The favour of your company is requested to attend the Funeral of the late Colonel Nairne, from No. 1 Grison Street, on Cape Diamond, to the place of interment, on Friday next at one o'clock in the afternoon.
All that was most worthy in Quebec attended to do honour to his memory. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery; long after his body was removed to Mount Hermon Cemetery, to lie beside his son and grandson—the last of his race.
Nairne played his part with high purpose and integrity. Among his papers at Murray Bay is a prayer, intended apparently for daily use, in which he asks that he may be vigilant in conduct and immovable in all good purposes; that he may show courage in danger, patience in adversity, humility in prosperity. He asks, too, to be made sensible "how little is this world, how great [are] thy Heavens, and how long will be thy blessed eternity." It is the prayer of a strong soul facing humbly and reverently the tasks of life.[20] He would have wished to found a community English speaking and Protestant. But the forces of nature were against him. The few English speaking people who came in (and they were but a few scattered individuals) for the most part married French wives. The children held the faith and spoke the tongue which they learned at their mothers' knees. It was the course of nature, and always we are foolish to quarrel with nature. A granite monument marks the resting place where the good old man sleeps in the cemetery at Quebec, but some memorial might well stand at Murray Bay, that those who look out upon the majestic river, the blue mountains, the smiling valley should have before them a reminder of the "friendly, honest man" who, a century and a half ago, began to win their heritage from the wilderness.[21]
CHAPTER VI
Thomas Nairne, Seigneur of Murray Bay
His Education in Scotland.—His winning character.—He enters the army.—Malcolm Fraser's counsels to a young soldier.—Thomas Nairne's life at Gibraltar.—His desire to retire from the army.—His return to Canada in 1810-11.—His life at Quebec.—His summer at Murray Bay, 1811.—His resolve to remain in the army.—Beginning of the War of 1812.—Captain Nairne on Lake Ontario.—Quebec Society and the proposed flight from danger to Murray Bay.—Anxiety at Murray Bay.—The progress of the War.—An American attack on Kingston.—Captain Nairne on the Niagara frontier.—Naval War on Lake Ontario.—Nairne's description of a naval engagement.—Sense of impending disaster at Murray Bay.—The American advance on Montreal by the St. Lawrence.—Nairne's regiment a part of the opposing British force.—The Battle of Crysler's Farm.—Nairne's death.—His body taken to Quebec.—The grief of the family at Murray Bay.—The funeral.
At his father's death Thomas Nairne was the only surviving son. In 1791 the father had written of this boy, born in 1787 and thus only four years old: "Tom continues very stout but not easy to manage and [I] am afraid it will be difficult to separate [him] from his mother. He does not speak a word of English; neither do your sisters Mary (now called Polly) or Anny speak any other language than French; but I intend to send them all to Quebec next summer, where it's to be hoped they will soon learn to understand a little English." So to Quebec Tom was sent to begin his education. By 1798, when only eleven years old, he had gone to the relatives in Scotland and Nairne's friend, Ker, writes of him: "I think Tommie one of the sweetest tempered fine boys I ever saw and he will, I doubt not, be the comfort and delight of you all." Polly was there too—"a very good girl ... of great use to her Aunts to whom she pays every attention." Tom, like his brother John, was carefully instructed by his father. He must look after himself, dress, care for his clothes, and keep clean, without troubling others. Especially must he try to think clearly and speak distinctly—truly a sound beginning of education. His brother's death in 1799 made him an important person, the pride of his house. "There are many Tams now in this parish," wrote his father in 1801, "even a part of it is named St. Thomas, all in compliment to our Tom." At the time of his father's death in 1802, a boy of fifteen, Tom was attending the Edinburgh High School. Before me lies a coverless account book of octavo size in which are written by some careful person, in clear round-hand, recipes, scraps of poetry, problems in arithmetic and geometry, and among other things, "Tom's Expenses, 1796." A quarter at the High School costs 10/6, "Lattin books," 4/-, school money is 3/-, a ferret 3d., and so on. His sister Polly's expenses are entered in the same book and that young lady's outlay was more formidable. Items for the milliner such as "making up a Bonnet. 3/6," (young ladies still wore bonnets) are frequent. Miss Polly spent 6/- on ear-rings. Once when she took a "Shaise" it cost her 2/-, while "Chair Hire" is sometimes 1/6 and sometimes reduced to the modest proportions of 9d. No doubt for her health's sake she bought for 1/- a "Sacred Tincture" which, we may hope, did her good.
Thomas Nairne was an attractive boy. He lived with his father's executor and friend, James Ker, an Edinburgh banker, a wise, prudent, far-seeing, man. Mr. Ker was married to Colonel Nairne's niece and he received Tom as his own child. The boy was the inseparable companion of Ker's son Alick. Tom won praises on all sides. An Aunt wrote seriously that she had feared he was too good to live; and she comforted Nairne's grief at his son John's death by the thought of what Tom will be to him. He is "a happy chearful pleased little fellow always quiet at home"—but also "happy and at home wherever he goes." So thoughtful, she adds, is he that, entirely on his own motion, he deems it proper to write to his mother; one of these letters is before me—beautifully written in a large but well-formed schoolboy hand. "A very promising sweet young man," was the renewed judgment of his business-like guardian upon Tom in 1803, when he was a boy of only sixteen. By that time, it was thought that Tom had exhausted the advantages of the Edinburgh High School. The Edinburgh accent of the day did not suit the taste of his fastidious guardian, who hoped that in an English school a better manner of speech might be acquired. Tom's cousin and companion, Alick Ker, a boy a few years older, was going to school at Durham and thither also went Tom. The lads "are the greatest friends in the world," wrote his watchful aunt; "Alick does not know how to exist without Tom but Tom is more independent of Alick, for he is not so shy." In an aunt's, perhaps partial, view Tom was quicker and showed more application than Alick. "Tom advances with great deliberation in his height," she writes, which was very convenient, for, since Alick was older, Tom came in for Alick's out-grown clothes and this saved expense.