William Dunlop - Recollections of the War of 1812

The elder of these two brothers, William Dunlop, was born at Greenock, Scotland, in 1792, and became, when a stripling of scarce 21 years of age, a surgeon in the famous 88th, or, Connaught Rangers. Being ordered to Canada, where the war with the United States was in progress, he made his way to the fighting line in the Niagara Peninsula, and there, serving first as surgeon and afterwards as a combatant, he gave indubitable proofs of courage and capacity. When the "appalling intelligence" of the peace concluded by the Treaty of Ghent reached him, Dunlop embarked with his regiment for England, just missing by a few days a share in the glorious action of Waterloo, and was ordered to India. While there his restless activity occupied itself with his medical and military duties, with the congenial task of editing a newspaper, and with numerous tiger hunts. So successful was he as a slayer of tigers that he earned the name of "Tiger" Dunlop, and in his later Canadian days was familiarly known as "The Tiger." An attack of jungle fever drove him back to England on half-pay, and settling in London he lived for a few years what has been called a most miscellaneous life. He wrote articles for the magazines. He edited for a time a newspaper called the "British Press," until he quarrelled with the publisher for dismissing contemptuously a political upheaval in France in the following brief "leader": "We perceive that there is a change of ministry in France; – we have heard of no earthquakes in consequence!" He edited a work on medical jurisprudence. He started a Sunday newspaper for Anglo-Indians called "The Telescope," the history of which, declared one of his friends, was a comedy of the drollest kind. He founded a club, – being of convivial tastes and a prince of boon companions, – called The Pig and Whistle. Finally, – and this doubtless led to his returning to Canada, – he became interested, as secretary, or, director, in some industrial concerns, notably a salt works in Cheshire. In London he made the acquaintance of Mr. John Galt, and accompanied him to Canada in 1826. He received from the Canada Company the appointment of Warden of the Forests, and for twenty years was a leading figure in what we now call Western Ontario. If one wishes to know "The Tiger" in this period, he must be sought in the charming pages of the Misses Lizars' book "In the Days of the Canada Company." There, his rollicking humour, his broad sympathies, his eccentric jests are excellently depicted. Dunlop represented Huron in Parliament, where he was a veritable "enfant terrible," speaking his mind in his slap dash way and frequently convulsing the House with merriment. The story of his tossing the coin with his brother to settle which of them should marry Lou McColl, the Highland housekeeper and devoted friend, and the terms of his extraordinary will and testament, – one clause of which (typical of all) leaves some property to a sister "because she is married to a minister whom (God help him) she henpecks", – are famous. Dunlop's literary talents were considerable. He wearied of writing as he did of most things that demanded continuous application. But he had an easy style, much shrewd wit, and undoubted ability. These qualities he displayed in his magazine articles, in his book "The Backwoodsman," and in the "Recollections," which are here reprinted from "The Literary Garland," the Montreal periodical of half a century or more ago. They were penned long after the events concerned had occurred and it may be supposed that he fell into some errors of fact. But as a picture of the manner in which this haphazard war was conducted it is singularly vivid and impressive. The unearthing of manuscripts and official documents about this war will not throw into clearer relief than the following pages do, the desperate circumstances under which a mere handful of French Canadian and Loyalist colonists emerged from their primitive villages and log cabins and with Spartan courage and hardihood drove back the invader again and again and captured large areas of his territory. There are several readable sketches of these campaigns, but none with the freshness and spirit of Dunlop's. In this lies its value and the justification for preserving it. Dunlop retired from Parliament in 1846, and was appointed Superintendent of the Lachine Canal. He died in the village of Lachine in the Autumn of 1848, and his body was conveyed to its resting place at Goderich.

The favourable reception of a small work on this colony has emboldened me again to come before the public in the character of an author, and as it is fifteen years since I last obtruded myself in that capacity, I have at least to boast of the merit assumed to himself by the sailor in his prayer, during a hurricane, "Thou knowest it is seldom that I trouble thee," and I may hope on the same grounds to be listened to.

It is now upwards of thirty-three years since I became acquainted with this country, of which I was eleven years absent. During that time I visited the other quarters of the globe. My design in this work is to shew the almost incredible improvement that has taken place during that period. Notwithstanding all that has been written by tourists, &c., very little indeed is known of the value and capabilities of Canada, as a colony, by the people of Great Britain.

I have not arrived at anything like methodical arrangement further than stating in their chronological order, events and scenes of which I was a witness, with occasional anecdotes of parties therein concerned, so that those who do not approve of such a desultory mode of composition, need not, after this fore-warning, read any further. My intention, in fact, is not exclusively either to instruct or amuse, but, if I possibly can accomplish it, to do a little of both. I wish to give an account of the effect of the changes that have taken place in my day in the colony, on my own feelings, rather than to enter into any philosophical enquiry into their causes; and if in this attempt I should sometimes degenerate into what my late lamented friend, the Ettrick Shepherd, would have denominated havers , I hope you will remember that this is an infirmity to which even Homer (see Horace,) is liable; and if, like hereditary disease, it is a proof of paternity, every author in verse or prose who has written since his day, has ample grounds whereon to found its pretensions to a most ancient and honourable descent.

The end of March or the beginning of April, 1813, found me at the Army Depôt in the Isle of Wight. Sir Walter Scott in his Surgeon's Daughter, says that no one who has ever visited that delightful spot can ever forget it, and I fully agree with him, but though perfectly susceptible of the impressions which its numberless beauties leave on the mind, I must confess that the view of a fleet of transports rounding St. Helens to take us to our destination, would have been considered by myself and my comrades, as a pleasanter prospect than all Hampshire could offer to our admiration.

I shall not stay to describe the state of military society in those days at the Army Depôt at Parkhurst barracks and the neighbouring town of Newport. It has been much better done than I could expect to do, by Major Spencer Muggridge, in Blackwood's Magazine; all I can do as a subaltern, is fully to endorse the field officer's statement, and to declare that it is a just, graphic and by no means over-charged description.

I went once, and only once, to the Garrison Mess, in company with two or three officers of my acquaintance, and saw among other novelties of a mess table, one officer shy a leg of mutton at another's head, from one end of the table to the other. This we took as notice to quit; so we made our retreat in good order, and never again returned, or associated with a set of gentlemen who had such a vivacious mode of expressing a difference of opinion.