"They have stolen his gloves and purloined his cravat
Even scraped a souvenir from the nap of his hat."
Be thankful if we satisfy even one or two of your queries. He had indeed to live here on the niggardly allowance of £5,000 per annum. The story [220] about censuring an officer for cutting off his pig-tail refers not to his stay in Canada, but to another period of his life. He lived rather retired; a select few only were admitted to his intimacy; his habits were here, as elsewhere, regular; his punctuality, proverbial; his stay amongst us, marked by several acts of kindness, of which we find traces in the addresses presented on several occasions, thanking him for his own personal exertions and the assistance rendered by his gallant men at several fires which had occurred. [221] He left behind some warm admirers, with whom he corresponded regularly. We have now before us a package of his letters dated "Kensington Palace." Here is one out of twenty; but no, the records of private friendship must remain inviolate.
The main portion of the "Mansion House," at Montmorenci, is just as he left it. The room in which he used to write is yet shown; a table and chair—part of his furniture—are to this day religiously preserved. The lodge is now the residence of the heirs of the late G. B Hall, Esquire, the proprietors of the extensive saw mills at the foot of the falls.
THE DUKE OF KENT, THE QUEEN'S FATHER, AT QUEBEC, 1791-4.
Of the numerous sons of King George III., none, perhaps, were born with more generous impulses, none certainly more manly—none more true in their attachments, and still none more maligned neglected—traduced than he, who, as a jolly Colonel of Fusileers spent some pleasant years of his life at Quebec from 1791 to '94, Edward Augustus, father of our virtuous and beloved Sovereign.
We wish to be understood at the outset. It is not our intention here to write a panegyric on a royal Duke; like his brothers, York and Clarence—the pleasure-loving, he, too, had his foibles; he was not an anchorite by any means. His stern, Spartan idea of discipline may have been overstretched, and blind adherence to routine in his daily habits may have justly invited the lash of ridicule. What is pretended here, and that, without fear of contradiction, is that his faults, which were those of a man, were loudly proclaimed, while his spirit of justice, of benevolence and generosity was unknown, unrecognized, except by a few. No stronger record can be opposed to the traducers of the memory of Edward, Duke of Kent, than his voluminous correspondence with Col. DeSalaberry and brothers, from 1791 to 1815—recently, through the kindness of the DeSalaberry family, laid before the public by the late Dr. W. J. Anderson, of Quebec.
The Duke had not been lucky in the way of biographers. The Rev. Erskine Neale, who wrote his life, is less a biographer than a panegyrist, and his book, if, instead of much fulsome praise, it contained a fuller account—especially of the early career of his hero—of the Duke's sayings and doings in Gibraltar, Quebec and Halifax, it would certainly prove more valuable, much more complete.
Singularly enough, Neale, disposes in about three lines, of the years the Duke spent in Quebec, though, as proved by his correspondence, those years were anything but barren. Quebec, we contend, as exhibited in the Duke's letters, ever retained a green spot in his souvenirs, in after life.
The Old Château balls, the Kent House in St. Lewis street, had for him their joyful sunshine, when, as a stalwart, dashing Colonel of Fusileers, aged 25, he had his entrées in the fashionable drawing- rooms of 1791-4 Holland House, Powell Place (Spencer Wood, as it is now called), old Hale's receptions, Lymburner's soirees in his old mansion on Sault au Matelot street, then the fashionable quarter for wealthy merchants. The Duke's cottage orné at the Montmorenci Falls had also its joyous memories, but these were possibly too tender to be expatiated on in detail.
The Prince, it appears, was also present on an occasion of no ordinary
moment to the colony that is when the King, his father, "granted a
Lower Chamber to the two provinces in 1791."