A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

The crêpes were eaten at the end of the luncheon as a sweet, and among the other dishes that I remember was the cold salmon,—invariable on such occasions, salmon abounding in our Breton rivers,—with a highly spiced local sauce, filet de boeuf en aspic, York ham, fowls, Russian salad, and the usual cakes and fruits. The huntsmen seated at this feast did not wear the pink coats and top-hats of more formal occasions, but dark jackets and knee-breeches and the small, round Breton cap with upturned brim that admitted of a pipe being tucked into it at one side. And so they carried their pipes, as the peasants did, and the legitimists among them had a golden fleur-de-lis fixed in front. The ladies of the party, in summer dresses and wide-brimmed hats, arrived when the more substantial part of the repast was over, and their carriages filled the highroad outside the precincts of Ker-Eliane. A feast was spread at a little distance for the peasants, and wine flowed all day. After the feasting two famous biniou-players took up their places on the high talus that separated Ker-Eliane from Loch-ar-Brugg and played the farandol, the jabadao, and other country-dances for the peasants to dance to. The biniou is rather like a small bagpipe and produces a wild, shrill sound. The players wore a special costume: their caps and their stockings were bright red; their jackets and waistcoats bright blue, beautifully embroidered; their full white breeches of coarse linen. Like all the peasants at that time, they wore their hair long, falling over the shoulders. It was a charming sight to see the peasants dancing, all in their local costumes. The women's skirts were of black or red stuff, with three bands of velvet, their bodices of embroidered velvet, and they all wore a gold or silver Breton cross, hung on a black velvet ribbon, round their necks, and a Saint Esprit embroidered in gold on the front of their bodices. Among the coifs I remember several beautiful tall hennins. What a day it was! Landerneau talked of it for years, and I have never forgotten it. We children had our luncheon sitting on the grass near the big table, and afterward there were endless games among the heather and bracken. My little sister Eliane appeared, carried in her pink basket, and seemed to look about her with great approval.

"A feast was spread at a little distance from the peasants, and wine flowed all day"

Later on in the day, when the dancing had begun, we went to look on at that, and I wanted very much to dance, too; but nobody asked me, for I was too little. I must by that time have begun to get very tired and troublesome, for I remember that maman promised me a little wheelbarrow if I would be good and allowed Jeannie to take me back to Ker-Azel. I was already sleepy, as I had drunk a quantity of champagne, with which the servants had replenished my little liqueur-glass, and I allowed myself at last to be carried away by Jeannie, and fell asleep in her arms.

CHAPTER IV
THE OLD HOUSE AT LANDERNEAU

During these early years of my life our time, though mainly spent with bonne maman at Quimper, was also given for many months of the year to Landerneau, and a little later on was divided between these two houses and Loch-ar-Brugg. At Landerneau we lived in a vast old house that had been part of my mother's marriage dowry. The family house, equally old and vast, of the Kerouguets was also at Landerneau, and the house of dear Tante Rose, my father's eldest sister. Landerneau was a picturesque old town, so near the sea that the tides rose and fell in the River Elorn, which flowed through it. A legend ran that the part of Landerneau lying on the southern banks of the river, still all wild with great rocks that seemed to have been hurled together by some giant's hand, had been reduced to this condition by the devil. He had been traveling through the country, and the inhabitants of the southern half of Landerneau had refused to give him food and drink, whereas those of the northern half had suitably and diplomatically entertained him; and it was in vengeance that he had hurled these great rocks across the river, to remain as permanent, if picturesque, embarrassments to southern Landerneau. The morality of the story was disconcerting, and very much puzzled me when I was told it by old Gertrude. Our house formed a corner of the principal street in the northern side of the town. In the days of the Terror, not so far distant in my childhood, it had been used, with the house of Tante Rose across the way, as a prison where the condemned were put on their way to be guillotined at Brest, and a subterranean passage that ran between the two houses, under the street, conveyed the unfortunates swiftly and unobtrusively, if occasion required it, from one prison to the other. Another lugubrious memento of that terrible time were the small square openings in the floors of the upper rooms in these houses. In our days they were used to summon servants from below, but their original purpose had been for watching the captives unobserved. In the panels of the great oaken door that opened on the street, in our house, were little grated squares through which those who knocked for admittance could be cautiously examined, and this feature gave a further idea of the strange and perilous circumstances of bygone days. The kitchen, which was entered from a stone hall, was our delight; it was called the every-day kitchen. Enormous logs burned in a vast open fireplace, archaically carved. At that time coal was little known in the country, and the joints were roasted on a spit before this fire, which looked like the entrance to an inferno. There was a little oven for stews and sweets, etc. Under a square glass case on the mantel-shelf, lifted high above the busy scene, stood a statue of the Virgin, very old and very ugly, dressed in tinsel, a necklace of colored beads around its neck. This was a cherished possession of Nicole's, an old cook of my grandmother's, who followed us everywhere, and at its foot, under the glass cover, lay her withered orange-flower wedding-wreath. The kitchen was lighted at night by numbers of tallow candles that burned in tall brass candlesticks, each with its pincers and snuffer. (A candle with us does not "take snuff"; it has "its nose blown"—on mouchait la chandelle.) Brass warming-pans, which we children called Bluebeard's wives, were ranged along the walls, and a multitude of copper saucepans hung in order of size, glittering with special splendor on those spaces that could be seen from the street, for "où l'orgueil ne va t'il pas se nicher?" Through an opening in the wall opposite the big windows dishes could be passed to the servants in the dining-room during meals.

The dining-room windows looked out at a garden full of flowers, the high walls embroidered with espalier fruit-trees, plum-, cherry-, mulberry-, and medlar-trees growing along the paths. At the bottom of the garden was a large aviary containing golden and silver pheasants, magpies, canaries, and exotic birds that my father's naval friends had brought him from their long Oriental voyages. My father himself tended these birds, and I can answer for it that they lacked nothing. I must tell here of the strange behavior of a golden pheasant. Despite papa's gentleness and care, this bird seemed to detest him and would not let him enter the aviary; but when I came with papa, the pheasant would run to the wires and eat the bread I held out to it from my hand. Papa was surprised and interested, and suggested one day that I should go with him into the aviary and "see what the pheasant would say." No sooner said than done. The bird rushed at papa and pecked at his feet with a singular ferocity; then, feeling, evidently, that he had disposed of his enemy, he turned to me, spread out his wings before me, bowed up and down as if an ecstasy of reverent delight, and taking the bread I held out to him, he paid no more attention at all to papa.

"In the panels of the great oaken door ... were little grated squares"

The principal rooms on the ground floor of the house opened on a stone hall with an inlaid marble floor, where, in a niche carved in the wall, and facing the wide stone staircase, stood another Virgin, much larger and even older than Nicole's. She was of stone, with a blunted, gentle countenance, and hands held out at each side in a graceful, simple gesture that seemed to express surprise as much as benediction. As we came down from our rooms every morning it was as if she greeted us always with a renewed interest. Fresh flowers were laid at her feet every day, and we were all taught, the boys to lift their hats, the girls to drop deep curtseys before her. Indeed, these respects were paid by us to all the many statues of the Virgin that are seen on our Breton roads. From the hall one entered the salon, with its inlaid parquet floor, so polished that we were forbidden to slide upon it, for it was as slippery as ice, and falls were inevitable for disobedient children. On the mantelpiece was a clock representing Marius weeping over the ruins of Carthage. His cloak lay about his knees, and we used to feel that he would have done much better had he drawn it up and covered his chilly-looking bronze shoulders. On each side of the clock were white vases with garlands in relief upon them of blue convolvulus and their green leaves. But what bewitched us children were the big Chinese porcelain figures, mandarins sitting cross-legged, with heads that nodded gently up and down at the slightest movement made in the room. Their bellies were bare, their eyes seemed to laugh, and they were putting out their tongues. Black ibises upon their robes opened wide beaks to catch butterflies. I remember crossing the hall on tiptoe and opening the salon-door very softly and looking in at the mandarins sitting there in their still merriment; and it required a little courage, as though one summoned a spell, to shake the door and rouse them into life. The heads gently nodded, the eyes seemed to laugh with a new meaning at me now; and I gazed, half frightened, half laughing, too, until all again was motionless. It was as if a secret jest had passed between me and the mandarins. In an immense room to the left of the salon that had once, perhaps, been a ball-room, but was now used as a laundry, was a high sculptured fireplace that was my joy. On each side the great greyhounds, sitting up on their hind legs, sustained the mantelpiece, all garlanded with vines. Among the leaves and grapes one saw a nest of little birds, with their beaks wide open, and the father and mother perched above them. And, most beautiful of all, a swallow in flight only touched with the tip of a wing a leaf, and really seemed to be flying. Only my father appreciated this masterpiece, which must have been a superb example of Renaissance work, and when, years afterward, my mother sold the house, the new owner had it broken up and carted away because it took up too much room!