirely given up to this industry;
the men in their boats, and the women and girls in the factories. It
is a busy, dirty, and not very attractive town, with one principal
street leading down to the port; but walk out of it in any direction,
so as to escape the odours of the sardine factories, and the views
from the high ground are most rewarding.
There is no prettier sight, for instance, than to watch the arrival of a
fleet of several hundred fishing-boats rounding the last promontory,
racing in whilst they are eagerly watched from the shore. At the
point where the sketch was taken, the little fleet divides, to come to
anchor at different inlets of the bay. Of the scene down at the port,
where the boats unload; of the massing of a forest of masts against
the evening sky, with rocks and houses high above as a background,
we can only hint in these pages.
 Waiting Sardine Boats
for the at
Douarnenez.

At Douarnenez, in summer, the inhabitants are accustomed to an

inroad of visitors who come for the bathing season, and there is a
little colony of artists who live comfortably at the principal inns (en
pension for five or six francs a day), but it is not as quiet as Pont-
Aven, of which we shall speak in the next chapter, for the streets are
closely built and badly paved, and the busy inhabitants wear sabots
which are rattled down to the shore at all hours of the day and
night, according to the tide. Moreover, the inhabitants of the town
are scarcely typical Bretons; they are a little demoralised by success
in trade, a little inclined to smuggling, and decidedly fond of
drinking. The men, living hard lives, facing the most fearful storms
of the Atlantic in their exposed little boats, out sometimes for days
without a take, are apt to be uproarious when on shore. The hardy,
bright-featured women of Cornouaille, whose faces are becoming so
familiar to us in these pages, have a rather sad and reckless look at
Douarnenez; their homes are not too tidy as a rule; the little children
play in streets which steam with refuse from the sardine factories,
where their elder sisters are working in gangs, with bare feet and
skirts tucked up to their knees, sifting, and sorting, and cooking
sardines, and singing snatches of Breton songs the while. The lower
streets, steep and narrow, are blocked with fish-carts, and the port
is crowded with boats with nets drying in festoons. But the view of
Douarnenez seen at a little distance out at sea, with its high rocks
and overhanging trees almost reaching to the water’s edge, and
above, the spire of the old church of Ploaré standing sharp against
the sky, will remain best in the memory. There is no end to the
beauties of the bay of Douarnenez, if we explore the neighbourhood,
starting off early for the day and not returning until sundown.
In the evening there is a great Bohemian gathering
at the Hôtel du Commerce; its artistic visitors
overflow into the street, and make themselves heard
as well as seen. There is a clatter of tongues and a
cloud of smoke issuing from the little café presided
over by the neat figure in the sketch. Those who
have been to the Hôtel du Commerce at Douarnenez
will recognise the portrait at once; those who have
not must picture to themselves a girl with dark hair
and brown complexion, a headdress and bodice in
which scarlet and gold are intermingled, a dark skirt with a border of
yellow or orange, and a spotless white apron and sleeves. In soft
shoes she flits silently through the rooms and supplies our clamorous
wants in turn; neither remonstrance nor flattery will move her, or
cause her to raise her eyes.
The children of Douarnenez have learned to beg, and along the
broad road which leads to Quimper, beggars are stationed at
intervals to waylay the charitable. Driving home in the little covered
carriage shown in the sketch, a dark object appears before us on the
way. Near it, at the side of the road, is a little shed roughly made
with poles and brambles, and, protruding from it, two sabots filled
with straw, two sticks, and a pair of bragous bras. The rest of the
structure consists of dried ferns, and a poor deaf human creature
propped up to receive the alms of the charitable, a grim figure
watching and waiting in the sun and wind.
 CHAPTER IX.

Concarneau—Pont-Aven—Quimperlé.

F ourteen miles south-east of Quimper is

Concarneau, another important fishing station of
Cornouaille. It is well to go thither by road, in order
to see the view of Quimper and the valley below,
when a few miles out of the town; a view which few
travellers see in these days. The old town of
Concarneau, with its fortifications and towers, called
“Ville Close,” which in its position somewhat
resembles St. Malo, is approached by a drawbridge from the
mainland, and at high tide is surrounded by water; it consists of one
long irregular street with old houses shut in by dark walls, through
the loopholes of which we see the sea. The nominal population of
Concarneau is 5000, but in the Faubourg Ste. Croix, where the fleet
of fishing-boats come and go at every tide, the population is
upwards of 10,000. There is a fine modern aquarium, and there are
several interesting monuments in the immediate neighbourhood, but
there is nothing very remarkable in the situation of the town itself,
and it is certainly not a place for visitors to stay in; the work of life
at Concarneau is to catch and cure little fishes, and the odours of
the dead and the dying, the cured and the fried, pervade the air. The
hedges are made of the cuttings of sardine boxes.
We happen to see Concarneau at its best on a fine summer’s
morning, when the wide quay of the Faubourg Ste. Croix, where the
sketch is taken, is alive with people, the majority on their way to
church across the drawbridge in the Ville Close. The little fleet of
fishing-boats is moored in a cluster at the quay; the nets are drying
in the sun en masse, and the cork floats hang from the masts in
graceful festoons. Everyone is in holiday attire, and seems bent upon
going somewhere—to church, for a drive in the country, or for an
excursion out to sea. The fishermen and workmen have for the most
part disappeared into the wine-shops, whence their hilarity overflows
into the streets. The girls employed in the sardine factories have put
on their best dresses and neatest shoes, and go in companies of six
or eight together to the church. Their smooth white caps and lappets
glisten in the clear air which blows lightly from the south-east, and
the odours of sardines are for the time forgotten. It is the time and
the spot from which to take away an impression of Concarneau, for
its ordinary everyday aspect is not romantic. The procession of
people coming from church down the old-fashioned street, shut in
by walls and towers, makes a good picture. The majority wear their
proper costume, as sketched on opposite page; a few only have
fallen into temptation, and carry bonnets, trains, and high heels
across the Place.
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