Another Day You May See Him Dash Past Belmont Or Holland
House Or Powell Place, Occasionally Dropping In With The Bonhommie
Of A Good, Kind Prince, As He Was - Especially When The Ladies Were Young
And Pretty.
You surely did not expect to find an anchorite in a slashing
Colonel of Fusileers - in perfect health, age, twenty-five.
Not a grain of
asceticism ever entered, you know, in the composition of "Farmer George's"
big sons; York and Clarence, they were no saints; neither were they
suspected of asceticism; not they, they knew better. And should royal
Edward, within your sight, ever kiss his hand to any fair daughter of Eve,
inside or outside of the city, do not, my Christian friend, upturn to
heaven the whites of your eyes in pious horror; princes are men, nay, they
require at times to be more than men to escape the snares, smiles,
seductions, which beset them at every step in this wicked, wicked, world.
How was Montmorenci Lodge furnished? Is it true that the Prince's
remittances, from Carlton House never exceeded L5,000 per annum during his
stay here? - Had he really as many bells to summon his attendants in his
Beauport Lodge as his Halifax residence contained - as he had at Kensington
or Castlebar Hill? Is it a fact that he was such a punctual and early
riser, that to ensure punctuality on this point, on of his servants was
commanded to sleep during the day in order to be sure to be awake at day-
break to ring the bell? - Did he really threaten to court-martial the 7th
Fusileers, majors, captains, subs and privates, who might refuse to sport
their pig-tails in the streets of Quebec, as well as at Gibraltar?
Really, dear reader, your inquisitiveness has got beyond all bounds; and
were Prince Edward to revisit those shores, we venture to say, that you
would in a frenzy of curiosity or loyalty even do what was charged by De
Cordova, when Edward's grandson, Albert of Wales, visited, in 1860, Canada
and the American Union: -
"They have stolen his gloves and purloined his cravat -
Even scraped a souvenir from the nap of his hat."
Be thankful if we satisfy even one or two of your queries. He had indeed
to live here on the niggardly allowance of L5,000 per annum. The story
[220] about censuring an officer for cutting off his pig-tail refers not
to his stay in Canada, but to another period of his life. He lived rather
retired; a select few only were admitted to his intimacy; his habits were
here, as elsewhere, regular; his punctuality, proverbial; his stay amongst
us, marked by several acts of kindness, of which we find traces in the
addresses presented on several occasions, thanking him for his own
personal exertions and the assistance rendered by his gallant men at
several fires which had occurred. [221] He left behind some warm admirers,
with whom he corresponded regularly. We have now before us a package of
his letters dated "Kensington Palace." Here is one out of twenty; but no,
the records of private friendship must remain inviolate.
The main portion of the "Mansion House," at Montmorenci, is just as he
left it. The room in which he used to write is yet shown; a table and
chair - part of his furniture - are to this day religiously preserved. The
lodge is now the residence of the heirs of the late G. B Hall, Esquire,
the proprietors of the extensive saw mills at the foot of the falls.
THE DUKE OF KENT, THE QUEEN'S FATHER, AT QUEBEC, 1791-4.
Of the numerous sons of King George III., none, perhaps, were born
with more generous impulses, none certainly more manly - none more true
in their attachments, and still none more maligned neglected - traduced
than he, who, as a jolly Colonel of Fusileers spent some pleasant
years of his life at Quebec from 1791 to '94, Edward Augustus, father
of our virtuous and beloved Sovereign.
We wish to be understood at the outset. It is not our intention here
to write a panegyric on a royal Duke; like his brothers, York and
Clarence - the pleasure-loving, he, too, had his foibles; he was not an
anchorite by any means. His stern, Spartan idea of discipline may have
been overstretched, and blind adherence to routine in his daily habits
may have justly invited the lash of ridicule. What is pretended here,
and that, without fear of contradiction, is that his faults, which
were those of a man, were loudly proclaimed, while his spirit of
justice, of benevolence and generosity was unknown, unrecognized,
except by a few. No stronger record can be opposed to the traducers of
the memory of Edward, Duke of Kent, than his voluminous correspondence
with Col. DeSalaberry and brothers, from 1791 to 1815 - recently,
through the kindness of the DeSalaberry family, laid before the public
by the late Dr. W. J. Anderson, of Quebec.
The Duke had not been lucky in the way of biographers. The Rev.
Erskine Neale, who wrote his life, is less a biographer than a
panegyrist, and his book, if, instead of much fulsome praise, it
contained a fuller account - especially of the early career of his
hero - of the Duke's sayings and doings in Gibraltar, Quebec and
Halifax, it would certainly prove more valuable, much more complete.
Singularly enough, Neale, disposes in about three lines, of the years
the Duke spent in Quebec, though, as proved by his correspondence,
those years were anything but barren. Quebec, we contend, as exhibited
in the Duke's letters, ever retained a green spot in his souvenirs, in
after life.
The Old Chateau balls, the Kent House in St. Lewis street, had for him
their joyful sunshine, when, as a stalwart, dashing Colonel of
Fusileers, aged 25, he had his entrees in the fashionable drawing-
rooms of 1791-4 Holland House, Powell Place (Spencer Wood, as it is
now called), old Hale's receptions, Lymburner's soirees in his old
mansion on Sault au Matelot street, then the fashionable quarter for
wealthy merchants.
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