Rambles in Brittany

by M. F. Mansfield

St. Brieuc is a city, although it has no tram-cars to dodge and no restaurants or Hôtels Étrangers, which is a good thing for the native and the tourist alike.

In reality its half-dozen hotels rise to the distinction of being known as “establishments,” yet they have lost none of their local flavour. St. Brieuc is the metropolis where the summer visitors—Parisians all—of the beaches come to buy the little necessaries and luxuries which a mere watering-place fails to supply. Then, too, one who is rusticating, even in a delightful spot like Val André, lacks notably the inspiration coming from a more or less frequent contact with a large centre, and so he hies himself to a market-town, gets the fare of the country at a hotel for travelling salesmen, and has a bit of the transmitted gossip of the capital over a bock at the principal café; after this—voilà! the seaside again for a time.

This may not be the Anglo-Saxon way of treating a similar situation, but it is exactly after the French method.

St. Brieuc is the seat of a bishopric, suffragan of the metropolitan see of Brittany at Rennes. Its origin is due to a missionary who came with eight disciples at the end of the fifth century to evangelize Armorica. As a place of pilgrimage,—the tomb of St. Brieuc having become a shrine,—it soon began to draw throngs from all parts, and the importance of the city which grew up around the memory of the missionary was soon assured.

The cathedral of St. Brieuc was begun by St. William Pinchon before the middle of the thirteenth century, and was soon finished.

Its exterior presents the severe and austere, though beautiful, Gothic of its time, but the accessories of its interior arrangements show plainly the debasement of the later interpolations, although there are some really excellent details hidden away amid a profusion of mediocrities, notably the tomb of St. William, a fine Way of the Cross by a local sculptor, and a low, hanging gallery at the base of the choir, which is a remarkably beautiful and effective adjunct to a great church. The exterior is more impressive, though its two principal doorways have been badly restored or rebuilt at some time since the completion of the edifice. The great, gaunt, donjon-like towers are the chief features of beauty and distinction, and tell the story of the whole fabric in quite an unassailable manner.

At the town hall is a museum which has some good modern art works, including a fragment of Rodin’s Portes de l’Enfer and some notable paintings of Breton subjects.

In the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Fardel are many old houses, one of the most notable being the hotel of the Dukes of Brittany, begun in 1572 by Yvon Collou. James II. of England lodged here when he came to St. Brieuc in 1689.

The carved and decorated fronts of these old wooden houses lend a quaintness and charm to the streets of St. Brieuc, in strong contrast to the modernity of its hotels and cafés. There is considerable and varied local industry at St. Brieuc, and this gives the city some importance as a manufacturing centre, but the chief events of its commercial life are the great fairs held in July and September, the latter founded in the fifteenth century by Marguerite of Clisson.

The environs of St. Brieuc are charmingly diversified, from the wide open stretches of farming country at the south to the wastes of rock and sand flanking the great Bay of St. Brieuc.