Part 1 (1/2)

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 was.h.i.+ng-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!