Poor Mrs. Davis! How was she to civilize these savages; how invest their lives with any interest above timber? They would not listen to the polite news of “Government House;” they would not vouchsafe the least attention to the interesting paragraphs she recited as table-talk,—how the Prince of Hohenhumbughousen had arrived at Windsor on a visit to Majesty, nor how Royalty walked in “The Slopes,” or sat for its picture.
Of the “Duke of Northumberland,” they only knew a troopship of the name, and even that had been waterlogged! The “Wellington” traded to Mirimachi, and the “Robert Peel” was a barque belonging to Newfoundland, and employed in general traffic, and not believed very seaworthy.
Some may make the ungracious remark that she might have spared herself this task of humanizing; that she could have left these “ligneous Christians,” these creatures of tar and turpentine, where she found them. The same observation will apply equally to Cooke, to Franklin, to Brooke of Borneo, and a hundred other civilizers: so Mrs. D. felt it, and so she labored to make T. J. feel it; but he would n't. The ungrateful old bear saw the ordinary grow daily thinner; he perceived that Banquo might have seated himself at any part of the table, and he actually upbraided his wife with the fact. Every day he announced some new defection from the list of their old supporters. Now it was old Ben Crosseley, of the “Lively Biddy,” that would n't stand being ordered to shake out his canvas—that is, to spread his napkin—when he was taking in sea store; then it was Tom Galket grew indignant at not being permitted to beat “to quarters” with his knuckles at every pause in the dinner. Some were put out by being obliged to sit with their legs under the table, being long habituated to dine at a cask with a plank on it, and of course keeping their limbs “stowed away” under the seat; and one, an old and much-respected river pilot, was carried away insensible from table, on hearing that grog was not a recognized table beverage throughout the British dominions.
The banishment of lobscouse and sea-pie, pork, with its concomitant cataplasm of peas, and other similar delicacies from the bill of fare, completed the defection; and at last none remained of the “once goodlie company,” save an old attenuated Guernsey skipper too much in debt to leave, but who attributed his fealty to the preference he entertained for “les usages de la bonne société et la charmante Mde. Davis.” T. J. could never hold up his head again; he moped about the docks and quays, like the restless spirit of some Ancient Mariner. Every one pitied him; and he grew so accustomed to condolence—so dependent, in fact, on commiseration—that he spent his days in rowing from one ship to the other in the harbor, drinking grog with the skippers, till, by dint of pure sympathy, he slipped quietly into his grave, after something like a two years' attack of delirium tremens.
The same week that saw T. J. descend to the tomb saw his widow ascend to the “Upper Town,”—the more congenial locality for aspirations like hers. If no eulogistic inscription marked his resting-place, a very showy brass plate adorned hers. From that hour she was emancipated; it seemed, indeed, as if she had turned a corner in life, and at once emerged from gloom and darkness into sunshine. It chanced that the barracks were at that very moment undergoing repair, and several officers were glad to find, at a convenient distance, the comforts and accommodations which a plausible advertisement in the “Quebec Messenger” assured them were to be obtained for one pound one shilling weekly.
There are people who tell you that we live in a heartless, selfish, grabbing, grasping age, where each preys upon his neighbor, and where gain is the spirit of every contract; and yet, in what period of the world was maternal tenderness, the comforts of a home, the watchful anxieties of parental love, to be had so cheaply? Who ever heard of bachelors being admitted into families, where music and the arts formed the evening's recreation, in the Middle Ages? Does Herodotus inform us that “young and attractive ladies would take charge of a widower's household, and superintend the care of his family”? Not a bit of it! On this point, at least, the wisdom of our ancestors has no chance with us. There is not a wish of the heart, there is not a yearning of the affections, that a three-and-sixpenny advertisement in the “Times” will not evoke a remedy for. You can make love, or a book, or a speech, by deputy; for every relative you lose, there are fifty kind-hearted creatures to supply the place; and not only may you travel over half the globe without more personal exertion than it costs you to go to bed, but you can be measured either for a wife or a suit of clothes without ever seeing the lady or the tailor.
The “Hotel Davis,” so said the newspaper, “was situated in the most airy and healthful locality of the Upper Town.” No one ever rung the bell of the hall-door from the first of October to May, but would acknowledge the truth of the first epithet. The society, for admission to which the most particular references are required, embraces all that is intellectual, high-bred, and refined. The table, where preside the 'feast of reason and the flow of soul,' combines the elegance and delicacy of the French, with the less sophisticated succulence of English cookery. Intellectual resources,—the humanizing influences of song and poetry,—the varied pleasures of cultivated and kindred spirits, which have won for this establishment the epithet of the Davisian Acropolis, continue to make it the chosen retreat of gentlemen connected with civil and military pursuits, who are lodged and boarded for one guinea weekly.
“Receptions every Thursday. Balls, during the winter, on the first Monday of each month.”
Such was one among many—I select it as the shortest—announcements of this cheap Elysium; and now, two words about Mrs. D. herself. She was a poor, thin, shrivelled-up little woman, with a rugged, broken-up face, whose profile looked like a jagged saw. Next to elegance of manner, her passion was personal appearance,—by which she meant the adventitious aid of false hair, rouge, and cosmetics; and these she employed with such ever-varying ingenuity that her complexion changed daily from classic pallor to Spanish richness, while the angle of incidence of her eyebrows took in everything, from forty-five degrees to the horizontal. Her style was “sylph,” and so she was gauzy and floating in all her drapery. A black veil to the back of her head, a filmy, gossamer kind of scarf across her shoulders, assisted this deception, and when she crossed the room, gave her the air of a clothes'-line in a high wind.
Black mittens, over fingers glowing in all the splendor of imitation rings, and a locket, about the size of a cheese-plate, containing the hair—some said the scalp—of the late T. J., completed a costume which Mrs. D. herself believed Parisian, but to which no revolution, democratic or social, could reduce a Frenchwoman.