LAMBALLE—ST. BRIEUC—GUINGAMP.
[Illustration]
It is half past five o’clock on a summer’s morning at LAMBALLE, and the
deep-toned bell of Notre Dame resounds through the valley of The
Gouessan. The sun is up, and gleams upon the roof tops, and upon the
heads of the old women who are sitting thus early in the market-place,
surrounded with flowers, taking their morning meal of _potage_. It is
market morning, and the open square in the centre of the town is filling
fast with arrivals from the country. Everything is fresh from the late
rains, and the air is laden with the scent of flowers, butter, and milk.
On every side carts are unloading, and itinerant vendors are fitting up
stalls for the sale of provisions and goods. There are rows of stalls
for the sale of cloth stuffs, shoes, and wooden sabots, for pots and
pans, and for innumerable trinkets of small value to tempt the
peasantry. The shops are opening one by one, displaying less
fashionable, if more useful, wares than we have seen at St. Malo and
Dinan; agricultural implements, and all articles for the use and
temptation of the country people who come from far to make purchases,
bargaining in a rather uncouth tongue, but with a certain dignity and
determination of manner which we shall find peculiar to the Bretons.
Both buyers and sellers speak in a language apparently half French and
half Welsh, and the majority dress in plain, dark, home-spun stuffs, the
men with their blouses, the women with their caps, all put on clean for
the day. This market-place at Lamballe is a sight, if only to see the
fowls and the flowers. It is full of the killed and wounded, bright
plumage and delicate leaves; beauty led captive by vigorous hands,
hustled out of the market-place by rosy, unsentimental housekeepers;
carried heads downwards, both fowls and flowers!
The noise and chattering of a market morning have begun in earnest, but
the great bell of Notre Dame resounds above all; two other churches soon
join in the concert, and the clatter of sabots over the rough
cobblestones up to the church doors adds to the clamour. It is time to
follow the people up the streets, almost too steep for wheels, which
lead to the great church of Notre Dame, built oh the site of the ancient
castle of the counts of Penthièvre.
Travellers, especially summer tourists coming from Dinan or Rennes, on
their way westward by railway, seeing the beautiful position of this
town, with its church above the valley, pause sometimes to consider
“whether Lamballe is worth stopping at for a night.” As we are writing
for all, we may tell them, as we pause to take breath on the ladder of
stones which leads to Notre Dame, that the Gothic pile which crowns the
hill before them, whose granite walls almost overhang a precipice, and
from the rocks of which its pillars and arches seem to spring, is not
only full of historic interest, but has a grandeur of effect in the
interior which we shall seldom find equalled in Brittany. The original
structure was a castle chapel, built early in the sixteenth century, but
the present building does not present many special architectural
features of interest, excepting the remains of an ancient rood-loft and
some stained glass. The building has undergone several periods of
restoration down to the present time, when workmen are busy repairing
its outer walls. But the interior, on Sundays and fête days, is a
picture to be remembered, and is especially full of human interest. The
nave is less obstructed with modern ornaments than usual, and there is a
quietness about the services which we do not find in larger towns. There
are the usual wooden cabinets set against the side wall with green
curtains in place of doors; in the centre compartment there is a dark
object concealed, and on one side the skirt of a woman’s dress peeps
from under the curtain; it is only Marie in a new gown telling some of
her sins. There are several women kneeling on chairs, dressed in dark
green or brown shawls, stuff dresses, and neat strong shoes; all heads
turn one way as we enter, the old women, especially, scanning us from
head to foot and mentally taking our measure as they pray. Here, on this
summer morning, crowded with men, women, and children on their knees,
their figures just distinguishable in the subdued light, the proportions
of the lancet arches supported by clustering pillars, and the
stained-glass windows, have a fine effect.
Before leaving Lamballe, a sketch should be made, from the valley, of
the church of Notre Dame, with its surrounding houses, walls and rocks
in evening light. The drawing, if accurate, will be considered
exaggerated, on account of the extraordinarily picturesque and
commanding site. The views from the terraces and old ramparts of
Lamballe form an almost complete panorama of the country round. It is a
view of rich cultivated land, covered with crops of cereals, and cattle
grazing in the valleys. Over all this land the great bell of Lamballe
makes itself heard in company with the whistle of the locomotive which
hurries travellers on to St. Brieuc, a distance of twelve miles
westward.
In ST. BRIEUC we find ourselves in a busy city of 15,000 inhabitants,
apparently too much occupied with trade and agriculture to think about
beautifying their houses and streets. There are many narrow, irregular
streets, in which the old houses have been replaced by others generally
modern and mean; “une vraie ville de rentiers qui aurait besoin d’être
‘hausmannisée.’” There is a large square _Place_ for the military, and a
market-place near the cathedral, where the old women congregate. St.
Brieuc, as will be seen on the map, is the principal town in the
department; it carries on a large export trade in the produce of the
country, especially in butter and vegetables, for the English and
European markets. Cattle are exported largely from Légué, the actual
port, about two miles off, in the centre of the bay of Brieuc, hidden
from the town by intervening hills.
[Illustration]
In the country round and on the hills overlooking the sea, there are men
and women at work in the fields, girls carrying milk on their heads from
the neighbouring farms, and others busy in the farmyards. The buckwheat
harvest has commenced, and the fields are being robbed of their rich
colour; but the scene is bright with fresh green and yellow mustard, and
rich here and there with clover. The sombre figures are the peasantry
with their dark costumes. Here we feel inclined, for the first time, to
stay and sketch, wandering along the coast to the fishing villages on
the western shore of the wide-spreading bay of St. Brieuc, visiting the
farms and homesteads, and making studies of the interiors of dwellings.
The rough, wasteful method of husbandry, the old farmhouses with their
one living-room with massive furniture and mud floors, and the simple
manners of the peasants, remind us irresistibly of Ireland, whilst the
names of people and places and the intonation of voices are altogether
Welsh.
[Illustration]
Everyone is at work near St. Brieuc in the summer months, every man,
woman, and child, in the fields, on the roads, or on the shore; a
bright, quick-witted population, accustomed to the inroads of strangers.
The inhabitants are superintended in their occupations by some officers
of the line, whose regiments are quartered near the town. The soldiers
are sprinkled over the streets, and dot the hillsides with colour. The
rattle of drums and the smoke of innumerable bad cigars make a lasting
impression in this city.
St. Brieuc, or St. Brioc, is the site of a very ancient bishopric, whose
chapter was loyal and powerful to the last. Its history is told best in
the strength of its cathedral walls, and especially in the ruins of the
tower of Cesson, a castle once commanding the entrance to the bay and
the approach to St. Brieuc from the sea. There is little that is
remarkable in the churches, and, unless it be some old overhanging
houses near the cathedral, little to sketch in the town that we shall
not find of a better type elsewhere. The business of nearly everyone at
St. Brieuc is to prepare ox hides, tallow, hemp, and flax, to sell
stores for the ships that fit out here for the Newfoundland
cod-fisheries, and generally to provide the agricultural population with
the necessaries of civilisation. The town is as noisy as any French
market-town where soldiers are quartered. In the evening come the carts
from the country, and the clatter of sabots over the stones; at sundown
the regimental drums, at midnight the evacuation of the cafés, and the
songs of warriors going to their rest; at dawn a market generally begins
under our windows. When do these people find rest? The answer comes
laconically from the _femme de chambre_ at our inn. “There is the winter
for rest”; and there is the French saying, applicable enough in this
land of noises, that we have “l’éternité pour nous reposer.”
[Illustration]
In the neighbourhood of St. Brieuc is a picturesque château, part of
which is shown in the sketch; on the sky-line fringing the roof are
metal figures of horses, men, and dogs, typical of the chase.
There are modern innovations of high white houses, factories, steam
ploughs, plate-glass windows, and smooth pavements to walk on, and the
majority of people one meets in St. Brieuc are dressed in modern
fashion, but there are odd corners, and very odd old men and women in
the by-streets. There is an old woman who sits in the market-place
surrounded by earthenware pots, rather disconsolately, for trade is bad;
but who, facing the last rays of the setting sun, unconsciously makes a
picture which for colour is a delight to the eye; a comfortable old
woman in dark blue dress, with dazzling white cap, bronzed hands and
wrinkled face, all aglow under its snowy awning; a background of brown
and blue earthenware piled in straw, a distance of dark shadows, and
half defined leaning eaves.
[Illustration]
St. Brieuc is much visited in the summer for sea bathing. The large
buildings near the sea, surrounded by high walls and gardens, are
convents or seminaries, where several hundred children are boarded and
educated for about £20 a year. In the summer the children give place to
adult _pensionnaires_, who come from all parts of France for the bathing
season, and the convents are turned into lodging-houses, reaping a good
harvest in spite of the apparently moderate terms of five or six francs
a day. These _pensionnaires_ spread over the cliffs and sands like
summer flies, to be discerned sometimes in the distance as in the
sketch.
[Illustration: WINNOWING NEAR ST. BRIEUC.]
It is at a village on the cliff near Fort Rosalier that we first see men
and women winnowing, their arms extended in the breeze, a bright and
characteristic scene recorded exactly in the sketch; a picture soon to
vanish before patent winnowing-machines and other improvements.
Mathurine, one of the party—who has pinned a clean white band of linen
over her flowing hair and under-cap, and put on a dark brown embroidered
shawl—takes the opportunity, during the midday meal of _potage_, to
stand for her portrait.
[Illustration]
About midway between St. Brieuc and Guingamp, on the north side of the
railway, is the quiet little town of Châtelaudren. It is washed and
watered by the Leff, the “river of tears,” which, coming from the
mountains that we see to the south, winds its way through rich valleys,
seaward. In its course, and in its time, the Leff has done much havoc in
this peaceful valley, inundating and destroying Châtelaudren in 1773,
and still occasionally overflowing its banks. To-day it is to the angler
a capital trout stream, if he will follow its course southward to the
mountains; to the artistic eye it is a sparkling river of light, set in
a landscape of green and grey. In the town of Châtelaudren, with its one
wide and rather dreary-looking street, there is not much to detain the
visitor, but it is a good starting-point from which to explore the
country and the Montagnes Noires. The land is thickly cultivated, and
well grown with crops almost down to the sea; and on every side in this
autumn time there are signs of industry. From the fields we hear voices
of women at work; in the farmyards there is the dull thud of the flail
and the burr of the winnowing-machine. Across the sloping fields from
the sea come sounds of singing and laughter, disconnected and weird
sometimes, from being caught up by the wind, then dropped and taken up
again.
* * * * *
Eight miles from Châtelaudren, in a green valley watered by the river
Trieux, is the quiet old town of GUINGAMP. Its past history, like that
of nearly every town in Brittany, has been so eventful that its present
normal state may well be calm; but once a year its inhabitants neither
work nor repose. In the month of September they hold their annual Fête
de St. Loup, and pilgrims come from all parts of Brittany by excursion
trains to the famous “Pardon” of Guingamp.
These religious festivals which are held once a year in nearly every
town in Brittany, and are generally combined with dancing, fireworks,
and other festivities, are the occasion of a great gathering of the
people from remote parts of the country; excursion trains bring tourists
and pilgrims from all parts of France, and during the week of the fête
it is difficult to find a resting-place in Guingamp. The three principal
Pardons are generally held at Ste. Anne d’Auray in Morbihan, in July, at
Ste. Anne de la Palue in Finistère, in August, and at Guingamp, in
September. The Pardon at Guingamp is held on Sunday and Monday, when
processions are formed to the shrine of a saint a mile and a half
outside the town, indulgences are granted, relics and crosses are
distributed, trinkets are blessed, and sermons preached by the bishop of
the diocese to the people assembled in the open air. After the services
there is a fête in the town, of which the programme on the next page
will give the best idea.
PROGRAMME OF THE FÊTE AT GUINGAMP AT THE TIME OF THE “PARDON.”
[Illustration:
VILLE DE GUINGAMP
FÊTE DE S^TLOUP
PROGRAMME
DIMANCHE ET LUNDI MATIN, DE ONZE HEURES À MIDI
Musique Militaire sur la Place du Centre
À DEUX HEURES APRÈS MIDI, CHAQUE JOUR
_DÉPART DU CORTÉGE, MUSIQUE EN TÊTE, POUR SAINT-LOUP_
À SIX HEURES DU SOIR
RETOUR, EN VILLE, DES DANSEURS ET DE LA MUSIQUE
LES DEUX SOIRS, À HUIT HEURES, SUR LA PLACE DU CENTRE
BAL À GRAND ORCHESTRE
BRILLANTE ILLUMINATION
_À LA FIN DU BAL_
EMBRASEMENT DE TOUTE LA PLACE
_Aux Feux de Bengale de diverses couleurs (Effets de Jour, Effets
d’Incendie)_
GRANDE RETRAITE VÉNITIENNE
AUX PYRAMIDES DE LANTERNES ET FEUX DE BENGALE
Illuminations et Décors, par M. Kervella, de Rennes
]
The religious aspect of these Pardons, and the gathering of the
pilgrims, is sketched in Chapter XII.; we will therefore speak of
Guingamp as it is seen every day. Whether it be from the interest
attaching to the great annual fête, or from reports of the miraculous
cures that have been effected by the patron saint, Guingamp has always
attracted travellers, and has been written of in terms of rapture which
may astonish a visitor when he sees it for the first time. It is a town
of not more than 8000 inhabitants, with one principal street, which
winds irregularly down like a stream, spreading and overflowing its
banks at one point, in triangular fashion, in what is called the
market-place, then narrowing again, and working its way through a suburb
of small houses into the great high-road to Morlaix. It has two
monuments—the church of Notre Dame, and a bronze fountain in the
market-place. The timbered houses are old, and many of their gables
lean; the cobblestones in the streets are rough, and the public square
of dust, with withering trees, built on the old ramparts, looks as
dreary as any we shall see on our travels. But it is surrounded by green
landscape, and the view from the walks on the ramparts, seen through the
tops of poplars, is of a green valley with trees and grey roof-tops,
between which winds the river Trieux, slowly turning water-wheels.
[Illustration]
The church was built between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
represents several styles of architecture—Romanesque, Gothic, and
Renaissance. It was originally founded as a castle chapel, and part of
the structure is as early as the thirteenth century. It has three
towers, the centre one having a spire. The interior is impressive, on
account of the simplicity of arrangement for services and the
comparatively uninterrupted view of the nave and aisles; an effect more
like that on entering a cathedral in Spain than in France.
[Illustration]
Brittany is a land of lasting monuments; and of its buildings it has
been well said, “ce que la Normandie modelait dans le tuf, la
Basse-Bretagne le ciselait en granit”; but remembering the magnificent
churches we have seen in Normandy, we need not detain the reader long in
Notre Dame de Guingamp. If we were asked by tourists if the church of
Notre Dame at Guingamp was worth going very far to see, we should
answer, No. It is only as a picture that it attracts us much. We shall
see finer buildings in other parts of Brittany, but nowhere a more
characteristic assembly. The most curious feature is a chapel forming
the north porch, which is open and close to the street, lighted at night
for services, and separated only from the road by a grille. This
_portail_, as it is called, forms the chapel of Notre Dame de Halgoet,
and is the sacred shrine to which all come at the fête of Guingamp. It
is ornamented by rich stone carving and grotesque gurgoyles. The people
of Guingamp love the chapel of Notre Dame de Halgoet; it is a retreat
for them by day and by night, a place of meeting for old and young, with
a perpetual beggars’ mart at the door. This north porch with its open
grille is a house of call for rich and poor of both sexes, and placed as
it is in the centre of the town, abutting upon the principal street, it
forms part of their everyday life to go in and out as they pass by. It
is one of the many welcome retreats in France; in a land of perpetual
noises and glare, of shrill, uncouth voices and latch-less doors, it is
the church that gives us peace and shade.
[Illustration]
In the centre of Guingamp is its market-place, and in the centre of the
market-place is a fountain, consisting of a circular granite basin with
a wrought-iron railing. There is a second basin of bronze, supported by
four sea-horses with conventional wings, and a third by four naiads; the
central figure is the Virgin, her feet resting on a crescent. This
fountain was constructed by an Italian artist, and its waters played for
the first time on the night of the annual Pardon, in 1745. The history
of Guingamp is not complete without recounting the story of the
construction of this fountain; but regarded from a picturesque point of
view, the smooth green bronze with its Renaissance ornamentation
harmonises neither with the surrounding houses, with their high-pitched
roofs and pointed turrets, nor with the towers of Notre Dame. We are
more interested with the living groups which furnish the wide
market-place in the morning sun.
[Illustration]
A few yards from the cathedral, on the opposite side of the street, is
the old Hôtel de l’Ouest, where travellers are entertained in rather
rough but bountiful fashion.
“Take a little trout or salmon, caught this morning in the Trieux, a
little beef, a little mutton, a little veal, some tongue, some
omelettes, some pheasant, some fish salad, some sweets, some coffee, and
then—stir gently,” is the prescription for travellers who stay at the
Hôtel de l’Ouest. As this is an average hotel, it may be worth while to
state that the bill presented (by the young lady in the sketch) to
_three_ English travellers, who spent a night and part of a day there,
was 12 fr. 80 c.
Excepting at the time of fêtes, Guingamp is almost as quiet and
primitive in its ways as in the days of the Black Prince. Our notes of
days spent in this city in different years are the most uneventful in
our records. On one summer’s morning we hear an unusual sound from the
great bell of Notre Dame, and find a procession of priests and
choristers winding up the principal street, followed by hundreds of the
inhabitants. What is the occasion? “The mother of the Maire is dead; she
was a bountiful lady, beloved by all, and we are to bury her this
morning.” And so the inhabitants turn out _en masse_, and march with
slow steps, for about half a mile, to the cemetery. It is a dark, silent
stream of people, filling the street, and carrying everything slowly
before it; the only sounds being the chanting of the choir, and the
repetition of prayers. We follow to the cemetery, which is crowded with
graves, each headed by little iron or wooden crosses, hung with
immortelles. The procession divides and disperses down the narrow paths,
a few only of the friends of the deceased standing near the grave.
[Illustration]
At one corner of the cemetery is a shabby little wooden building, like a
gardener’s tool-house, which seems to excite much interest. A girl, with
shining bronzed face, in a snow-white cap, holding a little child by the
hand, is coming out of the door; we venture to ask the reason of her
visit. “Just to see my father for a minute,” is the ready answer.
In a little wooden box, about the size of a small dog kennel, is her
father’s skull or _chef_, as it is called; he is tumbling over with his
friends in other boxes exactly as in the sketch, which, rough as it is,
has the grim merit of accuracy. The sight is a common one in Brittany,
but it is startling and takes us by surprise at first, to see at least
fifty of these shabby boxes, some on shelves in rows, but generally
piled up in disorder and neglect. The lady who is being buried so
solemnly this morning will some day be unearthed, and her _chef_, in a
box duly labelled and decorated with immortelles, will take its place in
the ossuary of Guingamp.
From the high ground near the cemetery, and especially from a hill a
little farther from the town in a north-easterly direction, we obtain a
good view of Guingamp and of the country round. There is a mound,
covered with smooth grass, clumps of gorse, and tall fir trees, through
which the wind moans on the calmest day; a spot much favoured on summer
evenings by the youth of Guingamp. Looking round over the thickly wooded
but rather sombre landscape, and on the old grey roofs of the town, one
is a little at a loss to account for the rapturous descriptions which
nearly all travellers give of Guingamp. On a fine summer’s morning the
landscape is seen to perfection; but to tell the truth about it, the
scene is not very striking either for beauty or for colour. Guingamp has
been described as “a diamond set in emeralds,” and we read of its
landscape “riant,” and so on. “Guingamp m’a pris le cœur,” says another
traveller; but their interest is in the past, they people it with
memories, and with the events of past years.
Our business is with the present aspect of Brittany, and we are bound to
record that Guingamp, excepting at the time of the Pardon, is a very
ordinary place indeed. The artist and the angler may linger in its
valleys, and make it headquarters for many an excursion. If we might
suggest one walk to them, we should say—
Go out of the town in a south-easterly direction, following the course
of the river Trieux on its right bank for half an hour, and you will
come to a suburban village, with a rough wooden cross (like the one
sketched on page 89) raised aloft in the centre of the street, and the
bright and trim new stone spire of a chapel conspicuous amongst its
irregular roof-tops.
Turn round to the right hand, just by the cross, and enter a large
farmyard; the women are busy winnowing, not with hands upraised in the
wind, as we have seen them at St. Brieuc, but twirling by hand a new
patent blue-painted rotatory winnowing-machine with a burring sound, in
a cloud of choking dust. They are storing their harvest in a large barn,
the remains of an ancient Gothic church, the abbey of Ste. Croix, with
its choir window piled up with straw. Immediately in front are the farm
buildings, part of a round tower and a corner turret standing, and much
of the old woodwork and massive interior fittings is still preserved.
The garden reaches to the river, where ancient and historic trout
disregard the angler of to-day. The farm and its surroundings are as
picturesque as any painter could desire.
The inhabitants of this suburb have a real grievance; they had lived for
generations in familiar sight and sound of the cathedral of Guingamp;
they saw its spire and towers at evening, standing out sharp and clear
against the western sky, and were in feeling living almost in the town
itself, when suddenly the engineers of the “Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest”
threw up a mountain of earth in their midst, and shut out the town and
the sunset light from them, and from their children, for evermore.
[Illustration]