Breton Folk: An artistic tour in Brittany :: CHAPTER IX. Concarneau Pont-Aven QuimperlE.

CHAPTER IX. Concarneau Pont-Aven QuimperlE.

Fourteen 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.

Concarnean Sunday morning

On the Quay at Concarneau.

There is a wide, open space in front of the HÔtel des Voyageurs, on the quay Ste. Croix—where, at a window overlooking the quay, the femme de chambre is putting the last touches to her toilet—but behind it are narrow, dirty streets, crowded cafÉs and estaminets, where the husbands of these white-capped women have disappeared for the day. The majority of the well-to-do inhabitants are en promenade under the trees, and nearly everyone is bent upon pleasure of some sort. Here is a party just starting for a boating excursion across the bay, singing a Breton air to the time of the rowers, which we can hear on the quay. The sketch gives the exact picture: the heavy fishing-boat built for rough weather and stormy seas; the rowers standing four abreast, the heavy oars plashing in the sunlight, the boat down at the stern with its holiday load; whilst the gamin of Concarneau sits on the edge of the quay, over the principal drain of the town, with a string to catch little fishes.

The sketch on the quay when the tide is out, with people waiting for the ferry-boat, gives the aspect looking seaward, on a quiet evening, as we drive away towards Pont-Aven.

To reach Pont-Aven, we ascend and descend some gently sloping hills, in an easterly direction, for about eight miles. On the left hand of the road, near the village of TrÉgunc; we pass one of the largest rocking stones in Brittany, a block of granite 12 feet long by 9 feet, poised upon a second slab half buried in the ground. Little children lie in wait for travellers, and move this stone, which is known far and wide as “La pierre aux maris trompÉs,” a stone by which husbands are said to test the fidelity of their wives. All the heath-covered land on the way to Pont-Aven is strewn with granite boulders; there is a celebrated dolmen, or “table stone,” in the neighbourhood, and, near at hand, at RustÉphan, are the picturesque remains of a fifteenth-century castle, which may be reached through a wood by leaving the road at the village of Nizon, two miles from Pont-Aven.

At a point where the river Aven—breaking through its narrow channel, dashing under bridges and turning numerous water-wheels—spreads out into a broad estuary, is the little port of Pont-Aven, built four miles from the sea. The majority of the houses are of granite, and sheltered under wooded hills; the water rushes past flour-mills and under bridges with perpetual noise, and a breeze stirs the poplar trees that line its banks on the calmest day. The widest part of the village is the Place, sketched (looking northwards) from the stone bridge which gives Pont-Aven its name. A small community of farmers, millers, fishermen and peasant-women, is its native population, supplemented in summer by a considerable foreign element.

Pont-Aven is a favourite spot for artists, and a terra incognita to the majority of travellers in Brittany. Here the art student, who has spent the winter in the Quartier Latin in Paris, comes when the leaves are green, and settles down for the summer to study undisturbed. How far he succeeds depends upon himself; his surroundings are delightful, and everything he needs is to be obtained in an easy way that will sound romantic and impossible in 1879. Pont-Aven being set in a valley between two thickly wooded hills, opening out southwards to the sea, the climate is temperate and favourable to outdoor work. In the centre of the village is a little triangular Place, and at the broad end, facing the sun, is the principal inn, the HÔtel des Voyageurs, which, at the time of writing, has an excellent hostess, who takes pensionnaires for about five francs a day, “tout compris,” and where the living is as good and plentiful as can be desired. This popular hostelry is principally supported by American artists, some of whom have lived here all through the year; but many English and French painters have stayed at Pont-Aven, and have left contributions in the shape of oil paintings on the panels of the salle À manger.

We have mentioned the HÔtel des Voyageurs; but there are other inns; there is the HÔtel du Lion d’Or, also on the Place, frequented principally by French artists and travellers; and down by the bridge, a quaint little auberge (with a signboard painted by one of the inmates), the Pension Gloanec. This is the true Bohemian home at Pont-Aven, where living is even more moderate than at the inns. Here the panels of the rooms are also decorated with works of art, and here, in the evening, and in the morning, seated round a table in the road, dressed in the easy bourgeois fashion of the country, may be seen artists whose names we need not print, but many of whose works are known over the world. The resources of these establishments are elastic, accommodation being afforded, if necessary, for fifty or sixty pensionnaires, by providing beds a few yards off in the village. The cost of living, board and lodging, at the Pension Gloanec, including two good meals a day with cider, is sixty francs a month! When we add that the bedrooms are clean and bright, especially those provided in the neighbouring cottages, we have said enough about creature comforts, which are popularly supposed to be unknown in Brittany. The materials for work and opportunities for study are similar to those in Wales, with fewer distractions than at Bettwys-y-Coed.

Pont-Aven.

At Pont-Aven the presiding genius at the HÔtel des Voyageurs is one Mademoiselle Julia Guillou. At this little inn, as at the HÔtel du Commerce at Douarnenez, the traveller need not be surprised to find that the conversation at table is of the Paris Salon, to find bedrooms and lofts turned into studios, and a pervading smell of oil paint. It is said of Pont-Aven that it is “the only spot in Europe where Americans are content to live all the year round”; but perhaps the kind face and almost motherly care of her pensionnaires by the portly young hostess, Mademoiselle Julia Guillou, has something to do with their content.

The views in the neighbourhood of Pont-Aven are beautiful, and the cool avenues of beeches and chestnut trees, a distinctive feature of the country, extend for miles. From one of these avenues, on the high ground leading to an ancient chapel, there is a view over the village where we can trace the windings of the river far away towards the sea, and where the white sails of the fishing-boats seem to pass between the trees. The sides of the valleys are grey with rocks, and the fields slope steeply down to the slate roofs of the cottages built by the streams, where women, young and old, beautiful and the reverse, may be seen washing amongst the stones.

Returning from Labour, Pont-Aven.

Pont-Aven has one advantage over other places in Brittany; its inhabitants in their picturesque costume (which remains unaltered) have learned that to sit as a model is a pleasant and lucrative profession, and they do this for a small fee without hesitation or “mauvaise honte.” This is a point of great importance to the artist, and one which some may be glad to learn through these pages. The peasants, both men and women, are glad to sit for a franc for the greater part of a day; it is only at harvest time, when field labourers are scarce, that the demand may be greater than the supply. and recruits have to be found in the neighbouring fishing villages. Once or twice a week in the summer, a beauty comes over from Concarneau in a cart, her face radiant in the sunshine, the white lappets of her cap flying in the wind. Add to these opportunities for the study of peasant life and costume the variety of scenery, and the brightness and warmth of colour infused into everything under a more southern sun than England, and it will be seen that there are advantages here not to be overlooked by the painter.

The picturesque town of QuimperlÉ on the rivers EllÉ and Isole, from which so many English travellers have been scared, in years gone by, by Murray’s laconic admonition, “No good inn,” is a most pleasant and comfortable resting-place. It is approached on a high level when coming by railway from Quimper, the road from the station winding round the hills down to the Place, where there is the comfortable HÔtel des Voyageurs. On arriving at QuimperlÉ, the aspect of the people is more cosmopolitan, for we are approaching the borders of the province of Morbihan, and are on the highway between Nantes and Brest.

at QuimperlÉ Station

The people at the station are not numerous, and they are nearly all third-class travellers. The quiet, almost taciturn company consists of a tourist, a sergent de ville, a commercial man of QuimperlÉ, the same old woman that we meet everywhere on our travels, in the comfortable dark hood and cape of the country, and a peasant-woman taking home her sack of meal, sketched on the opposite page.

QuimperlÉ contains about 6500 inhabitants, principally occupied in agriculture. It is surrounded by hills covered with orchards and gardens shut in by high walls; an old and sleepy place, full of memories of the past, and with, apparently, little ambition for the future. There is an ancient abbey church, built in the eleventh century, on the plan of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; in the crypt is the tomb of St. GurloËs, one of the early abbots of QuimperlÉ. The large grey-roofed building on the Place adjoining this church, now used as the Mairie, was formerly a convent of Benedictine nuns; and other buildings, such as the old inn, the Lion d’Or, were originally used by the abbots of St. Croix.

But QuimperlÉ, in spite of its railway, is a town where grass grows between the paving-stones of its streets; a place which owes much of its attraction to its picturesque site and its ancient buildings, to its market-days, its weddings and fÊtes. In the lower town there are some old narrow streets, with most picturesque wooden gables, and there is one dilapidated square, called “the Place of Revolution,” where there would seem little left to destroy.

A painter might well make QuimperlÉ a centre of operations, for its precincts are little known; the gardens shine with laden fruit-trees, and the hills are rich in colour until late in autumn; and in the evening there is no better place for rest than under the trees on the Place Nationale. Here the people pass to and fro, as in the sketch on the opposite page; there are more women than men to be seen, for the latter are resting from their labours, in the cafÉs. Beyond, and high above this group, are the houses of the old town, surmounted by the two square Gothic towers, with spires covered with lichen, of the church of St. Michel. Under the trees near the river are women selling sardines and fruit. The position of the bridge over the EllÉ is indicated by the man leaning over the stone parapet. The man with the cart has just come in with wood for winter fires.

On the Place at QuimperlÉ.

The great attraction to QuimperlÉ is in the country round; in the beauty of the woods and the windings of the streams. In this neighbourhood the artist and the angler may settle down together and spend the summer months delightfully.

A Big Load.

We said that QuimperlÉ, a town with a railway station, on the great highway between Nantes and Brest, owes most of its life and picturesque attraction to women, weddings, fÊtes, and flowers. Let us picture a prominent personage at the old HÔtel du Lion d’Or. She had a beautiful name, Augustine, pronounced with enviable accuracy by all the household. She hovered about us like a fairy, attending to our wants in the most delicate way; to outward seeming a ministering angel with pure white wings, but, in truth, a drudge, a methodical housewife, massive, and hard to the touch. She did the work of three Parisian garÇons, and walked upstairs unaided with portmanteaus which it would require two men to lift, anywhere out of Brittany. She slept in a box in the kitchen, and dressed “somehow” in five minutes. She ate what was left, contentedly, at the end of the day, and rose at sunrise to do the laborious work of the house; helping also at harvest-time in the fields. She had the sweetest of smiles (when she liked), an unconquerable habit of taking snuff, and a murderous way of killing fowls in the early morning which we shall not easily forget.

How it comes to pass that this girl of nineteen occupies such an important position in the household is one of those things which are peculiar to Brittany. The strong individuality, industry, and force of character of the women make themselves felt wherever we go. Whilst the men slumber and smoke, the women are building little fortunes or propping up old ones. All through the land, in the houses, in the factories, and in the fields, the strong, firm hand and arm of a woman does the work.

Augustine.

The pedestrian or sportsman, in his wanderings through Brittany, will, if he knows the country, seek, at the end of a long day, the country auberge where a “household fairy” presides. The land is full of legends and tales of gnomes and witches, but the reality is a white-capped figure, that welcomes the traveller at the inn door the modern representative of “mine host.” Her brightness and attraction, and at the same time her whole armour and coat of mail, are her stiffly starched cap, epaulets, and apron of spotless white. She presides at the fÊtes and weddings which are celebrated at the inns, and joins in the frolics at the end of the day, dancing with the rest up and down the street, and submitting with modest but hearty goodwill to some rather demonstrative tokens of esteem. “How is it that these widespread collars are never crumpled?” some one asks. “Oh, we just turn them round and throw them over the shoulder for a minute!” is the quick answer.

Let us refer to our notebook to see how one of these weddings is managed in QuimperlÉ in 1878. It is just after harvest, and the time for rest and festivity in many a village round. Coats and gowns that have been laid by for months are brought out, and many an antique-shaped garment sees the light for the first time for a year. Two or three weddings are arranged for the same day, and at early morning all meet at QuimperlÉ. The girls come on foot, dressed in their local costumes, excepting a little innovation of finery here and there; the “boys,” for they are little more in age, have modernised themselves, and wear a clumsy imitation of the conventional suit of black, being especially proud of Parisian hats. But excepting in the matter of costume, they do as their forefathers did; they spend the day in the streets of QuimperlÉ, parading arm-in-arm with their brides, stopping to take, and to give, refreshment at every inn-door and at the homes of all their friends. We meet them early in the morning crossing the principal square; they have registered their marriages, and have taken the sacrament in the church of St. Michel, in the upper town, and for the rest of the long summer day and half into the night they dance the “De Rober” up and down the streets, hand in hand together, to the music of the bag-pipe and the flageolet.

Evening: near QuimperlÉ.

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