"Where distract ambition compassed
And was encompass'd,"
and his brothers in arms, the young men who had begun the career of life
with him, were reaping bloody laurels, to be gazetted in the list of
killed and wounded, as heroes--then forgotten;--Colonel Talbot, a true
hero after another fashion, was encountering, amid the forest solitude,
uncheered by sympathy, unbribed by fame, enemies far more formidable,
and earning a far purer, as well as a more real and lasting immortality.
Besides natural obstacles, he met with others far more trying to his
temper and patience. His continual quarrels with the successive
governors, who were jealous of the independent power he exercised in his
own territory, are humorously alluded to by Dr. Dunlop.
"After fifteen years of unremitting labour and privation," says the
Doctor, "it became so notorious in the province, that even the executive
government at Toronto became aware that there was such a place as the
Talbot Settlement, where roads were cut and farms in progress; and
hereupon they rejoiced--for it held out to them just what they had long
felt the want of, a well-settled, opened, and cultivated country,
wherein to obtain estates for themselves, their children, born and
unborn, and their whole kith, kin, and allies. When this idea, so
creditable to the paternal feelings of these worthy gentlemen, was
intimated to the Colonel, he could not be brought to see the fitness of
things in an arrangement which would confer on the next generation, or
the next again, the fruits of the labour of the present; and
accordingly, though his answer to the proposal was not couched in terms
quite so diplomatic as might have been wished, it was brief,
soldier-like, and not easily capable of misconstruction; it was in these
words--'I'll be d--d if you get one foot of land here;' and thereupon
the parties joined issue.
"On this, war was declared against him by his Excellency in council, and
every means were used to annoy him here, and misrepresent his
proceedings at home; but he stood firm, and by an occasional visit to
the Colonial Office in England, he opened the eyes of ministers to the
proceedings of both parties, and for a while averted the danger. At
length, some five years ago, finding the enemy was getting too strong
for him, he repaired once more to England, and returned in triumph with
an order from the Colonial Office, that nobody was in any way to
interfere with his proceedings; and he has now the pleasure of
contemplating some hundreds of miles of the best roads in the province,
closely settled on each side by the most prosperous farmers within its
bounds, who owe all they possess to his judgment, enthusiasm, and
perseverance, and who are grateful to him in proportion to the benefits
he has bestowed upon them, though in many instances, sorely against
their will at the time."
The original grant must have been much extended; for the territory now
under Colonel Talbot's management, and bearing the general name of the
Talbot Country, contains, according to the list I have in his own
handwriting, twenty-eight townships, and about 650,000 acres of land, of
which 98,700 are cleared and cultivated. The inhabitants, including the
population of the towns, amount to about 50,000. "You see," said he
gaily, "I may boast, like the Irishman in the farce, of having peopled a
whole country with my own hands."
He has built his house, like the eagle his eyry, on a bold high cliff
overhanging the lake. On the east there is a precipitous descent into a
wild, woody ravine, along the bottom of which winds a gentle stream,
till it steals into the lake: this stream is in winter a raging torrent.
The storms and the gradual action of the waves have detached large
portions of the cliff in front of the house, and with them huge trees.
Along the lake-shore I found trunks and roots of trees half buried in
the sand, or half overflowed with water, which I often mistook for
rocks. I remember one large tree which, in falling headlong, still
remained suspended by its long and strong fibres to the cliff above. Its
position was now reversed: the top hung downwards, shivered and denuded;
the large spread root, upturned, formed a platform, on which new earth
had accumulated, and a new vegetation sprung forth, of flowers, and
bushes, and sucklings. Altogether it was a most picturesque and curious
object.
Lake Erie, as the geography book says, is two hundred and eighty miles
long, and here, at Port Talbot, which is near the centre, about seventy
miles across. The Colonel tells me that it has been more than once
frozen over from side to side; but I do not see how this fact could be
ascertained, as no one has been known to cross to the opposite shore on
the ice. It is true that more ice accumulates in this lake than in any
other of the great lakes, by reason of its shallowness: it can be
sounded through its whole extent, while the other lakes are found in
some parts unfathomable.
But to return to the chateau. It is a long wooden building, chiefly of
rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side. Here I
found suspended, among sundry implements of husbandry, one of those
ferocious animals of the feline kind, called here the cat-a-mountain,
and by some the American tiger, or panther, which it more resembles.
This one, which had been killed in its attack on the fold or
poultry-yard, was at least four feet in length, and glared on me from
the rafters above ghastly and horrible. The interior of the house
contains several comfortable lodging-rooms, and one really handsome one,
the dining-room. There is a large kitchen with a tremendously hospitable
chimney; and underground are cellars for storing wine, milk, and
provisions. Around the house stands a vast variety of outbuildings of
all imaginable shapes and sizes, and disposed without the slightest
regard to order or symmetry. One of these is the very log hut which the
Colonel erected for shelter when he first "sat down in the bush,"
four-and-thirty years ago, and which he is naturally unwilling to
remove. Many of these outbuildings are to shelter the geese and poultry,
of which he rears an innumerable quantity. Beyond these is the cliff,
looking over the wide blue lake, on which I have counted six schooners
at a time with their white sails. On the left is Port Stanley. Behind
the house lies an open tract of land, prettily broken and varied, where
large flocks of sheep and cattle are feeding, the whole enclosed by
beautiful and luxuriant woods, through which runs the little creek or
river above mentioned.
The farm consists of six hundred acres; but as the Colonel is not quite
so active as he used to be, and does not employ a bailiff or overseer,
the management is said to be slovenly, and not so productive as it might
be.
He has sixteen acres of orchard-ground, in which he has planted and
reared with success all the common European fruits, as apples, pears,
plums, cherries, in abundance; but what delighted me beyond everything
else, was a garden of more than two acres, very neatly laid out and
enclosed, and in which he evidently took exceeding pride and pleasure;
it was the first thing he showed me after my arrival. It abounds in
roses of different kinds, the cuttings of which he had brought himself
from England in the few visits he had made there. Of these he gathered
the most beautiful buds, and presented them to me with such an air as
might have become Dick Talbot presenting a bouquet to Miss Jennings.[14]
We then sat down on a pretty seat under a tree, where he told me he
often came to meditate. He described the appearance of the spot when he
first came here as contrasted with its present appearance, or we
discussed the exploits of some of his celebrated and gallant ancestors,
with whom my acquaintance was (luckily) almost as intimate as his own.
Family and aristocratic pride I found a prominent feature in the
character of this remarkable man. A Talbot of Malahide, of a family
representing the same barony from father to son for six hundred years,
he set, not unreasonably, a high value on his noble and unstained
lineage; and, in his lonely position, the simplicity of his life and
manners lent to these lofty and not unreal pretensions a kind of
poetical dignity.
I told him of the surmises of the people relative to his early life and
his motives for emigrating, at which he laughed.
"Charlevoix," said he, "was, I believe, the true cause of my coming to
this place. You know he calls this the 'Paradise of the Hurons.' Now I
was resolved to get to paradise by hook or by crook, and so I came
here."
He added, more seriously, "I have accomplished what I resolved to do--it
is done; but I would not, if any one was to offer me the universe, go
through again the _horrors_ I have undergone in forming this
settlement. But do not imagine I repent it; I like my retirement."
He then broke out against the follies, and falsehoods, and restrictions
of artificial life, in bitter and scornful terms; no ascetic monk or
_radical_ philosopher could have been more eloquently indignant.
I said it was granted to few to live a life of such complete retirement,
and at the same time such general utility; in flying from the world, he
had benefited it: and I added, that I was glad to see him so happy.
"Why, yes, I'm very happy here." And then the old man sighed.
I understood that sigh, and in my heart echoed it. No, "it is not good
for man to be alone;" and this law, which the Father of all life
pronounced himself at man's creation, was never yet violated with
impunity. Never yet was the human being withdrawn from, or elevated
above, the social wants and sympathies of his human nature, without
paying a tremendous price for such isolated independence.
With all my admiration for what this extraordinary man has achieved, and
the means, the powers, through which he has achieved it, there mingles a
feeling of commiseration which has more than once brought the tears to
my eyes while listening to him. He has passed his life in worse than
solitude. He will admit no equal in his vicinity. His only intercourse
has been with inferiors and dependents, whose servility he despised, and
whose resistance enraged him--men whose interests rested on his
favour--on his will, from which there was no appeal. Hence despotic
habits, and contempt even for those whom he benefited; hence, with much
natural benevolence and generosity, a total disregard, or rather total
ignorance, of the feelings of others--all the disadvantages, in short,
of royalty, only on a smaller scale. Now, in his old age, where is to
him the solace of age? He has honour, power, obedience; but where are
the love, the troops of friends, which also should accompany old age? He
is alone--a lonely man. His constitution has suffered by the dreadful
toils and privations of his earlier life. His sympathies have had no
natural outlet; his affections have wanted their natural food. He
suffers, I think; and not being given to general or philosophical
reasoning, causes and effects are felt, not known. But he is a great man
who has done great things; and the good which he has done will live
after him. He has planted, at a terrible sacrifice, an enduring name and
fame, and will be commemorated in this "brave new world," this land of
hope, as Triptolemus among the Greeks.
For his indifference or dislike to female society, and his determination
to have no settler within a certain distance of his own residence, I
could easily account when I knew the man; both seemed to me the natural
result of certain habits of life acting upon a certain organisation. He
has a favourite servant, Jeffrey by name, who has served him faithfully
for more than five-and-twenty years, ever since he left off cleaning his
own shoes and mending his own coat. This honest fellow, not having
forsworn female companionship, began to sigh after a wife--
"A wife! ah! Saint Marie Benedicite,
How might a man have any adversite
That hath a wife?"