Part 6 (1/2)

Only figure to yourself a rock, about two miles and a half in length and scarcely the fifth part of that in breadth, and then most likely you will not be so much astonished at my making the above comparison [of Gibraltar to a prison], from which you may wisely suppose that those unfortunate beings who had the misfortune of being shut up in it led a most inactive and stupid life....

However, to give the Devil his due, I must not omit to observe that it contained a most excellent Library, by which means officers might improve themselves greatly and spend their leisure hours to their credit, provided they were desirous of doing so; particularly as nothing existed in that place to take off their attention from study; and I make no doubt but some young men had the sense to profit by that favourable opportunity. At the same time [I] am extremely sorry to inform you your promising son did not, in any shape whatever, and am much concerned to add that he spent a very idle life whilst there, doing nothing else the live-long day than riding or lounging; which I presume you will think was a complete disgrace to any man of a liberal education, in which I perfectly agree with you.... I sincerely hope and trust that he [your son]

will mend as he becomes older and wiser.

Tom confesses himself at this time ”a complete idle, good for nothing fellow,” but he disarms his mother's reproaches when he adds that he is chiefly occupied in thinking of her and of his large estate in Canada where he longs to be. It had for him a new attraction, since his cousin Alick Ker was just going out to Canada, a Captain on the staff of Sir James Craig, the new Governor, who was related to the Kers. For the time Tom's family was content that he should be at Gibraltar, where he was safe, and where, too, as Ker prudently says, ”he lives cheaper than he could in England, has a genteel [how the age loved that word!] society and the use of a large Library.” He rode on the sandy beach; sometimes, until the coming of the French troops, the British officers were allowed to ride into Spain.

These diversions all came to an end on August 26th, 1807, when Tom turned his back on Gibraltar for good. Incredible as it may now seem, the voyage to England took nearly a month; he arrived on the 24th of September. The young man had been turning over seriously his future prospects. In a letter to his mother he makes some enquiry about his own probable income from his estate. While protesting that he is himself ”a Devilish ugly fellow” he has some thought of getting his mother to choose a ”rib” for him and, presumptuous as it may seem, she must be handsome. He was thinking now of a civilian career. At Gibraltar he had found that he was short-sighted, and long sight seemed a necessity to a soldier. But Fraser, to whom he poured out his woe, answered that short-sightedness need not interfere with his efficiency; Colonel Nairne had been short-sighted and yet, withal, a successful officer; the question of sight would matter only if he was in command, in face of the enemy, and, even then, he could get a.s.sistance. Fraser advised him to stay in the army until he attained the rank of a field officer, when he might retire on half pay to his estate at Murray Bay, ”extensive but not valuable in proportion.” In truth Tom, tired of the army, was home-sick.

He says to Fraser that he is ”feeling an indescribable degree of anxiety to see my dearest mother, sisters, and yourself, not forgetting to include my estate, where I often figure myself, strutting about like unto a mighty Bashaw; which peaceful idea I sincerely hope will be realized, some day or other, if it pleases G.o.d to spare me so long; ...

my only desire is now that blessed time may be near at hand or even that I could afford to set out to Murray Bay without any further delay.

However it is proper to drown that wish, for the present, amongst the noise of arms, as the whole world is up against us, and my a.s.sistance, though little enough, G.o.d knows, may be of some use. At all events it would be tasting the sweets of this life before I had ever felt the miseries of it.” He ends by asking that nothing of which he is possessed may be spared ”towards making Alick Ker pa.s.s a pleasant time in Canada.”

The fear which the old aunt had ingenuously expressed that Tom might prove too good to live was happily belied, for he appears to have been a sufficiently idle young fellow, though, as his watchful guardian wrote, ”a good economist”; the same guardian thought this extremely opportune, since ”Bona Parte,” with all Europe under his heel, was making it lively for the fortunate islands, and forcing them to levy a tax of 10% on incomes. ”This tax,” writes the indignant banker, ”is one of the many blessed fruits of the French Revolution, and of the horrible tyranny and perfidy of their rascally Emperor.”

Not long did Tom remain in England. Soon he was off with his regiment to Sicily, at this period garrisoned by British troops, and saved by a strip of inviolate sea from the grasp of the master of Italy. The sojourn in Sicily must have been dull. He was stationed at Syracuse, but his school training had not gone deep enough to interest him in Thucydides's marvellous story of the siege of that place or in the antiquities of Sicily. The chief surviving record of his sojourn in Sicily is an account from his washerwoman, ”Mrs. De La.s.s,” dated at Syracuse the 8th of March, 1809. His distaste for the army was now complete. His sister Polly had ended her school days and, by a fortunate circ.u.mstance, had gone out to Canada ”under the protection of Sir William Johnstone's lady” and to Canada Tom was himself resolved to go.

Early in 1810, he was back in Edinburgh, taking a few weeks' holiday with the Kers, resolved to go on half pay at once, if possible, or, failing this, to sell out, and after a delay of fourteen or fifteen months, to go home to Murray Bay. The intervening time he intended to spend in the study of farming; he had almost completed a plan for going into Berwicks.h.i.+re to reside with a farmer and thus equip himself as a land owner. His friends thought him changeable. ”The Captain,” wrote Ker on the 30th of March, 1810, ”is a sweet tempered good young man but he wants steadiness.... I fear that after trying to be a farmer at Murray Bay he may tire and want to return to the army.” So serious was Tom about his future bucolic life that he wrote to his sister Christine, as he had written before to his mother, to ask whether she did not think he should look round for a wife; such a companion would be necessary, he thought, if he settled down as a farmer in Canada. We can imagine that the proposition, from a youth of twenty-three, caused some dismay among the occupants of the Manor House at Murray Bay; but Tom was soon professing himself something of a woman hater and he never married.

His return to Murray Bay followed quickly. By a fortunate, or perhaps, in view of the tragic fate awaiting poor Tom, unfortunate, chance, instead of going on half-pay, he was able to exchange from the 10th Regiment of Foot to the Newfoundland Regiment. The chief reason for the exchange was that the Newfoundland Regiment was ordered to Canada, where Tom could get leave of absence to pay a long visit to Murray Bay and learn how its life would suit him. So, in the autumn of 1810, the young man was in Canada, which he had not seen since childhood. To Murray Bay he soon paid a flying visit; the longer leave of absence would come later. His competent, busy, prudent and affectionate old mother welcomed him with open arms. He had thought of himself as a young Bashaw strutting round among the people of his seigniory. No doubt they were much interested to see the young Captain; but his duties soon called him back to Quebec, from which place on December 3rd, 1810, he writes to his mother:

I have this moment finished drinking tea, all alone.... You have totally spoiled my relish for anything except for Murray Bay; my notions of things in general appear to be entirely changed. Murray Bay while viewed only in perspective afforded me a sort of pleasing reflection; but now that I have a nearer view and enjoyed its comforts my ideas have experienced a complete revolution. So you see what your society and most kind loving treatment have effected.

You may therefore rest a.s.sured that no stone will be left unturned to try to get back in order that we may remain together in this world as long as it may please the Almighty to permit us. On my arrival here at 2 o'clock p.m. I proceeded to the Upper Town in order to look out for a bed, concerning the getting of which I had entertained my doubts being, _tout ensemble_, a queer figure, having on my covered handkerchief, thick great coat, Canadian boots, and round hat; in short at the first essay I was refused by a ”No room in the house, Sir,” a common reply given to those whose unfortunate appearance happens not exactly to please the harsh and scrutinizing eye of the lord of the mansion. I then turned my frozen steps towards this house of hospitality where after explaining _mon besoin_ to the waiter he scrupulously and critically eyed me from top to toe, from head to foot, then turned on his heel to go to his master and report accordingly. During his absence I commenced a serious inspection of self to find if possible what had attracted his attention so pointedly towards my toes, when I observed the cause to be the silver chain of my over-alls peeping out from under my great-coat; which, no doubt, was the reason of having received a favourable answer; for on his re-entrance he asked me to sit down and I finally engaged a room.

On January 9th, 1811, Tom wrote to say that a man had arrived from Murray Bay but without letters:

”What the Devil has come over those sisters of mine? Pray are they still behind the stove patching their old stockings? No time forsooth--Rediculous--Could not the lazy wretches have only wrote me the scratch of a pen merely to wish me a good New Year? Mr.

McCord to be sure mumbles something about time; it is highly diverting to have country la.s.ses talk about want of time, particularly those I am now speaking of, unless they have greatly altered for the better since I saw them last, and turned their hands to cow-keeping, tending of poultry, or something of that description; but I'll be bound for it they still employ themselves with nothing else except perching behind the stove, growling, and driving carriols.”

He exhorts his sisters to take long walks in the fine cold weather. Then he dips into politics. There is to be an election at Murray Bay for the county of Northumberland and Mr. Bouchette, a Canadian, had asked for the interest of Tom as seigneur. He regrets that he cannot himself offer to stand since he is unsettled in plans, ”and totally unacquainted with the language of the country”; a strange comment on the fact that in early youth he had known only French. The habitant had recently secured the right to vote but already pleased himself in exercising it. Though, as Tom says, ”Dr. La Terriere of the adjacent seigniory of Les Eboulements, the Cures, and the Devil knows who” all wished Bouchette elected and Tom was himself anxious that a habitant should not be chosen, Bouchette failed and a habitant was sent to Quebec to represent the district in the Legislature.

Tom's letters written during the winter of 1810-1811 are full of the gossip and events of the time in Quebec. He is now obviously keen for self-improvement, and, in the manner of his father, for the improvement of others also; while congratulating Polly on the better style of her letters which are now ”sprightly”, he corrects her spelling. Among other things he is trying to complete a proper inscription for his father's tomb. He sends for the t.i.tle deeds of his property in order that he may do homage to the governor Sir James Craig, and shows a lively interest in the management of his estate. His father's old friend, Colonel Fraser, was visiting Quebec which, more than fifty years earlier, he had helped to win for Britain but where now, it is somewhat sad to think, he has, as Tom says, very few acquaintances. So the young Captain spends two or three hours daily with the Colonel and finds that he has many interesting subjects to talk with him about. He drives with him into the country. He enquires about a house in Quebec which his mother had some thought of buying and talks of a trip to Montreal to buy a horse to send to Murray Bay. In the letters home Christine, ”Rusty” is the special object of his teasing. She has been accustomed to spend the winters at Quebec, but is now at Murray Bay, and he asks how she likes the dull country at this season. ”She never says anything about it, which is in her favour.... I trust that through the means of Picquet you contrive to keep her rusty dollars moving.” Tom's absence from Murray Bay was soon to end. On March, 23rd, 1811, he wrote joyously that he has got leave of absence for six months, and is coming ”to my own dear Murray Bay.”

Christine had been dangerously ill and he is naturally anxious to be at home.

So behold the young seigneur disporting himself at Murray Bay in the spring of 1811. Old Malcolm Fraser, at the manor of Mount Murray just across the bay, kept a watchful eye on the G.o.dson who, he had begun to fear, was not proving wholly satisfactory. The cause of Fraser's misgiving is not clear but he lectured Tom with tactful insight. Of his own career the young officer was now beginning to take a new view.

During the long holiday at Murray Bay he had time to taste its pleasures and to learn its chief interests. He went out fis.h.i.+ng and shooting; he sailed and rowed on the river; he occupied himself in the daily business of the seigniory, for which his competent mother had so long cared; she was now building a mill which would probably add to Tom's revenues. He made friends with the cure Mr. Le Courtois. This gentleman, a French emigre, who found a refuge in Canada, had thrown himself with great devotion into the rough life of a missionary among the scattered peoples, Canadians and Indians alike, of his remote parish. He was a man of culture and remained always a valued counsellor of the Protestant family in the Manor House.[22] But, in spite of all the interests and friends.h.i.+ps at Murray Bay, Tom soon found that the little community hardly needed him. Every thing was well looked after, prosperous and promising. He would be only a fifth wheel to the coach and, before long, he had made up his mind that he had better stick to his military career.

Without doubt Tom was a young man of winning character. Malcolm Fraser, having studied him and lectured him, reconsidered his unfavourable estimate, and wrote to Ker on the 10th of October, 1811: ”I think him incapable of any immoral or mean action; ... he seems to hearken to the lectures of his old G.o.dfather tho' not perhaps always delivered in the most delicate Style.” To his mother he was a tender son, and for his father's memory he showed a filial reverence. One of his first acts on arriving in Canada had been to arrange for the erection in Quebec of a proper monument in his memory--something that others had long talked about and which Tom brought to completion, but which has, alas, long since disappeared. Tom was in truth a man of action, and to action in the larger world he now turned. Towards the end of September, 1811, at the time when, to-day, Murray Bay's summer sojourners turn reluctantly homeward from the crisp autumn air and from the mountain sides beginning to show the season's glowing tints, Captain Nairne set out from the Manor House to join his regiment at Quebec. He had in mind a plan to go back to Europe and to get to Spain or Portugal for a share in the Peninsular War then raging. Fraser, now in his 79th year, writes on October 10th, 1811, his advice that the young man ”should continue on full pay till he attains the rank of Major, by brevet or otherwise, and then, if he chooses, he may exchange and retire on the half of whatever full pay he holds at the time, and as soon as such exchange can be accomplished with decency and propriety.” War with the United States was now impending, hardly a fitting time for a young man to withdraw from the army, and Fraser points out that ”in the present situation of public affairs and at his age and fitness for service” Tom's retirement would be hardly decent. ”Next to my own nearest connections,” he continues, ”my chief attention will be paid to Captain Nairne and the other connections of his late Father with whom I had the happiness to live in Friends.h.i.+p and intimacy from our first meeting (1757) till his Decease (1802) and I trust we shall meet again in a future state.”

The young man thus returned to his military duties with his old friend's benediction and restored confidence. But to the family the plan for a military career was a sore disappointment. His sister Christine, its woman of the world, and the one most in touch with the Canadian society of the time, was keen that Tom should live at Murray Bay. To her entreaties he answers on October 6th, 1811, that there is no earthly use for him at Murray Bay where everything is so well looked after that his presence would do more harm than good. Time would hang heavy on his hands if he were always employed in fis.h.i.+ng, shooting and navigating the river. It is better, he says, that he should continue in his present position and he intends to withdraw his application for half pay. When Christine returns to the charge and urges that Murray Bay is not to be despised the young man retorts that he never said it was and answers her with some dignity:

It will ill become me to despise the favourite residence of a person for whom I have at all times testified the greatest love esteem and respect. Indeed I think my behaviour hitherto might have spared me such a severe remark.... You charge me with being inconsistent and changeable, in which opinion you are not, I believe, singular; but until you point out to me where I have been so, I shall till then, plead not guilty in my own mind.

War was now brooding over Canada--the fratricidal War of 1812. But for the time Quebec was gay. There was hardly a week without a private ball, Tom wrote in February, 1812; and the a.s.semblies, dinners and suppers were innumerable. He chaffs his sister Christine, whose rheumatic pains had apparently become a kind of family joke, and says that, since they are the enemies of high kicking, her inability longer for this pastime ”is partly the cause of her sounding a retreat to the peaceful shades and grottoes of Murray Bay.” Polly, the other unmarried sister, was more content to be at Murray Bay, with results that led to a family tragedy as we shall see later. Her brother pictures her driving his nag with her carriole through the country; so reckless is she that she is sure to run down some one. ”Does she, proud and high, still continue hopping away to the country weddings?” His request that Pope's Works and _The Spectator_ be sent to him seems to indicate a serious turn of mind. He is sending to Murray Bay _The Lady of the Lake_ and _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ whose middle-aged author was just turning from poetry to win unprecedented success as a writer of fiction. In the spring he goes out shooting for snipe nearly every day; and he sends to Murray Bay for his fis.h.i.+ng tackle. When a fellow officer falls ill he sends him down to Murray Bay for a month.

Soon came a more active life. War with the United States was near and Canada was getting ready. In May, 1812, Malcolm Fraser, led to Quebec from Murray Bay and the intervening parishes what militia he could muster. At the same time, he was made a commissioner to administer the oaths of allegiance: in extreme old age the veteran was ready again to do what he could. The Newfoundland regiment, to which Tom belonged, was ordered to the interior. The storm cloud drew near and burst on June 19th, 1812, in the form of a declaration of war by the United States on Great Britain. The Americans intended to pour troops into Upper Canada, but spa.r.s.ely settled at that time, and quickly to occupy it. The frontier on the Niagara River was the chief danger point and the Newfoundland Regiment was sent up to Lake Ontario to aid in the defence.

On July 3rd, 1812, Tom writes from Kingston in Upper Canada. The news has reached him that war has been declared; and already, busy with the task of placing men and supplies where they will be most needed, he has been the length of Lake Ontario in the _Royal George_; staying two days at York, now Toronto; going thence to Niagara and then sailing back to Kingston. At Kingston there are 1,000 militia and Carleton Island, (where Tom's father had commanded in the War of the American Revolution) has been taken by the British--an inglorious success for its garrison consisted of but three veterans and some women. The adjacent Indians, says the young Captain, ”are anxious to be at the Yankees with their Toma-hawks.” Altogether some exciting campaigns were in prospect and Tom was glad that his family was ”snug at Murray Bay.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH MAP OF LAKE ONTARIO AND R. ST. LAWRENCE TO ILl.u.s.tRATE WAR OF 1812]

There, remote and isolated, they seemed indeed safe--so safe that, to share the security, a general descent of their friends seemed imminent.

At Quebec there was, for a time, something like a panic. ”Every one here,” wrote Mrs. Hale to Miss Nairne ”is in a complete state of anxiety and suspense, not at all knowing whether we shall be attacked, or what may become of us. I have just now seen Colonel Fraser, who a.s.sures me I shall be welcome at your mother's house, in case we should be obliged to leave Quebec. [He] advised my writing for fear you should have applications from other quarters.... Many ladies are going to England.... My spirits are so depressed that I cannot pretend to amuse you with any anecdotes.” Murray Bay offered its hospitality with great heartiness and Mr. Hale wrote, ”I believe all Quebec mean to move towards you if necessary, so you must prepare.”

Quebec was in a flutter of successive excitements, now certain that it was invulnerable, now fearing an immediate descent of the enemy, and always longing for peace. In England the Orders in Council which provoked the war were now revoked, and Malcolm Fraser wrote that this must soon bring peace in America, especially since New England and New York were against the war. Miss Nairne's friend in Quebec, Judge Bowen[23], wrote to her in November, 1812, announcing the armistice for six months, arranged some time before, and a.s.suring the ladies at Murray Bay that all cause for anxiety was now past,--an illusive hope for the armistice was not ratified by President Madison and the war went on. We get echoes of social jealousies that may now amuse us. Sir James Craig, the late Governor, had repressed sternly the aspirations of the French element and had been specially friendly with the Nairne circle; he was indeed a cousin of the Nairnes' relative by marriage, James Ker. But now with Sir George Prevost as Governor things were changed. Sir George came from Halifax and Quebec society looked with green-eyed jealousy upon his ”Halifax people.” ”They are not the right sort,” Judge Bowen wrote to Christine Nairne: