CHAPTER XIV
1688-1710
WHAT BECAME OF RADISSON? NEW FACTS ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE FAMOUS PATHFINDER
What became of Radisson? It seems impossible that the man, who set France and England by the ears for a century, and led the way to the pathfinding of half America, should have dropped so completely into oblivion that not a scrap is recorded concerning the last twenty-five years of his life. Was he run to earth by the bailiffs of London, like Thackeray’s “Virginian?” Or did he become the lion tamed, the eagle with its wings clipped, to be patronized by supercilious nonentities? Or did he die like Ledyard of a heart broken by hope deferred?
Radisson, the boy, slim and swarth as an Indian, running a mad race for life through mountain torrents that would throw his savage pursuers off the trail—we can imagine; but not Radisson running from a London bailiff. Leading flotillas of fur brigades up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to the Great Northwest—he is a familiar figure, but not stroked and petted and patronized by the frowzy duchesses of Charles the Second’s slovenly court. Yet from the time Radisson ceased to come to Hudson Bay during Iberville’s raids, he drops as completely out of history as if he had been lost in Milton’s Serbonian Bog. One historian describes him as assassinated in Quebec, another as dying destitute. Both statements are guesses, but from the dusty records of the Hudson’s Bay Company—many of them undisturbed since Radisson’s time—can be gleaned a complete account of the game pathfinder’s life to the time of his death.
The very front page of the first minute book kept by the Company, contains account of Radisson—an order for Alderman Portman to pay Radisson and Groseillers £5 a year for expenses—chiefly wine and fresh fruit, as later entries show. There were present at this meeting of the Company, adventurers of as romantic a glamor as Robert Louis Stevenson’s heroes or a Captain Kidd. There was the Earl of Craven, married to the Queen of Bohemia. There was Ashley, ambitious for the earldom that came later, and with the reputation that “he would rob the devil, himself, and the church altars.” It was Ashley, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, who charged a bribe of £100 to every man appointed in the government services, though he concealed his peculations under stately manners and gold lace. Notoriety was the stock in trade of the court beauties at that time, and Ashley’s wife earned public notice by ostentatiously driving in a glass coach that was forever splintering in collision with some other carriage or going to bits over the clumsy cobblestones. Old Sir George Carterett of New Jersey was now treasurer of the Navy. Sir John Robinson was commander of the Tower. Griffith was known as the handsome dandy of court balls. Sir John Kirke, the Huguenot, was a royal pensioner of fighting blood, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. The meeting of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers was held at the house of Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor of London, renowned for the richest wife, the finest art galleries, the handsomest conservatories in England. It was to Viner’s that Charles the Second came with his drunken crew to fiddle and muddle and run the giddy course, that danced the Stuart’s off the throne. Mr. Young was a man of fashion as well as a merchant, so famous for amateur acting that he often took the place of the court actors at a moment’s notice.
Radisson’s House on Seething Lane in 1679. (1) St. Olave Hart’s Church; (2) Radisson’s House: (3) Pepys’ House.
These were Radisson’s associates, the Frenchman’s friends when he came to London fresh from the wilderness in his thirtieth year with the exploration of the North and the West to his credit. None knew better than he, the money value of his discoveries. And Radisson knew the way to this land. By the lifting of his hand, he could turn this wealth into the coffers of the court adventurers. If the fur trade was a gamble—and everything on earth was gamble in the reign of Charles—Radisson held the winning cards. The gamesters of that gambling age gathered round him like rooks round a pigeon, to pick his pockets—politely and according to the codes of good breeding, of course—and to pump his brain of every secret, that could be turned into pounds sterling—politely, also, of course. Very generous, very pleasant, very suave of fair promises were the gay adventurers, but withal slippery as the finery of their silk ruffles or powdered periwigs.
Did Radisson keep his head? Steadier heads have gone giddy with the sudden plunge from wilderness ways to court pomp. Sir James Hayes, Prince Rupert’s secretary, declares in a private document that the French explorer at this time “deluded the daughter of Sir John Kirke into secretly marrying him,” so that Radisson may have been caught in the madcap doings of the court dissipations when no rake’s progress was complete unless he persuaded some errant damsel to jump over the back wall and elope, though there was probably no hindrance in the world to ordinary lovers walking openly out of the front door and being married properly. The fact that Radisson was a penniless adventurer and a Catholic, while his bride was the daughter of a rich Puritan, may have been the explanation of the secrecy, if indeed, there is any truth at all in the rumor repeated by Hayes.