Part 25

“A Mrs. Perry, to whom I went to school, had two sons away fighting. One day some Indians arrived, several of them wearing extra long scalp-belts, and one had in his belt a scalp with long yellow hair. Mrs. Perry said she knew that was her son’s hair; and anyway the son was never heard of again, as far as I know.

“On the occasion that the officer came to search for arms his troop evidently thought he was staying a good while, for sometimes they would try to approach the house a little nearer, when he would go to the door and wave them back. On their tour through the country they burned every grist-mill, so that the people would be starved out, and then of course we had to pound our grain as best we could. My uncle had a grist-mill and a saw-mill. He also had a daughter of sixteen, a lovely girl. When they had demolished the grist-mill they turned their attention to the other, but the girl was determined to save it, and as fast as a man would set it alight in one place she would pour water on it, until at last they admired her courage and bravery so much that the officer in charge ordered a man to help her destroy everything which would mean the least danger from fire and that the saw-mill was to be let alone.

“My father was also all through ’37, and when the first troubles came and our streets were full of shouting mounted rebels he waited for no orders but got supplies on his own account, trusting that some day the authorities would repay him, and his regiment was equipped and sent off without delay; he was colonel of the 4th Middlesex. If I had had anything to do with those times there would have been no question of making prisoners--shoot the dogs and be done with it. What business had they coming over here to stir up peaceable people, first in 1812 and then in 1837. Father saw no real fighting in ’37, except that in connection with the taking of Theller and the _Anne_, but he was in Windsor at the time of the Hume tragedy. Hume was skinned, and they said they were going to make drumheads out of the skin. When the brigands left his body hanging on the posts they went to Prince’s place, cut the trees, destroyed the fences, and frightened Mrs. Prince out of her senses.

“I saw Sutherland and Theller when they passed through St. Thomas on their way to Toronto for trial. My father as Colonel was president of the court-martial, and at that time he received many threatening letters, scores of them, saying that if any American lives were taken he and all his race would be killed. He laughed at this, saying that they evidently knew very little about a court-martial, for as president he had really less to say than the youngest officer in the room.

“At the beginning of the troubles in St. Thomas the Loyalists one day took refuge in an upper room of a big building, thinking they were going to be surrounded by rebels below; they were surrounded, but I don’t remember that anything hostile was intended. One of those in the upper room threw an axe out of the window and it fell on a man’s head, splitting his face open, and he was carried home on a stretcher, covered with a white cloth. I suppose he died afterwards. My husband was away with the militia, and I was terrified at being left alone with a maid-servant and a servant boy. One day a lot of them came in front of the house, and furiously began to pull the palings of the fence down, one of them shouting, ‘A Tory lives here; we’ll not leave a stick for him to see! We’ll burn the house, too!’ A magistrate came along just then and caught the fellow by the throat, calling him a rebel, had him arrested, and the rest of them left my premises. I was afraid they would return to carry out their threat, and got a man to come and watch all night, but they did not reappear. A party of the rebels were somewhere near, and our men wanted to catch them, but we were poorly supplied with ammunition. I was in a shop and heard the proprietor of it talking to another man, lamenting the lack of bullets, so I said, ‘Give me the moulds, and give me all the lead you have, and to-morrow you shall have all the bullets you can carry.’ So they did, and I and my woman-servant sat up the whole of that night melting lead and running bullets, and when the men came for them next day there was nothing too much for them to say, and they went away cheering me. The thing got into the American papers, which said that even the Canadian ladies were so earnest in the war that they sat up all night running bullets. When my servant and I were making them we had two moulds, one cooling while we filled the other. After the bullets were emptied into the cold water of course they were not smooth, and we each had a knife to cut off the part adhering; so there we sat in silence that whole night, filling and cutting, the silly maid weeping steadily. She was a young Scotch girl just out, and she cried all through the night as she worked. I gave the men their balls, saying, ‘Every bullet should find a billet,’ but they did not catch their party of rebels.

“Talbot’s likeness to William IV. was specially commented on when 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.