In the corner of a field just outside the town, where a lively discussion is going forward between a farm labourer and three girls at a well, there is a picture which for colour alone is worth remembering. It is one of those everyday scenes in which costume and the surrounding landscape harmonise delightfully. We give few sketches of architecture because photographs of the best examples may always be obtained, preferring rather to give the life of the people. There are more figure subjects in the streets of Quimper than there is time to note. Thus, for instance, as we pass through a poor, dirty suburb at the lower end of the town, a woman comes to the door of a dark dwelling, and gives alms to a professional beggar, so grotesque and terrible in aspect that he hardly seems human; but the woman standing at the stone doorway wears a costume that might have been copied from an Elizabethan missal. She gives, as every one gives, to the poor in Brittany, but her husband’s small wages at the pottery works hard by leave little margin for charity, and he will want all his spare money at this time of year for the fêtes. The fêtes are an occasion for universal feasting and rejoicing, in which the drinking propensities of the holiday makers are only too apparent in the streets, leading in the evening, sometimes, to domestic interviews like the one sketched below.
At the time of the Fête of the Assumption there is a crowd at Quimper from all parts of Finistère, and there is an amount of festivity which must be bewildering to the quiet inhabitants; it is then that we may see sometimes in the streets the splendid type of Breton woman sketched at the head of this chapter, and, by contrast, some others much more grotesque.
But perhaps the most interesting group of all, and the most complete and characteristic of Mr. Caldecott’s sketches, is the one which forms the frontispiece to this volume—a scene in a cabaret, or wineshop, where the farmers who have come in to market, whose carts we may see on the cathedral square, meet and discuss the topics of the day, amongst which, after the state of trade and the crops, the term of Marshal McMahon’s government and the results of the annual levy of “les conscrits” are uppermost. Soon after harvest-time, generally early in September, the annual levy of reserves for the army takes place, and Quimper, being the centre of a populous district, is the rallying-point for lower Finistère.
It is the nearest approach to an open political discussion that we may witness on our travels, and a good opportunity to see the conservative Breton farmer, the “owner of the soil,” one who troubles himself little about “politics” in the true sense of the word, and is scarcely a match in argument for the more advanced republican trader and manufacturer of Quimper, but who, from hereditary instinct, if from no other motive, is generally an upholder of legitimist doctrines and a royalist at heart.
Seated on the carved oak bench on the left is a young Breton clodhopper or farm help, whose ill-luck it has been to be drawn this year; who leaves his farm with regret—a home where he worked from sunrise to sunset for two francs a week, living on coarse food and lodging in the dark with the pigs. As he sits and listens with perplexed attention to the principal speaker, and others gather round in the common room to hear the oracle, we have a picture which tells its story with singular eloquence, and presents to us the common everyday life of the people of lower Brittany with a truthfulness and vivacity seldom, if ever, exceeded. The only bright colour in the picture is in the red sashes of the men and in one or two small ornaments worn by the women.
Other scenes should be recorded if only to show, by way of contrast, that Quimper is very like other parts of France. At one of the lycées the annual prize-giving is going forward, and there is a fashionable gathering, in which military uniforms are prominent. It is an opportunity for seeing some of the élite of Quimper both on the platform and in the crowded hall, and a great chance for a sketch. The boys come up one by one, and stand on a raised platform to be decorated with a paper wreath, to receive a book and a salutation on both cheeks. It is interesting to note that, before joining his applauding friends in the hall, the boy takes off his wreath and throws it away. There is scarcely a Breton costume in the hall.
