DOI Heft:
No. 30 (September, 1895)
DOI Artikel:Goodhue, Bertram Grosvenor: Quebec as a sketching ground
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17294#0221
Quebec as a Sketching Ground
brown, yellow, and pink. Still, I should not abuse
the hotel, for, after all, it has a cafe, where, wonder-
ful to relate, you can get things to eat, drink, and
smoke up to eleven in the evening—a very pleasant
discord in the general harmony. You see I will
make you a very good cicerone, for although I have
been here only a week, I have already explored
everything of artistic interest, and have worked
pretty hard as well. The drawings which I am
sending are the most elaborate ones I have made,
but there are a lot of others too rough to be of
value to any one but myself.
Saturday is market-day here, and the thing to
is superfluous. Down you go, bumping around
corners and tumbling down long flights of steps
with imminent risk to life and limb, until you
bring up, breathless and staring, on the edge of
the quays. Now if you will turn about, you will
see the market a little behind you—you passed it
without noticing it, you will remember; and if you
will look up in the air, about 800 feet above you,
you will see the terrace and the hotel, with specks
of people hanging over the rail and looking down
at the busy anthill of a market below.
The market-place is covered with boards in lieu
of pavement, as indeed are nearly all of the streets
do is to get up early in the morning and go to the
market before breakfast, forgetting the aching void,
like a Spartan, in the interest of Art. There are
two market-places, but the Marche Champlain is
the best, as well as the biggest one, and it's really
so interesting after you get to it that you forget all
about breakfast.
Of course you know there is scarcely a rod of
level ground in all Quebec, so you must be pre-
pared, on coming out of your lodgings, for a con-
siderable rise in temperature before getting to the
market, which lies on the waterside. Crossing the
Place d'Armes, which isn't level by a good deal,
you begin to descend. Why, man, you may just
as well hug your traps tightly under your arm and
run for it—you'll have to, anyway—so this direction
202
in the old town, though away up in the English
quarter, the " Faubourg," as the French call it,
they order such things better, or at any rate differ-
ently. Every square yard of this boarding is
occupied now by fat old "habitant" women in
straw hats, each one sitting on a little box, and
holding a tremendous, brass-handled umbrella over
her head, for some unknown reason, since it isn't
raining, and if it were, their chateaux de fioy would
be ample protection.
I had a very hard time getting any decent
sketches in the market; what with the restlessness
of the vendors themselves, and the hurrying,
struggling crowd filling all the interstices, no sooner
had I put my pencil to the paper than, lo ! the
subject was out of sight. Finally, I bribed one
brown, yellow, and pink. Still, I should not abuse
the hotel, for, after all, it has a cafe, where, wonder-
ful to relate, you can get things to eat, drink, and
smoke up to eleven in the evening—a very pleasant
discord in the general harmony. You see I will
make you a very good cicerone, for although I have
been here only a week, I have already explored
everything of artistic interest, and have worked
pretty hard as well. The drawings which I am
sending are the most elaborate ones I have made,
but there are a lot of others too rough to be of
value to any one but myself.
Saturday is market-day here, and the thing to
is superfluous. Down you go, bumping around
corners and tumbling down long flights of steps
with imminent risk to life and limb, until you
bring up, breathless and staring, on the edge of
the quays. Now if you will turn about, you will
see the market a little behind you—you passed it
without noticing it, you will remember; and if you
will look up in the air, about 800 feet above you,
you will see the terrace and the hotel, with specks
of people hanging over the rail and looking down
at the busy anthill of a market below.
The market-place is covered with boards in lieu
of pavement, as indeed are nearly all of the streets
do is to get up early in the morning and go to the
market before breakfast, forgetting the aching void,
like a Spartan, in the interest of Art. There are
two market-places, but the Marche Champlain is
the best, as well as the biggest one, and it's really
so interesting after you get to it that you forget all
about breakfast.
Of course you know there is scarcely a rod of
level ground in all Quebec, so you must be pre-
pared, on coming out of your lodgings, for a con-
siderable rise in temperature before getting to the
market, which lies on the waterside. Crossing the
Place d'Armes, which isn't level by a good deal,
you begin to descend. Why, man, you may just
as well hug your traps tightly under your arm and
run for it—you'll have to, anyway—so this direction
202
in the old town, though away up in the English
quarter, the " Faubourg," as the French call it,
they order such things better, or at any rate differ-
ently. Every square yard of this boarding is
occupied now by fat old "habitant" women in
straw hats, each one sitting on a little box, and
holding a tremendous, brass-handled umbrella over
her head, for some unknown reason, since it isn't
raining, and if it were, their chateaux de fioy would
be ample protection.
I had a very hard time getting any decent
sketches in the market; what with the restlessness
of the vendors themselves, and the hurrying,
struggling crowd filling all the interstices, no sooner
had I put my pencil to the paper than, lo ! the
subject was out of sight. Finally, I bribed one