Philippe Aubert de Gaspé - Cameron of Lochiel

In Canada there is settling into shape a nation of two races; there is springing into existence, at the same time, a literature in two languages. In the matter of strength and stamina there is no overwhelming disparity between the two races. The two languages are admittedly those to which belong the supreme literary achievements of the modern world. In this dual character of the Canadian people and the Canadian literature there is afforded a series of problems which the future will be taxed to solve. To make any intelligent forecast as to the solution is hardly possible without a fair comprehension of the two races as they appear at the point of contact. We, of English speech, turn naturally to French-Canadian literature for knowledge of the French-Canadian people. The romance before us, while intended for those who read to be entertained, and by no means weighted down with didactic purpose, succeeds in throwing, by its faithful depictions of life and sentiment among the early French Canadians, a strong side-light upon the motives and aspirations of the race.

In spite of the disclaimer with which the author begins, the romance of Les Anciens Canadiens is a classic. From the literary point of view it is markedly the best historical romance so far produced in French Canada. It gathers up and preserves in lasting form the songs and legends, the characteristic customs, the phases of thought and feeling, the very local and personal aroma of a rapidly changing civilization. Much of what de Gaspé has so vividly painted from his boyish reminiscences had faded out of the life upon which his alert eyes rested in old age. The origin of the romance, as given by his biographer, the Abbé Casgrain, is as follows:

When, in 1861, that patriotic French-Canadian publication the Soirées Canadiennes was established, its inaugurators adopted as their motto the words: "Let us make haste to write down the stories and traditions of the people, before they are forgotten." M. de Gaspé was struck with the idea; and seeing that the writers who were setting themselves the laudable task were all young men, he took the words as a summons to his old age, and so the book came to be written.

Patriotism, devotion to the French-Canadian nationality, a just pride of race, and a loving memory for his people's romantic and heroic past – these are the dominant chords which are struck throughout the story. Of special significance, therefore, are the words which are put in the mouth of the old seigneur as he bids his son a last farewell. The father has been almost ruined by the conquest. The son has left the French army and taken the oath of allegiance to the English crown. "Serve thy new sovereign," says the dying soldier, "as faithfully as I have served the King of France; and may God bless thee, my dear son!"

In the present day, when nationalism in Quebec appears rather given to extravagant dreams, it would be well for the distant observer to view the French Canadians through the faithful medium which de Gaspé's work affords him. Under constitutional forms of government it is inevitable that a vigorous and homogeneous minority, whose language and institutions are more or less threatened by the mere preponderance of the dominant race, should seem at times overvehement in its self-assertion. A closer knowledge leads us to conclude that perhaps the extreme of Quebec nationalism is but the froth on the surface of a not unworthy determination to keep intact the speech and institutions of French Canada. However this may be, it is certain that the point of contact between the two races in Canada is at the present day as rich a field for the romancer as de Gaspé found it at the close of the old régime .

According to the Histoire de la littérature Canadienne of Edmond Lareau, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé was born in Quebec on the 30th of October, 1786. He died in 1871. He belonged to a noble French-Canadian family. At the manor of St. Jean-Port-Joli, of which he was seigneur, he passed a large part of his life; and there he laid the chief scenes of his great romance. He was educated at the seminary of Quebec, and then studied law in the city, under Sewell, afterward chief-justice. Only for a few years, however, did he devote himself to his profession – one from which so many a poet and man of letters has broken loose. He accepted the position of sheriff of Quebec, and afterward came misfortunes which Lareau passes over with sympathetic haste. His lavish generosity to his friends and the financial embarrassments into which he fell, his four years' confinement in the debtors' prison, his sufferings of soul and body, all doubtless contributed to the poignant coloring with which he has painted the misfortunes of M. d'Egmont, le bon gentilhomme . On his release from prison he retired to his estate of St. Jean-Port-Joli, but not to the solitude and benevolent melancholy of D'Egmont. The romancer was of too sunny a disposition, he was too genuine and tolerant a lover of his kind, to run much risk of becoming a recluse. A keynote to his nature may be found in the bright Bonsoir la compagnie with which, in the words of an old French-Canadian song, he closed his literary labors at the age of seventy-nine, when the last page of the Mémoires was completed.

The story we have translated, under the title of The Canadians of Old, was published in 1862. It is accompanied in the original by a mass of curious information, in the shape of notes and addenda , such as would hardly interest the general reader. They will more than repay, however, the attention of any one who wishes to study the French-Canadian people as they were in their early days. The story itself has the air of being the product of a happy leisure. The style is quaint and unhurried, with no fear of the printer's devil before its eyes. The stream of the narrative, while swift enough and direct enough at need, is taught to digress into fascinating cross-channels of highly colored local tradition, or to linger felicitously in eddies of feast and song.

The work begun in Les Anciens Canadiens De Gaspé carried to completion in his second and last composition, the Mémoires, published in 1866. As the former work is a vivid epitome of life at the seigneuries and among the habitants of those days, so the latter reproduces and fixes for us the picturesque effects of life in the city of Quebec itself in the generation or two succeeding the conquest – a period during which the French-Canadian noblesse yet maintained, about the person of the English governor, something of the remembered splendor of the old vice-regal court.

As my story lays no claim to classicism, either in style or structure, this foreword may as well be made to play the part of a preface. My acquaintances will, doubtless, open their eyes on seeing me thus enter, at the age of seventy-six, on the perilous paths of authorship. Possibly I owe them an explanation. Although tired of reading all these years with so little profit either to myself or others, I yet dreaded to pass the Rubicon. A matter small enough in itself in the end decided me.

One of my friends, a man of parts, whom I met last year in St Louis Street, in our good city of Quebec, grasped me warmly by the hand and exclaimed:

"Awfully glad to see you! Do you know, my dear fellow, I have talked this morning with no fewer than eleven people, not one of them with half an idea in his noddle!" And he wrung my arm almost out of joint.

"Really," said I, "you are very complimentary; for I perceive by the warmth of your greeting that I am the exception, the man you – "

"Oh, yes, indeed," he cried, without letting me finish my sentence, "those are the only sensible words I have heard this morning." And he crossed the street to speak to some one, probably his addle-pate number twelve, who was seeking to attract his attention.