The Englishwoman in America

by Isabella L. Bird

The cholera, which in America assumes nearly the fatality and rapidity of the plague, had during the summer ravaged Quebec. It had entered and desolated happy homes, and, not confining itself to the abodes of the poor and miserable, had attacked the rich, the gifted, and the beautiful. For long the Destroying Angel hovered over the devoted city—neither age nor infancy was spared, and numbers were daily hurried from the vigour of living manhood into the silence and oblivion of the grave. Vigorous people, walking along the streets, were suddenly seized with shiverings and cramp, and sank down on the pavement to rise no more, sometimes actually expiring on the cold, hard stones. Pleasure was forgotten, business was partially suspended; all who could, fled; the gloom upon the souls of the inhabitants was heavier than the brown cloud which was supposed to brood over the city; and the steamers which conveyed those who fled from the terrible pestilence arrived at Toronto freighted with the living and the dead. Among the terror-stricken, the dying, and the dead, the ministers of religion pursued their holy calling, undaunted by the terrible sights which met them everywhere—the clergy of the different denominations vied with each other in their kindness and devotedness. The priests of Rome then gained a double influence. Armed with what appeared in the eyes of the people supernatural powers, they knew no rest either by night or day; they held the cross before many a darkening eye, and spoke to the bereaved, in the plenitude of their anguish, of a world where sorrow and separation are alike unknown. The heavy clang of tolling bells was hourly heard, as the pestilence-stricken were carried to their last homes. Medical skill availed nothing; the "pestilence which walketh in darkness" was only removed by Him in whose hand are the issues of life and death.

Quebec had been free from disease for about six weeks before I visited it; the victims of the pestilence were cold in their untimely graves; the sun of prosperity smiled upon the fortress-city, and its light-hearted inhabitants had just begun their nightly round of pleasure and gaiety. The viceroyalty of Lord Elgin was drawing rapidly to a close, and two parties, given every week at Government House, afforded an example which the good people of Quebec were not slow to follow. There were musical parties, conversaziones, and picnics to the Chaudière and Lorette; and people who were dancing till four or five o'clock in the morning were vigorous enough after ten for a gallop to Montmorenci.

The absolute restlessness of the city astonished me very much. The morning seemed to begin, with fashionable people, with a desultory breakfast at nine o'clock, after which some received callers, others paid visits, or walked into the town to make trifling purchases at the stores; while not a few of the young ladies promenaded St. Louis Street or the ramparts, where they were generally joined by the officers. Several officers said to me that no quarters in the world were so delightful as those at Quebec. A scarlet coat finds great favour with the fair sex at Quebec—civilians, however great their mental qualifications, are decidedly in the background; and I was amused to see young ensigns, with budding moustaches, who had just joined their regiments, preferred before men of high literary attainments. With balls, and moose-hunting, and sleigh- driving, and "tarboggining," and, last but not least, "muffins," the time passes rapidly by to them. A gentleman, who had just arrived from England, declared that "Quebec was a horrid place, not fit to live in." A few days after he met the same individual to whom he had made this uncomplimentary observation, and confided to him that he thought Quebec "the most delightful place in the whole world; for, do you know," he said, "I have got a muffin."

With the afternoon numerous riding parties are formed, for you cannot go three miles out of Quebec without coming to something beautiful; and calls of a more formal nature are paid; a military band performs on Durham Terrace or the Garden, which then assume the appearance of most fashionable promenades. The evening is spent in the ball-room, or at small social dancing parties, or during the winter, before ten at night, in the galleries of the House of Assembly; and the morning is well advanced before the world of Quebec is hushed in sleep.

Society is contained in very small limits at Quebec. Its élite are grouped round the ramparts and in the suburb of St. Louis. The city until recently has occupied a very isolated position, and has depended upon itself for society. It is therefore sociable, friendly, and hospitable; and though there is gossip—for where is it not to be found?—I never knew any in which there was so little of ill-nature. The little world in the upper part of the city is probably the most brilliant to be found anywhere in so small a compass. But there is a world below, another nation, seldom mentioned in the aristocratic quarter of St. Louis, where vice, crime, poverty, and misery jostle each other, as pleasure and politics do in the upper town. This is the suburb of St. Roch, in whose tall dark houses and fetid alleys those are to be found whose birthright is toil, who spend life in supplying the necessities of to-day, while indulging in gloomy apprehensions for to-morrow—who have not one comfort in the past to cling to, or one hope for the future to cheer.

St. Roch is as crowded as the upper town, but with a very different population—the poor, the degraded, and the vicious. Here fever destroys its tens, and cholera its hundreds. Here people stab each other, and think little of it. Here are narrow alleys, with high, black-looking, stone houses, with broken windows pasted over with paper in the lower stories, and stuffed with rags in the upper—gradations of wretchedness which I have observed in the Cowgate and West Port at Edinburgh. Here are shoeless women, who quiet their children with ardent spirits, and brutal men, who would kill both wives and children if they dared. Here are dust-heaps in which pigs with long snouts are ever routing—here are lean curs, wrangling with each other for leaner bones—here are ditches and puddles, and heaps of oyster-shells, and broken crockery, and cabbage-stalks, and fragments of hats and shoes. Here are torn notices on the walls offering rewards for the apprehension of thieves and murderers, painfully suggestive of dark deeds. A little further are lumber-yards and wharfs, and mud and sawdust, and dealers in old nails and rags and bones, and rotten posts and rails, and attempts at grass. Here are old barrel-hoops, and patches of old sails, and dead bushes and dead dogs, and old saucepans, and little plots of ground where cabbages and pumpkins drag on a pining existence. And then there is the river Charles, no longer clear and bright, as when trees and hills and flowers were mirrored on its surface, but foul, turbid, and polluted, with ship-yards and steam-engines and cranes and windlasses on its margin; and here Quebec ends.

From the rich, the fashionable, and the pleasure-seeking suburb of St. Louis few venture down into the quarter of St. Roch, save those who, at the risk of drawing in pestilence with every breath, mindful of their duty to God and man, enter those hideous dwellings, ministering to minds and bodies alike diseased. My first visit to St. Roch was on a Sunday afternoon. I had attended our own simple and beautiful service in the morning, and had seen the celebration of vespers in the Romish cathedral in the afternoon. Each church was thronged with well-dressed persons. It was a glorious day. The fashionable promenades were all crowded; gay uniforms and brilliant parasols thronged the ramparts; horsemen were cantering along St. Louis Street; priestly processions passed to and from the different churches; numbers of calashes containing pleasure-parties were dashing about; picnic parties were returning from Montmorenci and Lake Charles; groups of vivacious talkers, speaking in the language of France, were at every street-corner; Quebec had all the appearance, so painful to an English or Scottish eye, of a Continental sabbath.

Mr. and Mrs. Alderson and myself left this gay scene, and the constant toll of Romish bells, for St. Roch. They had lived peacefully in a rural part of Devonshire, and more recently in one of the prettiest and most thriving of the American cities; and when they first breathed the polluted air, they were desirous to return from what promised to be so peculiarly unpleasant, but kindly yielded to my desire to see something of the shady as well as the sunny side of Quebec.

No Sabbath-day with its hallowed accompaniments seemed to have dawned upon the inhabitants of St. Roch. We saw women with tangled hair standing in the streets, and men with pallid countenances and bloodshot eyes were reeling about, or sitting with their heads resting on their hands, looking out from windows stuffed with rags. There were children too, children in nothing but the name and stature—infancy without innocence, learning to take God's name in vain with its first lisping accents, preparing for a maturity of suffering and shame. I looked at these hideous houses, and hideous men and women too, and at their still more repulsive progeny, with sallow faces, dwarfed forms, and countenances precocious in the intelligence of villany; and contrasted them with the blue-eyed, rosy- cheeked infants of my English home, who chase butterflies and weave May garlands, and gather cowslips and buttercups; or the sallow children of a Highland shantie, who devour instruction in mud-floored huts, and con their tasks on the heathery sides of hills.

Yet, when you breathe the poisoned air, laden with everything noxious to health, and have the physical and moral senses alike met with everything that can disgust and offend, it ceases to be a matter of wonder that the fair tender plant of beautiful childhood refuses to grow in such a vitiated atmosphere. Here all distinctions between good and evil are speedily lost, if they were ever known; and men, women, and children become unnatural in vice, in irreligion, in manners and appearance. Such spots as these act like cankers, yearly spreading further and further their vitiating influences, preparing for all those fearful retributions in the shape of fever and pestilence which continually come down. Yet, lamentable as the state of such a population is, considered merely with regard to this world, it becomes fearful when we recollect that the wheels of Time are ceaselessly rolling on, bearing how few, alas! to heaven—what myriads to hell; and that, when "this trembling consciousness of being, which clings enamoured to its anguish," not because life is sweet, but because death is bitter, is over, there remains, for those who have known nothing on earth but misery and vice, "a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation," when they that have done evil "shall rise to the resurrection of damnation."