NANTES TO VANNES
Next to Marseilles, Nantes is the finest provincial capital of France.
This may be disputed, but it is the opinion of the writer.
Perhaps it is because of the glorious part that the city played in the
past to preserve its independence, and the independence of Brittany,
succumbing only with the second marriage of Queen Anne; but, for some
reason, the links that bind it with the past have never grown rusty, nor
have modern cosmopolitan characteristics destroyed the individuality of
the Breton.
The situation doubtless has much to do with the air of geniality which
pervades the city. When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of
the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened
gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the mediæval capital that it was
before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern
notes to be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic,
with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur
of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional
shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer
dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears.
There is a forest of masts of shipping, scores upon scores of great
chimney-stacks, of ship-houses, of sugar and oil refineries, and along
the quay-side streets there are yet sailors and longshoremen hanging
about and smoking a finishing pipe, or drinking a last drop of spirit
or glass of beer. But all is “drawing in,” and soon all will be hushed
in silence, and only the walls and towers of the great castle and the
cathedral will keep watch, as they have for five centuries past. This
is Nantes, the great trading port. Up in the town blaze forth the great
hotels that would do credit to Paris, and yet are so different, and
coffee-rooms as splendid and brilliant as any in the capital itself,
with the prices of the portions twenty per cent. less.
They keep late hours in this part of Nantes, and night does not
actually fall until midnight, when, one by one, up go the coffee-room
shutters,--to come down again in the same order between six and seven
in the morning. This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire
approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and
austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London,
it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling
away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven.
In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient
than modern,--this antique Namnêtes, the capital, by preference, of the
Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes.
The old lanes and crossways of the middle ages have disappeared in
making the spacious great streets of our own time, but there is much
left to remind one of other days in the old houses and in the ever
dominant cathedral and castle.
The Cathedral of St. Pierre is not a masterpiece of itself, but it
encloses a treasure that may well be included in that category,--the
tomb of Duke Francis II. and Margaret of Foix. The great harmony of
this composition, under the half-light of the stained-glass windows,
reveals a charm that most mausoleums altogether lack. On a tablet of
white marble lie the effigies of the duke and duchess, with two angels
kneeling at their heads, and, crouched at their feet, a greyhound,
supporting the escutcheon of Brittany. Four statues, at the corners of
the pedestal, symbolize Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Prudence.
This magnificent tomb is justly counted as Michel Colombe’s finest work.
The castle of Nantes, like that of Angers, is now an arsenal, and
accordingly is less interesting than if it were even a shattered
ruin. It was the castle of the dukes, and the great lodge, a dainty
Renaissance building, with delicately sculptured window-frames and
balconies capriciously disposed, gives an idea of the comfort and luxury
with which pervasive Duchess Anne surrounded herself in the vivid days
when she lived at Nantes. Within the walls of the castle, one might yet
see--were one allowed to ramble over it at will--the chambers where the
odious Gilles of Laval, the Maréchal de Raiz, Fouquet, the Cardinal de
Retz, and the Duchess de Berri were imprisoned during the long years
that it served as a cage for the political prisoners of France. Madame
de Sévigné sojourned here in 1675, so the sombre and yet gay castle,
besides having entertained many of the Kings of France, from Louis XI.
onward, has also somewhat of the aspect of a literary shrine.
In the courtyard is a great well with an admirably worked decorative
railing in wrought iron, quite worthy to rank with Quintin Matsys’s
famous well at Antwerp. The museums of painting and of archaeology,
abounding in rare Breton antiquities, give the town prominence among the
artistic centres of provincial France. The former contains some fine
examples of the work of Philippe de Champaigne, Lancret, Watteau, and
Théodore Rousseau among others.
The environs of Nantes are wonderfully picturesque for the artist, but
offer little for the amusement of the 125,000 inhabitants of this city
of affairs.
To the north, the Erdre winds its way through flat banks, and widens out
here and there into a veritable lake.
From Nantes to the ocean the wind blows more strongly and the horizon
widens; the great waterway of the Loire has already become practically
an arm of the sea, and one breathes its salt air. The aspect of nature
now grows more and more melancholy for the seeker after gaiety and life;
only the artist will revel in these dull brown and gray riverside and
seaside towns, which follow the coast-line from St. Nazaire to Batz,
Croisic, and Guérande. It is what the French themselves call a land of
grayish twilight, with vast stretches of marsh-land and pebble-strewn
sands.
At the extremity of the north bank of the Loire, at the apex of a bend
of the coast-line, is the Bay of Croisic and the Batz country.
Like a needle pricking the horizon, the tip of the tower of Croisic
marks the location of this sleepy little port in the flat and saline
marsh-land round about. South lie the lighthouse and the tower of the
ruined church of Bourg de Batz, that little Breton village all but
isolated from the mainland itself.
It is the true borderland or frontier between the sea and the land, the
one almost imperceptibly mingling with the other. Of it Jean Richepin
sang:
“Mirage! Sahara! les Bédouins! Un Émir
Est venu planter là ses innombrables tentes
Dont les cônes dressés en blancheurs éclatantes
Resplendissent parmi les tons bariolés
De tapis d’Orient sur le sol étalés;
Ses cônes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures,
Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes bordures
Ne sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les Œillets.
On l’évaporement laisse de gros feuillets
Métalliques, moirés flottant d’or et de soir.
Par l’étier et le tour qu’un paludier fossoil
La mer entre, s’épand, s’éparpille en circuits,
Puis arrive aux bassins....”
“The sea sells cheap” say the natives, who are mostly engaged in the
salt industry, as one would infer from the foregoing. Competition
has cut considerably into the industry of recovering salt from the
sea-water, but it is still kept up, and these little Breton coast
villages depend upon it, and on fishing, for their sustenance.
St. Nazaire, where the sea first meets the waters of the Loire, is
quite new, created but yesterday by the march of progress. Tradition
connects the site of this busy port--the seventh in rank among the ports
of France--with the ancient Gallo-Roman port of Corbilon. No trace of
its former appellation exists since the sixth century, when Gregory of
Tours, in the first history of France, mentions the settlement as having
been pillaged by a Breton chief, and refers to it as Vic-Saint-Nazaire,
which nearly approaches its present name.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the market-town was called
Port Nazaire, and was defended by a castle erected by the Dukes of
Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_St. Nazaire_</u>]
Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with
its coastwise and foreign trade and its great shipyards, St. Nazaire
is a busy, bustling town. The blemish it has, in the eyes of most, will
be its general aspect of modernity and its uncompromising, right-angled,
straight streets, laid out on a plan which suggests that of Chicago,
if one make an allowance for the difference in magnitude. St. Nazaire
surpasses Chicago, however, in having a sea front, instead of a lake
front, and its hotels are better and cost less. What more should a
passing traveller want of a modern city?
Between Nantes and St. Nazaire, on the granite flank of Sillon de
Bretagne, sits Savenay, as if its houses were ranged around the steps
of an amphitheatre. It has fallen considerably from its proud position
of having been the flourishing capital of the district. It still is the
largest town, but none of the honours go with its size; decay has fallen
upon it, and the hotels are dull, sad places, and even the omnibus from
the railway has stopped its journeys.
The town was the site of a terrific conflict in the Vendean wars,
and was well-nigh destroyed, and its inhabitants were massacred. Now
vineyards grow upon the very soil that a hundred or more years ago
covered thousands of corpses. Altogether it is a gruesome memory which
Savenay conjures up, if one dare even to think of it.
Between Savenay and Guérande, at an equal distance between the two,
are the peat-bogs of Grand Brière. They are the great resources of the
country. Would you see them worked? Then come in August, when you are
making your way to some seacoast resort of Lower Brittany. For nine
days only in the year do the authorities permit the sods to be cut, but
everybody takes part therein, you will be told; and enough peat will be
gathered, and dried, and pressed into “loaves,” as the Brièrons call
them, to warm Nantes for a year.
Guérande is a capital not quite so dead and alive as Savenay; it is
the possessor of a past of a most momentous and vivid character in
its relation to the history of Brittany and of France. To-day, as in
other days, the town is avowedly Breton, as characteristically so as
any of its size in the province. Much has been sacrificed to the god
of progress, but enough of the ancient aspect of the place remains to
recall its features of the time of Duguesclin and Clisson, and the
Counts of Montfort and of Blois, who proclaimed peace here in 1365. The
enormous Saint Michael Gate is a great fortress-gateway, flanked with
two cylindrical and conical roofed towers of the time when feudalism
ruled Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_Ancient Fortifications of Guérande_</u>]
“Guérande,” says a Frenchman, “has not unlaced its corselet of stone
since the fifteenth century.” To-day, even, it is surrounded by its
mediæval ramparts in a manner like no other northern city in France,
reminding one of those great walled cities of Aigues Mortes and
Carcassonne in Southern Gaul.
This proud belt of machicolated ramparts, ten towers, and four great
gates, and its deep, though now herbage-grown, moat is indeed one of
the few monuments of the middle ages that remain to us in all their
undisturbed splendour.
Guérande is not exactly a deserted village, but its streets are, at
midday, as lone and silent as though its population had not been in
residence for many months. This is a notable feature in many small
French towns during the hour and a half of the midday meal, but nowhere
else is it more to be remarked.
The old parish Church of St. Aubin of Guérande has a collection of
strangely carved capitals depicting horrible chimerical beasts, and
the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Blanche--a fine work of the thirteenth
century--is occasionally the scene of a marriage wherein the
participants dress themselves in the old-time resplendent costumes. Such
an occasion is rare, but should one be fortunate enough to meet with it,
he will carry away still another memory of the mediæval flavour still
lingering about this somnolent little Breton city.
Seaward beyond Guérande are only Bourg de Batz and Croisic, a gay
little maritime city with a fine Gothic church of the highly ornamented
species, and many old, high-gabled houses of the variety which one sees
frequently in stage settings. There are the local watering-places,
too, of the Nantais, Ste. Marguerite and Baule, which have nothing of
interest, however, for the traveller who seeks to improve his mind and
amuse himself simultaneously. They are undoubtedly of great healthful
and economic value to Nantes and St. Nazaire, however, and they do not
differ greatly from others of their class elsewhere.
Again returning to the highroad, if one be travelling by road, “_Vous
prenez le chemin de Vennes” (Vannes) “par la Roche Bernard qui est aussy
celuy de Rhennes et de Rhedon_,” wrote a sixteenth-century chronicler,
and the direct road to-day lies the same way. It is known as “National
Road” No. 165.
Straight as the crow flies, but now up and now down, like all Breton
roadways, this highway runs from Nantes to Quimper, 232 kilometres.
The aspect of the country changes perceptibly as one leaves Savenay on
the way to the real Brittany. One crosses the Vilaine by the suspension
bridge of La Roche-Bernard, hung so perilously high that the great
three-masted coasters may pass beneath. It is unlovely, but convenient,
and saves a round of fifty kilometres on the journey, as one goes from
Nantes to Vannes, so it may be pardoned.
[Illustration: <u>_Châteaubriant_</u>]
Northward lies the very ancient town of Châteaubriant, once the centre
and life of Breton warfare and political strife. It was an ancient
barony of the county of Nantes, and owes its name to the compounding
of the word château with that of its original lord, who was named Brient.
The ancient feudal fortress is now a ruin, but the castle built by
John of Laval, governor of Brittany under Francis I., still serves
the gendarmerie and the sous-préfecture offices. Above the portal of
the colonnade one reads this inscription, which gives the date of the
completion of the new castle:
DE MAL EN BIEN, DE BIEN MYCVLX
POUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX
1538
Each is most interesting, and so abundantly supplied with the lore of
romance and reality, that one can only get his fill of studying it on
the spot.
The Church of St. Jean de Béré is a historical monument of almost the
first rank, and the remains of the ancient Benedictine convent of St.
Saveur date originally from a foundation of Brient I.
On the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of each year, on the plain
behind the town, is held the celebrated fair of Béré, one of those
great combinations of marketing and merrymaking for which old France
was noted, and which have so largely disappeared that to be a part and
parcel of one is to have a most agreeable experience. Guibray, near
Falaise, in Normandy, the “horse-fair” at Bernay, and the Fair de Béré
are the most celebrated in these parts.
It was in the neighbouring forest, as Pontcalec recites in the pages of
“The Regent’s Daughter” of Dumas, that he met his adventure with the
“sorceress of Savenay.”
“I saw an enormous faggot walking along,” said Pontcalec to his three
Breton friends. “This did not surprise me, for our peasants carry such
enormous faggots that they quite disappear under their load, but this
faggot appeared from behind to move alone.”
A very good description this of what one may see even to-day, not only
in this particular forest, but in any other in France. French frugality
burns small sticks and twigs that in other lands would be made into
a brushwood fire, and who shall not say that this trait, along with
many others, does not contribute to the contentment of the French
peasant? for he is content, if not amply endowed with this world’s
goods; marvellously so as compared with his English, Irish, or Italian
brethren. There may be other reasons, but his thrift is the principal
one.
Any one seeking change and rest will certainly find what he is looking
for at Châteaubriant. It is somnolently dull all through the week and
doubly so on Sundays, but, in spite of all this, it is delightful, and
a romantic novelist--or even a writer of romantic novels--could hardly
find a more inspiring background than the country round about.
There is a legend, too, in connection with the old château that might be
worked up into a first-class romance, either for the stage or as a sword
and cloak novel. After all, it is not exactly legend either, though it
is almost too horrible to appear true. The reader may judge for himself,
for here it is:
In the old château lived for a time that unfortunate Frances de Foix
whom Francis I. had created Countess de Châteaubriant. To-day much of
the luxury with which this mistress of the royal lover had surrounded
herself has disappeared, though enough remains, through restoration
and preservation, to suggest the very splendid appointments of a
former time. The young Frances de Foix, herself of the house that once
possessed the crown of Navarre, married the old Count of Laval, who
soon brooded himself into a passion of jealousy over the affair of
his wife and her princely lover, particularly as it was said that she
had gone to visit Francis while he was in prison after his capture at
Pavia. “The countess found the king’s prison very dismal,” said the
chroniclers of the time. This last act proved too much for the elderly
spouse, who speedily “shut up his young wife in a darkened and padded
cell, and finally had her cut into pieces by two surgeons,” as the story
goes. After this horrible event the murderer fled the country, as might
have been expected, in order, say the chroniclers again, “to escape the
vengeance of the king.”
Redon, just to the north, is an unattractive place. Most folk know it
only as the railway official calls out: “Forty-five minutes’ stop for
luncheon, refreshments, and all the rest.”
Very amusing are these railway lunch-rooms seen throughout France. But
withal they are most excellently appointed, although the passengers,
like their kind the world over, eat as though they had not a minute
to lose, and have a good fifteen left on their hands when they have
finished their repast.
The meals are usually divided into three categories: the public table at
a set price, the table for the aristocracy at three francs, the table
with set portions, the frugal repast at half as much, and the service
“to order,” which is the most costly of all.
[Illustration]
Nothing is of an inferior quality, however, and, as all is served
from the same kitchen, it is merely a question as to whether one will
have more or less, or whether he will eat it off linen napery, with
a napkin to tuck under his right ear,--as is the French commercial
traveller’s custom,--or whether he will be satisfied with an oilcloth
table-covering. The difference is more apparent than real, for the
“frugal repast” at a franc and a half is the three franc meal shorn of
its trimmings; you get the same dishes and the same service.
As if to ease the process, a stentorian railway hand puts his head in
the door and shouts: “Ten minutes before the Vannes express starts!”
and returns again at the end of the allotted time to give a final call:
“Into the carriages, gentlemen!” It is much the same the world over, of
course, but they are more polite in France, and the food is better of
its kind, and much better served, two very appreciable differences.
Redon itself and its great open square, on which are the railway
station, the hotels, and the gaunt, lone, dismembered tower of the
Church of St. Sauveur, is by no means attractive. The square is bare of
trees, and in the summer the sun beats down upon the frequenters of the
terrace coffee-rooms of the hotels in a manner which makes one wonder
why they do not move off and seek a shady spot elsewhere.
The indifference shown by the natives of certain localities for the
pelting sunlight, which makes some of us think of cabbage leaves for
our hats and “gin rickeys” for our stomachs, is curious. The Neapolitan
prefers to loll about in the blazing Italian sun, and says that no one
but an Englishman or a dog ever seeks the shade. The citizen of Redon is
like him, and does not care who knows it, and his sunlight, though it
comes to earth some hundreds of miles farther north, appears to be of
the same caloric value.
Redon was an old monastic foundation of St. Convoïon’s, of the Vannes
church. He built the Abbey of St. Sauveur, of which the present church
and its lone tower are later additions. The main body of the present
edifice dates in part from the time of the foundation, though its fabric
was frequently added to and restored up to the twelfth century, from
which period it may really be said to date. The central tower of this
church is said to be the only Romanesque feature of its class in all
Brittany, and is certainly one of the most sturdy anywhere to be seen.
Another remarkable feature is a chapel, the walls loopholed and
machicolated, and built by the Abbé Yves in the fifteenth century;
to-day it serves as the sacristy.
The high altar, a rich and imposing affair, was the gift of the great
Richelieu when he was in possession of the revenues of the abbey. The
city was surrounded by a fortification or wall by the Abbot John of
Treal in 1364, and in 1422 John V., Count of Brittany, established a
mint here.
Questembert, westward toward Vannes, is a town of four thousand or so
inhabitants, and has many interesting old houses, but otherwise is
devoid of attractions either for the lover of architectural monuments or
for worshippers at religious or other shrines. It is, however, the place
for holding many local fairs or markets of considerable magnitude, where
one may make practically his first acquaintance with the Breton peasant,
becoiffed and beribboned as he, or she, only is on native heath.
Rochefort-en-Terre is also a chief place; as its population numbers
less than seven hundred souls, it cannot be considered as even a
local metropolis. Its situation and its fine, though not stupendously
remarkable, architectural glories make up for what it lacks in the way
of population. It sits high on a hillside dominating the little river
Arz, a confluent of the Vilaine. Its name is due to the founder of
a château built here in the thirteenth century and destroyed by the
Catholic Leaguers in 1594, though it was afterwards rebuilt and again
destroyed, this time by Revolutionary firebrands, in 1793. The ruins of
this château are to-day very satisfactory indeed as ruins, though they
include few or none of the architectural details with which the work
must once have been endowed. The lower courses of the walls are there,
remains of five towers, and an ancient well, with a curb of sculptured
granite.
The ancient collegiate Church of Notre Dame de la Tronchaye
is an ecclesiastical monument of high rank, for a town like
Rochefort-en-Terre, and is an altogether lovable old shrine, with
admirable sculptures in stone and some curious wooden statues, in the
interior, said originally to have been those of Claude of Rieux and
Suzanne of Bourbon, Lord and Lady de Rochefort. These statues are now
converted into a St. Joseph and a Virgin. This may or may not have been
a sacrilege; it certainly was a desecration. The ancient city gates
remain, and there are numerous fifteenth and sixteenth century houses.
The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by
the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have
followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the
summer-time. Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Hôtel
Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes
upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little
hotel while journeying to Finistère.
Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of
Kerlean, the family estate of _the_ Descartes. The birth certificate of
the Descartes is in the records in the mayor’s office.
Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress
of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d’Elven, dates from the
fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle
keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration
its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened
perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal
castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a
literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed
here some of the most moving scenes in his “Story of a Poor Young Man.”
Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation
as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here
given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in
Brittany are concerned.
[Illustration: <u>_Tour d’Elven_</u>]
One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and
uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the
metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous
gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very
rich, as possessors of this world’s goods count their gains. Devoutness
need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around
Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have
his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant.
Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on
here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay,
nevertheless.
The simple folk of the Morbihan, who have crowded into Vannes for the
day, are as interested and amused with a hurdy-gurdy Punch and Judy
show, a travelling circus, or a merry-go-round as if they were the
latest distractions of Paris. Meanwhile one seeks his hotel, and there
comes another surprise.