CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. REUNIONS
York
Upper Canada
12th January 1818
My dear Father,
You will have received by now, I trust, the brief note of our safe arrival in Quebec one week past, and I pray that this letter, too, shall find you and Mama and Elizabeth in good health. I can only add that I pray, also, for your peace and tranquillity in respect of the disagreements with the diocese, and I await news of the proceedings of the consistory court with confidence that Justice shall in the end be done.
Of our own situation I am pleased to send you every good report, and more fully than I was able in my last. The regiment (less one troop to form a depot at Hounslow) left Liverpool on the 28th of November with all its horses, and so well fitted were the transports that we lost naught but half a dozen during the voyage. This was also occasioned by calm seas throughout yet a very favourable wind which made for a faster crossing than sometimes is made, so that we entered the St. Lawrence River on the 2nd of January, and proceeded under tow by steam barge (which I had never seen before) for as far as the rapids above Montreal. There we were disembarked and two troops under the major proceeded to that city where they are to reinforce the garrison. The remaining three troops were transferred to Lake Ontario, and so to here at the western part.
I shall not describe the difficulties we had on account of the severe cold (though it is said that the winter this year is much less severe than usual) but the men and horses bore it unexpectedly well, perhaps because the air, though cold, is very dry and there has been little wind. Above all, Henrietta has suffered it without distress or complaint. We had good quarters on the ship which brought us, and the two dozen wives who accompany the regiment are treated with every consideration by the agents. For much of the transfer to Lake Ontario the ladies were taken by sledge and, covered with furs, they had a very pleasant ride of it indeed! At first I thought that Henrietta might remain in Montreal for her confinement, but, there being still two months, and she feeling in hale condition, she has accompanied me here.
York is the most unlikely capital you ever saw. There are scarce a thousand inhabitants, not counting military. It was burned by the Americans five years ago and there is much bitterness still at it. But it grows almost by the day, even in the depths of winter. What is so very pleasing, though, is that the Lieutenant Governor here (in Upper Canada, I mean) is Sir Peregrine Maitland, who commanded the Guards at Waterloo. He is the finest of men. And his wife is Lady Sarah Lennox, an acquaintance of Henrietta’s, and his aide-de-camp of but two months is Charles Addinsel, whose reacquaintance from Peninsular days I never felt more pleased to make. He was a good friend of d’Arcey Jessope’s, of whom you heard me speak much. So neither Henrietta nor I shall be wanting in engaging company, it seems, no matter how hard a winter it goes.
As to the military purpose for which we were hastened here (I feel that I may say this without prejudice to safety) it would appear that the alarm is past, and we may find ourselves altogether more agreeably employed than was supposed…
Hervey put down his pen and read over the letter. What his father would make of the vivid ink, he did not know. Perhaps he should have explained that his own had frozen solid on the last leg of the journey, broken the glass of the bottle, and then, when the baggage had been brought inside, thawed into his unexpectedly absorbent pelisse coat. Private Johnson said he could remove the ink without too much trouble, but Hervey doubted it, and thought he would have to reconcile himself to writing off a second coat in ten years. He’d see a pauper’s grave yet, he sighed.
He looked again at the last paragraph. It was not untrue; he need not concern himself there. But it was so far from the whole truth that he worried it was more than he habitually allowed under the general principle of not alarming his family (which had always made his letters from the Peninsula read as if he had been little more than a spectator). Of course there was no present danger of renewed fighting: that much was clear to him in Quebec. This man Bagot, whom Lord Liverpool had sent to settle the question of warships on the Great Lakes was, by all accounts, not a man to misjudge things: it seemed that he had drawn the sting that remained of the late war with a new protocol. Hervey was looking forward to meeting him at dinner at the lieutenant-governor’s that evening.
But the evening would not, of course, be unalloyed pleasure, for there would also be the brooding presence of Lord Towcester. What a joy the last two months had been, separated most of the time by a mile or more of ocean in their respective transports. However, any hope that the sea air had improved his lordship’s disposition, in essentials, was dashed in Quebec, where he had stomped about the governor-general’s apartments in petulant rage, his desire for easy glory thwarted by the tidings of peace. There, Hervey had wondered yet again if he should have accepted Sir Abraham’s handsome offer. In truth, he had wondered long about it during the Atlantic passage, but so pleasant was the cruise that the offer had faded greatly in its temptation by the time they reached Canada. But all of Towcester’s baseness had been laid bare again since their landfall, at least to Hervey’s eyes, and he could scarcely hope to avoid any more trials of loyalty. And try as he might to see this country favourably (and there was much in its raw beauty that appealed) Hervey could not detach his feelings from those he supposed Henrietta must have. How, in Heaven’s name, might she be happy in this frontier of nature? He would love her with all the intensity a man could, but was that — in the spirit’s sense — enough to keep the cold from her?
