With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their early form.
In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered—if they really do “suffer”—from a decreasing population, Brittany has augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the political economists of France that the “fine and healthy race of Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic.” Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton peninsula.
Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land. There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate, has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port, for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far. Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, “the most architectural country in Europe,” has been sadly neglected, for, as has been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved Italy.
The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him, above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village, and then the village. “Rien n’est plus beau que mon village, en verité je vous le dis.” Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman.
Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred or even to jealousy.
Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain, evidently composed by a resident of Finistère, and there first heard by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the inhabitants of other nations since the world began:
“Voleur comme un Léonard,
Traitre comme un Trégarrais,
Sot comme un Vannetais,
Brutal comme un Cornouaillais.”
Sometimes the love of one’s own country may be carried to an extreme. We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of Trélaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English. At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, in St. Anthony’s Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand.
Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their charmingly stage-managed fêtes and ceremonies.
The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who, as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists’ sketching-ground is concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk, with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very atmosphere of Brittany.