Picturesque Quebec : a sequel to Quebec past and present Part 17

Quebec, 6th July, 1838.

(From _Waifs in Verse_, by G. W. Wicksteed, Q.C., Law Clerk, House of Commons of Canada, 1878.)

To which melting address the "Inconstants," on their way to Britain, feelingly replied. Our s.p.a.ce allows us to insert but a few stanzas of this poetical lament.

All language fails to tell how much We value your address, Or say how deeply we partake The feelings you express.

Those _Hastings_ are a hasty set, And left you in a hurry; Those _Malabars_ are malapert, And hot as Indian curry.

Be true, and then the breath of May Shall fill our sails and bring Our willing steps and eager hearts, And _Spring_--and _Pring_--and _Ring_.

And each of you for one of ours Shall change her maiden name, And as we are all _Inconstants_, you Of course will be the same.

Kamouraska, August, 1838.

Here we stand on the princ.i.p.al artery of the commerce of the city, St.

Peter street, having a width of only twenty-four feet. St. Peter street is probably not so ancient as its sister, Sault-au-Matelot street. St. Peter street was so named in memory of Messire Pierre le Voyer d'Argenson, who, in 1658, came to Quebec as successor to M. de Lauzon. M. d'Argenson was, in 1661, succeeded by the Baron d'Avaugour.

On the site on which the Quebec Bank [86] was erected in 1863, there stood the offices, the vaults, and the wharf of the well-known merchant, John Lymburner. There were three Lymburners: John, lost at sea in the fall of 1775, Mathew, and Adam, the most able of the three; they were, no doubt related to each other. The loyalty of Adam, towards the British Crown, in 1775, was more than suspected; his oratorical powers, however, and his knowledge of const.i.tutional law, made him a fit delegate to England in 1791, to plead the cause of the colony before the Metropolitan authorities. His speech on the occasion is reported in the _Canadian Review_, published at Montreal in 1826.

Colonel Henry Caldwell states that, in 1775, Governor Guy Carleton had ordered a cannon to be pointed from the wharf on which stood Lymburner's house, with the intention to open fire upon the _Bostonais_, should they attempt a surprise on the Sault-au-Matelot quarter. Ma.s.sive and strongly built stone vaults (probably of French origin), are still extant beneath the house adjoining, to the south of this last, belonging to the heirs Atkinson.

On the site of the offices of Mr. McGie stood, in 1759, the warehouse of M. Perrault, _l'aine_, from a great number of letters and invoice-bills found in the garret, and which a friend [87] has placed at our disposal, it would seem that M. Perrault had extensive commercial relations both in Canada and in France. A curious letter to M. Perrault, from Bigot's notorious councillor, Estebe, then in Bordeaux, was found in this tenement. It discloses a sad state of things in Old France. This old doc.u.ment dates of 24th February, 1760, a few months subsequent to the Battle of the Plains and a few weeks prior to that of Ste. Foye, in April, 1760.

"BORDEAUX, 24th February, 1760.

"_To Monsieur Perrault,_

Quebec:

"SIR,--It was with heartfelt pleasure I received your favour of the 7th November last, since, in spite of your misfortunes, it apprized me of the fact that both you and your lady were well.

"I feel grateful for the sympathy you express in our troubles during our pa.s.sage from Quebec to Bordeaux. I wish I could as easily forget the misfortunes of Canada as I do the annoyances we suffered on the voyage.

"We learned, _via_ England, by the end of October last, the unfortunate fate of Quebec. You can imagine how we felt on hearing of such dreadful news I could contain neither my tears nor my regrets on learning the loss of a city and country to which I owe everything, and to which I am as sincerely attached as any of the natives. We flattered ourselves that the silence the English had kept during all last summer on their operation was of good omen for us, and that they would be ignominiously compelled to raise the siege; we had even an indistinct knowledge of the repulse they had met with at Montmorency (31st July, 1759); we knew that our troops followed them closely wherever they attempted to land. We have erred like you in the hopes we cherished. What fatality, what calamity and how many events unknown to us have led to your downfall? You do not know, my dear Sir, of the extent of your misfortunes. You imagine that the loss of the remainder of the colony is close at hand. You are right. This cannot be otherwise, since the relief which is sent to you from France cannot prevent that. The small help which Canadians expected from the payment of some Treasury notes is taken away from them; none are paid since the 15th of October last. This, then, is the overwhelming blow to all our hopes! The Treasury notes of the other colonies are generally in the same predicament; the King pays none, and the nation groans under taxation. No credit, no confidence, anywhere; no commerce nor s.h.i.+pments; a general bankruptcy in all the cities of France. The kingdom is in the greatest desolation possible. Our armies have been beaten everywhere; our navy no more exists--our s.h.i.+ps have been either captured or burnt on the coasts where the enemy has driven them ash.o.r.e, Admiral de Conflans having been defeated in getting out of the harbor of Brest. In one word, we are in a state of misery and humiliation without precedent. The finances of the King are in fearful disorder; he has had to send his plate to the Mint. The _Seigneurs_ have followed his example, and private individuals are compelled to sell their valuables in order to live and pay the onerous taxes which weigh on them. At the present moment, by Royal order, an inventory is being taken of the silver of all the churches of the kingdom. No doubt it will have to be sent to the Mint, and payment will be made when that of the Treasury notes takes place--that is, _when it pleases G.o.d_. Such is a summary of what now occurs here. How I regret, my dear Sir, the merry days I spent in Canada! I would like to be there still if matters were as formerly. I could own a _turn-out_ there, whereas I go on foot, like a dog, through the mud of Bordeaux, where I certainly do not live in the style I did in Quebec. Please G.o.d this iron age may soon end! We flattered ourselves this winter that peace would soon be proclaimed; it is much talked of, but I see no signs of it. It will, it is said, require another campaign to complete the ruin, and to postpone more and more the payment of the Treasury notes. What will be the ultimate fate of these bills is very hard to say. It is unlikely any settlement of them will be made before peace is concluded. My opinion is that nothing will be lost on the bills, which are registered, but I cannot say the same of the exchange, which is not registered, since payment has been stopped. The Government has refused to register any bills, even some which had been sent to me, and which were payable in 1758. I negotiated some registered ones here and in Paris at 50 per cent. discount. Non-registered ones are valueless, and you get few purchasers even for registered bills. Four richly laden vessels belonging to the West India Company (_Compagnie des Indes_) have arrived lately. This was very opportune, as the Company was rather shaky. However, it never failed to pay the "Beaver Bills," and has even accepted those which had not yet fallen due. Our affairs on the coast of Coromandel are like the rest--in a bad way. Fears are entertained for Pondicherry. The English are arming a large expedition for Martinique. That island will have the same fate as Guadeloupe. The succor sent out to you, if ever it reaches you, of which I doubt, consists in six merchant s.h.i.+ps, laden with 1,600 tons of provisions, some munitions of war, and 400 soldiers from Isle Royal. I believe this relief is sent to you more through a sense of honour than from any desire (as none exists) to help you. Many flatter themselves you will retake Quebec this winter. I wish you may, but I do not believe you will. This would require to be undertaken by experienced and determined men, and even then such attempts fail. [88] Remember me to your dear wife. Kiss my little friend (your boy) for me. I reserve him when he comes to France a gilt horse and a silver carriage. My wife and family beg to be remembered.

Yours, &c.,

(Sd) ESTEBE.

P.S.--Your brother is always at La Roch.e.l.le. Since I am at Bordeaux, out of 80 vessels which left South America, one only has arrived here.

You can fancy how trade stagnates. A singular distrust exists everywhere. The exchange of ---- and other good houses is refused.

Those who want to remit to Paris have to get their specie carried.

6th March, 1760.

The hospital of Toulouse is just short of nine millions. Bankrupts everywhere merchants and others.

St. Peter street has become the general headquarters of the most important commerce, and of life insurance and fire a.s.surance offices. The financial inst.i.tutions are there proudly enthroned: the Bank of Montreal (founded in 1818 and incorporated in 1828), Bank of Quebec (founded in 1817), the Union Bank (founded in 1865), the Banque Nationale (founded in 1873), the Bank of British North America (founded in 1836, incorporated in 1840, opened at Quebec in 1837), the Merchants' Bank (founded in 1861).

In this street resided, in 1774, the Captain Bouchette, who, in the following year, in his little craft, _Le Gaspe_, brought us back our brave Governor, Guy Carleton; M. Bouchard, merchant, M. Panet, N.P. (the father of His Lords.h.i.+p, Bishop B.C. Panet), as also M. Boucher, Harbor Master of Quebec, "(who was appointed to that post by the Governor, Sir R.

S. Milnes, on the recommendation of the Duke of Kent.)." [89] Boucher had piloted the vessel, having on board the 7th Regiment, (the Duke's), from Quebec to Halifax.

The office in which the _Quebec Morning Chronicle_ has been published since 1847, belonged in 1759 to M. Jean Tache, "President of the Mercantile Body," "an honest, and sensible man," as appears by _Memoirs sur le Canada_, (1749-60). One of our first poets, he composed a poem "_On the Sea_." The ancestor of the late Sir E. P. Tache, and of the novelist, Jos. Marmette and others, he possessed, at that period, extensive buildings on the Napoleon wharf, which were destroyed by fire in 1845, and a house in the country, on the Ste. Foye road, afterwards called "Holland House," after Major Samuel Holland, our first Provincial Surveyor-General, whose services as surveyor and engineer were subsequently so conspicuous at Quebec and at Prince Edward Island.

The _Chronicle_ building, during nearly half a century, was a coffee house, much frequented by sea-faring men, known as the "Old Neptune" Inn.

The effigy of the sea-G.o.d, armed with his formidable trident, placed over the main entrance, seemed to threaten the pa.s.sers-by. We can remember, as yesterday, his colossal proportions. "Old Neptune" [90] has disappeared about thirty years back.

_THE OLD NEPTUNE INN._

"Shall I not take mine ease in mine Inn."

--_Shakespeare_.

"The Golden Fleece was the oldest tavern in Corinth. It had been the resort of sea-faring men from the remotest period."--(_Travels of Herodotus in Greece_, 460 _B.C._)

When the brilliant Henry Ward Beecher p.r.o.nounced Quebec an _Old Curiosity Shop_, we are induced to think that amidst its acc.u.mulated antiquarian relics, its church pictures and madonnas, its famous battle-fields, its historical monuments, ma.s.sive fortifications and wondrous scenery,--more than one of the quaint French dwellings with their peaked gables, and walls four feet thick, must have caught his observant eye. However striking Ward Beecher's word-painting may be, it would I opine, have required the marvellous pencil of the author of "_The House with the Seven Gables_," Nathaniel Hawthorne, becomingly to portray all the _arcana_ of such a building as the _Chien d'Or_ (the old Post Office), with its ghastly memories of blood and revenge.

The legendary moss cl.u.s.tering round these h.o.a.ry piles, is not, however, always dark and gloomy. Love, war, adventure, occasionally lend them their exciting or their soft glamour. Sometimes the annals of commerce entwine them with a green wreath--a sure talisman against the rust of oblivion. It is one of the land marks of commerce we purpose here briefly to describe.

At the foot of Mountain Hill, lies our chief emporium of news, labelled for more than a quarter of a century, _Morning Chronicle_ Office. These premises stand on a very conspicuous site, viz., at the foot of Mountain Hill, the highway from the port to the Upper Town, direct to the old _Chateau_ and Citadel--a few rods only from the spot where Champlain, in 1608, laid the foundations of his extensive warehouses and dwelling, and close to where, in 1615, he had his famous gardens. This business stand, for many years past, was owned by the late Hon. Henry Black; at present it belongs to Hon. Geo. Okill Stuart, Judge of the Court of Vice Admiralty. Its beginnings brings us back to the era of the Bourbon sovereigns of Canada, to the unregretted time (1758), when Intendant Bigot's shoddy _entourage_ held high carnival in famine-stricken Quebec.

In those blighting days, in which Madame de Pompadour reigned in France, and Madame Pean in Quebec, _rings_ and public robbery flourished in Canada; but among high officials, all were not corrupt.

There were some memorable exceptions. One of these exceptions was the worthy, witty, and honest warden of the Quebec merchants, Jean Tache, "_homme probe et d'esprit_," say old memoirs. Mr. Tache, the "_syndic des marchands_," was not only an upright and wealthy merchant, he was also gifted with the poetical fire; he, it was, who wrote the first French poem issued in Canada, "_Le Tableau de la Mer_."

Jean Tache was also an extensive holder of real estate in and round Quebec, warehouses (_des voutes_) on the Napoleon wharf; a country seat on the Ste. Foye road, subsequently the property of Surveyor- General Samuel Holland--Holland Farm; lastly, the well-known business stand, where, in 1847, Mr. St. Michel printed James Bell Forsyth's news sheet, the _Morning Chronicle_.

Commercial ruin overtook the worthy Lower Town magnate, Monsieur Tache; his s.h.i.+ps and cargoes, during the war of the conquest, like the rest of poor, deserted Canada, fell into English hands, being captured at sea; out of the disaster Jean Tache saved naught but his honourable name.

We fail to trace for a time the fortunes of his Mountain Hill Counting House. At the dawn of this century the premises were used as a famous coffee-house, the "Neptune" Inn, [91] a noted place of resort for merchants, masters and owners of s.h.i.+ps. Like the Golden Fleece Tavern of Corinth, which seems to have sheltered the father of History-- Herodotus--in the year 460 B.C., its "banqueting saloon" was roomy, though every word uttered there also smacked of the salt water. The old "Neptune" was probably occasionally looked up in 1807 by the Press Gang, which, in those days, was not a thing to be laughed at. Witness the fate of poor Latresse, shot down for refusing to surrender to Lieut. Andrel, R.N., on trying to make his escape from a tavern in St.

John's suburbs, where he had been attending a dancing party. [92]

Singularly enough, sixty years ago, the leading Lower Town merchants met in this old tenement of the former "_Syndic des Marchands_"

to establish the first Exchange. Of the resolutions pa.s.sed at the meeting thereat, held in 1816, and presided over by an eminent merchant, John William Woolsey, Esq., subsequently President of the Quebec Bank, we find a notice in the _Quebec Gazette_, of 12th December, 1816. [93] They decided to establish a Merchant's Exchange in the lower part of the "Neptune" Inn. Amongst those present, one recognizes familiar names--John Jones, George Symes, James Heath, Robert Melvin, Thomas Edward Brown, &c.

Why was the place called "Neptune" Inn? For the obvious reason that a large statue of the G.o.d of the sea, bearing in one hand a formidable iron trident, stood over the main entrance in a threatening att.i.tude.

This conspicuous land-mark was known to every British s.h.i.+p-captain frequenting our port. Right well can the writer of these lines remember the truculent trident.

But if, even in the days of that excellent landlady, Mrs. Hammond, it meant to the wearied mariner boundless cheer, the latest London papers, pipes and soothing rum punch mixed by a comely and cheerful bar-maid, to the unsophisticated Canadian peasant, attracted to the Lower Town on market days, it was of evil portent.

With honest Jean Baptiste, more deeply read in the _Pet.i.t Catechisme_ than in heathen mythology, the dreaded G.o.d of the sea and his truculent trident were ominous, in his simple eyes, they symbolised the Prince of Darkness, "_Le diable et sa fourche_," the terrors of a hereafter.

This did not, however, prevent Neptune from standing sentry, in the same exalted spot, for close on forty years, until in fact, having fallen to pieces by natural decay, it was removed about the time the Old Neptune Inn became the _Morning Chronicle_ office; the whereabouts of its _dejecta membra_ are now a dead secret.

The origin of the famed statue had defied the most recondite searchers of the past. For the following we are indebted to the retentive memory of that eminently respected authority, the "oldest inhabitant." The statue of Neptune, says the octogenarian, Robert Urquhart, so well remembered at the foot of Mountain Hill, was presented to the landlord of the hotel, George Cossar, formerly butler to Hon. Matthew Bell, who then owned the St. Lawrence Chambers. It had been the figure-head of the _Neptune_, a large king's s.h.i.+p, stranded in 1817 on Anticosti.

Would the stranded _Neptune_ of 1817 be the same as the flags.h.i.+p of Admiral Durell in 1759, the _Neptune_ of 90 guns, to whom the large bell bearing the word "_Neptune_, 1760," inscribed on, belonged? This bell, which formerly stood on the Royal Engineers' workshop at Quebec, was recently taken to Ottawa. The wreck had been bought by John Goudie, of St. Roch suburb, then a leading s.h.i.+p builder, and, having to break it up, the figure-head was brought to Quebec, and presented as above stated.

The following respecting press gangs and the presence of Lord Nelson, whilst at Quebec in 1782, was contributed by one of the "oldest inhabitants" to QUEBEC PAST AND PRESENT, but reached too late for insertion:--

_MY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST._