Studio: international art (5.1895)

Quebec as a Sketching Ground

I have mentioned Sous le Cap in terms of praise,
and it deserves all and more than I have said.
It winds around the cliff from one to another point
of comparative safety, though it is scarcely wide
enough to allow of driving through a caleche,
the local substitute for coupes—halfway between
a dog-cart and an old-fashioned chaise. On the
upper side the houses can't have any back rooms
at all, for the jagged cliff cuts into them con-
stantly, while on the other they are built apparently
on nothingness. There isn't an atom of architec-
ture, properly speaking, only clothes-lines and
funny squared logs for sidewalks and steps ; ladders
and companionways leading in every direction,
covered bridges, chickens, and dirt. Much as
there is of picturesqueness, there is more of dirt,
and if you examine the drawings carefully, you will
discover that I have become a sort of symbolist,
for in the foreground of one of the sketches, in the
middle of the road, I have portrayed a tomato.
Now this tomato stands for all the filth of Sous le
Cap, and if that isn't symbolism I don't know
what is.

Sous le Cap, though but a short lane, has many
turnings, and so its delights are continually seen
from different points, and seem new each time.
Besides, there are a number of little passages lead-
ing into backyards which offer, after all, even more
local colour to the square foot than the street
itself. If you can manage to get into one of these,
either under the guidance of the Vaudreils or alone

and unaided, you can look up or down, as the case
may be, several hundred feet.

The Rue Petite Champlain is another typical
street, and while it does not possess the charm of
Sous le Cap, still its architecture is more preten-
tious, being usually of stone, and at one end are
the famous Breakneck Steps. But alas ! while
these once deserved their name their glory is now
departed. I purchased a photograph of them in
their original state, when they were of wood and
followed their own sweet wills with regard to the
direction taken, but a city government, composed,
as all city governments are, of Goths and Vandals,
has recently removed this historic piece of en-
gineering, filling its place with a perforated iron
structure which has hand-rails and the like, and is
altogether ridiculously safe in every way. It is
true that in my drawings I have striven to forget
this fact, and so you will not appreciate the loss as
you would were you here with me.

But the beauties of Quebec are not confined to
this part of the town, although it is the oldest. By
taking the extremely Philistine but equally com-
fortable " Ascenseur," you will arrive on the terrace
in no time at all, when you will be free to roam at
will through the comparatively uninteresting fau-
bourg and down the other side of the mountain—
eminence, hill, whatever you may choose to call it
—on which Quebec is perched. But wherever
you may go, always above you will rise the forti-
fications : even these are picturesque rather than

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