Whether
La Baronne De St. Laurent Would Be Admitted There Or Not?
Whether a de
Longueuil's or a de Lanaudiere's place was on the right of Lady Maria, the
charming consort of His Excellency Lord Dorchester - a daughter of the
great English Earl of Effingham?
Whether dancing ought to cease when their
Lordships the Bishops entered, and made their bow to the representative of
royalty? Unfortunately Quebec had then no Court Journal, so that following
generations will have but faint ideas of all the witchery, the stunning
head-dresses, the decolletees, high-waisted robes of their stately
grandmothers, whirled round in the giddy waltz by whiskered, epauletted
cavaliers, or else courtesying in the demure menuet de la cour.
In August, 1796, when Isaac Weld, Jr., visited Quebec, he describes the
old part of the chateau as chiefly taken up with the public offices, all
the apartments in it, says he, "are small and ill-contrived; but in the new
part (Haldimand Castle) which stands in front of the other, facing the
square (the ring), they are spacious and tolerably well furnished, but
none of them can be called elegant. This part is inhabited by the
Governor's family. * * * * Every evening during summer, when the weather
is fine, one of the regiments of the garrison parades in the open place
before the chateau, and the band plays for an hour or two, at which time
the place becomes the resort of numbers of the most genteel people of the
town, and has a very gay appearance." (Weld's Travels through the States
of North America in 1795-6-7, vol.
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