There is an interesting coincidence in the lives of Bouquet and Haldimand. Drawn to each other, doubtless, by the tie of nativity and profession, similarity of disposition, interests and fortunes, a life-long friendship was the natural consequence. They were associates in land investments. Bouquet bequeathed his entire estate to his native brother-in-arms, including the valuable collection before referred to. More fortunate than the former, the latter lived to be made a Knight of the Bath, and to die in his native town of Yverdun.[[9]]
CHAPTER IX.
Governor Elliott—Social and Military Life in Pensacola—Gentlemen—Women—Fiddles—George Street—King’s Wharf on November 14, 1768.
There exists evidence in the Canadian archives that, in July, 1767, Mr. Elliot was appointed to succeed Governor Johnstone, but careful search has failed to discover any official act upon which to rest the conclusion that he ever came to the province.
In a note dated eighteenth of October, 1768, at Pensacola, General Haldimand tells Governor Brown that “assistance will be given to land Governor Elliot’s baggage, and put the garden in order,” in answer, evidently, to a request of Governor Brown, made in expectation of the new governor’s early arrival. But these preparations were manifestly made in vain, for in a letter written at Pensacola, in January, 1769, by the general to Mr. John Bradley of New Orleans, he says: “I hope that these matters will be settled on the arrival of Governor Elliot, daily expected.” And numerous papers in the Canadian archives, as well as documents in the American state papers, show that from the eighteenth of December, 1766, up to the appointment of Governor Peter Chester, in 1772, Brown was the acting governor of the province. The evidence is therefore conclusive that though Elliot was appointed, he either died or resigned without ever having gone to the province.
The coming of officers and others from the military posts of the province to headquarters, as well as the frequent courts-martial held there, especially numerous and exciting in 1766-7, enlivened military life at Pensacola.
Of the social life of the town during Johnstone’s and Brown’s administrations, we have but little information. If, however, the opinion of an official high in rank is to be accepted as evidence, gentlemen were not numerous up to 1767, as will be seen from an extract from a letter of his to a friend: “A ship lately arrived from London, has brought over the chief justice and the attorney-general of the province, and other gentlemen, who are very much wanted.” But who are and who are not gentlemen? Let the moralist, the sectarian, partisan, votary of sport or fashion, dude, friend, enemy, the prejudiced, the just, the harsh, and the charitable successively sit in judgment upon the same man; what a very chameleon in character will he not appear, as he is reviewed by each of his judges? Of this variety of judgments, an occurrence, at Pensacola during this period, is illustrative.
Major Farmer of the Thirty-fourth regiment of infantry, stationed at Fort Charlotte,[[10]] was by the Johnstone party accused of embezzlement and fraud. But a court-martial which sat at Pensacola honorably acquitted him, and upon a review of the record the finding of the court was approved by the King.
Another letter, in 1770, gives the following uninviting picture of the civil as well as the social condition of the place: “Pensacola has been justly famed for vexatious law-suits. It is contrived, indeed, that if a poor man owes but five pounds, and has not got so much ready money, or if he disputes some dollars of imposition that may be in the account, or if he is guilty of shaking his fist at any rascal that has abused him, he is sure to be prosecuted, and the costs of every suit are about seven pounds sterling.... I have known this province for a little more than four years, yet I could name to you a set of men who may brag of one governor resigned, one horse-whipped and one whom they led by the nose and supported while it suited their purpose, and then betrayed him. What the next turn of affairs will be, God knows.”