Just at this time came old Malcolm Fraser's end. At the age of 82 he died on June 17th, 1815, the day before the battle of Waterloo. He had entered the army in 1757 and apparently was still serving in the Canadian militia at the time of his death so that his military career covered well nigh sixty years. One instruction given in his will is characteristic; it is that his body might "be committed to the earth or water, as it may happen, and with as little ceremony and expense as may be consistent with decency." His removal was a heavy blow to the family at the Manor House. It was Christine who kept most in touch with the outside world and to her the letters of the period are nearly all addressed. They contained the gossip of Quebec,—how in December, 1814, a Mr. Lyman—"a bad name for a true story to come from,"—had brought word of peace negotiations at Ghent; news of General Procter's Court Martial and of a fee of £500 paid to Andrew Stuart, one of the lawyers in the case. The letters are few and in 1817 they cease altogether. During the spring of the year Christine had been ailing. On a June day she drove out for an airing and, as she alighted from the carriage, expired instantly. The feeling of the Protestant family towards the Roman Catholic Church is shown in the fact that she left a small legacy to the curé, Mr. Le Courtois.
There now remained but two daughters. In May, 1821, "Polly" died in Quebec at Judge Bowen's house. Her old mother followed in 1828. Of Colonel Nairne's large family but one child remained, Mrs. McNicol. Her husband, Peter McNicol, appears to have been a quiet and retiring man and of him we hear little. He was an officer in the local militia and, in 1830, became a Captain in the second Battalion of the County of Saguenay. There were two sons, Thomas and John. Thomas, the elder, was to get the estate at Murray Bay; for John India was talked of; but his mother could not let him go—"our family has been too unlucky by going there." In 1826, when a youth of twenty, Thomas made a tour in Europe. Then, or later, the young man fell into dissipated habits and he died in early manhood. There remained only John. When he came of age in 1829 he too travelled in Europe; in April he was at Rome and there saw the newly-elected Pope, Pius VIII. He returned to Canada quite a man of the world and for a time lived in Quebec, engaged in business. But in 1834 when his father Peter McNicol died[25] John's prospects changed. The seigniory belonged to his mother, during her lifetime, but he was the heir. It seemed desirable that the name of the first seigneur should be continued and, in 1834, by royal warrant, John McNicol adopted the name and arms of Nairne. Once more was there a John Nairne. In 1837 we find him empowered to take the oath of allegiance from the habitants—to show that they were not in sympathy with the rebel Papineau. His mother, the old Colonel's last surviving child, died in 1839. She was a kindly woman, of genial temper, with a fine faculty for friendship; so intimate was she with Malcolm Fraser's daughter that she wrote "I do believe, nay am sure, she has not a thought with which I am not made acquainted." She never lost her sympathy with young people and her delight in their "innocent gaiety."
As in 1762, so now again in 1839, a John Nairne ruled at Murray Bay. The young seigneur soon took a wife. In 1841 he married Miss Catherine Leslie, of a well known Canadian family, a bride of only seventeen, and then settled down at Murray Bay to live the life of a country gentleman. He became Colonel in the militia, took some part in politics on the Conservative side, and studied agriculture. He was resolved to keep up the dignity of his position and set about rebuilding the manor house. The work was begun in 1845 and completed by the autumn of 1847; the new structure with little change is the present Manor. It is of stone covered with wood, a capacious dwelling with some fine rooms, and admirably suited to its purpose. To John Nairne an heir was born in 1842 and named John Leslie Nairne and the prospect seemed excellent for the final establishment of a Nairne dynasty in the seigniory. But, alas, this was not to be. The child died in his third year and the last of the Nairnes ruled at Murray Bay knowing that with himself the family should become extinct.
We must turn now to study the type of community of which he was the chief. A singular type it is, French in speech, Roman Catholic in faith, half feudal in organization, in a land British in allegiance, if not in origin. Long the determined rival of the Briton in America the French Canadian, though worsted in the struggle, remains still unconquered in his determination to live his own separate life and pursue his own separate ideals. When the British took Canada they fondly imagined that in a few years a little pressure would bring the French Canadians into the Protestant fold.[26] Immediately after the conquest preparations for this gradual absorption were made. The Roman Catholics were to be undisturbed but, as soon as a majority in any parish was Protestant, a clergyman of that faith would be appointed and the parish church would be given over to the Protestant worship. The minority would, it was hoped, acquiesce, and, in time, adopt the creed of the majority. The most illuminating comment upon these expectations is the fact that, during the half century after the conquest, Protestantism made probably not more than half a dozen converts among the Canadians, while of Protestants coming to the country during that time hundreds went over to the Church of Rome. In other ways too the type in French Canada has proved curiously persistent. A Lowland Scot of twenty-five married an Irish woman of twenty-three and went to live in a French Canadian parish. Hitherto they had spoken only English but after twenty-five years they could not even understand it when heard. They explained that at first they spoke English to each other but when the children went to school they used only French. So the parents yielded "C'était les enfants, M'sieu!"
A modern critic of France[27] has announced, as a sounding paradox, that the French, even of present-day anti-clerical France, are a profoundly religious people. Certainly this appears in France's efforts in Canada. When the Roman Catholic faith was first planted there the ground was watered with the blood of martyrs, done to death by brutal savages. At the very time when in France Pascal's satire and scorn were making the spiritual sincerity of the Jesuits more than doubtful, in Canada these same Jesuits were dying for their faith almost with a light heart. They and others, like-minded, won New France for the Catholic Church and to that Church the conquered habitant has since clung with a tenacity really heroic. He accepts its creed, he believes in its clergy. Whatever license of conduct marked the clergy of France in the bad days before the Revolution, the clergy in Canada during the 300 years of its history have been notable for a severity in morals so austere that hardly once in that long period has there been a whisper of scandal. In consequence, they have always retained the respect of the people and to-day, in every village, the curé commands extraordinary influence.
It may be that to the Church chiefly does the habitant owe the preservation of his identity. Inferior to the heretic conqueror in social status, the habitant yet retained in religion the sense of his own superiority. Was he not a member of an ancient body, in the presence of which Protestantism represented a mushroom growth of yesterday? The Church taught him that wealth, honour, and worldly power were not always given to the faithful; they had the truer riches of spiritual privileges and spiritual hopes. What mattered the pride of life in the face of these eternal treasures? So the habitant went his way. Led by his teachers he showed striking tenacity of character. He would not follow the customs of the English. He looked with suspicion upon their methods. Even in agriculture, where he had everything to learn, he would not imitate him. Their language he would not learn, their religion he abhorred; so he remained, and he remains still, true to his own traditions, a Gallic island in the vast Anglo-Saxon sea of North America.
The habitant has not proved a pliable person. The very name shows his sense of his own dignity. Though he held his land under feudal tenure he would not accept a designation that carried with it some sense of the servile status of the feudal vassal in old France. So the Canadian peasant, a feudal tenant en censive or en roture, yet wished not to be called censitaire or roturier, names which he thought degrading; he preferred to be called a habitant, an inhabitant of the country, a free man, not a vassal. The designation obtained official recognition in New France and has come to be the characteristic word for the French Canadian farmer among English-speaking people.
In other respects too the Canadian has been hardly less assertive. Earlier writers, while they call him obliging, honest and courteous, speak also of his self-conceit, boastfulness, fondness for drink. At Malbaie Nairne found him defiant when his spirit was aroused. Not less tenacious than the men were the women. Malcolm Fraser tells how when he was stationed at Beaumont, near Quebec, in January, 1761, he sent one of his men to cut wood on the property of a certain habitant, the man himself consenting. But Madame, his wife, was not pleased. She abused Fraser, called him opprobrious names, and, in a war of words, remained, he admits, mistress of the field. The wrathful virago carried her appeal to Murray in Quebec, who, she said, had passed many officers under the rod and Fraser found himself called upon to explain the matter. In a petition he humbly begs that some "recompence" (of punishment of course) may be made to the woman for "the insolent expressions used by her as well against the general, as the officers, who have the honour to serve under His Excellency."
Even when he knows only rude frontier life the French Canadian often retains something of the politeness and deference in manner of the nation from which he springs. But, unlike them, he has retained little sense of what is artistic. No thought of beauty of situation seems to determine his choice of the site for his dwelling. What he has in mind is protection from the prevailing wind, if this is possible, and, for the rest, convenience. So he puts his house close to the highway, in many cases even abutting upon it. He shows no taste in grouping his farm buildings. He plants few trees and his house stands bare and unattractive by the road side. The absence of trees near his dwelling is sometimes accounted for by the need, in earlier times, of clearing away everything that might offer a chance of ambush to his Indian enemies. If this is the true origin of the habit, an instinct survives long after the need which developed it has disappeared. The houses are persistent in type and nearly always of wood. The principle doorway opens into the living room, usually of a good size. It is kitchen, diningroom, parlour, often even workshop. In this chamber cooking, sewing, repairing of tools, all the varied family activities, take place. One large guest chamber or two small bedrooms open off it. In the corner there is a rude staircase and up under the sloping roof are two more rooms; one a bed-room probably with three or four beds, the other a general lumber room. Often there are two families in a household. As always with the French, family feeling is very strong. As soon as they are old enough the elder sons may go out into the world; it is usually a younger son whom the father selects to remain with him on the family property. This son is free to marry and to him, when the old father dies, the land goes on condition that he will always keep the door open to members of the family who may seek its refuge. It is not easy to see how so small a cottage can discharge these hospitable functions; in addition to adults there are often, in a French Canadian family, from ten to fifteen, sometimes twenty or twenty-five children. Through the long winters, doors and windows remain closed. The family gets on without fresh air and it gets on also without baths.
Since there are often many hands to do the work habitant farming is greatly diversified. But improvements come only slowly. Some of the most fertile areas in Quebec have been half ruined because the habitant would not learn the proper rotation of crops. Of the value of fertilizing he has had only a slight idea. His domestic animals are usually of an inferior breed, except perhaps the horses. Of these he is proud and, no matter how poor, usually keeps two, an extravagance for which he was rebuked by successive Intendants under the French régime. In recent times the French Canadian farmer has been making great progress. He is pre-eminently a handy man. Though his versatility is lessening, to this day, in some of the remoter villages, he buys almost nothing; he is carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, shoemaker; and, if not he, his wife is weaver and tailor. The waggon he drives is his handiwork; so is the harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the wool of his own sheep: it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and will no longer wear homespun. Sometimes the habitant makes his own boots, the excellent bottes sauvages of the country. The women make not only home-spun cloth, but linen, straw hats, gloves, candles, soap. When there are maple trees, the habitant provides his own sugar; he makes even the buckets in which the sap of the maple tree is caught. Tobacco grows in his garden, for the habitant is an inveterate smoker: sometimes the boys begin when only five years old or less. The women and the girls, indeed, do not smoke and an American visitor, who declares that he saw pretty French Canadian brunettes of sixteen puffing clouds of smoke as they worked in the harvest field, is solemnly rebuked by a French Canadian writer; the brunettes must have been Indian women.[28]