This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican.
The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great ocean’s mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic effects to be observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in the Bay of Douarnenez as a “bloody apotheosis,” the real aspect of which is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Béranger sang:
“Faisons honte aux hirondelles.
Tu croiras, sur nos essieux,
Que la terre a pris des ailes
Pour passer devant les yeux.”
The country inland is as original as the coast, and both the peasant on shore and the sailor on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has Brittany been called charming or gracious, never lovely or sweet, but always cold, though not so in climate, which is always terrible and austere.
But, for all that, it is delightful, and when one has tired of the stupid gaieties of Switzerland or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit among the low hills and valleys of the Côtes du Nord, or the rocky promontories and inlets of Finistère, or, on the south coast between Quimper and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers such as the Aven, and let him learn for himself that there is something new under the sun, even on well-trodden ground.
Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well known to English-speaking folk as it should be. There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened in the summer months by the advent of a little world of literary and artistic folk from Paris. Then there is an artist colony or two in Lower Brittany, where the visitors work hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for four or five months of the year. At Nantes there is the overflow of tourists of convention from the châteaux district of Touraine, and up and down the length and breadth of Brittany, from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional wanderers on bicycles or in motor-cars.
The great mass, however, is herded around the conventionally “gay” five o’clock resorts of Dinard, Paramé, and St. Malo, and in by far the greater area of the province the seeker for pleasure and true edification is far more rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept the fastidious away, and the terrific hobnails of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to despair. Both these deterrents, real and fancied, are disappearing, however. The hygienic bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here and there, and the peasants, or, at least, some of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole apparently clamped or riveted to the wooden shoe; at least there are no big, pointed, mushroom-headed tacks to drop out, point uppermost, in dry weather.
The topographical aspect of Brittany is largely due to the two great zones of granite formation which come together at their western extremities,—the mountains of Alençon and the jutting rocks that come to the surface from Poitou northward.
In general, the whole aspect of Brittany echoes the words of Brizeaux, the Lorient poet:
“O terre de granit, recouverte de chênes.”