Quebecers will be pleased to learn that the name of Sir Peregrine Maitland is pleasantly preserved by means of Maitland Scholarships in a grammar school for natives at Madras, and by a Maitland Prize in the University of Cambridge. Sir Peregrine, as patron of education, opened an era of progress which his successors Lords Elgin, Dufferin and Lorne have continued in a most munificent manner.
A curious glimpse of high life at Quebec, in the good old days of Lord
Dalhousie, is furnished in a letter addressed to Delta, of Blackwood's
Magazine, by John Galt, the novelist, the respected father of our gifted
statesman, Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt. [40]
The talented author of the "Annals of the Parish," after expatiating on the dangers he had that day incurred in crossing over from Levis to Quebec in a canoe, among the ice-floes, thus alludes to the winter amusements:—
QUEBEC, 22nd February, 1827.
MY DEAR SIR,—I am under very great obligations to you. A copy of the "Laird" having come to the castle from the New York publishers, Lady Dalhousie lent it to me. * * * I am much pleased with Quebec. It is at present filled with Highland regiments, in which I have many acquaintances and the hospitality of the other inhabitants is also unbounded, for the winter suspends all business, and pleasure is conducted as if it were business. The amateurs have a theatre, and I wrote a piece for them, in which a Londoner, a Glasgow merchant, an Irish girl, a Yankee family and a Highlander were introduced. It was adapted entirely to the place, and in quiz of a very agreeable custom —of everybody calling on strangers. Dr. Dunlop performed the Highlander beyond anything I ever saw on the regular stage. The whole went off with more laughter than anything I have ever seen, for the jokes being local and personal (supplied by upwards of thirty contributors), every one told with the utmost effect."
"This farce, says Delta, composed at Quebec by J. Galt, and performed there before the Earl of Dalhousie (then Governor-General), was named "The Visitors, or a Trip to Quebec," and was meant as a good humoured satire on some of the particular usages of the place. An American family figured as the visitors, and the piece opened with a scene in an hôtel, when a waiter brings in a tea-tray loaded with cards of callers, and the explanation of the initials having had reference to people, many of whom were present at the performance, tended much to make the thing pass off with great éclat. It seems that a custom prevails there to a punctilious extent, of all the inhabitants of a certain grade calling upon strangers and leaving their cards.
"This flash of harmless lightning, however, assumed somewhat of a malignant glare when seen from the United States. The drift of the performance was, it seems, hideously misrepresented by some of the newspapers, and it was said that Mr. Galt had ungratefully ridiculed the Americans, notwithstanding the distinction and hospitality with which they had received him. It thus came to pass that he promised, when next in New York, to write another farce, in which liberty as great should be taken with his own countrymen. "An Aunt in Virginia" was the product of this promise, and with the alterations mentioned and a change of scene from New York to London, it was published under the name of "Scotch and Yankees.""
A volume would not suffice to detail the brilliant receptions, gay routs, levees, state balls given at the Castle during Lord Dorchester's administration—the lively discussions—the formal protests originating out of points of precedence, burning questions de jupons between the touchy magnates of the old and those of the new regime. Whether la Baronne de St. Laurent would be admitted there or not? Whether a de Longueuil's or a de Lanaudière's place was on the right of Lady Maria, the charming consort of His Excellency Lord Dorchester—a daughter of the great English Earl of Effingham? Whether dancing ought to cease when their Lordships the Bishops entered, and made their bow to the representative of royalty? Unfortunately Quebec had then no Court Journal, so that following generations will have but faint ideas of all the witchery, the stunning head-dresses, the décolletées, high-waisted robes of their stately grandmothers, whirled round in the giddy waltz by whiskered, épauletted cavaliers, or else courtesying in the demure menuet de la cour.
In August, 1796, when Isaac Weld, Jr., visited Quebec, he describes the old part of the château as chiefly taken up with the public offices, all the apartments in it, says he, "are small and ill-contrived; but in the new part (Haldimand Castle) which stands in front of the other, facing the square (the ring), they are spacious and tolerably well furnished, but none of them can be called elegant. This part is inhabited by the Governor's family. * * * * Every evening during summer, when the weather is fine, one of the regiments of the garrison parades in the open place before the château, and the band plays for an hour or two, at which time the place becomes the resort of numbers of the most genteel people of the town, and has a very gay appearance." (Weld's Travels through the States of North America in 1795-6-7, vol. 1, p. 351)
In 1807, when the deadly duel between England and Imperial France was at its height, Great Britain sent New France as her Viceroy, a military Governor, equally remarkable for the sternness of his rule and for his love of display, hence the name of "Little King Craig," awarded to Sir James Craig. To meet his requirements the House of Assembly voted in 1808, a sum of £7,000 to repair the Château St. Louis. Sir James took up his quarters in the interim, in Castle Haldimand. The Château St. Louis received an additional story and was much enlarged. In 1812 an additional sum of £7,980 19s 4d was voted to cover the deficit in the repairs. Little King Craig inhabited Château St. Louis during the winters of 1809-10-11, occupying Spencer Wood during the summer months. The Château stables were subsequently converted into a riding school, afterwards into a theatre, where the exhibition of Harrison's Diorama caused the awful tragedy of 12th June, 1846. [41] The Earl of Durham, in 1838, struck with the commanding position of this site, had the charred ruins of the old Château removed and erected a lofty platform which soon was called after him "Durham Terrace."