What I Remember, Volume 2 | Page 9

down.
"All the time employed in this little revision of the toilet had not been
left unimproved by my companion, who at the end of it produced and
showed to the proud mother an admirable full-length sketch of her
pretty darling. The delighted astonishment of the poor woman, and her
accent, as she exclaimed, 'O, si c'était pour moi!' and then blushed to
the temples at what she had said, were irresistible, and the good-natured
artist was fain to make her a present of the drawing."
My Breton book ("though I says it as shouldn't") is not a bad one,
especially as regards the upper or northern part of the province. That
which concerns Lower Brittany is very imperfect, mainly, I take it,
because I had already nearly filled my destined two volumes when I
reached it. I find there, however, the following notice of the sardine
fishery, which has some interest at the present day. Perhaps the
majority of the thousands of English people who nowadays have
"sardines" on their breakfast-table every morning are not aware that the
contents of a very large number of the little tin boxes which are
supposed to contain the delicacy are not sardines at all. They are very
excellent little fishes, but not sardines; for the enormously increased
demand for them has outstripped the supply. In the days when the
following sentences were written sardines might certainly be had in
London (as what might not?) at such shops as Fortnum and Mason's,
but they were costly, and by no means commonly met with.
On reaching Douarnenez in the summer of 1839 I wrote:--"The whole

population and the existence of Douarnenez depend on the sardine
fishery. This delicious little fish, which the gourmands of Paris so
much delight in, when preserved in oil, and sent to their capital in those
little tin boxes whose look must be familiar to all who have frequented
the Parisian breakfast-houses" [but is now more familiar to all who
have entered any grocers shop throughout the length and breadth of
England], "is still more exquisite when eaten fresh on the shores which
it frequents. They are caught in immense quantities along the whole of
the southern coast of Brittany, and on the western shore of Finisterre as
far to the northward as Brest, which, I believe, is the northern limit of
the fishery. They come into season about the middle of June, and are
then sold in great quantities in all the markets of southern Brittany at
two, three, or four sous a dozen, according to the abundance of the
fishery and the distance of the market from the coast. I was told that the
commerce in sardines along the coast from l'Orient to Brest amounted
to three millions of francs annually."
At the present day it must be enormously larger. I remember well the
exceeding plentifulness of the little fishes--none of them so large as
many of those which now fill the so-called sardine boxes--when I was
at Douarnenez in 1839. All the men, women, and children in the place
seemed to be feasting upon them all day long. Plates with heaps of
them fried and piled up crosswise, like timber in a timber-yard, were to
be seen outdoors and indoors, wherever three or four people could be
found together. All this was a thing of the past when I revisited
Douarnenez in 1866. Every fish was then needed for the tinning
business. They were to be had of course by ordering and paying for
them, but very few indeed were consumed by the population of the
place.
And this subject reminds me of another fishery which I witnessed a few
months ago--last March--at Sestri di Ponente, near Genoa. We
frequently saw nearly the whole of the fisher population of the place
engaged in dragging from the water on to the sands enormously long
nets, which had been previously carried out by boats to a distance not
more I think than three or four hundred yards from the shore. From
these nets, when at last they were landed after an hour or so of

continual dragging by a dozen or twenty men and women, were taken
huge baskets-full of silvery little fish sparkling in the sun, exactly like
whitebait. I had always supposed that whitebait was a specialty of the
Thames. Whether an icthyologist would have pronounced the little
Sestri fishes to be the same creatures as those which British statesmen
consume at Greenwich I cannot say; but we ate them frequently at the
hotel under the name of gianchetti, and could find no difference
between them and the Greenwich delicacy. The season for them did not
seem to last above two or three weeks. The fishermen continued to drag
their net, but caught other fishes instead of giancketti. But