someone in the neighbourhood received an English paper with William’s
picture in it. Talbot might have sat for the portrait. His usual
dinner was soup, always soup, a plain joint, usually leg of mutton,
vegetables, pancakes--I never saw anything but pancakes by way of a
course to follow the meats at any of the many times I was there--and
the best port wine that ever was brought into Canada. He imported it
for himself direct from the manufacturers, and often half of it was
abstracted on the way. He was not the boor he was painted, but it is
certain he could be fascinating. I dined there often, and he was a
perfect host, always choosing after-dinner topics which he thought
would be suited to the interests of his guests. For instance, one
evening he told me much about his mother and sister, and many of the
strange and interesting things his sister’s continental life opened to
her. He also explained that same evening how ladies of fashion hire
court dresses made in Paris, great news to us Canadians. From another
man I heard that this sister, who had taken vows of celibacy, Colonel
Talbot said, but not vows to relinquish the world, was a political spy
in the pay of the French Government and the Spanish Government. The
story accounted for her regular six months’ residence in Paris and the
same in Madrid; but she must have been clever to be able to serve two
such governments, the antagonist this six months of the one she had
been spying for in the previous six.
“Once when I was dining there he talked of his mother and her life at
Malahide Castle, and how she managed the servants. There were plenty
of cows and many servants, but no butter. She asked why, and was told
that the cows were bewitched, and that the butter would not come. The
lady was equal to the emergency, and said that she gave them just one
week to get the cows unbewitched, and if there was not plenty of the
best butter forthcoming by that time the whole troop of servants would
be replaced by others. The butter soon came and was of the best.
“The mother was Roman Catholic and the father a Protestant, the family
to be divided in the way of the sons following the father and the
daughters the mother. Colonel Talbot was nothing in particular, but
when he was away visiting he would go to whatever church his hosts went
to. I think it was in Toronto once he was at the Roman Catholic, when
the priest spoke to him after the service and said he was glad to see
him returning to the true faith.
“Another time he was at church, somewhere in the country, with Sir
Peregrine Maitland’s party, and was wearing the celebrated sheepskin
coat which had for a hood the head of the beast, to be worn in bad
weather, the wearer’s face covered and the eyes looking through the
eyeholes. On this occasion the head was turned over the back of the
collar part, in its usual place in fine weather or under cover. The
text was that in which we were told to beware of a wolf in sheep’s
clothing, and as the words were said Talbot got up, gravely shook
himself, turned round so that the sheep’s head was in full view, and
equally gravely sat down again.
“His household furniture could not be called furniture at all; enough
wooden chairs to sit on, and a table made of a couple of planks nailed
to ‘sawhorses’ made the dining-room equipment when I knew him; but when
the dinner was served the boards were covered with the finest damask, a
white dinner service, good glass and silver. Geoffrey was as peculiar
as his master, and once I heard Colonel Talbot ask him a question as he
waited at table, and Geoffrey went to the cupboard, got what he wanted,
put it on the table, went to the kitchen and returned again before
answering his master’s question.
“His nephew, Julius Airey, was disgusted with the place and his
anomalous position in it, brought there as the heir and no definite
understanding arrived at, and he was kicking his heels in idleness and
uncertainty between nineteen and twenty-four. In one of his letters
home he drew a picture, a dreadful caricature of the colonel, which
afterwards in some inexplicable manner found its way back to Talbot and
decided him _not_ to make Julius his heir; it showed the dining-room
in its bareness, a wooden hook on the wall bearing a bridle, and his
uncle in a chair by the fire, choosing the moment to depict him just
after a coal had hopped into his uncle’s big gaping pocket and set it
afire. Colonel Talbot was very unfair to Julius, inasmuch as he kept
him there all those years and never told him that he had better look
for his own way in the world, as he was not to be the heir after all.
“My husband dined with Colonel Talbot once in every three weeks, and
he never saw a badly served or badly cooked dinner, and only once did
he see salt meat on the table, and that was put on on purpose. Sheriff
Parkins, of London, famous for his championship of Queen Caroline, came
as he said two thousand miles to visit Talbot, but Talbot could not
be bothered with him, hence the salt meat. At dinner Parkins began to
abuse Sir George Arthur; ‘Sir George is a friend of mine,’ said Talbot,
but Parkins paid no attention to that--went on. ‘Sir George is a friend
of mine,’ again said Talbot, and Parkins desisted for a while, but
soon returned to the charge. ‘Sir George is a friend of mine,’ said
Talbot for the third time, ‘and I will not have him so spoken of at
my table.’ ‘Call it a _table_?’ said Parkins as he lifted the damask.
‘In my house, then,’ said Talbot. ‘Call it a house? It is nothing but
a dog-kennel, and as for your _table_, I have seen nothing but salt
junk.’ ‘Geoffrey,’ said Talbot, ‘this gentleman is ready to go, bring
him his horse,’ and Parkins went off in a rage, such a rage that when
he reached the inn he kicked a panel of his bedroom door through with
one blow from his heavily booted foot. The sheriff had time to tell
one good story, that Caroline was so fond of Sydney Smith, who also
befriended her, that she had a large portrait of him hung on her walls;
when he next came to see her, her broken English announced that she had
put him among her ‘household dogs.’
“Geoffrey was a great character, but he and his master understood each
other thoroughly. They came together in a characteristic way. One day
when Talbot was visiting somewhere in the Old Country the host found
fault with the footman for bringing in cold plates; next day the plates
were so red hot that the host first jumped, then swore, and then
dismissed the man. ‘That’s the man for me,’ said Colonel Talbot, ‘I
like him for that hot plate business,’ and he engaged Geoffrey on the
spot. Whatever eccentricity his master chose to perpetrate Geoffrey
would second it, and they made a formidable pair. Talbot hated the
Scotch, and once when he saw someone approach who turned out to be a
friend, he excused his first coldness by saying, ‘Oh, I thought you
were one of those abominable Scotch.’ Although Irish himself, he had
no trace of any nationality but English. He was English in speech and
prejudice. How he got on so well with Dunlop was hard to understand,
unless it was on the score of mutual eccentricity. And Dunlop was
desperately rude. Once in Toronto a member of Parliament invited my
husband and me to dine at the members’ mess, and it happened that in
that big roomful of men I was the only woman. I sat near one end, at
the right hand of our host, and Dr. Dunlop was at the extreme end of
the table, too far off to speak to. He began to talk at the top of his
voice, so that the whole long table could hear him, and he stated that
he had been in the Talbot settlement, where there was not such a thing
as a gate; when you came to a fence you had to straddle it, and that’s
what they all did, men and women alike. Now was not that rude, with me
at the table! If I had been near him I would have given him some of my
mind, I assure you. And besides, it was a great falsehood.”
One story told in extenuation of Talbot’s business methods is that a
local Deborah undertook to overcome the great colonel of whom everyone
else was afraid. He went to her homestead to adjust some land dispute;
their words waxed high, until she, unable to dispose of him in any
other way, knocked him down, made shafts of the legs of this descendant
of the Kings of Connaught, and dragged him to the roadside while his
back performed the part of a Canadian summer sled. In his own words,
this lady was a true Scotch virago. One day as he sat at dinner her
counterpart entered the dining-room, Geoffrey as usual serving. She
announced that she had come for a horse, to get provisions from the
blockhouse. The latter had been built in the early days at a point
midway between Port Talbot and Long Point, the two extremes of the
infant settlement, where flour, pork, and other provisions might be
imported by boat and then distributed according to the Czar’s judgment.
She was told she might have Bob, a quiet, strong horse; but she had set
her heart on Jane, the beast kept for the Colonel’s own use and ridden
by none else. Most emphatically she was told she should not have Jane.
She seized the carving-fork and threatened “to run it through him;” so,
in his own words as he told the story to a friend, “I had to holloa to
Geoffrey to give the Scotch devil the mare.”
To protect himself as much as possible from intrusion he had a window
adjusted on the primeval post-office system, the pane arranged so that
it would open and shut from within. During the audiences Geoffrey
stood behind him to hand down the maps, and the intending purchaser
was left on the path outside. The inevitable query was, “Well, what
do you want?” The trembling applicant made an answer, the land was
given or refused as the case might be, and to speed the parting
guest the equally inevitable concluding remark, “Geoffrey, turn on
the dogs,” followed. It was destined that his third downfall should
be accomplished by a Highlander. The latter had several glasses of
brandy at the inn near by, and when the landlord demurred at giving
more, “You must let me have it,” said the other, “for I am going to
see that old Irish devil, Colonel Talbot, who took my land from me,
and if he will not give it back I’ll give him the soundest thrashing
a man ever got, for I will smash every bone in his body.” He was
given the desired extra glass, and somewhat exhilarated reached the
historic pane, through which justice, land, curses and kindness were
dispensed according to the humour of the hour. An Englishman is always
supposed to be in his best mood after dinner; with the Colonel time
after that function was sacred, and all business had to be transacted
before it. Up came the truculent Highlander this day, and out came
the usual “Well, and what do you want?” The grievance was explained;
he wanted his land back again. The refusal was prompt, and as prompt
the blow that was aimed in return. That ended the affair for the day;
but on the next, as the Colonel walked down his avenue, he saw the
Highlander waiting for him. Shaking his fist at him, he cried, “Clear
yourself off, you----Heeland rascal--did you not yesterday threaten to
break every bone in my skin!” But pupil of the Duke of York, comrade
of Arthur Wellesley as he was, the Colonel thought it wise to seek
the seclusion of his own room. A week from that time his closest
friend smilingly said, “Our friend the Port Talbot Chief has at last
met his match in the person of this Scotchman.” The ladies were not
counted. Instead of taking himself off as commanded, the Highlander
had gone into the kitchen and sat himself down with the Colonel’s men
at dinner. He did the same at supper, and following the men to their
long bedroom, jumped into bed. The next morning he was the first at
breakfast, the same at dinner and supper. This went on for two days.
Geoffrey complained, the Highlander was ordered to the window, and the
Colonel demanded what he meant by such behaviour. “I mean to live and
die with you, you old devil, if you do not give me back my land.” He
was in return commanded to take his land, and commended to a climate
less arctic than the one of their mutual choice. “Never let me see your
face again” was the final adjuration from the window. Two Amazons and
a Highlander had conquered the Lion of Port Talbot.
It is certain that one of the Deborahs of ’37 was Anna Jameson the
_Ennuyée_, for if her husband was not quite like the cypher Lapidoth
her memory somewhat overshadows his. If we accept her opinions of
Toronto as qualified by the unfortunate circumstances and mishaps
attending her arrival, we still have no wish to alter her descriptions
and impressions elsewhere in Canada. She was one of the many
distinguished visitors to Port Talbot, and she has left us her view of
its master and by inference his view of her. But those who knew him
better contend that he did not like or admire her. In the first place
she committed the unpardonable sin of borrowing money, which was not
replaced. During her visit he was not too polite to her, and he did not
hesitate to express his opinion after she had gone.
Of course, a dozen love stories clung round the Colonel’s early
days; there were speculations as to what could have induced such a
self-burial, but they were all of the hearsay order. One was that he
was jilted at the altar, set sail, and we know the rest. Another,
that in the sylvan court of George III. the young princesses, aides,
equerries and courtiers made hay together, and, in spite of the Royal
Marriage Act, also fell in love. One of the princesses--the name does
not transpire--it was said cared for the dapper little lieutenant.
Among the never-ending romances, heartbreaks and silent partings which
haunt the walls of royal palaces and the pathways of royal parks, may
be the love story which resulted in the determination--“Here, General
Simcoe, will I rest and will soon make the forest tremble under the
wings of the flock which I shall invite by my warblings around me.”
However, “I never saw but one woman I ever really cared anything
about,” was his own admission, “and she wouldn’t have me; and, to use
an old joke, those who would have me, the devil wouldn’t have them.”
The one lady was no princess, but owned to the name of Johnstone.
Whatever his ideal had been, Mrs. Jameson, wandering about the country
without a maid and in a lumber-waggon, as he called it, was not to
his taste. She on her part was very proud of her contrivances, and
unstrapped her mattress to show him how comfortable she could be at all
times when beds were not forthcoming; but he gruffly turned his back
and muttered something he would not say aloud.
Mrs. Jameson’s observations on Canadian society, as it was then, are by
no means bad, and it is easy to believe them; but when she allows such
distaste or her own painful position to overshadow her cheerfulness and
express nothing but regret at seeing Niagara--she would have preferred
it a Yarrow unvisited--she need not be taken altogether at her own
valuation as a prophetess. We can sympathise with her “By the end of
the year I hope, by God’s mercy, to be in England,” but no further.
But, generally speaking, she must have been a fascinating woman; plain
at first sight, her mind, manners and accomplishments obliterated
the impression, and the charm was heightened by beautiful hands, a
sweet voice, and fair hair of a reddish tinge. The voice she used with
great effect in singing, but the hair she allowed to be seen in curl
papers when she received her callers in the new Canadian London in the
year ’37, when en route from the Colonel’s to the omega of her “wild
journey,” Mackinaw.
Perhaps at no one spot in Canada could there be found a larger
gathering of Deborahs, than at what was called the Talbot anniversary,
a yearly fête instituted by John Rolph in honour of the day when his
friend, the Honourable Thomas Talbot, landed his canoe for good at the
scene of his future life. On each 21st May the backwoodsman left his
toil, the spinning wheels were silent, and arm-in-arm the settlers,
men and wives, came in to enjoy themselves and see the faces which,
as a rule, they had no other chance to see. The first fête was held
at Yarmouth Heights, in the grounds and under the superintendence of
Captain Rappelje. The tables were laid in a bower of cedar and other
sweet woods, and the hepatica, anemone and violet were the decorations.
The two hundred people who sat down to dinner had come long distances,
some from Long Point and London. The board groaned under venison, wild
turkey and many toothsome edibles, and when these were disposed of
“The King,” “The day and all who honour it,” called forth shouts from
lungs strong as the arms that raised the glasses high. Then the storm
subsided, and the Colonel, still fair but “short, stout, and showing
his hardships and years, rose and made a speech, short, neat and
explicit, ending with ‘And may God bless you all.’” The upper story of
the Rappelje house was in one large room, and here the ball was held
when the pleasures of the dinner were concluded. Above the musicians’
seat was a large transparency, “Talbot Anniversary,” a tree with an
axe laid at the root as an emblem. The “squirrel” was the Colonel’s
favourite figure in the dance, and this night he “led off” Macdonell’s
Reel with the mother of the fair-haired miss who had spoken up so
boldly as to his woman-hating. He certainly now made good his rejoinder
that he liked a pretty girl as well as anybody, for in the succeeding
dances he managed to secure, not only the prettiest girls there, but
the prettiest in the settlement. The room was of course lighted with
tallow candles, but it needed no modern power of electricity to show
the delight of the assembled youth in their version of the Spanish
fandango.
In 1830 the anniversary was held in the St. Thomas Hotel, when “the
prettiest girl in the district” led off with the Colonel. She was
dressed “in a sky-blue poplin stripe”--a blue satin and a white stripe
alternating--“embossed, trimmed with white satin and white blonde,”
white flowers and white gloves; her shoes she made herself, getting
Hyndman, the bootmaker, to add fine dancing soles to them. Any one to
whom the Colonel paid his rare attentions at once became an object
of interest and perhaps envy. His complexion won for him several
inelegant comparisons, and the pretty girl was twitted about “that old
turkey-cock,” and “folks said she would not leave till his health was
drunk for the last time.” In the succeeding years, as ’37 troubles
loomed and burned and settled into quiet again, the character of this
entertainment changed. The regiment stationed in London and St. Thomas
contributed to the gathering, and the red-coats only too successfully
did by the home-spun as they had done previously by the “black-coated
laity.” They even supplanted the original toast with “Here’s to red
wine, red coats, _red face_ and right royal memories.” The red face of
the Colonel was the only relic of former times left. The peasant and
lord of the manor element in the feast changed; the very celebration of
it was removed from St. Thomas to London, where it soon died a natural
death, the old zest gone, the raison d’être of its being destroyed.
* * * * *
For warlike times, these western Deborahs had an easy billet. Farther
east and on the Niagara frontier the women knew more of what war really
meant. There were short periods of anxiety, as in Galt, when the order
came to muster, and great was the consternation among the wives. They
met in congregation, all crying over the husbands they might see no
more. But the husbands were returned to them that same night, whole and
sound, and the rejoicing was proportionate. One company told off to
make arrests at different points came across an Atalanta, who this time
used her powers to save a husband. In the house of one of the suspects
an assemblage was found talking over rebellion matters with great zest
and with no marked admiration of the loyalist side of it. A private
was sent to the barn where it was hoped the host might be found, and
another was directed to hold this said wife while others should go over
the fields to arrest her husband, who would be unprepared for them.
She dodged the volunteer and took to flight, the man in pursuit, down
the path-way, over scrub, through fields, through bush, through briar,
over park, over pale--and the advantage lay in the fences. She, with
skilful management of dress, vaulted the accustomed “snake” like a
bird; he came to grief in a mixture of rail, ditchwater and mud. This
gave her such a start that by the time he picked himself up she had
reached her goal, and man and wife were so safely hidden that no sign
of them could be seen. Of all the party then taken only one suffered.
He was sentenced to be hanged, but that sentence was commuted to penal
servitude, under which he died.
The isolated farm-houses in the eastern part of Upper Canada and in
Lower Canada suffered severely from the wanton attacks of rebels and
sympathisers; and as for the terrors, the woes, the tears of the Lower
Canadian women and children at the hands of the military, what pen can
tell, what tongue describe them. On the island of Tanti a band of Bill
Johnston’s marauders attacked the lonely farm occupied by a family
named Preston. The mother, of truly heroic mould, regardless of numbers
and the sentinels at her doors, contrived to get abroad to alarm her
few neighbours. All her worldly goods, money, provisions, arms, were
taken, one son died of his wounds, and the husband barely escaped with
his life. What could such islanders do? Hickory Island had as its
tenant one lone widow.
On a night early in November, ’38, a rising took place in Lower Canada
at Beauharnois and La Tortu. La Tortu was a small village near La
Prairie; the chief sufferers were two farmers, Vitry and Walker. The
outlying situations of the farms gave the marauders ample chance to
have their own way, and one “_voluntary_” contribution to the patriot
cause, at Pointe à la Mule, was made at the instance of a party of
masked men who emptied the farmer’s savings-box, and comforted him
by saying that he had helped on the Cause. Vitry and Walker were
murdered. The wife of the latter arrived with her child in Montreal on
the following Sunday, the day of the great illumination and the issue
of Sir John’s proclamation, in which he announced his intention to
destroy every town where rebels were gathered or where they might be
taking shelter. The proclamation added that he would deal with cases of
conspiracy or rebellion according to martial law, “either by death or
otherwise, as to me shall seem right and expedient.” Like the dreaded
Duke of Burgundy, the motto “I have undertaken it” might be seen in
his eyes. Even the peaceable Lord Durham had just said, deprecating a
renewal of the rebellion, that to those who should succeed in producing
lamentable results like to the scenes of ’37 would the responsibility
belong. The sight of Mrs. Walker, literally covered with her husband’s
blood, and her description of what was evidently her heroic resistance,
did not tend to allay the excitement.
Montreal had now a strong picket guard surrounding it, two thousand men
besides the militia were under arms, and the times, instead of having
a depressing effect, tended to exhilaration as well as illumination.
Agreeably to orders, the inhabitants placed two lights in every window
to assist the troops in case of attack. It is hard to credit that the
soldiery then in Canada was close upon the number of the pith of the
allied forces at Waterloo.
The rising at Beauharnois has an added interest through the seigneur,
Mr. Ellice, Lord Durham’s brother-in-law, who reigned after the manner
of Talbot and Dunlop, but not in such dictatorial fashion. He was a man
in affluent circumstances, and while in Canada as one of Lord Durham’s
suite had begun new roads, built bridges and made other improvements on
his estate, using therefor several years’ back rents and the benefits
which would be accruing for years to come. With his wife and son he
arrived to receive the affectionate homage of his dependants, with whom
he imagined an intercourse full of confidence was established. The
family had been received with the customary respect, and were naturally
surprised when, at dead of night, they recognized in the mob a good
many of their tenants. A volley was poured in, the house invaded, one
lady wounded, and the rest of the party carried off to be shut up with
thirty prisoners from the _Henry Brougham_. From the tale recently told
by an old rebel, himself but half willing, it appears that many of
these tenants were brutally coerced into rising by the patriot body.
Ellice’s house had been despoiled of fourteen guns and other arms,
and eleven barrels of cartridges, but not before one servant at least
had made a spirited resistance; he succeeded in tying up some of the
rebels, for which he was treated severely later on.
The _Brougham_ had been burnt at the wharf, and the passengers
captured; but the despatches, the things on board most coveted,
escaped. A lady passenger proved equal to the question as to where they
and a large sum in bank bills which the captain had contrived to keep
possession of but could not hide, should be concealed. “_Honi soit qui
mal y pense_”--she rolled them into a bundle and converted herself into
a Bustle-Queen-at-Arms.