He stands, hat in hand, facing the city that honors his memory so greatly. To Samuel de la Champlain Quebec has not merely given the glory of what seems to us to be one of the handsomest monuments in America, but here and there in her quiet streets she brings back to the stranger within her walls recollections of the doughty Frenchman who braved an unknown sea to find a site for the city, which for more than three hundred years has stood as guardian to the north portal of America. Other adventurous sea spirits of those early days went chiefly in the quest of gold. Champlain had loftier ambitions within his heart. He hoped to be a nation-builder. And not only Quebec, but the great young-old nation that stands behind her, is his real monument.
Still, the artist's creation of bronze and of marble is effective—not alone, as we have already said, because of its own real beauty—but also very largely because of its tremendously impressive setting at the rim of the upper town—facing the tiny open square that as far back as two hundred and fifty years ago was the center of its fashionable life. Champlain in bronze looks at the tidy Place d'Armes—older residents of Quebec still delight in calling it the Ring—with its neat pathways of red brick and its low, splashing fountain, as if he longed to return to flesh and blood and walk through the little square and from it down some of the narrow streets that he may, himself, have planned in the days of old.
Or perhaps he would have chosen that once imposing main thoroughfare of Upper Town, St. Louis street, which out beyond the city wall has the even more distinctive French title of the Grande Allee. We have chosen that main street many times ourselves, leading straight past the castellated gateways of the Chateau, fashioned less than a score of years ago by a master American architect—Mr. Bruce Price—and since grown very much larger, quite like a lovely girl still in her teens. On the other side of the street, close to the curb of the Place d'Armes, is the ever-waiting row of Victorias and caleches, whose drivers rise smilingly in their places even at the mere suggestion of a coming fare. Beyond these patient Jehus stands the rather ordinary looking Court House, somewhat out of harmony with the architectural traditions of the town—and then we are plunged into the heart of as fascinating a street as one may hope to see in North America. It is clean—immaculate, if you please, after the fashion of all these habitans of lower Canada—and it is bordered ever and ever so tightly by a double row of clean-faced stone houses, their single doors letting directly upon the sidewalk, and, also after the fashion of all Quebec, surmounted by steep pitched tin roofs and wonderfully fat chimneys, covered with tin in their turn. Quebec seems to have a passion for tin. It is her almost universal roofing, and in the bright sunshine, glittering with mirror-like brilliancy of contrast against the age-darkened stone walls, it has a charm that is quite its own.
One of these old houses of St. Louis street sets well back from the sidewalk in a seeming riotous waste of front lawn, and bears upon its face a tablet denoting it as the one-time home of the Duke of Kent. This distinguished gentleman lived in Quebec many years before he became father of Queen Victoria. In fact, Quebec remembers him as a rather gay young blade of a fellow who had innumerable mild affairs with the fascinating French-Canadian girls of the town. These things have almost become traditions among the older folk of the place. Those girls of Quebec town seem always to have held keen attractions for young blades from afar. When you turn down Mountain Hill and pass the General Post Office with its quaint Golden Dog set in the façade, they will not only make you re-read that fascinating romance of the old Quebec, but they will tell you that years after the Philiberts and the Repentignys were gone and the English were in full enjoyment of their rare American prize, that same old inn, upon whose front the gnawing dog was so securely set, was run by one Sergeant Miles Prentice, whose pretty niece, Miss Simpson, so captivated Captain Horatio Nelson of His Majesty's Ship Albemarle that it became necessary for his friends to spirit away the future hero of Trafalgar to prevent him from marrying her.
Beyond the old house of the Duke of Kent, St. Louis street is a narrow path lined by severe little Canadian homes all the way to the city gate. Many of these houses are fairly steeped in tradition. One tiny fellow within which the ancient profession of the barber still works is the house wherein Montcalm died. And to another, Benedict Arnold was taken in that ill-starred American attack upon Quebec. A third was a gift two centuries ago by the Intendant Bigot to the favored woman of his acquaintance. Romance does creep up and down the little steps of these little houses. They change hardly at all with the changing of the years.
Lower Town, Quebec—from the Terrace
Here among them are the ruins of an old theater—its solid-stone façade still holding high above the narrow run of pavement. It has been swept within by fire—the evil enemy that has fallen upon Quebec again and again and far more devastatingly than even the cannon that have bombarded her from unfriendly hands.
"Are they going to rebuild?" you may inquire, as you look at the stolid shell of the old theater.
"Bless you, no," exclaims your guide. "The Music Hall was burned more than a dozen years ago. Quebec does not rebuild."