Part 7 (1/2)
If Nairne fell Canada was saved and the gallant young officer did not die in vain.
News travelled slowly in those days but bad news has swifter wings than good; a week after Thomas Nairne fell the particulars of his death had reached Quebec. It was Judge Bowen's painful duty to send to Murray Bay the intelligence he had received from Nairne's Colonel. He wrote to Mr.
Le Courtois, the cure, giving the sad news and adding ”I understand that the enemy have since crossed over to their own side.... Would to G.o.d their visit had fallen upon any other head than that of our poor friends.” He begged Mr. Le Courtois, who, himself an exile from France because of the Revolution, had witnessed many sad days, to be the minister of consolation at this time. ”You will, I am sure be the friend of the distressed and instil into their bosoms that peace which, I am afraid, nothing but your a.s.sistance and time can restore to them.” Mr.
Le Courtois was to hand to Miss Nairne a touching and wise letter from Bowen. ”Do not, my dear Miss Nairne,” he wrote, ”give way to feelings but too natural upon a trying moment like this but rather exert yourself to speak comfort and consolation to your dear Mother. Recall to her that we are all but sojourners here on earth and that he is but gone before to those blessed mansions of eternal peace and happiness where she will one day meet him never to part again.” Old Malcolm Fraser sent the sad news to Tom's friends in Scotland. ”I am not fit to write much,”
he said, but he found comfort in the thought that the young Captain died gallantly and that the enemy ”must have suffered great loss of men, as they were entirely drove off the Field and they lost a piece of cannon.
But, alas! all this can afford little consolation to his good and afflicted mother.”
Nairne's body was not allowed to remain where he had fallen. Judge Bowen thought he ought to lie at Quebec beside his soldier father and this was also in accord with Mrs. Nairne's wishes. Colonel Morrison, the officer in command on the field where Nairne fell, had already been transferred to the garrison at Quebec and every attention was paid to the task.
Bowen ordered a strong oak coffin, large enough to contain that in which Nairne was buried, and with this itself in an outer box a man was sent to bring back the body. He bore a letter from the Bishop of Quebec to the clergyman who had buried Nairne. All was carried out as arranged. A second time Nairne's body was taken from the grave where it had been laid and its bearer began his long winter journey to Quebec. The sleigh with its sad burden, a moving dark speck on a white background, made its slow way along the wintry roads and by the sh.o.r.es of the ice bound St.
Lawrence. We can picture the awed solemnity with which the French Canadian peasants heard the story of Nairne's fall as his body rested for the night in inn or farm yard. On January 20th, 1814, Bowen wrote to Mr. Le Courtois that the body would arrive by Sat.u.r.day as it was at Berthier on the previous day when the stage pa.s.sed.
The funeral took place at one o'clock on the 26th of January, 1814. Of the people of Murray Bay a single unnamed habitant was present, a man detained by Bowen in Quebec that he might witness the ceremony and carry back an account of it to his home. ”I examined the body,” wrote Bowen briefly of what must have been a grim task, ”with the a.s.sistance of my friend Buchanan and there cannot now be the smallest doubt as to the ident.i.ty of it. He was buried poor Fellow in the Cloathes he wore when killed. His Regimental Jackit and shoes which were put into his coffin I found in it upon opening it and have taken them out and will preserve them for his poor friends if so melancholy a Remembrance of him should be desired by them.” The lock of hair cut off by Colonel Plenderleath at the funeral was brought to Quebec by young Sewell, one of Nairne's companions; the remainder of his effects, sent forward in a box, seem to have been lost on the way. At the funeral the six senior Captains in Quebec were his pall bearers and the mourners were fellow officers of the 49th and Quebec friends of his family--well-known names--Caldwell, McCord, Stewart, Hale, Mountain, Dunn and Bowen himself. A great crowd was present. ”Never,” wrote Bowen to Miss Nairne, ”was a funeral at Quebec more generally attended.” The death of the young officer was too tragic not to call forth the sympathy of a wide circle. Eulogies were p.r.o.nounced upon him and they said only what was true--that a soldier, brave, lovable and promising had fallen on the field of honour.
[Footnote 22: See Appendix G., p. 287. ”The Cures of Malbaie”.]
[Footnote 23: Bowen's career was remarkable. He continued on the bench until 1866, having held the office of a Judge in Canada for well nigh sixty years.]
[Footnote 24: He had recently died, and it did not diminish the Nairnes'
interest in him that he left 5,000 to their relative Ker.]
CHAPTER VII
A FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE
Life at Murray Bay after Captain Nairne's death.--Letters from Europe.--Death of Malcolm Fraser.--Death of Colonel Nairne's widow and children.--His grandson John Nairne, seigneur.--Village life.--The Church's influence.--The habitant's tenacity.--His cottage.--His labours.--His amus.e.m.e.nts.--The Church's missionary work in the villages.--The powers of the bishop.--His visitations.--The organization of the parish.--The powers of the _fabrique_.--Lay control of Church finance.--The cure's t.i.the.--The best intellects enter the Church.--A native Canadian clergy.--The cure's social life.--The Church and Temperance Reform.--The diligence of the cures.--The habitant's taste for the supernatural.--The belief in goblins.--Prayer in the family.--The habitant as voter.--The office of Churchwarden.--The Church's influence in elections.--The seigneur's position,--The habitant's obligations to him.--Rent day and New Year's Day.--The seigneur's social rank.--The growth of discontent in the villages.--The evils of Seigniorial Tenure.--Agitation against the system.--Its abolition in 1854.--The last of the Nairnes.--The Nairne tomb in Quebec.
With the death of Thomas Nairne almost end the dramatic events in the history of the family. It remains briefly to bring this to its conclusion, and to add to it some general account of a village of French Canada in the past and in the present. Captain Nairne's mother was now the owner of the property and it continued in her competent hands until her death in 1828. ”Polly's” marriage had taken that daughter away and, though there was a reconciliation, no longer was the Manor House her home. Mrs. McNicol (with her husband and children) and Christine Nairne still lived there with the widow of Colonel Nairne, and life went on much as before, save that its interests were now narrowed to Murray Bay; no more was there an outside career, such as the young Captain's, to watch.
When Thomas Nairne was killed the struggle against Napoleon in Europe had reached a supreme crisis. Occasional letters to Murray Bay give glimpses of great events. On March 16th, 1814, an Edinburgh friend writes to Christine: ”The Castle was fired to-day in honour of the successes of our allies in France who have again routed Bonaparte, who has retreated to Paris. His enemies are within twenty-five miles of that capital so we must hope that the Tyrant's fate is at the Crisis and that we shall soon enjoy the blessings of a permanent peace; much has Bony to answer for.” Ker wrote a little later from Edinburgh to say that Bonaparte ”is now a prisoner on board of one of our 74 gun s.h.i.+ps,” and to express the hope that by his fall Britons will soon get quit of the property tax.
On March 17th, 1815, we hear from another correspondent of the renewed firing of the Castle guns at Edinburgh, this time to announce the arrival from America of the ratification of Peace with the United States. ”We only regret this had not been settled before the disastrous affair at New Orleans where we have lost so many brave men and able generals, but such are the horrors of war.” Just as this peace came in America renewed war broke out in Europe. ”That monster Bonaparte a fortnight since landed and raised the standard of rebellion in the south of France. The accounts from there are very contradictory.” On March 22nd the news seems better. ”Troops are a.s.sembling in defence of France and the traitor does not seem to have any adherents, so we would fain hope all may go well.” The writer, a Miss Beck, sends, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of Murray Bay, the book ”Guy Mannering,” which is ”in very high repute ... the author unknown, but very generally thought to be Walter Scott, the Poet.”
The hope that all would go well in regard to Bonaparte was soon dissipated. Ker wrote on April 10th, 1815, a bitter letter:
We were flattering ourselves with being at Peace with the whole world when like a thunderbolt, the tremendous news of the monster Buonaparte's Escape from Elba, his landing and rapid progress through France, and the second Expulsion of the unhappy Bourbons burst upon us!... We have the immediate prospect of being involved in a b.l.o.o.d.y and interminable war, the consequences of which no man can foretell. The French army, Marshalls, and Generals have covered themselves with indelible Disgrace and shewn themselves, what I always thought them, the most perfidious and perjured traitors and miscreants that the world ever produced, and the rest of the French Nation are a set of the most unprincipled Knaves and Cowards that ever were recorded in history. I trust however that their punishment is at hand and that the Almighty will speedily hurl vengeance on their guilty heads. Among other evils, a new tax on Property, with additions, is said to be in immediate contemplation and G.o.d knows how we shall bear all the acc.u.mulating Burdens to which this Country must be subjected.
Just at this time came old Malcolm Fraser's end. At the age of 82 he died on June 17th, 1815, the day before the battle of Waterloo. He had entered the army in 1757 and apparently was still serving in the Canadian militia at the time of his death so that his military career covered well nigh sixty years. One instruction given in his will is characteristic; it is that his body might ”be committed to the earth or water, as it may happen, and with as little ceremony and expense as may be consistent with decency.” His removal was a heavy blow to the family at the Manor House. It was Christine who kept most in touch with the outside world and to her the letters of the period are nearly all addressed. They contained the gossip of Quebec,--how in December, 1814, a Mr. Lyman--”a bad name for a true story to come from,”--had brought word of peace negotiations at Ghent; news of General Procter's Court Martial and of a fee of 500 paid to Andrew Stuart, one of the lawyers in the case. The letters are few and in 1817 they cease altogether.
During the spring of the year Christine had been ailing. On a June day she drove out for an airing and, as she alighted from the carriage, expired instantly. The feeling of the Protestant family towards the Roman Catholic Church is shown in the fact that she left a small legacy to the cure, Mr. Le Courtois.
There now remained but two daughters. In May, 1821, ”Polly” died in Quebec at Judge Bowen's house. Her old mother followed in 1828. Of Colonel Nairne's large family but one child remained, Mrs. McNicol. Her husband, Peter McNicol, appears to have been a quiet and retiring man and of him we hear little. He was an officer in the local militia and, in 1830, became a Captain in the second Battalion of the County of Saguenay. There were two sons, Thomas and John. Thomas, the elder, was to get the estate at Murray Bay; for John India was talked of; but his mother could not let him go--”our family has been too unlucky by going there.” In 1826, when a youth of twenty, Thomas made a tour in Europe.
Then, or later, the young man fell into dissipated habits and he died in early manhood. There remained only John. When he came of age in 1829 he too travelled in Europe; in April he was at Rome and there saw the newly-elected Pope, Pius VIII. He returned to Canada quite a man of the world and for a time lived in Quebec, engaged in business. But in 1834 when his father Peter McNicol died[25] John's prospects changed. The seigniory belonged to his mother, during her lifetime, but he was the heir. It seemed desirable that the name of the first seigneur should be continued and, in 1834, by royal warrant, John McNicol adopted the name and arms of Nairne. Once more was there a John Nairne. In 1837 we find him empowered to take the oath of allegiance from the habitants--to show that they were not in sympathy with the rebel Papineau. His mother, the old Colonel's last surviving child, died in 1839. She was a kindly woman, of genial temper, with a fine faculty for friends.h.i.+p; so intimate was she with Malcolm Fraser's daughter that she wrote ”I do believe, nay am sure, she has not a thought with which I am not made acquainted.” She never lost her sympathy with young people and her delight in their ”innocent gaiety.”
As in 1762, so now again in 1839, a John Nairne ruled at Murray Bay. The young seigneur soon took a wife. In 1841 he married Miss Catherine Leslie, of a well known Canadian family, a bride of only seventeen, and then settled down at Murray Bay to live the life of a country gentleman.
He became Colonel in the militia, took some part in politics on the Conservative side, and studied agriculture. He was resolved to keep up the dignity of his position and set about rebuilding the manor house.
The work was begun in 1845 and completed by the autumn of 1847; the new structure with little change is the present Manor. It is of stone covered with wood, a capacious dwelling with some fine rooms, and admirably suited to its purpose. To John Nairne an heir was born in 1842 and named John Leslie Nairne and the prospect seemed excellent for the final establishment of a Nairne dynasty in the seigniory. But, alas, this was not to be. The child died in his third year and the last of the Nairnes ruled at Murray Bay knowing that with himself the family should become extinct.
We must turn now to study the type of community of which he was the chief. A singular type it is, French in speech, Roman Catholic in faith, half feudal in organization, in a land British in allegiance, if not in origin. Long the determined rival of the Briton in America the French Canadian, though worsted in the struggle, remains still unconquered in his determination to live his own separate life and pursue his own separate ideals. When the British took Canada they fondly imagined that in a few years a little pressure would bring the French Canadians into the Protestant fold.[26] Immediately after the conquest preparations for this gradual absorption were made. The Roman Catholics were to be undisturbed but, as soon as a majority in any parish was Protestant, a clergyman of that faith would be appointed and the parish church would be given over to the Protestant wors.h.i.+p. The minority would, it was hoped, acquiesce, and, in time, adopt the creed of the majority. The most illuminating comment upon these expectations is the fact that, during the half century after the conquest, Protestantism made probably not more than half a dozen converts among the Canadians, while of Protestants coming to the country during that time hundreds went over to the Church of Rome. In other ways too the type in French Canada has proved curiously persistent. A Lowland Scot of twenty-five married an Irish woman of twenty-three and went to live in a French Canadian parish. Hitherto they had spoken only English but after twenty-five years they could not even understand it when heard. They explained that at first they spoke English to each other but when the children went to school they used only French. So the parents yielded ”_C'etait les enfants, M'sieu!_”
A modern critic of France[27] has announced, as a sounding paradox, that the French, even of present-day anti-clerical France, are a profoundly religious people. Certainly this appears in France's efforts in Canada.