by Ann Birch
“Very well, daughter. Continue, but not so loud, please.” She turned to Anne whose head was still hidden behind the newspaper. “You know, my dear, that you must always rise when a worthy elder appears before you.” She waited while the girl, sighing, got to her feet. “You also know that your father does not approve of your reading his paper until he has looked at it himself. Only when he has put it in the wastebasket are you free to peruse it.”
“I am not ‘perusing’ Papa’s paper, as you put it, Mama. He never reads anything but The Gazette. I am reading The Upper Canada Guardian. Its first edition appeared today, and I love this article by Mr. Justice Thorpe who—”
“Stop a moment. Where did you get this paper?”
“From the York Hotel.”
“Where? Where?”
“The York Hotel, just down the way. You know it—”
“You are telling me that you went into a public place and picked up a newspaper? What am I to do? How many times have I told you that you—”
“Must never go into a public place alone . . . I’ve heard it a hundred times at least. But this is an important day. Didn’t you hear what I said?” Standing up, Anne thrust the paper into her mother’s hands. “It’s the first edition. Today, November 5, 1807. The first independent paper in Upper Canada to officially publish opposition opinions. Mr. Justice Thorpe says . . .”
But Annie Powell was no longer listening to her daughter. She had noticed the headline on the paper’s first page. “A Free Press is Essentially a Free State,” it proclaimed. Interesting. And the article might contain just what she needed for her stock of conversation with Mrs. Gore this very afternoon. She pulled her spectacles from her reticule and sat down to peruse it. In five minutes she had garnered what she wanted: Robert Thorpe’s rant against Governor Gore. At last. Here in writing for the townspeople, even the riff raff, to see and contemplate.
She looked across the room to see her daughter staring at her. “Thank you, my dear. It is an important day, as you say.”
She scooped up the small embroidered packet containing Spot’s socks and headed for the front door.
* * *
The wind was in her face as she headed west along Palace Street towards the garrison. But it was exhilarating, and she tugged her hat down farther over her ears and strode onwards.
In less than an hour, in spite of the rough dirt road she walked upon, she sighted Government House, high on the bank of the lake near the mouth of the bay. What she saw filled her with satisfaction, as always. The home of the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada was so much inferior to her own abode. It was a one-storey frame structure, rectangular in shape, with a tiny veranda on one side. It looked, in fact, like an army barracks.
The footman showed her into a withdrawing room that had only one noteworthy piece of furniture: a tall walnut bookcase filled with piles of the Governor’s correspondence and reports. She had heard from Cook that he bribed postmasters in the United States to intercept his opponents’ mail and no doubt some of these piles contained the letters of suspected traitors. It always puzzled her that the Governor was reluctant to believe what she herself told him about Mr. Justice Thorpe. Perhaps in the past the scoundrel had been careful to keep his letters free of his rants and grievances, but now, with this new paper in circulation, Governor Gore must surely recognize the man for what he was: a blackguard set on undermining British authority.
It was a low-ceilinged room and the fire in the hearth made it uncomfortably hot. She took from her reticule a handkerchief with which she wiped away the rouge that was trickling down her cheeks. The house was uncannily silent. The Gores had no children, though they had been married for four years, and as Annie sat waiting for Mrs. Gore to appear, she found herself missing her own withdrawing room with the noise of the pianoforte and the chatter of her daughters and granddaughters. Here in this solitary place, its walls covered with portraits of the earls and marquises that made up the Gores’ illustrious connections, their eyes staring down upon her, she felt hemmed in and spied upon.
The Governor’s lady slipped into the room quietly, followed by her English setter. They greeted each other. Mrs. Gore seated herself in a chair near Annie, and Spot lay down beside his mistress, his head on her leather sandals. She was a young woman, rather plain in appearance, and this day she had dressed simply in a grey cotton frock and pulled her hair up into a twist at the top of her head. She wore no makeup, and Annie was glad that she had got rid of her rouge before the lady appeared.
Mrs. Gore unwrapped the packet that Annie presented to her. “Lovely,” she pronounced, looking at the socks and showing them to Spot who wagged his tail. “And your daughter Anne knit these? How kind of her!”
A maid entered bearing a tray of ginger cakes and a pitcher of boiling water. A footman followed, pushing a teapoy. When the servants left, Mrs. Gore mixed the tea, poured the water over it, and passed a delicate bone-china cupful to Annie. “How very warm this room is today,” the lady said, pulling out a fan from behind the cushion on her chair. It was a pretty fan, two-sided with familiar motifs. My goodness, it’s the one Anne lost over the railing on our upstairs veranda. Seeing her interest, her hostess commented, “Pretty, is it not? And a gift from dear Spot”—the animal wagged his tail again—“who brought it to me from the roadway one day when my husband and I were travelling in our carriage. I washed it off carefully and it’s become part of my accoutrements. Fans of this quality are not to be had in this place, as you must know.”
Well, I’m keeping my mouth shut over this one. Aloud Annie said, “A special gift, indeed.”
“My dear husband will join us shortly. He wants to talk to you about Mrs. Small, I believe. You will find—”
“That I now thoroughly concur in your opinion of the woman.” The Governor himself appeared in the doorway, adding, “I sincerely hope that you will find no reason not to join us at our December ball. She will not be present, of that fact I can assure you.” He approached Annie and made a small bow.
Well, there’s a victory!
“And, what is more, I find that you have been completely right in your assessment of Mr. Justice Thorpe. The man is a scoundrel.”
“Something has happened to convince you of his perfidy, sir?”
“I daresay you have not read the first edition of a heinous newspaper that has just this day appeared in our streets?” He thrust his hand through the blond hair that was always parted low over his ears and pulled forward to cover the baldness of his high forehead. For a moment, the flap of hair rose in response to his gesture and then fell into place again. Annie tried not to notice.
Well, thanks to my difficult daughter, I am ready for this one. “Indeed, sir, my husband informed me of his incendiary opinions this very morning. He was enraged by the man’s suggestion on the front pages of this . . . this . . . rag that he, as a member of the Legislative Assembly, should set himself up as a spokesman for popular grievances, instead of deferring to you, the King’s representative, in such matters.” As Annie said this, she tried hard to keep the I-told-you-so note from her voice.
“You yourself have many times warned me about the scoundrel, ma’am. I confess that I was often insensitive to your opinions. I must now try to set things right with you and your husband.”
The Governor gave a tug on the huge stock which he always wore. Anne caught a glimpse of the jowls that this stock covered. “Confounded hot in this room, my dear,” he said to Mrs. Gore. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped at the sweat on the puffy bags under his eyes. For a moment, he seemed to have lost track of what he was saying.
“Set things right, sir?”
“You may tell Mr. Powell that I have today appointed him to the Executive Council with an emolument of five hundred pounds annually.”
Halleluiah. No more chicory for breakfast.
* * *
Back home again in the late afternoon, she tore off her stays and swathed herself in a loose-fitting robe. Then she went belowsta
irs. Cook was busy stripping the hide from a small furry animal, one of several that lay upon the long pine table in front of the hearth.
“Put down your knife, Cook. Tonight’s supper will be the side of beef that Mr. St. George’s boy delivered this morning.”
“Indeed, ma’am? I had planned for a nice Brunswick stew with these squirrels that Henry killed in the back forty this afternoon. I have some corn and root vegetables to cook with them. Cheap and tasty, ma’am.”
“No squirrels. Beef. And see that Henry opens our best bottle of burgundy.”
CHAPTER FIVE
My sisters and I and Mama had been stitching for a whole afternoon in our withdrawing room. Not a word had we spoken for three hours. We were making flannel petticoats for the relief of poor women in the parish, an undertaking against which I had not a word of complaint, but oh! the tedium of it all.
Then, at last, Mama went to the mantel and pushed the magic button that always changed our small world for the better. There was a lull for a few minutes—we continued stitch, stitch, stitching—and then Lucy appeared with cakes and sherry. Eliza folded her petticoat neatly and set it in her basket on the floor near her chair. Mary did the same, and I followed their example, though what I really wished to do with mine was probably best left unrecorded.
At least now we could start talking. “I have good news for you, girls,” Mama said, smiling at us for the first time all afternoon. Oh, oh, I thought . . . Mama’s good news is never good. “Today I received an invitation from the Governor to a December ball at Government House. Dear Mrs. Gore enclosed a note with it. The Woman Small will not be invited, she told me, so we must all attend. The company will be exemplary.”
“As if the company of Mrs. Small would make any difference to anyone,” I said. “She is the one who suffers from the gossip in this place. Perhaps we should worry more about the pernicious influence of our new Surveyor-General. He gets invited to all of the Governor’s soirées even though everyone suspects that he beats his wife. And I know it for a certainty. I talked to Marie at the last subscription ball and she pulled back her glove to show me the bruises on her right hand. Her wrist was covered in horrid purple welts. I daresay the bastard will be present at—”
“Language, language, Anne,” Mama said, her cheeks becoming very red.
“Can we not stick to my point?” I said. “Will the . . . Surveyor-General Wyatt . . . be present at the Governor’s ball? For if he is to be there, I shall stay home.”
“He is a friend of that renegade Thorpe, and I expect he will soon lose his position. I have warned the Governor many times about Wyatt’s insubordination.”
“No doubt you have, Mama. But his friendship with Thorpe is surely not his most important failing. His wife told me—”
“My dear Anne, it is horrible, but what can we do about wife-beating? Only death can separate husband and wife. That is why I have always cautioned you and your sisters to make prudent marriages.”
“Why do you keep harping on prudent marriage, Mama? Who can foretell what kind of a monster a man may become after marriage when the laws of the land allow a man to control all of his wife’s property and leave her subservient with no money of her own?” As I said this, I recognized that I might be heading into deep waters. I had no idea of what Mama brought to her marriage with my father.
I noticed Eliza and Mary exchanging glances. “May I wear my new gown, Mama?” Mary asked.
“Certainly, my dear. And you may borrow my silver-beaded reticule.”
Their diversion worked. Mama, Eliza, and Mary were now in full sail, sweeping through waves of discourse on ball gowns, jewellery, and fans.
I listened, or appeared to listen, but my mind was on my last meeting with Marie Wyatt. She was a pretty girl of seventeen, small and fragile in stature. I had become friendly with her in the last few months since she and her husband arrived in town. I saw her only three days before when Mama and I were looking through rolls of linen at the market. She was beside us, examining the same material. When she stretched out her arms to turn the rolls over, her sleeves slipped up to expose her arms, and I noticed the raw red bands of flesh, almost like bracelets, that stretched from her wrists to her elbows.
“You have hurt yourself, Marie,” I said, thinking perhaps of a scald from a kettle on the hearth.
Her reaction jarred me. She burst into tears. “My husband . . . he . . . tied me with coarse ropes to the bedpost . . .”
I wrapped my arms around her. But I could think of no words to say. No questions to ask.
And the man Wyatt who did this was our Surveyor-General. And now, remembering Mama’s words about his possible suspension by Governor Gore, I could only imagine with horror that the brutality could get worse. He might take out his anger on the defenceless child who was his wife.
“Anne, Anne, pay attention, please.” Mama’s voice brought me back from the nightmare of my thoughts. “You must wear your blue gown. A pity you did not dye it as I suggested. But I have a pretty pink-and-blue paisley shawl that will cover up the worn patch on the back of the neckline.”
“Thank you,” I said in my demurest voice, dreading what must surely come next: a reminder of my perfidy in losing my fan. But she said no more. Mama is not an insensitive woman. Perhaps she recognized that she had exhausted every aspect of that topic.
* * *
It was hot and noisy in the Governor’s ballroom, and the low ceiling served to make the fiddles seem at first overwhelmingly screechy. As I shook hands with the Governor and Mrs. Gore in the receiving line at the entrance to the room, I noticed her fanning herself.
Then I took a second look. It was my fan! “Oh, dear lady,” I said, cooing like a mourning dove, “what a lovely fan. Those are mother-of-pearl blades, are they not? And so many of them! Do I see fourteen?”
“Sixteen, I believe,” the lady said, smiling. By this time, I could hear Mama breathing hard into my right ear, so I passed onward into the ballroom, secretly glad that the accursed thing had found a home where it was appreciated.
Mama, Papa, Eliza, Mary, and I took chairs overlooking the dancers. But Mary and I were not there long. John Macdonell scooped Mary up immediately, and I found myself in the arms of Mr. William Willcocks, who huffed and puffed me through a country dance with three other couples. He was a fat, lascivious old brute and I had to do my best to keep him from squeezing me whenever he joined me in a two-step. Though I loved to dance, at this moment I envied Eliza, alone on her chair beside my parents.
But things got better. I soon found my dance card filled with the names of attractive young soldiers from the garrison. As I grew warm with the exercise, I cast off Mama’s shawl and my hair fell loose from its band. I noticed that the odious St. George pretended not to see me. And I pretended not to notice Mama’s face as Lieutenant Stretton of the 49th Regiment swept me around the floor in a waltz. He was a perfect gentleman, but his hand was around my waist—and that was necessary with this dance—and I know Mama feared that I was letting him make what she would call “untoward advances.” If she could only hear his discourse! He fancied himself an artist and he had just described in boring detail his latest sketch of the garrison blockhouse. “The water in the bay,” he droned on, “so difficult—well-nigh impossible, in fact—to capture the mist over it . . .”
I kept dancing with one partner after another, until finally a footman announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, please join the Governor and Mrs. Gore in the dining-room for supper.” I was ready for food. I had just finished a quadrille with my partner, the young gentleman John Beverley Robinson, and the steps were so intricate, so ever-changing, that I was glad to have an hour to relax.
“May I accompany you, Miss Powell?” Master Robinson asked. He was a handsome lad with pink cheeks, a mere sixteen years of age and newly arrived from Mr. Strachan’s school in Cornwall, but he was already a favourite of our small society here in York.
Being a rather cocky young man, he didn’t wait for an answer,
simply offered me his arm. As we joined the crowd moving into the dining-room, we saw Mr. Willcocks at the head of the lineup. He was already patting his stomach in anticipation of what was to come.
Master Robinson turned his head towards me and intoned:
“No wonder Will grows fat, the unwieldy sinner
Makes his whole life but one continual dinner.”
I laughed out loud, causing several heads to turn in my direction. But I didn’t care, it was so funny. I liked this lad. He was quick with a quotation, and though I had no idea where these words came from—and I suspected the name “Will” had been inserted for the occasion—they were a perfect summary of the odious William Willcocks. I once heard from his relation, Miss Russell, that his extensive diary entries were largely a summary of what he ate each day.
“Oh, my God, never oysters,” I said when we got to the buffet table. “I can’t eat them. I’d rather starve!”
“My dear Miss Powell,” the gallant boy said, “I am here to assist you. See those buckets on the floor? I shall crack the oysters open for you and the buckets will receive the shells. Then we can find a table over there by the window where it’s less noisy.”
“No, no, I thank you. The only place I eat oysters is in New York when I visit my Uncle George, Mama’s brother. They’re fresh from the sea in New York. Have you thought about how long it’s taken to bring these oysters here from the Atlantic Ocean?”
“And have you thought about the insult you heap upon me in your suggestion that the food I serve here is not fresh?”
It was Mrs. Gore’s voice. I turned around to see her behind me, her eyes narrowed in anger. She continued, “Surely you must know that Mr. Jordan, owner of that fashionable hotel you and your parents frequent for subscription balls, keeps the oysters in his cellars in beds of damp sea sand. He waters the beds twice a week to keep the creatures alive. Cook purchased them this very afternoon and brought them here in time for serving.”
