Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush

by Susanna Moodie

  A strong English bull-dog immediately seized upon the bone, and for some time gnawed away at the best end of it, and contrived to keep all the other dogs at bay. This proceeding was resented by a stout mastiff, who thought that he had as good a right to the beef as the bull-dog, and flung himself tooth and claw upon his opponent. While these two were fighting and wrangling over the bone, a wiry, active Scotch terrier, though but half the size of the other combatants, began tugging at the small end of the shank, snarling and barking with all the strength of his lungs, to gain at least a chance of being heard, even if he did fail in putting in his claims to a share of the meat.

  An old cunning greyhound, to whom no share had been offered, and who well knew that it was of no use putting himself against the strength of the bull-dog and mastiff, stood proudly aloof, with quivering ears and tail, regarding the doings of the others with a glance of sovereign contempt; yet, watching with his keen eye for an opportunity of making a successful spring, while they were busily engaged in snarling and biting each other, to carry off the meat, bone and all.

  A multitude of nondescript curs, of no weight in themselves, were snapping and snuffling round the bone, eagerly anticipating the few tit bits, which they hoped might fall to their share during the prolonged scuffle among the higher powers: while the figure of Justice, dimly seen in the distance, was poising her scales, and lifting her sword to make an equal division; but her voice failed to be heard, and her august presence regarded, in the universal hubbub. The height to which party feeling was carried in those days, had to be experienced before it could be fully understood.

  Happily for the colony, this evil spirit, during the last three years, has greatly diminished. The two rival parties, though they occasionally abuse and villify each other, through the medium of the common safety valve – the public papers – are not so virulent as in 1840. They are more equally matched. The union of the provinces has kept the reform party in the ascendant, and they are very indifferent to the good or ill opinion of their opponents.

  The colony has greatly progressed under their administration, and is now in a most prosperous and flourishing state. The municipal and district councils, free schools, and the improvement in the public thoroughfares of the country, are owing to them, and have proved a great blessing to the community. The resources of the country are daily being opened up, and both at home and abroad Canada is rising in public estimation.

  As a woman, I cannot enter into the philosophy of these things, nor is it my intention to do so. I leave statistics for wiser and cleverer male heads. But, even as a woman, I cannot help rejoicing in the beneficial effects that these changes have wrought in the land of my adoption. The day of our commercial and national prosperity has dawned, and the rays of the sun already brighten the hill-tops.

  To those persons who have been brought up in the old country, and accustomed from infancy to adhere to the conventional rules of society, the mixed society must, for a long time, prove very distasteful. Yet this very freedom, which is so repugnant to all their preconceived notions and prejudices, is by no means so unpleasant as strangers would be led to imagine. A certain mixture of the common and the real, of the absurd and the ridiculous, gives a zest to the cold, tame decencies, to be found in more exclusive and refined circles. Human passions and feelings are exhibited with more fidelity, and you see men and women as they really are. And many kind, good, and noble traits are to be found among those classes, whom at home we regard as our inferiors. The lady and gentleman in Canada are as distinctly marked as elsewhere. There is no mistaking the superiority that mental cultivation bestows; and their mingling in public with their less gifted neighbours, rather adds than takes from their claims to hold the first place. I consider the state of society in a more healthy condition than at home; and people, when they go out for pleasure here, seem to enjoy themselves much more.

  The harmony that reigns among the members of a Canadian family is truly delightful. They are not a quarrelsome people in their own homes. No contradicting or disputing, or hateful rivalry, is to be seen between Canadian brothers and sisters. They cling together through good and ill report, like the bundle of sticks in the fable; and I have seldom found a real Canadian ashamed of owning a poor relation. This to me is a beautiful feature in the Canadian character. Perhaps the perfect equality on which children stand in a family, the superior claim of eldership, so much upheld at home, never being enforced, is one great cause of this domestic union of kindred hearts.

  Most of the pretence, and affected airs of importance, occasionally met with in Canada, are not the genuine produce of the soil, but importations from the mother country; and, as sure as you hear anyone boasting of the rank and consequence they possessed at home, you may be certain that it was quite the reverse. An old Dutch lady, after listening very attentively to a young Irishwoman’s account of the grandeur of her father’s family at home, said rather drily to the self-exalted damsel, –

  “Goodness me, child! if you were so well off, what brought you to a poor country like this? I am sure you had been much wiser had you staid to hum –”

  “Yes. But my papa heard such fine commendations of the country, that he sold his estate to come out.”

  “To pay his debts, perhaps,” said the provoking old woman.

  “Ah, no, ma’am,” she replied, very innocently, “he never paid them. He was told that it was a very fine climate, and he came for the good of our health.”

  “Why, my dear, you look as if you never had had a day’s sickness in your life.”

  “No more I have,” she replied, putting on a very languid air, “but I am very delicate.”

  This term delicate, be it known to my readers is a favourite one with young ladies here, but its general application would lead you to imagine it another term for laziness. It is quite fashionable to be delicate, but horribly vulgar to be considered capable of enjoying such a useless blessing as good health. I knew a lady, when I first came to the colony, who had her children daily washed in water almost hot enough to scald a pig. On being asked why she did so, as it was not only an unhealthy practice, but would rob the little girls of their fine colour, she exclaimed, –

  “Oh, that is just what I do it for. I want them to look delicate. They have such red faces, and are as coarse and healthy as country girls.”

  The rosy face of the British emigrant is regarded as no beauty here. The Canadian women, like their neighbours the Americans, have small regular features, but are mostly pale, or their faces are only slightly suffused with a faint flush. During the season of youth this delicate tinting is very beautiful, but a few years deprive them of it, and leave a sickly, sallow pallor in its place. The loss of their teeth, too, is a great drawback to their personal charms, but these can be so well supplied by the dentist that it is not so much felt; the thing is so universal, that it is hardly thought detrimental to an otherwise pretty face.

  But, to return to the mere pretenders in society, of which, of course, there are not a few here, as elsewhere. I once met two very stylishly-dressed women at a place of public entertainment. The father of these ladies had followed the lucrative but un-aristocratic trade of a tailor in London. One of them began complaining to me of the mixed state of society in Canada, which she considered a dreadful calamity to persons like her and her sister; and ended her lamentations by exclaiming, –

  “What would my pa have thought could he have seen us here to-night? Is it not terrible for ladies to have to dance in the same room with storekeepers and their clerks?”

  Another lady of the same stamp, the daughter of a tavern-keeper, was indignant at being introduced to a gentleman, whose father had followed the same calling.

  Such persons seem to forget, that as long as people retain their natural manners, and remain true to the dignity of their humanity, they cannot with any justice be called vulgar; for vulgarity consists in presumptuously affecting to be what we are not, and in claiming distinctions which we do not deserve, and which no one else
would admit.

  The farmer, in his homespun, may possess the real essentials which make the gentleman – good feeling, and respect for the feelings of others. The homely dress, weather-beaten face, and hard hands, could not deprive him of the honest independence and genial benevolence he derived from nature. No real gentleman would treat such a man, however humble his circumstances, with insolence or contempt. But place the same man out of his class, dress him in the height of fashion, and let him attempt to imitate the manners of the great, and the whole world would laugh at the counterfeit.

  Uneducated, ignorant people often rise by their industry to great wealth in the colony; to such the preference shown to the educated man always seems a puzzle. Their ideas of gentility consist in being the owners of fine clothes, fine houses, splendid furniture, expensive equipages, and plenty of money. They have all these, yet even the most ignorant feel that something else is required. They cannot comprehend the mysterious ascendancy of mind over mere animal enjoyments; yet they have sense enough, by bestowing a liberal education on their children, to endeavour, at least in their case, to remedy the evil.

  The affectation of wishing people to think that you had been better off in the mother country than in Canada, is not confined to the higher class of emigrants. The very poorest are the most remarked for this ridiculous boasting. A servant girl of mine told me, with a very grand toss of the head, “that she did not choose to demane hersel’ by scrubbing a floor; that she belonged to the ra’al gintry in the ould counthry, and her papa and mamma niver brought her up to hard work.”

  This interesting scion of the aristocracy was one of the coarsest specimens of female humanity I ever beheld. If I called her to bring a piece of wood for the parlour fire, she would thrust her tangled, uncombed red head in at the door, and shout at the top of her voice, “Did yer holler?”

  One of our working men, wishing to impress me with the dignity of his wife’s connexions, said with all becoming solemnity of look and manner –

  “Doubtless, ma’am, you have heard in the ould counthry of Connor’s racers: Margaret’s father kept those racers.”

  When I recalled the person of the individual whose fame was so widely spread at home, and thought of the racers, I could hardly keep a “straight face,” as an American friend terms laughing, when you are bound to look grave.

  One want is greatly felt here; but it is to be hoped that a more liberal system of education and higher moral culture will remedy the evil. There is a great deficiency among our professional men and wealthy traders of that nice sense of honour that marks the conduct and dealings of the same class at home. Of course many bright exceptions are to be found in the colony, but too many of the Canadians think it no disgrace to take every advantage of the ignorance and inexperience of strangers.

  If you are not smart enough to drive a close bargain, they consider it only fair to take you in. A man loses very little in the public estimation by making over all his property to some convenient friend, in order to defraud his creditors, while he retains a competency for himself.

  Women, whose husbands have been detained on the limits for years for debt, will give large parties and dress in the most expensive style. This would be thought dishonourable at home, but is considered no disgrace here.

  “Honour is all very well in an old country like England,” said a lady, with whom I had been arguing on the subject; “but, Mrs. M—, it won’t do in a new country like this. You may as well cheat as be cheated. For my part, I never lose an advantage by indulging in such foolish notions.”

  I have no doubt that a person who entertained such principles would not fail to reduce them to practice.

  The idea that some country people form of an author is highly amusing. One of my boys was tauntingly told by another lad at school, “that his ma’ said that Mrs. M—invented lies, and got money for them.” This was her estimation of works of mere fiction.

  Once I was driven by a young Irish friend to call upon the wife of a rich farmer in the country. We were shewn by the master of the house into a very handsomely furnished room, in which there was no lack of substantial comfort, and even of some elegancies, in the shape of books, pictures, and a piano. The good man left us to inform his wife of our arrival, and for some minutes we remained in solemn state, until the mistress of the house made her appearance.

  She had been called from the washtub, and, like a sensible woman, was not ashamed of her domestic occupation. She came in wiping the suds from her hands on her apron, and gave us a very hearty and friendly welcome. She was a short, stout, middle-aged woman, with a very pleasing countenance; and though only in her coloured flannel working-dress, with a nightcap on her head, and spectacled nose, there was something in her frank good-natured face that greatly prepossessed us in her favour.

  After giving us the common compliments of the day, she drew her chair just in front of me, and, resting her elbows on her knees, and dropping her chin between her hands, she sat regarding me with such a fixed gaze that it became very embarrassing.

  “So,” says she, at last, “you are Mrs. M—?”

  “Yes.”

  “The woman that writes?”

  “The same.”

  She drew back her chair for a few paces, with a deep-drawn sigh, in which disappointment and surprise seemed strangely to mingle. “Well, I have he’rd a great deal about you, and I wanted to see you bad for a long time; but you are only a humly person like myself after all. Why I do think, if I had on my best gown and cap, I should look a great deal younger and better than you.”

  I told her that I had no doubt of the fact.

  “And pray,” continued she, with the same provoking scrutiny, “how old do you call yourself?” I told her my exact age.

  “Humph!” quoth she, as if she rather doubted my word, “two years younger nor me! you look a great deal older nor that.”

  After a long pause, and another searching gaze, “Do you call those teeth your own?”

  “Yes,” said I, laughing; for I could retain my gravity no longer; “in the very truest sense of the word they are mine, as God gave them to me.”

  “You luckier than your neighbours,” said she. “But airn’t you greatly troubled with headaches? ”

  “No,” said I, rather startled at this fresh interrogatory.

  “My!” exclaimed she, “I thought you must be, your eyes are so sunk in your head. Well, well, so you are Mrs. M—of Belleville, the woman that writes. You are but a humly body after all.”

  While this curious colloquy was going on, my poor Irish friend sat on thorns, and tried, by throwing in a little judicious blarney, to soften the thrusts of the home truths to which he had unwittingly exposed me. Between every pause in the conversation, he broke in with –“I am sure Mrs. M—is a fine-looking woman – a very young-looking woman for her age. Any person might know at a glance that those teeth were her own. They look too natural to be false.”

  Now, I am certain that the poor little woman never meant to wound my feelings, nor give me offence. She literally spoke her thoughts, and I was too much amused with the whole scene to feel the least irritated by her honest bluntness. She expected to find in an author something quite out of the common way, and I did not come up at all to her expectations.

  Her opinion of me was not more absurd than the remarks of two ladies who, after calling upon me for the first time, communicated the result of their observations to a mutual friend.

  “We have seen Mrs. M—, and we were so surprised to find her just like other people!”

  “What did you expect to see in her?”

  “Oh, something very different. We were very much disappointed.”

  “That she was not sitting upon her head,” said my friend, smiling; “I like Mrs. M—, because she is in every respect like other people; and I should not have taken her for a blue-stocking at all.”

  The sin of authorship meets with little toleration in a new country. Several persons of this class, finding few minds that could
sympathise with them, and enter into their literary pursuits, have yielded to despondency, or fallen victims to that insidious enemy of souls, Canadian whisky. Such a spirit was the unfortunate Dr. Huskins, late of Frankfort on the river Trent. The fate of this gentleman, who was a learned and accomplished man of genius, left a very sad impression on my mind. Like too many of that highly-gifted, but unhappy fraternity, he struggled through his brief life, overwhelmed with the weight of undeserved calumny, and his peace of mind embittered with the most galling neglect and poverty.

  The want of sympathy experienced by him from men of his own class, pressed sorely upon the heart of the sensitive man of talent and refinement; he found very few who could appreciate or understand his mental superiority, which was pronounced as folly and madness by the ignorant persons about him. A new country, where all are rushing eagerly forward in order to secure the common necessaries of life, is not a favourable soil in which to nourish the bright fancies and delusive dreams of the poet. Dr. Huskins perceived his error too late, when he no longer retained the means to remove to a more favourable spot, – and his was not a mind which could meet and combat successfully with the ills of life. He endeavoured to bear proudly the evils of his situation, but he had neither the energy nor the courage to surmount them. He withdrew himself from society, and passed the remainder of his days in a solitary, comfortless, log hut on the borders of the wilderness. Here he drooped and died, as too many like him have died, heartbroken and alone. A sad mystery involves the last hours of his life: it is said that he and Dr. Sutor, another talented but very dissipated man, had entered into a compact to drink until they both died. Whether this statement is true cannot now be positively ascertained. It is certain, however, that Dr. Sutor was found dead upon the floor of the miserable shanty occupied by his friend, and that Dr. Huskins was lying on his bed in the agonies of death. Could the many fine poems, composed by Dr. Huskins in his solitary exile, be collected and published, we feel assured that posterity would do him justice, and that his name would rank high among the bards of the green isle.