At
That Time The Greatest Of The Poets Of Quebec, Octave Cremazie, Sang
The Glories Of Our Ancestors And The Brave Deeds Of Old France.
His
energetic and inspired voice excited youthful emulation.
A group of
budding writers surrounded him, but each one felt timid and hesitated
to tune his notes amongst the loud echoes of his vigorous patriotism.
Alas! the star fled from our skies, another generation of enthusiastic
poets and writers disputed the honour of seizing the lyre, so heavy
for their fingers, which had been left on the rock of Quebec, by the
author of the Flag of Carillon. O! my old comrades, do you think as
frequently as do I, of those old days, when with hearts full of poetic
illusions, we united our talents, our hopes and I might add our
poverty, to establish that spiritual association in which the
beautiful was idolized, seekers as we were after the ideal, dealers in
mental bijouterie, despised at first by some, but which
succeeded more than once in directing the attention of literary France
to our shores? Do you, at times, remember our joyful meetings, our
interminable readings, our long hours of continued study and waking
reveries in common - do you yet remember the bewildering evenings in
which the glass of Henri Murger mingled its sonorous tinklings, bright
and merry, to the love-song of our flowery youth? We were all rivals,
but
"Our hearts, as our lute, vibrated as one,"
and God knows that this rivalry never severed the bonds of affection
which united us, and so was founded what has since been styled the
Mutual Admiration Society. Mutual Admiration Society! If we were to
consider the number of books, dress-coats, gloves and other articles
of more intimate character that were exchanged between us, it might
more safely have been called the Society for Mutual Support. At all
events, from the spectacle before me this evening I gather that this
Society of Mutual Admiration, if admiration it must be termed, has
taken a singular development since I had the honour of assisting so
frequently at its meetings, and there is nothing surprising in this,
since one of the most distinguished of the founders of this society,
Mr. Faucher de St. Maurice, informed me the other day that the society
in question was about to annex the French Academy. (Laughter.) But to
be serious, allow me to recount another anecdote. There was a time,
gentlemen, when our Mutual Admiration was far from being so ambitious
as to dream of having a succursale under the rotunda of the
French Institute. But if our productions were meagre, our revenues
were still more so, and famine often reigned in the chests of the
confraternity. However we had our own days of abundance when there was
corn in Egypt. The first Quebecer who understood that poetry, unlike
perpetual motion, could not feed itself, was a brewer, whose memory is
now legendary and who was known by the harmonious name of McCallum.
Arthur Casgrain, who in a couple of years afterwards we sorrowfully
bore to the cemetery, had thought of composing an Epic on the Grand
Trunk.
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