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قراءة كتاب A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago
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Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.
Incorrect page numbers in the Table of Contents have been corrected.
A Childhood
in Brittany
Eighty Years Ago
by
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
With illustrations by
Paul de Leslie
New York
The Century Co.
1919
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
The Century Co.
Published, October, 1919
CONTENTS
CHAPTER | PAGE | |
I | Quimper and Bonne Maman | 3 |
II | Eliane | 44 |
III | The Fête at Ker-Eliane | 55 |
IV | The Old House at Landerneau | 68 |
V | Tante Rose | 83 |
VI | The Demoiselles de Coatnamprun | 98 |
VII | Bon Papa | 122 |
VIII | Le Marquis de Ploeuc | 131 |
IX | Loch-ar-Brugg | 153 |
X | The Pardon at Folgoat | 196 |
XI | Bonne Maman's Death | 204 |
XII | The Journey from Brittany | 215 |
A CHILDHOOD IN
BRITTANY
This little sheaf of childish memories has been put together from many talks, in her own tongue, with an old French friend. The names of her relatives have, by her wish, been changed to other names, taken from their Breton properties, or slightly altered while preserving the character of the Breton original.
A CHILDHOOD IN
BRITTANY
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 passionately 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 spaces beneath me, and Mr. John Dobray, when I was introduced to him by my proud father, said, "So this is Sophie."
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:
Jésus péguen brasvé,
Plégar douras néné;
Jésus péguen brasvé,
Ad ondar garan té!
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