A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago Part 1

A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago.

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick.

CHAPTER I

QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN

I was born at Quimper in Brittany on the first of August, 1833, at four o'clock in the morning, and I have been told that I looked about me resolutely and fixed a steady gaze on the people in the room, so that the doctor said, "She is not blind, at all events."

The first thing I remember is a hideous doll to which I was pa.s.sionately attached. It belonged to the child of one of the servants, and my mother, since I would not be parted from it, gave this child, to replace it, a handsome doll. It had legs stuffed with sawdust and a clumsily painted cardboard head, and on this head it wore a _bourrelet_. The _bourrelet_ was a balloon-shaped cap made of plaited wicker, and was worn by young children to protect their heads when they fell. We, too, wore them in our infancy, and I remember that I was very proud when wearing mine and that I thought it a very pretty head-dress.

I could not have been more than three years old when I was brought down to the _grand salon_ to be shown to a friend of my father's, an Englishman, on his way to England from India, and a pink silk dress I then wore, and my intense satisfaction in it, is my next memory. It had a stiff little bodice and skirt, and there were pink rosettes over my ears. But I could not have been a pretty child, for my golden hair, which grew abundantly in later years, was then very scanty, and my mouth was large. I was stood upon a mahogany table, of which I still see the vast and polished s.p.a.ces beneath me, and Mr. John Dobray, when I was introduced to him by my proud father, said, "So this is Sophie."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Quimper is an old town"]

Mr. Dobray wore knee-breeches, silk stockings, and a high stock. I see my father, too, very tall, robust, and fair, with the pleasantest face. But my father's figure fills all my childhood. I was his pet and darling. When I cried and was naughty, my mother would say: "Take your daughter. She tires me and is insufferable." Then my father would take me in his arms and walk up and down with me while he sang me to sleep with old Breton songs. One of these ran:

Jesus peguen brasve, Plegar douras nene; Jesus peguen brasve, Ad ondar garan te!

This, as far as I remember, means, "May Jesus be happy, and may His grace make us all happy."

At other times my father played strange, melancholy old Breton tunes to me on a violin, which he held upright on his knee, using the bow across it as though it were a 'cello. He was, though untaught, exceedingly musical, and played by ear on the clavecin anything he had heard. It must have been from him that I inherited my love of music, and I do not remember the time that I was not singing.

I see myself, also, at the earliest age, held before my father on his saddle as we rode through woods. He wore an easy Byronic collar and always went bareheaded. He spent most of his time on horseback, visiting his farms or hunting.

My father was of a wealthy bourgeois family of Landerneau, and it must have been his happy character and love of sport rather than his wealth--he was master of hounds and always kept the pack--that made him popular in Quimper, for the gulf between the _bourgeoisie_ and the _n.o.blesse_ was almost impa.s.sable. Yet not only was he popular, but he had married my mother, who was of an ancient Breton family, the Rosvals. One of the Rosvals fought in the Combats de Trente against the English, and the dying and thirsty Beaumanoir to whom it was said on that historic day, "Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir," was a cousin of theirs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: We played in the garden at Quimper]

My mother was a beautiful woman with black hair and eyes of an intense dark blue. She was unaware of her own loveliness, and was much amused one day when her little boy, after gazing intently at her, said, "_Maman_, you are very beautiful." She repeated this remark, laughing, to my father, on which he said, "Yes, my dear, you are."

My mother was extremely proud, and not at all flattered that she should be plain Mme. Kerouguet, although she was devoted to my father and it was the happiest _menage_. I remember one day seeing her bring to my father, looking, for all her feigned brightness, a little conscious, some new visiting-cards she had had printed, with the name of Kerouguet reduced to a simple initial, and followed by several of the n.o.ble ancestral names of her own family.

"What's this?" said my father, laughing.

"We needed some new cards," said my mother, "and I dislike so much the name of Kerouguet."

But my father, laughing more than ever, said:

"Kerouguet you married and Kerouguet you must remain," and the new cards had to be relinquished.

My mother, with her black hair and blue eyes, had a charming nose of the sort called "_un nez Roxalane_." It began very straight and fine, but had a flattened little plateau on the tip which we called "_la promenade de maman_." My memory of her then is of a very active, gay, authoritative young woman, going to b.a.l.l.s, paying and receiving visits, and riding out with my father, wearing the sweeping habit of those days and an immense beaver hat and plume.

Quimper is an old town, and the _hotels_ of the _n.o.blesse_, all situated in the same quarter and on a steep street, were of blackened, crumbling stone. From _portes-cocheres_ one entered the courtyards, and the gardens behind stretched far into the country.

In the courtyard of our _hotel_ was a stone staircase, with elaborate carvings, like those of the Breton churches, leading to the upper stories, but for use there were inner staircases. My mother's boudoir, the _pet.i.t salon_, the _grand salon_, the _salle-a-manger_, and the billiard-room were on the ground floor and gave out upon the garden.

The high walls that ran along the street and surrounded the garden were concealed by plantations of trees, so that one seemed to look out into the country. Flower beds were under the salon-windows, and there were long borders of wild strawberries that had been transplanted from the woods, as my mother was very fond of them. Fruit-trees grew against the walls, and beyond the groves and flower beds and winding gravel paths was an orchard, with apricot-, pear-, and apple-trees, and the clear little river Odel, with its washing-stones, where the laundry-maids beat the household linen in the cold, running water.

It was pleasant to hear the _clap-clap-clap_ on a hot summer day. Is it known that the pretty pied water-wagtail is called _la lavandiere_ from its love of water and its manner of beating up and down its tail as our washerwomen wield their wooden beaters?

Beyond the river were the woods where I often rode with my father, and beyond the woods distant ranges of mountains. I looked out at all this from my nursery-windows, with their frame of climbing-roses and heliotrope. Near my window was a great lime-tree of the variety known as American. The vanilla-like scent of its flowers was almost overpowering, and all this fragrance gave my mother a headache, and she had to have her room moved away from the garden to another part of the house. How clearly I see this room of my mother's, with its high, canopied four-poster bed and the pale-gray paper on the walls covered with yellow fleurs-de-lis!

The wall-paper in my father's room was one of the prettiest I have ever seen, black, all bespangled with bright b.u.t.terflies. Of the _grand salon_ I remember most clearly the high marble mantelpiece, upheld by hounds sitting on their haunches. On this mantelpiece was a huge _boule_ clock, two tall candelabra of Venetian gla.s.s, and two figures in _vieux Saxe_ of a marquis and a marquise that filled us with delight. On each side of the fireplace were two Louis XV court chairs--chairs, that is, with only one arm, to admit of the display of the great hoop-skirts of the period. I remember, too, our special delight in the foot-stools, which were of mahogany, shaped rather like gondolas and cushioned in velvet; for we could sit inside them and make them rock up and down.

The houses of the _n.o.blesse_ swarmed with servants; many of them were married, and their children, and even their grandchildren, lived on with our family in patriarchal fashion. Men and maids all wore the costumes of their respective Breton cantons, exceedingly beautiful some of them, stiff with heavy embroideries, the strange caps of the women fluted and ruffled, adorned with lace, rising high above their heads and falling in long lappets upon their shoulders, or perched on their heads like b.u.t.terflies. These caps were decorated with large gold pins and dangling golden pendants, and these and the materials for the costumes were handed down in the peasants' families from generation to generation. My young nurse Jeannie--there was an old nurse called Gertrude--wore a skirt of bright-blue woolen stuff and a black-cloth bodice opening in a square over a net fichu thickly embroidered with _paillettes_ of every color. Hers was the small flat cap of Quimper, with the odd foolscap excrescence, rather like the horn of a rhinoceros, curving forward over the forehead. Needless to say, the servants did not do their daily work in this fine array; while that went on they were enveloped from head to foot in large ap.r.o.ns.

The servants and the peasants in the Brittany of those days had a pretty custom of always using the _thou_ when addressing their masters or the Deity, thus inverting the usual a.s.sociation of this mode of address; for to each other they said _you_, and on their lips this was the familiar word, and the _thou_ implied respect. Our servants were of the peasant cla.s.s, but service altered and civilized them very much, and while no peasant spoke anything but Breton, they talked in an oddly accented French. I remember a pretty example of this in a dear old man who served my little cousin Guenole du Jacquelot du Bois-Laurel. Guenole and I, because of some naughtiness, were deprived of strawberries one day at our supper, and the fond old man, grieving over the discomfiture of his little master, said, or, rather chanted, half in condolence, and half in playful consolation: "Oh, le pauvre Guen_o_le, que tu es des_o_le!" accenting the _o_ in a very droll fashion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A very stately autocratic person"]

The servants were all under the orders of a very stately autocratic person, the steward or major-domo. It was he who directed the service from behind his master's chair at the head of the table and he who prescribed the correct costume for the servants. His wife had charge of Jeannie and of me; it was she who, when two little sisters and a brother had been added to the family, took us down to our breakfast and supervised the meal. We had it in a little tower-room on the ground floor, milk soup or gruel and the delicious bread and b.u.t.ter of Brittany.

We lunched and dined at ten and five--such were the hours of those days--with our parents in the dining-room, and it was here that one of the most magnificent figures of my childhood appears; for my devoted father brought me back from Paris one day a splendid mechanical pony, life-sized and with a real pony-skin, the apparatus by which he was moved simulating an exhilarating canter. Upon this steed, after dessert, we children mounted one by one, and we resorted to many ruses in order to get the first ride of the day. This dear pony accompanied all my childhood. He lost his hair as the result of an unhappy experiment we tried upon him, scrubbing him with hot water and soap, one day when we were un.o.bserved. He had a melancholy look after that, but was none the less active and none the less loved. When I saw his dismembered body lying in the garret of a grand-niece not many years ago I felt a contraction of the heart. How he brought back my youth, and since that how many generations had ridden him!

We played at being horses, too, driving each other in the garden, where we spent most of our days when at Quimper. Strange to say, even while we were thus occupied, we always wore veils tightly tied over our bonnets and faces to preserve our skins from the sun. We all wore, even in earliest childhood, stiff little dresses with closely fitting boned bodices. My sister Eliane was delicate and wore flannel next her skin; but my only underclothing consisted of cambric chemise, petticoats, and drawers, these last reaching to my ankles and terminating in frills that fell over the foot in its little sandaled shoe. When I came back from a wonderful stay, later on, of four or five years in England, a visit that revolutionized my ideas of life, I wore the easy dress of English children, and had bare arms, much to my mother's dismay. Another change that England wrought in me was that I was filled with discomfort when I saw the peasants kneeling before us at Loch-ar-Brugg, our country home; for in those days, although the Revolution had pa.s.sed over France, it was still the custom for peasants to kneel before their masters, and my mother felt it right and proper that they should do so. I begged her not to allow it, but she insisted upon the ceremony to her dying day, and only when I came as mistress to Loch-ar-Brugg with my children and grandchildren was it discontinued.

Another early memory is the long row of family portraits in the _salle-a-manger_. I think I must have looked up at these from my father's shoulder as he walked up and down with me, singing to me while my mother went on with her interrupted dessert, for the awe that some of them inspired in me seems to stretch back to babyhood. Some were so dark and severe that it was natural they should frighten a baby; but it was a pastel, in flat, pale tones, of an old lady with high powdered hair, whose steady, forbidding gaze followed me up and down the room, that frightened me most. This was an elder sister of my grandmother's, a March'-Inder, who, dressed as a man, had fought with her husband and daughter in the war of the Chouans against the republic. Her husband was killed, and her daughter, taken prisoner by a French officer, had hanged herself, so the family story ran, to escape insult. Another portrait of a great-grandmother enchanted me then, as it has done ever since, a charming young woman seated, with her hands folded before her, her golden hair unpowdered, her dress of citron-colored satin brocaded with bunches of pale, bright flowers.

And there was a portrait of my grandmother in youth, with black hair and eyes as black as jet. I thought her very ugly, and could never a.s.sociate her with my dearly loved _bonne maman_.

I must delay no longer in introducing this most important member of the family, my mother's mother, with whom we lived, for the old Quimper _hotel_ was her dower-house.

Poor _bonne maman_! I see her still, in her deep arm-chair, always dressed in a long gown of puce-colored satin, a white lace mantilla, caught up with a small bunch of artificial b.u.t.tercups, on her white hair. She wore white-thread lace mittens that reached to her elbows, and her thin, white hands were covered with old-fashioned rings. My mother was her favorite daughter, and I, as the eldest child of this favorite, was specially cherished. Both of _bonne maman's_ parents had been guillotined in the Revolution. I do not think her husband was of much comfort to her. He came to Quimper only for short stays. He was _directeur des Ponts et chaussees_ for the district, but also a deputy in Paris, and these political duties, according to him, gave him no leisure for family life. He was at least ten years younger than _bonne maman_, very gay and witty, _l'homme du monde_ in all the acceptations of the term, full of deference to _bonne maman_, whom he treated like a queen, with respectful salutes and gallant kissings of the hand. He seemed very fond of his home at Quimper when he was in it, but he seldom graced it with his presence.

When I went up to see _bonne maman_ in the morning, she would give me her thumb to kiss, an odd formality, since she was full of demonstrations of affection toward me. I did not find the salute altogether agreeable, since _bonne maman_ took snuff constantly, and her delicate thumb and forefinger were strongly impregnated with the smell of tobacco. Taking me on her knees, she would then very gravely ask to see my little finger, and when I held it up, she would scrutinize it carefully, and from its appearance tell me whether I had been good or naughty. Beside her chair _bonne maman_ had always a little table, the round polished top surrounded by a low bra.s.s railing. On this were ranged a number of toilet implements, her gla.s.ses, scent-bottle, work-bag, and various knickknacks. A very unique implement, I imagine, was a little stick of polished wood, with a tuft of cotton wool tied by a ribbon at one end. This she used, when her maid had powdered her hair or face, to dust off the superfluous powder, and I can see her now, her little mirror in one hand, the ribboned stick in the other, turning her head from side to side and softly brushing the tuft over her brow and chin. The table was always carried down with her to the _pet.i.t salon_, where, her morning toilet over, she was borne in her chair by means of the handles that projected before and behind it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Bonne maman_ was devoted to my father"]

_Bonne maman_ had an old carriage, an old horse, and an old coachman.

None of these was ever used, since she never went out except on Easter day, when she was carried in a sedan-chair to hear ma.s.s at the cathedral near by. The sedan-chair was gray-green with bunches of flowers painted on it, and upholstered with copper-colored satin. It was carried by four bearers in full Breton costume. They wore jackets of a bright light blue, beautifully embroidered along the edges with disks of red, gold, and black; red sashes, tied round their waists, hung to the knees; their full kneebreeches were white, their shoes black, and their stockings of white wool. Like all the peasants of that time, they wore their hair long, hanging over their shoulders, and their large, round Breton hats were of black felt tied with a thick chenille cord of red, blue, and black, which was held to the brim at one side by a golden fleur-de-lis, and that had a scapular dangling from the end. Within the chair sat my grandmother, dressed, as always, in puce color; but this gala costume was of brocade, flowers of a paler shade woven upon a dark ground, and the lace mantilla of every-day wear was replaced by a sort of white tulle head-dress, gathered high upon her head and falling over her breast and shoulders. I remember her demeanor in church on these great occasions, her gentle authority and _recueillement_, and the glance of grave reproach for my mother, who was occupied in looking about her and in making humorous comments on the odd clothes and att.i.tude of her fellow-worshipers. On all other days the cure brought the communion to my grandmother in her room. I remember the first of these communions that I witnessed. I was sitting on _bonne maman's_ bed when the cure entered, accompanied by his acolytes in red and white, and I was highly interested when I recognized in one of these important personages the cook's little boy. The cure was going to lift me from the bed, but _bonne maman_ said: "No; let her stay. When you are gone I will explain to her the meaning of what she sees." This she attempted to do, but not, I imagine, with much success. Old Gertrude, Jeannie's chief in the nursery, had of course already told me of _le pet.i.t Jesus_, and I had learned to repeat, "Seigneur, je vous donne coeur." But _bonne maman_ was grieved to find that I did not yet know "Our Father."

"Sophie does not know her Pater," she said to my mother. "She must learn it."

"Oh, she is too young to learn it," said my mother. But _bonne maman_ was not at all satisfied with this evasion and saw that the prayer was taught to me. She was very devout, and confessed twice a week; but more than this, she was the best of women. I never heard her speak ill of any one or saw her angry at any time, nor did I ever see her give way to mirth, though I remember a species of silent laughter that at times shook her thin body.

_Bonne maman_ was devoted to my father, even more devoted than to her own sons, of whom she had had eight. They had been so severely brought up by her, but especially, I feel sure, by my grandfather, that through exaggerated respect and absurd ceremony they almost trembled during the short audiences granted to them by their parents. My father trembled before n.o.body. He was always cheerful, good-tempered, and kind. During our life at Quimper he was not much at home, as he had a horror of receptions and visits,--all the bother, as he said, of social life,--and the time not spent in hunting was fully occupied in seeing after his farms, his crops, and his peasants. Therefore, when he came back for a three-or-four-days' stay with us, it was a delight to young and old. I see him now, sitting in a low chair beside _bonne maman's_ deep _bergere_, his head close to hers, his pipe between his teeth,--yes, his pipe--for _bonne maman_ not only permitted, but even commanded, him to smoke in her presence, so much did she value every moment of the time he could be with her. So they smiled at each other while they talked,--the snowy, powdered old head and the fair young one enveloped in the midst of smoke,--understanding each other perfectly; and although their opinions were diametrically opposed, politics was their favorite theme. They must have taught me their respective battle-cries, for I well remember that, riding my father's knee and listening, while he varied the gait from trot to gallop, I knew just when to cry out, "_Vive le Roi!_" in order to please _bonne maman_, and "_Vive la Republique!_" to make papa laugh. When disputes occurred in _bonne maman's_ room, they were between my father and mother, if that can be called a dispute where one is so gay and so imperturbable. It was _maman_ who brought all the heat and vehemence to these differences, and, strange to say, _bonne maman_ always took my father's side against her beloved daughter. My mother's quick temper, I may add, displayed itself toward me pretty frequently in slaps and whippings, no doubt well deserved, for I was a naughty, wilful child; whereas in all my life I never received a punishment from my father. I remember his distress on one of these occasions and how he said, "It is unworthy to beat some one who cannot retaliate."

To which my mother, flushed and indignant, replied, "It would indeed need only that." She was a charming and lovable woman, but I loved my father best.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I heard music constantly"]

_Bonne maman_ was very musical, and in the _pet.i.t salon_, when she was installed there for the day, I heard music constantly, performed by two young _proteges_ of the house. One of these was Mlle. Ghislaine du Guesclin, the youngest descendant of our great Breton hero. It was a very poor, very haughty family, and extremely proud of its origin.

Ghislaine's father, the Marquis du Guesclin (for with a foolish conceit he had separated the particle from the name) had died, leaving his daughter penniless and recommending her to my grandfather, who placed her as _dame de compagnie_ beside my mother and _bonne maman_.

Ghislaine was an excellent musician, and their relation was of the happiest. The other _protege_ was called Yves le Grand, and was the son of _bonne maman's coiffeur_. His story was curious. As a boy of fourteen or fifteen he had come three times a week to wash the windows and doors, and while he worked he sang all sorts of Breton songs and strange airs that, as was learned later, were his own improvisations. _Bonne maman_, noticing his talent, had him taken to Paris by her husband, and he was educated in the conservatory, where, after ten years of admirable study, he took the second prize. He returned to Quimper, and earned a handsome livelihood by giving pianoforte lessons while remaining in a sense our private musician, for he was much attached to us all and accompanied us on all our travels. Ghislaine sang in a ravishing fashion, and Yves accompanied her on the clavecin that stood in the _pet.i.t salon_, mingling the grave accents of his baritone with her clear soprano. When I first heard them I was almost stupefied by the experience, cuddling down into _bonne maman's_ arms, my head sunk between her cheek and shoulder, but listening with such absorption and with such evident appreciation that _bonne maman_ loved me more than ever for the community of taste thus revealed between us.

I must often have tired her. I was a noisy, active child, and sometimes when I sat on her knee and prattled incessantly in my shrill, childish voice, she would pa.s.s her hand over her forehead and say: "Not so loud, darling; not so loud. You pierce my ear-drums; and you know that _le bon Dieu_ has said that one must never speak without first turning one's tongue seven times round in one's mouth." At this I would gaze wide-eyed at _bonne maman_ and try involuntarily to turn my tongue seven times, an exercise at which I have never been successful. I may add in parenthesis that I have often regretted it.

Another amusing adage I heard at the same time from Gertrude. If a child made a face, it was told to take care lest the wind should turn, and the face remain like that forever. I was much troubled by this idea on one occasion when _maman_ and Ghislaine had been to a fancy dress ball. Ghislaine told me next day about the dances and dresses.