Images of Jersey in 1888

The title page of the book

St Aubin

Three Jersey belles with a handsome soldier

A florist in the Halkett Place market

Pretty young girls in Grouville Bay Si les délicieuses fillettes tiennent ce qu'elles promettent, nous publierons une édition revue et augmentée quand elles seront grandes! (If the delightful little girls fulfil their promise, we will publish a revised and updated edition when they are grown up!

Elizabeth Castle

Autre type de marin jersiais - la mer quelquefois, sa pipe et son chien toujours! (Another type of Jersey sailor - the sea sometimes, his pipe and his dog always)

A Sainte Brélade: Le site est merveilleux, la vague transparente. Et l'on s'y baigne comme au temps de l'an quarante!(The beauty sport is marvellous, the surf is tranparent, and one can bathe there as in the 'forties)

Old sailor at Gorey

Promenade sentimentale sur l'Albert Pier. Quelque chose comme O'Guy, MacGontran et Gaston, Esquire. Tout bien considéré, l'avantage reste aux dames! (A romantic walk on the Albert Pier. Something like O'Guy, McGontran and Gaston, Esquire. All things considered the advantage remains with the ladies)

The caption to this picture referred to a "hotch potch of comical faces" in an excursion car posing for a photograph at the appointed place at Grève de Lecq or elsewhere

A dairy maid with her friendly Jersey heifer

Saluting the cows on Castle Green

The traditional view of Mont Orgueil, as popular today as it was in Edwardian times

Tennis players at Le Hocq

A bathing machine at Grève d'Azette. C'est Nounou qui voudrait bien faire comme Maman et Bébé. Mais les brides de son bonnet la retiennent au rivage, pauvre Nounou. (Nanny wants to do the same as mummy and baby, but her bonnet strings tie her to the shore. Poor Nanny.)

Victorian Jersey

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and never could it be more true than in 1888, when these impressions of a holiday island were published in a French book entitled Plages de Bretagne et Jersey (Beaches of Brittany and Jersey). No words other than the original captions are needed to sum up the image which was created of an island which was beginning to rely heavily on tourism to expand its economy as the Victorian era was at its peak. (Note: These images were previously dated to 1912 and Edwardian Jersey, drawn from a later edition of the book, now known to have first been published in 1888.)

On the left is the title page of the book, which features over a hundred delightful drawings of beaches and other scenes, all along the north Brittany coastline from Mont Michel to Brest, and including St Malo, Paramé, Cancale, Dinard, Saint Lunaire, Portrieux Saint Quay (as it was known then, the two parts of the name now having reversed), Roscoff and Brest.

A bathing hut being moved with the tide

The caption to the picture on the top right of a couple enjoying the view over St Aubin's Bay and its fort, is Un vrai paradis terrestre, 'pas chere amie?: En effet mon ami, Un paradis sans serpent (A real paradise on earth, my love? In fact, my love, a paradise without snakes)

Left: A St Helier, l'armée Anglaise assiégée par le bataillon Jersiais. "Se rendra! Rendra pas!! Rendra!" (At St Helier the English army besieged by the Jersey batallion. "Give up! Don't give up! Give up!")

Corbière Lighthouse

Above: A couple struggling on the rocks at Corbière Lighthouse.

- Ouf! je m'en peux plus

- Et moi donc!

- On pourrait construire les phares un peu moins haut

- Parbleu! Les touristes sont aussi intéressants que les navigateurs

(Phew! I can't go any further: Nor me!: They could build the lighthouses a little less high: Of course, the tourists are as important as navigators)

Another view of the lighthouse

The grape seller

Petite marchande de raisin

The little grape seller: En la voyant passer, plus d'un se dit tous bas: Le beau fruit! Mais trop verte, et bon pour les goujats! (Seeing her pass, more than one says softly: Beautiful fruit! But too green, and good for boors!)

Ready for a good walk

Serenading Jersey's famous giant cabbages, used for making walking sticks

Mont Orgueil Castle was as popular a tourist destination and image in Edwardian times as it is today, and it appears that there was then the added attraction of cattle grazing on Castle Green. This father and daughter were clearly impressed:

Voyons, papa, tu te mets à saluer les vaches

Ma chère enfant, qu'il soit permis à un éleveur francais de se découvrir devant ces représentantes autorisées d'une aristocratie justement célèbre et de faire des voeux pour l'union des nobles vaches jersiaises et de nos grandes vaches nationales

(Look, father, you're even beginning to greet the cows: My dear child, it is permitted for a French breeder to take off his hat before these approved representatives of a justly celebrated aristocracy and to wish for a union of these noble Jersey cows with our large national cattle.)

Not Jersey, but St Malo. However, we could not resist finishing with this delightful picture of two young ladies with the "bathing master" on the beach at St Malo. It's interesting that the clothing is not all that different from what is fashionable today, a century later.