are rife to this day among the settlers of the Talbot District with
respect to the Colonel's eccentricities and mode of life. On one
occasion a person named Crandell presented himself at Castle Malahide,
late in the evening, as an applicant for a lot of land. He was ushered
into the Colonel's presence, when the latter turned upon him with a
flushed and angry countenance, and demanded his money. The Colonel's
aspect was so fierce, and the situation was so lonely, that Crandell was
alarmed for his life, and forthwith surrendered all his capital. He was
then led off by Jeffery to the kitchen, where he was comfortably
entertained for the night. The next morning the Colonel settled his
business satisfactorily, and returned him his money, telling him that he
had taken it from him to prevent his being robbed by some of his
rascally servants. On another occasion a pedantic personage who lived in
the Township of Howard, and who spent much time in familiarizing himself
with the longest words to be found in the Dictionary, presented himself
before the Colonel, and began, in polysyllabic phrases, to lay a local
grievance before him. The language employed was so periphrastic and
pointless that the Colonel was at a loss to get at the meaning intended
to be conveyed. After listening for a few moments with ill-concealed
impatience, Talbot broke out with a profane exclamation, adding: "If you
do not come down to the level of my poor understanding, I can do nothing
for you." The man profited by the rebuke, and commenced in plain words,
but in rather an ambiguous manner, to state that his neighbour was
unworthy of the grant of land he had obtained, as he was not working
well. "Come, out with it," said the Colonel, "for I see now what you
would be at. You wish to oust your neighbour, and get the land for
yourself." After enduring further characteristic expletives, the man
took himself of incontinently. Although many of his settlers were native
Americans, the Colonel had an aversion to Yankees, and used to say of
them that they acquired property by whittling chips and barter--by
giving a shingle for a blind pup, which they swopped for a goose, and
then turned into a sheep. On another occasion, an Irishman, proud of his
origin, and whose patronymic told at once that he was a son of the
Emerald Isle, finding that he could not prevail with the Colonel on the
score of being a fellow-countryman, resorted to rudeness, and, with more
warmth than discretion, stood upon his pedigree, and told the Colonel
that his family was as honourable, and the coat of arms as respectable
and as ancient as that of the Talbots of Malahide. Jeffery and the dogs
were always the last resource on such occasions. "My dogs don't
understand heraldry," was the laconic retort, "and if you don't take
yourself off, they will not leave a coat to your back."
By the time the year 1826 came round, Colonel Talbot, in consequence of
his exertions to forward the interests of his settlement, had begun to
be very much straitened for means. He accordingly addressed a letter to
Lord Bathurst, Secretary for the Colonies in the Home Government, asking
for some remuneration for his long and valuable services. In his
application for relief we find this paragraph: "After twenty-three years
entirely devoted to the improvement of the Western Districts of this
Province, and establishing on their lands about 20,000 souls, without
any expense for superintendence to the Government, or the persons
immediately benefited; but, on the contrary, at a sacrifice of £20,000,
in rendering them comfortable, I find myself entirely straitened, and
now wholly without capital." He admitted that the tract of land he had
received from the Crown was large, but added that his agricultural
labours had been unproductive--a circumstance not much to be wondered at
when it is borne in mind that his time was chiefly occupied in selling
and portioning out the land. The Home Government responded by a grant of
£400 sterling per annum. The pension thus conferred was not gratuitous,
but by way of recompense for his services in locating settlers on the
waste lands of the Crown. That he was entitled to such a recompense few,
at the present day, will be found to deny. He was a father to his
people, and, in the words of his biographer, "acted as the friend of the
poor, industrious settler, whom he protected from the fangs of men in
office who looked only to the fees."[4]
In course of time the Colonel's place of abode at Port Talbot came to be
a resort for distinguished visitors to Upper Canada, and the
Lieutenant-Governors of the Province frequently resorted thither. The
late Chief Justice Sir John Beverley Robinson was a frequent and an
honoured guest at Castle Malahide; and Colonel Talbot, in his turn,
generally availed himself of the hospitality of the Chief Justice during
his annual visits to Little York. Among scores of other distinguished
visitors may be mentioned the Duke of Richmond, Sir Peregrine Maitland,
Lord Aylmer and Sir John Colborne. Mrs. Jameson also visited the spot
during her sojourn in this country just before the rebellion, and
published the most readable account of it that has yet appeared.
Speaking of the Colonel himself, she says: "This remarkable man is now
about sixty-five, perhaps more, but he does not look so much. In spite
of his rustic dress, his good-humoured, jovial, weather-beaten face, and
the primitive simplicity, not to say rudeness, of his dwelling, he has
in his features, air, and deportment, that _something_ which stamps him
gentleman. And that _something_ which thirty-four years of solitude have
not effaced, he derives, I suppose, from blood and birth--things of more
consequence, when philosophically and philanthropically considered, than
we are apt to allow. He must have been very handsome when young; his
resemblance now to our royal family, particularly to the King, (William
the Fourth,) is so very striking as to be something next to identity.
Good-natured people have set themselves to account for this wonderful
likeness in various ways, possible and impossible; but after a rigid
comparison of dates and ages, and assuming all that latitude which
scandal usually allows herself in these matters, it remains
unaccountable. . . I had always heard and read of him as the 'eccentric'
Colonel Talbot. Of his eccentricity I heard much more than of his
benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his perseverance;
but perhaps, according to the worldly nomenclature, these qualities come
under the general head of 'eccentricity,' when devotion to a favourite
object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest. . . Colonel
Talbot's life has been one of persevering, heroic self-devotion to the
completion of a magnificent plan, laid down in the first instance, and
followed up with unflinching tenacity of purpose. For sixteen years he
saw scarce a human being, except the few boors and blacks employed in
clearing and logging his land: he himself assumed the blanket-coat and
axe, slept upon the bare earth, cooked three meals a day for twenty
woodsmen, cleaned his own boots, washed his own linen, milked his cows,
churned the butter, and made and baked the bread. In this latter branch
of household economy he became very expert, and still piques himself on
it." Of the château itself and its immediate surroundings, she says:
"It" (the château) "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. 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 were
feeding--the whole enclosed by beautiful and luxuriant woods, through
which runs the little creek or river. 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. 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. . . Another thing which gave a
singular interest to my conversation with Colonel Talbot was the sort of
indifference with which he regarded all the stirring events of the last
thirty years. Dynasties rose and disappeared; kingdoms were passed from
hand to hand like wine decanters; battles were lost and won;--he neither
knew, nor heard, nor cared. No post, no newspaper brought to his
forest-hut the tidings of victory and defeat, of revolutions of empires,
or rumours of unsuccessful and successful war."
The faithful servant, Jeffery Hunter, came in for a share of this
clever woman's keen observation. "This honest fellow," she tells us,
"not having forsworn female companionship, began to sigh after a
wife--and like the good knight in Chaucer, he did
'Upon his bare knees pray God him to send
A wife to last unto his life's end.'
So one morning he went and took unto himself the woman nearest at
hand--one, of whom we must needs suppose that he chose her for her
virtues, for most certainly it was not for her attractions. The Colonel
swore at him for a fool; but, after a while, Jeffery, who is a
favourite, smuggled his wife into the house; and the Colonel, whose
increasing age renders him rather more dependent on household help,
seems to endure very patiently this addition to his family, and even the
presence of a white-headed chubby little thing, which I found running
about without let or hindrance."
In politics Colonel Talbot was a Tory, but as a general rule he took no
part in the election contests of his time. His servant Jeffery Hunter,
however, who seems to have had a vote on his own account, was always
despatched promptly to the polling-place to record his vote in favour of
the Tory candidate. The Colonel was a Member of the Legislative Council,
but he seldom or never attended the deliberations of that Body. During
the Administration of Sir John Colborne, when the Liberals of Upper
Canada fought the battles of Reform with such energy and vigour, the
Colonel for a single campaign identified himself with the contest, and
made what seems to have been rather an effective election speech on the
platform at St. Thomas. He traced the history of the settlement, and
referred to his own labours in a fashion which elicited tumultuous
applause from the crowd. He deplored the spread of radical principles,
and expressed his regret that some advocates of those principles had
crept into the neighbourhood. The meeting passed a loyal address to the
Crown, which was dictated by Colonel Talbot himself. This, so far as is
known, was the only political meeting ever attended by him in this
Province.
The Colonel was nominally a member of the Church of England, and
contributed liberally to its support, though, as may well be supposed,
he was never eaten up by his zeal for episcopacy. By some people he was
set down as a freethinker, and by others as a Roman Catholic. The fact
is that the prevailing tone of his mind was not spiritual, and he gave
little thought to matters theological. During the early years of the
settlement, as we have seen, he was wont to read service to the
assembled rustics on Sunday; but this custom was abandoned as soon as
churches began to be accessible to the people of the neighbourhood; and
after that time, though he was occasionally seen at church, he was not
an habitual attendant at public worship. He was fond of good company,
and liked to tell and listen to dubious stories "across the walnuts and
the wine." A clergyman who officiated at a little church about five
miles from Port Talbot was his frequent guest at dinner, until the
Colonel's outrageous jokes and stories proved too much for the clerical
idea of the eternal fitness of things. "It must," says his biographer,
"have been rather a bold venture for a young clergyman to come in
contact with a man of Colonel Talbot's wit and racy humour, and a man
who would startle at the very idea of being priest ridden; in fact, who
would be much more likely to saddle the priest. The reverend gentleman
bore with him a long while, till at length finding that he was not
making any progress with the old gentleman in a religious point of
view--on the contrary, that his sallies of wit became more frequent and
cutting--he left him to get to heaven without his assistance. Colonel
Talbot was never pleased with himself for having said or done anything
to provoke the displeasure of his reverend guest, but being in the habit
at table, after dinner, of smacking his lips over a glass of good port,
and cracking jokes, which extorted from his guest a half approving
smile, he was tempted to exceed the bounds which religious or even
chaste conversation would prescribe, and came so near proving _in vino
veritas_, that the reverend gentleman would never revisit him, although
I believe it was Colonel Talbot's earnest desire that he should."
Bad habits, if not checked in season, have a tendency to grow worse. As
the Colonel advanced in years his liking for strong drink increased to
such an extent that the _in vino veritas_ stage was, we fear, reached
pretty often. To such a state of things his solitary life doubtless
conduced. He had an iron constitution, however, and it does not appear
that his intemperate habits during the evening of his life materially
shortened his days. He lived long enough to see the prosperity of his
settlement fully assured. For many years prior to his death it appears
to have been his cherished desire to bequeath his large estate to one of
the male descendants of the Talbot family, and with this view he invited
one of his sister's sons, Mr. Julius Airey, to come over from England
and reside with him at Port Talbot. This young gentleman accordingly
came to reside there, but the dull, monotonous life he was obliged to
lead, and the Colonel's eccentricities, were ill calculated to engage
the affections of a youth just verging on manhood; and after
rusticating, without companions or equals in either birth or education,
for some time, he returned to England and relinquished whatever claims
he might consider he had on his uncle. Some years later a younger
brother of Julius, Colonel Airey, Military Secretary at the Horse
Guards, ventured upon a similar experiment, and came out to Canada with
his family to live at Port Talbot. About this time the Colonel's health
began seriously to fail, and his habits began to gain greater hold upon
him than ever. As a necessary consequence he became crabbed and
irritable. The uncle and nephew could not get on together. "The former,"
says his biographer, "had been accustomed for the greater portion of his
life to suit the convenience of his domestics, and, in common with the
inhabitants of the country, to dine at noon; the latter was accustomed
to wait for the buglecall, till seven o'clock in the evening. Colonel
Talbot could, on special occasions, accommodate himself to the habits of
his guests, but to be regularly harnessed up for the mess every day was
too much to expect from so old a man; no wonder he kicked in the traces.
He soon came to the determination of keeping up a separate
establishment, and another spacious mansion was erected adjoining
Colonel Airey's, where he might, he thought, live as he pleased. But all
would not do, the old bird had been disturbed in his nest, and he could
not be reconciled." He determined to leave Canada, and to end his days
in the Old World. He transferred the Port Talbot estate, valued at
£10,000, together with 13,000 acres of land in the adjoining township of
Aldborough, to Colonel Airey. This transfer, however, left more than
half of his property in his own hands, and he was still a man of great
wealth. Acting on his determination to leave Canada, he started, in his
eightieth year, for Europe. Upon reaching London, only a day's journey
from Port Talbot, he was prostrated by illness, and was confined to his
bed for nearly a month. He rallied, however, and resumed his journey. In
due time he reached London the Greater. He was accompanied on the voyage
by Mr. George McBeth, the successor to the situation of Jeffery Hunter,
who had died some years before. McBeth had gained complete ascendancy
over the Colonel's failing mind. Being a young man of some education,
and a good deal of finesse, he was treated by his master as a companion
rather than as a servant, and the latter merited his master's regard by
nursing him with much care and attention.
Colonel Talbot remained in London somewhat more than a year, during
which period, as also during his previous visits to England, he renewed
old associations with the friend of his youth, the great Duke. He was
often the latter's guest at Apsley House, and the stern old hero of a
hundred fights delighted in his society. London life, however, was
distasteful to Colonel Talbot, and, after giving it a fair trial, he
once more bade adieu to society and repaired to Canada--always attended
assiduously by George McBeth. Upon reaching the settlement he took
lodgings for himself and his companion in the house of Jeffery Hunter's
widow. Here, cooped up in a small room, on the outskirts of the
magnificent estate which was no longer his own, he received occasional
visits from his old friends. Colonel Airey, meanwhile, had rented the
Port Talbot property to an English gentleman named Saunders, and had
returned to his post at the Horse Guards in England. Mr. Saunders had
several daughters, to one of whom George McBeth paid assiduous court,
and whom he afterwards married. Upon his marriage he removed to London,
accompanied by Colonel Talbot, who resided with him until his death, on
the 6th of February, 1853. When the Colonel's will was opened it was
found that with the exception of an annuity of £20 to Jeffery Hunter's
widow, all his vast estate, estimated at £50,000, had been left to
George McBeth.
The funeral took place on the 9th. On the previous day--the 8th--the
body was conveyed in a hearse from London to Fingal, on the way to Port
Talbot, so as to be ready for interment on the following morning. By
some culpable neglect or mismanagement it was placed for the night in
the barn or granary of the local inn. The settlers were scandalized at
this indignity, and one of them begged, with tears in his eyes, that the
body might be removed to his house, which was close by. The undertaker,
who is said to have been under the influence of liquor, declined to
accede to this request, and the body remained all night in the barn. On
the following morning it was replaced in the hearse and conveyed to Port
Talbot, where it rested for a short time within the walls of Castle
Malahide. A few attached friends from London and other parts of the
settlement attended the coffin to its place of sepulture in the
churchyard at Tyrconnel. The officiating clergyman, the Rev. Mr.
Holland, read the service in a cutting wind, and the ceremony was ended.
A plate on the oaken coffin bore the simple inscription:
THOMAS TALBOT,
FOUNDER OF THE TALBOT SETTLEMENT,
Died 6th February, 1853.
[Illustration: DAVID LAIRD, signed as D. LAIRD]
THE HON. DAVID LAIRD,
_LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES._
The Hon. David Laird is the fourth son of the late Hon. Alexander Laird,
a Scottish farmer who, in the year 1819, emigrated from Renfrewshire to
Prince Edward Island. The late Mr. Laird settled in Queen's County,
about sixteen miles from Charlottetown, the capital of the Province, and
devoted himself to agriculture. He was a man of high character and great
influence, alike in political and social matters. For about sixteen
years he represented the First District of Queen's County in the Local
Assembly, and during one Parliamentary term of four years he was a
member of the Executive Council. He was a colleague and supporter of the
Hon. George Coles, who is called the father of Responsible Government in
Prince Edward Island. He was one of the signatories to the petition
forwarded by the Assembly to the Home Government in 1847, praying that
Responsible Government might be conceded; and he had the satisfaction of
sitting in the Assembly on the 25th of March, 1851, when Sir Alexander
Bannerman, the Governor, announced that the prayer of the petition had
been granted. He was also for many years one of the most active members
of the Managing Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society of Prince
Edward, an institution which did much for the advancement of
agricultural industry in the Province, by encouraging the importation of
improved stock, and by other similar operations.