The Englishwoman in America - Isabella Lucy Bird (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

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Society is contained in very small limits at Quebec. Its _elite_ are grouped round the ramparts and in the suburb of St. Louis. The city until recently has occupied a very isolated position, and has depended upon itself for society. It is therefore sociable, friendly, and hospitable; and though there is gossip--for where is it not to be found?--I never knew any in which there was so little of ill-nature. The little world in the upper part of the city is probably the most brilliant to be found anywhere in so small a compass. But there is a world below, another nation, seldom mentioned in the aristocratic quarter of St. Louis, where vice, crime, poverty, and misery jostle each other, as pleasure and politics do in the upper town. This is the suburb of St. Roch, in whose tall dark houses and fetid alleys those are to be found whose birthright is toil, who spend life in supplying the necessities of to-day, while indulging in gloomy apprehensions for to-morrow--who have not one comfort in the past to cling to, or one hope for the future to cheer.

St. Roch is as crowded as the upper town, but with a very different population--the poor, the degraded, and the vicious. Here fever destroys its tens, and cholera its hundreds. Here people stab each other, and think little of it. Here are narrow alleys, with high, black-looking, stone houses, with broken windows pasted over with paper in the lower stories, and stuffed with rags in the upper--gradations of wretchedness which I have observed in the Cowgate and West Port at Edinburgh. Here are shoeless women, who quiet their children with ardent spirits, and brutal men, who would kill both wives and children if they dared. Here are dust-heaps in which pigs with long snouts are ever routing--here are lean curs, wrangling with each other for leaner bones--here are ditches and puddles, and heaps of oyster-shells, and broken crockery, and cabbage-stalks, and fragments of hats and shoes. Here are torn notices on the walls offering rewards for the apprehension of thieves and murderers, painfully suggestive of dark deeds. A little further are lumber-yards and wharfs, and mud and sawdust, and dealers in old nails and rags and bones, and rotten posts and rails, and attempts at grass. Here are old barrel-hoops, and patches of old sails, and dead bushes and dead dogs, and old saucepans, and little plots of ground where cabbages and pumpkins drag on a pining existence. And then there is the river Charles, no longer clear and bright, as when trees and hills and flowers were mirrored on its surface, but foul, turbid, and polluted, with ship-yards and steam-engines and cranes and windlasses on its margin; and here Quebec ends.

From the rich, the fashionable, and the pleasure-seeking suburb of St. Louis few venture down into the quarter of St. Roch, save those who, at the risk of drawing in pestilence with every breath, mindful of their duty to God and man, enter those hideous dwellings, ministering to minds and bodies alike diseased. My first visit to St. Roch was on a Sunday afternoon. I had attended our own simple and beautiful service in the morning, and had seen the celebration of vespers in the Romish cathedral in the afternoon. Each church was thronged with well-dressed persons. It was a glorious day. The fashionable promenades were all crowded; gay uniforms and brilliant parasols thronged the ramparts; horsemen were cantering along St. Louis Street; priestly processions passed to and from the different churches; numbers of calashes containing pleasure-parties were dashing about; picnic parties were returning from Montmorenci and Lake Charles; groups of vivacious talkers, speaking in the language of France, were at every street-corner; Quebec had all the appearance, so painful to an English or Scottish eye, of a Continental sabbath.

Mr. and Mrs. Alderson and myself left this gay scene, and the constant toll of Romish bells, for St. Roch. They had lived peacefully in a rural part of Devonshire, and more recently in one of the prettiest and most thriving of the American cities; and when they first breathed the polluted air, they were desirous to return from what promised to be so peculiarly unpleasant, but kindly yielded to my desire to see something of the shady as well as the sunny side of Quebec.

No Sabbath-day with its hallowed accompaniments seemed to have dawned upon the inhabitants of St. Roch. We saw women with tangled hair standing in the streets, and men with pallid countenances and bloodshot eyes were reeling about, or sitting with their heads resting on their hands, looking out from windows stuffed with rags. There were children too, children in nothing but the name and stature--infancy without innocence, learning to take God's name in vain with its first lisping accents, preparing for a maturity of suffering and shame. I looked at these hideous houses, and hideous men and women too, and at their still more repulsive progeny, with sallow faces, dwarfed forms, and countenances precocious in the intelligence of villany; and contrasted them with the blue-eyed, rosy- cheeked infants of my English home, who chase butterflies and weave May garlands, and gather cowslips and buttercups; or the sallow children of a Highland shantie, who devour instruction in mud-floored huts, and con their tasks on the heathery sides of hills.

Yet, when you breathe the poisoned air, laden with everything noxious to health, and have the physical and moral senses alike met with everything that can disgust and offend, it ceases to be a matter of wonder that the fair tender plant of beautiful childhood refuses to grow in such a vitiated atmosphere. Here all distinctions between good and evil are speedily lost, if they were ever known; and men, women, and children become unnatural in vice, in irreligion, in manners and appearance. Such spots as these act like cankers, yearly spreading further and further their vitiating influences, preparing for all those fearful retributions in the shape of fever and pestilence which continually come down. Yet, lamentable as the state of such a population is, considered merely with regard to this world, it becomes fearful when we recollect that the wheels of Time are ceaselessly rolling on, bearing how few, alas! to heaven--what myriads to hell; and that, when "this trembling consciousness of being, which clings enamoured to its anguish," not because life is sweet, but because death is bitter, is over, there remains, for those who have known nothing on earth but misery and vice, "a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation," when they that have done evil "shall rise to the resurrection of damnation."

It was not that the miserable degraded appearance of St. Roch was anything new to me; unfortunately the same state of things exists in a far greater degree in our large towns at home; what did surprise me was, to find it in the New World, and that such a gigantic evil should have required only two hundred years for its growth. It seemed to me also that at Quebec the gulf which separates the two worlds is greater even than that which lies between Belgravia and Bethnal Green or St. Giles's. The people who live in the lower town are principally employed on the wharfs, and in the lumber trade. But my readers will, not thank me for detaining them in a pestiferous atmosphere, among such unpleasing scenes; we will therefore ascend into the High-street of the city, resplendent with gorgeous mercers' stores, and articles of luxury of every description. This street and several others were at this period impassable for carriages, the roadways being tunnelled, and heaped, and barricaded; which curious and highly disagreeable state of things was stated to arise from the laying down of water-pipes. At night, when fires were lighted in the narrow streets, and groups of roughly dressed Frenchmen were standing round them, Quebec presented the appearance of the Faubourg St. Antoine after a revolution.

Quebec is a most picturesque city externally and internally. From the citadel, which stands on a rock more than three hundred feet high, down to the crowded water-side, bustling with merchants, porters, and lumbermen, all is novel and original. Massive fortifications, with guns grinning from the embrasures, form a very prominent feature; a broad glacis looks peaceful in its greenness; ramparts line the Plains of Abraham; guards and sentries appear in all directions; nightfall brings with it the challenge --"_Who goes there?_" and narrow gateways form inconvenient entrances to streets so steep that I wondered how mortal horses could ever toil up them. The streets are ever thronged with vehicles, particularly with rude carts drawn by rough horses, driven by French peasants, who move stolidly along, indifferent to the continual cry "_Place aux dames_." The stores generally have French designations above them, the shop men often speak very imperfect English; the names of the streets are French; Romish churches and convents abound, and Sisters of Charity, unwearied in their benevolence, are to be seen visiting the afflicted.

Notices and cautions are posted up both in French and English; the light vivacious tones of the French Canadians are everywhere heard, and from the pillar sacred to the memory of Wolfe upon the Plains of Abraham, down to the red-coated sentry who challenges you upon the ramparts, everything tells of a conquered province, and of the time, not so very far distant either, when the lilies of France occupied the place from which the flag of England now so proudly waves.

I spent a few days at Russell's Hotel, which was very full, in spite of the rats. In Canadian hotels people are very sociable, and, as many during the season make Russell's their abode, the conversation was tolerably general at dinner. Many of the members of parliament lived there, and they used to tell very racy and amusing stories against each other. I heard one which was considered a proof of the truth of the saying, that "the tailor makes the gentleman." A gentleman called on a Mr. M----, who had been appointed to a place in the government, and in due time he went to return the visit. Meeting an Irishman in the street, he asked, "Where does Mr. 'Smith' live?"--"It's no use your going there." "I want to know where he lives, do you know?"--"Faith, I do; but it's no use your going there." Mr. M----, now getting angry, said, "I don't ask you for your advice, I simply want to know where Mr. 'Smith' lives."--"Well, spalpeen, he lives down that court; but I tell ye it's no use your going there, for I've just been there myself, and _he's got a man_." It is said that the discomfited senator returned home and bought a _new hat!_

Passing out by the citadel, the Plains of Abraham, now a race-course, are entered upon; the battle-field being denoted by a simple monument bearing the inscription "_Here died Wolfe victorious_." Beyond this, three miles from the city, is Spencer-Wood, the residence of the Governor-General. It is beautifully situated, though the house is not spacious, and is rather old-fashioned. The ball-room, however, built by Lord Elgin, is a beautiful room, very large, admirably proportioned, and chastely decorated. Here a kind of vice-regal court is held; and during the latter months of Lord Elgin's tenure of office, Spencer-Wood was the scene of a continued round of gaiety and hospitality. Lord Elgin was considered extremely popular; the Reciprocity Treaty, supposed to confer great benefits on the country, was passed during his administration, and the resources of Canada were prodigiously developed, and its revenue greatly increased. Of his popularity at Quebec there could be no question. He was attached to the Canadians, with whom he mixed with the greatest kindness and affability. Far from his presence being considered a restraint at an evening party, the entrance of the Governor and his suite was