FINISTÈRE--SOUTH
At Quimperlé one makes his first acquaintance with that part of
the Armorican peninsula known to-day on the maps of France as the
Department of Finistère. This charming little town is of itself of great
importance, as marking the dividing-line between the dialect of Vannes
and that of the western peninsula. There is no great difference to be
noted by the casual traveller, since all of the younger population speak
the French tongue,--sometimes exclusively,--but there is an unmistakable
modification of manners and customs toward the more theatrical aspect
which one best sees at Pont Aven, Pont l’Abbé, and the little fishing
villages around the Bay of Douarnenez.
Of the women of Quimperlé much has been remarked by all who have ever
lingered within its walls. They are “superb in type, elegant and
gracious,” we were told by a French artist who had set up his easel on
the quay. But there is no need to tell anybody; even a woman-hater would
remark it. Certainly this is as good an entrance to a new and strange
land as heart could desire.
Quimperlé lies on both sides of the little river Elle, which, like
the other streams of the South Breton coast, is a special variety of
waterway quite unlike their more pretentious brothers and sisters
elsewhere. The country round about has been called the “Arcadia of
Lower Brittany,” and so it will strike even the least observant of
travellers--after he has recovered from the effects of the glances of
those elegant and gracious females.
The most ancient part of the little city is that known as the walled
town, grouped around the ancient Abbey of Holy Cross, on that tongue of
land which separates the Isole and the Elle. The escarpment is badly
built up, but withal it is ruggedly picturesque, abounding in old
houses, some of which have stood since the thirteenth century.
[Illustration: <u>_Quimperlé_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Market-house, Faouët_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Market-day_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Rosporden_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Stone Crucifix, Concarneau_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Concarneau_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Pont Aven_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: Map, ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_From the Museum at Quimper_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Cape de la Chèvre_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Woman of Chateaulin_</u>]
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.
[Illustration: <u>_Camaret_</u>]