Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush (8 page)

Another lady of the same stamp, the daughter of a tavern-keeper, was indignant at being introduced to a gentleman, whose father had followed the same calling.

Such persons seem to forget, that as long as people retain their natural manners, and remain true to the dignity of their humanity, they cannot with any justice be called vulgar; for vulgarity consists in presumptuously affecting to be what we are not, and in claiming distinctions which we do not deserve, and which no one else would admit.

The farmer, in his homespun, may possess the real essentials which make the gentleman – good feeling, and respect for the feelings of others. The homely dress, weather-beaten face, and hard hands, could not deprive him of the honest independence and genial benevolence he derived from nature. No real gentleman would treat such a man, however humble his circumstances, with insolence or contempt. But place the same man out of his class, dress him in the height of fashion, and let him attempt to imitate the manners of the great, and the whole world would laugh at the counterfeit.

Uneducated, ignorant people often rise by their industry to great wealth in the colony; to such the preference shown to the educated man always seems a puzzle. Their ideas of gentility consist in being the owners of fine clothes, fine houses, splendid furniture, expensive equipages, and plenty of money. They have all these, yet even the most ignorant feel that something else is required. They cannot comprehend the mysterious ascendancy of mind over mere animal enjoyments; yet they have sense enough, by bestowing a liberal education on their children, to endeavour, at least in their case, to remedy the evil.

The affectation of wishing people to think that you had been better off in the mother country than in Canada, is not confined to the higher class of emigrants. The very poorest are the most remarked for this ridiculous boasting. A servant girl of mine told me, with a very grand toss of the head, “that she did not choose to
demane
hersel’ by scrubbing a floor; that she belonged to the
ra’al gintry
in the ould counthry, and her papa and mamma niver brought her up to hard work.”

This interesting scion of the aristocracy was one of the coarsest specimens of female humanity I ever beheld. If I called her to bring a piece of wood for the parlour fire, she would thrust her tangled, uncombed red head in at the door, and shout at the top of her voice, “Did yer holler?”

One of our working men, wishing to impress me with the dignity of his wife’s connexions, said with all becoming solemnity of look and manner –

“Doubtless, ma’am, you have heard in the ould counthry of Connor’s racers: Margaret’s father kept those racers.”

When I recalled the person of the individual whose fame was so widely spread at home, and thought of the racers, I could hardly keep a “straight face,” as an American friend terms laughing, when you are bound to look grave.

One want is greatly felt here; but it is to be hoped that a more liberal system of education and higher moral culture will remedy the evil. There is a great deficiency among our professional men and wealthy traders of that nice sense of honour that marks the conduct and dealings of the same class at home. Of course many bright exceptions are to be found in the colony, but too many of the Canadians think it no disgrace to take every advantage of the ignorance and inexperience of strangers.

If you are not smart enough to drive a close bargain, they consider it only fair to take you in. A man loses very little in the public estimation by making over all his property to some convenient friend, in order to defraud his creditors, while he retains a competency for himself.

Women, whose husbands have been detained on the limits for years for debt, will give large parties and dress in the most expensive style. This would be thought dishonourable at home, but is considered no disgrace here.

“Honour is all very well in an old country like England,” said a lady, with whom I had been arguing on the subject; “but, Mrs. M—, it won’t do in a new country like this. You may as well cheat as be cheated. For my part, I never lose an advantage by indulging in such foolish notions.”

I have no doubt that a person who entertained such principles would not fail to reduce them to practice.

The idea that some country people form of an author is highly amusing. One of my boys was tauntingly told by another lad at school, “that his ma’ said that Mrs. M—invented lies, and got money for them.” This was her estimation of works of mere fiction.

Once I was driven by a young Irish friend to call upon the wife of a rich farmer in the country. We were shewn by
the master of the house into a very handsomely furnished room, in which there was no lack of substantial comfort, and even of some elegancies, in the shape of books, pictures, and a piano. The good man left us to inform his wife of our arrival, and for some minutes we remained in solemn state, until the mistress of the house made her appearance.

She had been called from the washtub, and, like a sensible woman, was not ashamed of her domestic occupation. She came in wiping the suds from her hands on her apron, and gave us a very hearty and friendly welcome. She was a short, stout, middle-aged woman, with a very pleasing countenance; and though only in her coloured flannel working-dress, with a nightcap on her head, and spectacled nose, there was something in her frank good-natured face that greatly prepossessed us in her favour.

After giving us the common compliments of the day, she drew her chair just in front of me, and, resting her elbows on her knees, and dropping her chin between her hands, she sat regarding me with such a fixed gaze that it became very embarrassing.

“So,” says she, at last, “you are Mrs. M—?”

“Yes.”

“The woman that writes?”

“The same.”

She drew back her chair for a few paces, with a deep-drawn sigh, in which disappointment and surprise seemed strangely to mingle. “Well, I have he’rd a great deal about you, and I wanted to see you bad for a long time; but you are only a humly person like myself after all. Why I do think, if I had on my best gown and cap, I should look a great deal younger and better than you.”

I told her that I had no doubt of the fact.

“And pray,” continued she, with the same provoking scrutiny, “how old do you call yourself?” I told her my exact age.

“Humph!” quoth she, as if she rather doubted my word, “two years younger nor me! you look a great deal older nor that.”

After a long pause, and another searching gaze, “Do you call those teeth your own?”

“Yes,” said I, laughing; for I could retain my gravity no longer; “in the very truest sense of the word they are mine, as God gave them to me.”

“You luckier than your neighbours,” said she. “But airn’t you greatly troubled with headaches? ”

“No,” said I, rather startled at this fresh interrogatory.

“My!” exclaimed she, “I thought you must be, your eyes are so sunk in your head. Well, well, so you are Mrs. M—of Belleville, the woman that writes. You are but a humly body after all.”

While this curious colloquy was going on, my poor Irish friend sat on thorns, and tried, by throwing in a little judicious blarney, to soften the thrusts of the home truths to which he had unwittingly exposed me. Between every pause in the conversation, he broke in with –“I am sure Mrs. M—is a fine-looking woman – a very young-looking woman for her age. Any person might know at a glance that those teeth were her own. They look too natural to be false.”

Now, I am certain that the poor little woman never meant to wound my feelings, nor give me offence. She literally spoke her thoughts, and I was too much amused with the whole scene to feel the least irritated by her honest bluntness. She expected to find in an author something quite out of the common way, and I did not come up at all to her expectations.

Her opinion of me was not more absurd than the remarks of two ladies who, after calling upon me for the first time, communicated the result of their observations to a mutual friend.

“We have seen Mrs. M—, and we were so surprised to find her just like other people!”

“What did you expect to see in her?”

“Oh, something very different. We were very much disappointed.”

“That she was not sitting upon her head,” said my friend, smiling; “I like Mrs. M—, because she is in every respect like other people; and I should not have taken her for a blue-stocking at all.”

The sin of authorship meets with little toleration in a new country. Several persons of this class, finding few minds that could sympathise with them, and enter into their literary pursuits, have yielded to despondency, or fallen victims to that insidious enemy of souls,
Canadian whisky
. Such a spirit was the unfortunate Dr. Huskins, late of Frankfort on the river Trent. The fate of this gentleman, who was a learned and accomplished man of genius, left a very sad impression on my mind. Like too many of that highly-gifted, but unhappy fraternity, he struggled through his brief life, overwhelmed with the weight of undeserved calumny, and his peace of mind embittered with the most galling neglect and poverty.

The want of sympathy experienced by him from men of his own class, pressed sorely upon the heart of the sensitive man of talent and refinement; he found very few who could appreciate or understand his mental superiority, which was pronounced as folly and madness by the ignorant persons about him. A new country, where all are rushing eagerly forward in order to secure the common necessaries of life, is not a favourable soil in which to nourish the bright fancies
and delusive dreams of the poet. Dr. Huskins perceived his error too late, when he no longer retained the means to remove to a more favourable spot, – and his was not a mind which could meet and combat successfully with the ills of life. He endeavoured to bear proudly the evils of his situation, but he had neither the energy nor the courage to surmount them. He withdrew himself from society, and passed the remainder of his days in a solitary, comfortless, log hut on the borders of the wilderness. Here he drooped and died, as too many like him have died, heartbroken and alone. A sad mystery involves the last hours of his life: it is said that he and Dr. Sutor, another talented but very dissipated man, had entered into a compact to drink until they both died. Whether this statement is true cannot now be positively ascertained. It is certain, however, that Dr. Sutor was found dead upon the floor of the miserable shanty occupied by his friend, and that Dr. Huskins was lying on his bed in the agonies of death. Could the many fine poems, composed by Dr. Huskins in his solitary exile, be collected and published, we feel assured that posterity would do him justice, and that his name would rank high among the bards of the green isle.

Alas! this frightful vice of drinking prevails throughout the colony to an alarming extent. Professional gentlemen are not ashamed of being seen issuing from the bar-room of a tavern early in the morning, or of being caught reeling home from the same sink of iniquity late at night. No sense of shame seems to deter them from the pursuit of their darling sin. I have heard that some of these regular topers place brandy beside their beds that, should they awake during the night, they may have within their reach the fiery potion for which they are bartering body and soul. Some of these persons, after having been warned of their danger by repeated fits of
delirium tremens
, have joined the tee-totallers; but their abstinence only lasted until the re-establishment of their health enabled them to return to their old haunts, and become more hardened in their vile habits than before. It is to be questioned whether the signing of any pledge is likely to prove a permanent remedy for this great moral evil. If an appeal to the heart and conscience, and the fear of incurring the displeasure of an offended God, are not sufficient to deter a man from becoming an active instrument in the ruin of himself and family, no forcible restraint upon his animal desires will be likely to effect a real reformation. It appears to me that the temperance people begin at the wrong end of the matter, by restraining the animal propensities before they have convinced the mind. If a man abstain from drink
only as long as the accursed thing is placed beyond his reach, it is after all but a negative virtue, to be overcome by the first strong temptation. Were incurable drunkards treated as lunatics, and a proper asylum provided for them in every large town, and the management of their affairs committed to their wives or adult children, the bare idea of being confined under such a plea would operate more forcibly upon them than by signing a pledge, which they can break or resume according to the caprice of the moment.

A drunkard, while under the influence of liquor, is a madman in every sense of the word, and his mental aberration is often of the most dangerous kind. Place him and the confirmed maniac side by side, and it would be difficult for a stranger to determine which was the most irrational of the two.

A friend related to me the following anecdote of a physician in his native town: – This man, who was eminent in his profession, and highly respected by all who knew him, secretly indulged in the pernicious habit of dram-drinking, and after a while bade fair to sink into a hopeless drunkard. At the earnest solicitations of his weeping wife and daughter he consented to sign the pledge, and not only ardent spirits but every sort of intoxicating beverage was banished from the house.