Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ After the feasting two famous biniou-players took up their places on the high talus that separated Ker-Eliane from Loch-ar-Brugg and played the farandol, the jabadao, and other country-dances for the peasants to dance to. The biniou is rather like a small bagpipe and produces a wild, shrill sound. The players wore a special costume: their caps and their stockings were bright red; their jackets and waistcoats bright blue, beautifully embroidered; their full white breeches of coarse linen. Like all the peasants at that time, they wore their hair long, falling over the shoulders. ”

“ We children always went with our parents to the evening parties in Landerneau. Maman did not like to leave us, and it will be remembered that in those days one dined at five o'clock and that we children had all our meals except breakfast with our parents. It was at a dinner-party at Tante Rose's that Mlle. Suzette, next whom I sat, said to me smiling, with her shy dignity, "I have a present here for a little girl who has been good," and she drew a small paper parcel from the silk reticule that hung beside the rosary at her side. ”

“ 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 petit salon, mingling the grave accents of his baritone with her clear soprano. ”

“ We still lived at Quimper or Landerneau, using Loch-ar-Brugg as a mere country resort; but by degrees the ugly walls, nine feet high, that shut in the house from the gardens and shut out the view were pulled down, lawns were thrown into one another, great clumps of blue hydrangeas were planted all down the avenue, on each side, between each beech-tree, and the house, if not beautiful, was made comfortable and convenient. It was when we were really established at Loch-ar-Brugg that maman began to take the finances of the household into her capable hands. ”

“ ELIANE An important event in my child life was the birth of my sister Eliane. I remember coming in from the garden one day with a little basket full of cockchafers that I had found, and running to show them to maman. She was lying in her large bed, with its four carved bedposts and high canopy, and, smiling faintly, she said: "Oh, no, my little girl; take them away. They will creep and fly over everything." ”

“ 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. 20 This dear pony accompanied all my childhood. ”

“ The camel and the bears were under perfect control, and the Gipsies were not going to hurt us. They asked if they might make the bears dance for us, and we ran to show them the way to Loch-ar-Brugg. Maman, in her broad garden hat, was walking in the beech-avenue, and came at once to forbid the Gipsies to enter, as they were preparing to do; but as we supplicated that we should be allowed to see the bears dance, she consented to allow the performance to take place in the highroad before the grille. We sat about on the grass; the camel towered against the sky, gaunt, tawny, and melancholy ”

“ The only flower that grew in the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun's garden was heliotrope, for that had been "maman's" favorite flower. They were poor gardeners, and the little bonne who came in by the day to do the housework could give them no help in the garden. So it was Tante Rose, trotting on her high heels, a little garden fork on her shoulder, who appeared to do battle with the moss and dandelions and to restore a little order. ”

“ The inn at Quimperlé was called the Hôtel du Trèfle Noir, and though very primitive, the thatch showing through the rafters in the roof of the immense kitchen-dining-room, it was scrupulously clean. We all sat down together at the long table, servants, coachman, postilion, and all, and the déjeuner served to us by the good landlady was fit to put before a king. I remember maman laughing and asking her why she served the salmon and, afterward, a heaping golden mound of fried potatoes, on a great plank, and the landlady saying that she had no dishes large enough. ”

“ 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 buttercups, 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. ”

“ Isménie would answer sadly, "but que voulez-vous, chère Madame, our means, as you know, are so narrow. It costs so much to buy a dress. We could hardly afford new ones now."
"But, on the contrary, it doesn't cost so much," Tante Rose would say. "I know some excellent woolen material, the very thing for your dresses, and only five francs for the length. You can well afford that, can't you? So I'll buy it for you and bring it to-morrow."
And so she would, the innocent sisters imagining five francs the price of material for which Tante Rose paid at least thirty. ”

“ 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 butterflies. ”

“ Near the château stood a very old and beautifully carved font that must have belonged to a church long since destroyed. Later on, in the days of her descendants, it was kept filled with growing flowers and was a beautiful object, but my aunt merely used it as a sort of waste-paper basket for any scraps she picked up in the park. We children used to conceal ourselves in it in our games of hide-and-seek. I enjoyed myself among my many cousins, for I was at this time so young and so naughty that they tended to give way to me in everything. ”

“ When he passed before us every one knelt down except me, for I wished to gaze with all my eyes at the magnificent apparition. The bishop leaned toward me, smiling, and made a little cross on my forehead with his thumb, and then he put his hand, which was very white and adorned with a great ring of amethyst and diamond, before my lips. "Kiss Monseigneur's hand," papa whispered, and, again much puzzled, I obeyed, for maman and bonne maman gave their hands to be kissed by men and never kissed theirs. When the bishop put the salt in Eliane's mouth she made the most hideous grimace. Heavens! ”

“ Maman, however, remained devoted to her, and continued to see as much of her as ever, and her mother, my old 119 friend, was entirely indifferent to the doors, closed or open, of Landerneau. She wore a brightly colored Turkish silk handkerchief tied turban-wise about her head, and soft gray-leather riding boots,—men's boots,—so that she was known in her quarter as Chat-botté. In her own house she wore men's dress-breeches, short jacket, and high boots. Her feet were remarkably small, and the wave of hair on her forehead was as black as jet. ”

“ The crêpes were eaten at the end of the luncheon as a sweet, and among the other dishes that I remember was the cold salmon,—invariable on such occasions, salmon abounding in our Breton rivers,—with a highly spiced local sauce, filet de boeuf en aspic, York ham, fowls, Russian salad, and the usual cakes and fruits. The huntsmen seated at this feast did not wear the pink coats and top-hats of more formal occasions, but dark jackets and knee-breeches and the small, round Breton cap with upturned brim that admitted of a pipe being tucked into it at one side. ”

“ She is ugly! She cries!"
Eliane's christening was a grand affair. Her godmother was bonne maman, and her godfather my uncle de Salabéry, who brought her a casket in which was a cup and saucer in enamel and also an enamel egg-cup and tiny, round egg-spoon, and this I thought very silly, since Eliane, like the cockchafer, ate only milk. The casket was of pale-blue velvet, and had Eliane's name written upon it in golden letters. She was carried to the cathedral by her nurse, who wore a gray silk dress woven with silver fleurs-de-lis, a special silk, with its silver threads, made in Brittany. ”

“ One knows how marked and unsightly velvet soon becomes if sat upon, and it was a wise and crafty fashion to have a breadth of perfectly matching silk introduced between the full folds at the back of these dresses, so that when one sat down it was upon the silk. It was in regard to this sensible contrivance that the ladies of Landerneau were reported to declare that it was strange indeed to see the noblesse so miserly that they could not afford a whole velvet dress, and therefore let silk into the back. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And, Laic, this large jar is for the prison," for Tante Rose forgot nobody, and all with such quiet grace and order. The poor of Landerneau adored her. The thread she spun was woven at her country place, La Fontaine Blanche, into linen to make clothes for them, and she knitted socks and waistcoats even as she went about the streets on her errands of mercy. If the poor loved her, it was respect mingled with a little fear that the bourgeoisie felt, for she had no patience with scandal-mongering and sharply checked their gossiping, 90 provincial habits. ”

“ As a closed carriage made me sick, I was put into the coupé with papa and maman. Eliane, Ernest, their nurses, and all the other servants, followed in a sort of omnibus, and behind them came all the horses, trotting gaily along the road to share in the blessings of this great day of the Assumption of the Virgin. The horses of Brittany, it will be conceded, are a specially favored race. ”

“ One saw life-sized ladies and gentlemen dancing in stately rounds or laughing under trees and among flowers and butterflies. The great dining-room was paneled with dark wood carved into frames around the portraits of ancestors that were ranged along it. The coffers and the sideboards, where the silver stood, were of the same carved wood. I remember once going down to 133 peep at the kitchen in the basement, and the dark immensity, streaming, as it were, with cooks, servants, kitchen-boys, and maids, so bewildered and almost frightened me that I never ventured there again. ”

“ Eloi was very ancient, and adorned with strange old statues of clumsily carved stone painted in garish colors. One was of a Christ waiting for the cross, His hands tied before Him. It was a hideous figure, the feet and hands huge and distorted, the eyes staring like those of a doll ”