All this is as it should be, of course, but the price has of late gone up, though it is still thought exceedingly modest by guests who have spent most of their time in big city or seaside hotels.
Painters are perhaps fewer here to-day than some years ago, and there are more of the questionable pleasures of society, such as bridge and ping-pong, which is a pity.
Another appendage to the Hotel Julia is found at the St. Nicolas Beach on the coast. St. Nicolas is hardly more than a bathing-place, but it is delightfully empty, and altogether Pont Aven, with its environs, is a charming centre from which to make a week’s, a month’s, or a summer’s excursion.
Of the young girls of Pont Aven, Anatole France has uttered many truthful phrases. Very gracious they are indeed with their great white quilled collars, their windmill coifs, and their black skirts plaited like an accordion.
Here at Pont Aven—as elsewhere—fashion reigns, and the costume as it is known to-day is quite different from that of fifty years ago, which was not so picturesque, one would say, judging from old prints.
The metropolis of these parts and the ecclesiastical capital, for it is a cathedral city, is Quimper, twenty odd kilometres west of Concarneau.
Quimper is a real city, though it owns to a trifle less than twenty thousand inhabitants, and was the ancient capital of the county of Cornouaille. From all points the marvellously beautiful spires of its Cathedral of St. Corentin dominate the place. It is one of the most characteristically Breton towns in the manners and customs of the people, the general aspect of its wharfs and streets, its shops and its markets.
The first establishment of a settlement here was in Roman times, when, in the eleventh century, it was known as the Civitas Aquilonia. After the expulsion of the Romans from the land, it became the capital and the home of the kings or hereditary Counts of Cornouaille, one of whom, Grollon, has left a legend of great vitality, telling of his emigration here from Britain across the seas, and the founding of the first bishopric.
The cathedral, dedicated to St. Corentin, was built between 1239 and 1515, and shows the marks of the best workmanship of its time. Its fine spires rival those of St. Pol de Léon and Tréguier in the north. The ground-plan of this fine church is not truly orientated, a detail which is supposed to indicate the inclining of the head of Christ on the cross. It is not unique, but the arrangement is so rarely found as to warrant remark.
The town hall encloses a library of some thirty-four thousand volumes, among them a copy of the first dictionary in the Breton tongue, published at Tréguier in 1499.