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A Medieval New World: Nation-Making in Early Canadian Literature, 1789-1870
by
Elana Laurel Aislinn Ryan
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of English University of Toronto
© Copyright by Elana Laurel Aislinn Ryan 2015
ii
A Medieval New World: Nation-Making in Early Canadian
Literature, 1789-1870
Elana Laurel Aislinn Ryan
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of English University of Toronto
2015
Abstract
This thesis examines how medievalist narratives of nationhood developed in the early
days of English Canadian literature, from 1789-1870. Early Canadian authors imagined a
past for Canada tied not to the land but to cultural memory; they created a medieval
history for Canada by adapting European medieval myth and legend. Adaptation was a
powerful tool in the hands of authors struggling to negotiate North America’s multiple
colonial relationships: it allowed them to embrace European cultural histories, to stake a
claim to those Old World cultural inheritances, while simultaneously appropriating those
histories into new narratives for the New World.
This project, as the first large-scale study of medievalism in Canada, involved finding
and cataloguing instances of medievalism in Canadian literature. The trends explored in
this thesis are based on 443 works of Canadian medievalism published between 1789 and
1870.
Chapter One analyzes Canada’s first literary magazines in the late eighteenth century.
Responding to revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic, these magazines advocated a
revolution not of arms but of manners, with medieval chivalric codes as the exemplar.
iii
Chapter Two turns to the literary aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.
These wars instilled in many Canadian authors anxieties not only about France and the
United States, but also about the role of empire in the modern world. In this new world
order, medievalism became a source of validation, a keystone that held together a nation
or empire’s history from antiquity to the modern day. Chapter Three examines the
reemergence of French-oriented medievalism after the failed rebellions of 1837-1838 and
the ensuing unification of the Canadas. In the hands of English Canadian authors, even
sympathetic French characters were stuck in the past, thus relegating their roles in
Canada to those of cultural progenitors but not modern political participants. Chapter
Four, on the period leading up to and immediately following Confederation, examines the
expansion of racialized narratives of Canadianness to include pan-British and pan-
northern conceptions of Canadianness. This northern identity particularly embraced
Canada’s history of Viking contact as integral to the nation’s hardy northern character.
iv
Acknowledgments
This thesis was generously funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, a Dr.
Ranbir Singh Khanna Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Canadian Studies, a Kathleen
Coburn Graduate Admission Award at the University of Toronto, and a University of
Toronto Doctoral Completion Award.
Sincere thanks to my supervisory committee for their help throughout the project.
Heather Murray’s thoughtful guidance has shaped not only my scholarship but also my
approach to academia in many ways: thank you for modeling the type of scholar I hope to
become. Nick Mount’s knowledge of Canadian literary society helped buttress the
project’s literary foundations. Thanks to Will Robins for believing in the success of the
project from the beginning, and for helping me share it with the world of medieval
studies.
The feedback of my examining committee, including Colin Hill and Lynne Magnusson,
has helped me imagine new directions of research emerging from this project. I
particularly appreciate Cynthia Sugars’ thoughtful and thorough report, as well as her
enthusiastic support of my other projects in development. Thanks also to Russell Poole
for inspiring my love of the medieval world, to Nandi Bhatia for teaching me to think
across national boundaries, and to Karis Shearer and Richard Moll for sharing their troves
of Canadian medievalism.
I am grateful for the assistance of many friends who doubled as study partners and
editors. Special thanks to Kailin Wright, Gillian Bright, and Leif Einarson for their keen
v
editorial eyes, and to Jenny O’Kell, Melanie East, and Marci Prescott-Brown for sharing
this journey with me. Noelle Gadon, Erin Reynolds Webster, Jude Welburn, and
Christina Galego made studying for comprehensive exams not only productive but also
enjoyable. Thank you to MaryAnne Mason, Laurie Jennings, and Zheng Shao for their
constant encouragement and for reminding me that there is a world outside academia.
My family deserves recognition for the myriad ways in which they have both directly and
indirectly supported this project; the following can express only a small fraction of my
gratitude. Thanks to my brother, Colan Ryan, for understanding the process and for
bringing the family together on many occasions, to Kish and Gord Kightley for giving me
another home, and to Kristin Kightley for helping me transition to the professional side of
academia. Finally, my most heartfelt thanks to my husband, Michael Kightley, and my
parents, Leonard and Kathleen Ryan. Thank you for eagerly reading all of my work, and
for encouraging me every step of the way; most of all, thank you for your love and
support. I dedicate this thesis to you.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii
List of Appendices ........................................................................................................... viii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
The Database and Some Broad Trends in Early Canadian Medievalism .................................................................................. 19
Chapter 1. Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the New Canada: the Beginnings, 1789-1794 .................................................................. 27
Chapter 2. The Aftermath of War: 1800-1835 .................................................................. 78 Chapter 3. Rebellion, Responsible Government,
and the French Question: 1837-1848 ........................................................................ 138 Chapter 4. Defining a Nation: 1848-1870 ....................................................................... 189 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 245
Works Cited and Consulted ............................................................................................ 251 Appendix. Bibliography of Canadian Medievalism, 1789-1870 .................................... 278
VITA ............................................................................................................................... 309
vii
List of Figures
Figure 1. Medievalism Produced in British North America by Time Period ................... 20
Figure 2. Distribution of Medievalist Publications by Region ......................................... 22
Figure 3. Distribution by Literary Genre .......................................................................... 23
Figure 4. Sources of Medieval Traditions used in Canadian Publications ....................... 24
Figure 5. Interest in Regional Celticism ........................................................................... 25
Figure 6. “A Sign of the Times” ..................................................................................... 198
Figure 7. “Humours American” ...................................................................................... 199
viii
List of Appendices
Bibliography of Canadian Medievalism, 1789-1870 ...................................................... 278
1
Introduction
In 1815, Sir Walter Scott’s brother Thomas — a military paymaster in Lower
Canada — wrote to him about the “literary child” of “an Indian chief” (346): “What do
you think of a man speaking the language of about twelve Indian nations, English,
French, German, and Spanish, all well, being in possession of all modern literature —
having read with delight your Lady of the Lake, and translated the same, together with the
Scriptures, into Mohawk[?]” (345). The “Indian chief” in question was the half-
Cherokee, half-Scottish John Norton,1 who had been adopted by Joseph Brant
[Thayendanegea] into the Mohawk nation at Onondaga on the Grand River in western
Upper Canada (Klinck, “Norton, John”). Norton was an author in his own right as well as
a translator: his primary literary focus was ethnographic travel writing. Thomas Scott was
suitably in awe of his accomplished acquaintance, and although his letter veers into
romantic stereotypes of noble savagery, it nevertheless provides an important window
into early Canada’s literary cultures; moreover, the letter reveals three of the key
premises that underlie this project.
First, it suggests the degree to which the business of literature in British North
America was, from its very beginnings, an international affair: British North Americans
consumed and responded to literature produced on both sides of the Atlantic, and British
North American authors likewise produced their works for both local and international
1 Norton likely also served as the inspiration for John Richardson’s Wacousta. For more information, see David Beasley’s The Canadian Don Quixote: The Life and Works of Major John Richardson (particularly the second edition), and for a refutation of the biographical similarities between Norton and Wacousta, see Carl F. Klinck’s “John Norton” in Recovering Canada’s First Novelist: Proceedings from the John Richardson Conference.
2
audiences. Thomas Scott wrote that Norton was, for example, “afraid that the Edinburgh
Review will be hard on his book” — a journal that was part travel narrative, part history
of the Iroquois nations, and part firsthand account of the War of 1812; in his letter, Scott
also fulfilled a promise to ask his influential brother to help the book reach the right
literary circles in the United Kingdom (345-346). Second, it suggests the extent to which
literary re-imaginings of the medieval world, such as Scott’s Lady of the Lake, had a
widespread audience in British North America that transcended even linguistic
boundaries: Norton must have felt there was sufficient demand among Mohawk-speakers
for such historical fiction in order to choose The Lady of the Lake as one of only two
works to translate to Mohawk — the other being the Bible. Norton’s instincts about the
appeal of Scott were certainly accurate at least insofar as anglophone Canadian literary
communities were concerned,2 nor, as I shall demonstrate in the following chapters, was
he wrong about the extraordinary populist appeal of medievalism in general in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British North America.
Unfortunately, there seem to be no extant copies of Norton’s translation of The
Lady of the Lake; there is no record of its ever having been printed, so it may indeed have
circulated only in manuscript. More unfortunately, even the manuscript(s) has (or have)
been lost, thus mirroring my third key point about medievalist processes: loss and erasure
are inevitable by-products of writing about the past. Early English Canadians felt free to
select for themselves a history for the nation — a history that extended back beyond the
point of colonization into the medieval past; moreover, their selections were predicated
on the notion that the land had no pre-existing indigenous histories. These history-writing
2 See Carole Gerson’s A Purer Taste: The Writing and Reading of Fiction in English in Nineteenth-Century Canada for more on Scott’s influence on Canadian literary culture.
3
projects required the land to be a blank space in which European settlers could select and
write their own version of a new history for a new nation. Whether parroting, adapting, or
even refuting Old World sources, each history nonetheless assumed the New World’s
inherent connection to the Old. Norton’s Mohawk version of Scott would have
represented a unique and possibly powerful intervention into English Canadian attempts
to write such a historical back-story. At the very least, it would have prompted
considerations of the interplay between aboriginal and European histories in the story of
Canada; its very existence (if acknowledged) would have suggested that Mohawk and
other First Nations literary and historical traditions had the same kind of influence on the
colonies of British North America as did Scott’s romantic visions of historical Scotland.
The erasure (whether intentional or not) of Norton’s version from the corpus of Canadian
literature is thus a telling instance of one of the central concerns of medievalism around
the world: the creative process of medievalism is always necessarily entwined with a
process of erasure. Medievalism — or the attempt to establish narrative continuity with
the past — is predicated on an already-existing dislocation from that past.
This thesis takes as its foundational principles the three key points outlined above:
that Canadian literary culture is and always has been an integral part of international
literary conversations; that interest in the medieval world was a widespread phenomenon
in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canada; and that that interest — or “medievalism”
— involved both selective inclusion and selective erasure. Building upon these three
principles, this project examines how Canadian authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries imagined a medieval past for Canada tied not to the land but to cultural
memory. There are two halves to this exploration of Canadian medievalism: one, this
4
thesis, explores specifically how the issues raised by medieval allusions and adaptations
in early Canadian literature evolved alongside the shifting sociopolitical concerns of
colonies in transition to nationhood. The other half is a database of medievalist literature
in Canada; this database — which I explain further at the end of this introduction — aims
to make the study of Canadian medievalism accessible to other scholars. As an annotated
catalogue of more than one thousand works of Canadian medievalism, the database will
enable scholars to search and sort the material according to their own interests, in order
not just to identify relevant primary sources but also to find general trends in the history
of medievalism in Canada.
What is Medievalism?
Clare A. Simmons has traced the origin of the word “medievalism” to John
Ruskin in 1853; Simmons suggests that Ruskin used it “to describe his own generation’s
enthusiasm for the medieval (itself a nineteenth-century term; earlier, the phrase Middle
Ages was used)” (“Introduction” 1). Medievalism for Ruskin thus covered a broad range
of cultural phenomena, but over the last century and a half, the term has accrued even
further connotations. Tom Shippey, one of the most influential theorists of medievalism,
defines the field thus:
Medievalism is the study of responses to the Middle Ages at all periods
since a sense of the mediaeval began to develop. Such responses include,
but are not restricted to, the activities of scholars, historians and
philologists in rediscovering medieval materials; the ways in which such
materials were and are used by political groups intent on self-definition or
5
self-legitimation; and artistic creations, whether literary, visual or musical,
based on whatever has been or is thought to have been recovered from the
medieval centuries. The Middle Ages remain present, moreover, in the
modern consciousness, both through scholarship and through popular
media such as film, video games, poster art, TV series and comic strips,
and these media are also a legitimate object of study, if often intertwined
with more traditionally scholarly topics. (International Society for the
Study of Medievalism)
The term “medievalism” thus covers broad categories of material: it can be popular or
scholarly, creative or critical. Shippey’s initial emphasis on responsiveness to the Middle
Ages suggests a perhaps misleading sense of intentionality on the part of creators of
medievalism; although many medievalist works do respond self-consciously and directly
to medieval sources, that creative intent is not necessary for a work to be medievalist. On
the contrary, the ongoing interaction between the modern and the medieval is often
unconscious, and is often most powerful when unconscious — for both author and
audience. Even the Canadian national anthem implicitly draws upon the legacy of
medievalist discourses without ever having to acknowledge its debt: the modern idea of
“the true north strong and free” would not exist without nineteenth-century Canada’s
ideas of medieval Nordicity. We are, in a sense, haunted by the Middle Ages: we have
inherited ideas both from and about the medieval world through popular culture and
scholarship, and the traces left behind by these ghosts of medieval culture can be every
bit as pervasive in and influential upon modern cultural production as are direct
engagements with the medieval.
6
The Problem of Continuity
The multiplicity of forms that medievalism can take reflects an ambivalence
inherent in the ways both scholars and authors orient the relationship between the modern
and the medieval: Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel argue “It is . . . one of the
peculiarities of medieval study everywhere that it constantly hovers between the dual
consciousness of the Middle Ages as a place and time of non-origin (that is, the dark
period constructed in and by the Renaissance) and that of origin (the origin of the modern
state)” (678-679). The Renaissance interpretation of the Middle Ages (and particularly
the Early Middle Ages) was one of disavowal, a rejection of the influence of a
millennium of cultural production in favour of claiming kinship with Greco-Roman
classical cultures. Yet, as Freedman and Spiegel indicate, this claim of a cultural break
was complicated by parallel claims of political continuity. Moreover, this ambivalence to
reinterpretations of the Middle Ages is not something restricted to Renaissance theorists;
it remains an integral part of modern studies of the medieval as well.
Projects analyzing nationalist medievalisms necessarily grapple with issues of
how to trace an historical past when both the critics and the authors of the works we
study are always chronologically and sometimes geographically displaced from that
history. But even in Britain — a country with in situ relics of its medieval past —
scholars and authors have long struggled with the ostensibly Anglo-Saxon country’s post-
Norman Conquest displacement from its Germanic history. In Reversing the Conquest:
History and Myth in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Clare A. Simmons discusses
the Conquest of 1066 as a moment of rupture that required nineteenth-century authors to
7
work creatively around historical fact in order to imagine an Anglo-Saxon England. In
addition to dealing with temporal displacement from the past, the English models
Simmons discusses also involve an almost melancholic sense of trying to recover
something of their own now long lost.
Colonial medievalisms in countries like Australia and the United States also deal
with rupture and displacement, but they generally do not share the sense of loss prevalent
in Old World medievalism. With respect to Australia, Louise D’Arcens discusses the
conjunction of temporal and spatial displacements of the nineteenth-century colony from
medieval Europe; in the United States, American medievalists such as Freedman and
Spiegel, as well as Candace Barrington, address early Americans’ attempts to reconcile
their desire for a continuous thread of Saxon democracy with the rupture from Britain
caused by the American Revolution. Early Canadian medievalisms are, however,
somewhat different from their other colonial counterparts. As with those of other
colonies, early Canadian medievalisms tackle issues of rupture and continuity; yet, like
English models, they also often attempt to recover a lost past. An important difference,
though, is that this recovery is rarely a melancholic project, since Canada (like other
colonies) did not have the physical traces of European medieval history and therefore had
no such history to lose; instead, Canadian medievalisms joyfully recovered what Europe
had lost. The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project addresses some similar
concerns in its analyses of modern Canadian adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays; even the
notion that Newfoundland English is the closest dialectically to Shakespeare’s is a way of
reclaiming England’s losses (see, for example, Peter Ayers’ “Learning to Curse in
Accurate Iambics: Shakespeare in Newfoundland.”). This thesis takes a broader view of
8
reclaiming even older histories and literatures: I examine how Canadian authors
appropriated European medieval histories, transplanting them to what they believed was a
more fertile climate in the New World in order to revive the ancient spirits of traditions
that had grown heavy and cumbersome in their original soil.
Medievalism in the Colonies
Shippey argues that one of the features of medievalism is that it must engage with
recovering the Middle Ages. Yet, as he also reasons above, this “recovery” is itself a
creative practice, one that is not so reliant upon historical truth as it is upon “whatever…
is thought to have been” true about the past. In Old Songs in the Timeless Land:
Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840-1910, Louise D’Arcens argues:
medievalism is a hermeneutic rather than a forensic practice; for while it
acknowledges the historical existence of the medieval period, it does not
seek to reconstruct and thereby recover the original ‘presence’ of the
Middle Ages. . . . [T]he modern (and colonial) traces we study . . . do not
point to a pure origin but to a complex, internally divided origin, to which
we cannot have unmediated access and of which we cannot take full
possession through historical knowledge. (15-16)
The study of history reveals not the harmony of a “pure origin” but a complex cacophony
of voices clamouring to be heard. All medievalism is, therefore, palimpsestic, since it
writes an imagined past over whatever traces of a “real” past might exist. In all nations,
the study of history is always, by necessity, mediated; in colonial countries such as
Canada and Australia, recovering histories wherein one layer (that of the settlers) has
9
been written over another (that of colonized peoples) poses its own set of challenges.
Colonial medievalism is thus a double palimpsest.
All re-imaginings of the medieval are based on the absence of the medieval itself,
nowhere more so than in colonies with no visible medieval European history of their
own. Michelle R. Warren argues that the “importation of the European Middle Ages” is
an inherently colonial project, one which
offered one path to integrating “new” nations into global history. This
path, however, led European-identified elites to overlook or explicitly
deny the ways in which Amerindian populations also possessed history.
Recourse to medieval European history thus facilitates colonialist denials
of “coevalness” (in Johannes Fabian’s term)3 to indigenous peoples. In the
Americas, then, nationalist medievalisms occupy a complicated
ideological ground that includes fragmented identifications with European
imperialism, colonial oppression, the prestige of ancient histories, and the
cachet of self-invention. (288)
In the Old World, visible writing upon the slate of history — through artefacts such as
written literature and archaeological remains — makes it difficult to select among
European histories to reinvent historical tradition (although the process is by no means
impossible). The seemingly blank slate of the New World, however, held great appeal.
The temporal and geographical distance between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
British North America and the European medieval world gave early British North
American authors the freedom to choose what elements of the European past they wanted
3 See Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Other. New York: Columbia U.P., 1983.
10
to incorporate into their visions of what British North America (and eventually Canada)
should be; this perceived absence of history also gave them the power to reject elements
they deemed undesirable. They looked to Europe’s past not simply to find, but rather to
create literary, political, and racial models for the New World.
Medievalism in Canada: Francophone-Anglophone Tensions
Canadian medievalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries grappled with a
further set of complications beyond those of colonizer/colonized and present/past: it also
had to attend to the divisions inherent in its multi-ethnic settlers’ racial pasts. Navigating
the connections and disjunctions particularly in the histories of francophones and
anglophones was a fundamental and defining element of the medievalisms particular to
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canada.
In the imagination of medievalist writers, tensions between the English and
French in Canada draw on eight hundred years of conflict between the two groups in the
Old World, reaching back at least to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 CE: the
English lost to the Norman William, and for centuries afterwards, a French-speaking
nobility dominated the country. As Simmons explains, British medievalism in the
nineteenth century was haunted by the fact of the Conquest, and British authors found
numerous creative ways to reverse its symbolic (if not factual) effects. Yet despite this
creative leeway, Simmons argues that there were still uncrossable boundaries: “no writer
of this time,” she writes, “would have dreamt of literally reversing the Conquest and of
giving the victory of 1066 to Harold” (9). In Canada, however, no such blatant revision of
history was necessary. For English Canadians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
11
the word “Conquest” took on a meaning different from that which it had for their
counterparts in Britain: here, it referred not only to 1066, but also to the 1759-1760
English victory over the French in British North America, and the subsequent cession of
France’s major territories in the region to Britain. For anglophone Canadians, the
“Conquest” of 1759 was not a rupture from the British past, but rather it was a re-
entrenchment of that history. In Australia, the US, and the UK, the “rupture” of
medievalism has generally referred to an historical moment — whether of colonization,
conquest, or independence — but in nineteenth-century Canada, discourses of continuity
and displacement revolved not around events but around people. For many English
Canadian authors of the time, their “Conquest” in British North America was a literal
reversal of the Norman Conquest (unlike the metaphorical reversals with which
Simmons’ British sources had to content themselves); it set to rights an historical
mistake, giving Canadians the chance to rebuild their history from the Middle Ages
onwards.
For Canadians, the questions thus became, first, who gets to control the
discourses of rupture and continuity, and second, in these discourses, who gets
continuous access to history, and whose history is ruptured? For early English Canadian
authors, continuity with medieval history became the province of anglophones, and
(perceived) displacement from history became the lot of francophones. As I will discuss
particularly in Chapters 2 and 3, by the early- to mid-nineteenth century, medievalism —
or, in this case, a continuous access to the medieval past — became a keystone that held
together narratives not only of English Canada but also of the British Empire.
12
Race and Nordicity in Canada
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century constructions of race were both much more
fluid and much more narrow than similar discourses are today. Early English Canadians
saw, for example, French Canadians as a distinct race, separated from not only English
Canadians but also (to a lesser degree) even the French themselves. English Canadians,
by virtue of having been born into a supposedly dominant race, saw the right to access
and control historical narratives as part of their racial birthright. As I will explore further
in Chapter 4, such attempts to racialize access to the past fed into narratives (particularly
among Anglo-Saxon supremacists in Upper Canada) that racialized Canadianness itself.
The distinctiveness of this emergent Canadian race was predicated not only on its unique
combination of racial histories, but also on the climate in which it was developing:
Canada’s northernness became an integral component in the production of a superior,
Nordic race.
In White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada, Daniel Coleman
argues that in the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries,
What has come to be called ‘the Northern myth’ was central to this
figuration of Canada as a testing and improving ground for effete
European manhood. According to this myth, the rigours of life in a stern,
unaccommodating climate demanded strength of body, character and mind
while it winnowed away laziness, overindulgence, and false social
niceties. Canada’s placement in the North meant that by a process of
social Darwinism, over time its population would shed all over-bred,
13
aristocratic European delicacy as well as repel ‘southern’ lassitude and
hedonism. (24)
This “Northern myth” took on two forms: the first of these, as above, was the
invigorating effect which a cold and bracing climate would have on the Canadian race;
the second form historicized the idea of northern superiority, and applied the precepts of
environmental effects on race to the medieval progenitors of modern Canadians
(especially the Vikings and other Teutonic peoples). Like Coleman, Jennifer Henderson
notes in Settler Feminism and Race Making in Canada, “the hero of this narrative of
national maturation is normatively masculine — in the case of nineteenth-century
Canada, a wholesome and vigorous Nordic youth, blazing a westward trail across the
northern half of the continent” (3). These gendered tensions featured prominently in late
nineteenth century medievalist racial theory, in which northern nations, in particular
those of medieval Scandinavia and Germany, were masculinized, and southern ones, such
as France, were feminized; however, the medievalist racial theories complicated this
gender binary by asserting that feminized Christian civilization was necessary to temper
the barbarity of masculinized warrior-paganism. As easily as Canadian medievalism
racialized medieval national origins, it also racialized both gender and religion.
Methodology and Overview
This project represents the first comprehensive effort to trace a history of
medievalism in Canada. The two parts of the project — the database and the thesis —
take different approaches to the material: the aim of the database is to be as inclusive as
possible in collecting the works of medievalism produced in and about Canada. The
14
thesis, on the other hand, must be more selective. The thesis thus draws on the database
to address the major trends in the evolution of Canadian medievalism over the course of
the history of British North America, up to and including Canadian Confederation. The
goal of this project is to trace how early English Canadian authors appropriated medieval
historical narratives to create a literary, political and racial future for Canada. This study
begins in 1789, the year that saw the launch of British North America’s first literary
periodical, The Nova-Scotia Magazine. It ends in 1870, a few years after Confederation,
in order to incorporate popular responses to the (first) culmination of Canada’s nation-
building project.
This project takes as its subject matter the broad scope of early English Canadian
literature. It considers not only texts that have since become part of the Canadian literary
canon, but also popular literature in general. I use the term “popular literature” to denote
any literary materials — including periodicals, pamphlets, novels, book-length
collections of poetry, and books of history — that were published in Canada, or that were
written by Canadians and circulated in Canada, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Despite this wealth of literary material produced in and about Canada at the
time, the current Canadian literary canon includes relatively few works before those
produced by the Confederation Poets starting in the 1880s. Contemporary literary
periodicals were the vehicles for the majority of literary production in the colonies;
looking at them in addition to monographs thus provides a much more extensive picture
of early Canada’s literary cultures, one that represents an intervention into the canonical
wisdom stemming from the work of Northrop Frye that early Canadian literature was
produced in and about isolation.
15
Of course, canonical Canadian literature influenced and was influenced by
medievalism as well. Anna Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada
draws upon an early (and not fully developed) version of the discourses of nordicity that
became so influential in Confederation-era Canada. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s
Evangeline directly connects his Acadians and their traditions to the people and culture of
medieval Normandy. John Richardson based Wacousta loosely on the life of John
Norton, the author whom Thomas Scott discussed in his letter above; not only did
Richardson take a medievalist author as his inspiration, but he himself played with the
Gothic stereotypes so prevalent in (and popularized by) medievalist literature. The
Canadian Gothic has lately been the subject of much literary interest in Canada; see, for
example, Justin D. Edwards’ Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National
Literature and Cynthia Sugars’ Canadian Gothic: Literature, History, and the Spectre of
Self-Invention. Medievalism has thus always interacted with both canonical and popular
literary cultures in Canada.
On a theoretical level, analyzing popular literary culture has further benefits, as
explained by Coleman:
By examining popular, ‘low culture’ literature, we can observe the
unstable dynamics between the official symbolic history of the nation and
its fantasmic, repressed histories, because popular writing is usually
produced not only by those who securely hold the reins of power but also
by those who are lobbying for power. Popular literature allows us to see a
contest between representations of the nation that had broad appeal and
how these representations jockey for official state adoption. (35)
16
Non-canonical texts and literary periodicals, with their contesting voices and often
anonymous or pseudonymous contributions, represent a populist intervention into (or
addition to) official literary histories. Of course, no periodical could claim to represent
the entire cross-section of literary thought in Canada at its time; each magazine’s editors
had their own biases as to what material they would select and publish. However, that
editorial selection process is itself an important part of this project: the act of editing is a
creative one, and editors just as much as authors crafted political messages for their
readers. One of the underlying premises of this project is that medievalism was a
pervasive phenomenon in early Canada’s literary cultures, and that phenomenon
influenced all stages of Canada’s literary publishing industry.
The first chapter of this project in particular analyzes editorial interventions in
medievalism. In the late eighteenth century, Canada’s first two English literary
magazines — The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de
Québec — turned to the medieval world to respond to revolutions on both sides of the
Atlantic. These magazines advocated a revolution not of arms but of manners, with
medieval chivalric codes as the exemplar.
As a whole, this project focuses on English-language medievalism in early
Canadian literary culture, but the first chapter also examines some French-language texts
that were inextricably connected to the English Canadian literary scene of the time. The
Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec was a bilingual literary magazine whose
audience included speakers of both languages; its English articles therefore circulated in
French literary circles, as did its French articles in English ones. Moreover, since it was
published and edited by anglophones, it was a direct product of the city’s English literati.
17
For these reasons, this project analyzes works in both languages in The Quebec Magazine
/ Le magasin de Québec, even though elsewhere it restricts its scope to English-language
publications.
Chapter 2 turns to the literary aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of
1812. These wars instilled in many British North American authors, such as George
Longmore and James Martin Cawdell, a natural anxiety about France and the United
States; perhaps more curiously, the wars also prompted an anxiety about the role of
empire — including the British — in the modern world. In this new world order,
medievalism became a source of validation, the keystone that held together a nation or
empire’s history, from antiquity to the modern day.
Chapter 3 examines the re-emergence of French medievalism in English Canadian
literature after the failed rebellions of 1837-1838 and the ensuing unification of the
Canadas. The French, whose medieval history had been employed only as a foil to that of
the British in the 1820s, reappeared quite suddenly as sympathetic or even heroic
characters in medievalist narratives, such as those of Eliza Lanesford Cushing. However,
in the hands of many anglo-Canadian authors — most notably John Breakenridge —
even these sympathetic French characters were stuck in the past, thus relegating their
roles in British North America to those of cultural progenitors rather than modern
political participants.
Chapter 4, on the period leading up to and immediately following Confederation,
examines the expansion of racial Canadianness. In this period, English Canadian authors
emphatically rejected perceived ideas of Americanness as a model for their new nation,
and they even began to turn away from Englishness: instead, they developed a more
18
inclusive brand of Canadian Britishness and northernness. The influence of Irish
Canadians such as Thomas D’Arcy McGee was profound: Irishness, long Othered by
England, became an acceptable and even (in very limited circumstances) desirable
heritage. Canada’s new Nordic identity, as promoted by Anglo-Saxon supremacists such
as Robert Grant Haliburton, particularly embraced Canada’s history of Viking contact as
integral to developing the nation’s hardy northern character.
The cultural narratives in these chapters are thus largely framed by the contexts of
three sets of relationships: those between anglophones and francophones in early North
America; those between the British North American colonies and the United States; and
of course, the relationships between the Old World and the New. In the hands of English
Canadian authors struggling to negotiate these multiple relationships, medievalism was a
powerful tool: it allowed them to embrace European cultural histories, to stake a claim to
those Old World cultural inheritances, while simultaneously appropriating those histories
into new narratives for the New World.
19
The Database and Some Broad Trends in Early Canadian Medievalism
This project, as the first large-scale study of medievalism in Canada, began with
finding and cataloguing instances of medievalism in Canadian literature. The collection
process yielded abundant results. I intend to publish the full results of my search — over
one thousand entries and growing — as a database for scholarly use; here, though, I will
confine myself to an overview of the 443 entries from the period of 1789-1870. The
appendix includes a bibliographic list, and below are statistical overviews of medievalism
in the period.
A note on the aids that facilitated my search: Thomas B. Vincent’s Index to Pre
1900 English Language Canadian Cultural and Literary Magazines was an invaluable
search tool. Richard Moll also very generously shared with me his collection of late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian Arthuriana. The University of
Rochester’s Camelot Project was another helpful finding aid.
The data presented below are based on the database’s 443 entries from the period
of 1789-1870. An “entry” in the database can be anything from a short note in a literary
magazine to a book-length collection of poetry. For periodicals, I group the serialized
publication of one long work into only one entry (even though it may appear in six
different numbers of a magazine). Each entry in the database is tagged with attributes
noting details such as the type of work and its basic relationship to medieval literatures
and cultures. For example, a poetic work of historical fiction set in fourteenth-century
Switzerland would have tags denoting its genres, the time and place of its setting, and
important historical figures. A literary adaptation might have additional tags, such as
those denoting the adapted text and author, and any particularly important characters. An
20
interested scholar could thus search and sort the material by attributes, in order not only
to find texts that meet certain criteria, but also to identify literary trends and to see how
these trends vary by time and place. For example, if one were interested in works
engaging with both Nordic and Celtic medievalism in the early 1850s, one could search
for “Nordic” and “Celtic” attributes, and limit the date range to 1850-1855. Such a search
would yield two results: a work of fiction by Caroline H. Butler entitled “The Cave of
Eigg — A Legend of the Hebrides,” and a semi-fictional editorial in the Anglo-American
Magazine. A search for Nordic or Celtic attributes in the same time frame would yield
fifteen results, including the two above.
Figure 1
Figure 1, above, shows a breakdown of medievalism produced in British North
America by the time periods covered by each of my four chapters. Although the fact that
443 works of medievalism were published in Canada over this eighty-year period is
considerable in itself, there are a number of factors that suggest this statistic perhaps
21
underrepresents the importance of medievalism in early Canada. For example, this list
includes major book-length publications as well as magazine articles, so “one” work of
medievalism might indeed represent a very significant literary output. Moreover, eighty
years is a misleading time frame, since the literary publishing industry in British North
America almost completely collapsed for about twenty-five of those years, as I discuss in
Chapter 2. Before this collapse, the only two literary magazines (The Nova-Scotia
Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec) were monthly
publications, between them producing 55 issues over almost five years; the fifty-six
medievalist works in their pages average, then, to a work of medievalism in every issue.4
This consistency of medievalist publication is not limited to these first two magazines;
indeed, one of the most notable elements about medievalism in Canada is its
pervasiveness across time and region: whenever and wherever the literary publishing
industry was active, so too was the production of literary medievalism. In later years,
interest in medievalism was certainly not so evenly distributed amongst all Canadian
publications, but there were no time periods or regions that did not feel its influence.
Medievalism was not a fad: rather, it thrived in Canada’s growing literary industry.
Indeed, its popularity may even have contributed to the industry’s growth.
4 There were, of course, some issues of both magazines that did not have any medievalist material, counterbalanced by multiple articles in some other issues.
22
Figure 2
In the early years of British North America, the major publishing houses were in
Eastern cultural centres — namely, Halifax and Quebec. Next, Montreal and then York
(Toronto) developed as literary centres. The growing population of the Canadas by mid-
century contributed to the growth of the publishing industry in Montreal and Toronto, but
it was also boosted by the slow decline of publishing in the Maritimes; over the course of
the century, the literary industry shifted westwards. As shown in Figure 2 above, the
publication locations of medievalism in Canada followed the pattern of Canadian literary
production in general. Medievalist activity was thus not strongly regionalized in early
Canada, since its production seems to have depended primarily on general industry
strength; however, it would still have had the most cultural influence in the regions most
involved in its production.5
5 These places of publication do not necessarily correspond with the places of first publication of any given work; the literary culture of North America at the time was such that reprinting articles with or without acknowledgment of the source was common practice. Figure 3, then, tracks not necessarily where medievalism in Canada was first produced, but more broadly where it was being selected and shared with the public.
23
Figure 3
As shown in Figure 3 above, at the beginning of the period, prose non-fiction was
by far the most popular genre of medievalism. As I discuss in Chapter 1, historical and
anthropological studies, such as those of Edward Gibbon and William Jones, were
enormously popular and influential at the end of the eighteenth century. Scholarly studies
remained popular throughout the period, but their market share of medievalism declined
as more authors experimented with creative forms. Verse was a consistently popular form
of creative medievalism across the century, but other creative forms such as prose fiction,
and, towards the end of the period, satire, grew significantly in popularity. Illustrations
too became more common, in part due to cheaper and easier printing methods, and in part
due to the increase in skilled engravers in North America. The shift towards creative
medievalism coincides with a general increase in creative literary production in Canada;
it reflects a shift in the self-consciousness of Canadian literary culture recognizing itself
as such rather than as a disparate group of producers and consumers.
24
Figure 4
Among the most intriguing applications of the database is the ability to track early
Canada’s relative interest levels in different cultural and literary traditions. Figure 4, for
example, plots the number of medievalist publications engaging with specific national
traditions over time. Chapter 2 draws on this type of data in its discussion of the relative
silence about medieval France in the early decades of the nineteenth century; given
Canada’s colonial history, France would be a natural source of historical inspiration, so
such a gap is unusual. As the data shows, however, in the wake of the 1837-1838
rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, interest in French medievalism surged (as
examined in Chapter 3). Chapter 4 examines the rise in interest in medieval Scandinavia
in the years leading up Confederation. Working with the database has revealed minor
trends that are beyond the scope of this thesis but that are well worth exploring; for
example, searching the database for Middle Eastern medievalism indicates that it was of
enduring interest in early Canada, a phenomenon seemingly belonging to Edward Said’s
25
notion of Orientalism rather than to any limited Middle Eastern ethnic presence in early
Canada.
Figure 5
As shown in Figure 4, the strain of medievalism that enjoyed the greatest overall
popularity and most consistent growth was that of Celtic medievalism. However, at
various times, Canadians were interested in different specific national origins of
Celticism (Figure 5). Chapter 2 discusses the rise in popularity of Scottish medievalism,
and the integration of Scottish heritage into definitions of Canadianness. Chapter 4
examines the rise of interest in and acceptance of Irish heritage, a phenomenon surprising
at a time when Irish famine refugees faced persecution around the globe. Although, as
shown above, Irish history did not achieve the popularity of that of the Scottish, it was
nevertheless a significant current in medievalism in Canada.
Using the database to identify these trends in Canadian literary medievalism is
only the first step. The purpose of this thesis is to trace why these trends occurred in their
particular sociopolitical environments; it is, moreover, to examine how these processes of
26
literary appropriation narrativized and even justified Canada’s progress from colony to
nation. The following study begins thirty years after the British “Conquest” of the French
in North America, at the time of the French and American revolutions; British North
America, facing a crisis of identity as to its own place in the new world order, responded
with its first “quiet revolution.” Its revolution of chivalric manners, rather than of arms,
began the process of remaking Canada’s history into a new narrative for the new world.
27
Chapter 1
Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the New Canada: the Beginnings, 1789-1794
From its inception, Canadian literary culture has self-consciously engaged with
medieval precedents. Canada’s first two English-language literary magazines,6 The Nova-
Scotia Magazine (1789-1792) and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec (1792-
1794) both displayed a strong interest in the medieval world: they contained, on average,
a work of medievalism in every single issue of each magazine. In both of these literary
magazines, most of this content was drawn from already-published European sources,
although some of it was original to the North American magazines. Establishing
originality is a task ranging from difficult to impossible in this era of reprint culture,
which saw periodicals borrowing freely from one another without feeling the need to
provide detailed (if any) citations; however, even where the content is a direct reprint
from a European source, what the editors selected to present to their North American
audience reveals just as much about New World interests as do the compositions
originating in North America. One element encouraged by this reprint culture was the
interaction between conversations happening on both sides of the Atlantic, so even
though these two literary magazines had a rather limited local audience, they were still
participating in international literary discourse. Reprinting also freed the magazines to
present a broad spectrum of interests: even just among the medieval articles, they covered
religion, history, and culture in Western Europe, in the Celtic world, in Scandinavia, in
Arabia, and even in Persia. Yet, these diverse interests work together in the magazines to
establish a narrative that is distinctly Canadian in focus; the magazines combined all of 6 Fleury Mesplet’s Gazette du Commerce et Littéraire, published in Montreal from 1778-1779 (see Barbour 1-4; Fleming 64; Hébert 333) was Canada’s first literary periodical.
28
these traditions from the medieval past to comment on the chaotic events of the late
eighteenth century.
The reasons for turning to the medieval world were manifold. One such
motivation was the lack of an independent press with guaranteed rights to free speech: the
history of censorship in early British North America, along with the necessity of gaining
government printing contracts, made it much safer for printers and publishers to avoid
involving themselves directly in contemporary politics. The Nova-Scotia Magazine and
The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec may, then, have turned to key figures and
events from medieval history as allegorical substitutions for reasons of political
expediency; even though there were certainly others at the time (Jacob Bailey and
Alexander Croke, for example) who were willing and able to publish openly political
satires without retribution, getting a reputation for being politically troublesome would
not be good for a printer’s business. Perhaps, though, medievalism held its greatest
appeal to these magazines in that it allowed them to appropriate and reshape historical
examples for modern sociocultural ends. Drawing on a thousand years of literature and
history (or, more accurately, presenting the image of drawing on such a connection to the
past) could be a persuasive justification for modern sociocultural arguments. The growing
trend of Evangelical Protestantism in Nova Scotia prompted The Nova-Scotia Magazine
to denounce certain medieval evangelical preachers, thereby warning its audience about
the dangers of evangelical fervour. Moreover, in response to the political upheaval on
both sides of the Atlantic, the two magazines drew upon medieval periods of revolt to
advocate a path between blind loyalty to the crown and the outright revolutions of France
29
and America. On questions of both faith and government, the magazines turned to the
past for help in creating a new Canadian society.
A Brief Literary History of New France and British North America
The literary histories of New France and British North America set up the
conditions for the production of medievalism in The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The
Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec in two ways. First, the multiplicity of these
histories — along with their transatlantic nature — created precedent for the intrinsically
international nature of Canadian medievalism; second, the history of powerful political
influence over British North America’s early presses established the wisdom of political
circumspection in the printing industry.
The first of these conditions — that of the historically transatlantic nature of
Canadian literature — has its roots in the earliest French expeditions to the New World.
Although printing presses were banned in New France,7 various European settlers still
participated in a literary culture that was necessarily international. In general, literature in
New France followed the pattern set by Marc Lescarbot’s Le Théâtre de Neptune en la
Nouvelle-France, a play composed and performed in 1606 in Port-Royal (now Annapolis,
Nova Scotia) for Samuel de Champlain’s quasi-chivalric “Ordre de Bon Temps” (Marsh).
Although the play reflects distinctly New World creative efforts, it was published in print
only in France itself, rather than in Acadia or Canada (Blais 31-33). Other literary
endeavours in New France faced a similar transatlantic split between text and
performance: because of low rates of literacy, local literature was largely oral (from
7 The suggestion that Bishop of Quebec, Henri-Marie Dubreuil de Pontbriand, had a press for personal use has been discredited (see Tremaine 12-13; Melançon 415 n. 1).
30
occasional songs, to public readings of ordinances, to spiritual recitations) whereas the
written word (apart from administrative manuscripts) was often either imported from or
exported to France (Melançon 46-48).
France’s cession to Britain of much of Acadia, including Newfoundland and
peninsular Nova Scotia, as per the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 at least officially lifted the
restrictions on local literary production. Unlike the French, the British did not ban
printing in the colonies, but nevertheless the first press did not arrive in the new province
of Nova Scotia until Boston printer Bartholomew Green moved to Halifax at the end of
1751, two years after the founding of the city. Green’s former partner and fellow
Bostonian John Bushell followed soon after, and he established British North America’s
first newspaper — the Halifax Gazette — in March of 1752 (Fleming 61). That Bushell
printed government proclamations in both English and French suggests two things:
firstly, it reflects the government’s acceptance — at least on a purely practical level — of
the multicultural nature of Nova Scotian society, and secondly, it indicates that the
audience of the new press extended beyond the anglophones of Halifax to the
francophone Acadian population.
Since the Treaty of Utrecht, the Acadian population had insisted on remaining
neutral in any conflict between England and France: in large part they feared reprisals
from the Mi’kmaqs, who were French allies, if they took up arms against the French.
However, the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War between France and England in 1754
made the province’s new Lieutenant Governor Charles Lawrence rethink his acceptance
of the Acadians’ professed neutrality. In 1755, he and the Halifax Council decided that
they could not risk the continuing presence of a large French-speaking population that
31
would not submit themselves entirely to the British crown; they expelled the Acadians
from Nova Scotia and present-day New Brunswick, dispersing them haphazardly across
British territories where they thought the Acadians would have the least influence
(Francis, Jones, and Smith 117-121). During the war, Britain encouraged occupants of
New England to resettle in Nova Scotia, advertising the area’s wonderful fecundity;
thousands of fishers and farmers (who became collectively known as the New England
Planters) took over the century-old farms that the Acadians had been forced to abandon
(Francis, Jones, and Smith 197). Although Britain eventually allowed the Acadians to
return to the colony, they could not return to their own fertile lands, which by then were
occupied by the Planters. Instead, many of them resettled on much less productive land
on the eastern coast of present-day New Brunswick, as well as in southwestern Nova
Scotia, Cape Breton (Île Royale) and Prince Edward Island (Île St-Jean) (Francis, Jones,
and Smith 124).
The Seven Years’ War also caused drastic changes in the French territory of
Canada (the southern part of modern-day Quebec, on both sides of the St. Lawrence). In
1759, the British successfully captured the city of Quebec, and the surrender of Montreal
in 1760 put the province under British military rule, leading to France’s ceding Canada in
its entirety to Britain under the Treaty of Paris in 1763.8 Under the terms of the treaty,
8 Whether France would cede Canada or Guadeloupe was a matter of some debate: British Prime Minister William Pitt chose Canada, mainly to avoid further wars with the French in North America (Francis, Jones, and Smith 155-156). There were, however, concerns that without the French presence, the American Thirteen Colonies might be more likely to rebel against Britain. Ironically, Benjamin Franklin convinced Pitt and his cabinet that keeping Canada as a British colony would lead to peace in the region, and that the colonies would certainly not take up arms against their mother country unless Britain were to act in such a hostile manner as giving Canada back to France (“Treaty of Paris”).
32
the French colonists could choose to stay in Canada, now known as the Province of
Quebec, or emigrate; those who chose to stay were guaranteed freedom of religion
insofar as the laws of Great Britain allowed. Unlike the Acadians, these French
Canadians were never threatened with expulsion. Britain did hope to assimilate the
francophones into British culture via immigration of New Englanders, but few New
Englanders chose to move to Quebec, preferring instead Nova Scotia or the rich
farmlands of the newly created Indian Territory to the west. The demographics of the
province, 500 British to 70 000 Canadians in 1765 (Francis, Jones, and Smith 163),
meant that the British government had to find reasonable compromises for the
francophone population in matters of daily life, much as had happened in Nova Scotia
with John Bushell’s printing government proclamations in both English and French. With
the sanction against printing no longer in effect, William Brown and Thomas Gilmore —
both of whom had trained as printers in Philadelphia (Gervais, “Brown, William”;
“Gilmore, Thomas”) — established a press in the city of Quebec in 1764, starting the
bilingual Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec that June (Fleming 64). Although the
Gazette was not an official publication of the government, it was a convenient method for
the governor, James Murray, to communicate ordinances to the public, both anglophone
and francophone; Murray therefore designated laws printed in the Gazette as having been
officially published, even going so far as to require priests to read such sections of the
newspaper to their congregations (Gallichan, “Official Publications” 310). Aside from the
Gazette, Brown and Gilmore did not restrict themselves to publishing only in English or
French (or both): they also served the print needs of a range of cultural and spiritual
33
communities in the province, printing in German, Latin, Abenaki, Mohawk, and
Montagnais (Fleming 64).
Yet, this burgeoning linguistic range did not actually indicate freedom of the
press: the governments in both Quebec and Nova Scotia exerted strong control over the
printing industry. Printing government legislation was a significant source of revenue for
printers, and being the official king’s printer provided a measure of financial stability,
though that office did not come without its costs. In response to the Stamp Act of 1765 —
which required that many forms of print, including newspapers, had to be printed on
paper that had been taxed and stamped accordingly — Bushell’s successor Anthony
Henry printed the Halifax Gazette with black edging to indicate mourning, and in some
cases he used a skull and crossbones or devil as a counter-stamp. This act of protest cost
his shop its role as the king’s printer, as the government soon withdrew its contracts,
effectively muzzling the paper: because of the loss of revenue, Henry had to cease
publication of the Gazette (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 321-322). After the British
parliament revoked the Stamp Act in 1766, newspaper production did start again in
Halifax and Quebec,9 but printing anti-government material remained perilous.
In Montreal, the printing industry also started with cultural conflict and political
censorship. During the American Revolution, the American Continental Army succeeded
in capturing Montreal for a period of seven months, between November 1775 and June
1776, as part of their strategy to limit the ability of the British to attack the Thirteen
Colonies from the north (Francis, Jones, and Smith 175). In order to encourage
9 Brown and Gilmore’s Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec ceased publication for the duration of the Stamp Act but resumed in May 1766. In Halifax, Robert Fletcher — the new king’s printer — started the Nova-Scotia Gazette in August 1766 (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 321-322).
34
Montreal’s inhabitants to join in the revolution, the Continental Congress commissioned
Fleury Mesplet to set up a French printing shop to disseminate propaganda to the
francophone population (Galarneau). Mesplet had quite the international background:
born in France, he trained as a printer there under his father before setting up printing
businesses first in London and then in Philadelphia. His arrival in Montreal and attempt
to set up a press there did not go smoothly: he arrived in May 1776, only a month before
the Americans withdrew, and the reinstated British government imprisoned him for
nearly a month on suspicion of his being an American spy. However, following his
release, he soon established his shop and started Canada’s first literary periodical, the
Gazette du commerce et littéraire, with Valentin Jautard as editor. The paper was, as
Patricia Lockhart Fleming describes, “Suspect from the outset, with too much Voltaire
for the church and too much popular sympathy in the government’s view” (64). Mesplet
and Jautard were arrested after the paper had been in existence for only one year; they
were held without charge by executive order for forty months (Fleming 64; Laurence,
“Newspaper Press” 233). After this second incarceration for Mesplet, he founded a less
controversial paper, the Montreal Gazette / Gazette de Montréal in 1785.
The Establishment of Literary Magazines in British North America
Mesplet was not the only printer brought to British North America by the
American Revolution. Loyalists of all trades moved northwards, particularly to Nova
Scotia and to the western portion of Quebec, or Upper Canada as of 1791, thereby
significantly increasing literary commerce in these regions. One such Loyalist immigrant
was the printer John Howe, who left Boston for Halifax
35
not . . . from his devotion to the crown as such and especially not to King
George III. What counted with him, as with many New England loyalists,
was the British heritage, the contributions of Britons over the centuries to
politics, the arts, science, and literature. He was determined never to
relinquish his membership in a nation whose accomplishments he admired
and idealized. (Beck)
Together with editor William Cochran, Howe founded The Nova-Scotia Magazine, a
literary monthly, in 1789. Cochran had also come to Halifax as a result of the American
Revolution, but for reasons different from those of Howe: he had emigrated from Ireland
to America because of his belief in the ideals of the revolution, but the new republic did
not live up to his expectations. Disillusioned with the political realities of the United
States, and in particular with the institution of slavery, he left the United States to seek
ordination in the Church of England in Nova Scotia (Wright). Howe’s respect for cultural
heritage combined with Cochran’s attention to the North American element of British
North America to produce an Anglo-centric magazine that also emphasized local culture.
Thomas Brewer Vincent, Sandra Alston and Eli MacLaren argue that the magazine
“appears to have been designed primarily to maintain the cultural imprint of Britain on
Maritime society, but Cochran also sought to encourage young local writers. . . . What
emerged was a version of ‘Britishness’ that had more to do with local values than with
the realities of contemporary Britain” (241).
In Quebec, printer Samuel Neilson founded British North America’s third literary
periodical (and second literary magazine), The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de
Québec, in 1792. After the first issue, he enlisted the Presbyterian minister Alexander
36
Spark as editor; Spark stayed with the magazine until its end in 1794, also acting as a
mentor to Samuel’s brother John, who took over as printer after Samuel died in 1793
(Vincent, Alston, and MacLaren 242; Barbour 10). The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin
de Québec seems to have held similar views to The Nova-Scotia Magazine regarding its
cultural role in British North America. The full titles of both magazines reveal that, to
their editors, the magazines occupied a special place between Old World and New World
societies; they were not simply importing, but instead carefully curating, adapting, and
adding to European scholarship. The later volumes of The Nova-Scotia Magazine give it
the full title of The Nova-Scotia Magazine and Comprehensive Review of Literature,
Politics, and News. Being a Collection of the Most Valuable Articles Which Appear in the
Periodical Publications of Great-Britain, Ireland, and America, with Various Pieces in
Verse and Prose Never Before Published. This title emphasizes the magazine’s curatorial
role to select only the best of the best amongst the periodicals in the English-speaking
world. If its standards for republished works were so high, then presumably its editors
believed — or intended their audience to believe — that the original Nova-Scotian
compositions also ranked among the best on an international scale. The full title of The
Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec also indicates its participation in the
international literary and political discourses of the time, but its stated emphasis (at least
in the English version) is on the adaptation of international works to a specifically
Canadian context. Given at the beginning of each volume, its full title is The Quebec
Magazine, or Useful and Entertaining Repository of Science, Morals, History, Politics,
&c. Particularly Adapted for the Use of British America. By a Society of Gentlemen in
Quebec. // Le magasin de Québec, ou receuil utile et amusant de literature, histoire,
37
politique, &c. &c. particulierement adapté a l’usage de l’Amerique Britannique. Par une
societé de gens de lettres. The title emphasizes the editorial process involved in
publishing the journal: even though most of the content has originally been published
elsewhere, all of the editorial choices – such as selecting what to include and organizing
the material – are acts of adaptation. Moreover, the title page’s claim that the journal is
offered “By a Society of Gentlemen in Quebec” asserts local and communal ownership of
the literary product. The claim of a society’s participation seems unlikely: Alexander
Spark is the only person to have drawn a salary for editing the magazine (Vincent,
Alston, and MacLaren 242), and there is no record of other editorial assistance (either
paid or unpaid). Moreover, Neilson makes this claim on the cover of the first issue, even
before he had enlisted the help of an editor. Neilson thus promoted the probable fiction
that the magazine was the result of the efforts of the community, thereby again stressing
local relevance. By adapting the (largely European) source material for a Canadian
audience, the magazine effectively reimagines the content itself as Canadian.
Of note is the difference between the English and French editorial bylines of The
Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec. The English version emphasizes the social
rank of its editors – even though they are in the provincial city of Quebec, with its
population of 14 000 in 1790 (Cartier), they are “gentlemen”; on the other hand, the
French version ignores rank (the editors are simply “gens”) and instead focuses on the
“societé . . . de lettres,” the literary nature of their society. In this respect, the magazine
seems to have modeled itself after some its European sources: both the Bibliothèque de
l’homme publique and L’esprit des journaux françois et étrangers include in their bylines
the notion of being written by “gens de lettres.” (I discuss articles borrowed from these
38
two magazines later in this chapter.) The English version of the full title of The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec invokes a sense of displacement from the centre of
gentility and learning, whereas the French suggests a comfortably homegrown literary
society that interacts with similar bodies elsewhere. Also of note is that the title is in both
English and French, reflecting the fact that it is indeed a bilingual literary periodical:
some articles appear in both languages (in “double”), but often a work is presented in
either French or English, with no division of articles by language. The journal thus
assumes bilingualism among its audience. The magazine’s choice to be bilingual would
have been in response to historical precedent as well as demographics. It followed in the
footsteps of Brown and Gilmore’s Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec, as well as
Mesplet’s Montreal Gazette / La Gazette de Montréal, but whereas those papers were
designed to inform the general public, a literary venture such as The Quebec Magazine /
Le magasin de Québec would have targeted a more elite audience with an interest in the
arts — and the leisure time to pursue such an interest. The first subscription library in the
country, established by Governor Frederick Haldimand in Quebec City in 1779 (K. Smith
145), was also bilingual (Beckman, Dahms, and Bruce); it was open to any member of
the public who could afford to purchase a membership share and pay the annual fee,
again reflecting an economic, rather than linguistic, divide in Quebec society. Most of the
British elite — including the governors and lieutenant-governors of Quebec — needed at
least some facility with the French language, if not complete fluency: French, after all,
was “the language of international diplomacy,” in which even the Treaty of Paris was
written (“Treaty of Paris”).
39
Religious Controversy in Nova Scotia
By the time of The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le
magasin de Québec, history had proved through the experiences of Mesplet, Jautard, and
Henry that publishing political commentary in British North America had the potential to
be both personally and financially ruinous. The situation was less fraught when it came to
publishing religious commentary, since religious institutions had far less control over the
printing industry than the government did. Yet, turning to medieval exemplars was still
not only a prudent practice, but also one well-established in various forms of Christian
Protestantism. Indeed, a fundamental part of many Protestant doctrines involved looking
to the Middle Ages to determine at what point the Church had deviated from the ‘true
faith.’ In British North America, The Nova-Scotia Magazine employed medieval
religious models to justify its position on the religious upheaval that swept the region
following the arrival of the New England Planters in Nova Scotia. In the early- to mid-
eighteenth century, New England had experienced an evangelical religious revolution
commonly called the Great Awakening,10 but this transformation had not extended across
the border to Nova Scotia’s Anglican and Reformed11 churches. The Evangelical
Congregationalism of the Planters was in many ways foreign to the faiths established in
the province, and The Nova-Scotia Magazine regarded evangelical tendencies with
significant distrust: its series on populist preachers in the Middle Ages clearly reveals its
skepticism about the viability of evangelical faith, either in the past or present.
10 See Thomas S. Kidd’s The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America for a study of this period of religious reform. 11 Nova Scotia’s churches were by no means unified at the time; I use “Reformed” to designate a broad category of mainstream Calvinist religions, including Presbyterianism.
40
In Nova Scotia, one of the most influential of the evangelical preachers was a
Planter named Henry Alline, who even as a child in Rhode Island was already aware of a
religious calling. However, his formal religious education ended when his family
emigrated to the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia. The centralization of political power in
Halifax under its merchant clique had a secondary effect of further isolating poor rural
communities, and there were no educational or religious institutions in the rural Minas
Basin area that Alline could attend. He did read voraciously, and he attempted to return to
New England in 1775 for further education, but the outbreak of the American Revolution
prevented his return. Soon after the start of the Revolution, the Nova Scotia provincial
government called up part of its militia, and Alline was encouraged to seek a commission
in the army. Alline declined the offer, deciding that his mission was “to go forth, and
enlist my fellow-mortals to fight under the banners of King Jesus” (qtd. in Bumsted). The
war seems to have helped galvanize his decision to preach, even though he was
unordained. (He eventually was ordained by three separate churches in 1779, two of
which he had been instrumental in founding.) Starting in 1776, he travelled around the
Minas Basin from his home in Falmouth, preaching what J.M. Bumsted calls “a spiritual
assurance which rejected and transcended the tribulations of the secular world, whether
British or American. It was a message unmistakably Nova Scotian in its emphasis.” He
maintained that Nova Scotia was “the new centre of Christendom” (Francis, Jones, and
Smith 201). His preaching encouraged his audience not only to reject the secular world in
favour of the spiritual one, but it also called upon his followers to reject even established
religious structures. He emphasized a cathartic experience of a religious “new birth” in
Christ; he preached that this cathartic experience in itself qualified one for the ministry,
41
and he encouraged those who had experienced it themselves to become preachers
(Bumsted). Alline’s death in 1784 prompted another period of turmoil for his “New
Light” churches, many of which eventually formed the Baptist Church in Nova Scotia
(Eaton 278-279). In his revivalist doctrine, Alline challenged the Calvinism of the
Congregational Church to which most of the Planters belonged, as well as the
Anglicanism of the British settlers. In his opposition to secular and clerical hierarchies,
he also challenged Nova Scotia’s relationship with both Great Britain and the United
States.
That Nova Scotia remained a British province is in some ways surprising, given
that more than half of its inhabitants at the time of the Revolution had come from New
England. The Planters had been brought to the province to stabilize and entrench British
culture in the region, by virtue of their being manifestly more British than the area’s
former French Acadian inhabitants; they were not, however, any more British than their
American brethren, and they had come to Nova Scotia only fifteen years before the start
of the American Revolution. Most of them did not join the Americans, but neither did
they want to fight their own relatives: when Governor Francis Legge called up part of the
militia in 1775, many regions of the province sent the governor missives asking to be
treated as a neutral party in the war (Francis, Jones, and Smith 199). Numerous
explanations have been proposed for the Planters’ lack of interest in the American cause,
including the idea that they left the Colonies before anti-British rhetoric came to a head,
and thus were less inclined to see a war as necessary. However, Alline’s teachings also
contributed to sublimating political frustrations into religious enthusiasm. He gave his
42
followers the mission to bring the world back to God, to “fight under the banners of King
Jesus” — and not under the banners of any worldly ruler.
The Nova-Scotia Magazine took issue with Alline’s brand of self-taught
evangelicalism, preferring instead to advocate the type of Protestantism favoured by
denominations such as the Church of England. In some ways, Alline’s personal religious
beliefs overlapped with the Sandemanian faith of John Howe, the magazine’s
printer/publisher: both the New Light and Sandemanian faiths shared emphases on
pacifism, on rejecting the material world in favour of the spiritual world, on charity, and
on anti-hierarchical church structure.12 Despite these similarities, the founders of
Sandemanianism (John Glas and Robert Sandeman) spoke passionately against the
evangelical revivalism of the Great Awakening. However, neither the New Light
Congregationalism nor Sandemanianism was a unified faith: indeed, both suffered from
sectarian struggles. The Sandemanians as a whole felt that loyalty to the monarchy was a
matter of religious principle; however, while the greater portion of the faithful held as
religious tenets the avoidance of political interference or military service, the Boston
Sandemanians (to which Howe belonged) were far more vocal in their political views.
The Boston Sandemanians never actually took up arms, but they did actively support the
Loyalist cause in other ways. Howe, for example, joined the British troops in their
occupation of New York and Newport during the Revolution in order to print a Loyalist
newspaper (J. Smith 148). Howe’s branch of Sandemanianism also maintained a greater
degree of class consciousness and hierarchy than did most Pietist Christians, and in this
12 See John Howard Smith’s The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century for a discussion of Sandemanianism in Nova Scotia, and of John Howe’s contributions to the church (148, 177-179).
43
respect Howe’s beliefs aligned with those of William Cochran, The Nova-Scotia
Magazine’s editor. The Church of England, to which Cochran belonged, was the model
of Christian practice against which the New Lights rebelled, with its hierarchical
structure that separated formally-educated clergy from the laity. The issue of ministerial
education seems to have galvanized Howe and Cochran’s opposition to the New Lights.
In The Nova-Scotia Magazine, Howe and Cochran published a selection of essays
from Edward Gibbon and Joseph Berington that cast suspicion on uneducated,
evangelical preachers from the Middle Ages and promoted a successively more specific
view of acceptable modern Christian practice. These essays appear in several issues of
The Nova-Scotia Magazine over the course of a year; notably, this series on controversial
religious figures in medieval history ceased when Cochran resigned and Howe took over
as editor. Berington had published his History of the Lives of Abeillard and Heloisa in
1787, and Gibbon had published the final installment of his History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire even more recently: volumes four through six were released
simultaneously on Gibbon’s 51st birthday, 8 May 1788 (Womersley). All of Cochran’s
selections from Gibbon come from this last installment, rather than from his wildly
popular and controversial first volume (published 1776) or his less popular (but also less
controversial) second and third volumes (published 1781). This focus on the most recent
volumes indicates that The Nova-Scotia Magazine, much like modern periodicals, wanted
its scholarship to be current; it did not feel the need to catch its readers up on scholarly
developments of the previous ten or fifteen years, but rather it wanted to disseminate the
most recent in historical thinking. Yet restricting himself to the last three volumes of
Gibbon’s opus did little to change how selective Cochran had to be in his editorial
44
process: in the original 1788 quarto printing, volumes four through six together command
nearly two thousand pages of text, not including apparatus, out of which he chose to
share approximately two dozen pages with the readers of The Nova-Scotia Magazine —
all of which related to the medieval world.
Cochran chose the works of Gibbon and Berington as much for their personal
religious views as for the quality of their scholarship on the history of religion in the
Middle Ages. Gibbon had a complicated spiritual path: raised in the High Church of
England, at the age of sixteen he converted to Roman Catholicism, much to the
consternation of his father (Mankin). Gibbon attributed his conversion to a pair of literary
sources: he liked to say that an ironic reading of Conyers Middleton’s attack on the
Catholic Church’s claim to miraculous power was the catalyst, but in his Memoirs he
instead attributes his conversion to reading works by the Elizabethan Jesuit Robert
Parsons (Womersley). In an attempt to counteract Gibbon’s conversion, his father sent
him to study first under sceptic David Mallet and next under the Reformed minister Mr.
Pavilliard in Switzerland; a year and a half after his conversion to Catholicism, Gibbon
returned to Protestantism and “suspended Religious enquiries” (qtd. in Womersley).
Gibbon’s historical writing bears the marks of this spiritual journey, of someone who has
set aside his interest in theological questions: much of the controversy surrounding his
first volume stemmed from his refusal to give special consideration to the official version
of medieval Church history but rather to view it with the same critical eye he would give
to any set of historical documents. For subsequent editions, Gibbon severely redacted
Chapters 15 and 16, which covered early Church history, the relationship of Christianity
to other modes of worship, and the usefulness of religion to governance. This historical
45
approach prompted outrage against Gibbon; his critics questioned both his scholarly
method and his moral character. However, the picture that The Nova-Scotia Magazine
presents of Gibbon through its choice of excerpts is very different from the one presented
by his detractors after the publication of his first volume. Each of the sets of excerpts that
The Nova-Scotia Magazine published includes at least one article on medieval religious
history; Gibbon’s commentary in these pieces shows a strongly Protestant viewpoint, one
that is perhaps Calvinist but not necessarily so. In this way the magazine catered to the
religious sensibilities of the established churches in Nova Scotia at the time.
Through this series on religion in the Middle Ages, The Nova-Scotia Magazine
promoted a successively more specific version of acceptable faith in the New World. In
its first issue, the magazine begins its selections from Gibbon’s works with a piece
entitled “Character of Mahomet [From the 5th vol. of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, by Mr. Gibbon, lately published.]” In this excerpt, Gibbon provides a character
sketch of Mahomet13 (the Prophet Muhammad, c.570-632), emphasizing his personal
nature rather than his life’s story. He constructs Mahomet as an “illiterate Barbarian”
(18), but one with exquisite manners. This notion of a civilizing veneer over the truth
extends from Gibbon’s perception of Mahomet to his perception of Islam as well. He
refers to the “artist” (18) of the Koran and indicates uncertainty whether Mahomet
“consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm” (18-19); he describes the resulting faith as
one “which, under the name of Islam, he [Mahomet] preached to his family and nation is
compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction, THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE
13 For the sake of consistency with the source text, I use “Mahomet” to denote Gibbon’s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad; my comments relate exclusively to this characterization and not to the actual religious figure.
46
GOD, AND THAT MAHOMET IS THE APOSTLE OF GOD” (19, emphasis in
original). In his emphasis on the artifice and artistry of Islam, Gibbon strongly affirms a
Judeo-Christian point of view. By selecting this as its first excerpt from the History, The
Nova-Scotia Magazine refutes the direst of the charges against Gibbon, namely his
paganism. However, since Islam did not gain a significant following in Nova Scotia until
the mid-twentieth century, this sketch of Mahomet also serves as a politically safe
introduction to Gibbon’s skepticism about the accuracy of official religious histories.
Gibbon constructs a dichotomy between how Mahomet’s followers described him and his
deeds, and “our more accurate enquiry” (18), but although he questions the actual breadth
and usefulness of Mahomet’s travels, he nevertheless admires his “pious and
contemplative disposition” and his attempt “to rescue his country from the dominion of
sin and error” (19). In what becomes a recurring theme in discussions of medieval
religions in The Nova-Scotia Magazine, the excerpt goes on to express deep skepticism of
the ability of any individual religious reformer to retain pure motives when confronted
with political realities:
Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were those of
pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is incapable of
cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims, despise his
arguments, and persecute his life . . . . In the exercise of political
government, he [Mahomet] was compelled . . . to employ even the vices of
mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use of fraud and
perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation
of the faith . . . . Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; and a
47
politician will suspect, that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at
the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes. (19)
Gibbon charts a trajectory of corruption for Mahomet, from a pure desire to save his
fellow citizens, to the hypocrisy of believing he alone as the Prophet of God could break
God’s commandments in His name. Gibbon’s admiration for Mahomet’s spirit dissolves
in the wake of two main obstacles: Mahomet’s personal ambition and his fraudulence.
Although Gibbon does not make an explicit connection between Mahomet’s lack
of formal education and his being an impostor, they certainly seem related. Gibbon could
forgive Mahomet’s being an “illiterate Barbarian” underneath a veneer of grace and
hospitality in “the enthusiasm of his [Mahomet’s] youth,” but he returns yet again in his
condemnation of Mahomet’s ambition to the notion of fraud — which, at the beginning
of the excerpt, is clearly linked to Mahomet’s lack of education. In part, the fraudulence
at the end of the piece refers to Mahomet’s unfair dealings with prisoners who follow
other faiths; however, given the construction of artifice at the start of the sketch, and
given the attitude towards religious enthusiasts in subsequent selections, I argue that The
Nova-Scotia Magazine casts suspicion on any untutored proselytizer; in particular, it uses
this sketch of Mahomet along with those of other medieval religious figures to promote
mainstream Reformed or Anglican Protestantism and to cast suspicion on the more
extreme Evangelical movements such as Alline’s.
In its subsequent numbers, The Nova-Scotia Magazine promotes a conservative
Protestantism that would have appealed to adherents of both the Anglican and Reformed
churches. The magazine includes two excerpts of a religious nature from Gibbon in the
second number, one on the “Character of Peter the Hermit” and the other on the
48
“Numbers and Spirit of the First Adventurers in the Crusade.” Together these two
excerpts condemn both what Gibbon saw as the degeneracy of the Roman Catholic
Church at the time of the Crusades and the excess of religious enthusiasm among the laity
in certain eighteenth-century Evangelical Protestant sects. The “first adventurers” to
whom Gibbon refers are those who participated in a branch of the First Crusade often
referred to as the People’s Crusade, which saw tens of thousands of peasants march from
France, Italy and Germany to Constantinople. Gibbon describes the “genuine leaders” of
one such group from Germany as “a goose and a goat, who were carried in front, and to
whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit” (102). In
medieval bestiaries, goats could serve a dual purpose: the Second-family bestiary, for
example, compares the goat to Christ, but it also associates the he-goat and kid with
wantonness and gluttony, respectively (Clark 136-137, 152). However, by Gibbon’s time,
goats had come to be strongly associated with the Devil, so much so that in 1726, Daniel
Defoe felt it necessary to complain in his Political History of the Devil that “among all
the horribles that we dress up Satan in, I cannot but think we shew the least of invention
in this of a Goat” (229). The audience of The Nova-Scotia Magazine would have
understood the story of the People’s Crusade on one level as idolatry, and on another as
an allegory of the Devil leading sinners astray. The story thus expresses Protestant
concern about icons, idolatry, and degeneracy in the Roman Catholic Church; however,
Gibbon’s distrust of evangelicalism (and by extension Evangelical Protestantism) is
equally evident in his denunciation of the preacher Peter the Hermit (c.1050-1115), one
of the leaders of the People’s Crusade, who was commissioned by Pope Urban II to whip
up enthusiasm for the Crusades across France and Italy. Gibbon condemns Peter as an
49
“accomplished fanatic” who “excelled in the popular madness of the times” (102). Much
as in the sketch of Mahomet, Gibbon strongly disapproves of Peter’s “ignorance of art
and language” (102); also as with Mahomet, Gibbon is surprised at Peter’s success as an
orator, but argues that Peter “supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent
appeals to Christ and his Mother” (102). The simplicity of Peter’s approach seems to
offend Gibbon as much as does his cause of recruiting for the Crusades. Although
Gibbon could find redeeming qualities in Mahomet’s bringing monotheism to his people,
and leading them out of what Gibbon sees as a spiritual dark age, he can find no such
redemptive features about Peter the Hermit. Peter’s flock, and those attracted to the
Crusades by similar leaders such as Walter the Pennyless and the monk Godescal, are
“the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a
brutal license of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness” (“Numbers” 102). Peter is the
metaphorical goose and goat for his branch of the People’s Crusade: instead of leading
the Crusaders towards an eternal truth — even one “compounded... by a necessary
fiction” (“Mahomet” 19) — he leads them from a spiritual darkness into a spiritual
quagmire. In these two excerpts, the supposed righteousness of the People’s Crusade,
assured to the participants by religious figures Peter and Godescal, gave the people
license to commit a range of sins. Historically, even many of those who would not
naturally be violent or vicious had to turn to morally questionable activities such as theft
in order to survive. Of those that made it to the Holy Land, most (unarmed, untrained
peasants) were slaughtered by the better-trained army of the Seljuk Turks (A. Murray
939-941, M.C. Barber).
50
The Nova-Scotia Magazine furthers this theme of mistrust of evangelicals with a
passage in its October 1789 number from Berington’s History of the Lives of Abeillard
and Heloisa, originally published in England in 1787. Although this excerpt is the only
one from Berington’s History included in the magazine’s entire run, it focuses on neither
the twelfth-century French philosopher Peter Abelard (1079-1142) nor his lover Heloise
(c.1098-1164). Instead, its subject is Arnold of Brescia, a twelfth-century religious
reformer who preached the spiritual importance of poverty. Berington considers Arnold’s
quests for reform to be motivated mainly by ambition and only secondarily by a desire to
correct the abuses in the church:
To collect a party, to give his name to a sect, or to attack the rich and
powerful, were ideas before which his mind expanded . . . . He viewed the
depraved manners and the intemperate lives of the monks and clergy, and
against them he would direct the severest opposition. His cause, he well
knew, would be popular, and the better under the guise of sanctity, to
effect his purpose, he threw over his shoulders, the austere dress of a
religious man. (265)
To Berington, Arnold is a fraud, an actor who wishes nothing more than to be famous;
underneath his costume of religiosity he is “daring, impetuous, self-sufficient, vain”
(267). Berington is galled by Arnold’s challenge to established order, but at the same
time he not only admits but also condemns the existence of corruption and depravity in
the Church: “Indeed, nothing could be more glaringly offensive than the ostentatious
parade of the bishops and great abbots, and the soft and licentious lives of the monks and
clergy; but Arnold, in his declamation, far exceeded the bounds of truth” (266). This
51
passage expresses in equal measure fascination with and revulsion by the notion of an
egalitarian society. Berington, a Roman Catholic priest, was a reformer himself: he
advocated for political freedom for Catholics and for religious tolerance, while criticizing
the political power of the Papacy (Chinnici). However, Berington draws a sharp
distinction between his approach to reform and Arnold’s. In Berington’s text, Arnold
represents a threat to authority both secular and spiritual with his quest to “pull down the
proud, and to exalt the humble” (265), whereas Berington himself had no desire to
overthrow established order completely, but instead to reform the Church from within.
Berington’s rhetoric of finding a middle ground between allowing abuses of power to
continue unchecked and launching outright revolution would have found a receptive
audience in Nova Scotia of the 1780s, in a province that had stayed loyal to Britain
through the American Revolution. The first stirrings of the French Revolution in the
spring of 1789, only five months before The Nova-Scotia Magazine published this
excerpt, would again have raised questions in the province of the proper functions of
secular and religious power.
Mahomet, Peter the Hermit, and Arnold of Brescia stand in stark contrast to Pope
Gregory I (c. 540-604), of whom The Nova-Scotia Magazine published Gibbon’s
biographical account in April 1790. Gibbon emphasizes Gregory’s own education and
scholarship, as well as his patrimony of monasteries in Rome and Sicily. Gregory,
Gibbon claims, “was second in erudition to none of his contemporaries,” and his
pontificate was “one of the most edifying periods in the history of the church” (257).
Gibbon admits that Gregory had his shortcomings, but he argues that “His virtues, and
even his faults, a singular mix of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense
52
and superstition, were happily suited to his station, and to the temper of the times” (257).
The very things for which he criticizes Peter the Hermit and Mahomet (such as pride, and
even the mix of simplicity and cunning) he sees as suitable for Gregory’s time and
position. In Gregory’s case, Gibbon praises any subterfuge he may have been involved in
for the good of the Church: “the credulity or the prudence of Gregory was always
disposed to confirm the truths of religion by the evidence of ghosts, miracles, and
resurrections” (258). Gibbon implies that Gregory may or may not always have believed
stories about the supernatural, but regardless knew it would be prudent to give credibility
to stories that support “the truths of religion.” This type of deception earns Gregory high
praise from Gibbon, instead of the label of “impostor” like Mahomet, or that of
“accomplished fanatic” like Peter the Hermit. Gibbon considers Gregory to be a true
leader of the Christian faith, not tainted by the degeneracy he saw as widespread by the
time of the Crusades. In this belief, Gibbon follows John Calvin, who also believed the
teachings of Gregory to be of paramount importance to the modern church: in his
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin frequently turned to the writings of Gregory to
support his argument for a non-hierarchical clerical structure (Little 149). Much more
educated than the newly “awakened” itinerant preachers, but at the same time not too
removed from his flock by Catholic hierarchies, Gregory serves — for Cochran’s
purposes — as an appropriate model for leaders of Christianity in Nova Scotia.
Revolution and Government
Cochran’s choice to excerpt heavily from Gibbon seems to stem from the
alignment not only of their religious sympathies but also of their political ideals. Much
53
like Cochran with the American Revolution, Gibbon initially supported the ideals of the
French Revolution; however, he too became disillusioned with the violence (Womersley).
Although he had not yet abjured the French Revolution at the time The Nova-Scotia
Magazine published excerpts from his History, Gibbon’s discussions of medieval
chivalry — particularly in France — do reveal political ideals applicable to Nova Scotian
society during a time of territorial exchange and bloody revolution on both sides of the
Atlantic. Included in the magazine’s first number, Gibbon’s “Character of Charlemagne”
comments on the responsibilities of good — if imperfect — government. In this piece,
Gibbon draws a distinction between public and private virtues that is pointedly absent in
his discussions of religious figures. The excerpt begins with a brief discussion of the
moral failings of Charlemagne (c. 742-814) (such as his lack of chastity, and his possibly
incestuous relationships with his daughters), but Gibbon’s tone is conspicuously non-
judgmental because, he says, “the public happiness could not be materially injured by his
nine wives or concubines” (20). Gibbon suggests, then, that a certain amount of moral
corruption is acceptable in government, so long as it does not infringe on public well-
being. In Nova Scotia, the Halifax merchant clique that controlled the legislature
certainly had its share of corruption, but the article suggests that revolution is not always
a necessary cure. Remarkably, given Gibbon’s disgust at pride and ambition in the
character of religious figures, he claims that he “shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the
ambition of a conqueror,” even though “in a day of equal retribution, the sons of his
brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the four thousand five
hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same spot, would have have [sic] something
to alledge [sic] against the justice and humanity of Charlemagne” (20). He avows
54
Charlemagne’s “treatment of the vanquished Saxons was an abuse of the rights of
conquest” (20). Although in another time, Britain’s treatment of the Acadians could have
been much worse (unlike Charlemagne, Britain did not behead those whom they had
conquered), this comment would undoubtedly have created an uneasy reminder of the
responsibilities of a conquering nation towards all of its subjects, both new and old. The
inclusion of this article perhaps then offers a subtle social critique of the government’s
treatment of the Acadians, an issue that would still have been quite current, with Acadian
communities struggling to reestablish themselves from the mid-1760s onwards.
In Cochran’s selection, the final verdict on Charlemagne is that his
“encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on ... [his]
character” (20), even though his attempts “to improve the laws and character of the
Franks” (20) failed to create a stable political system that would survive his death. In
Gibbon’s view, this instability was one of the primary factors that led to the development
of chivalry in the Middle Ages. In an excerpt entitled “Origin of Knighthood,” he
describes the rise of chivalry as a type of “revolution” that takes place “among the
Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was gradually extended to the rest of
Europe” (100). The excerpt expresses ambivalence towards revolution: on the one hand,
the values inherent to chivalry taught
the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace; to esteem
himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries; and proudly to
neglect the laws of civil society and military discipline. Yet the benefits of
this institution, to refine the temper of Barbarians, and to infuse some
principles, of faith, justice and humanity, were strongly felt, and have been
55
often observed. The asperity of national prejudice was softened; and the
community of religion and arms spread a similar valour and generous
emulation over the face of Christendom. (101)
Despite the significant drawbacks of losing peaceful cultural pursuits and of effectively
erasing any legal systems, this revolution nevertheless in some ways expresses ideals that
would have been shared by imperial Britain, namely those of erasing distinctions and
prejudices between countries, of having one community of faith, and of “refining”
Barbarian temperaments. Moreover, this chivalric revolution serves not only to refine the
Barbarians but also to purify former exemplars of culture, such as that of ancient Greece.
Gibbon claims that “impartial taste must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic
games of classic antiquity. Instead of the naked spectacles which corrupted the manners
of the Greeks, and banished from the stadium the virgins and matrons; the pompous
decoration of the lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and high-born beauty”
(101). In Gibbon’s formulation, the chivalric revolution thus softened Barbarian society,
civilizing it, while simultaneously undoing some of the corrupt excesses of a society that
had become too civilized for its own good. It is interesting that Gibbon uses the status of
women as a barometer of the moral corruption of society, but he was no early feminist:
he assumes that women in both (and perhaps all) time periods had the same natural
sensibilities, and that those sensibilities allowed them to attend only the most refined
entertainment. Still, he does see the ability to include (pure, chaste, high-born) women in
public life as a distinct improvement. A further advantage of the newly reformed society
is that it combines an aristocracy with a meritocracy: most knights achieved the honour of
knighthood through the pure and unblemished “dignity of their birth . . . but a valiant
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plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the father of a
new race” (101).
Because of these merits, then, Gibbon does not blame the general populace or
even the knights for their role in this chivalric revolution, but he does speak harshly of
the dukes and barons, the leaders of the revolution, for “usurp[ing] the rights of
sovereignty” (100) and for creating an order “which disdained to conceive the peasant or
burgher as of the same species with themselves” (101). In this statement, Gibbon
expresses two divergent impulses: a monarchical one that is offended by the usurpation
of power, and a more democratic, egalitarian one that takes umbrage at the suggestion
that the working class is less than human. The effect of this essay, then, is to promote a
middle path between the anarchic revolutions of the Americans and the French, and the
corruptions of a perhaps too-civilized British society. Its inclusion in the magazine
suggests that Nova Scotia could follow this middle path: while retaining the advantages
of British cultural institutions such as the legal system, as an increasingly multicultural
society — as a citizenry comprised not only of direct immigrants from Britain and
France, but also the local Mi’kmaq population, German immigrants, and American
Loyalists (in itself a diverse group, including African-American and Iroquois Loyalists
[Francis, Jones, and Smith 205]) — perhaps it too could shed “the asperity of national
prejudice” and develop a partial meritocracy without threatening to “usurp” the rights of
sovereign Britain.
Medievalist Politics in The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec
The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec shared The Nova-Scotia
57
Magazine’s desire for a middle path, for a monarchy eager to promote merit amongst all
of its subjects. Its printer/publisher and editor, Samuel Neilson and Alexander Spark
respectively, also shared The Nova-Scotia Magazine’s approach to religion: Spark, a
Presbyterian minister in Quebec, preached a distinctly anti-evangelical message, leading
to a split in the congregation between Spark’s “moderates” and the evangelicals. Neilson
was a loyal member of Spark’s group of moderates. Neilson and Spark were mainstream
by choice in their approach to religion, and Spark was strongly loyal to the British
government; however, it is likely that the political views they printed were at least in
some ways shaped by the nature of their government contracts. Neilson also owned and
printed the weekly newspaper The Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec; the
newspaper was the official publication venue for government announcements. Moreover,
even though Neilson wanted The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec to operate
independently from government influence, in order to keep the magazine financially
solvent, Spark accepted direct government oversight in order to secure government
advertising contracts (Lambert). In the newspaper, Neilson devoted significant space to
contemporary news of the French Revolution (Hare), and this interest was certainly also
reflected in The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, the more literary venture of
the two. Whereas the Gazette naturally focused on news articles, in The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec Neilson and Spark explored medieval literary history
in order to comment on contemporary politics.
In March 1793 (one month after revolutionary France had declared war on
Britain, although this news had not yet reached North America), Neilson republished an
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article from the Italian Mercury14 which describes an attempted coup d’état in fourteenth-
century Naples, and the subsequent advice of Italian poet Francis Petrarch (1304-1374) to
the new king consort of the restored queen (via their chief steward). On the one hand, the
article overtly supports a strictly inherited monarchy as the correct form of government,
and rejects any usurpation of power: the introduction to Petrarch’s letter (also from the
Mercury) states that the people are most desirous for the return of the queen and her
consort to the throne — even though they have no reason to believe the new consort will
be any better a ruler than the usurper, or for that matter the last consort, who, the author
declares, was universally disliked. On the other hand, despite this dogged support in the
preface of an inherited monarchy, regardless of the merits of any individual ruler,
Petrarch’s own comments subtly criticize the concept of monarchy-through-inheritance.
Both in London (the home of the Italian Mercury) and in Halifax, this strategy of
professing complete support for the monarchy in the article’s introduction avoids political
fallout by locating all of the possibly controversial elements solely in the text of a much-
admired and long-dead poet and scholar.
Petrarch tells Niccola Acciajoli (Niccolò Acciaiuoli, 1310-1365), the Steward of
Naples, to advise the king that “it is much less honourable to be born a king than to be
chosen by the will and judgment of the people; the former being made by fortune, the
latter by merit” (64). On the surface this statement supports the article’s earlier assertion
that the people rallied to the cause of the briefly-ousted Queen Jane (Joan I, 1326-1382)
and her consort King Lewis (Louis of Taranto); however, it also suggests rather darkly
that matters would be quite different if the people had chosen the usurper, King Lewis
14 A literary periodical in both English and Italian, edited by Francesco Sastres and published in London from 1789-1790.
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(Louis) of Hungary. It reminds the Steward and his monarchs that “the will and judgment
of the people” is a powerful force that is not to be taken for granted. Petrarch further
advises Acciajoli to “persuade him [the king consort] not to think himself a happy and
true king, till he shall have, by his own virtues, caused the calamities of his kingdom to
cease, repaired its losses and ruins, restored peace, subdued tyranny, and restored liberty
to the people” (64, emphasis in original). That the magazine italicizes the phrase about
restoring “liberty” is particularly provocative given the prominence of the word in the
discourses around both the French and American Revolutions.15 It goes on to reinforce
this ideal of equality amongst the people even in a monarchy, with Petrarch’s advice that
the king should “not presume to deny himself to any, as he was not born . . . for himself
alone, but for all the Republic” (65). Petrarch’s reference to the Kingdom of Naples as a
“Republic” emphasizes the notion that the monarchy and the government exist for the
people. The footnote to this passage goes on to describe the historical precedent for this
interaction between government and subject by explaining that “Petrarch had seen living
examples at the court of the great King Robert [of Milan, grandfather of Joan], a
philosophic prince, at the gate of whose palace was a large bell, and the lowest of his
subjects were permitted to ring it, and this was the signal that they requested audience of
the sovereign, which was immediately granted” (65 n.). The “great King Robert” was,
then, immediately responsible to all of his subjects, no matter their status in society, and
at their beck and call; presumably he was great because he worked for them, and not the
other way around. Via Petrarch, Neilson and Spark proffer Robert’s kingdom as the
15 For example, Patrick Henry’s famous speech to the Virginia Convention, which included the rallying cry “Give me liberty, or give me death,” and the motto of the French Republic: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”
60
standard for a pure, uncorrupted monarchy that also has the ability to function as a
republic, but the epistle also warns of the possibility of corruption particularly in the most
successful societies. As with Gibbon in later centuries, Petrarch believes in the dangers of
luxurious complacency in a civilization that has reached its zenith: as a warning to the
restored line, he writes that “The Romans, invincible, and conquerors of other nations,
were overcome by luxury” (63).
The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec furthers this construction of
monarchy as a way of protecting the liberty of the people in an essay on the “Histoire
Générale du Sénat de Suede.”16 The essay begins with an idealized description of recently
Christianized medieval Sweden, an elective monarchy in which the roles of the king and
senate were primarily legislative. For the senators, under the new Christian system “leur
titre de drott fut changé en celui de conseiller ou sénateur du royaume” (150), but such a
change of title implies the more drastic reform of giving up independent control over a
small region in order to work together to advise the monarch of the realm. However,
much as with Petrarch’s description of Milan, “La souveraineté se maintint toujours dans
le peuple” (150): the author goes on to explain that “Depuis les tems les plus reculés, il
jouissoit du droit d'élire ses juges provinciaux (Lagmœn) qui, dans les assemblées des
états, portoient la parole pour les paysans de leurs proivinces, et se virent toujours
soutenue par les suffrages de la multitude” (150). The king and the senate may have had
the responsibility of governing, but the author suggests that they acted only on behalf of
the people, who had direct control over the election of the judiciary; the text thus asserts
16 The essay is a translated excerpt and review of Carl Hillebransson Uggla’s Svea-Rikes Råds-Længd, published in Stockholm in 1791; the translation comes from the September 1792 issue of the Paris review magazine, L’esprit des journaux, françois et étrangers. Par une societé de gens-de-lettres.
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that real sovereignty, then, always rested with the people. The author claims that the
system faltered, however, when the people’s representatives became too “entreprenans,”
obliging the king and the senate “de se servir mutuellement d'appui, et même de chercher
des moyens pour rétablir l'équilibre trop dérangé par la prépondérance de la démocratie,”
eventually creating a system in which not even the judges are responsible to the people
anymore, and “le gouvernement devin aussit aristocratique qu'il avoit été démocratique
auparavant” (150). Rather ironically, the author’s solution to a government in which the
pendulum of power has swung too far away from the people is one of the most autocratic
of monarchies: he lauds the achievements of Gustave Vasa (Gustav I of Sweden, r. 1523-
1560), in particular his strict control over the aristocratic senators:
la fermeté de Gustave Vasa soutint les droits du trône, en même tems qu'il
défendit la liberté du peuple; le sénat en corps redevint le conseil du roi et
le tribunal suprême du royaume, et ses membres épars dans les provinces
n'avoient d'autre autorité que celle que le roi voulut bien leur confier, et
dont ils étoient responsables à lui. Les assemblées des états furent
retablies, et les sénateurs n'y assistoient guere que pour signer et publier
les décrets. (151)
The author fears the corruption of an upper class whose role was originally to safeguard
the rights of the people, and the usurpation of royal prerogatives by that class. At least
superficially, Gustave Vasa’s reign creates a more egalitarian society by restoring the
state assemblies so that the people again have a voice in their government, and also by
curtailing the power of the senators so that they are again part of the public. However,
unlike in earlier times, the senators — and perhaps by extension the people — are
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responsible to the king, and not the other way around. The author recognizes some
problematic potential in this system, in that it works only with the right monarch: he
comments, for example, on situations such as “la longue minorité de Charles XI” (r.
1660-1697) and “Les malheurs de Charles XII” (r. 1697-1718) (152) that weakened the
monarchy and again allowed abuses of senatorial power. Just as much as the author is
convinced that aristocratic governance will do its utmost to abuse the rights of king and
people, he is equally convinced in the power of a strong monarch to balance his power
with that of the people, and in doing so to uphold the liberty of all. His final word is in
praise of monarchical power in contemporary Swedish politics, on the dissolution of the
senate in 1789 and the dispersal of the senators to various advisory departments: “il auroit
été difficile pour le souverain de faire un meilleur choix” (152).
A serial essay on the “Constitution du corps helvétique,”17 also in The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, shares the above author’s concern about corrupt mid-
level aristocrats; this essay explores what can happen when, as a remedy, the balance of
power shifts entirely to the people instead of to the monarch. In response to the quickly-
shifting political powers in thirteenth-century Switzerland, various cities formed a league
to defend themselves from “le despotisme des grands”; however, finding their league
inadequate, they sought the protection of Rudolph of Hapsburg (1218-1291), while “se
17 The main content of this serial essay is from Jean Louis Antoine Reynier’s Le guide des voyageurs en Suisse, précédé d’un discours sur l’état politique du pays,” published in Paris in 1791. The introduction to The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec’s version of the essay is taken from a review of the guidebook in the Bibliotheque de l’homme public; ou analyse raisonnée des principaux ouvrages françois et étranger, Sur la Polituque en général, la Législation, les Finances, la Police, l’Agriculture et le Commerce en particulier, et sur le Droit naturel et public. Par M. Condorcet, Secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des Sciences, l’un des Quarante de l’Académie Françoise, et autres Gens de Lettres. Seconde Année. Tome Cinquieme. Paris: Buisson, 1791.
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réservant leurs droits et leurs franchises” (7). As in the previous examples of idealized
Sweden and Milan, a strong king works for the people, and protects both them and their
rights, but a weak king exposes his subjects to danger. Rudolph, “devenu empereur,
protégea les citoyens des villes libres contre les petits tyrans qui vouloient les opprimer;
mais Albert d’Autriche18 imita l’orgueil de ces tyrans plutôt que la modération de son
pere” (7). Although Albert, in his pride, is ultimately responsible for the mistreatment of
the Swiss population, the article places the most direct blame on the governors he
appoints, citing their “tyrannie” (as opposed to Albert’s “indifférence”) as the causes of a
rebellion in three Swiss cantons (7). The rebellion is thus not directly against the
monarch, thereby making a more palatable event to the magazine’s modern audience. The
author praises the “modération” of the rebels (including William Tell):
les mesures des confédérés se trouverent si bien prises que, dans le même-
tems, les garnisons des trois châteaux furent arrêtées et chassées sans
effusion de sang, les forteresses rasées; et par une modération incroyables
dans un peuple irrité, les gouverneurs furent conduits simplement sur les
frontières, et relâchés après en avoir pris le serment qu’ils ne
retourneroient jamais dans le pays. (8)
Yet despite this praise of the foresight and reason of the people, immediately after the
description of the rebellion and attempts by Austria to reclaim the Swiss Confederation,
the author details the extreme coarseness of Swiss life in the Middle Ages:
“l’administration des troupeaux les occupoit seule dans un tems où l’agriculte leur étoit à
peine connue . . . . Le pain, que l’Europe entiere regarde comme une denrée de premiere
18 The eldest son of Rudolph, and his successor in the duchy of Austria but not in the elective monarchy of Germany.
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nécessité, est mis au nombre des superfluités” (8-9). The author even goes so far as to
suggest that it is “la simplicité des mœurs auxquelles ils devoient leur liberté” (9).
Although their simplicity protects them from tyrannical abuse of power, it also prevents
them from forming any functional society, as “tout gouvernement paroissoit un joug” (9).
Precisely because they are so resolutely independent, the author suggests, their culture
stagnates: as a people entirely opposed to intellectual and technological progress, they are
unsuited for interactions with the modern world. Indeed, in the essay’s description,
contact with other European nations throws the country into turmoil before it starts the
process of rescuing the Swiss from themselves: “Les Suisses étoient plongés dans la
barbarie, lorsque les autres peuples s’éclaroient déja: mais les voyages, des
communications plus faciles, et les alliances étrangeres, ont enfin commencé à détruire
cette ignorance” (9).
This series of essays on political upheaval in medieval Switzerland, Sweden, and
Italy expresses fear about the possible outcomes of contemporary political turmoil in
Europe and North America. On the one hand, The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de
Québec expresses anxiety about whether (in the absence of a strong monarchy) an upper
class can ever be relied upon to protect the people; on the other hand, it fears the
ignorance and stagnation that might accompany giving too much power to the people. All
of the essays take for granted the relevance of monarchy in the modern world, but how
the monarchy interacts with the citizens is a matter of debate. In the first number, Neilson
includes a piece entitled “Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les revolutions des Etats,” from an
address given by the Prussian Minister of State, Count Hertzberg, to the Academy of
Sciences of Berlin on October 6, 1791; this speech directly addresses the question of the
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French Revolution, though within the context of revolutions throughout history. In 1791,
the revolution is in its relatively early stages: France is still a monarchy, with Louis XVI
as king. Hertzberg expresses his hopes for the form of government the revolution will
produce in France: “la nation françoise, éclairée et excitée par les philosophes du tems,
veut se donner la meilleure constitution possible, et surpasser même celle de l’Angleterre,
en unissant ou en mélant le monarchie avec la republique, et en assurant le pouvoir
législatif à la nation, et le pouvoir exécutif au roi, subordonné cependant aux représentans
de la nation” (12). Hertzberg advocates for what he perceives as the ideal balance in
government, a balance also called for in all of Neilson’s chosen excerpts on political
history, from Petrarch’s epistle to the histories of Sweden and Switzerland. In this ideal
system, although the people and the monarch each preside over different elements of the
government, the state nevertheless belongs to the people, and the role of the monarch is
to work under their guidance for their best interests. Much like The Nova-Scotia
Magazine, The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec constructs the ideal society as
a unification of republicanism and monarchy, a middle path between the anarchy of
living only for oneself and the corruptions of a long-established civilization.
Using Racial Origins to Imagine the New World
By publishing on issues of political upheaval and revolution, both magazines
address the idea of how societies become corrupt, and how to fix this corruption —
particularly while staying within the bounds of loyalty to the British crown. In this
context, it is particularly interesting that both magazines (although predominantly The
Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec) should publish multiple excerpts from the
66
works of English lawyer and orientalist Sir William Jones. Jones’s philological studies
helped not only to destigmatize, but also to ignite a popular craze for, medieval Germanic
and Celtic literatures, in which both The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec participated: Jones and the magazines turned to the
“barbarian” races of the north as models for reinvigorating British society in the New
World.
Jones built his primary reputation as a linguist, particularly of eastern languages,
and his major scholarly contributions were threefold: his translations and analyses of
medieval Persian, Turkish, and Arabic poems helped to ignite the craze for romantic
orientalism; his production of a Persian grammar had commercial value for the East India
Company; and his groundbreaking work on Indo-European language families changed
conceptions not only of linguistic history — thereby laying the groundwork for the
studies of medieval philology in the nineteenth century — but also of global racial
origins.19 Although Jones built his primary reputation on his scholarship, he was also
deeply involved in the political developments of the time. In Wales, early in his legal
career, “he championed the rights of a peasantry oppressed by the arbitrary and
discretionary power exercised by the largely Anglicized landowners” (Franklin); this
early tendency towards egalitarianism later manifested itself in Jones’s arguing for
universal suffrage. Given his legal and political bent, the American Revolution
understandably captured his interest, and although he was not an official diplomatic
emissary, he nevertheless travelled to France in 1779 to meet with Benjamin Franklin and
19 Jones used to be credited with the discovery of the relationship of Sanskrit to European languages, but the French Jesuit Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux had previously remarked upon this similarity in 1767, nearly twenty years before Jones.
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to discuss potential articles of compromise between the nations. He wrote various essays
on the reformation of government, but he was not entirely sympathetic to the
revolutionary cause of the Americans. Part of what would have made him so appealing to
The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec was his advocating for balance in
government. He wrote to one of his friends and pupils, Lord Althorp, of his political
affiliations (or lack thereof), explaining:
The friends of lord North were too monarchical, and those of the late
Marquis [of Rockingham], in general, far too aristocratical for me; and, if
it were possible to see an administration too democratical, I should equally
dislike it. There must be a mixture of all the powers, in due proportions
weighed and measured by the laws, or the nation cannot exist without
misery and shame. (qtd. in Franklin)
The Nova-Scotia Magazine published a few of Jones’s poetic works, including a
translation of Petrarch (“Laura: an Elegy”), and “Solima: an Eclogue,” an original verse
based on themes and images Jones had identified in medieval Arabian poems. The
Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, by contrast, focused on his historical
linguistic studies: over the course of six issues in 1792-1793, Neilson included six
excerpts from Jones’s third through seventh annual speeches to the Asiatic Society. These
excerpts discuss primarily the linguistic and literary history of the Middle and Far East,
from the ancient world through the Middle Ages. “On the History of the Arabs” discusses
religious and literary differences before and after the time of the Prophet Muhammad;
“On the History of the Tartars” describes the development of literature — including the
development of a system of writing — through the times of Chengiz (Genghis Khan,
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1162-1227), Kublai Khan (1215-1294), and Tai’mur (Timur or Tamerlane, 1336-1405);
“On the History of the Ancient Persians” includes a discussion of two of the most
influential works of poetry in medieval Persia, the Gulistan and Bostan of Sadi (c. 1213-
1291), and it also theorizes the racial origins of various groups across Europe and Asia.
To introduce its readers to Jones, The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec
chose “On the History of the Hindu’s [sic],” from his Third Anniversary Discourse in
1786. This excerpt includes the instrumental passage in which Jones posits a common
ancestor-language from which stemmed various Indo-European languages:
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and
more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger
affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could
possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no
philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have
sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both
the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom,
had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added
to the [s]ame family, if this were the place for discussing any question
concerning the antiquities of Persia. (92-93)
This assertion was revolutionary in a number of ways, not least in that it challenged the
accepted supremacy of Greco-Roman cultural and literary production. By suggesting that
a British colony (in this case, India) might have a more refined language — and along
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with it, perhaps equally refined cultural products — than the centre of the empire, Jones
catalyzed a paradigm shift in literary and cultural studies. He also destigmatized Celtic
language and culture by suggesting that it, too, is part of the same family tree that
produced all of the Western European languages. It was common practice among British
scholars of the time to trace England’s literary and cultural history back only as far as
Chaucer, before turning to his continental early Renaissance influences; the legacy of
Germanic and Celtic cultures in England was not well-acknowledged, let alone
embraced, in the late eighteenth century. Jones’s argument was thus revolutionary not
only in giving the margins of the British Empire credibility as sites of valuable cultural
production, but also in giving English language and culture an alternative genealogy of
which to be proud. According to Jones, if the Germanic languages are as refined and
culturally valuable as are those that derive from Greek or Latin, then English culture
should begin to embrace its Germanic elements as much as it does its Latinate ones.
The Nova-Scotia Magazine takes this destigmatization of Celtic and Germanic
races to another level in an article reprinted from the Universal Magazine,20 entitled
“Reflections on the Age of Chivalry.” This article, a response to Edmund Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), contends that the northern European
races were integral to what Burke calls the “glory of Europe” (222 n.) during the age of
medieval chivalry. Whereas Burke laments the death of chivalry, and the rise of the age
of “sophisters, economists, and calculators” (222 n.), the anonymous responding author
counters by explaining that chivalry itself was the product of the overthrow of a corrupt
society much like the one Burke describes — namely, that of the Romans. The author
20 The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, published in London from 1747-1814.
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argues that “it is to the barbarians, who spread conflagration and ruin, who trampled on
the monuments of art, and spurned the appendages of elegance and pleasure, that we owe
the bewitching spirit of gallantry which in these ages of refinement, reigns in the courts
of Europe” (222). He contends that the former Roman subjects were “a corrupted people,
who had all the vices of former prosperity, along with those of present adversity” (223).
The true seeds of chivalry lay not in their corrupt civilization but rather among the
warrior cultures of the northern nations, whose “great respect to women” was the only
thing that “soften[ed] their ferocity” (222-223). Interestingly, the author remarks in his
explication of this “great respect” that “The climates of the north required little reserve
between the sexes; and, during the invasions from that quarter. . . it was common to see
women mixed with warriors” (223). In this formulation, chivalry’s origins lie not in
worshipping women from afar, but rather in associating with women as equals. The
author acknowledges that the invasions did not instantly reinvigorate the stagnant Roman
culture to create a new model society with gender equality, but rather admits that in the
short term, “Anarchy and confusion were the result of so many contrasts” (223);
however, he argues, “by degrees, were laid the foundations of new manners, which, in
modern Europe, have brought the two sexes more on a level, by assigning to the women a
kind of sovereignty, and by associating love with valour” (223). The “barbarians” of the
north “carried their opinions along with their arms” and created a “revolution in the
manner of living” in the southern European civilizations (223). The warrior cultures,
combined with a respect for social equality (and a good dose of Christianity), produce a
society that is more socially equitable than that of the pre-“revolution” Roman world. The
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article claims that the barbarian revolution of manners was necessary to propel a
degenerate society out of its vices and towards a new age of glory.
Ironically, then, “Reflections on the Age of Chivalry” suggests that an infusion of
barbarian manners was necessary for moral refinement. However, this article was not
alone in this seemingly counterintuitive stance: in 1820, Sharon Turner expanded upon
and popularized this theory in the third edition of his History of the Anglo Saxons,
generalizing that all civilizations tend to corrupt and stagnate, and require an invasion by
a nomadic race to reinvigorate society (1: 12-13). In The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin
de Québec, the Count Hertzberg’s discourse on revolutions reveals a similar attitude:
Ces destructions et ces révolutions des grands empires . . . sont
notoirement arrivées par leur trop grande étendue, qu’un seul homme peut
difficilement embrasser, gouverner et défendre; par la foiblesse,
l’incapacité et la mauvaise politique de leurs souverains, par le
relâchement du caractere, et par la dégénération des mœurs des nations qui
ont habité ces vastes monarchies, ainsi que par la civilisation et la valeur
naturelle et supérieure des nations voisines, qui ont profité de la décadence
du gouvernement et du caractere des souverains et des habitans des
grandes monarchies, enfin par cette vicissitude qui regne assez
généralement dans les choses humaines. (10)
The article’s editor refers specifically to “la fameuse migration des nations
septentrionales et germaniques en Europe, de même que par les Arabes et les Turcomans
en Asie et en Afrique” (10) as one of the three great examples of external revolutions,
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suggesting, then, that the Roman Empire fell as much because of the moral superiority of
the Nordic and Germanic tribes as because of the flaws in Roman society itself.
Given this intellectual climate, The Nova-Scotia Magazine’s and The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec’s inclusion of Celtic, Germanic and Norse sources
takes on new meaning: by creating an affinity with “barbarian” groups, the magazines
create the necessary revolution of manners without ever promoting armed revolution,
thus reinvigorating colonial British society. The frontispiece of the November 1792
number of The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec shows a “View of a Druids
[sic] Temple in the Island of Jersey,” and it is accompanied by a description in both
French and English. The editors are quite proud that the “elegant and correct” illustration
was created by “a Gentleman at present in this City” (205), thus claiming ties not only to
the picture but also by extension to the temple itself. The article describes the earliest
function of the temple as “a place whereon sacrifices were offered by the Druids before
christianity [sic] had shed its mild influence over Europe. These sacrifices consisted not
only of beasts, but of their fellow creatures who were immolated also, to appease the
wrath and avert the vengeance of their sanguinary Deities” (206). It goes on to decry in
the strongest terms the modern disrespect shown to the ancient structure: before the artist
had the opportunity to visit it and share his picture with a Canadian audience, the temple
“had been mutilated and defaced by the unskilful [sic] hands of modern workmen” (206).
The article suggests that the values of modern society, with workmen who mutilate and
deface ancient artifacts, are deficient. The emphasis on the barbarity of the Druids, who
sacrificed their own people to the gods, does nothing to take away from the need to
preserve their history; instead, the article creates an affinity with the Druids — albeit one
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tempered by the “mild influence” of Christianity — to promote a value system more
refined than that of a society that lets a wealthy private citizen remove a temple to his
own estate for private enjoyment.
The Nova-Scotia Magazine too emphasizes rather than softens “barbarian”
elements. In the March 1792 issue, the magazine includes a verse translation of “Hirlas,”
a poem by twelfth-century Welsh poet Owen, Prince of Powis (Owain Cyfeiliog) about a
battle between Owen’s warriors and Saxon nobles. The poem emphasizes the animalistic
or natural associations of the warriors, referring to various warriors as a dragon, a lion, a
hurricane, a wolf, or eagles (184-185). In the poem, these animal associations are words
of praise, meant to congratulate each warrior on his fierce conduct in battle; these
speeches are part of the ceremony of passing around the drinking horn (185). The wild
elements in the poem are thus a way of reinforcing communal bonds. That the horn
travels to each of the warriors emphasizes the egalitarian nature of the community —
with room to reward particular merit. The magazine also includes “The Vegtams Quitha,”
an attempted literal translation of the Old Norse poem “Vǫluspá,”21 so that readers can
compare “the rugged materials of the Skald” (134)22 to a version by Thomas Gray that
would have been famous at the time. (By popular request, the magazine also included
Gray’s version in a later number.) Whereas Gray chooses repeatedly to soften the poem,
to make it more romantic and accessible, and less mythic and foreign, the attempted
literal translation highlights the poem’s foreignness. Gray’s “Descent” translates the
21 The poem “Vǫluspá” belongs to a medieval Icelandic verse collection of Norse mythology called the Elder or Poetic Edda. The Elder Edda is preserved primarily in one manuscript from the thirteenth century, the Codex Regius. 22 The Old Norse/Icelandic word for poet, similar to the English bard in that the roles of both were highly performative.
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poem into rhyming couplets; the literal verse “Quitha” uses short lines. Gray’s
protagonist is simply called the King of Men; in the “Quitha,” he is Odin. Gray reduces
the powerful all-seeing Volva to a prophetic maid. Gray’s King of Men claims to be
simply a traveller, a warrior’s son, where in the “Quitha,” Odin assumes the guise of a
personified “Vegtamr” (Toil), the son of “Valtams” (War). Gray also eliminates the first
five stanzas of the poem, which in the “Quitha” describe the beloved god Ballder’s
“portentous dreams” of his own death, and the “universal oath” taken by “nature’s
general race/ . . . For Ballder’s safety” (134). In Gray, Odin’s journey turns into a contest
to see whether he can outwit the prophetic maid, but in the “Quitha,” Odin’s mission to
see the Volva is one of love: he and all the gods are horrified at the prospect of losing
Ballder, and wish to protect him. Again, the more “rugged,” “barbaric” version places a
greater emphasis on the value of community, adhering to the theory of a “revolution of
manners” set forth in “Reflections on the Age of Chivalry.”
Canadian Voices in an International Conversation
The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec
were not alone in looking to the medieval races of the north for sociopolitical models. On
both sides of the Atlantic, scholars and politicians looked to the Anglo-Saxons for
inspiration for modern political systems, often citing an idealized free Saxon constitution,
or looking to the Saxon political assemblies as the ancestor of modern parliaments.23 In
23 J.R. Maddicott summarizes the nature of the Saxon assemblies, sometimes called the witan or witenagemot (respectively, “wise ones” or “meeting of the wise ones”) thus: “For a period of nearly 150 years, from Æthelstan’s accession in 924 to Edward the Confessor’s death in 1066, central assemblies summoned by the king played a crucial part in the management of the English polity. Drawing the king’s great men and others
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Rights of Man, political philosopher Thomas Paine24 argued that the government of
William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087) destroyed the constitution of the Anglo-Saxons,25
and that “the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a
constitution” (28). In the United States, Thomas Jefferson argued, “Has not every
restitution of the antient Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that we return
at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever yet
devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the 8th century?” (qtd. in Horsman 22).
Moreover, Jefferson so valorized Hengist and Horsa, the fifth-century Saxon conquerors
of southeast England, that he wished to put them on the Great Seal of the United States;
John Adams recorded that Jefferson thought of Hengist and Horsa as “the Saxon chiefs
from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and
less great into the government of the realm, they both overtopped and complemented the local assemblies of shire and hundred which drew the freemen of the shires into its government at a subordinate level. Both exemplified a society where participation in the processes of the state was, by comparison with any other European country, uniquely widespread. It was one where the early Germanic tradition of large assemblies in which non-noble freemen had some part to play not only survived but flourished, while elsewhere in Europe during the late tenth and eleventh centuries that tradition failed, as ‘assembly politics slowly turned into the politics of royal and princely courts.’ From the start of the period the regularity and frequency of the meetings of central assemblies, and the broad but consistent range of their business, gave them the character of an institution. These features should in themselves inhibit us from regarding assemblies as no more than gatherings of the king’s ‘wise men’: the literal translation of the word ‘witan’ almost always used in laws, charters, and the narratives of the Chronicle, and often too in poetry and homiletic prose, to describe this body. Its members were not merely ‘witan’; they comprised ‘the witan’” (49-50). 24 Paine was also an active participant in both the American and French Revolutions. 25 Following the Norman conquest of England, which began in 1066, William I did in fact still convene assemblies, but he restricted participation to vassals of the king, and he transformed the assemblies into one of his feudal rights as king: giving counsel thus became an obligation of fealty (Maddicott 57-78).
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form of government we have assumed” (qtd. in Horsman 22).26 Reginald Horsman
argues that “To many Americans the sweeping away of entail and primogeniture after the
Revolution eliminated the last remnants of the feudal system and restored the freedoms of
the period before 1066” (16). Whereas Jefferson’s rhetoric in America was inherently
about conquest and dominance inasmuch as it was about democracy — Hengist and
Horsa betrayed the Britons, at whose behest they had originally come to Britain (Bede
44-48) — in the provinces of British North America, the literary magazines preferred a
more moderate approach. In contrast to American discourses of conquering the land, and
British ones of reforming political rights, The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec looked to the medieval north for models of how the
ruggedness of the landscape — and the necessary hardiness of its inhabitants — might
give birth to a new form of civilization in the New World. In doing so, they added a new
and distinctly Canadian voice to an important international debate.
Although The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de
Québec were the first literary magazines in the provinces that became modern-day
Canada, they saw themselves not merely as provincial magazines but as valuable
contributors to a global literary discourse. Because they intended to participate in an
international literary community, they picked up the conversations that were happening in
Europe and added their own commentary; they did not insist on starting a completely new
discussion for the New World. Medievalism has thus always existed in Canadian letters,
because it has always existed in European literary discourse ever since the late Middle
Ages. Just as European authors have used the medieval past to comment both subtly and
26 See Allen Frantzen, Desire for Origins 15-18 for more on Jefferson’s infatuation with Anglo-Saxon history.
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directly on current political events, so too did Canada’s early literary magazines use the
past to critique the momentous social changes — both religious and political —
happening on both sides of the Atlantic in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Although the magazines supported mainstream Anglican and Reformed religious ideals,
and both overtly supported the monarchy, the history of censorship in British North
America made it safer to comment on current events via writings on the past. In both
religion and politics, the magazines advocated a middle path, calling for Canadian ideals
lying between perhaps-outdated European systems and untested American ones. Timed
as they were between Henry Alline’s New Light movement and the second Great
Awakening, which swept across the United States in the early nineteenth century, the
magazines rejected both Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism in favour of a
conservative Protestant doctrine. Likewise, they called for a middle path between
aristocratic governance and revolutionary republicanism, for a monarchy responsible to
the people. Even in reprinting prominent European intellectuals, both The Nova-Scotia
Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec promoted a message that
was distinctly Canadian, a call to reform society through a revolution of manners, not one
of arms. If, according to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thought, the harsh
northern climes bred values necessary to regenerate a corrupt society, then Nova Scotia
and Canada were ideal settings for a newly regenerated golden age of civilization.
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Chapter 2
The Aftermath of War: 1800-1835
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, two competing trends emerged in
medievalist production in Canada: the first of these trends was a decline in French-
oriented medievalism, and the second was the beginnings of the century-long rise of
Celtic medievalism. These trends both emerged in the context of the British Empire’s
wars on both sides of the Atlantic, wars which loomed large in both the daily lives and
the cultural imaginations of Canadian authors. The ongoing military threats to Britain
from both France and the United States led to marked uneasiness in British North
America about the stability of its particular mixture of ethnic backgrounds, since a
significant percentage of the population claimed either French or American descent.
Despite this intense interest in all things military, the war with France seems not to have
stimulated interest in French history and culture among English Canadians but rather to
have stifled it: from the demise of The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec in 1795
until the late 1830s, Canadian literary publications were almost entirely silent on the
subject of French medievalism. This absence is particularly notable after the subject’s
promising beginnings in the magazines of the late eighteenth century as well as in
comparison with the later flourishing interest in medieval France in the 1840s.
The reduction in the English Canadian production of France-related medievalism
assumed two aspects. First, there were simply fewer works of French medievalism being
published than there were in both earlier and later periods, both in terms of absolute
numbers and in terms of proportions. For example, in the period of 1789-1795 (covered
by Chapter 1), 18% of the medievalist works drew on medieval France; in the period of
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1800-1835, only 11% discussed French medievalism. The other aspect regarding this
silencing of French history in English publications is less straightforward: some authors
in fact made a point of dissociating the modern French from their medieval roots. In this
chapter, I examine how the work of George Longmore (1793-1867), one of the first
anglophone authors born in Canada, performs this silence. Longmore is a particularly
important figure in early nineteenth-century English Canadian literary history because he
was one of early Canada’s most prolific authors, and he was all the more prominent due
to the depressed state of the Canadian literary publishing industry in the 1800s through
the 1830s. Longmore’s reputation, though, was not limited to Canadian literary culture;
indeed, he published extensively on both sides of the Atlantic. He travelled widely with
the military, and his experiences fighting against the armies of Napoleon undoubtedly
shaped his perception of French Canadians, as well as the French themselves. In The War
of the Isles, for example, he portrays modern France as a broken society. Whereas he
explores in some depth the medieval histories of England and Spain, he largely excludes
French history. Even more tellingly, he actively distances the modern French from their
medieval traditions, thereby denying that they have a right to control their own historical
narratives. For Longmore, access to the past is a profoundly political and religious
privilege, not a right.
In contrast to the glaring absence of French history in English Canadian
publications in these first decades of the century, this same period saw English Canadians
begin a century-long obsession with the medieval Celtic world — or rather, with the way
Celtic medievalism had been modelled for them by Scottish authors such as James
Macpherson (1736-1796) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). (The expansion of this trend
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to Irish Celtic medievalism will be discussed in Chapter 4.) For example, James Martin
Cawdell (1784-1842), who made a career in both the military and the civil service in
Canada, was a vocal proponent of recreating Canadian society after the traditions of
medieval Britain; his literary endeavours reveal his fascination with a pan-British model
that combined both Celtic and Germanic medieval influences. The pervasiveness of such
ideas about Celtic — and particularly Scottish — medievalism was such that even the
teenaged Robert Baldwin (1804-1858) wrote a pair of prose-poems in declared imitation
of the ostensibly medieval Scottish poet Ossian. The combined effect of these racialized
inclusions and exclusions from the narrative of English Canadian society was clear:
whereas the history and people of Scotland were a safe and valuable addition to British
North America, those of France were too volatile, too dangerous to be normalized by
inclusion in the realm of English Canadian literature.
Literary and Historical Developments
Despite the auspicious start of The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec
Magazine / Le magasin de Québec in the 1790s, the demise of the latter in 1795 signalled
the beginning of a quarter-century hiatus in the publishing of literary magazines in British
North America. As Vincent, Alston and MacLaren suggest, this interruption was due at
least in part to the outbreak of war for the British Empire (242), both in North America
and in Europe. The government of revolutionary France declared war on Britain in
February of 1793, a war that lasted until the Peace of Amiens in 1802, but this peace
proved short-lived: Britain declared war on France (now under the control of Napoleon)
again in 1803. The war between Britain and France was primarily naval until 1807, when
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France invaded Portugal and carried out a coup d’état in Spain, thus beginning the
Peninsular War (so named for the Iberian Peninsula). Britain, as an ally of Portugal, came
to its aid and thus became embroiled in a land and naval war against France (W. Turner).
Although the effects of these wars on North America were indirect, they were
nevertheless drastic, affecting not only French-English relations within British North
America but also the relationship between British North America and the United States.
Napoleon’s losses in the Caribbean, combined with the financial pressures of facing war
again with England, led him to sell the area then known as Louisiana (an area extending
all the way from modern Louisiana to Montana) to the United States (“Louisiana
Purchase”), effectively ending French colonialism in North America. Moreover, the naval
tactics of both Britain and France contributed to the War of 1812. In response to the
British blockade of Spanish America from France and Spain, France imposed a European
naval blockade called the Continental System, separating Britain from trade with all
continental and Baltic European ports and requiring that neutral parties not visit a British
port before a Continental one. Britain retaliated by requiring that neutral parties first visit
British ports in order to obtain a license to trade with the Continent. These restrictions
greatly benefited Maritime logging and shipping industries in Canada, since Britain now
looked to Canada for raw materials that it had previously also sourced from the Baltic;
however, the United States — neutral in this conflict — resented Britain’s interference in
its international trade, and this grievance contributed to the outbreak of war between the
United States and Britain in 1812 (W. Turner).
War may have stimulated the economies of maritime British North America, but
it did little to encourage literary or cultural pursuits. However, publishing of a more
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practical nature — newspapers, for example — continued and thrived throughout this
period, even by those publishers whose literary magazines had failed. Several of these
newspapers did in fact include literary content, although not as their primary focus. John
Howe, who had published and edited The Nova-Scotia Magazine, continued to publish
his Halifax Journal (est. 1780) until 1800 (Tremaine 610); in 1801, he took over as
king’s printer and also as publisher of The Nova-Scotia Royal Gazette from Anthony
Henry (Beck). Likewise, John Neilson (the younger brother of Samuel Neilson, of The
Quebec Magazine / Le Magasin de Québec) continued to print and publish The Quebec
Gazette / La Gazette de Québec until 1822, when he passed it on to his son Samuel and to
William Cowan (Gallichan, “Official Publications” 314). The Quebec Gazette / La
Gazette de Québec was so successful, in fact, that it had more than a thousand subscribers
between 1810 and 1820 (Hare and Wallot 75). It was, however, unusual in its ability to
resist for so long the polarization along both political and linguistic lines that was
occurring within much of the press in the early nineteenth century. Newspapers like The
Quebec Mercury (est. 1805), for example, championed the rights of English merchants, to
which members of the Parti canadien responded with the French-language Le Canadien
(est. 1806); other newspapers also tended to align themselves along this linguistic-
political divide (Laurence, “Newspaper Press” 235). Consequently, there were very few
bilingual publications by 1820, but The Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec
maintained its bilingual editions until 1832, at which time it began issuing separate
English and French editions (Laurence, “Newspaper Press” 236). The newspaper’s (albeit
secondary) interest in literary matters nevertheless managed to survive this period of
politicization: although primarily a news publication, The Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de
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Québec had included a “Poets [sic] Corner” segment as early as 1775, featuring both
original and reprinted songs and poems (Gerson, “English Literary Culture” 393-394).
Even after the linguistic split in the 1830s, La Gazette de Québec printed satirical dramas
(Andrès 390) and literary reviews (Parker, “Courting Markets” 347). Yet even as papers
became ever more political — or perhaps in reaction to this trend — literary magazines
reestablished themselves in Lower Canada and in Nova Scotia: the 1820s saw the
emergence of such magazines as The Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository out of
Montreal and The Acadian Magazine in Halifax.
As in Lower Canada, literary endeavours in Upper Canada likewise figured in
news gazettes, but except for the brief run of the Christian Recorder (1819-1821) and the
even briefer appearance of James Cawdell’s Rose Harp in 1823, there were no dedicated
literary magazines in the province until 1831 (Vincent, Alston and MacLaren 243, 246).
The Kingston Gazette (est. 1810) steadfastly supported local literature, including in every
issue at least one poem, many of which were written expressly for the paper (Peterman
402-403). Charles Fothergill, the editor of The Upper Canada Gazette from 1822-1826,
took a different approach: he produced a non-official supplement of a largely literary
nature, the Weekly Register. Through the Register, Fothergill gave voice to a number of
local poets, including James Cawdell (Peterman 403-404). Although these opportunities
for literary publishing in Upper Canada were relatively scant, there were other outlets for
expression, such as literary societies. The first of these in Upper Canada, the York
Literary Society (1820-1825), counted James Cawdell and Robert Baldwin among its
members; both men would join other, larger associations in the 1830s (H. Murray, Come
Bright Improvement 36-38).
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The Wartime Poetry of George Longmore
Although literary publishing slowed dramatically during wartime in British North
America, the wars nevertheless dominated the literary consciousness of the provinces
until the 1840s. Several of British North America’s authors and poets served in the
military either on the home front against the Americans in the War of 1812, as in the case
of James Cawdell, or in Europe against Napoleon, as with George Longmore. Born in
Quebec City in 1793, Longmore was one of the first anglophone poets to come from
British North America (MacDonald, “Further Light”). Longmore’s father, the Scottish-
born Dr. George Longmore, was one of Quebec City’s prominent physicians, and also a
supporter of its literary and educational institutions: he was a member of its Agricultural
Society, and he advocated the creation of a university (Tunis). Longmore’s mother
Christina was the daughter of Nicholas Cox, the former lieutenant governor of the Gaspé
(Tunis, Lee); because of these connections, the Longmores undoubtedly moved in Lower
Canada’s privileged and influential social circles (although not those of the truly elite).
George Longmore Jr. was sent to England to attend the Royal Military College,
graduating in 1809 with a commission as Ensign in the Royal Staff Corps, a field
engineering unit (MacDonald, “Further Light”, “George Longmore” 268). Promoted to
lieutenant in 1811, he spent the next three years serving in the Peninsular War against
Napoleon; after the war in Europe ended, Longmore and his unit returned to its
headquarters in England until he was redeployed to Lower Canada from 1819-1824
(MacDonald, “Further Light”, “George Longmore” 268).
85
It was during his deployment to Canada that he wrote and published his most
famous work, The Charivari,27 as well as “Tecumthé” and several other poems; these
latter he republished in Scotland (where his military service took him from 1825-1826)
under the title of Tales of Chivalry and Romance. Also in 1826, he published a poetic
account of his experiences in the Peninsular War, The War of the Isles. His service took
him briefly back to England, where he published Matilde, or the Crusaders: A Drama
(1827) before a stint in Mauritius from 1827-1832, and finally to South Africa from 1834
until his death in 1867. His appointment in South Africa was in the British Empire’s civil
service, the Staff Corps having disbanded in 1832. This last move occasioned a ten-year
hiatus in his artistic output, but he began publishing again in 1837, regularly producing
volumes of poetry until 1860 (MacDonald, “Further Light”). Interestingly, MacDonald
notes that Longmore attempted to return to Canada, seeking a post there in 1847, but his
request was turned down. However, it is difficult to ascertain whether he wished to return
to Canada out of any particular love for the country, or whether he was simply desperate
for employment: his appointment as Magistrate of Wynberg had ended in 1846, and
knowing his term was about to end, Longmore had also applied for positions elsewhere in
South Africa as well as in Mauritius (“Further Light”).
Longmore’s devotion to the military informs even his early writings, beginning
with his accounts of the Peninsular War (The War of the Isles) and the War of 1812
(“Tecumthé”). His choice of historical topics, such as “The Fall of Constantinople” and
the Crusades more generally, also naturally reflects his military focus, but perhaps more
27 Longmore published The Charivari under the pseudonym “Launcelot Longstaff,” a reference not only to the Arthurian knight but also to the pseudonym of “Launcelot Langstaff” used by Washington Irving and James Kirk in their Salmagundi Papers (Bentley).
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significant is the reverse, that his military writings reflect a fascination with history. Even
his poetry on modern warfare draws heavily on his interest in both classical antiquity and
the Middle Ages. In The War of the Isles, Longmore uses medieval history in particular
to establish the character of the modern nations involved in the Peninsular War. As I will
argue, in Longmore’s formulation, the ability — or perhaps the right — to access the past
becomes one of the key factors distinguishing England and its allies from Napoleonic
France.
Although The War of the Isles was first published in 1826, Longmore’s preface
indicates that it was “written more than ten years since, although some alterations and
modifications have been made since its first completion” (iii). Both the timing that
Longmore claims for its composition and the narrative structure of the poem make it
likely that he wrote or at least drafted the poem during his deployment to the continent
during the war. The poem follows the progress of the British Army through the war, from
England through Portugal and Spain to France, then to England in seeming victory, and
finally back to the Continent to defeat Napoleon one last time at Waterloo. Longmore
mixes accounts of the battles with musings on the history and cultures of the nations
involved. However, Longmore avoids discussing France’s medieval history for the entire
section of the poem in which the country is under Napoleon’s control; the country is
effectively disconnected from its medieval past during what Longmore sees as its
“thraldom” to Napoleon (e.g. 8.3, among others).28 Access to history thus becomes
symbolic in the poem of the current state of freedom in a country. For Longmore, this
historical access consists of two related elements: first, continuity of tradition from
28 Citations of The War of the Isles refer to canto and verse number.
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ancient history to the present, and second, the ability to participate in the processes of
historiography — in the creation and interpretation of history. The British, whose
traditions stretch unbroken to the Middle Ages, control their histories by participating
fully in the creative processes of historiography. On the other hand, because the medieval
traditions of the French have been ruptured by the Revolution, the French in Longmore’s
poem no longer have the ability to influence or interpret their own history. Medieval
history, as the link between the classical age and the modern, acts as a keystone in
Longmore’s poem: medievalism holds together the complete narrative of nations such as
Britain, enabling the entire structure to be orderly and sound. On the other hand,
Longmore’s narrative of France lacks this keystone of medievalism, and without it,
French society lies in ruins.
In its form and in its content, The War of the Isles attempts to strengthen the
connections between its modern audience in the British Empire and both the recent and
the distant past. Longmore chose to structure this long poem in Spenserian stanzas, not
only because the form fits his grand theme of nations (and their ideologies) at war, but
also because Spenser first used this stanza for his Faerie Queene, another work that
looked to the medieval world to glorify the England of his own time. Moreover,
Longmore constructs the poem as if it belongs both to the medieval world and to the
nineteenth century. He conceives of his speaker as a “minstrel” (9.53) paying tribute to
the fallen soldiers29 with “the wanderings of . . . [his] lay” (10.51). The poem is both a
public oral/musical performance (as the “strains” of his “harp”) and a private reading,
addressed to the singular “Stranger” who “scans” the poem (10.51). Yet, these divisions
29 This quotation refers specifically to those fallen at Waterloo, but it is equally applicable to those lost throughout the Peninsular War.
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between public and private, and familiar and unfamiliar, become more complicated: the
medieval bardic performance, although public, nevertheless creates an intimacy between
the performer and the audience, an intimacy that is glaringly absent in the speaker’s
address to the reading “Stranger.” The solitude of Longmore’s modern reader of poetry
does not lend itself to community-building, except insofar as readers might imagine
themselves to be part of a collective audience, much as Benedict Anderson suggests that
citizens of a nation imagine their communion with each other (6). However, as
Longmore’s project is in large part about defining and building a national ethos for the
whole British Empire, he anticipates Anderson by imagining a pseudo-medieval
community of listener-participants for his lay.
Early in the poem, Longmore establishes that the British and their allies have
access to a history that is continuous since Roman times, but he leaves conspicuous
blanks in French history. The two most prominent nations in the poem (despite the fact
that most of it is set in Spain), England and France both have at least some access to
Greco-Roman history and culture, as emphasized by Longmore’s frequent reference to
them by their Roman names of Britannia and Gallia. Even more frequently, though, he
refers to Britain by its older Celtic name of Albion, thereby establishing an even longer
lineage for Britain than for France. Not only does Longmore’s Britain have access to
Roman and pre-Roman Celtic histories, but it also combines these with medieval history,
something that his France is not able, or not permitted, to do:
Britannia, . . . with calm, unshaken form,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Clad in Minerva’s suit of armourye,
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In lofty accents, thus, address’d the good and free: —
“Offspring of Albion, — whom great Alfred first
“Awoke to Nature’s most benignant call;
“And Reason’s light, in solemn charter nurs’d,
“Charming those clouds, which did its beams enthrall;
“Ennobling ye, with the firm-binding wall
“Of laws and bold allegiance; . . .” (1.9-10)
Here, a personified Roman Britannia borrows the Middle English “armourye” of
Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, to speak to the modern British offspring of
Celtic Albion about Alfred the Great, the tenth-century King of Wessex (in southwest
England) and self-styled King of the Anglo-Saxons. This astonishing merging of mythic
and historical referents constructs a vision of Britishness that transcends time and place.
In this vision, the essence of Britishness is so consistent across the ages that it can
combine elements from its various periods of history without creating any conflict. The
history of Celtic Albion merges seamlessly with those of Roman Britain and Anglo-
Saxon England, all of which draw upon — and contribute to — one continuous sense of
Britishness that is also shared by the speaker’s modern comrades. This consistency is a
key element in one of the most important ideas of the poem: that political freedom comes
with the freedom of uninterrupted access to history, the freedom to participate in a
continuous historical narrative. Moreover, these freedoms — both of politics and
historiography — stem from “the firm-binding wall / Of laws and bold allegiance.”
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Longmore’s choice of Alfred is particularly important: although the Vikings had
been raiding the English coasts for three quarters of a century, it was during Alfred’s
brother’s reign and at the beginning of his own kingship that they invaded in earnest,
establishing settlements in northeastern England and conquering the neighbouring
regions to expand their kingdom (“Alfred”). Although all of the other major kingdoms in
England fell to the Vikings, Alfred and Wessex managed not only to withstand the
invading forces, but also to drive them back to the northeast (although not out of the
country). Under the peace treaty negotiated by Alfred, the northeast became the Danelaw,
or the area ruled by the law of the Danes. The parallels to early nineteenth-century
Europe are striking: the French army takes the place of the Vikings, conquering all except
the last bastion of “the good and free,” leaving the inheritors of Alfred’s legacy to drive
back — but not annihilate — the invaders. This potential link between French domains
and the Danelaw resonates in Canada as well: the Vikings of the Danelaw eventually
submitted to Anglo-Saxon rule (in part peacefully, and in part by force) and were
gradually assimilated into English culture. England’s assimilationist approach to the
Vikings within the Danelaw paralleled late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century
English Canadian political approaches to the French in Canada; for example, as I will
discuss in Chapter 3, in 1839, the Governor General (Lord Durham) officially endorsed
the project to assimilate the French, thus codifying what had been unofficial practice for
the better part of a century.
As Longmore suggests, the laws of Alfred are quite important: he was certainly
not the only – nor even the first — king in Anglo-Saxon England to assemble a code of
law, but his was quite comprehensive, referencing and including many of the laws of the
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neighbouring English kingdoms as well as those of his own design (“Alfred”). For
Longmore, Alfred stands as a paragon of law and order, compared to the lawlessness of
the French who “martyr’d [their] king” during the revolution, “That war of civil strife
which then did wage; / Making men’s carcasses, the stepping stool / To whom should
prove the most cunning of the age” (1.6). Longmore’s choice of “martyr’d” seems odd at
first, in that it suggests that the revolutionaries persecuted Louis XVI for his religion, but
Longmore elaborates on this idea: not only have the French committed an offense against
God by executing their king, but they also actively continue to spurn God and
Christianity through their attempts to subjugate all of Europe under someone who was
able to seize power through cunning and guile, not through divine birthright. Britannia
asks the (emphatically Christian) British soldiers,
. . . shall the impious, urg’d to overwhelm,
(And scorn all thoughts of HIM, whose spirit awes
The wise and the virtuous,) devastate each realm,
Denying e’en the POWER, which guides Creation’s helm[?] (1.15)
Britannia’s questioning whether the British can allow the “impious” French forces to
devastate Europe again recalls her invocation of Alfred, who also fought a heathen army.
One of the conditions of the peace treaty he negotiated with the Vikings was the
conversion of Guthrum, the king of the Danes in England, to Christianity, thereby
bringing the Danelaw into communion with the other regions of England (“Alfred”).
Alfred, and by extension the modern “offspring of Albion,” thus defend faith, law, and
order against the onslaught of forces — whether Danish or Napoleonic — that are
attempting to destroy all three.
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Longmore’s chosen examples from history parallel his desired outcome of the
Peninsular War: he cites moments from the past in which Britain or her current allies
defeated the French. He invokes, for example, the victory of Charles I of Spain30 over the
French at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 (4.10), and the expulsion of the French from Genoa
by the admiral Andrea Doria, later Prince of Melfi, in 1528 (4.7).31 It is likewise
unsurprising that he chooses to invoke the early English victories in the Hundred Years’
War; however, the reasons he gives for these victories and the motives he attributes to the
French are certainly more ideologically charged than realistic. Britannia addresses her
forces thus:
Sons of the valiant, who on Cressy’s day,
With Edward built their monument of fame;
And ye, whose fathers stood in bold array
At Agincourt, by Henry, and o’ercame
The race that dare you now — and darkly aim
To mar the freedom which they cannot gain . . . (1.11)
The French are almost an afterthought in this depiction of the glorious achievements of
Edward III, Henry V, and the English soldiers who fought with them, figuring only — if
ironically — as a jealous, freedom-hating collective. Although the idea that Napoleon’s
30 Although Spain had been an ally of France and not of Great Britain, Longmore still sympathizes with the country for having been deceived by Napoleon: because of their alliance, Napoleon was able to execute a coup d’état, capturing Spain’s royal family, overthrowing its government, and installing his brother Joseph as king in 1808 (W. Turner; Parkinson 12-13). 31 Although Longmore laments that “There are no Dorias now, to earn a claim / On freedom’s smile” (4.7), he neglects to mention that Doria had, in fact, been in the service of Francis I of France for several years and had been instrumental in the French capture of Genoa before his change of heart (“Andrea Doria”).
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reign restricted the freedoms of his subjects more than did those of previous French
monarchs is at best dubious, it is certainly valid to claim that his conquering other nations
restricted the freedoms of those peoples; it seems less justifiable, however, to suggest that
these conquests occurred as the result of a natural hatred of freedom among the French
race, particularly since freedom from tyranny was one of the goals of the French
Revolution. Perhaps what Longmore means to suggest, though, is that at the peak of
Napoleon’s power, the people’s desired freedom lay so far outside their grasp that they
enviously attacked the freedom others enjoyed. Even this interpretation, however, cannot
quite justify Longmore’s correlation of the modern with the medieval French as if they
suffered from the same freedom-destroying despair: in the Hundred Years’ War, the
French aim was to retake formerly French-governed lands on the continent that had, for
various reasons, fallen under English control. Both the French and the English sought to
enlarge their territorial possessions on the continent, but the French also fought for
freedom from foreign control; if there was an imperial aggressor, it was the English.
Through this revision of history, Longmore is able to define freedom in a manner very
different from the cries of “liberty” in the French and American Revolutions: freedom
instead finds its roots in law, order, and Christian obedience.
As long as the war rages in the poem, Longmore depicts medieval French history
and culture only as a backdrop to the valiant deeds and great artistic accomplishments of
other nations. England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and even to a minor extent
Russia are all exalted by their own medieval histories in the poem, but strangely,
although Longmore praises many of these nations by alluding to episodes that should also
ennoble the French, Napoleon’s France gets no part of the country’s historical glory.
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Sometimes Longmore deliberately draws attention to this absence, as in the case of his
praise of Agustina de Aragón (also known as Agustina Zaragoza y Domenech), whose
bravery during the French assault on the Spanish town of Saragossa (Zaragoza) in 1808
helped temporarily drive back the invading forces, and he wonders how the annals of
history would read
Had thy dark sons, rush’d on to emulate
The deeds, oh Spain, of Saragossa’s maid!
In firmness far above her haughty mate, —
Tho’ formed for Love and softness, not afraid
To share the battle’s toil, and wield the avenging blade. (2.22)
The image Longmore presents of Agustina is one of soft femininity and purity leading the
(unfortunately too few) troops into battle, but the latter half of this claim rings truer than
the former. Agustina certainly did not shy away from “sharing the battle’s toil”: she
operated the cannons on the city walls when the city’s troops started to fall back, and
later in the war she fought against the French occupying forces at numerous battles, even
being granted a military rank and pension in her own right for her services (Fernandez).
The reality of her efforts is certainly no less brave than Longmore suggests, but his
depiction deliberately invites a comparison to Joan of Arc, leading the French troops to
victory in several battles in the Hundred Years’ War by virtue of her piety (and
presumably of her innate grasp of military strategy). Indeed, Longmore acknowledges in
his notes that Agustina’s “history reminds us of the exploits of the Maid of Orleans, and
may furnish some future minstrel of Spain, a subject worthy of Epic poetry” (272 n. 9).
Even the titles he uses for them are similar — “Saragossa’s maid” and “the Maid of
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Orleans” — despite the fact that Agustina was married, as Longmore recognizes with his
nod to her “haughty mate.” Yet, Longmore’s reference to Joan in his notes calls attention
to her absence in the text proper, as well as the absence of other models of French
heroism — whether medieval or modern. Moreover, Longmore invites “some future
minstrel of Spain” to take advantage of the comparison between Agustina and Joan; even
in the notes, he does not envision the French regaining control of their history.
Two figureheads of French chivalry and sovereignty do appear in the text proper,
but not as models nor as inspiration for the French army. When the British army, which
has been fighting its way across Spain, arrives in Roncesvalles in the Spanish Pyrenees,
the speaker launches into a rapturous address to the city about the glorious tales of
heroism in its history:
Oh, Roncesvalles, long renown’d in song,
Fam’d in the minstrel’s wild, chival’rous [sic] strain,
For brave Orlando, in the battle strong,
And conflicts of imperial Charlemain . . . (7.12)
The “wild, chival’rous strain” to which Longmore refers is the twelfth-century French
chanson de geste, La Chanson de Roland, which celebrates the tragic heroism of Roland,
a knight of Charlemagne’s court, at the Battle of Roncesvalles in 778. In the Chanson,
Charlemagne and his army have been fighting the Saracens in Spain for seven years, but
they head back for France after Marsile, the last undefeated Saracen king, sues for peace
and (falsely) offers not only to pledge fealty to Charlemagne but also to convert to
Christianity. However, at the urging of Roland’s treacherous stepfather, the Saracens
break their agreement: they ambush Roland and the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army at
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Roncesvalles. Roland and his soldiers fight heroically, but they are finally overwhelmed
by the sheer size of the Saracen army. Charlemagne and the main Frankish army arrive
too late to save the rearguard, but they avenge the deaths of their comrades by defeating
the Saracen army and executing the traitors.
It is logical for Longmore to invoke La Chanson de Roland in that he sees the
conflict between Napoleon’s France and the allied forces as a religious one, pitting
Christians against a nation that has abjured God, and the Chanson is certainly as much (if
not more) concerned with the triumph of Christianity as it is with the tragic martyrdom of
Roland. However, the Chanson also emphatically supports the extension of
Charlemagne’s imperial power not only into Spain but also across Europe — a situation
repeated by the armies of Napoleon. Yet Longmore calls for the upcoming battle at
Roncesvalles to follow in the footsteps of the city’s fabled history:
Oh, Roncesvalles fam’d in war; again,
And gloriously as thou wert nam’d of yore,
Shall history’s muse send forth its glowing train
Of thoughts, to give thee splendid place once more
Amidst fair freedom’s deeds, and chivalry’s bright yore. (7.12)
Two things seem to make this invocation possible: first, Longmore’s association of
Charlemagne’s side with Christianity and justice (and therefore freedom), and second, his
dissociation of the characters of the story from both the eighth-century Franks and the
modern French. His choice to spell the emperor’s name “Charlemain” is not unusual
among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century references to the historical figure; however, it
does deviate from the traditional spelling in the Chanson. The twelfth-century Oxford
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manuscript, the oldest extant copy of the Chanson, gives the name as either
“Carlemagne” or simply “Carles” (the respective equivalents of Charlemagne and
Charles in modern French). Longmore’s naming Roland “Orlando” has much deeper
significance: it removes the character from the French tradition and places it instead in
the Italian. Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato (1495) and Ludovico Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso (1516-1532), both Italian epic poems, take this same paladin Roland as
their hero, although neither tells of his death or of the battles at Roncesvalles. Longmore
completes this de-Gallicizing of the heroic story by apostrophizing the city of
Roncesvalles directly, rather than his Charlemain or Orlando: twice he insists that it is
Roncesvalles itself that is “long renown’d in song” and “fam’d in war.” The heroism of
Roland, Charlemagne’s vengeful justice, and the divinely ordained triumph of
Christianity over heathendom all belong to the battlefield in the Spanish Pyrenees, and
not to the national mythos of the French.
It is only when the British army arrives victorious in France, having freed the
citizens from their “thraldom” (8.3) to Napoleon, that Longmore finally reintroduces
French history to the text; Longmore’s French characters can thus claim access to their
own history only through the mediation of the British. As the army passes Pau, the
birthplace of France’s King Henry IV (1553-1610), Longmore finally allows the French
to have a “heroic . . . friend and father” (8.15), telling us:
And here it was one of Earth’s magnates drew
The breath of life, ’midst this contented race,
Henry, the good and brave. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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And Love’s and Chivalry’s first shoots entwin’d
Their tendrils round his heart, devotedly inclin’d. (8.14)
Once the French people are again, as they were in Longmore’s idealized view of Henry’s
time, a “contented race,” the poet allows them to remember and build upon their
contributions to the days of heroism and chivalry. Yet it is unlikely to be a coincidence
that Longmore chose Henry IV as the one of only two heroes32 to whom the French have
claim in the poem: Henry was by upbringing (if not by birth) a Huguenot, even though he
turned from Protestantism to the Roman Catholic faith on ascension to the throne of
France, in an attempt to maintain peace in the kingdom. He also issued the Edict of
Nantes, which guaranteed civil liberties to the Huguenots and other Protestant groups in
France (Holt 166-171). Moreover, it was under Henry that France established the
colonies of Acadie and Nouvelle-France in Canada. However, Longmore feels compelled
to remind us that France’s days of freedom, chivalry and nation-building do not continue
uninterrupted (unlike those of Britain): “Anarchy hath laid that mansion low” (8.15), he
writes, lamenting the assassination of a king who satisfies “every claim / Which Justice
could require, Integrity could name, — / or Heroism honour” (8.15-16). Henry’s attempts
to create religious stability within France were not effective in the long term, and he was
assassinated by a Catholic fanatic in 1610. Thus, Longmore’s focus on Henry reinforces
his poetic formulation of uneven historical continuity: even when he grants his French
characters access to their own history, it is only in an interrupted form.
This ebb and flow of a country’s fortunes is the model that Longmore sees for all
nations, empires, and even races, with the notable exception of the British. The poet
32 The other French hero is the crusader Raymond of Toulouse (8.25).
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challenges his audience to “Search the world’s annals, and then know, the end / Of each
republic hath been Empire’s bond” (10.38). The measure of a country’s greatness is, for
him, freedom — the freedom provided by law, faith, and allegiance. When that freedom
is tested, Longmore asserts that “The brave will rally ’gainst oppression’s weight, / But
they who bear the yoke must be degenerate” (10.37). On the surface, Longmore’s racial
theory seems to stem from other theories emergent in the early nineteenth century,
notably Sharon Turner’s assertion that all societies undergo cyclical change. According to
Turner, over time, barbarian peoples gradually cultivate art and culture until their refined
civilization has lost all trace of its roots, at which point civilization stagnates and
corrupts; these soft, “effeminate” (12) cultures then tend to be overthrown by another
“manly” (18) warrior culture, which — despite the violence of the transition —
reinvigorates the moral and cultural progress of the civilization, and the cycle begins
anew. Yet, there is a key difference between Longmore’s and Turner’s formulations of
race and culture: Turner envisions the rise and fall of a race’s culture and morals, whereas
Longmore sees changes in how much power a race or nation holds — its essential
character remaining constant through this change. Whereas Turner foresees that a people
and their civilization will degenerate, Longmore suggests that a people who allow this to
happen “must” themselves “be degenerate” (emphasis added).
Alone of the nations Longmore surveys, Britain is immune to the shifting political
systems of republics and empires, to the highs and lows of fortune. The reasons for this
stability are twofold: one, its rulers possess the kind of “true majesty . . . [which] is to
move / Just in the eye of law, and in a people’s love!” (10.39) and two, the people uphold
fiercely the country’s “watchword” of “her liberty and her laws” (10.50). Because of
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these two traits, Britain is “immortal,” and her people the “bright sons of Chivalry”
(9.38); in the “Land where an ALFRED reign’d! and where a GEORGE now reigns”
(10.49), the British are the true heirs to the romantic heroism of medieval legend, as well
as to the legacy of justice and faith in their nation’s history.
The Fall of Empires
Despite Longmore’s faith in Britain’s immortality, paradoxically, he seems
disquieted by the idea of empire. His suggestion in The War of the Isles that empire is the
doom of every republic touches on this anxiety, which he explores in greater depth in
another long poem, “The Fall of Constantinople.” Longmore originally published “The
Fall of Constantinople” in two installments, in the December 1823 and January 1824
issues of The Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository, a Montreal literary magazine
edited at the time by David Chisholme. Longmore and Chisholme seem to have
developed a rapport, because when Chisholme left the Repository, he took Longmore’s
business with him: Longmore published his next long poem, “Tecumthé,” in Chisholme’s
own new magazine, The Canadian Review and Literary and Historical Journal, instead
of in the Repository. This affinity may have stemmed from an alignment of their political
beliefs: Chisholme certainly shared both Longmore’s faith in British superiority as well
as his dim view of the French. Chisholme’s views were perhaps even more extreme than
Longmore’s — or failing that, certainly more vitriolic; as Carl Ballstadt notes, “his
essays were so full of invective and abuse that he did his tory patrons more harm than
good. He attacked all persons inclined to reform, but was particularly vicious in his
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denunciation of [French-Canadian politician Louis-Joseph] Papineau and of French
Canadian character generally” (“Chisholme”).
Yet whereas Chisholme felt entirely assured of the moral and cultural superiority
of the British Empire over all other nations, Longmore’s writing suggests he struggled
with anxieties about the moral place of (any) empire in world history. “The Fall of
Constantinople” does not, as the title suggests, focus exclusively on the conquest of
Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, nor on the subsequent demise of the Byzantine
Empire; instead, it takes as its theme the volatility of imperial power. Fully the first canto
(of the poem’s two) is devoted to classical history leading up to the establishment of
Constantinople as the centre of the Byzantine Empire. Longmore’s introduction to the
poem indicates his perspective of the changing fortunes of an empire rather than simply
its rise and fall:
Amongst the varieties and vicissitudes of time,— the decline and fall of
empires,— the disorders of military despotism, and the revolutions and
usurpations of states,— nothing perhaps forces itself more strongly on the
mind, in the perusal of the History of mankind, than the Fall of
Constantinople,— and the subversion of the Roman Empire and its Cæsars
after her long struggle thro’ all the changes and chances of the world . . . .
A melancholy reflection on the instability of human greatness crosses the
mind in reviewing its fate, and which did not even escape the remark of
the stern Mahomet [Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II] himself as he passed
along the august but desolate mansions of an hundred successors of the
great Constantine, after his capture of the city, and could not refrain from
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repeating this elegant distich from Persian poetry — “The spider hath
wove his web in the imperial palace, and the owl hath sung her watch-
song on the tower of Afrasiab.” (497)
Longmore’s emphasis on mutability in this commentary suggests that empires —
including the Roman — are not so much destroyed as undermined; they are not
obliterated, but rather transformed. His anxiety about empire thus works through multiple
stages in his explanation of the poem. On one level, if all empires must fall, then so too
must the British; yet, if the Eastern Roman Empire could survive through a millennium of
“changes and chances of the world,” only to be brought low by the “instability of human
greatness,” then perhaps the British Empire might survive “the varieties and vicissitudes
of time” through the constancy of divine Christian greatness.
Longmore’s reflection on “the instability of human greatness” certainly has a
religious element, and perhaps a racial one as well, as the thought leads him immediately
to comment (or, more accurately, to borrow Edward Gibbon’s comments)33 on Mahomet
[Mehmed II], the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople. A respect for Mahomet
and for the artistic achievements of non-Judeo-Christian middle eastern civilization is
evident here in the notes, in a fashion that it is not in the poem, yet Longmore has
structured this discussion so as to indicate the inevitability of the spider weaving his web
in the palace of the Ottomans (as well as in that of the Romans). It is worth noting that
Longmore’s generosity towards the Persian and Ottoman cultures extends only to their
poetry, and only insofar as Gibbon expressed his own respect for it: in the poem proper,
33 Longmore quotes the translated Persian distich directly from chapter 68 of Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6: 507), and his depiction of Mahomet is heavily influenced by the same.
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he complains of “the wild sounds of many a Turkish song; / Not as of yore — when the
more tuneful Greek / Skimm’d its [the Propontis’s] calm waters with his light Caïque”
(2.6.132-134). Predictably, he is even less sympathetic to the Ottomans’ adherence to
Islam, referring to Mahomet’s victory as beginning “a period inglorious to the efforts of
Europe’s offspring, who might at the time by their united efforts have crushed the hydra
of Mahometanism” (497). Given Longmore’s animosity towards the Ottomans and Islam
in general, his grimly fatalistic adherence to the idea of the wheel of fortune would have
provided him some solace in its reassurance that even the “hydra of Mahometanism” —
much like Greco-Roman culture before it — must also fall.
Longmore goes on to address an issue that would have been vastly more
troubling, an idea that he touched on briefly in The War of the Isles: that empires are
already morally fallen, that they are an inherently degenerate form of government
because their very nature curtails the possibility of the freedom of self-government in the
areas under their control. This oppressive nature can arise not only through conquest, but
also through the natural growth of a free republic into a bloated empire. Longmore writes
that his “final ideas” on the “false hopes of all sublunary grandeur . . . are naturally drawn
to a termination, in the subjugation of Greece under the power of Philip of Macedon,—
with the decline of Rome under the degeneracy and luxury of her Emperors, and by the
fall of the Eastern Empire at last, under the overwhelming torrent of her mahometan
invaders” (497). It is telling that Longmore chooses to focus on Philip (II) of Macedon
rather than on his son, Alexander the Great, whose empire far exceeded the area ruled by
Philip. Although Philip never managed to conquer central and southern Greece, the areas
he did rule were all Grecian in culture; Alexander, on the other hand, extended his empire
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from Greece to Egypt to the Himalayas, overthrowing the vast Persian Empire in the
process. Longmore’s sympathies for the loss of liberty under imperial rule clearly lie
primarily with the Greeks conquered by Philip, and only to a small degree with the
peoples conquered by Alexander. Longmore sees Philip as the orchestrator of the
downfall of Greek civilization, even referring to Alexander as “that victor’s son”
(1.4.110). Philip appears as the worse evil of the two Macedonian rulers, perhaps for two
reasons: one, Longmore certainly greatly admires Greek culture, whereas he shows little
respect (if indeed any that is not borrowed from Gibbon) for the Persians; two, he may
consider Alexander’s overthrow of the Persian Empire to be simply an exchange of one
emperor for another, thus in no great degree changing the state of liberty of his subjects.
Both of these reasons suggest that Longmore values the free association of self-governing
states — an arrangement such as Greece had before Philip and Alexander.
Philip and Alexander’s creation of a Macedonian empire leads Longmore to muse
upon a modified version of the medieval concepts of the translatio imperii and translatio
studii. In the High Middle Ages, both England and France attempted to justify their
claims to dominion in Europe via their connections to Ancient Greece and Rome. The
passage of knowledge and culture (the translatio studii) from the classical world to these
two medieval nations supported their separate claims to be the true inheritors of Greece
and Rome’s political power as well (the translatio imperii). These issues became
particularly important after the Norman Conquest, since the King of England was also
(through William the Conqueror’s lands in France) the Duke of Normandy, and thus
technically a vassal of the King of France (Schwartz). The relationship between the
French language and Latin led to a more self-evident cultural connection between Rome
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and France than between Rome or Greece and England, so English authors such as
Geoffrey of Monmouth sought alternative connections between England and the ancient
world. Monmouth claimed that Britain had been conquered, settled, and named by
Brutus, a Roman descendant of the Trojan Aeneas (6-30). The Britons were therefore, in
Monmouth’s fictional representation, a Greco-Roman people long before the historical
occupation of Britain by the Romans; thus, they would naturally retain their birthright of
classical culture and power long after the real Romans withdrew from England in the fifth
century. This Greco-Roman ancestry gave the British a claim to classical knowledge and
power at least equal to that of the French, thus establishing the two medieval nations as
sibling cultures and thereby refuting any fealty that England might owe to France.
Longmore’s version of this translatio is the flight of personified Liberty, rather
than the movement of people (real or fictional). In his formulation, the collapse of the
independence of the Greek states leads directly to the greatness of Rome, because it is
only in this collapse that Liberty takes flight across the Ionian Sea:
From the strew’d embers, where her [Liberty’s] last hopes lay
Warm to her breast, she caught one lambent ray,
Spread her fair wings, whilst Mercy helped to soar,
And led her onwards to Italia’s shore. (1.4.113-116)
Longmore’s poetic version of Liberty can reside in only one nation at a time, and she
follows the westward path set out by the classical translatios. However, the exclusivity of
the relationship between Liberty and her home seems to be more than simply poetic
convenience for Longmore: as we have seen in The War of the Isles, he sees Great Britain
as the current guardian of Liberty, a relationship that is exclusive in that poem as well.
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Yet it seems strange that the British Empire can be the true home of Liberty, in that the
creation of empire has, in the past, caused her to take flight in search of more receptive
climes: in Rome, not even “the Brutus’ arm, which tore the pall / Of dark oppression off”
(1.6.143-144) by assassinating a would-be emperor “Could save her liberty from that
thraldom’s state” (1.6.154).
Longmore’s resolution to this apparent paradox is the advent of Christianity. In
his view, empires that existed before Christianity were oppressive by their very nature,
thus driving out Liberty; however, empires that embrace the Christian faith can manage
not only to escape this miserable fate, but moreover to become paragons of freedom. “But
lo, a sun had risen in the East” (1.8.191), he writes,
Tortur’d and torn by Persecution’s rage,
And bound by chains, and threats in vassalage—
Though all the Cæsars on the shrine had trod,
Still, still, it beam’d the beacon of a God,—
It rose, the landmark of a power divine,
Whose glory graced the hand of Constantine.
And on Byzantium’s shores, at length unfurl’d
A light, whose splendour should eclipse the world. (1.8.209-216)
This “eclips[ing] of the world” by the “power divine” of Christianity is intimately
connected with the worldly presence of the Byzantine Empire — an empire that, by
liberating Christianity from its “chains, and threats . . . [of] vassalage,” exemplifies
Longmore’s sense of true freedom. It is interesting that Longmore describes early
Christianity’s persecution by the Romans in terms of the feudal relationship of vassalage,
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a term belonging to the High Middle Ages and therefore anachronistic for the era of the
Roman Empire. Vassalage was a system of mutual responsibility between a lord and
subordinate involving two related concepts: homage — the promise of allegiance of the
vassal to the lord — and fealty, or “fidelity, trust, and service . . . which the vassal swore
with his hand on relics or a Bible” (Rosenwein 157). A lord would both have vassals and
be a vassal to a higher-ranking noble, or to the king himself. Vassalage was also
intimately connected with Christianity. It was a network of relationships binding together
not only the knights and nobles of a kingdom, but also its religious institutions:
monasteries and convents would themselves have vassals, and (perhaps more strangely)
their abbots would serve likewise (Rosenwein 156). In “The Fall of Constantinople,” the
persecution of Christianity by binding it with “chains, and threats in vassalage” is
ultimately self-defeating, since the method of oppressing Christianity — vassalage — is
also an instrument of that same faith.
The poet makes the connection between Christianity and the reinvention of
empire all the more explicit in a footnote, claiming that it was a combination of Emperor
Constantine’s “embrac[ing] the Christian Religion” combined with his “disgust . . . with
the adherences of the Romans to their ancient rites . . . which induced him principally to
remove the seat of Empire to Constantinople, and raise the Cross on the tower of St.
Sophia” (503 n.). Longmore thus presents us with a dual perspective on the relationship
between government and freedom: in pagan societies, he clearly finds governments that
are either regional (such as those of Greece’s city-states) or driven by the populace (such
as the Roman Republic) to be desirable, and in such societies he feels that the centralized
government and personality cults of empire stifle the freedom of a civilization. On the
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other hand, among Christian societies, empire becomes not just acceptable but even
desirable, because it serves to further the purposes of divine (rather than temporal) power.
Through this belief, Longmore seems able to reconcile his desire for the British Empire
to be a beacon of hope and freedom for the world with his anxieties about the problematic
nature of imperial power.
The Empire in Canada
Although Longmore had a fondness for the government models of Greek city-
states and of the Roman Republic, and despite his high valuation of Liberty, he was
certainly no revolutionary republican. In The Charivari, published in Montreal in April
1824 — mere months after “The Fall of Constantinople” — Longmore’s narrator decries
populist uprisings. In an appendix to the text, Longmore notes that “The Charivari is an
ancient custom, which, as far as can at this remote period of time be learned, had its
commencement in the Provinces of Old France; and from them spread over the whole
Kingdom; from thence it was transplanted into Canada with the earliest settlers from that
country, and has been kept up ever since.” Emma Dillon elaborates on the tradition’s
origins: “The earliest records of the term ‘charivari,’ ‘charivaria,’ or ‘chelevelet’ date
from the late thirteenth century, from cities such as Paris, Lyons, Avignon, and Bourges,
recounting aggressive and sometimes violent outbursts of civic protests around
marriages” (92). Dillon further notes that the practice spawned comparable traditions in
Scotland and England, as well as in the Americas. As in The War of the Isles,
Longmore’s British Empire inherits Old French tradition, but in this case, the legacy is
decidedly not a positive one. The potential for civic engagement in such a practice is
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instead misdirected into an abuse of the privileges of a free society. In response to the
group gathered to censure a seemingly inappropriate marriage, Longmore notes:
For such a crowd in Canada’s a rarity,
Not as in England,— where your mob’s, a measure
For people to declare their “Freedom’s” pleasure. (1062-1064)
The inverted commas around the word “Freedom” indicate that Longmore believes these
English mobs fundamentally misunderstand the word, misusing it to support demands for
personal desires, instead of for law and order in the nation — which, combined with
Christian faith, form the fundamental elements of Longmore’s conception of true
freedom. Moreover, Longmore’s note on the continuity of the tradition of charivari in
Canada belies his narrator’s assertion that unruly crowds are a rarity in Canada; indeed, it
suggests that the tradition of charivari will have primed Canadian citizens for acts of
rebellion similar to those happening in England.
D.M.R. Bentley has explained the immediate circumstances of rebellion and calls
for reform to which Longmore refers:
Longmore viewed with dismay the agitation for political reform and
republican government that lay behind three events which, in 1824, were
still fresh in the minds of Britains and British North Americans alike: the
Spa Field Riot of 1816, the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, and the Cato Street
Conspiracy of 1820. Longmore’s readers would have known [James]
Watson [referenced in line 1104] as one of those charged with High
Treason after the earliest of these events, and would have recognized the
“Hunt” of a previous line (1071) as the “Orator” [Henry] Hunt who
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presided over the huge and disastrous meeting of reformers at Peter’s
Field. They would also have had very fresh in their memory the attempt of
the few extreme radicals of the Cato Street Conspiracy to assassinate
members of the British Cabinet and establish a provisional government in
London. And surely they could not have doubted that, if such things could
happen in England, they were also possible—even likely—in Canada.
(Introduction to The Charivari)
Moreover, these anti-government factions are not the only ones Longmore accuses of
misusing and undervaluing the freedom enjoyed by England (as well as by extension the
rest of the British Empire): he implicates the entire democratic process, not only by
referring to voters at an election as a “mob” (1073), but also by mocking the elected
officials of “the Common’s House of Parliament” (1078) for their ostensible
jurisprudence, as evidenced by their causing “King Charles’ decapitation” (1080).
Longmore’s narrator describes in order of best to worst the stereotypical Tory, Whig, and
Reformer. Although the narrator’s scathing tone at first seems to implicate all three in
this governmental disorder, he in fact praises the Tories for defeating and exiling
Napoleon, while the Whigs come off as silly but necessary fools; it is for the Reformer
that he saves his worst censure:
Then, your Reformer comes,— who thinks each measure,
Conjur’d within his brain, must be much wiser,
Than those, which Britain has esteem’d its treasure
For generations past . . . (1097-1100)
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Longmore’s veneration of established British tradition is evident in his mockery of the
arrogant Reformer who wishes change for change’s sake. As Bentley suggests, Longmore
does indeed seem to have been worried about the effect of these parliamentary “mobs” in
Canada, despite his narrator’s claim that mobs in Canada are a “rarity.” Longmore
follows his discourse on the British parliament with a similar critique of Canada’s.34 He
maintains that both the British protestors and the Canadian members of parliament suffer
from their lack of understanding of such foundational elements of British law as the
Magna Carta. The British misappropriate it as a call for personal license, whereas the
Canadians would far rather devote themselves to pecuniary measures: “They understand,
‘the Arithmetical,’— / Profit and Loss,— Tare,— Tret,— Discount or Barter,— / And
any ‘Bill,’ — better than ‘Magna Charta [sic]’” (1118-1120). Longmore’s invocation of
the thirteenth-century Magna Carta does not simply reinforce his reverence for the
historical traditions of British law; it also serves to further entrench his Tory sympathies.
He is quite right that any protestor appealing to the Magna Carta as precedent for
personal liberties would indeed be misinterpreting the document: although the charter did
establish the rights and liberties of England’s barons while simultaneously limiting the
power of the king, it did little to establish or protect the rights of the peasant class. Taken
with his disdain for the mercantile considerations of Canada’s members of Parliament,
Longmore’s sense of freedom seems to be primarily concerned with the upper classes of
society — the aristocrats for whom he says the Tories are so named (1084).
34 Although Longmore does not specify to which of the Canadian parliaments he refers, it is logical to assume that his target is the parliament of Lower Canada, since both The Charivari and his own experiences were based in that province.
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Longmore’s distaste for those who do not respect tradition is as much inflected by
race as it is by class. At the end of the narrator’s rant about the Canadian parliament, he
reveals that the quarrelsome figures are “‘soi-disant’ [self-proclaimed] patriots,— [and]
their communion / Bars any creed, whose psalmody is ‘Union.’” (1127-1128). The
troublesome members turn out to be the French-speaking ones, presumably members of
Lower Canada’s Parti canadien. Although the party would not officially be renamed the
Parti patriote until 1826 (Roy), Longmore’s choice to refer to them as “‘soi-disant’
patriots” was no doubt influenced by the discourses of patriotism and French nationalism
that were circulating in the mid-1820s. Yet, the narrator (and quite probably Longmore as
well, given his perception of the French in The War of the Isles) clearly rejects the idea
that there is anything patriotic about the goals and actions of these parliamentarians,
believing them not to be acting in the best interests of the nation or the empire. His
critique is linguistically, religiously, and racially charged. The abundance of religious
imagery in his description of the “patriots” invites the reader to question what their true
creed might be, what communion they practice, what psalms they sing. Though we might
expect the answers to accord with Roman Catholicism, the poem does not provide this
solution, nor in fact any obvious identification (the terminology used being equally
applicable to the Anglican tradition as to Roman Catholicism). Instead, the narrator tells
us only what their communion does not allow, what is absent in their faith rather than
what is present; what it bars is “Union.” Much as with the French in The War of the
Isles, Longmore constructs the French Canadians as deficient in their religious
sensibilities; he informs us that these French Canadians share in the general
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Parliamentary reverence for arithmetic and finance, but he leaves it an ominously open
question whether they revere anything else.
By rejecting “Union,” the French Lower Canadian parliamentarians reject not
only the idea of cooperation with their fellow legislators, but also the more official
concepts of union in circulation at the time, such as the possibility of political unification
with the majority-Anglophone Upper Canada. More symbolically, they also deny the rule
and order of the British Empire by rejecting its and Canada’s flag, the Royal Union (now
commonly referred to as the Union Jack). These acts all go against what Longmore — as
an officer in the British army, as a decided Tory, and as a member of one of Lower
Canada’s elite Anglophone families — would have seen as the best interests of the
Canadian provinces and those of the British Empire as a whole. Since they reject (British)
order, they create disunity in their country, and their faith is suspect at best; they thus fail
to achieve any of the three elements that form Longmore’s concept of freedom — the
same concept that he introduced in The War of the Isles and developed in “The Fall of
Constantinople.” Indeed, the Lower Canadian parliamentarians not only fail to meet
Longmore’s standard of freedom, but they are even actively suspicious of what Liberty
has to offer them: they “think th’entail of Liberty has got / Most specious pleaders,
(barring slips of grammar) / To bind their privileges to a spot” (1124-1126).
James Cawdell’s Canada: A New Old England
At the same time as Longmore was lamenting the difficulties that the traditions of
the British Empire, as “th’entail of Liberty,” faced in Canada from a vocal French
opposition, James Martin Cawdell was also advocating for a return to medieval traditions
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in the Canadas. Like Longmore, Cawdell served in the military, but he took a path
opposite to Longmore’s, both literally and figuratively. Whereas Longmore was born in
Canada and moved to Britain (and from there to other imperial postings), Cawdell moved
from England to Canada; while Longmore’s career was generally distinguished (although
somewhat marred by political circumstance), Cawdell’s led him deeper into obscurity.
Cawdell was born in Durham in northern England in 1784; he received a classical
education as well as training in the law, but he found legal studies distasteful, and in
1810, he purchased a military commission at the rank of ensign in the 100th Regiment of
Foot, then stationed in Montreal (Fraser). He was soon deployed to York (Toronto),
where his choice of friends brought him into disfavour with Upper Canada’s Lieutenant
Governor, Francis Gore. When Brigadier-General Isaac Brock redeployed Cawdell to the
regiment’s headquarters at Fort George (Niagara-on-the-Lake), Cawdell’s lack of
political circumspection got him into further trouble: he wrote a piece satirizing Gore, a
piece which Brock believed to satirize himself also. This satire provoked Brock to exile
Cawdell to a remote post on St. Joseph Isle (near modern Sault Ste-Marie). Cawdell
attempted to resign his commission in protest, but the outbreak of the War of 1812 forced
him to change his plans; his resignation was delayed until October of 1813 (Fraser). With
the war still raging, Cawdell wished to be of service to his country in a way that he hoped
would garner him some fame, although unfortunately his skill as a military tactician
seems to have been on par with his political acumen. In a letter to Noah Freer, the
Military Secretary, he proposed an eccentric plan to form near Fort George an
independent state, whose neutrality he was certain the Americans would respect, and
from which he and “two or three hundred men” could “never cease to be a thorn to the
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Government of the United States” (Cruikshank 96). The conclusion of his letter divulges
his real motivation in making such a proposal: he writes, “By this means I am confident
that I can be of more service to myself and country than if I remained a humble subaltern
without a name and without distinction” (Cruikshank 96). These years seem to have set
the pattern for the rest of his career: he earnestly desired to gain a name and distinction
within society’s inner circles, but he lacked the tact to avoid offending the members of
the very circles he so wished to join.
Cawdell’s subsequent attempts to gain a militia commission proved unsuccessful,
and he secured his exclusion from public offices of any prominence by again satirizing
Gore in 1816; he later compounded his problems by writing quite unrepentantly to the
new Lieutenant Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, about his penchant for political
invective (Fraser). Although he continued to seek public office, he was forced by the lack
of forthcoming appointments to turn his hopes for fame to other avenues. In addition to
his literary endeavours (which will be discussed in the next section), he wrote political
prose to advocate restructuring Canada’s social system. In a pamphlet entitled The
Canadian Conservative, which he claims to have written in 1818 although he did not
publish it until 1839, he argues for a rethinking of Canada’s place within the British
Empire — in no small part, it seems, for the purposes of creating and distributing honours
to Canadians. “Certainly it is a folly to suppose,” he argues, “that where colonies have
territories more extensive than the mother country, and at the same time a considerable
distance from it, that they, any more than children, are to remain for ever in a state of
infancy. The time of emancipation must come” (7). Cawdell desires an arm’s-length
relationship between Canada and Great Britain, ostensibly to help Canada come into its
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own as a nation, but it seems that his real desire is not to see a child grow up but instead
to see a clone develop with the same advantages as its original. He envisions a Canada
that is modelled directly after medieval England, from its governments to its hierarchies
to its military.
Cawdell sets out what he sees as the basic principles of feudal society in late
medieval England as the guidelines for the ideal operation of Canadian society. He
appeals to England’s voting policies during the late fifteenth century as a way of limiting
the powers of democracy (that system being, to Cawdell, “Of all the different forms of
government, . . . the worst” [6]). Cawdell argues that “all who reasonably may be thought
to be free agents, and to possess some degree of information, should have a vote in the
election of their Legislators” (6), and he accepts wholeheartedly as a test of this
qualification
the spirit of the law which first authorised the yeomanry of England, who
possessed freehold estates of the yearly value of forty shillings, to vote for
members of parliament, (in the reign of Henry VI, nearly 400 years ago,)
for owing to the difference in the value of land, wheat, money, &c. at that
time and in the present day, forty shillings would be equal to thirty or forty
pounds now, and the land that would have given that rent, (forty shillings)
would not, in all probability, have been less than thirty or forty arable
acres, (the common yearly rent of land during this period was a shilling an
acre); of course that law will never be brought back to its original
intention in England, but it might and ought to have been in Canada. (6)
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Interestingly, if Cawdell did write the pamphlet in 1818 as he claims, then he would not
have passed the test that he here sets out: until 1822, his only position was as a teacher at
a country school for an annual salary of £16 (Fraser), well short of the £30 or £40 he
recommends as a prerequisite for being able to vote. Presumably Cawdell believed
himself “to possess some degree of information” regardless of his financial straits, even if
he did not believe in extending the same benefit of the doubt to his fellow citizens. As his
appeals for public office demonstrate, he certainly felt he deserved a place among the
province’s elite, and he must have believed he would soon join their ranks. More telling
than this apparent hypocrisy, though, is his assertion about what is right and possible in
Canada compared to in England. He acknowledges that times and laws have changed in
England, and that neither can become again what they once were. However, he seems to
feel that Canada, as a young colony, has the chance to make itself into a new version of
medieval England — to put into modern practice what he saw as the best of England’s
history, without making the same mistakes England made along the way.
The most pressing need that Cawdell identifies in remaking Canada into a pseudo-
feudal society is, naturally enough given his own desire for advancement, the
establishment of “an order of Nobility and Knighthood” (8). This idea had been discussed
by the British Parliament, but Cawdell feels its dismissal was too hasty:
In the debates on the Canadian Constitution, in the English House of
Commons, the idea of a Canadian Nobility was laughed at by the then
opposition, as, in all probability, they would have been too poor to keep up
their dignity . . . We read that in Henry VIII’s time, amongst the palace
regulations of that Monarch, he gave orders that the Knights’ hall, in the
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palace, should be strewed with fresh hay every day, that the Knights and
Gentry in waiting might be more comfortable; but in our days, even the
poorer order of people have their carpetting, instead of carpetting their
apartments with hay, and many instances might be named, to shew what
are necessaries of life with our yeomanry of the present day, were luxuries
with Nobles and Knights of former days. (8)
Cawdell’s comparison between early modern knights and modern “yeomen” is somewhat
contradictory to his argument for establishing a class of nobles in Canada. He disputes
the charge that Canada is too poor to support an entrenched division of classes by
pointing to the general improvement of living standards for the entire populace, an
argument that seems to lead to the equalization rather than stratification of classes.
Cawdell’s argument blurs the distinctions between class and wealth, thus leading to a
problem of circular logic in which at times he invokes wealth as a reason to create the
honours of class, and at others he uses class distinctions to argue for better compensation.
The increased standard of living of the general populace is, however, at best a
mixed blessing in Cawdell’s opinion. In his mind, it perhaps actually acts to the detriment
of society, since he believes it reduces the power of the people he thinks should rightfully
govern the country:
There is at present another defect in the formation of our legislature,
which did not exist at its formation, but has arisen since, from the
increased wealth and advanced state of society amongst us. In England,
the wealth and influence of old families ensure the election of the gentry
and connections of the nobility, for the counties, and for some of the
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boroughs, but we have no such advantage here — our gentry are mingled
with the general body of yeomanry, and have no real representation in the
House of Assembly. (10-11)
Cawdell’s worry that the gentry in parliament will be eclipsed by the “general body of
yeomanry” reveals his rather essentialist notions about class: there are people whose
birthright it is to govern (and if this class does not exist, it should be created), and then
there is the rest of society. His real argument, then, is emphatically not that the “poorer
order” of Canadians should be granted titles by virtue of having the material
qualifications for early modern knighthood, but rather, that (extraordinary) wealth is not
necessary to maintain the dignity of the noble classes — even if, as in the case above, it
helps maintain their influence. He points to the case of Germany: “what a numerous train
of Princes, Nobles, and Knights, who have scarcely any other inheritance than their
honours, and their military pay in the service of their Sovereigns. Are they despised? —
No” (8). Yet here too his example proves to be a less-than-ideal foundation upon which
to build a stable, prosperous nation: even in the mid-nineteenth century, contemporary
historians accepted that the proliferation of small, poor and weak duchies making up the
Holy Roman Empire35 contributed to its collapse in 1806.36 Not only were the smaller
35 The Holy Roman Empire consisted, at its peak, of modern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Italy, and border regions of France and Poland. 36 Likewise, the German Confederation, established in 1815, essentially maintained the sovereignty of its individual member states, thereby leading not to national unity but to further discord. The Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire — the two largest member states — were mutually suspicious of each other, and the princes of the larger, wealthier states controlled the Diet, or national assembly, to the detriment of the princes of the smaller states. None of the general citizenry of any of the states had any representation in this national body, and in fact many of their liberties — such as freedom
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territories easier to conquer, but Napoleon was also able to convince many of the princes
to mediatize their neighbours in order to enlarge their personal territories, while
voluntarily subjugating themselves to the French Empire (Bryce 1866 398-400). Yet
despite these significant problems with Cawdell’s own model, he thinks that the pride of
the powers-that-be in Britain is the only thing preventing them from granting titles to
Canadians. “But alas!” he moans, “I am afraid the British administration is too proud to
allow the Colonies to participate in the splendid honours of the Empire, and yet on this
system, ‘the salvation of Canada depends, and the wiles of Democracy could not prevail
against it’” (8).
The counterpart to the loyalty inspired by these honours, in Cawdell’s system of
defense, is “a good and efficient Militia, to defend us from our insidious neighbours [the
United States]” (11). Cawdell complains that “The Militia plan of all modern colonies,
seems to have blindly copied from those of ancient Greece and Rome, or the feudal
system in England, without paying sufficient attention to the peculiarities incident to the
manners and customs of different nations and of different ages” (11). Despite this
objection, quite ironically, Cawdell’s own plan for a Canadian militia also mimics feudal
military systems. England’s feudal armies were composed of three roughly defined
groups: levies of serfs, mercenaries, and the knightly classes (including both influential
magnates and lesser landholders) (Prestwich); it is upon this last, most elite segment of
the fighting classes that Cawdell bases his proposal for the Canadian armed forces. His
plan is the creation of a militia that is well paid, well trained, well respected, and well
bred — essentially, a new knightly class. Again, he sees Canada’s social climate as more
of the press, which Cawdell surely appreciated in Canada — were severely curtailed under this system (Bryce 1911 459-461).
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appropriate to this medieval reincarnation than England’s: “The great body of the
Canadian militia, being men of landed property, or the sons of those who are, of course
form a more respectable class of society, and are accustomed to live better and more
comfortable [sic] than those from which the greater part of the English militia are drawn”
(13). Cawdell’s belief that Canadian soldiers are “more respectable” than English ones
stems from the fact that even the lower classes in Canada — unlike in England — tended
to be “landed,” thus establishing them as akin to at least the lower orders of knights and
gentry in medieval England.
For Cawdell, this innate degree of respectability among the Canadian soldiers
should naturally be rewarded financially and materially, an argument he supports by
again referring to England’s late medieval past: “A few centuries ago, professional
soldiers, or men at arms, as they were called, (Cavalry) were much better paid than at
present; in the 15th century, their average pay was 2 shillings sterling a day, which was
also the pay of a member of parliament sent by a city or borough” (13). This comparison
seems to be as much about social status as it is about compensation: Cawdell envisions
that the members of his ideal Canadian militia will be public officials of equal standing
and importance to members of parliament. This comparison becomes even more
favourable in light of Cawdell’s previously discussed argument that members of
parliament should primarily be gentry. It is at this point that Cawdell’s argument
coalesces. Coming from landed families, the members of the militia should enjoy similar
privileges as knights of the emerging gentry in late medieval England; the gentry, in their
turn, should not only be rewarded with honours and titles but should also control the
government. Despite the contradictions in the finer details of Cawdell’s argument, these
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broader contentions work together to support his main thesis: that Canada should remodel
itself as a chivalric society.
Celtic Influences
Although Cawdell had no political influence to achieve sweeping political
reforms, he nevertheless attempted repeatedly to establish medieval ideals and
institutions in Canada through his literary endeavours, in the process drawing upon the
taste for Celtic medievalism that was emerging in both Canada and the British Isles.
Whereas his overtly political commentary had focused on specifically English medieval
history, his creative works took a broader view of history of the British Isles, merging
Celtic and English influences in his literary attempts to medievalize Canada.
Cawdell tried at least twice to launch a literary magazine entitled The Roseharp,
although unfortunately neither time did it prove viable. No copies exist of his 1823
attempt, and it seems that he was able to produce only the first sheet of what was to be
the introductory number of his 1835 Roseharp: for Beauty, Loyalty and Song. In this
latter attempt, Cawdell announced the launch not only of the magazine but also of the
corresponding “Roseharp Patriotic Academy,” a quasi-chivalric institution which he
envisioned to “be somewhat similar to the Masonic Society of the Knights Templars” (1).
Membership in this chivalric order would be open to both sexes, and general members it
seems would be styled “Academians,” “Knights,” or “Ladies” of the Roseharp. The upper
levels of this order were to include the “Knights St. George of the Roseharp,” the
“Roseharp Chieftain,” and numerous other positions all ultimately subordinate to “The
Sovereign Liege Lady of the Knights of the Roseharp” (2). Cawdell was clearly heavily
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influenced by the courtly love tradition in medieval romances in his structuring of the
order to give at least symbolic primacy to ladies of the court. More remarkable though is
the combination of cultural referents he includes in the titles of the ranks as well as in the
title of the order itself. By itself, his invocation of St. George, the patron saint of England,
would be standard, but it seems unusual that Knights of St. George would associate with
a “Chieftain”; this latter title in particular stands out from the others on the list, since it is
not a traditionally chivalric designation, but rather (in this case) a Celtic one. Although
the label could be culturally ambiguous, the context of the rest of the magazine clarifies
its origin: most of the number is taken up with “The Raven Plume,” a work of prose
fiction set in 12th-century Wales, which Cawdell uses to establish an origin story for the
name “Roseharp.” The story is unfortunately incomplete, in fact ending mid-sentence
since Cawdell seems to have been able to produce only one 8-page sheet of his projected
24-page first number. However, it still serves to set up the basic plot of the story, a
romance (in both the medieval and modern senses of the word) set in twelfth-century
Wales involving the daughter of an exiled noble family and a nobleman fighting to
defend the throne of the rightful prince against a usurper. The noble soldier recognizes
the high status of his lover and her family through their possession of and proficiency
with a harp.
Cawdell explains the significance of the harp in a footnote, crediting the
“Encyclopedia Britanica [sic]” as his source:37
The Harp was the favorite musical instrument of the Britons and the other
Northren [sic] Nations, (Harpa, is the Welsh word). By the laws of Wales,
37 The passage is closely adapted from the entry on “harp” that appeared in the fourth through sixth editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1810-1823).
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the harp was one of the three things that were necessary to constitute a
Gentleman, and none could pretend to that character who had not one of
these favourite instruments, or could not play upon it. By the same laws, to
prevent slaves or inferior persons from pretending to be gentlemen, it was
expressly forbidden to teach or to permit them to play upon the harp; and
none but the King or Sovereign Prince, and then Musicians and Gentlemen
were allowed to have harps in their possession. A Gentleman’s harp was
not liable to be seized for debt, because the want of it would have
degraded him from his rank. The Harp was in the same estimation, and
had the same privileges amongst the Saxons and Danes. (7 n.)
Cawdell’s explanation stresses two things: the noble associations of the harp in Celtic
cultures, and the broader Britishness/Germanicness of these same customs. His assertion
that “none but the King or Sovereign Prince, and then Musicians and Gentleman” would
have harps is, on its own, not illogical: there would be little reason for a non-musician to
own a harp, unless its owner was wealthy enough to afford decorative luxuries. There is,
however, little evidence (either in Cawdell’s Britannica source, or in other contemporary
scholarship) to suggest that possessing or playing a harp under other circumstances would
be a crime. Indeed, Bede’s story of Cædmon suggests that some level of musical talent
with the harp was valued at all ranks of Anglo-Saxon society: the story begins with the
shame of a cowherd at not being able to take his turn in the singing in the feast-hall, when
the expectation is “þæt heo ealle sceoldon þurh endebyrdnesse be hearpan singan”
(Mitchell and Robinson 222) [that they all must in succession sing with the harp].
Likewise, the bardic orders of Wales do not seem to have been restricted to — or even to
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any significant degree composed of — the nobility, although many of the bards certainly
worked under the patronage of noble houses (Lewis). The use of the harp does not seem
to be quite so restricted historically as Cawdell suggests, but given the name of his
magazine and order, it suits his purposes to imagine that association with the instrument
confers gentility.
Cawdell’s commentary seems designed to lead his readership to the belief that the
cultures of the medieval Welsh, the Saxons, and the Danes were to a large degree
interchangeable. Indeed, even the title of the magazine indicates this cultural fusion: his
choice of the name Roseharp could not more clearly indicate his desire to integrate Welsh
and English heritage, the rose symbolizing England (“Official symbols of Canada”), and
the harp symbolizing Wales (Morgan 91). Likewise, Cawdell’s explanation of the
importance of the harp claims sweeping cultural similarities; significantly, Cawdell
modifies his source text to present an even more homogenous image of the medieval
north. The original Encyclopædia Britannica entry asserts, “The harp was in no less
estimation and universal use among the Saxons and the Danes” than it was among the
Welsh (276), whereas Cawdell goes so far as to declare, “The Harp was in the same
estimation, and had the same privileges amongst the Saxons and Danes” (7 n.). Cawdell’s
adaptation accomplishes two things: firstly, it seeks to reinforce the exclusivity of the
harp in all three cultures by replacing the Britannica’s claim of its “universal use” with
an assertion of privileged use of the instrument. Secondly, by stressing the similarities of
the harp’s place in all three cultures, Cawdell seeks to establish uniformity among what
he refers to as the “Northren Nations” — “northren” being the spelling of “northern” in
the Lowland Scots dialect. Notably, the Britannica on this point reads simply as
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“northern nations” (275). Cawdell further conflates Welsh and Anglo-Saxon cultures by
accepting the Britannica’s claim that “harpa” is the word for “harp” in Welsh — or, as
the Britannica puts it, “in the language of the Cimbri” (275): harpa is in fact the Old
Norse term, closely related to the Old English hearpa, but not at all related to the Welsh
word telyn.38
The sense of Britishness that Cawdell thus creates is an emphatically northern
European one, merging elements of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian cultures;
importantly, however, this Britishness is dissociated from any French roots. In his
description of the cultural roots of the harp, Cawdell chooses to highlight the Britons as
the primary group among his “Northren” nations, and this choice is a racially charged
one. The Britons were a Celtic people who inhabited the majority of the island of Britain,
the Brittany region of France, and Britonia in northern Spain. In the fifth century, the
Anglo-Saxons conquered most of the Britons’ island territory, except for a few areas such
as Wales and Cornwall. The Britons did not simply disappear from the Anglo-Saxon
controlled areas — some high-born Briton women may even have married into Saxon
royal families (Campbell 41) — but linguistically and culturally the traditions of the
Germanic invaders predominated in the area that became England; Wales, on the other
hand, maintained its British character and its close cultural ties to Brittany in France.
Cawdell’s invocation of the Britons as a specifically northern people actively dissociates
them from their French and Spanish connections. Moreover, his appeal to them as a
Celtic culture whose name has been appropriated by the English supports his project of
38 The Encyclopædia Britannica corrected this mistake by its ninth edition in 1880, which clearly lists the Germanic and Celtic etymologies (Hipkins 488-489).
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creating a concept of Britishness that is northern, Celtic and Germanic, but most
emphatically not French.
There are a number of factors which may have contributed to Cawdell’s impulse
to merge medieval Celtic and English histories. To begin with, Cawdell has significant
precedent upon which to draw for associating the Celtic Britons with English chivalric
culture: King Arthur — a central character in chivalric romance, and a hero to the modern
British — was a Briton. As such, however (if indeed he existed at all), he would have
fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons; he is therefore not a prime example of cultural
cooperation. Furthermore, only in fiction were he and his round table an example of
Celtic chivalry in the mode of post-Norman Conquest England: he would likely have
lived sometime in the fifth through seventh centuries (R. Barber, King Arthur 1-11),
whereas chivalric culture peaked some five to six hundred years later, so his life would
not have borne a recognizable resemblance to that of the character in Arthurian legend.
Moreover, Arthur is intimately connected with French chivalry, since many (if not most)
of the legends about him were written in France; the body of Arthurian literature would
not, then, reflect the sense of northern Britishness that Cawdell wished to create.
A more immediate influence on Cawdell’s writing seems to have been the work
of Sir Walter Scott, who was perhaps even more beloved in Canada than in his native
Scotland. As a Scot, Scott also fit well into Cawdell’s project of northernness. Scott
enjoyed such popularity in Canada that, as Carole Gerson argues, his brand of historical
romance set the “pure standard” (Purer Taste 69) for the writing of fiction in Canada for
nearly a century, even after his popularity had waned in the rest of world. Gerson
attributes this astonishing degree of influence to a number of factors. On the most basic
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level, in early nineteenth-century Canada, “Scott was esteemed for having made fiction
respectable and directly or indirectly received the homage of scores of imitators who
filled the pages of Canadian literary periodicals with historical romances set in Europe”
(Purer Taste 67). On another level, Canada’s political circumstances and ethnic heritage
fostered a climate to which Scott’s work was especially suited: “The threat of cultural and
political absorption by the United States further consolidated the appeal of Scott, a
representative of the nation [of Scotland] from which approximately one-quarter of
English-speaking Canadians claimed descent, to those desiring to strengthen Canada’s
emotional ties to the British Empire” (Purer Taste 70). Moreover, Gerson contends
Scotland and New France served similar roles in the English/English-Canadian literary
imaginations: “Both nations, having suffered defeat at the hands of the English, had
ceased to present a political threat. English-Canadian writers were quick to find in French
Canada a New World counterpart to the folklore, history, and local colour of Scott’s
fiction, which they could develop with a mixture of condescension and nostalgia” (Purer
Taste 71). However, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, French history was unsafe
territory during the British Empire’s war with Napoleon’s France, as well as during
Lower Canada’s social unrest in the 1820s and 1830s. It was not until after the 1837-1838
rebellions and the ensuing unification of the Canadas in 1841 that the spectre of New
France truly ceased to be dangerous and became instead inspirational for English-
Canadian literature, as will be discussed in the next chapter. Until that point, the
relationship between the medieval Scottish and the English as imagined by authors such
as Scott — a relationship based on cultural assimilation — may have served as a model
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for the kind of relationship English-Canadian authors wished to cultivate between
Canada’s anglophone and francophone populations.
Ossianic influences on Robert Baldwin
As the “pure standard” for English-Canadian fiction, Scott was certainly the
driving force behind the popularity of Celtic culture and history in English Canada, but
he did not initiate the craze for Scottish medievalism. Scott himself was influenced by
James Macpherson’s Ossian stories, which had been extremely popular (if
controversial)39 in Britain in the mid- to late-eighteenth century (Waterston, Rapt 44).
Beginning in 1760, Macpherson published several volumes of what he claimed were
translations of early medieval Scottish Gaelic manuscripts that he had discovered. Except
for the first volume, these manuscripts of poetry were all narrated (and supposedly
composed) by Ossian, a character Macpherson based on the Irish legendary figure Oisìn.
Dafydd Moore argues that “This appropriation and misrepresentation of Irish culture and
history, which naturally enough attracted the outrage of Irish antiquarians, was not
inadvertent, and indeed central to Macpherson’s cultural agenda of instating Celtic
39 Dafydd Moore explains the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the Ossian poems thus: “Macpherson, along with several associates, made two tours, in the early Autumn of 1760 and late Spring of 1761, collecting manuscript material and taking down songs from oral sources. It was from these materials, supplemented with a large amount of “creative reconstruction”, that the two books of epic poetry with a single identifiable author were fashioned, in a process that has never been entirely clear. Careful examination of the poems in relation to the Gaelic materials it is known that Macpherson had at his disposal have failed to decisively separate honest mistakes from wishful thinking from a deliberate attempt to mislead and it is likely that, initially at least, Ossian was a potent combination of all three. It should be noted however that the volumes, and particularly the Temora volume contain significant amounts of material for which no source has been discovered. The Ossian poems were in no way what Macpherson said they were, but neither were they an entire fabrication.”
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Scotland as the spiritual home of the values of heroic Sensibility manifest in the poems.”
The political element of Macpherson’s Ossian project involved attempting not only to
shift the focus of Celtic history and culture from Ireland to Scotland, but also thereby to
heighten Scotland’s influence within the United Kingdom and on the world stage. Moore
contends that these political motives were a product of the literary atmosphere in the
Scottish Lowlands at the time:
the true inspiration for the poet and poems is . . . to be found in the literary
scholarship of the eighteenth century on the subject of primitive peoples,
language and poetry, and in particular the literary and wider cultural and
political imperatives of the lowland Literati of Scotland . . . . First
amongst these imperatives was the production of an ancient literature that
demonstrated that Scotland was a country of long-standing civilisation. . . .
If Ossian’s sentimental heroes offered some sort of model for the
eighteenth-century British citizen, they also offered important propaganda
tools for a Scottish cultural and political elite eager to be seen as an equal
partner in the Union.
These fashions for Celtic medievalism shaped the literary and philosophical tastes
of Canada’s young Robert Baldwin. Baldwin was born in York in 1804 into an influential
and politically-minded family. His father, William Warren Baldwin, was a doctor,
lawyer, and architect as well as charismatic politician; his mother, Margaret Phoebe
Willcocks, had not only wealth and connections, but also such acuity that Baldwin saw
her as the real “master mind of the Family” (qtd. in Cross 11). He was still a child when
the War of 1812 broke out, but nevertheless he had occasion to see the war firsthand.
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When the American forces invaded York in April 1813, Phoebe and the children
evacuated the city, and walked north to the farm of a family friend; they had managed to
get only a few kilometers away when the York garrison exploded. They were close
enough both to hear the blast and to see the smoke rising from the ruined buildings (Cross
14). As Michael S. Cross argues, the sight indelibly shaped Baldwin’s perceptions of the
United States and its values, making their “menace more apparent. . . . [H]e would
forever see the curling smoke of burning York” (15).
Baldwin was educated at the most prestigious school in Upper Canada, the Home
District Grammar School, where (according to his father) he particularly excelled at
classics (Cross 13). It was during these teenage years that he dabbled in poetry,
frequently exchanging verses with James Hunter Samson. In their letters, Samson and
Baldwin both mention the possibility of publishing their work; however, Samson seems
to have been the more enthusiastic of the two about producing a collaborative volume,
Baldwin seeming more interested in publishing his own poetry (H. Murray, “And Every
Lawyer’s Clerk”). The product of these exchanges was an 1820 manuscript volume
entitled Poems. By Robert Baldwin. & Others. Collected by James Samson Hunter. Vol.
1st. The title page of the manuscript seems, however, to be misleading: Heather Murray
has argued that its various oddities (including the misnaming of Samson) likely reflect
“the running jests and innuendoes” of their correspondence, and that it was likely that the
page could “be decoded by only a select few” (“And Every Lawyer’s Clerk”). Her
analysis of the manuscript concludes that Baldwin, not Samson, was the collector and
copyist, and that apart from two poems attributable to Samson, the rest were likely
Baldwin’s. Most of the volume addresses fairly standard topics such as love, friendship,
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and nature; however, the final two entries stand out from the rest of the volume in both
form and content. Whereas the rest of the manuscript consisted of 52 poems (according to
the index, since two leaves are now missing), the final two pieces are written in prose;
whereas the poems address general or contemporary themes,40 the prose pieces are works
of historical fiction whose titles announce that they are written “In imitation of Ossian”
(72, 76).
Given Macpherson’s appropriation of Irish history and culture, Ossian is perhaps
a strange model for Baldwin. He was of Irish, not Scottish, descent; his father and
grandfather had emigrated from Ireland in 1799, only five years before his birth, and they
maintained significant ties to their former country. Baldwin himself visited Ireland in
1836, in the hope of becoming “a better Irishman” (Cross 3). The entire family
maintained the political values that had been so important to them in Ireland, and indeed
Baldwin’s greatest achievement in Canadian politics — the institution of responsible
government — was something that his grandfather had fought for unsuccessfully in
Ireland in the 1780s (Cross 8, 18). It is, therefore, unsurprising that unlike Macpherson’s
use of Ossian to establish an alternate history, Baldwin’s stories do not actively
disenfranchise Ireland. For one, Baldwin’s stories are not geographically rooted. The
names and place names in them replicate the cadences of those in Macpherson’s, but they
are sufficiently vague as to defy attribution even to a specific Celtic language. Baldwin
thus did not so much appropriate Irish history with his Ossianic stories as he did express
40 The only other poem that could be construed as historical is “The Death of Tecumsee” (25), a fictionalized account of the death of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh in 1813, during the War of 1812. The volume also includes an ode “To Tecumsee” (39), but that poem is purely commemorative, and devoid of historical detail.
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his interest in a broad form of Celtic medievalism — as mediated by the values and
literary sensibilities of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The foremost of these values that Baldwin explores in his Ossianic stories is the
place of duty, both within the bonds of family and within the larger context of obligations
to one’s community. His vehicle for these concerns is two short prose-poems, both
relating the tragic extinction of the same noble family. Baldwin prefaces each piece with
what he refers to as an “Argument,” although that of his first story, “The death of Sickla,”
functions as the first part of the plot rather than as a synopsis. The first argument recounts
the shipwreck of two brothers, Gador and Salnim, their sister Sickla, and the sister’s
lover, Balnor.41 The storm separates the family into pairs, washing them ashore in two
lands at war with each other; the (male) guests, having been “hospitably receiv’d” (72) by
the chiefs of the lands, repay their hosts’ kindness by joining the next day’s battle. Their
duty to their respective hosts leads them unknowingly into conflict with each other:
Gador kills Balnor, and Salnim avenges Balnor’s death by killing Gador. When Salnim
realizes that he has killed his brother — who was both his host’s enemy and his friend’s
killer — he immediately kills himself. The web of obligations seems to leave him no
other solution. The same compounded sense of duty claims the life of Sickla in the story
proper, as she mourns the deaths of her brothers but especially that of her lover. She hears
Balnor’s spirit “calling vengeance on . . . [her] race” at the same time as it “chide[s] . . .
41 Heather Murray suggests that the characters’ names in the Ossianic stories are in fact veiled references to Baldwin’s social group, whether to his close friends and family or to his specifically literary connections. In addition to exchanging poetry with Samson, Baldwin also sent various samples to his friend James Givins. Moreover, in 1820, Baldwin belonged to the ten-member York Literary Society, along with his cousin and future brother-in-law Robert Baldwin Sullivan, Givins and James Cawdell (“And Every Lawyer’s Clerk,” Come Bright Improvement 36-38).
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[her] for delaying” (74) in answering his call to kill herself. However, her duty in dying is
not simply to satisfy a blood feud: as Baldwin reveals in the next story, “Departure of
Calinda,” Sickla’s death frees her to join Balnor in the afterlife, to ride “on a beam with
the lord of her soul” (79). Baldwin does not at all problematize the suicide of an innocent
in the conflict; indeed, in the story it seems the natural outcome not only that family
members bear responsibility for each other, but also that lovers should follow each other
to the grave. This Romantic idea of love that can be fulfilled only in the afterlife seems to
have held particular appeal to Baldwin, since he repeats this motif with Sickla’s sister
Calinda: Calinda’s lover also dies in war, and his spirit also fetches her to ride with him
on a beam of light. After all of this death, only their father Giflor remains, the “last of . . .
[their] race” (80), and the narrator worries about who will bear the responsibility for
Giflor’s commemoration when the time comes. Baldwin’s narrator laments to Giflor:
no son shall reuse the stones over thy tomb; no daughter with her soul of
sadness mourn over thy ashes. Yet will the friend of thy son wake a
parting lay over thy tomb; he shall drop a tear to console thy remains; the
light of his soul shall awake to ring thy dirge; and when thou ridest on the
beam; when the gale bears thee on its wings; he shall mourn thy fate. (81)
In a way, Baldwin ends the story as he began it, by extending the bonds of duty beyond
bloodlines and into the broader community: even in the absence of descendants to honour
their patriarch, the community (via the friend of the son) takes on the familial duties both
to mourn and to remember.
This emphasis on duty in the stories of Baldwin’s youth proved to be much more
than an idealistic fancy of a nobler time: indeed, Baldwin’s devotion to duty was perhaps
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the most powerful force in his life. Despite his “oppressive shyness and discomfort in the
glare of public performance” (Cross 25), he nevertheless followed the path expected of
him by his father, first establishing himself as a lawyer and then entering politics. Duty
ruled his private life as well, even keeping him from joining his ill wife Eliza — on
whom he doted — at her place of convalescence in New York on their eighth wedding
anniversary; he deeply regretted not being able to leave York and be with her, but, he
wrote to her, “it would be inconsistent with duty” (qtd. in Cross 24; emphasis in original).
Unfortunately, his writing of the doomed love of Sickla and Calinda proved prophetic for
his own relationship: Eliza died soon after returning to York (Cross 24). The two had
been married for not quite nine years. Like his heroines, Baldwin became obsessed with
being united again with his love in the afterlife; at the time of her death he wrote, “in the
waste that lies before me I can expect to find joy only in the reflected happiness of our
darling children, and in the looking forward, in humble hope, to that blessed hour which
by God’s permission shall for ever reunite me to my Eliza in the world of Spirits” (qtd. in
Cross 2). In his final years, he even carried a letter in his waistcoat with instructions in
case of his death: he was adamant that he was not to be interred without his body being
given a wound to match that of Eliza’s Caesarean section (Cross 1-2). His family
complied with his request, allowing Baldwin to fulfill what he saw as his final obligation
in this world.
Robert Baldwin was one of Canada’s consummate Reformers, yet ironically his
liberal political views perhaps owed much to his deeply conservative personal values: he
looked to the past to form his own chivalric code, one which had love as the figurehead
of his soul but duty as its true sovereign, and it was this code that compelled him again
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and again to sacrifice his own political advancement for what he considered to be the
good of the people. He found his ideals in an idealized past, in the world of the romantic
heroes of Sir Walter Scott and James Macpherson. James Cawdell shared Baldwin’s
affinity for the world of the medieval Celts, but he was politically at the opposite end of
the spectrum from Baldwin: Cawdell was not a Reformer but a reformer, a staunch Tory
who wanted to remodel Canada’s entire sociopolitical system after late medieval
England’s. George Longmore, also a Tory, was the most typically conservative among
the three: he advocated a return in the spirit of politics to traditional English ideals while
strongly supporting the letter of the political status quo. Among the values espoused by
elite society in the Canadas, Baldwin’s politics could not have been more different from
those of Cawdell and Longmore, yet all three sought in their own ways to bring the
medieval world to Canada, looking to the past for models of how to construct the ideal
Canadian society. For Baldwin, the influence of medievalism was inward-looking,
intrinsically about codes of personal behaviour; both Cawdell and Longmore, on the
other hand, looked outward to examine how people of a variety of ethnic backgrounds
ought to interact with each other. Yet despite these authors’ differences in politics and in
literary focus, the racialized narratives of Canadianness promoted by all three
complement each other. Scotland, having been conquered centuries before by the
English, proved itself to be a safe source for English Canadian writers looking to
incorporate a rustic, rugged, noble back-story into narratives of the early Canadian
experience. Modern France under the control of Napoleon, on the other hand, was much
too dangerous an influence to court, particularly in light of the growing social unrest in
Lower Canada in the 1820s; French history was therefore not safe either. For the first
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third of the nineteenth century, English Canada was decidedly silent on the heritage of its
French neighbours. Indeed, French history and culture would not become a popular topic
in English Canadian literature again until after the failed rebellions of 1837-1838 and the
ensuing unification of the Canadas.
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Chapter 3
Rebellion, Responsible Government,
and the French Question: 1837-1848
On the surface, the dominant trends in English perceptions of the medieval French
changed radically from the 1810s to the 1840s. As discussed in the last chapter, until the
late 1830s, English Canadian authors denied a voice to French medievalism, refusing to
grant the French control over their history, and thereby rejecting the validity of the
modern French nation-state. In the 1840s, the discourse shifted: suddenly, the French
became one of the most popular topics in the realm of literary medievalisms, particularly
in literary magazines such as The Literary Garland (1838-1851) and The Amaranth
(1841-1843). In general, 16% of the Canadian medievalism of the period explicitly
addressed medieval French traditions; The Literary Garland matched this overall
average, but in The Amaranth, fully 29% engaged with medieval France. Although this
re-emergence of English interest in medieval French tradition might seem like a
multicultural embrace — and in some ways, it was — the ways in which English-
Canadian literature appropriated French history also replicated many of the same patterns
that had been used in previous decades to discredit the validity of modern French self-
governance. As I argued in the last chapter, English Canadian authors still saw the French
Revolution as creating a fundamental break in French history. Unlike their French
counterparts, French Canadians did not go through a complete revolution (although many
did rebel, unsuccessfully, in 1837-1838); the French in Canada, then, were still linked to
their history in a way that the French in France were not. However, the ways in which
anglophone authors portrayed French Canadian connections to the past differed greatly
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from their portrayals of English Canadian history: whereas they saw English Canada (and
the British Empire in general) as adapting the spirit of its history for a new, modern
world, they portrayed French Canada as simply stuck in the past, irrelevant to the
development of a modern Canadian nation except as a repository of old-fashioned
pastoral traditions.
Although in previous decades the subject of French history was almost taboo, the
rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada in 1837-1838 forced considerations of the French
to the forefront of English Canadian discourse. Despite the English-French tensions in
Canada, however, the relationship between England and France during this period was
unusually peaceful and cooperative. The so-called “Pax Britannica” was an entire century
of relative peace in Europe following the downfall of Napoleon, although there were
notable exceptions, such as the Italian revolutions of the 1820s that eventually led to the
unification of Italy. French and British relations were particularly calm in the 1830s and
1840s, when King Louis Philippe I sought to ally himself and the country with Britain.
Louis Philippe had spent much of his exile from France during the Napoleonic era in
England, and he maintained sufficiently close ties with England that it sheltered him in
exile again after his downfall in 1848. For many anglophone Canadian authors, France
and its history thus ceased to pose a direct threat during these decades. The situation in
Canada, however, was different. The Lower Canadian rebellions remained an open
wound, as evidenced by the decade-long controversy surrounding Lower Canada’s
Rebellion Losses Bill, which was finally enacted in 1849 (Mills, “Rebellion Losses
Bill”). Perhaps because of these lingering tensions, portraying French Canadian society
as little changed from its medieval predecessors became quite popular in the 1840s.
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These portrayals did not reflect political reality, but rather they strove to create it: in
general, anglophone discourses of French cultural heritage became a way to control the
narrative of francophone societies, to render them politically impotent in the modern era
by trapping them in the past.
Not all anglophone Canadian authors participated in that particular discourse of
French medievalism: one in particular, Eliza Lanesford Cushing, actually used the
examples of French medieval history to advocate modern political reform in a way that
included the modern French Canadians in the debate. Yet, the approach of John
Breakenridge was more common. His volume of poetry, The Crusades, and Other Poems
covers topics from the Crusades to Napoleon; although he embraces French chivalry, he
also appropriates it for the modern British, depicting France as a nation that has inherited
only a perversion of chivalric tradition. As in George Longmore’s work (discussed in the
previous chapter), in Breakenridge’s poetry, the modern British Empire enjoys
continuous access to its history — and indeed this continuous access is essential to its
modernity; in contrast, modern France’s relationship with its past is fundamentally
flawed.
In the Maritimes, the narrative of French medievalism similarly re-emerged, but
its concerns were slightly different from those of the Canadas. French medievalism in
The Amaranth, in Saint John, New Brunswick, reveals anxieties about tensions between
English and Acadian communities, specifically about which community might assimilate
the other. This anxiety emerges as a gendered disparity in the magazine: medieval French
women can be assimilated into English culture safely, bringing with them welcome
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chivalric codes of love and duty. Narratives of medieval French noblemen, on the other
hand, deal with the fear that they will assimilate and corrupt English society.
Literary and Historical Developments
The social unrest that British North America had been experiencing in the 1820s
only intensified in the 1830s, with growing opposition to the political oligarchies that
controlled the various provincial governments. In Upper Canada, the Family Compact —
a group of wealthy Tory politicians — controlled not only the executive and legislative
councils but also the judiciary as well as the highest-ranking positions in the civil service.
In Lower Canada, a group of anglophone merchants known as the Château Clique
dominated a similar range of positions. In Nova Scotia, the situation was even more
extreme: there, in addition to the powers exercised by the oligarchies in the other
colonies, the Council of Twelve enjoyed lifetime appointments. Although the responses
to these centralizations of power varied, all of the colonies of British North America
(including New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island) agitated for political reform and
responsible government.
In the Canadas, this political agitation turned violent. Having failed in its attempt
to achieve political reform through the British Parliament, and feeling it had exhausted all
legal means of resistance, Lower Canada’s Parti patriote (under Louis-Joseph Papineau)
moved to open rebellion late in 1837. Although the British army easily won most of the
initial skirmishes, the Patriotes nevertheless had significant popular support. After
regrouping in exile in the United States, the rebels made a second and equally ill-fated
attempt at revolution in November 1838. In Upper Canada, news of the Lower Canadian
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uprisings emboldened two groups of rebels in December 1837, one under William Lyon
Mackenzie in York, and one following Dr. Charles Duncombe in Brantford. The Upper
Canadian rebels were even more disorganized and even less successful than their Lower
Canadian counterparts, and most fled quickly to the United States (Francis, Jones and
Smith 286; Buckner and Foot).
The other colonies of British North America also pushed for political reform, but
none engaged in outright rebellion. In New Brunswick, Reformers led by Charles Fisher
and Lemuel Allan Wilmot were relatively successful in achieving limited governmental
reforms in the late 1830s through political avenues. In Nova Scotia, Joseph Howe — the
youngest son of printer and publisher John Howe — led the movement to reform, largely
through his own involvement in the newspaper industry (Francis, Jones and Smith 369-
370). The Howe family ran one of the most important printing dynasties in the Maritimes,
and Joseph expanded the family business when he took over The Novascotian from
George Renny Young in 1827 and turned it into the colony’s most influential newspaper
(Hare and Wallot 75). Howe used the paper as a vehicle for direct and indirect attacks on
the government, in part by printing satirical pieces (such as Thomas Chandler
Haliburton’s Sam Slick stories) and in part by publishing prose essays detailing
government corruption (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 327; Panofsky 352). His stance
in opposition to Halifax’s Council of Twelve landed him a libel charge in 1835; his
successful defense against the charge — claiming the “overwhelming public necessity”
of exposing corruption — helped to establish the freedom of the press in Nova Scotia
(qtd. in Parker, “Joseph Howe” 331).
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The immediate outcome of this political discontent across the colonies was the
appointment in 1838 of John George Lambton, Lord Durham, as Governor General of all
British North America (Francis, Jones and Smith 287). Durham’s task was to analyze the
political situation and to propose solutions to stabilize the colonies. For Lower Canada,
the appointment of Lord Durham was not the only consequence, however: the British
government suspended Lower Canada’s constitution, dissolving its parliament and
curtailing civil liberties (Francis, Jones and Smith 261). In both the Canadas, the rebels
and their leaders faced arrest or exile, but in Lower Canada, printers and publishers who
were sympathetic to the Patriote cause were equally targets. Ludger Duvernay, printer of
La Minerve, is but one example: he had to flee to the United States to escape arrest, and
the paper itself was banned mere days after Duvernay’s arrest warrant was issued. For the
rest of the 1830s, it remained dangerous to print — or to have printed — anything other
than outright condemnation of the rebels. One printer, Napoléon Aubin, was jailed for
publishing a single piece praising the Patriotes; printer Étienne Parent and publisher Jean-
Baptiste Fréchette were imprisoned for having expressed moderate support of the
Patriotes more than a year before the rebellions (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 328-
329). By implementing such harsh measures, the British imperial government sought to
control not only dissident elements but also French Canadian society at large. Lord
Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America, released in 1839, was even
more forthright about assimilating French Canadians into English Canadian society as a
way of controlling and eventually eliminating any threat French culture might pose in
Canada. Yet the Durham Report also offered hope for greater citizen involvement in the
governments of all the colonies, including Lower Canada: it recommended instituting
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responsible government, a system in which the executive council would be part of and
responsible to the elected legislature — and thereby to the people, rather than to the
governor alone (Francis, Jones and Smith 290).
Local contributions were also becoming more important in literary periodicals
such as The Literary Garland in Montreal (1838-1851) and The Amaranth in Saint John
(1841-1843). The Garland, printed by John Lovell and edited for most of its run by John
Gibson, was Canada’s first commercially successful literary magazine; it was also the
first to pay its contributors (Parker, “Lovell”). It supported the careers of a number of
authors who became quite important to the development of literature in British North
America, including Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill, John Richardson, Charles
Sangster, Rosanna Eleanora Leprohon, Elizabeth Mary MacLachlan, and Eliza Lanesford
Cushing (Gerson, “English Literary Culture” 395; Parker, “Lovell”). The Amaranth,
published by Robert Shives, also focused on local literary production: the majority of its
contributors were from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, although it also reprinted
material from British and American magazines. However, even in the pieces Shives
selected from foreign sources, he demonstrated his commitment to local literature: from
the London Sporting Review, for example, he reprinted the fictional stories of Saint John
lawyer Moses H. Perley (Rice). By the time The Amaranth appeared on the literary scene
of the Maritimes, Saint John had established itself as a rival centre of print culture to
Halifax. The emergence of the magazine signalled a shift in literary capital towards Saint
John throughout the 1840s, and although the magazine lasted only three years, it helped
to solidify the city’s place as a centre of literary production (Davies 382). Yet these
magazines’ focus on local literary production in no way restricted their field of vision to
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British North American topics; indeed, their local authors wrote on a wide array of
subject matter, including the medieval world.
The Literary Garland
The business acumen of John Lovell, the printer and publisher of The Literary
Garland, was instrumental in securing the magazine’s success and influence across
British North America. Lovell was born in Ireland in 1810, but when he was still a child,
his family immigrated to Lower Canada, near Montreal, in 1820. The family business
was farming, but since Lovell had no agricultural inclinations, he instead apprenticed
himself to the printer Edward Vernon Sparhawk, of the Canadian Times and Weekly
Literary and Political Recorder of Montreal. He spent his early career first in Montreal,
and then in Quebec City, returning to Montreal in 1832 as a foreman in the printing office
of the Sulpician newspaper L’Ami du peuple, de l’ordre et des lois (Parker, “Lovell”).
The views of L’ami du peuple towards Lower Canada’s social unrest — and particularly
towards the Patriotes — seem to have influenced Lovell’s own: the paper was ostensibly
moderate, opposing what it saw as Louis-Joseph Papineau’s extremism, but in essence
was still conservative and loyalist (Sylvain). When Lovell started his own printing office
in partnership with Donald McDonald, one of the first French newspapers they printed,
Léon Gosselin’s Le Populaire (1837-1838), held similar views. Although the paper tried
to be moderate in its approach to the political crisis, Papineau nevertheless ordered its
boycott; the paper also came under attack from conservative anglophone publications for
not taking a hard enough stance against the rebels. As Gérard Laurence has noted, “its
sympathies, therefore, did not follow ethnic lines” (“Gosselin”), nor, it seems, did
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Lovell’s. When the rebellions broke out in late 1837, he joined the Royal Montreal
Cavalry to fight against the rebels, even volunteering for dangerous missions; yet despite
his political allegiance, in his business practice he seems to have held little cultural bias
against the French. He was quite clearly comfortable working in French-language
environments and publishing in French; George L. Parker asserts that Lovell “supported
the flowering of French Canadian literature in the 1840s and early 1850s” through
publishing important works of literature and literary scholarship by French Canadians
(“Lovell”).
For The Literary Garland, which Lovell launched with his brother-in-law John
Gibson as editor in 1838, Lovell actively recruited writers such as Susanna Moodie for
their pro-British sentiments (Ballstadt, Hopkins and Peterman 78-79), but apart from such
recruitment, Lovell and Gibson seem to have taken a politically moderate approach,
including on issues of French cultures. Indeed, in the opening number, Gibson notes that
the magazine’s
pursuits are designed to interfere with no man’s opinions — to encroach
upon no man’s preserves — but rather to still the angry passions as they
rise, and shed upon the troubled waters the oil of peace . . . believing as we
do, that, whatever opinions, political or polemical, may be individually
held, there are none with “souls so dead,” that they will offer other than a
cordial welcome to a fellow labourer in the good cause of their country’s
weal; and we have no hesitation in contending, that with the true
prosperity of every country, its literature is indissolubly associated. (3)
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The magazine’s stated goal, then, is to be a moderating influence on society, to promote
the peaceful development of Canadian society through promoting its literature. On the
one hand, his desire to “still the angry passions” suggests a definite stance against the
(mainly French) rebels for disturbing the peace, yet he moderates this conservative
sentiment with his encouragement of patriotic debate amongst “fellow labourer[s].”
Although his use of the term “labourer” seems broad enough to include anyone who
works for civic betterment, it also necessarily invokes the working classes, the true
labourers, thus positioning the magazine as sympathetic to — or at least willing to
entertain — concerns that cross socioeconomic boundaries. Taking into account the date
of publication of this number of the Garland — December 1838, in the immediate
aftermath of the rebellions — Gibson’s statements seem remarkably even-handed.
Gibson also observes that “There are many who deem, that in a country yet in
infancy, with little of storied or traditionary lore, the sphere of our action must be
circumscribed, and that our efforts, like those of our predecessors, will end in failure. We
have no such fear” (4). Perhaps one of the reasons that Gibson and Lovell did not fear
this particular kind of failure is that the magazine did, in fact, supply British North
America with “traditionary lore” by publishing a wide variety of creative engagements
with medieval literature and history. Although the magazine displays quite a breadth of
interest in the medieval world — ranging from accounts of the Crusades, to Norse
mythology, to Italian political feuds — the country of single most historical interest to the
authors and editors of the Garland was France, surpassing even England. Nor was the
magazine’s interest in France restricted to the medieval era; like English Canadian print
culture in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, the authors of the late 1830s and
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1840s wrote of the modern French peoples as degenerate. In the “Sketches of Paris”
series, for example, the author E. compares the practice of animal fighting to the
supposedly animalistic nature of the French themselves; in another instalment, E.
describes how the festival of Mardi Gras has lost its former glory amidst the French
people’s fruitless struggle for liberty. Moreover, in “The Battle of the Plains of Abram,”
an author using the initials D.C. espouses the historically questionable argument that the
British — the “freest of the free” — fight for the freedom bequeathed to them by their
ancestors, whereas “France’s chivalry” is seemingly dead (105). The anonymous review
of X.B. Saintine’s Picciola makes a point of denouncing the immorality of most modern
light French literature before praising Picciola as an exception to the rule. The magazine
even published an anecdote about “La Fontaine,” the lyricist of the opera Astrée, who
thinks that the work is such “wretched! detestable! trash!” (390) that he looks down upon
the Parisians for embracing it. In “Acquaintance with the Great,” one A.R. recommends
that readers should generally avoid the writing of modern French patriots; the same
author comments further in “Intelligence Not the Test of Virtue” that the French lost their
moral principles in the rush towards the principles of enlightenment. Common among
these and many other depictions of the French in the Garland is the sense that the culture
of modern France had degenerated since the days of chivalry. Even though English
Canadian authors saw modern French culture as suspect at best, and degenerate at worst,
they could nevertheless appreciate medieval French cultural traditions; associating
French Canadians with medieval French culture thus became a way of establishing a
further rupture between French Canada and modern France.
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English Canadian depictions of French history changed dramatically after the
rebellions. Whereas the literary magazines and general print culture of the 1820s and
early 1830s denied the legitimacy of French cultures by silencing their histories,
magazines of the 1840s such as the Garland actively embraced the medieval French,
particularly for their contributions to the arts and to high European society. One
particularly interesting series on medieval French rebellions, though, breaks this mould of
discussing only artistic or cultural pastimes. Eliza Lanesford Cushing (a frequent
contributor in the magazine’s early years, and, after the death of John Gibson, its editor)
personally contributed several fictional works of both prose and poetry set in medieval
France; Cushing’s repeated return to the theme of rebellion in these pieces offers insight
into her shifting attitude toward rebel activities in contemporary Lower Canada — an
attitude which gradually attached more and more justification, even righteousness, to
rebellion by the French populace.
Eliza Lanesford Cushing on French Rebellions
Born in 1784 in Brighton, Massachusetts, Eliza Lanesford Cushing (née Foster)
belonged to a family of literary women. Her mother, Hannah Webster Foster, and her
sisters Harriet Vaughan Cheney and T.D. Foster, were all authors. The eldest sister,
Hannah White Barrett, contributed greatly to the benevolent societies of Montreal
(MacDonald, “Foster Sisters”). Barrett was the first to move to Montreal, arriving by
1826; her sisters followed in the early 1830s. There, the youngest three contributed as
authors and as editors to the local literary scene. All three wrote extensively for the
Literary Garland, which Cushing also edited from 1850-1851. Cushing and Cheney also
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co-published and edited The Snow Drop or Juvenile Magazine from 1847-1853. Susan
Mann Trofimenkoff argues that Cushing’s writing seems divorced from its historical and
political context, claiming, “Few of Mrs. Cushing’s pieces have any Canadian content or
interest; only one (published in Godey’s Magazine in Philadelphia) even hints that she
was aware of living in exciting times in Lower Canada.” However, I argue that Cushing
did indeed react to her political surrounds with her writing, but chose to present her
arguments through historical fiction rather than through direct commentary on
contemporary events. Even in the earliest days of her career, while she was still living in
the United States, she published two historical novels, Saratoga: A Tale of the Revolution
(1824) and Yorktown: An Historical Romance (1826). These novels about the American
Revolution cannot avoid being political; they certainly reveal Cushing’s pro-American
sentiments, but as Elisa Tamarkin describes, they also participate in a trend in which “by
the nineteenth century, the revolutionary moment is fungible enough to recall America’s
admiration of the British” (188, emphasis in original). In British North America in the
1830s, Cushing’s combination of Anglophilia and pride in the American rebels puts her
in a relatively unbiased position from which to comment on the Lower Canadian
rebellions. As in her early works, Cushing turned to historical fiction in The Literary
Garland to explore issues of loyalty and rebellion, particularly among the French.
In the May 1840 issue, under the initials “E.L.C.,” Cushing contributed a poem
entitled “Francis I, and the Chevalier Bayard,” which she indicates was written in
Montreal on February 25 of that year. By this time, Lord Durham, who had been sent by
the British Parliament to examine the causes of the rebellion and propose solutions to
stabilize the Canadas, had completed his Report on the Affairs of British North America
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and presented it in England. Although Durham made a number of recommendations, his
three main suggestions were to unite the Canadas, to give the colony more independence
of government, and to enact what came to be called responsible government – i.e., that
the governor’s executive council had to be comprised of elected members of the majority
party in the colonial Assembly (Francis, Jones and Smith 290). Cushing’s poem, though
set in France in 1515, grapples with some of the issues of colonial rule by questioning
what good government should look like.
The poem deals with the knighting of King Francis I of France (1494-1547) after
his victory at the Battle of Marignan. Young Francis, just turned 21, had been king for
less than a year, and this was his first major military action; in a way, this battle proved
his ability — and justified his right — to lead. Historically, after such a battle, it would be
appropriate to distribute honours to those who had fought with especial bravery, such as a
knighthood to those who had merited it, but in the poem Francis claims that his kingship
alone does not qualify him for this happy duty: before he can knight anyone else, he
himself must win that honour. Addressing his army, Francis says:
Ye well may claim, a guerdon meet, for valour such as yours,
But e’er my hand crown your deserts, I for the boon must sue
To him, ‘sans peur et sans reproche,’ Bayard the wise and true. (267)
Francis submits himself for the honour of knighthood to Pierre Terrail, the seigneur de
Bayard, who was generally esteemed as one of the noblest and kindest knights of the
time, a knight “without fear and beyond reproach.” In late medieval and early modern
France, the power of the king was conceptually absolute and God-given; the king was,
except for the pope, the ultimate authority. This mentality of the king’s ultimate
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superiority is borne out by Jacques de Mailles’s 16th century biography of the Chevalier
Bayard, an excerpt from which Cushing uses (via Sara Coleridge’s 1825 translation) as
the epigraph for her poem. The epigraph reads: “The king, desirous of doing him
[Bayard] signal honour, received the order of knighthood from his hands. Wherein he did
wisely; for by one more worthy it could not have been conferred on him” (267). In de
Mailles, the emphasis is on the king’s wisdom and generosity in honouring Bayard. The
opportunity to knight the king is just another honour that Francis distributes — albeit a
very high one. The flow of power is unidirectional from king to subject. However, in
Cushing’s account of this episode, the king’s authority seems to derive from — and be
responsible to — the “wise and true” people. In order for him to do his job, to exercise
his authority, his command must first be validated by the knight held in highest esteem by
his peers. This is akin to a form of responsible government: the king — much like a
governor in Canada, according to Durham’s proposal — seeks the counsel and approval
of Bayard, who is in a way elected by his peers as the best of their fraternity. However,
Cushing moderates this republican sentiment: Bayard initially demurs, replying that the
king is already “knight all knights above” (268). He refuses to act until the king
“charge[s]” him with a “royal mandate” (268) to invest him with the rank; only then does
he happily and faithfully spring into action. This pseudo-accountability to the people —
at least, to the elite among the people — may be a courteous formality, but if it is so, it is
one that endears the king to his people and indicates the strength of his character and the
depth of his subjects’ love.
In the poem, Cushing performs a diplomatic balancing act: of course responsible
government would affirm the authority of the governor (and by extension the British
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Parliament), but it would be the polite and chivalric thing to allow the people the
opportunity to express their allegiance directly. Cushing goes into raptures about the
flowering of chivalry in France throughout Francis’s reign; she also tells us that more
than any other pleasure, Francis “better loved to meet the foe ’neath the Oriflamme of
France” (268). The oriflamme, a banner with a golden sun and flames on a red
background, was the battle standard of the kings of France for much of the Middle Ages;
however, the last recorded instance of its use was at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415
(R.W. Barber 224), after which it was replaced by fleurs de lys on a white background.
The Battle of Marignan occurred a full century after the oriflamme fell into disuse, so it is
highly unlikely that Francis I ever fought anyone under that banner. Although it is not
hard to imagine that Cushing did not know the history of French battle standards and that
this is simply a mistake on her part, this “mistake” still accomplishes a purpose quite
appropriate to France at the end of the Middle Ages. It establishes her account in a deeper
medieval past, closer to the height of chivalry – something late medieval French culture
itself was quite keen on. As Barbara Rosenwein puts it, “the end of chivalry was
paradoxically the height of the chivalric fantasy” (319). It is at the end of the Middle
Ages that heraldry becomes popular; the various chivalric orders – the Order of the
Garter, the Order of the Golden Fleece – are established as the period draws to a close. In
this context, Cushing’s identifying chivalry as a governing principle in the age of Francis
I is quite appropriate. The more she emphasizes the chivalric nature of Francis’s reign,
the more she reveals her desire for chivalry in contemporary society, particularly in
contemporary government. In the fantasy of a chivalric society, only the best and most
virtuous would speak for the people; only the best among those would govern. Restricting
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membership on the Executive Council to those in the Assembly would ideally yield
exactly the same results as letting the governor choose whomever he wished, because
merit would be conspicuous, easily ranked, and rewarded appropriately. Were Canada a
chivalric society such as Cushing’s fantasy of the society of Francis I, allowing Canada
more self-government and responsible government would be a formality, but a courteous
one — and courtesy is the heart of chivalry.
In contrast to this first portrayal of Francis I stands one that Cushing published
two years later in 1842, a work of fiction called “Bourbon: An Historical Tale.” This
piece is also set early in the reign of Francis I, but it provides a very different portrayal of
the king and court. This story centers on the Duke of Bourbon, a noble of Francis’s court
who has risen to prominence in part through his natural abilities and in part through the
intervention of the king’s mother, who is madly in love with him. Her love, however, is
unreciprocated, and she uses all of her power to exact revenge by poisoning the king’s
relationship with Bourbon. Until his mother’s words worm their way into his heart, King
Francis is poised on the brink of greatness:
jealous of his [King Francis’s] glory and renown, of his splendid
conquests, and rapidly increasing power, all Europe had banded in a
general confederacy against him; but, undaunted, and self-confident, he
was preparing to defy them, when the startling fact was forced upon him,
that in the person of his high constable and sword-bearer [Bourbon], he
must recognize a domestic foe, whose enmity was more to be dreaded than
the united machinations of Emperor and Pope. (79)
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With this depiction of Francis, Cushing establishes a precedent in the story for a smaller
power standing up to the unjust acts of a larger one. We are clearly meant at this point to
sympathize with the “undaunted and self-confident” Francis, who is merely defending
himself against the bullying of jealous Europe. (One wonders, though, how this fictional
Francis achieved his splendid conquests if not at the expense of the other European
nations; perhaps their “united machinations” are not unprovoked.) In the story, Francis’s
battles against more powerful forces are clearly well justified; however, at the same time
as Cushing establishes this dynamic of the plucky little guy standing up for his rights, she
also turns the tables and makes Francis the unjust persecutor of his sword-bearer, the
Duke of Bourbon. Bourbon has shown no disloyalty to the king, and to Francis’s credit,
he initially rebuffs all such suggestions, but his mother’s continued assault on Bourbon’s
honour eventually insinuates itself into the king’s mind, and he begins to suspect
Bourbon of treason. He unfairly accuses the duke and seizes his lands, ironically driving
Bourbon to commit the crimes of which he was first accused: “Driven to desperation by a
long series of injuries, and at that moment smarting beneath that last cruel act of tyranny,
which stripped him of fortune and estates, the duke rushed to open revolt, not only to
gratify his revenge, which was a virtue of the age, but as the only alternative which
remained to him from disgrace and want” (87-88). As with Francis’s reaction to the
European powers, Bourbon’s revolt is not only understandable but also justified and even
honourable. Even though Cushing tells us that avenging one’s honour “was a virtue of the
age,” in order to make Bourbon’s actions more palatable to modern sensibilities, she casts
his decision as the only one available to him that would not be utterly disgraceful. Even
though both Francis and Bourbon are justified in defending themselves, the situation does
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not work out well for either one of them. Francis loses a key advisor and a strong ally
who could have helped him further his international ambitions; Bourbon flees into exile,
and although he does win some glory as a mercenary, he dies alone after learning that his
love has been forced to marry someone else.
This shift in Cushing’s characterization of Francis I seems remarkable given that
the two accounts were published less than two years apart. No longer the ideal chivalric
king, extending every courtesy to his knights, deriving his authority from them and
responsible to them in turn, Francis is instead fallible, despite his best intentions for his
kingdom and his subjects. During these two years, only one of Durham’s
recommendations had been implemented, that of uniting the Canadas. Lower Canada
(now Canada East) got the worse part of the bargain: despite its having a significantly
higher population than Upper Canada (670 000 to 480 000) (Francis, Jones and Smith
331), the two regions received equal representation of 42 seats each in the new Assembly.
To further the indignity, Lower Canada was relatively solvent before unification, whereas
Upper Canada had an unsustainable level of debt, which the two regions now had to
share. The issues of self-government and responsible government were not even being
debated in the British Parliament at this time. The chivalric fantasy made possible by the
Durham report had been betrayed, perhaps despite Britain’s best intentions towards
Lower Canada’s Anglophone population. Britain’s intentions for Lower Canada’s French
population, on the other hand, were not so benign, since one of the stated goals of the
Durham report was to assimilate the French and eradicate French culture in the colony.
As time progresses, Cushing becomes even more sympathetic to rebel causes: in
“The Knight of Navarre: A Tale of the Fourteenth Century,” published in March of 1843,
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rebellion is not merely justifiable but morally righteous. The French have captured the
territory of Evreaux (Évreux), which lies in Normandy although it belongs to the
Kingdom of Navarre (primarily on the French/Spanish border); the French have also
imprisoned the Navarrois king despite having sworn not to. The rebellion in this story
assumes both a political and a religious element: the French are “invaders” and
“oppressors” (98) in the Navarrois territory, and one of the knights even profanes the
local church by spilling the holy wine and killing the priest. It is worth noting, too, that
the priest has just blessed the wine, and thus the knight spills the blood of Christ as well
as the blood of the priest. The sacrilege is against an emphatically Catholic church. It is
thus the moral and spiritual duty of the Navarrois to retake the castle and overthrow their
oppressors, to whom they have been forced to swear oaths of loyalty. One possible
reading of this story is as an allegory of French Canadian oppression at the hands of the
English. However, I argue that the nuances of the story also comment on two of the ways
that French chivalric tradition could develop, one representing the path of Revolutionary
France, and the other, that of modern French Canada. The Navarrois in Evreaux, much
like French Canadians in Lower Canada, are an isolated colony; in their isolation, they
have maintained the spiritual and chivalric traditions of their ancestors. On the other
hand, the French knights are like Napoleon’s army: godless, imperial aggressors who
have given up both the honour and the faith required by the chivalric code. The rebellion
in the story is in order to restore civil liberty under the traditional spirit of chivalry, not to
break from the past by renouncing tradition.
Over the course of these three stories, we see the progress of Cushing’s political
sympathies: she begins by wishing for an idealized, chivalric version of responsible
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government, but at least initially her hopes fail to materialize and Lower Canada is left
with less economic and political power than before the union. Let down by the British
Parliament, Cushing next concedes in “Bourbon” that rebellion can be justified, even if it
often ends in sorrow. Finally, with “The Knight of Navarre” in 1843, Cushing articulates
a context in which rebellion is necessary to resist cultural hegemony. The growing divide
between the governor and the Assembly in the Canadas may have inspired Cushing’s
dramatic endorsement of civil liberties in this last story. In 1842, governor Charles Bagot
did abide by the spirit of responsible government and ask the elected politicians Louis-
Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin to be part of his Executive Council, but in
1843, the new governor Charles Metcalfe refused to have anything to do with the French
politician, Lafontaine. Despite these disappointments, and the initial failure of the
rebellions to achieve responsible government, the work of authors like Cushing in
keeping the discourses of reform alive in the popular consciousness eventually paid off:
the Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia would all achieve responsible
government a few years later, in 1848.
Cushing was not the Garland’s only author to take an interest in French
medievalism. Indeed, Gibson and Lovell printed quite a few other works relating to
French history that contributed to their goal of establishing in British North America a
culture that was, in the words of Mary Lu MacDonald, “moral and genteel — Christian
and middle class” (“Foster Sisters”). Once the rebellions were so thoroughly (and
brutally) quashed, the French in the Canadas — like the French in Europe — posed little
real military threat to established British power; not having broken from Christian
tradition, though, the French Canadians also posed somewhat less of a religious threat
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than did the newly secularized nation of France. Where both the French and the French
Canadians were safe, in the eyes of mainly Protestant English Canadian authors, was in
the medieval past, before Catholicism and Protestantism parted ways. After the French-
English divide forced its way to the forefront of public discourse, Protestant anglophone
authors began to write about French history as a way of controlling the narrative of
emerging Canadian society, as a way of locating modern French Canadians (made
“Other” by their Roman Catholicism) within the safe space of a unified Christian past.
The Literary Garland on the Civility of the Medieval French
Although the rebellions were over by the time Gibson and Lovell launched The
Garland, they did print material written in the midst of the turmoil revealing English
Canadian anxieties about the French threat. Susanna Moodie, one of their most
patriotically British authors, submitted to the magazine a poem dated January 2, 1838.
This poem, entitled “The Banner of England. A Loyal Song,” exhorts her fellow citizens
to defend “the standard of the free” (35) and not to let “A rebel band advance” (34).
Moodie takes some liberties with the exact nature of England’s battle standards in order
to claim a longer symbolic history for the current British flag, one which would include
its use during medieval conflicts with the French. Referring to the deeds of future King
Edward III of England (1312-1377) and his descendants in the Hundred Years’ War
against France, she urges her modern compatriots to honour the example of “Brave
Edward and his gallant sons, / [Who] Beneath its shadow bled” (9-10). Just as the English
banner was, during the Hundred Years’ War, “O’er Gallia’s hosts victorious, / [and] It
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tam’d their pride of yore” (21-22), Moodie calls upon it now to tame the French rebels
again.
Yet apart from Moodie’s piece written during the rebellions, the magazine is quite
open to French medievalism, particularly in the less controversial realm of its cultural
history rather than international military conflicts. In an excerpt entitled “Duelling
Anecdotes,”42 the author, John Gideon Millingen, credits France with introducing to
England the “honorable pastime” of duelling, “the field of single combat par excellence”
(423). More interestingly, it is not just the practice itself he attributes to the French, but
also the codes of honour that go along with it. He argues, “If we are indebted to our
neighbors for this practice, it is also to them we owe the various codes and regulations
drawn out to equalise, as far as possible, the chances of victory, and to prevent any unfair
advantage being obtained to the opposite party” (423). The regulations as well as their
underlying spirit have their origins in medieval French tradition; therefore, according to
Millingen, contemporary English concepts of fairness in resolving gentlemen’s disputes
trace their roots back to a chivalric spirit of fair combat developed in medieval France.
However, Millingen’s focus is not entirely on the indebtedness of English culture
to French, but rather on the “most curious” (423) elements of these French traditions.
Before discussing contemporary anecdotes about duelling, he turns to the historian Pierre
de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (c. 1540-1614) for some of the odder customs.
These “curious” practices include banning “infidel[s]” from participating in any fashion
or even witnessing the duel, as well as searching the combatants to make sure they
42 These “anecdotes” come from Volume 1 of J.G. Millingen’s The History of Duelling: including, narratives of the most remarkable personal encounters that have taken place from the earliest period to the present time, originally published in London in 1841.
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possess no “drugs, witchcraft, or charms about them” (423). Holy relics are permitted,
“yet it is not clearly decided what is to be done when both parties have not these relics, as
no advantage should be allowed to one combatant more than to another” (423).
Millingen’s discussion of the strange customs of medieval French duellists emphasizes
both their quaintness and their superstitious (i.e. Roman Catholic) nature, thereby
simultaneously discrediting them and rendering them safely amusing. (The Church of
England does not share with the Roman Catholic Church a belief in the efficacy of
relics.) The quaintness of these French traditions is an essential point: they may be
amusing and instructive, but are of purely historical interest to contemporary British
society. In the same way, much of English Canadian literary culture strove to depict not
only the traditions of French Canadian communities but also the people themselves as
relics of a bygone era. Magazines such as The Literary Garland turned increasingly to
francophone cultures as sources of fable and fancy; this rooting of British North
America’s French cultures in the past effectively denied their validity in the present.
Other articles in the Garland continue this theme of western civilization being
indebted — but not overly so — to the cultural accomplishments of medieval France. For
example, T.D. Foster wrote for the magazine a series of “Sketches of the Italian Poets,” a
biographical series covering Petrarch (1304-1374), Boccacio [Boccaccio]43 (1313-1375)
and Metastasio (1698-1782). In her accounts of both of the late medieval/early
renaissance poets, Foster both emphasizes and qualifies their French connections. Foster
devotes a significant portion — almost a page out of seven — of her biography of
Boccacio to an anecdote describing how the poet’s father brought him as an infant from
43 Hereafter I use “Boccaccio” to designate the historical person, and Foster’s spelling of “Boccacio” for her characterization of him.
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France to Italy after the tragic death of his French mother (555). In this, Foster takes her
cue from Boccaccio himself, who promoted the idea that his mother was a noble Parisian;
there does not, however, seem to be any evidence other than Boccaccio’s own stories
(and the acceptance of his word by a contemporary biographer) to support such a claim
(Papio). Thus on the one hand, Foster takes pains to establish Boccacio’s French lineage,
even beyond what the historical record warrants; on the other hand, though, she
establishes his lineage through an anecdote of his leaving France (and any maternal
French relatives) behind. Foster does not present this departure as an abjuration of his
French heritage; indeed, her construction of his character seems to belong more to the
“gay metropolis of fashion” (as she refers to modern Paris) than to “the time-hallowed
sanctuary of Rome” (555). Nevertheless, in Foster’s story, the adult Boccacio’s ties to
France all lie on a genealogical or spiritual level; any French influence on him is part of
his heritage, his past, and not part of the political reality of his present.
Foster’s story of Petrarch presents an interesting case for comparison, because
Petrarch spent much of his life — and many of his most poetically productive years — in
Avignon and Vaucluse, papal enclaves in the south of France. Before naming Petrarch in
her story proper (although he is named in the title and epigraph), Foster introduces him to
us as “the poet of Vanclusa” (449).44 This sobriquet is perhaps unusual for someone who
(as she acknowledges) descended from a noble Florentine family, wrote in Latin and
Italian, and was crowned the first poet laureate of Rome. Foster explains in the article
how one of the most famous Italian poets came to be so intimately connected with a
44 From the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, the modern department of Vaucluse was known as the Comtat Venaissin; in the Middle Ages, the name Vauclusa would have referred specifically to a valley and village famous for its spring within the Comtat.
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region in southeastern France: Petrarch’s father, having been exiled from Florence for
political reasons, brought the family to the Papal seat of Avignon when Petrarch was a
small child. While on a short break from his studies, Petrarch fell in love with the nearby
rural valley of Vanclusa, and made it his home for much of his adult life. On one level,
then, Foster seems to be granting credit to the French region that welcomed Petrarch and
his family, and inspired his poetry to such a degree that, Foster argues, “his most striking
images are drawn from the varied scenery around the fountain of Vanclusa” (452). Yet
again, Foster lessens the debt owed by Petrarch to his upbringing in Avignon and the
surrounding areas: she describes the atmosphere at his rural retreat one night as “a lovely
Italian evening” (449). It is unclear whether she means that the weather that particular
night was more like an evening somewhere in Italy than in southeast France, or whether
she considers Avignon and the region of Vanclusa to have been Italian because they were
technically papal fiefdoms, and thus did not belong to the Kingdom of France (or to any
of the other Frankish kingdoms which would eventually merge with France) (O’Malley
140). The number of officials of the Roman Catholic Church residing in Avignon
throughout the fourteenth century would have given the city quite the cosmopolitan
makeup and significantly increased the Italian presence in the city, but the local language
and culture — particularly in the more rural areas, such as Vaucluse — was still
Provençal. By acknowledging Vanclusa as the inspiration for some of Petrarch’s best
poetry, Foster again allows for French cultural influence, but by claiming the region as
Italian, she also presents the local inhabitants as a colonized people whose French
heritage does nothing to change their political present.
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Modern and Medieval French Crusaders in the Works of John Breakenridge
Another author and poet of the 1840s took a slightly different approach to this
phenomenon of distancing French cultural heritage from modern francophone peoples.
John Breakenridge, who wrote for the Garland under the pseudonym of Claud Halcro
(the name of a bard in Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate), also published a separate volume of
poetry with the Kingston shop of John Rowlands in 1846. In this independent volume,
The Crusades, and Other Poems, Breakenridge wholeheartedly embraces the bravery and
Christianity of a number of French Crusaders in the Holy Land; yet, he condemns any
French military action taking place in Europe — whether in the Middle Ages, or in
modern times. Breakenridge’s appreciation for the medieval French extends to their
artistic and cultural developments (such as the entwined traditions of chivalry and of the
wandering troubadour), but he sees the British — and emphatically not the French — as
the modern inheritors of these cultural accomplishments. In Breakenridge’s view, the
British have built upon the cultural foundations of the past, whereas the French have lost
their cultural and spiritual path, misapplying lessons from their history and thus leaving
their modern society broken.
Relatively little has been recorded in any comprehensive fashion about the life of
John Breakenridge. He was born in Niagara (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) in 1820 (Rand
388), possibly to John and Ann Breakenridge. The elder John Breakenridge was a
barrister in Niagara, and the younger joined the same profession, studying first at Upper
Canada College (Rand 388) before entering Osgoode Hall, Upper Canada’s only law
school at the time, in 1837 (“Breakenridge”). Towards the end of his studies, in 1841, he
served in Belleville as Deputy Clerk of the Peace for Victoria District (Journals of the
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Legislative Assembly, Appendices M and N). After his clerkship, he was called to the bar
in 1842 (“Breakenridge”). During his legal studies, he also wrote poetry: his poem “The
Crusaders’ Hymn Before Jerusalem” appeared in February 1840 in John Strachan’s
Cobourg newspaper, The Church, and subsequently garnered attention on both sides of
the Atlantic. In the UK, the London magazine The Churchman: A Magazine in Defence
of the Church and Constitution reprinted the poem in June 1840. Secular publications
likewise took notice of the new poet: The New York Albion also printed the “Hymn,” and
The Literary Garland took it from the Albion in 1846 (“Our Table” 288). It is odd,
though, that the Garland copied the poem from the Albion: Breakenridge had already
published two of his “Claud Halcro” poems with the Garland, and a third would be
published within two months of the appearance of the “Hymn.” Moreover, Breakenridge
had just released The Crusades, and Other Poems, which the Garland was able to review
the next month. Perhaps Gibson’s unwillingness to wait to review the entire volume
stemmed from his enthusiasm for Breakenridge’s poetry and his desire to share it with the
Garland’s readers as soon as possible. In fact, Gibson waxed enthusiastic about
Breakenridge’s newly released volume before he had even had a chance to read it: “We
have not yet seen it, but we are certain, from what we have seen of Mr. Breckanridge’s
[sic] writings, that it will adorn the literature of this Continent, and, we would fain hope,
win for the author a ‘European reputation’” (“Our Table” 288). Breakenridge’s career
was, however, cut short. After a period living in Kingston (at least during 1846-1847), by
1851 he had moved back to Belleville and established a practice there; unfortunately,
however, he died not long thereafter, in 1854, at the age of only 34 (Rand 388).
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Breakenridge’s The Crusades, and Other Poems covers a much broader range of
time periods and topics than its title might suggest. Breakenridge divided it into four
parts, the first of which is indeed a series of poems about the Crusades; the second
versifies a variety of Old Testament biblical stories; the third is a miscellany on modern
topics (including a poem about Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution, and
another, “Canada,” for which he won Upper Canada College’s poetry prize); the fourth is
a fictional long poem about northeastern African nobles sold into slavery. This diverse
collection juxtaposes Breakenridge’s characterization of the medieval French at the time
of the Crusades with that of the modern French at the time of the Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars. As George Longmore did two decades earlier, Breakenridge presents a
disconnection between the modern Revolutionary French and their medieval ancestors,
but unlike Longmore, Breakenridge does not present this disconnection as a gap in their
history, but rather as a dysfunctional relationship between the nation’s heritage and the
modern needs of its populace. Breakenridge draws a picture of a nation whose leaders are
so trapped in its past that it cannot have a stable and functioning present.
Even among the leaders of the First Crusade, the French knights stand out in
Breakenridge’s narratives for their particular bravery and morality. In the first poem in
the collection, “The Battle of Dorylæum” (1097), the Crusaders’ army under the
command of Lord Boemond [Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch and Taranto] meets
“thousands on thousands” (12) of Turks in battle. Although initially the Crusaders’ hearts
“know no fear” (12), the sheer size of the enemy force eventually leaves them “worn and
wearied” (15), until “gallant Normandy” [Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy] rallies
their spirits, calling to his fellow knights:
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“Rally! rally! brave Knights, charge again — wheel about!
O! Boemond, fly not — Apulia’s afar:
Turn, for honor or death, turn again to the war!
Turn Tancred! Otranto lies far from your ken;
Whither fly you? O, charge, gallant Tancred, again!
Bring hither my banner — ‘God wills it!’ I cry,
’Tis better to fall, than dishonoured to fly!”
Shouting Normandy! Normandy! fiercely he rides;
And Tancred returning, the glory divides. (16-17)
The nationalities of the knights in question are all emphasized: Normandy, the only one
not to lose faith, is identified exclusively by his northern French duchy, and the other two
leaders are tied to their southern Italian roots. Normandy reminds Boemond, the Prince of
Taranto, that his home of Apulia [Puglia, in southern Italy] is far away, as is Tancred’s
Otranto (a city in Puglia). It is partially the threat of dishonour, but also the noble
example of Normandy that brings back to the battle those in the midst of retreat. The cry
around which they rally is even “Normandy,” a reminder of that knight’s bravery — and
by extension that of his people — in sustaining the rest. Soon after Normandy
reinvigorates the Crusading army, even if only for an honourable death, reinforcements
arrive: “To the rescue De Bouillon bears gallantly down, / and the Turks to the four
winds of Heaven are strown” (17). Godfrey De Bouillon, another Frankish knight, thus
saves the Crusading army from certain defeat.
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It is, however, more than simple good fortune that he and the Crusaders under his
command arrive in time to save the day; it is a combination of divine providence that
seems to shine particularly strongly on Godfrey, and his nearly-mythical knightly
prowess. Breakenridge devotes the longest and most exalting description of all of the
Crusaders to Godfrey two poems later, in “The Siege of Antioch.” Breakenridge
introduces Godfrey first and foremost among the knights:
Godfrey de Bouillon first behold,
In panoply of burnished steel;
Deftly he doth the saddle hold,
Nor may his weight the war-horse feel:
In council calm, in action fierce,
And as Numidian lion bold,
He can in war the vanguard pierce,
In council, wisdom’s plans unfold.45 (20-21)
Godfrey is such an accomplished equestrian that he floats above his horse; he is both the
sagest of strategists and the fiercest of field commanders and warriors. Moreover, his
motivation to go on Crusade is properly religious: it is his desire to protect pilgrims “who
to the Holy Shrine / . . . Went to implore the aid divine” from the “deeds that made the
blood run cold, / Wrought by the bearded Moslem’s power” (21). Breakenridge’s
Godfrey is the ideal Crusader: noble, pious, brave, strong and wise.
For Breakenridge, the French are an integral part of the mythic qualities of his
stories of the Crusaders. Yet he does not mythicize only the French Crusaders; indeed, he
45 Breakenridge continues his encomium of Godfrey for another sixteen lines.
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extends this impulse to the rest of the Crusading army by ascribing French elements to
the group as a whole, even beyond what the historical record justifies. In his account of
“The Battle of Dorylæum,” whose historical counterpart took place in 1097,
Breakenridge inserts the Knights Templar and their battle cry: “Beau-seant! Beau-seant!
En avant, brave Knights! / Where the foemen are thickest, the bold Templar fights” (15).
The Knights Templar were, in fact, established in the aftermath of the First Crusade, after
Jerusalem had been conquered, but before the rest of the Levant was safe for Christian
pilgrims to travel to other holy sites (M. Barber, New Knighthood 2-8). Even though they
would not have been at the Battle of Dorylæum, they would nevertheless constitute for
Breakenridge’s audience a recognizable (and romanticized) Crusading monastic order.
The Templars were not exclusively French, but their motto was, and Breakenridge further
emphasizes their Frenchness (and thus the Frenchness of the bravest knights in the thick
of the battle) by cheering them onward in French. For Breakenridge, the French — more
than any other people — are part of the myth of chivalric heroism, and the myth part of
the French: he removes the French Crusaders from the realm of history and integrates
them into the realm of fantasy.
Once Breakenridge ascribes this quasi-fantastic status to the French, their story
becomes easier to control. He is able to render the mythic elements of French Crusading
history a part of British heritage by rendering those who create the myth — the
troubadours — loyal to the English crown. In “The Troubadour to the Captive Richard
Cœur de Lion,” Breakenridge writes of the loyalty shown by a French troubadour to
England’s King Richard I during the monarch’s captivity by the Duke of Austria. In his
notes, Breakenridge describes the legendary “story of Blondell, or Blundell, discovering
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the dungeon of the royal captive, Cœur de Lion, by traversing Germany, and singing
beneath the walls of every fortress an air well known to his royal master; till at length the
King from his dungeon answered it, and thus his prison was known” (62). Breakenridge’s
Blondell is based on Blondel de Nesle (fl. 12th C), a troubadour from northern France.
Although the troubadour himself was real (and quite artistically productive), the legend
of his finding Richard in the dungeon is likely apocryphal, in part because Richard’s
captors made no secret of his location. It is somewhat strange that a French troubadour
should not only display such unusual devotion to Richard, but also refer to him as “my
King” (44); although Richard controlled extensive lands in France, Nesle was not among
his territories. Yet, the legend of Blondell serves the purpose of subjugating French
artistic creation to the English crown, thereby laying claim not only to French artistic
heritage for Britain, but also to British rights to rule over French subjects (who should be
as loyal as Blondell).
In Breakenridge’s version, Blondell completely abjures any political ties he might
have to France. In contrast to the Holy Land narratives, in which French knights perform
fantastic deeds of Christian chivalry, the story of Richard’s captivity pits French political
interests immediately against English ones, a contest that would not be mythic but rather
all too real for Canadians in the 1840s. In such a contest for Breakenridge, British
political priorities must come first. Quite interestingly, Blondell exhorts England to
punish “the traitor-king, Philip of France” (45) for Richard’s unjust captivity, even
though Philip was not directly responsible for imprisoning Richard. He certainly made
the most of Richard’s captivity, however, by attempting to seize the English king’s
French territories while they were thus vulnerable (“Richard I”). Duke Leopold of
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Austria and Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI were his immediate jailers, yet Breakenridge
does not have Blondell call for vengeance against Austria or the Holy Roman Empire.
Instead, Blondell’s vision of retribution against Austria is one tinged with sorrow and
even sympathy, imagining a future time when another French traitor-king will take what
is not his:
On my soul there comes rushing a foresight of woe,
And before me long years of the dark future flow.
The palace of Austria, proud Shoenbrunn,
The Gaul hath invaded, the conqueror won.
Long years have gone by, but the Heavens are just,
And Austria’s hopes trodden down in the dust. (46)
The future invading Gaul is presumably Napoleon, who commandeered Vienna’s
Schönbrunn Palace after Napoleon’s troops captured Vienna in 1805 (Iby). Breakenridge
casts Vienna’s fall to Napoleon as one immoral act punishing another; this second wrong
requires yet another avenger finally to punish the French. Whereas the British lineage
inherits the avenging spirit of the Crusaders, Napoleon is heir to Philip’s treacherous
impulses.
In Breakenridge’s modern poem, “Napoleon Buonaparte, and the French
Revolution,” the French nobles have likewise inherited the wrong elements of medieval
French culture. The poem opens with a scene that might be taking place at any period of
French history from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century:
Peace o’er the nations reigns!
Gay revel in the monarch’s hall —
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Sweet music’s soul-entrancing strains!
Licentiousness, that bodes his fall,
Runs riot in the noble’s veins!
Cares not the feudal Lord
For all his vulgar horde
Of starving tenantry. (101)
The scene is a burlesque interpretation of the chivalric courts of legend. The nation is at
peace only because the peasants have not yet revolted; a modern troubadour plays “soul-
entrancing” music to a noble who seems not to have much of a soul; the “feudal Lord”
remembers only his tenants’ obligations to him, and forgets his to them. Although the
trappings of the medieval world are at play, the country has lost its true connection to the
spirit of its chivalric past. France’s modern feudal rulers hold onto the structure of their
medieval world without understanding how to adapt it to modern needs; moreover, the
sinfulness of Breakenridge’s French noble indicates that in the author’s mind, France had
turned its back on true religion even before the official institution of state atheism under
the Republic. Thus, in Breakenridge’s text, the relationship between the modern French
and their medieval past is fundamentally broken.
Yet, to Breakenridge, the peasantry is no better: in their uprising, “A godless
creed usurps the place / Of Faith — Religion wanes, and dies!” (102). Their revolt
against the monarchy — however out of touch the nobles are with modern needs — is, to
Breakenridge, an assault against God, and their battle cry a perversion of Christian
teaching:
Death to the Bourbon King!
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Woe! Principalities and powers!
The giant strength of numbers ours —
Your funeral dirge we sing! (102)
Just as the court scene was a parody of chivalric courts, the revolutionaries’ credo is a
distortion of Biblical verse: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places” (King James Version, Eph. 6.12). For the peasants,
the oppressive principalities and powers are not abstract spiritual agents, but quite real
and immediate figures of authority. Although the revolutionaries do indeed wrestle
against spiritual wickedness in high places, they have abandoned the notion that the strife
is “not against flesh and blood.” Trapped in feudal drudgery, the revolutionaries have
forgotten the spiritual lessons of their medieval past as much as their oppressors have.
Unlike Breakenridge’s Godfrey De Bouillon, who asserts that his “steel-capped lance” is
a Christian “staff” (“Siege of Antioch” 21), the modern revolutionaries place their “Pikes
at the palace gate” to declare that “There is no God!” (102)
Napoleon is, of course, one of the worst offenders in using inappropriate means to
reclaim the country’s medieval glory. The essence of French chivalry was, in
Breakenridge’s earlier poems in the creation, the innate humanity of the knights,
something that Napoleon and his contemporaries sorely lack. Although Breakenridge’s
Crusaders are certainly responsible for killing a vast number of Turks, their French
leaders in particular show mercy and kindness to the most vulnerable members of their
enemies’ society. Breakenridge’s final poem about the Crusades tells the story of
Godfrey’s brother Baldwin of Boulogne, who became the first king of Jerusalem
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(although the second ruler, after Godfrey), coming across a lone, pregnant Arab woman
in the desert. One of the knights steps forward to kill her, but Baldwin saves her not only
from the cruel knight but also from the dangers of giving birth unaided in the desert. He
covers her gently with his own cloak “To shelter her from shameless gaze, / While she
her babe did bear” (53); moreover, he leaves “his Esquires three, / With camels and
attendants there, / To help, if help might be” (54). Baldwin’s generosity and kindness
even in times of war puts Napoleon’s vicious inhumanity in stark relief. Breakenridge
writes of the massacre in the aftermath of Napoleon’s capture of the Syrian city of Jaffa,
exhorting his muse:
while the burning tear
Of pity starts for those who fell
In one red murder, born of fear
Invoke the very fiends of hell
To curse the damning deed!
Three thousand captives feed
Th’uncovered fosse with dead! (109)
Breakenridge is (justifiably) outraged by Napoleon’s slaughter of thousands of civilians
and prisoners of war. Even though Breakenridge has no problem with Christian knights
killing Muslim combatants on the field of battle, where there is some romantic glory to be
won, he cannot condone Napoleon’s ruthless and anti-chivalric massacre of people who
have already surrendered. Although Napoleon follows in the physical footsteps of the
Crusaders, reaching “The blood-stained walls of Acre! / . . . [Where] Richard stormed a
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Paynim band, the Holy Cross upon his breast” (110), his march on the Holy Land is again
presented as a perversion of medieval history.
Napoleon reaches out in vain to reclaim the glory of France under Charlemagne,
but Breakenridge presents his martial victories as morally empty because they lack the
(Christian) spirit of medieval chivalry. For Napoleon, and for France, the ambition for
“The Crown of Charlemagne!” is a “dream replete with woe!” (118). The abuses of the
past by the modern French render hollow the legacy of even Charlemagne for them: like
all of the French chivalric traditions that Breakenridge presents in the poem, it has no
more substance than a dream. Yet by no means does Breakenridge see historical tradition
and glory as things unattainable by modern nations: indeed, England draws upon the
strength of its “glorious days” under “England’s noblest virgin Queen” [Elizabeth I,
1553-1603] (116) in order to beat back Napoleon. For Breakenridge, England not only
remembers its past but also knows how to apply its legacy in the modern world; France,
on the other hand, may remember its chivalric glory but it has forgotten the essential
elements that made it great. These elements that to Breakenridge are the essence of
French chivalry — bravery, humanity, artistry, and Christian faith — no longer exist in
his depiction of France; he creates a cultural rupture between France’s medieval and
modern periods. Breakenridge’s England, on the other hand, takes full advantage of not
only its own “glorious days” but also those of France: his England is the true heir to the
moral and spiritual legacy of French chivalry.
Assimilation Narratives in Robert Shives’ The Amaranth
Like Breakenridge’s The Crusades, and Other Poems and Montreal’s Literary
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Garland, Saint John’s Amaranth also contributed to the burgeoning trend of French
medievalism in British North America. Like its Upper and Lower Canadian counterparts,
The Amaranth treated French history and culture with a combination of enthusiasm and
wariness; yet the relationship between the French and English in New Brunswick in the
late 1830s and early 1840s was significantly different from that experienced by the
Canadas. As with the other colonies of British North America, New Brunswick in the late
1830s and 1840s underwent stirrings towards responsible government; there, however,
the two decades were not quite as fraught in terms of ethnic and political tensions as they
were in the Canadas. Francis, Jones and Smith claim that the political atmosphere in New
Brunswick was more stable than in the other colonies because
A relatively homogeneous group of Loyalists and their descendants had
controlled the colony until the 1830s. Moreover, since Anglicans initially
made up a near majority of the population, the position of the Church of
England as the established church caused less resentment among New
Brunswick’s English-speaking population than it did elsewhere. (369)
The French-speaking Acadians comprised a not-insignificant minority, approximately 15
percent of the population in the middle of the century. They were concentrated in the
colony’s northeast, far from the centre of power in Saint John, but they certainly did not
live in isolation: in fact, their communities frequently assimilated Irish, Scottish, English
and even Québecois/e immigrants (Francis, Jones and Smith 365-366). (In Nova Scotia
and Prince Edward Island, by contrast, the Acadian returnees mainly assimilated into
anglophone communities.)
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Yet despite the assimilation of anglophones by these francophone communities in
New Brunswick, and the Acadians’ loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, the English
literary scene in Saint John in the 1840s seemed not to perceive French cultures as
enough of a threat to silence their history in English-language publications, as had
happened across British North America in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century.
Indeed, The Amaranth engaged extensively with medieval French history. Like many of
the works published in the Canadas such as the variety of articles in The Literary
Garland and John Breakenridge’s Crusades, The Amaranth treated the medieval French
with somewhat ambivalent feelings; unlike the Canadian publications, however, The
Amaranth did not depict French culture as entirely rooted in the past.46 Although the
Maritimes were certainly affected by the rebellions in the Canadas, the tensions between
francophone and anglophone communities were of a different nature: at least according to
the anglophone authors, the conflict in the Maritimes was more sociological than
economic. To the anglophone contributors to The Amaranth, francophone communities
still posed a threat unless and until they could be assimilated into British North American
culture. In The Amaranth, representations of French medievalism are split along gendered
lines: medieval French noblewomen who marry into English families — and bring with
them French cultural pursuits — are safe, but medieval French men are far more
dangerous, posing the potential to corrupt and assimilate English society.
Robert Shives, the publisher of The Amaranth, was born in Aberdeen in Scotland
around 1815, though his immediate heritage was not Scottish but rather British North
46 The Amaranth thus also stands in contrast to the American vision of French-Acadian medievalism promoted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his long poem Evangeline. In the poem, Longfellow emphasizes the notion that the Acadians’ lifestyle is little different from that of their medieval French ancestors.
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American: his parents were residents of Saint John, New Brunswick, and were simply
visiting Scotland at the time of his birth. Shives entered the printing industry at a young
age, working as an apprentice for the New Brunswick Courier starting in 1827. In 1840,
he started his own literary publication, The Amaranth, the first number of which appeared
in January 1841. Although The Amaranth did not enjoy the success of the Garland, it
nevertheless lasted 36 full issues, until Shives decided at the end of 1843 that the slim
profit margin was no longer worth the work (Rice). Interestingly, even though the
majority of articles in his magazines were originals written by Nova Scotians and New
Brunswickers, apparently some of his readership complained that there wasn’t enough
original material. In May of 1841, Shives responded to these apparent criticisms by
indicating that some of the magazine’s readers have told him they “preferred a good
selected article, to an original one”; moreover, he writes, it “is not a want of such original
matter that prevents our complying with their wishes. We have received many original
contributions, which we are sorry to say, are not sufficiently well written to claim a place
in our pages” (159). Of course he would want to present the magazine as highly selective,
but both the criticism and his response indicate the strength of his readership’s appetite
for local literature, which would in turn influence what Shives selected from other
publications. Logically, he seems to have used local interest in French medievalism to
guide his publication of further selections on the topic from other periodicals.
Like that of The Literary Garland, much of the French-related material in The
Amaranth praises the historical cultural accomplishments of the French: the article
“Charlemagne,” for example, praises the emperor for being “the wisest man of the age”
(14) and for contributing to the state of Christianity throughout France. An anecdote
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about “the first troubadour on record” (48), William Count of Poitou, is likewise
appreciative of the count’s sacrifices as a crusader. The Amaranth also shared with the
rest of British North American print culture the general sense that the modern French are
corrupt and dissipated; however, The Amaranth saw this power to corrupt as particularly
strong among French men (and especially noblemen). Virtuous women of all
nationalities, including the French, are frequently depicted as the victims of this fearsome
strain of French masculinity. In “The Condemned of Lucerne,” a previously honourable
Swiss man falls prey to “the soul-destructive atheistical philosophy of the French school”
(34) while fighting to defend his country against the French Directory and then Napoleon.
He becomes a robber and murderer, in the process inadvertently implicating — and
condemning to death — his beloved and pure-hearted wife. In Emma C. Embury’s “The
Abbot of La Trappe,” the young abbot succumbs to the corrupting influence of the court
of Louis XIV, taking a lover who dies as a result of his dissipation. Because of her death,
the abbot deeply repents his debauchery and reforms his own behaviour as well as the
code of conduct of his order. In “Pauline Rosier,” a poor but virtuous French woman is
cast aside by her wealthy and noble French husband, and her child taken away from her
by his order to be raised by peasant strangers. Nor are French noblemen in The Amaranth
dangerous only to French women: in “The Treacherous Duke,” the Duke of Brittany
covets a Spanish noblewoman, and imprisons her husband in an attempt to remove the
obstacles from his path. In Mrs. B—n’s “Adelaide Belmore,” the exiled and disguised
future king of France, Louis Philippe, falls in love with an American girl who spurns
him; even when she finds out his true identity, she is happy with her choice to have
married a middle-class American instead. These stories among others reveal that Shives
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and the magazine’s authors were clearly anxious about what they saw as the corrupting
influence of French noblemen; this anxiety extends to their representations of France in
the Middle Ages, with virtuous French noblewomen being safe to assimilate into British
society, but with French noblemen possessing the threatening potential to corrupt and
assimilate other societies.
In the February 1842 number, Shives printed two stories dealing with the lives
(and courts) of Henry V (1386-1422) and his French wife, Katherine [Catherine of
Valois] (1401-1437). The first of these, named “A Tale of the Fifteenth Century” and
attributed simply to “Clara,” is an original work for The Amaranth; the second, “The
Captive Prince” by the American author Mrs. Caroline Orne, is almost certainly a reprint.
The similarities go beyond the historical figures: both are romances in which loyal
women become involved in semi-illicit romances with disguised male lovers. Yet
whereas Orne’s story traces the affair between Henry’s captive cousin, the future King
James I of Scotland, and Joanna Beaufort, one of Queen Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting,
Clara’s story addresses the courtship of Henry and Katherine themselves.
“A Tale of the Fifteenth Century” opens with Katherine and her cousin Marie
discussing marriage prospects, and Katherine reveals herself to be a romantic, insisting
on the ideals of courtly love instead of on worldly power: “Oh, I tell you truly, ma . . .
cousine, that even if England’s lion-hearted Henry were to sue for my hand I would
refuse him. Katherine of France gives not her hand where her heart is not given; and I . . .
[shall] be right well wooed before I allow myself to be won” (52). Of course, the
aforementioned Henry overhears their conversation; he conspires with Katherine’s father,
Charles VI of France, to win her heart while pretending to be a mere nobleman instead of
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the king. Once Henry is sure of her love, he concludes his peace treaty with the French
king, part of which grants him Katherine’s hand in marriage. He then tests Katherine by
having her father tell her only that she must marry the King of England, without revealing
the deception. Despite her pleas not to be forced to marry against her will, Charles tells
her in seeming cruelty, “your country demands this sacrifice of your feelings. France is in
a wretched situation, England has seized many of our towns; I have this day, concluded a
treaty with England’s Monarch, your hand is the pledge of our mutual good faith, and
now my child, all you can say will not change my purpose” (53). (Ironically, Charles’s
speech, delivered here as a test, is likely to be more accurate in describing the real
motivations of the marriage than is Clara’s chivalric fiction.) Katherine passes all the
tests given her: she falls in love for love’s sake, but she puts her country’s needs above
her own and accepts the need to do her duty even if it costs her all of her happiness. She
is the ideal object of courtly love: noble, beautiful, self-sacrificing, seemingly
unattainable, and above all loyal. Moreover, her marriage to Henry represents a dual
assimilation: the first is of Katherine’s bloodline and culture into the royal house of
England, and the second is of France itself into English domains. Although Clara does
not directly address the question of royal succession, historically, upon the signing of the
peace treaty and Henry’s marriage to the real Catherine, Charles VI named Henry the heir
to the French throne (“Henry V”). However, as Henry died before Charles, the two
kingdoms were never consolidated.
Other works in The Amaranth likewise present the idea that medieval French
women are desirable cultural influences to assimilate into English society: Orne’s “The
Captive Prince,” for example, portrays the same Catherine as above (here, “Queen
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Catharine”) as a courteous, artistic, and gracious queen. Moreover, in H.W. Herbert’s “A
True Tale of the Crusades” (published anonymously in The Amaranth),47 it is only the
self-sacrificing love and bravery of the half-Spanish, half-French wife of England’s
crown prince that saves his life. In the story, the future King Edward I (1239-1307) is on
Crusade in the Holy Land, and his wife Ellenore (Eleanor of Castile) has accompanied
him. As the previous authors did with Catherine of Valois, Herbert emphasizes Ellenore’s
artistic sensibilities — and the French nature of this artistry. Ellenore’s belongings lie
scattered in the Prince’s tent:
On a light chair, not far removed from the Prince’s couch, there hung a
lady’s mantle of rich crimson . . . and on it lay a lute, which had
apparently been just laid down, while on the floor were scattered several
sheets of written music, not written as is now the case, by musical
notation, but by words, or mots, as they were then termed. (259)
The lute and French sheet music serve more than an individual recreational purpose:
Ellenore uses them to sooth the cares of the crusading prince, that he might more
effectively address his army’s needs. Ellenore’s music is but one expression of her
devotion to the prince; in a different context, her love is the only thing able to save his
life. After an assassin manages to wound Edward with a poisoned dagger, none of
Edward’s crusading knights are willing to risk exposing themselves to the poison by
drawing it from the wound. However, Ellenore’s “pure, strong, holy love” is strong
enough for her to risk sucking out the poison; Edward owes “his life to the undaunted
faith and more than heroic valour” of Ellenore (264). As in Clara’s story about an English
47 Originally published as “Ellenore: A True Tale of the Crusades” in Godey’s Lady’s Book, and Ladies’ American Magazine (Aug. 1843): 70-75.
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monarch and his French consort, so too in Herbert’s story does the French-and-Spanish
consort prove her absolute loyalty to her new monarch and kingdom. The marriage of the
historical Eleanor to Edward — like that of Catherine to Henry — also brought about a
double assimilation, both of the woman and of her French territory. Eleanor’s personal
hereditary right to Ponthieu passed into the line of the English royal family. Beyond the
lofty and romantic ideals of embracing French culture by marrying (or assimilating)
French women, amassing French territory for England posed another obvious benefit to
the medieval English noblemen who sought noble French wives.
The Amaranth discusses the other half of this cultural contact — that of medieval
French men with the English — in A.D. Paterson’s “The Last Days of Princes,” a series
reprinted from The Ladies’ Companion in New York. Unlike Clara’s non-threatening
depiction of the female side of French society, Paterson’s series reflects a deep anxiety
that French men might be more likely to try to conquer English society than assimilate
into it. Paterson writes of the fates of William the Conqueror and his four sons, and the
relationship of this Norman family to England. Paterson has little good to say about any
of these Normans except for the second son Richard, who died young in a hunting
accident; the sins of the rest seem to be innumerable. Paterson acknowledges,
the character of King William was not deeply reproachable, particularly
when the fierce and warlike dispositions of both the claimants [to the
English throne upon the death of Edward the Confessor] and their
followers are considered, and still further when we remember that the
greatest virtue of the period was valor, and its most appropriate reward
was acquisition.
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. . . But there was one great consideration which either seems never to
have occurred to William or else seems to have been disregarded as
unworthy his ambitious spirit. This was, the affectionate regard which the
English people had for their Saxon monarchs and for the Saxon race. (36)
Paterson can accept that William, as a nobleman with as valid a claim to the throne of
England as any, should pursue that claim; given the culture of the time, he can even
accept William’s acquisition of England through war. However, what he cannot accept is
William’s importing and imposing Norman cultural values at the expense of their Saxon
heritage. To Paterson, William’s great and unforgivable sin is trying to make England
assimilate into Norman culture. William’s sin is made all the worse by the Norman
connection to the Danes, “that hated people from whose dominion they [the Saxons] had
so recently become emancipated” (36).
This heaviest of sins propagates itself through the Norman line, in true Biblical
fashion. Paterson writes, “Well indeed is the denunciation in the decalogue, that the sins
of the fathers shall be visited on their children unto the third and fourth generation,
illustrated in the descendants of the Conqueror. Unnurtured in kindly affections towards
each other, the whole [family] of the first William were in constant hostility among
themselves” (140). The oldest son, Robert, is the only one who “possessed any feelings
of humanity” (140), but he is “indolent” (162); William Rufus “possessed not one virtue
under heaven”; and Henry, whom Paterson particularly seems to despise, is “cunning,”
“selfish and ambitious” (140), and “cruel, as well as treacherous” (145). Perhaps Henry’s
worst sin of all is that he pretends to be English, when (to Paterson’s mind) he can never
be anything but a duplicitous Norman. Paterson writes indignantly:
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He proclaimed himself an Englishman, which in fact he was by birth; he
distributed liberally and with discretion the funds which he had seized, and
thus obtained many an influential voice when he declared that his desire
was to be, not the inheritor of his deceased brother’s kingdom, but the
King of the people’s choice; still farther he won the hearts of the English
by solemnly promising to restore the Saxon laws which had been collected
by King Edward the Confessor; and he put the finishing stroke to his
popularity by marrying the daughter of the King of Scotland, the last scion
of the Saxon royal house. (147)
Henry’s embracing the Saxon English is, to Paterson, terrifyingly insidious because it is
all a prelude to his psychological conquest of the nation. None of his seemingly positive
qualities or acts (including his clear skill as an administrator and diplomat, or even the
accident of his birth in England, which in no way makes him English to Paterson) make
him any less of a threat to the Saxon people; in fact, these very qualities demonstrate him
to pose even more of a threat than the rest of his “hard” (36) family because he is able to
convince the Saxon English to give up elements of their culture without resistance.
Yet England does not submit to this foreign influence without managing to exact
some retribution. To Paterson’s delight, the power struggles between Robert and Henry
cause the brothers themselves “to be the unconscious instruments of England’s
vengeance on Norman invasion” (162). In order to prevent any possibility of his brother’s
challenging his claim to the English throne, Henry pre-emptively attacks Robert’s
territory of Normandy. The “mainly English” forces of the King thus annex the province
of Normandy to the English crown, “and what was most remarkable, the victory was
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gained on the same day of the same month which, forty years before, had been so fatal to
English liberty at Hastings” (162). Paterson sees a nice parallel between the two battles:
in the first, the Normans take England, and in the second, the English (even if led by a
Norman) take Normandy.
Paterson’s series is not alone in The Amaranth in worrying about the potential for
French societies to assimilate English ones. In the context of this series, Susanna
Moodie’s poem, “The Banner of England” (which Shives reprinted from the Garland in
May 1841) takes on new meaning. Whereas in the Garland, the poem appeared with the
date and place of its composition (Jan. 2, 1838 in Melsetter, Douro Township, Upper
Canada), in The Amaranth, Shives strips it of these important contextual details.
Moodie’s calling upon the “Sons of Britain” (33) to “tam[e]” the “pride” (22) of “Gallia’s
hosts” (21) seems, out of context, more proactive than reactive. Its worries about the
“advance” of “a rebel band” (34) is likewise unfocused on any specific rebels, and
therefore casts all of the French in British North America in the role of potential
aggressors. Without the context of the Lower Canadian rebellions, Moodie’s poem
magnifies existing anxieties about the threat of Acadian cultures in New Brunswick —
even if that threat is not armed rebellion, but rather cultural assimilation.
Although the same literary phenomenon — that of the re-emergence of French
medievalism — was occurring through British North America in the 1840s, it manifested
itself differently in the different colonies. Anglophone New Brunswickers had not
experienced outright war with the Acadians in their generation, but there still lingered not
only the memory of the expulsion of the Acadians nearly a century before, but also
anxieties that the returned Acadians might be planning to act on that grievance.
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Anglophone authors perceived French Acadian cultures as a latent threat because of their
potential to assimilate English-speakers and other cultural groups in the colony. On the
other hand, The Amaranth was more than happy to assimilate elements of French culture
into a dominant British society.
In the Canadas, after the crushing of the 1837-1838 rebellions, English literary
culture adopted a slightly different attitude towards French literature and culture. Many
authors in the Canadas rooted French Canadianness in the past, thereby attempting to
accomplish two purposes: the first of these was to separate French Canada further from
post-Revolutionary France, and the second was to deny French Canadians any significant
degree of political relevance in the developing Canadian nation. Eliza Lanesford Cushing
was one of the few voices (particularly in a patriotic magazine such as the Garland) to
see medieval French struggles for justice in government to be an integral part of the
modern colony of Canada’s struggles towards responsible government, to see, in other
words, medieval French and modern French Canadian political battles as intrinsically
linked. For a number of others, the approach of John Breakenridge was the norm: he
appreciated and even glorified the medieval French for their arts, culture, and Christian
chivalry, all of which he sees as having formed part of the modern British character. In
his view, the British have a healthy approach to their past (and to the past of related
nations) in which they understand their history and know how to apply its lessons to the
modern world; on the other hand, even though the French are aware of their glorious past,
modern French society has lost the spiritual and cultural elements that gave medieval
power structures their meaning. Whereas his British kept the spirituality and the culture,
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but developed new political systems for the modern world, his French tried to keep the
old political structures alone, structures that do not work in the modern era.
In the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, English Canadian authors
controlled the French narrative by silencing its history; by the 1840s, the methods had
changed, but the outcome had not. Just as in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century,
English Canadian authors like Breakenridge still constructed the modern French as
having a fundamentally flawed relationship with their history. Even though they no
longer attempted to silence that past, these anglophone authors depicted the Revolution as
an insurmountable rupture between French history and modernity. This rupture also
separated the modern French from modern French Canadians: whereas (to anglophone
authors) the French were disconnected from the past, French Canadians were anchored to
it. Portraying French Canadians as inhabiting a cultural past strategically denied the
validity of their culture in the political present. With the move towards responsible
government in the colonies of British North America in 1848, and the subsequent
discussions of confederating the colonies, English Canadian authors became increasingly
interested in the question of nationhood. For those who believed national identity to be
the same as racial identity, the project of establishing the racial origins of various
segments of Canadian society — and not just French Canadians — became all the more
imperative in the drive towards Confederation.
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Chapter 4
Defining a Nation: 1848-1870
As we saw in the first three chapters, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canadian
writers had sought to define what sort of social models would be appropriate in the new
world, but had maintained their racial and ethnic models as British; in the middle of the
nineteenth century, however, narratives of Canadian ethnicity began to shift away from
the exclusively English or Anglo-Saxon element of Britishness to a new, more inclusive,
and more particularly Canadian form. In the period leading up to and immediately
following Confederation, Canadian authors took a new approach to writing a history for
Canada: for the first time, authors wrote about Canada as having a serious and
worthwhile history of its own, one that should be contextualized and understood in terms
of its medieval European predecessors, but that also stood distinct from those European
histories.
In English Canada, the first of these history-building projects was John Mercier
McMullen’s 1855 History of Canada, From Its First Discovery to the Present Time;48 as
its title suggests, McMullen’s attempt to catalogue Canadian history considered the
events of even a few years prior to be worthy of setting down for posterity. Although
McMullen’s primary topic was, of course, Canadian history, he mobilized references to
48 This is not to say that McMullen’s work represented the first literary interest in Canada’s history: for example, in 1824, Julia Beckwith Hart published St. Ursula’s Convent, or the Nun of Canada, a novel about the 1759 siege of Quebec; in 1832, John Richardson published the historical fiction novel Wacousta, set largely during the 1763 siege of Detroit; in 1845, François-Xavier Garneau published the first volume of his French-language Histoire du Canada; and numerous works of short historical fiction (often focused on the early days of Quebec) had appeared in the literary magazines. However, McMullen was among the first to present English Canadian history not only as the stuff of romance but rather as the serious beginnings of a new nation.
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medieval history as a way of helping his audience understand current events. In 1869,
Robert Grant Haliburton took a very different approach to Canadian history, as we shall
see in the last section of the chapter: instead of examining specific historical events, he
looked at general racial theory, using what he saw as the essential characteristics of races
from the Middle Ages to project a racial future for the newly-Confederated Canada.
These attempts to codify Canadian history developed alongside debates about the
essential nature of Canadian culture. Earlier in the century, authors such as Thomas
Chandler Haliburton (of The Clockmaker fame) had rejected American culture as a model
for Canada, but political unrest in the United States leading up to the American Civil War
further reinforced the idea for many Canadians that Canadianness was most definitely not
the same as Americanness. In the flurry of outrage among English Canadians that
followed the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill in 1849, politicians toyed briefly with
the idea of annexing the Canadas to the United States; although the idea was relatively
quickly rejected, it nevertheless inspired anti-American literary protests, such as various
works by John Henry Walker and Charles Dawson Shanly in the satirical magazine
Punch in Canada. Walker and Shanly conceived of the United States as regressive and
feudal in the worst sense of the word; like Longmore’s and Breakenridge’s conceptions
of France (discussed in chapters 2 and 3, respectively), the America depicted by Walker
and Shanly had a fundamentally flawed relationship with the past. For Walker and
Shanly, Canada would be able to progress economically and socially only through
maintaining a relationship with the British Empire at large (but not exclusively England).
In general, Canadian literary culture of the time embraced a pan-British identity
rather than a more specific Englishness. Of 203 instances of medievalism in British North
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American literary magazines from 1848 to 1870, 43 of them — more than one fifth —
address the Celtic areas and cultures of the British Isles, while only 17 address explicitly
Anglo-Saxon heritage. In Canada, authors expanded Canadian Britishness to include
some of the cultures that English notions of Britishness had excluded and Othered. In
Britain and even more particularly in England, mid-nineteenth-century discussions of
Britishness used modern military conflicts (such as the Napoleonic wars) to define
themselves against, and thereby exclude, racialized Others; Canadian authors, on the
other hand, looked to the medieval past to justify including a broader spectrum of racial
groups in the new Canada. Thomas D’Arcy McGee, for example, explored medieval
Ireland’s role as a centre of scholarly Christianity to encourage appreciation in Canada
for Irish culture. Even at a time when the mass migration of Irish refugees was causing
elevated social tensions, McGee’s Popular History of Ireland was very well received;
contemporary reviews of his history reveal the willingness of Canadian literati to accept
Irish heritage into Canada’s expanding sense of Britishness.
Even for Anglo-Saxon supremacists in Canada, there was more to Canadianness
than simply re-learning to appreciate all of the British racial groups. The Anglo-Saxon
supremacist Canada First movement, which emerged shortly after Confederation,
championed Canada’s role as a specifically northern nation with a northern climate,
populated by historically northern racial groups. The theory of northern superiority, as
most famously expounded in Canada by Robert Grant Haliburton — one of the founders
of Canada First — held that northern climates breed hardy people and productive
societies. Canadian Britishness would thus not be diluted by expanding to include more
racial groups, but would rather be tempered and hardened by forging certain races
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together in the bitter cold of the Canadian north. Canada’s brief history of contact in the
Middle Ages with the Vikings — known at the time only through the evidence of the
medieval Icelandic sagas, since the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was not
discovered until 1960 — along with the coincidence of Canada’s and Scandinavia’s
northern latitudes, led Haliburton and others to claim a pan-northern kinship that should
propel Canada to greatness in the decades to come. This cultural philosophy of pan-
northernism embraced not only the rigours of Canada’s northern clime but also the
cultural and genetic inheritance of immigrants from northern European countries. Part of
this inheritance certainly was English, but it came to emphasize the other northern
European contributions, particularly the Irish, Norse, and Danish cultures. The quantity
of Nordic medievalism published in Canada in the 1860s bears out this increasing
fascination with northern cultures: 13 of the 38 works of medievalism in literary
magazines of the 1860s had Norse themes. Interestingly, despite Canada’s increasingly
diverse racial makeup, this emphasis on the benefits of northernness required authors to
posit a much greater influence of medieval Scandinavia on Canadian culture than would
be accounted for simply by the number of Canadians of ethnic Scandinavian
backgrounds. The new emphasis on northernness thus involved a deliberate and creative
inflation of Canada’s medieval Norse heritage for the purposes of imagining a new
national identity for a new nation.
Necessary for Haliburton’s and the Canada First movement’s belief in northern
superiority, however, was their equally strong faith in southern inferiority. Haliburton
believed that southern (and particularly tropical) climates inculcated a type of cultural
lethargy that would, over the course of centuries or millennia, lead to the downfall of
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every southern civilization that should rise to prominence. Notably, Haliburton’s distrust
of southern cultures led him to reimagine the French influence on Canada as a
specifically northern influence, tracing the lineage of French Canadians through the
Normans to the medieval Norse, and through the Bretons to medieval Celts. Although
Haliburton’s theory was certainly problematic in itself, its true danger lay in its potential
to influence Canadian immigration policies, which in the following decades did indeed
embrace racial hierarchies that assumed the superiority of northern peoples. The decades
leading up to Confederation saw an expansion of what being Canadian could mean
racially and culturally, but that expansion came at the expense of an ever-shifting set of
Others.
Literary and Historical Developments, 1848-1870
In 1849, more than a decade after the 1837-1838 rebellions, Lower Canada (now
Canada East) had still not resolved the issue of recompensing citizens for damages
sustained during the course of the fighting, even though Upper Canada (Canada West)
had settled the same issue without incident in 1845. Because of the difficulties of
separating rebel losses from loyalist losses, the legislature accepted that it would have to
allow claims from anyone who had not been convicted of participating in the rebellions.
John Mercier McMullen, a contemporary historian, wrote in his History of Canada about
the tensions emerging from the Rebellion Losses Bill as stemming directly from the “old
antagonism of races” (488) between the English and the French in the Middle Ages;
many English Canadians were deeply opposed to what they saw as using their taxes to
pay French Canadian rebels for having rebelled. When Montreal’s anglophone
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inhabitants learned that the Governor General, Lord Elgin, had approved the Rebellion
Losses Bill, riots broke out in the streets: the houses of the bill’s key sponsors were
attacked, and the Parliament House was looted and burned to the ground. In comparison
to the degree of violence and destruction which occurred during the French Revolution,
McMullen believed the Montreal rioters to have acted far more like the barbarous early
medieval mobs that brought down the Roman Empire: “The Paris mobs, in the midst of
revolution and anarchy, respected public buildings, the libraries, and works of art; and it
remained for the vandalism of Montreal rioters to inflict a public injury on themselves, of
a character adopted by the Saracens and Huns, and other barbarians of the middle ages, to
punish their enemies” (491). Although McMullen’s faith in the artistic sensibilities of the
French revolutionaries is not entirely warranted, his condemnation of the (primarily
anglophone) Montreal rioters is striking. Through their wanton destruction of the city,
these Montrealers lose their Britishness and instead become even worse than the
“barbarians” of the Middle Ages: whereas McMullen’s Saracens and Huns reserved such
devastation for their enemies, the Montreal rioters wreak it upon themselves.
The Rebellion Losses Bill had consequences reaching far beyond the riots in
Montreal; it also wrought a curious change in “patriotic” discourse in the Canadas. The
Tories took their protests to Queen Victoria, calling for her to dissolve the Canadian
Legislative Assembly and to veto the offending bill. The failure of this tactic, combined
with the economic upheaval wrought by Britain’s shift towards a philosophy of free trade
rather than one of colonial protectionism, pushed many among the Tory ranks to advocate
annexation to the United States. McMullen notes the irony of their stance:
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To escape from French domination, as it was termed, the more violent
Tory members of the Conservative Party, declared they were prepared to
go to any lengths — even to annexation with the United States, a measure
which in the passionate excitement of the moment was openly advocated.
Thus parties who had long made boast of their loyalty to the British
Crown — of their hatred of republican license and extreme democracy,
were now seen supporting the same treasonable measures, precisely, for
which so many in 1838 had perished on the scaffold. (488)
In this way, open dissent became reframed as patriotism. Yet, in a further twist, these
violently anti-French anglophone Tories found unlikely allies for their annexationist
movement. In Canada East, a small number of radical francophone intellectuals —
including Louis-Joseph Papineau and his nephew, Louis-Antoine Dessaulles —
advocated annexation because of the British government’s perceived betrayal of Lower
Canada, particularly in the matter of the Canadian union. Most of the French Canadian
elite, however, opposed such a measure. In Canada West, meanwhile, the Tories
(including John A. MacDonald) launched the British American League in Kingston in
July 1849. At this convention, a resolution proposing annexation to the United States was
raised, though rejected. Indeed, at a meeting mere months later, this same league (which
had been formed with the idea of annexation in mind) turned completely away from the
possibility of joining the American states and instead proposed an idea that would later
become Confederation. This idea was to unite the British North American colonies as an
alternate way of evading the feared French domination (Francis, Jones and Smith 342-
344).
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Thus having rejected the “Maelstrom of American dissension,” to borrow
McMullen’s phrase (Preface), and having been cut loose from the protections formerly
offered by the trade framework of the British Empire, the British North American
colonies faced a crisis of identity. Yet the colonies did not necessarily see each other as
natural partners for a new federal union; indeed, that Confederation happened at all is
somewhat surprising, given the significant resistance to the idea in the Maritime colonies.
In general, Upper Canada/Canada West was most enthusiastic about the proposed union,
because (with the largest population) it would hold the greatest power in the proposed
representation-by-population governmental structure. The literary publishing industry in
British North America had also largely shifted to the Canadas by this time, and thus
literature of the 1850s and 1860s tended to over-represent nationalist discourses
specifically from the Canadas. Much of this Canadian literary discourse emphatically
rejected the notion that Canadianness (or British North Americanness) had much in
common with American cultural identity; furthermore, although many (if not most)
English Canadian authors still looked to Britain for the basis of their cultural identity, the
Britishness they saw in Canada was Britishness with a difference.
Anti-American Sentiment and Satire in Punch in Canada
Even though the standard methods for publishing illustrations remained hand-
engraving and lithography until the late 1860s, when the relatively inexpensive method of
photolithography gained traction (Williamson 388), illustrating books and magazines
became increasingly popular throughout the mid-century. In part this rise in popularity
can be attributed to the increasing availability of local illustrators and engravers (although
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artists practising these trades were by no means numerous). One of the most prolific of
these artists was John Henry Walker, an Irish-born and trained engraver who immigrated
to Canada in 1842 and was prominent in Montreal’s engraving trade for over five
decades. Walker was the first to publish cartoons regularly in Canada (Rousseau and
Vachon). Although he engraved for a wide variety of publications, his own publishing
interests leaned towards satire, and he produced a number of satirical magazines over the
course of his career. His first, Punch in Canada (1849-1850), modelled itself after the
recently-established British Punch, or the London Charivari. Although locally-produced
political satire was nothing new to British North America (see, for example, Thomas
Chandler Haliburton’s Clockmaker stories in the 1820s), Walker’s visual satire added a
new element of interest. Moreover, as Dominic Hardy has argued, the anti-Union and
anti-Confederation climate in Montreal at the time made the city particularly fertile
ground for political satire (311). Walker enlisted Charles Dawson Shanly, an Irish-born
poet and humourist, as editor for the Canadian Punch, and Shanly also wrote and
illustrated for the magazine. Like Walker, Shanly had a long career in the literary
industry. Shortly before he immigrated to Canada in 1836, he had some of his poetry
accepted for publication in London; once in Canada, though, he made his primary
occupation the civil service while writing and editing on the side. Ironically, given the
strong anti-American bias of Punch in Canada, Shanly moved to New York in 1857 to
devote himself exclusively to journalism (F. Walker); either his political ideals had
changed since the demise of Punch in Canada, or he was unable to withstand the appeal
of turning a literary sideline into a true career.
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Despite Shanly’s later personal decision, the editorial stance of the magazine was
quite decidedly opposed to annexing Canada to the United States. A cartoon that David
Spencer attributes to Walker, “A Sign of the Times,” makes significant use of medievalist
rhetoric: it depicts a “good and loyal subject” (39), in the role of England’s patron Saint
George, slaying the dragon of annexation; the hero uses a giant feather-edged quill as a
lance, playing with the aphorism that the pen is mightier than the sword (Figure 6).
Moreover, the magazine suggests that its readers thrust home this political attack by
displaying this “sign of the times” as a literal sign at every door. Notably, the dragon
seems to be (at least for now) small and relatively powerless compared to the mature,
Figure 6: From Punch in Canada 23 Feb. 1850: 39.
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stalwart hero, suggesting that the cartoonist believes that the threat of annexation is not
yet fully-fledged and thus those who stand with the hero should be confident of victory
(provided, of course, that they take swift action before the dragon matures).
Punch elaborates in prose, verse and cartoon on the reasons why it believes
annexation to the United States would be a regrettable move for Canada. The poem
“Humours American” draws upon some of the most unsavoury aspects of American
political and economic practices, such as the slave culture in the south and the political
corruption in the north; in Pittsburgh, criminal behaviour seems to be widely accepted,
because “they’ve elected their magistrate / Inside the walls of the gaol” (18). The satire is
not, however, aimed so much at the American institutions as it is at those leaning in
favour of annexation. “These little traits are intended to warn you,” the poet writes;
“You’ll find plenty of such on hand” (18). Although the poem metaphorically attacks
American culture, its message is one of defense, warning Canadians to stay away from
the United States.
Despite the defensive nature of the text of “Humours American,” the
accompanying illustration explicitly goes on the offensive, showing Punch literally
Figure 7: from Punch in Canada 26 Jan 1850: 18.
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skewering the American eagle (Figure 7). In this case, the magazine associates the
character of Punch (the defender of British institutions in Canada) with the medieval
period. It depicts Punch, dressed as a knight, in a jousting match with the American
eagle; Punch’s lance pierces the eagle’s shield (and presumably the eagle itself) before
the eagle’s talons can reach Punch. The Latin motto of Punch’s shield, “Cave, adsum
[Beware, I am here],”49 reinforces the characterization of Punch as (an albeit aggressive)
defender of the realm. The Americans have inherited the worst parts of medieval Europe:
in lieu of serfdom, they have slavery, and perhaps because they treat a whole race of
people as sub-human, they themselves do not merit human characterization in the
cartoon. The Canadian Punch, on the other hand, stands proud as a knight (at least, as
proud as the magazine’s farcical mascot can stand), exemplifying to his best abilities the
spirits of chivalry and bravery.
Punch in Canada often employed images (both textual and pictorial) specific to
feudalism as a foil to the magazine’s own political ideals. As in Figure 7, chivalry may
not and should not be dead, but Punch had no interest in reviving feudal economic or
political policies. On the issue of free trade, Walker and Shanly felt strongly that the
current system of protectionism employed by the British Empire was a regressive relic of
the feudal system. In March of 1850, the editors (writing as the figure of Punch) penned a
letter addressed “To the People of Canada, on the Position of the Government”:
My soul rejoices in the prospect of a war between the old rotten remains of
feudalism, as evidenced in the existence of legal spiders, and their webs of
49 Punch’s chosen motto has precedent in both fact and fiction: it remains the motto of the Lowlands Scottish Jardine Clan, and Sir Walter Scott used it as the motto of the baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf in Ivanhoe.
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fiction and extortion, the union of church and state, and the conspiracy of
capital against labor in the system of customs and excise, or, in other
words, the idiotic system called protection, and the disciples of elective
institutions, free church, simple laws, free trade, and DIRECT
TAXATION. . . . Indirect taxation is the invention of the dark ages, when
the people were PROTECTED by the tender mercies of kingcraft and
priestcraft united; when, for a consideration, kings and bishops, and
abbots and lords, granted charters and monopolies, or, in other words,
robbed the many to benefit the few; the monopolists then levied indirect
taxes on the people for their own aggrandizement. (62)
Combining the questions of annexation and free trade, Punch took the perhaps
counterintuitive stance that an alliance with the United States would serve to entrench
feudal economic systems, whereas economic progress would be achieved only by
maintaining Canada’s political and economic arms-length connection to Britain. The
magazine saw these two questions (of economic policy and political allegiance) as so
inextricably linked that it declared them in fact to be the same question, one that should
and would be decided in favour of Britain and economic advancement:
there is but one great question before the country, and that is not
annexation. . . . All parties will eventually resolve themselves into
protectionists and free-traders. Annexation or British connexion will be
decided on these grounds. The protectionists, whatever they may now call
themselves, will become annexationists; the free-traders will stick to
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sound principles and the old flag,—and that the latter may triumph is . . .
[our] fervent wish . . . (62)
With this sentiment of establishing free trade while maintaining British
connections, Walker and Shanly’s political views coincided with those of publishing
magnate George Brown, who, as David Spencer writes, “was devoted to creating in
Canada the equivalent of a liberal, free enterprise state such as that emerging in the
British Isles as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution” (89). Punch’s logic seems to
be, firstly, that protectionism is a form of economic subjugation akin to feudal lord-vassal
relationships; secondly, that annexation would subjugate Canada to the rule of the other
American states; and finally, that by opposing Britain’s push towards free trade, the
advocates of protectionism would naturally align their interests with those of the
annexationists. Although proposals for various forms of economic and political
relationships with Britain and the United States abounded in the 1850s and 1860s, Punch
in Canada and Canada’s satiric press in general were united on both issues, insisting
upon Canada’s economic independence from as well as political loyalty to Britain, as
Spencer has argued. In Drawing Borders: The American Canadian Relationship during
the Gilded Age, Spencer asserts that “As much as the country was divided intellectually,
Victorian Canadian editorial cartoonists were consistent in their view of Americans.
Trade and commercial alliances were quite acceptable. Anything bordering on political
union was not” (91). For Shanly and Walker, the economic opportunities offered by the
industrial revolution presented a path for Canada to the future, a future that included
taking advantage of trade relationships with all modern countries. In their eyes, Canada
could not move into the future but instead would reenact Europe’s past on a different
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continent if it were to pledge fealty to the United States. Having a connection to the past
through Britain would allow Canadians to move forward in a way that Americans — who
by revolting had severed their connection to history — could not. Shanly and Walker
used their magazine as a vehicle to bring awareness of the medieval past to the Canadian
present, thus not only reinforcing the connection to the past but also spurring progress
into the future.
Shanly and Walker’s use of the medieval past was not limited to the question of
American annexation; they used it equally forcefully in regard to anglophone-
francophone tensions internal to the Canadas. Significantly, their approach to these
tensions did not pit the English against the French in Canada; rather, they saw the conflict
as one between an emphatically broader (and Celtic-inclusive) British people and the
French. In this conflict, Shanly and Walker thought that medieval political models should
not be misappropriated for modern political ends. Punch in Canada treats Governor
General Elgin’s claimed ancestral connection to the medieval Scottish king, Robert the
Bruce (1274-1329), particularly contemptuously: in “Lines Addressed to the Celebrated
Earl of ‘Dignified Neutrality,’” the magazine treats Robert the Bruce himself with
reverence, calling him “a patriot rare,” but declares of Elgin’s boasted lineage, “If your
descent indeed be such / You have descended very much” (127). The unnamed poet of
this piece lives up to the name of the magazine and indeed pulls no punches in his attack
on Elgin. The poet accuses him of “secret criminality” by assenting to the Rebellion
Losses Bill: in the poet’s view, Elgin sells out the country and “become[s] the tool / Of
Frenchmen whom . . . [he] ought to rule” for his salary of “About five thousand Pounds a
year” (127). (The logic of how the salary of the governor, who served at the pleasure of
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the British Parliament, depended on his becoming the tool of Frenchmen is not explored.)
Moreover, the poet vows that Elgin’s supporters
Shall never either curse or bully
Our British nationality!
We were not for french thraldom born . . . (127)
Many English Canadians believed that British superiority over the French had been
proved on the battlefield many times over, not only in the recent rebellions but also
eighty years before with Britain’s victory over New France, and again in 1815 with
Napoleon’s final defeat. In 1849, then, many of these same English Canadians felt that
their government had been either hoodwinked or bullied into betraying them. Walker and
Shanly believed that any concessions to French Canadians could alienate English
Canadians ever further from Britain, disrupting Canada’s political stability as well as
(what they saw as) its essential British character.
Given the anti-French, pro-English stance of Punch in Canada, the admiration of
Robert the Bruce in “Lines Addressed to the Celebrated Earl of ‘Dignified Neutrality’”
seems a bit puzzling: not only did Robert reestablish Scotland’s independence after
Edward I of England’s attempted subjugation of the entire island of Britain to the English
crown, but he also renewed Scotland’s alliance to France (Barrow). Yet, removed from
the specific context of French-English relations, Robert the Bruce stands as a medieval
British icon of resistance against oppressive government — unlike Lord Elgin, who, to
Punch in Canada and many English Canadians, was the very embodiment of oppressive
government. The implied moral degeneracy of Elgin as compared to his illustrious
ancestor emphasizes the expectation that modern political leaders should live up to
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historical models; it suggests that Canadians should be held to the same high standards as
European medieval heroes, because Europe’s history is Canada’s history too. The
Bruce’s emphatically anti-English Britishness acts in Punch as a reminder, however, that
Canada’s medieval history is not identical to England’s, but rather, it draws upon a
broader, more inclusive view of the medieval world. Punch’s admiration of Robert the
Bruce reinforces that it is possible for a nation in a colonial relationship with England to
be strong and independent, yet still very much British.
Expanding Canadian Britishness: the Uneasy Place of the Irish in Canada
Canada was not alone in exploring the complex and sometimes conflicting
elements of Britishness. Writing about the emergence of “British” identity in Britain in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Linda Colley stresses that
the cacophony and the slippages that were so often evident in expressions
of allegiance and belonging: as, for instance, in the procession in support
of parliamentary reform in Edinburgh in 1832 . . . which featured banners
celebrating legendary Scottish war-leaders against England such as Robert
Bruce and William Wallace, but simultaneously flourishings of red, white
and blue Union flags. (xv)
Indeed, Colley sees such tensions as “integral” to “the growing traction of ideas of
Britain and of British identity” (xv). Colley argues that the emergence of a British
identity did not signify or require its various elements to merge into one cultural identity,
nor, indeed, would a singular cultural identity be possible in the formation of empire. As
Ian Baucom argues, as much as imperial conquest challenges the identities of its
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colonized peoples, so too can empire “equally disrupt the cultural identity of a colonizing
nation” (14). Baucom argues that even the concept of Englishness within British identity
was subject to re-formation in the diverse spaces of the British Empire: he sees
Englishness as “something communicated to the subject by certain auratic, identity-
reforming places, as something, therefore, that can be both acquired and lost” (5-6).
If not even Englishness was a stable cultural identity in the milieux of empire,
then neither could the British Empire provide a stable, unified identity to its subjects. The
unity of Britain rested not on a shared culture, but rather, on the shared political (and to a
large degree, religious) experience of its citizens:
the Welsh, the Scottish and the English remain in many ways distinct
peoples in cultural terms . . . . The sense of a common identity here did not
come into being, then, because of an integration and homogenisation of
disparate cultures. Instead, Britishness was superimposed over an array of
internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in
response to conflict with the Other. (Colley 6)
Colley sees Great Britain itself as “an invention forged above all by war” (6) and above
all by war with France. The British, she argues, “defined themselves as Protestants
struggling for survival against the world’s foremost Catholic power. They defined
themselves against the French as they imagined them to be, superstitious, militarist,
decadent and unfree” (6). British North America did not have an “Other” that was quite
so neatly defined — English Canadians were not, for example, at war with French
Canadians — but the very nature of British definitions of Britishness allowed for this
flexibility. The idea that Britishness was a superimposed political construct made it easier
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for Canadians to redefine Canadian Britishness to include some of Britain’s Others —
such as Protestant Irish immigrants in the work of McGee, and even French Canadians in
Haliburton’s vision of the new Canada, as the last section of this chapter will discuss.
The militarism around which Britishness in Britain revolved was strongly linked
to European conceptions of the role of class hierarchies in government. Even if
anglophone British North America had fewer military Others against which to define
their patriotism, questions of class were certainly not unfamiliar territory. In The English
National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair, Peter
Mandler examines the relationship between militarism and class hierarchies in European
forms of patriotism; he contends that Britain’s ability to develop a common sense of
Britishness independent of cultural unity hinged on its approach to the Napoleonic wars.
Mandler argues that Britain — unlike France and even the German states — “was able to
mobilize its people with appeals to patriotism that did not require a levelling sense of
solidarity” (21). Because British wartime patriotism did not require erasing class
distinctions, it was also able to maintain broader cultural divisions. In France, by contrast,
the dominant discourses of patriotism from the late 18th through mid-19th centuries sought
to create a unified national character through erasing not only class distinctions but also
regional cultural differences. An essential part of Britishness — being “Other” to the
French, per Linda Colley — meant that if the French were leveling society, Britain had to
find a way to maintain hierarchies as an integral part of its character.
Even if, by the 1850s, “the British were coming to see themselves as more
homogeneous and uniform, less fissured by differences of region, religion, morals and
class if not gender” (Mandler 66), hierarchical thinking nevertheless still played a
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significant role in British racial theories. Mandler argues that Britain’s particular brand of
Anglo-Saxon patriotism (or “Teutomania”) in the 1860s responded to trends of
democratization while simultaneously reinforcing existing power structures:
Teutomania neither swept all before it, nor did it erase — rather it over-
laid — the pre-existing Christian and Enlightenment traditions that had
asserted a common humanity, linked by the rungs of a ladder rather than
separated by the branches of a tree. Not even Teutomaniacs necessarily
believed in an ineradicable racial basis for Teutonic virtue: their ‘race’
was one you could join, as well as be born into. . . . [T]hese decades saw a
heightened sense of global responsibility on the part of liberal Englishmen
who lent their support to nationalities on the Continent struggling towards
the common goals of liberty and order. (60)
One could, theoretically, acquire Britishness by evolving into it, by climbing up the
cultural evolutionary ladder. Mandler argues that this Victorian Teutomaniac version of
the “ladder” of evolution characterized even entire cultures as able to climb the ladder,
presumably aspiring towards the high rung theoretically occupied by Britishness, in order
to reach “the common goals of liberty and order.” This ladder model thus differed from
its Enlightenment predecessors in
its tendency to view whole peoples — races or nations — rather than
individuals or legislators as travellers along the rungs. A social
evolutionary perspective, it was felt, could explain why a given people
stood on a given rung at a given time in terms of that people’s inner state
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rather than their institutions. It was, in short, a machine for delineating and
explaining national character. (77)
Combining both racial and national evolutionary models, the idea of Britishness
embraced by Victorian Anglo-Saxon supremacists was thus particularly suited for
adaptation in the New World. Its hierarchical thinking set itself apart from the class-
levelling French and American ideas of patriotism, yet it also allowed for social mobility
for both individuals and nations. It provided a middle path for the evolution of a fledgling
nation and its inhabitants. Because the idea of social evolution necessarily involves
starting from a less-developed, less-polished state, this social theory allowed for the
inclusion of a greater variety of racial elements — including Britain’s Celtic Others — in
the formation of a new, growing nation such as Canada.
As discussed in Chapter 2, anglophone Canadians had been enthralled by Scottish
culture in particular since the early decades of the nineteenth century, and Canada’s love
affair with Sir Walter Scott showed no signs of waning. What was more radical by the
1850s, however, was the (somewhat fraught) induction of Ireland into the pantheon of
acceptable Canadian Britishness. Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s A Popular History of
Ireland: from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics (1863) was a
major, multi-volume work of medievalism published in North America that focused not
on the English or the French, but on Irish history and culture. Contemporary reviews of
McGee’s History, even more than the work itself, provide a window into how Irish
history was being accepted as part of Canadian history by the 1860s. Moreover, the
reception of McGee’s work provides insight into how the Canadian literary community at
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the time read histories in general, and how they applied medieval histories of non-English
nations to developing notions of Canadianness.
Irish immigration to British North America surged in the wake of the Potato
Famine: approximately 90 000 Irish refugees arrived in the Canadas alone during the
famine years (1845-1852). As happened in other countries that received massive numbers
of Irish refugees, xenophobia played a large role in Canada’s reception of the new
immigrants. The established populace was not without its reasons in fearing the influx of
immigrants: predictably, many of the new immigrants were not only starving but also
quite ill, a situation worsened by crowded and unsanitary shipboard conditions. Cholera
was a particular scourge of both the refugees and the established residents, since it
repeatedly escaped the quarantine stations. Moreover, the extreme poverty of the refugees
placed a significant burden on an already unstable economy. Perhaps the surprising thing,
then, is not that the Irish immigrants were treated with wariness, but rather that this
xenophobia was largely sublimated into the already-existing religious tensions in the
Canadas. More than two thirds of the newcomers were Protestant, but it was primarily the
Catholic minority who were targeted for particular exclusion; the Irish Protestants (many
of whom belonged to the Orange Order) were much more able to find allies among other
Protestant working- and middle-class social groups (Francis, Jones and Smith 310-311).
Francis, Jones and Smith note:
The Orange Lodge celebrated the British Crown and Protestantism. “No
Surrender” was the order’s rallying cry. The Orange Order opposed
Catholic schools and the use of the French language outside of Quebec.
But in the British Protestant fortress of Victorian Toronto, Irish Catholics,
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not French Canadians, constituted the resident minority group. . . . In mid-
nineteenth-century Toronto, Protestants outnumbered Catholics by three to
one. Clearly religion, not “race,” was the focus of opposition of the order;
the Orange Order in Canada allowed Protestant First Nations and
Protestant African-Canadian males to join. (311-312)
Although the Orange Order was founded in Ireland specifically to commemorate the
triumph of the Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic James II, in Canada the
Order found new purpose in promoting not just anti-Catholic but also specifically anti-
French Catholic policy. The Order became deeply enmeshed in the less sanguine (but
more sanguinary) elements of Canadian politics, ranging from nepotism to voter
suppression to rioting, including the burning of Parliament in 1849. Ironically, the
Order’s blatant sectarianism, religious discrimination, and bias against French Canadians
spawned some limited interracial and interethnic cooperation: non-Irish Protestant men
were also welcome to join the Orange Order to fight for (their vision of) the common
good of all Protestant Canadians.50
The Orange Order was remarkably successful in promoting the careers of its
members, including those of Irish extraction. Being Irish in Canada was thus not
necessarily a hindrance to ambitious men in these middle decades of the nineteenth
century; indeed, it became an acceptable addition to Canadian Britishness. By making
Protestant Irishness acceptable, the Order had the side effect of making Irishness in
general less unpalatable in Canada to audiences of English descent. Moreover, the nature
of anglophone Canadian reading audiences was expanding to include the influx of Irish
50 The beneficent functions of the Order should not go unmentioned: it played an important role in social welfare with various charitable programs.
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immigrants; literary magazines therefore would have had a more diverse base of potential
readers. The favourable reception given to Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s A Popular History
of Ireland: from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics (1863) testifies
to just how accepted Irishness in Canada had become — particularly given McGee’s
Catholicism and his advocacy against British colonial rule in Ireland. Born in the
northeast of Ireland in 1825, McGee spent much of his childhood in Wexford, a town
whose political climate surely shaped McGee’s own views. Wexford had been crucial in
the 1798 Irish rebellion against British rule, a rebellion in which McGee’s mother’s
family allegedly participated. In 1842, at the age of seventeen, he emigrated to the United
States, and quickly made a name for himself by lecturing and writing about Ireland’s
politics and literature. It was surely to his advantage that he had already begun to
establish himself in North America before the famine struck and Irish refugees arrived en
masse: by the height of the migration, he was in a position to advocate for better
treatment of the refugees, and he used his position to try to dispel some of the religious
prejudice and nativist attitudes that hindered the acceptance of the refugees into
American society. He returned briefly to Ireland from 1845-1848, during which time he
became deeply involved with the nationalist Young Ireland group. In 1848, McGee was
involved in organizing an armed rebellion. When the rebellion failed, he returned to the
United States, where he published his account of recent events in Ireland — an account
that, as Robin Burns notes, McGee signed quite boldly, “Thomas D’Arcy McGee, A
Traitor to the British Government.” McGee followed up this act by supporting nationalist
causes across Europe, and even advocating for Canadian annexation to the United States
(Burns).
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Had McGee’s political views remained such, it seems unlikely that he would ever
have wanted to move to the Canadas, and even more improbable that he would be invited
and welcomed. However, McGee’s views did change: whereas he had once been a liberal
revolutionary, according to Burns, he came to condemn that philosophy “as a threat to
Christianity and civilization”; moreover, he gradually became disenchanted with
American society, believing it to be too “disorderly” (Burns). As for Canada, he came to
appreciate its state-sanctioned tolerance and support of Roman Catholicism; indeed, by
1855 he was even lauding Canada’s advantages over the United States to potential Irish
emigrants. In 1857, the leaders of Montreal’s Irish community invited McGee to move to
the city and represent their interests. McGee was immediately popular with Montreal’s
Irish community at large: they collectively raised the money necessary for McGee to
meet the property qualifications to run for a seat in the legislative assembly (a seat which
he won and held for the next decade). Yet he did not restrict himself to representing Irish
interests; indeed, he was vocal in his support of various minority rights, including those
of francophones, First Nations, and religious minorities. He also softened his views on
British colonial connections, now believing it to be better for both Canada and Ireland to
work autonomously within the British Empire than entirely independently without it. He
renounced his republicanism, but in order to keep an arms-length relationship with
England, he proposed a separate British kingdom in British North America, one that
would be headed by one of Queen Victoria’s younger sons (Burns). He exchanged the
idea of annexation for that of Confederation.
McGee’s political evolution made him much more palatable to mainstream
Anglo-Protestant society (even if it was eventually to cause him grief with the Irish
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community). His Popular History of Ireland, published in Toronto and New York in
1863, sought to make Irish history likewise mainstream: McGee repeatedly compares
early medieval Ireland to modern nations such as the United States and England, thereby
not only deemphasizing Ireland’s foreignness but also suggesting the debt owed by
modern Western religion and politics to medieval Ireland. Instead of highlighting
Ireland’s difference, McGee emphasizes international continuity.
In terms of religion — the most significant modern marker of Irish difference —
McGee quickly establishes Ireland’s medieval role as a centre of Christian faith to which
other Western European nations turned for spiritual guidance. McGee has little to say
about pre-Christian Ireland, remarking early in the text that “The conversion of a Pagan
people to Christianity must always be a primary fact in their history” (10), and he keeps
to his word: only ten pages into an eight-hundred-and-four page text, he turns to the
history of Saint Patrick (fl. 5th C) and to his establishment of the Irish Church in 432 CE.
Patrick’s physical and spiritual journey takes him across much of Europe, first as a slave
and then as a student of theology. Patrick’s international travels mirror the widespread
influence of the Irish Church in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire:
The empire of barbarism had succeeded to the empire of Polytheism;
dense darkness covered the semi-Christian countries of the old Roman
empire, but happily daylight still lingered in the West. Patrick, in good
season, had done his work. And as sometimes, God seems to bring round
His ends, contrary to the natural order of things, so the spiritual sun of
Europe was now destined to arise in the West, and return on its light-
bearing errand towards the East, dispelling in its path, Saxon, Frankish,
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and German darkness, until at length it reflected back on Rome herself, the
light derived from Rome. (16)
McGee alludes to his Roman Catholicism by declaring that the “light” of Christianity was
“derived from Rome,” but the focus of his early Church history is on the unity of
medieval Christianity, rather than on its modern divisions. He presents medieval Ireland
as the immediate (although not original) source responsible for converting or re-
Christianizing the rest of Western Europe. To McGee, Ireland was the only nation that
held firm in its faith through the Middle Ages, and had it not been for that steadfastness,
the “darkness” of Polytheism would still cover the Western world.
Likewise, McGee emphasizes the debt owed by modern Western nations to the
political developments of medieval Ireland. He compares the legal and political structures
both of democracies (such as the United States) and of constitutional monarchies (such as
England) to those of medieval Ireland; for example, he asserts that the relationship
between Ireland’s medieval federal province of Meath and the other Irish provinces “may
be vaguely compared to those of the District of Columbia to the several States of the
North American Union” (7). Moreover, he contends that medieval Ireland’s legal and
political structures have parallels in those of modern nations. He describes two important
medieval documents: one, Ireland’s early constitution, which McGee claims was
“prepared under the auspices of Saint Patrick” (17) and which forms part of Ireland’s
“Book of Rights,” and two, the “Brehon laws,” or literally, the laws of the judges. “The
Brehon laws,” he argues, “bear the same relation to ‘The Book of Rights,’ as the Statutes
at large of England, or the United States, bear to the English Constitution in the one case,
or to the collective Federal and State Constitutions in the other” (17). Again, McGee
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strives to make Ireland’s medieval history less foreign to modern British and North
American audiences, and in so doing, he also works to prove medieval Ireland’s role as
the trailblazer for modern Western religion and politics.
McGee’s Popular History of Ireland proved “popular” in multiple senses of the
word. It was, as McGee intended, written engagingly for public consumption rather than
scholarly study; moreover, it was very well received by public intellectuals across British
North America. Hamilton’s Canadian Illustrated News printed a passage from the book
before the magazine had even seen a full copy; the editor (Alexander Somerville) noted
that he had seen passages printed in various American and Canadian magazines, and he
included one such passage in the August 1, 1863, number in order to add his own context
to McGee’s discussions of the 1798 French invasion of Ireland and the United Irishmen
rebellion (140).
Some of the publicity for McGee’s Popular History came from parties with a
vested interest in promoting sales of the book: for instance, McGee was a contributor to
the British American Magazine, which gave the Popular History a very favourable (and
extensive) review, referring to it as an “able, impartial and most attractive popular
history” (200). Moreover, the review identifies the Canadian publishers/distributors of
McGee’s Popular History as Rollo & Adam,51 the same house that published the British
American Magazine. In an even greater conflict of interest, Graeme Mercer Adam (of
Rollo & Adam) wrote book reviews for the British American Magazine and may indeed
have penned the review of McGee’s Popular History. However, even though these
51 I have been unable to confirm the existence of a separate Canadian publication. It is possible that Rollo & Adam distributed in Canada the New York edition of D. & J. Sadlier & Co., but even in that case, Rollo & Adam would have had financial incentive to promote McGee’s book.
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numerous overlapping interests almost certainly caused the magazine to give McGee’s
work extra publicity, the review itself seems genuine, its praise measured and its
concerns typical for an educated Anglo-Protestant reader. Indeed, the review helps to
explain why a young publishing house seeking to establish itself might invest both its
finances and its reputation in McGee’s book.
The reviewer takes pains to assure potential readers that McGee’s Catholicism,
while personally disagreeable to the reviewer, does not overly influence the presentation
of facts in the text or affect its overall readability:
The history of any living people must necessarily be tinged, in some
degree, with the political and religious opinions of the writer, especially if
he be the chronicler of the land of his birth; but when that writer is an
ardent adherent of the ecclesiastical system which has ruled Ireland so
long; it would be rediculous [sic] to suppose that the time honoured church
of his fathers should not be spoken of with affectionate regard, and an
apparent acknowledgement of many religious influences and powers,
which those who are not of her communion would coldly pass over or
loudly deplore.
Let it not, however, be understood, that in the first volume of Mr.
McGee’s history, now under review, there is the slightest taint of
illiberality, or undue religious bias; on the contrary it cannot fail to be
remarked, that in many particulars where one would have looked for
severer criticism and perhaps merited condemnation, events and characters
are described with a freedom from any approach to bitterness,
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partizanship, or bias, and always with the good points and redeeming
features placed side by side with qualities or distinctions of doubtful
character to many minds. (84)
The reviewer treats McGee’s Catholicism with almost a sense of indulgence, at least until
McGee’s second volume reaches the Protestant Reformation, but even then, given the
common rhetoric of the time, the reviewer’s response is remarkably moderate,
commenting only that “During the reign of Elizabeth, the history of Ireland viewed and
described from a Roman Catholic stand-point necessarily invests some prominent
characters with honour, which the earnest Protestant regards with dislike if not with
disgust” (197).
Interestingly, the review highlights (and accepts) McGee’s characterization of the
historical role of the Irish race as world leaders in various fields of scholarship and
theology. The commentary reveals a relatively considered theological stance that accepts
the Irish church as perhaps Europe’s most influential force in both Christian evangelism
and scholarship in the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages. The reviewer acknowledges
the international importance of early Irish Christianity: “The Irish Schools of the first
three christian centuries [i.e. 6th through 8th centuries C.E.] acquired a European
reputation, and as teachers of human and divine Science, the Irish Saints exercised great
power over their own countrymen, and far beyond their insular home” (85). McGee’s
own commentary, as discussed above, was much more effusive, describing Ireland in
lofty terms as Europe’s last beacon of Christianity, from which all other flames were
rekindled. McGee’s exalted rhetoric notwithstanding, the significance of Ireland’s early
Christian theologians was hardly in dispute, in either Roman Catholic or Anglican
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scholarship; however, the reviewer’s choice to include this particular topic reveals the
limits of his bias. His religious beliefs are quite compatible with Irish Christianity at least
until the schism of the Protestant Reformation — and indeed, he acknowledges the great
debt owed by European Christianity to the Irish School. By extension, he implies that
Protestant audiences as well as Catholic ones should find little to quarrel with in McGee’s
book, and much to be grateful for. The reviewer gives the medieval history of the Irish a
figurative stamp of approval: by emphasizing the parts of that history that are compatible
with Protestant Britishness, he creates a safe space of cultural contact for his readers to
deal with the Irish presence in Canadian communities.
Moreover, not only does the reviewer seem not to harbour racial bias against the
Irish, but indeed, he promotes an image of the Irish as a naturally erudite, culturally
advanced society when not subjected to the pressures of foreign control. Commenting on
the period following the Danish and Norse invasions of Ireland, the reviewer declares:
“The state of Irish and Anglo-Irish Society, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
are still visible to us at the present day. The love of learning, always strong in this race of
men and women, revived in full force with the exemption from the immediate pressure of
foreign invaders” (86). This concept that, historically, the Irish needed to be free from
foreign oppression in order for their scholarly and artistic cultures to flourish — notably,
a sentiment belonging to the reviewer, and not just to McGee — seems eminently
transferable to modern Ireland, whose people and culture were still reeling from the
famine caused directly by the systematic oppression of the Irish people by the English.
The reviewer even comes dangerously close to sympathizing with contemporary Irish
nationalists in his sympathy for the plight of the early modern Irish, the first to be
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subjugated to English rule: “The union of the Crowns of England and Ireland inaugurated
a new era. The social condition of the people under English authority, is described as
very depressed and harassing. The feudal system was rampant with all its cruel exactions
and hopelessness of relief” (86). The “union of the Crowns” to which the reviewer refers
is not the Act of Union forced upon Ireland in 1800, after the failed rebellions in 1798,
but rather the personal union of the Crowns of Ireland and England in 1542, under Henry
VIII. The reviewer stops short of endorsing more recent Irish nationalism (such as that
espoused by the United Irishmen rebels in 1798), lamenting only “that the excessive
hardships of those times, should have consigned to a felon’s cell and a shameful death, so
many bright spirits in the hey-day of youth, and for the sake of what they believed to be a
patriot’s noblest cause” (200). The reviewer thus selects what histories to admit into
Canadian identity; for him, medieval Irishness is perfectly acceptable and desirable, but
the closer one gets to the present day, the less desirable the histories become. The
challenge thus becomes to integrate the essence of medieval Irishness into Canadian
character without also importing modern national strife.
If agitation by the Irish for their independence was not deemed to be suitably
patriotic, then what would be the true course for Irish patriotism? To the British
American Magazine, the answer lies in the political unity of the British peoples — but a
unity properly expressed and respected by all parties. Building on the notion that the
English and Irish in Ireland are all one people, albeit one divided by caste and culture,
McGee argues for the necessity of universal enfranchisement within any nation; he (as
well as the reviewer) concludes by calling for the end of “every code, in every land
beneath the sun, which impiously attempts to shackle conscience, or endows an exclusive
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caste with the rights, and franchises which belong to an entire People” (McGee 804; also
qtd. in Adam 200). The logic of McGee and the British American Magazine seems to run
thus: Ireland has the potential to be a centre for high culture — as it did in the Middle
Ages — as long as it is not oppressed by foreign rule, but both foreignness and
oppression exist on a sliding scale. The English are foreign as long as they oppress the
Irish, but distributing power more equally amongst the nations and peoples of the United
Kingdom would lead to true British patriotism. The suggestion for Canada is thus that it
too needs an arms-length relationship to England in order to establish itself as a new
centre of learning and culture; as with the medieval Irish, modern Canadians need
universal enfranchisement (at least as universal as that offered in England itself) to
flourish as equals in the developing British Empire.
After McGee’s assassination in 1868, the tone of responses to his work shifted
from that of rational intellectual engagement with his ideas to near-beatification of the
man himself. The assassination was allegedly part of a Fenian plot. In the years leading
up to Confederation, McGee had publicly denounced the policies of the Fenians (or Irish
Republican Brotherhood), including their plan for an armed invasion of British North
America; McGee had advocated instead for Ireland to adopt Canada’s model of self-
government within the British Empire, a stance that made him unpopular not only with
Fenians in Ireland and the United States, but also among some of the Irish Canadian
community. There was, however, never any proof of a Fenian conspiracy to assassinate
McGee, and the man who was hanged for the crime was never even officially accused of
having Fenian ties (Burns); it is, therefore, entirely possible that Irish extremists simply
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became the scapegoat for the killing, while McGee became the martyred voice of Irish
Canadian moderation.
Even Grinchuckle, a satirical magazine that specialized in lambasting
contemporary politics and society, found itself unable to criticize McGee. In “A Rarity,—
An Honest Review,” the editor directs his satire at the genre of magazine book reviews,
while honouring McGee himself. The editor willingly admits that he “had not read the
book;— Montreal editors never do. But he had known the author,— known and loved
him, and from the deep fountain of hallowed recollections could draw copy enough to fill
the maws of a legion of printer’s devils” (129). Yet the irreverence towards the
newspaper editorial process disappears once the editor begins to write about McGee. The
magazine itself commented on this break from tradition: “Grinchuckle, whose natural
bent is to find the elements of the absurd in all mortal things, has for once been
completely non-plussed” (129). McGee was beyond reproach:
Of all the elements of the poet not one was lacking to D’Arcy McGee.
With an eye quick to note the ceaselessly changing aspects of Nature to
which his soul was wedded, with a hand whose felicity in delineating what
he saw was unrivalled, with a memory so tenacious that nothing generous
ever slipped from its grasp, with Hibernian blood, which boiled at every
tale or spectacle of wrong—he was qualified for the sacred mission of the
bard. With the high qualifications just enumerated, he had an adequate
sense of the greatness of his calling. He never extolled what was paltry, or
passed contemptuously by what was feeble and forlorn. He sang for love
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of song; he loved song only as a potent instrument for heightening the joys
and lightening the sorrows of his kind. (129)
In Grinchuckle’s estimation, McGee’s “Hibernian” [Irish] nature is intimately connected
with not only his desire for social justice, but also his poetic ability. Like the reviewer in
the British American Magazine, Grinchuckle’s editor believes firmly in the high literary
culture of Ireland’s bards; indeed, he views Ireland’s bardic profession — both medieval
and modern — as a sacred calling, irrespective of religious denomination.
The Rev. George M. W. Carey was likewise able to appreciate McGee’s brand of
high Irish culture and religion; moreover, he perceived the necessity of integrating the
kind of Irishness that McGee represented into the racial makeup of the newly-formed
Dominion of Canada. That McGee’s work resonated so deeply with a Baptist minister in
New Brunswick is a testament to its ability to break through religious divisions.
Interestingly, amidst his profuse lamentations for McGee’s untimely death, the one
section of praise for McGee that Carey italicizes is the least exaggerated in tone, thus
doubly marking the comment as one he particularly wants his readers to take to heart: he
writes that McGee was “peaceful, inoffensive, talented, and much needed at this critical
juncture of our Colonial History” (165). As for the Popular History of Ireland, Carey felt
it should be required reading:
As a Historian, he [McGee] is candid, impartial, and fearless in stating
what he conceives to be the truth. His History of Ireland should be widely
spread among his countrymen, and frequently perused; for it would tend
greatly to their enlightenment on many important points, to the removal of
their prejudices, and the softening of the asperities of their nature. (166)
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Carey feels the Irish would be greatly improved by learning more about their own history
as well as by adopting McGee’s philosophical stances; perhaps he also thinks that Irish
emigrants would become better potential Canadians by modeling their own expressions
of Irishness after McGee’s. Moreover, his statement demonstrates how he thinks histories
should function in the multicultural New World: both writing and reading history should
not only provide educational value but should also serve in the interests of integrating
cultures. Similarly to the other reviewers, Carey points out the indebtedness of all
Christianity to the Irish Church; however, Carey also acknowledges the political debt
owed by modern political systems to early Irish culture. Even prestigious positions within
the Church were filled by a “method of promotion . . . [that] was modeled on the electoral
principle which penetrated all Celtic usages” (McGee, qtd. in Carey 167). The vision of
Irishness that Carey shares with McGee’s History is thus one that lay at the very heart of
contemporary Canadian principles of both religion and politics. Like the other reviewers,
Carey embraces a democratic, scholarly Irish culture that shines with the light of the early
medieval Christian church; that vision of medieval Irishness (one very much separated
from the reality of the modern sick and destitute refugees) is one that all of the reviewers
welcome into Canada.
Lords of the North
As Canadian literary society began to promote a truly pan-British identity for
Canada — a national identity that that did not merely accept but instead celebrated
elements of Celtic cultures — another parallel impulse for an even broader ethnic
definition arose. These efforts to create a pan-British sense of Canadianness also
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contributed to a new project of differentiating Canadian Britishness from all other
expressions of British identity (whether those of the British Isles or of the other colonies).
For many authors and scholars, Canada’s key difference, and what many of them
believed would propel her to prominence (if not supremacy) on the world stage, was her
northernness. This northernness was not only geographical, but it was also racial; in order
to establish Canada’s racial northernness, English Canadian authors looked to create a
kinship with the cultures of medieval Scandinavia.
A century earlier, Charles de Secondat, the baron de Montesquieu, had theorized
about the effects of climate upon human physique, character, and culture. He justified his
belief in northern superiority through pseudoscientific analyses of the human body:
A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of the
body; this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of the blood from
the extremities to the heart. It contracts those very fibres; consequently it
increases also their force. On the contrary a warm air relaxes and
lengthens the extremes of the fibres; of course it diminishes their force and
elasticity.
People are therefore more rigorous in cold climates. . . . This
superiority of strength must produce a great many effects, for instance, a
greater boldness, that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority, that
is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security, that is, more
frankness, less suspicion, policy, and cunning. In short this must be
productive of very different characters. . . . The inhabitants of warm
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countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like
young men, brave. (316-317)
On the other hand, Montesquieu believed that inhabitants of temperate and warm
countries have much more “lively sensations” than people of colder climes. These lively
sensations seem for Montesquieu to correlate with artistic sensibilities: he writes, “I have
seen the operas of England and of Italy; they are the same pieces and the same
performers; and yet the same music produces much different effects on the two nations,
one is so cold and indifferent, and the other so transported, that it seems almost
inconceivable” (319). Yet, the south’s seeming facility for cultural production and
appreciation was not enough to prevent Montesquieu from condemning the entire region
of the globe: whereas “in northern countries,” he argues, “we meet a people who have
few vices [and] many virtues . . . . If we draw near the south, we fancy ourselves removed
from all morality” (320).
Whereas Montesquieu and those who followed him in Europe were primarily
interested in the long-term evolution of peoples in a particular climatic region, in Canada,
nineteenth-century racial theorists faced slightly different questions: what would be the
effects of Canada’s climate on various immigrant peoples, and what mix would produce
the ideal northern character? The two main elements of this character were Canada’s
physical geography and the medieval ethnic heritage of her inhabitants. There was more
interoperability between those two elements than one might expect: even before British
North America (and later Canada) experienced significant immigration from Scandinavia,
various authors heralded Canada’s Viking character based on Norse-Icelandic contact
with the New World in the Middle Ages. Even though Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux
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Meadows, the only currently-known Viking settlement in North America, was not
discovered until 1960, the lack of physical evidence proving medieval Viking habitation
in the New World did not preclude rampant speculation based on the literary evidence of
the medieval Icelandic Vinland Sagas (The Greenlanders’ Saga and The Saga of Erik the
Red). For example, in 1867 the New Dominion Monthly asserted the historical importance
of “The Northmen’s Discovery of America,” even going so far as to claim several
centuries of “considerable immigration” (86) of Norse peoples to colonies stretching
from Newfoundland to the Carolinas. Even earlier, in 1863, G.H. Squire won University
College (Toronto)’s English language poetry prize for “The Northmen in America.”
Squire’s poem not only asserts Viking contact with North America “Ages ere the
Genoesan / … crossed old ocean’s stream” (80), but also claims a Canadian right to
inherit the Viking spirit. Squire justifies this inheritance through the history of Norse
contact with North America as well as through medieval genealogy: the Norman
conquest “Gave unto the slower Saxon / Quicker motion in the blood” (80). For Squire,
the Normans were more Norse than French, and the conjunction of this mode of Norse
contact with that of Viking exploration gives British Canadians a unique claim on the
spirit of the early Viking explorer:
the old Norse fire yet liveth
Glowing in our hearts to-day!
He has perished, but his spirit
Empire’s roll through time shall sway! (80)
Squire’s version of Canadianness was more than willing to adopt the medieval history,
heritage and spirit of a small minority of Canadian citizens as essential to the identity of
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the whole. Canada’s lack of a singular medieval history made it possible for Squire,
among others, to choose which minority elements to include in their vision of a new
Canada.
Yet medieval Norse heritage was not embraced unreservedly or in its entirety;
indeed, attitudes towards Scandinavian cultures (much like those towards Celtic cultures)
were influenced by religious considerations. Even though some Canadian authors were
quite willing to find a muse in pagan Norse mythology, in general, their depictions of the
practitioners of that mythology were much less sympathetic than their portrayals of Norse
Christians. Canadians of the time believed northern climes bred peoples who were strong
both mentally and physically. However, they perceived pagan Viking cultures as too
fierce, too barbaric; tempered by Christian influence, though, fierceness became bravery,
and barbarism became hardiness. The ability to select which elements of Viking culture
to incorporate into the new Canadian identity thus became crucial to discourses of
Canadian northernness.
Interest in medieval Scandinavian cultures took root in Canada before any
concerted attempt to incorporate such heritage into a Canadian national identity. For
example, in Susanna and J. W. Dunbar Moodie’s short-lived Victoria Magazine (1847-
1848), Dunbar Moodie published two separate poems inspired by medieval Norse
history, both of which involve contact with the Celtic world. Moodie’s interest in Norse-
Celtic contacts was quite likely personal. He was born in Scotland’s Orkney Islands,
which have deep Norse and Celtic cultural roots: the islands were inhabited by various
Celtic groups for centuries before being annexed by Norway in the 9th century, and it was
only at the end of the 15th century that Scotland regained control of the Orkneys.
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The first of Moodie’s Norse-Celtic poems, “Iarl Sigurd,” concerns a battle
between pagan Norse and Scottish forces; in it, Moodie follows the natural Norse bias of
his source, the thirteenth-century Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson. The
second poem, “Brodir’s Fleet in Clontarf Bay,” characterizes a similar conflict between
ethno-religious groups, though this time with Norse-Irish contacts. This poem
fictionalizes the battle in 1014 between forces led by Brian Boru, King of Ireland, and
those of two Vikings: Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, and Brodir of the Isle of Mann. However,
the battle lines were not drawn strictly between ethnic groups, as both sides included
Viking and Irish troops, nor, historically, was the battle explicitly about religion.
Historically, the conflict lay between those who supported a nationalist approach to
government (all Ireland united under the High Kingship of Brian), and those who rebelled
against Brian’s recently-acquired overlordship in favour of maintaining local control.
However, Moodie casts the battle as a specifically religious one. In his prose narrative
accompanying the poem, he claims:
The contest was one between Christianity and Heathenism. Of the noble
and truly christian character of the celebrated Brien Boroimhe, the pious
and patriotic King of Ireland, we have every reason to form the highest
estimate, from the histories of his enemies, the Norsemen. Brodir, the
Vikingur, or Pirate, on the other hand, it appears from their histories, had
once been converted to Christianity, but had relapsed into Idolatry. To
show his contempt, no doubt, for the religion to which he had become an
apostate, he chose to fight Brien on “Good Friday,” the day on which our
Saviour died for mankind. In this battle, in which the Irish King fell by the
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hand of Brodir, at the advanced age of eighty-eight, the Norsemen were
almost utterly destroyed. ; and Brodir himself was taken alive and suffered
a cruel death. . . . If ever there was an adequate motive for the interference
of Providence in the affairs of men, this was one of them. (75)
Moodie sees the divine hand of Providence in the symbolic Good Friday martyrdom of
Brien, who was not only a Christian himself but also a great patron of the Church;
moreover, he takes great satisfaction in the destruction of an apostate. He takes pains to
emphasize his perception of the battle as proof of Christian superiority, giving little
weight to the combatants’ races: he places the poem’s climax not in a fight between
Brodir and Brien, but rather in a conflict between two Vikings, Brodir and his brother
Ospac [Ospak]. Historically, Ospak did fight on the side of Brian Boru against his own
brother. Moodie retains that fraternal conflict, while adding another layer: he has Ospac
announce his conversion to Christianity to Brodir on the very eve of battle, renouncing
his brother and condemning him as the “scourge of men and cursed of God!” (74). The
poem even stops before the battle itself; Ospac’s conversion and pledging of faith to “that
glorious Christian King” [whether Brien or the Christian God] (74) is victory enough.
McGee’s Popular History of Ireland similarly identifies the Battle of Clontarf as
at least partially religious in nature, referring to it as “the last field day of Christianity and
Paganism on Irish soil” (96); however, he also acknowledges other factors at work.
McGee admires Brian Boru for his nation-building efforts both physical and spiritual, and
acknowledges that Brian’s victory at Clontarf was due in no small part to his excellent
planning of infrastructure:
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He labored hard to restore the Christian civilization, so much defaced by
two centuries of Pagan warfare. . . . Many a desolate shrine he adorned,
many a bleak chancel he hung with lamps, many a long silent tower had
its bells restored. Monasteries were rebuilt, and the praise of God was kept
up perpetually by a devoted brotherhood. Roads and bridges were
repaired, and several strong stone fortresses were erected, to command the
passes of lakes and rivers. The vulnerable points along the Shannon, and
the Suir, and the lakes, as far north as the Foyle, were secured by forts, of
clay and stone. . . . What increases our respect for the wisdom and energy
thus displayed, is, the fact, that the author of so many improvements,
enjoyed but five short years of peace, after his accession to the Monarchy.
His administrative genius must have been great when, after a long life of
warfare, he could apply himself to so many works of internal improvement
and external defence. (95)
Despite his natural bias, McGee’s admiration was not reserved solely for Brian and the
Irish. Although he loathed the destruction that had been caused by Viking raids in Ireland
— particularly the desecration of churches and monasteries by pagan Vikings — he was
able to appreciate the cultural achievements of Vikings who came to colonize rather than
simply to pillage. Of course, it was easiest for him to appreciate these Viking dynasties in
countries other than Ireland:
The Northmen had never yet abandoned any soil on which they had once
set foot, and the policy of conciliation which the veteran King adopted in
his old age, was not likely to disarm men of their stamp. Every
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intelligence of the achievements of their race in other realms stimulated
them to new exertions and ashamed them out of peaceful submission.
Rollo and his successors had, within Brian’s lifetime, founded in France
the great dukedom of Normandy; while Sweyn had swept irresistibly over
England and Wales, and prepared the way for a Danish dynasty. (96)
For McGee, as for Moodie, Scandinavians were not essentially incompatible with other
Western European cultures, and indeed, such contact could even be greatly productive —
as in the case of Rollo of Normandy — provided the Vikings, like Rollo, embraced
Christianity.
Similarly, a work of historical fiction that appeared in the Literary Garland in
1850 stresses the Christian conversion of medieval Scandinavia as both a prerequisite for
and the means to cultural blending. “The Cross on the Snow Mountains. A Scandinavian
Tale”52 — published anonymously in the Garland, but written by English author Dinah
Maria Mulock Craik — is based very loosely on the life of the ninth-century Saint
Ansgar (801-865) and the conversion of King Olof of Sweden [Olaf, in Craik’s text].
Craik depicts Christianity as composed of two seemingly opposite characters, one
represented by the missionary Ansgarius, and the other by Hermolin, a delicate French
girl who marries Olaf: “The strong, fearless man of earth, the meek and gentle woman,
were types of the two foundations on which the early Church was laid — the Spirit of
holy boldness, and the Spirit of love!” (351). Without both of these elements, neither the
French nor Viking culture is able to thrive in the story. Regarding the court of Sir Loys of
Aveyran (one of Charlemagne’s knights), Craik repeatedly emphasizes the “frail[ty]” of
52 “The Cross on the Snow Mountains” was originally published in the February 1849 number of the Dublin University Magazine.
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“Southern flower[s]” [i.e. French women] (306), and despite the supposedly Christian
culture, there is a rather spectacular dearth of Christian love at the court for Hermolin, the
youngest and frailest of the knight’s daughters. The northern court of Olaf (and before
him, his father Hialmar) has its own problems, but frailty is not among them; instead,
they are products of the “wild and savage North” (306), possessing a surfeit of
bloodthirsty energy and no compassion for the least fortunate among them. The arrival of
Hermolin brings the warmth of Christian kindness to the Viking court, her faith and
tenderness slowly “melting the frost off his [Olaf’s] stern Northern heart” (350). The
union of Olaf and Hermolin regenerates the country not only religiously but also racially:
presumably their descendants — uniting the essences of North and South, masculine and
feminine, strength and meekness — become the perfect race in which the dual spirit of
Christianity can thrive.
Charles Sangster’s “A Northern Rune,” first published in the British Canadian
Review in 1863, marks a shift in the discourses surrounding Vikings and northernness,
particularly as they apply to Canadian society. The poem describes a winter storm as the
metaphorical song of a mythic “Norse-King-Harpist bold” (103); Sangster also explicitly
links the poem with modern Canada by identifying Kingston, Canada West, as the place
of composition. Sangster’s North is not “wild and savage” like Craik’s; instead, it is
“hardy” (103). Like the land that is welcoming but tough, Sangster’s Norse King is both
friendly and accessible but emphatically not weak: “O hale and gay / Is that Norse King
gray, / And his limbs are both stout and strong” (104). This Norse King is already an
ideal amalgam of hard and soft, of courage and charisma with artistic sensibility; his
character needs no further tempering. While not explicitly Christian, the Norse King has
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the potential to satisfy an audience who might read religious faith into his “sincere” heart
(103) and his “keen” eye for justice (104). The most surprising element of the “rune” — a
term by which Sangster primarily means a song — is the rousing cheer into which he
leads his audience/singers at the end of the poem:
Then hurrah for the rune,
The North King’s rune,
For his sons, his sons are we! (104)
Sangster, a Canadian, explicitly claims Old Norse ancestry for his Canadian audience —
even though by 1863, there were not yet any significant Scandinavian communities in
British North America. The kinship that he claims thus seems to come not through
traditional genealogy but through being bred by similar climates. An Old Norse rune had
multiple layers of meaning: it could be a letter of the alphabet, a word or concept, and a
magical inscription, all at the same time. Sangster’s use of “rune” to describe a song is
not historically accurate, but he comes closer to the mark by allowing the song-within-
the-song to have multiple signifiers. The Norse King’s “grand old hymn” and “the wintry
storm” cheered on by the singers in the chorus are largely interchangeable, and since
Canadians certainly experience the winter-storm-version of the “North King’s rune,”
through that experience they have some claim to Viking kinship.
As with Squire’s work, Sangster’s selective genealogy for Canada emphasizes the
ability of a new nation to choose its own history, to accept (even from within one small
segment of society) the elements it values and reject those it does not. Moodie and
McGee had established the Christianity of medieval Scandinavian cultures as a
prerequisite for inclusion into civilized Canadian society — thus rejecting pagan Norse
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society — and Sangster builds upon this selectivity by choosing to embrace only the most
benevolent elements of a warrior culture.
Towards Confederation
Sangster was not the only one in Canada to associate northern climates with hardy
inhabitants. In the late 1830s, Anna Jameson had commented in her Winter Studies and
Summer Rambles in Canada on the benefits of Canada’s rigorous northern climate on the
development of national character (even though at first she found the winter cold to be
stultifying). Such views became even more common in the 1860s. For example, an essay
in Somerville’s Canadian Illustrated News entitled “Lords of the Manor of the North
Pole” associates cold climates with a range of social benefits, from increased productivity
to greater health and happiness. Occasioned by a change in controlling ownership of the
Hudson’s Bay Company in 1863, the essay combines a discussion of the territorial rights
of the new Hudson’s Bay Company with “Notes on Natural History” of some of the
people and animals in its northernmost territories — namely, the Esquimaux [Inuit
peoples] and seals. The magazine applied the title of “Lords of the Manor of the North
Pole” only half in jest: according to the magazine, the terms of the Hudson’s Bay
Company’s territorial rights were feudal in nature: medieval “Lords of the Manor” had
exclusive rights to grant hunting, fishing, and other usage leases of their estates to tenants
as they saw fit. Likewise, the Hudson’s Bay Company had the exclusive prerogative of
keeping for themselves or leasing out hunting, fishing, and mining rights to their vast
236
northern and western territories.53 Given the Hudson’s Bay Company’s rights over the
sealing industry, the article’s immediate mention of “the Esquimaux” could indicate some
sympathy with their precarious legal situation of potentially being treated as either serfs
or poachers on their own land. However, the author takes pains to emphasize the
pleasures of life among the Esquimaux — indeed, if cold climes are invigorating, then the
coldest of cold climes must surely work wonders on the body and mind:
The travelers who have described the ‘sufferings of the poor Esquimaux’
from cold have not lived in Canada, else they would have learned that the
cold months are our delight, the season of renovated health, of much out-
of-door industry which cannot be accomplished at other times; the season
of traveling to the music of the merry sleigh bells, the time of the year of
social joy. (153)
Not only does the author declare that Canadians are much happier in the cold weather,
but he also suggests that races native to bracing climates are more likely to be better-
adjusted: “Unlike the Indians of milder latitudes, his [an Esquimaux’s] good humor is
imperturbable. He never fights, never quarrels, and seldom steals” (153). The author does
not venture a claim about what happens to British peoples in mild climates, but he does
aver that “industrial life in Canada” owes much to “degrees of cold . . . ranging from zero
to the coldest” (153). One of the natural corollaries to his claim is that colder nations —
usually, the most northern nations — are both the happiest and the most industrious. The
53 The 1863 change in ownership was the beginning of the end of the HBC’s semi-feudal rights to the north, since the new owners, the International Financial Society, were “less interested in the fur trade than in real estate speculation and economic development in the West” (Ray and Yusufali). Soon after the transfer of ownership, the HBC entered negotations to sell much of its northern territory (Rupert’s Land) to Canada, a deal finalized in 1870.
237
other insinuation is far more problematic: if the Arctic north is necessary to produce an
“Indian” who “never fights, never quarrels, and seldom steals,” then the author leaves
little room for native peoples of even slightly more temperate northern latitudes in his
vision of Canadian society.
The “Esquimaux,” in the author’s estimation, represent nordicity without
medieval European underpinnings: a bracing northern climate seemingly brings out better
qualities in the people than more temperate climes do, but this northernness on its own is
still insufficient to produce peoples whom the author considers most desirable for the
new nation. The author presents the “Esquimaux” as ahistorical: not only do they not
have a recognizably medieval history of nordicity, but — in a rhetorical move not
uncommon to nineteenth-century ethnographers of native subjects — the author also
depicts them as existing independent of time altogether. Northernness alone thus seems to
be only one half of the equation for the ideal Canadian race; an identifiable and extensive
— i.e. medieval — history of nordicity is the other.
These various ideas about the influence of northernness coalesced with Robert
Grant Haliburton and the Canada First movement. Haliburton, the son of Thomas
Chandler Haliburton (author of The Clockmaker) and Louisa Neville, was a successful
barrister in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel
in Nova Scotia; in addition to his legal career, he had a breadth of interests, spanning
classical studies, scientific research, agricultural development, and public policy. A
strong proponent of Canadian Confederation and nationalism, he — along with William
Alexander Foster, Henry James Morgan, Charles Mair, and George Taylor Denison III —
238
founded the Canada First movement, whereby they “cultivated an aggressive Anglo-
Saxon nationalism” (Huskins).
Haliburton’s interest in the relationship between climate and agriculture linked
naturally to his interest in the effects of climate on human culture. At the Montreal
Literary Club on March 31, 1869, he delivered a lecture on “The Men of the North and
Their Place in History.” The basic doctrine promoted by his speech is one of northern
superiority. Over the course of many centuries, he argues, humanity (in terms of both its
peoples and its cultures) has evolved according to the nature of local environments, such
that “southern nations have almost invariably been inferior to and subjugated by the men
of the north” (2). To Haliburton, the rigours of cold, northern climates simply must
produce superior people — but the process is a long, evolutionary one. This
chronological requirement could pose a problem for a country with a short history; it thus
becomes crucial to Haliburton’s project that Canada and Canadians stem from a long and
illustrious past. For Haliburton, the solution is not that Canadians must live in Canada for
eons to take full advantage of their nordicity, but rather, that the climate should augment
an already-evolved people. It follows, then, that the greatness of a society depends largely
upon two things: first, is it geographically northern? and second, is it populated by an
already-improved stock, that is, people whose medieval ancestors were also northern?
For Canada, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes:
A glance at the map of this continent, as well as at the history of the past,
will satisfy us that the peculiar characteristic of the New Dominion must
ever be that it is a Northern country inhabited by the descendants of
Northern races. As British colonists we may well be proud of the name of
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Englishmen; but as the British people are themselves but a fusion of many
northern elements which are here again meeting and mingling, and
blending together to form a new nationality, we must in our national
aspirations take a wider range, and adopt a broader basis which will
comprise at once the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian elements,
and embrace the Celt, the Norman French, the Saxon and the Swede, all of
which are noble sources of national life. (2)
But what is it that makes these northern races noble sources of national life? For
Haliburton, their truest power lies not in their ability to build nations (although they can,
and do), but rather in their power to destroy corrupt and despotic ones (inevitably those of
the south). Haliburton believes that northern civilizations will always bear the
responsibility of burning sickly civilizations to the ground to allow new, vigorous ones to
rise from the ashes. In reference to the sobriquet of Attila the Hun (406-453), Haliburton
asserts, “Well might their savage Monarch [Attila] style himself ‘the Scourge of God.’
In every age such will be the title and the mission of the avengers, for to the end of time
the North is destined to be the ‘the Scourge of God’ upon the enervated and enervating
South” (6). In their dying throes, these southern empires also manage to suck the life out
of the other civilizations they touch. The “mission of the men of the North, to sweep
away every vestige of the dead past, and to build up a new world of life and hope in our
race” (7) is both necessary and Providential. In Haliburton’s view, one does not have to
be Christian to carry out the Christian God’s work; indeed, he describes the Huns,
Vandals, Goths and other Germanic tribes of the early Middle Ages as “the apostles of a
new, of a Northern, of a Christian civilization” (8).
240
Haliburton stresses that the civilizations that emerge after a fall must, indeed, be
new, developing organically instead of being forced into the pattern of a dead society.
Regarding his investigation into the development of legal systems in Europe, he
comments:
I found that the same singular result followed from all attempts to
revive what Providence seemed to have consigned to the grave. Almost all
the Northern nations had similar systems of regulating the rights of
property and the remedies for wrongs. Their laws, were traditions called
by them their customs, an unwritten code which still exists in England
where it is known as the Common Law. . . . [I]t is a remarkable fact that
wherever these unwritten laws have been preserved, civil and political
liberty has survived. But the discovery in the twelfth century of the
Pandects of the Emperor Justinian, led to a great change. It was an
admirable code far surpassing in most respects the ruder customs of our
northern ancestors, but it was the handiwork of despotism, and was the
grave cloths of a world that had long since gone to its rest.
The Southern nations of Europe abandoned their customs, and adopted
the civil and canon law, and in every instance where this has taken place it
has been fatal to political liberty, for only those have retained their ancient
rights that have refused to adopt the laws of ancient Rome. (8)
Haliburton’s cycles of national liberty seem to trap nations along a given path. The
northern nations develop their custom based on their hardy self-reliance; because their
systems and their characters are robust, they are able to retain their own traditions instead
241
of capitulating to Roman law. Because their cultures develop organically, without being
weighed down by failed practices, their political liberty survives and thrives (at least,
according to Haliburton). On the other hand, unlike the northern European nations,
Haliburton’s southern nations are too weak to maintain their own customs, and instead
accept the laws of a failed society; moreover, accepting those “grave cloths” created by a
despot weakens the state of liberty in the southern nations even further. The southern
nations are trapped in a downward spiral — until the time comes for them to be sacrificed
to the northern “scourge.”
Given Haliburton’s distrust of southern cultures, it is particularly important to his
project to emphasize the Germanic and Celtic aspects of French culture, while ignoring
the Latinate. Haliburton tries to negotiate multiple Old World inheritances in Canada
without having to acknowledge geographical relativity — i.e., that France is more
southerly than England, and therefore French Canadians are from more southerly stock.
To solve this dilemma, he glosses over the much more complex historical ethnicities
within French Canadian culture, acknowledging only the groups with strong genetic and
cultural ties to the British Isles and to even more northerly nations, such as Norway.
Indeed, by tracing the line of the British monarchy through William the Conqueror to the
Norse/Norman Rollo, he makes the internally logical (although externally absurd)
argument that Queen Victoria’s lineage ties her more strongly to her French Canadian
subjects than it does to any of her British ones:
The Norman French of Quebec may well feel proud when they remember
that they can claim what no other portion of the Empire can assert, that
they are governed by a monarch of their own race, who holds her sceptre
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as the heir of Rollo, the Norman sea-king who first led their ancestors
forth from the forests of the North to the plains of Normandy. (9)
In fact, Haliburton traces Rollo’s (and therefore Queen Victoria’s) lineage back even
further, into a mythic past that includes gods and giants: “Rollo claimed to be descended
from the Gods of the North, and th[r]ough a Finnish king, from Forntjotr the old Frost
Giant, the father of the wind and of the Ocean; and it is as the heir of the sea king Rollo,
that Her Gracious Majesty, the Royal descendant of the Old Frost Giant, now rules over a
Northern race and sways the sceptre of sea” (9). It is this mythic lineage, one that ties the
monarchy to the frozen land, to their lived experiences in cold climes, that Haliburton
uses to justify British dominion in the world and particularly in Canada.
Because of his certainty of continued Anglo-Saxon dominion, on the one hand it
seems perfectly logical that Haliburton would advocate the re-formation of the British
race in Canada. On the other hand, it seems quite odd — particularly given his anxieties
about reusing elements from other cultures. However, the fact that British society was not
dying, but rather at its peak of world power, means that emulating the British is not at all
akin to borrowing grave cloths from a dead culture. Yet Haliburton’s insistence on
organic development still seems to apply:
Here in the New World, we, who are sprung from these men of the North,
are about to form a New Dominion in this Northern land, a worthy home
for the old Frost Giant, and a proud domain for his royal descendant. We
have here strangely united together all the original elements of the British
race. We have the Celt, with his traditions of “good king Arthur,” from
whom, through her ancient British ancestors, Her Gracious Majesty may
243
claim descent; we have the Saxon or Teutonic element, and in Quebec we
have a race that have come from Normandy and Brittany, the one the land
of the Northmen or Normans, and the other inhabited by a Celtic race,
cherishing the ancient British traditions of King Arthur and his twelve
companions. (9)
Haliburton’s plan is thus not to copy modern British society, but rather to repeat from its
medieval beginnings an experiment that has already proven successful. His plan involves
taking the original building blocks of the British race (or as close to them as can be
found, centuries later) and creating a new social structure — a “New Dominion in this
Northern land” — out of familiar, trustworthy pieces. (Conversely, then, he must have
deemed any racial groups not involved in forging the British race to be untested and
therefore untrustworthy.) Haliburton’s ideal Canadian race would naturally be closely
related to the British, but it would be a form perfectly suited to the Canadian landscape, a
form that looks to the medieval beginnings of British society to set itself on a successful
path — but after it sets off, it looks to the rigours of the northern landscape to forge the
best possible version of its national character. Haliburton’s Canada would thus repeat
Britain’s medieval process, but in a way suited to the geography of the land, in order to
develop a new society with the greatness of Britain but the distinctiveness of Canada.
It is perhaps ironic that, twenty years after an angry mob torched Parliament
House to protest what they saw as “French domination,” that an Anglo-Saxon
supremacist like Haliburton would declare French Canadians to be an essential
component of the new — and superior — Canadian Britishness; however, the more
things change, the more they stay the same. Haliburton’s formula is based on the idea that
244
these Norman and Breton French Canadian cultures will dissolve into the ethnic mixture,
strengthening the resulting Britishness but not retaining any visible signs of their French
history. Indeed, Haliburton has already elided their Frenchness, treating it as a temporary
state between medieval Norse origins and a future Canadian Britishness. It is perhaps in a
similar spirit that Canadian authors were able to accept Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s views
of Irish culture (and indeed that they were so prone to praise it after his assassination):
they could welcome its contribution to Canadian national identity, so long as the rest of it
could then disappear, in the name of patriotism. Despite John Henry Walker’s insistence
on characterizing Canadian culture as being anything but American, these first models of
Canadian ethnicity at the time of Canadian Confederation bear much more in common
with the American philosophy of the melting pot than they do with modern Canada’s
professed love of the cultural mosaic. The only indisputable difference is that Canada is
indeed a more northern nation; this bare truth led Haliburton’s vision of northern
superiority to dominate the Canadian cultural imagination for decades to come.
245
Conclusion
In 1882, the French historian and philosopher Ernest Renan delivered an address
at the Sorbonne in Paris about the popularity of contemporary projects of race- and
nation-making across the Western world. In this address, he argued for a rethinking of the
ethnographic elements that had become so popular in nationalist discourses in recent
decades:
La considération ethnographique n’a donc été pour rien dans la
constitution des nations modernes . . . . La vérité est qu’il n’y a pas de race
pure et que faire reposer la politique sur l’analyse ethnographique, c’est la
faire porter sur une chimère. Les plus nobles pays, l’Angleterre, la France,
l’Italie, sont ceux où le sang est plus mêlé. (15)54
Renan objects to theorizations of national identity that rely on race as their foundation;
there is no such thing as a discrete race, he argues, so such theories would make discrete
nations impossible. However, even as he attempts to discredit race-based national theory,
Renan still argues for the primacy of ancestry in building a nation: “Le culte des ancêtres
est de tous le plus légitime; les ancêtres nous on faits ce que nous sommes. Un passé
héroïque, des grands hommes, de la gloire (j’entends de la véritable), voilà le capital
social sur lequel on assied une idée nationale” (26).55 By ancestry, Renan does not mean
simply one’s genetic progenitors; indeed, such a definition would blur into the
54 “Ethnographic considerations have therefore played no part in the constitution of modern nations . . . . The truth is that there is no pure race and that to make politics depend upon ethnographic analysis is to surrender it to a chimera. The noblest countries, England, France, and Italy, are those where the blood is the most mixed” (trans. Martin Thom, 14). 55 “Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (by which I understand genuine glory), this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea” (Thom 19).
246
ethnographic distinctions he wishes to avoid. Yet, if this ancestry is not racial or genetic,
it must (at least to some degree) be able to be acquired and lost. Renan emphasizes the
legendary elements of ancestry, the heroic deeds and figures of the past — in other
words, a shared national myth — as the best foundation for a nation. “Un riche legs de
souvenirs” (26)56 is, to Renan, one of the essential components of this ancestry. In
Canada likewise, the legacy of cultural memory was certainly an integral part of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nationalist discourses.
Renan urged his French and European colleagues in the late nineteenth century to
reformulate their nations’ approaches to historiography, but English Canadian literature
had already been grappling with this very issue for the past century. As I have argued,
Canada was at the forefront of this international conversation about what metaphysically
constitutes a nation, because for the past century, it had had no simple territorial, racial,
linguistic, or cultural borders, nor did it have a singular history around which to define
itself. Instead, Canadian authors wrote a new medieval past for their nation in order to
help define not only its present, but also its future.
This historical, medievalist approach to nationalism is intimately connected with
the development of literary production in Canada. The international reprint culture
common in the early years of Canadian periodicals positioned Canadian literature from
its inception as part of an international literary culture. Moreover, the nineteenth century
saw Canada’s literary publishing industry embrace an ever-wider diversity of forms and
genres. In terms of genre, the predominance of prose non-fiction in the eighteenth century
gave way in later decades to a more equalized distribution with creative forms such as
56 “A rich legacy of memories” (Thom 19).
247
verse and prose fiction. The establishment of more and superior printing presses,
particularly in the Canadas, made publishing monographs locally much more feasible,
and by mid-century, improved technologies, along with a greater availability of artisans,
led to increasing incorporation of images in literary texts. The emergence of cartoons
attested to Canadians’ appetites for both satire and images. This diversity in what was
being published in Canada fuelled — and was in turn fuelled by — increased interest in
more diverse cultural sources. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Canada’s
authors began to explore and incorporate Celtic medieval traditions into their own
national narratives; in the years leading up to Confederation, this interest in the medieval
Celtic world expanded the definitions of Canadian Britishness to include previously
Othered racial groups such as the Irish. By the time the Irish began to be incorporated
into mainstream anglophone narratives of Canadianness, there was a significant
population of Irish living in the Canadas. Other racial groups — mainly those from
Scandinavian nations — also benefited from this new English Canadian diversity of
cultural interests. Even though there were very few settlers of Scandinavian descent
living in Canada by the time of Confederation, English Canadian literature courted them
and their medieval history as desirable influences on the new Canadian identity. A
Christianized, tempered version of the medieval European north became a prominent
model for the new Canadian identity.
However, this expanding interest in discourses of racial inclusion coincided with
discourses of exclusion. As English Canadian literature sought to define what its nation
should be, it also sought to define what it was not: medieval cultural inheritances were
rallied as proof that Canada was not southern, not American, and for many decades also
248
not French. The opposition between the political and cultural models of Britain and the
United States framed a significant portion of the debates about Canadian socio-political
identity. The French and American Revolutions in the late eighteenth century galvanized
opposition in British North America to revolutionary republicanism, but at the same time,
the British North American literary presses had little desire to import wholesale the
English model of aristocratic governance. Canadians of the mid-nineteenth century faced
a similar division between American and British societies: the United States faced
another period of upheaval with its Civil War, but English Canadian society — growing
ever more distinct from that of Britain — sought new ways to define its individual role in
the British Empire. This dissatisfaction with the social models presented by both the
United States and Britain manifested itself in how English Canadians wrote about these
nations’ relationships with the medieval past. On the one hand, they saw American
society as having broken from medieval tradition, a rupture that left it dangerously
acultural; on the other hand, Britain’s society sometimes appeared too invested in
tradition, particularly in terms of its aristocratic hierarchies. Instead, English Canadian
authors advocated a middle path that would apply the spirit of medieval traditions to the
exigencies of modern life in the New World.
Even as the literary community in Canada debated their relationship to the
medieval past, they also sought to determine who had control over that relationship. In
particular, the shifting political relationship between France and Britain likewise
influenced the ways in which English Canadian authors constructed Canada’s medieval
cultural inheritance. In the immediate context of the Napoleonic Wars, English Canadian
authors both suppressed French history and disenfranchised the French from the
249
processes of historiography; controlling the narratives of the past became a way to
control narratives of the present. In the period of relative cooperation between France and
Britain that followed the Napoleonic era, English Canadian authors no longer silenced
French medieval history in Canada; nonetheless, they still controlled the historical
narrative, in large part as a way of coping with the lingering tensions caused by the 1837-
1838 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada. They constructed France — like the United
States — as having fatally ruptured its relationship with medieval tradition; they wrote
about French Canadian society, on the other hand, as having progressed minimally since
the Middle Ages. By controlling historiography in this way, anglophone authors sought to
control the racial and political narratives of the emerging Canadian nation.
Canada’s literary and cultural history is not like those of European nations.
Canada has no medieval past, at least not in the sense that its eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century inhabitants of European origin would have understood the term. This absence of
the medieval was not for early Canadians a mark of shame, but rather it was a blank slate,
an opportunity to construct for themselves a unique relationship to the past. Early
Canadian authors thus strove to create a historical legacy for themselves and for their
nation. In the twenty-first century, now that Canada as a political entity has several
centuries of history connected to the land, it is easy to overlook early Canadian
conceptions of a past unconnected to place. Early Canadian authors felt the apparent lack
of local history quite pointedly; their response was to fill that void with a literary history
of their own creation. Anticipating Renan, they did not construct a past for themselves
based solely on genetics, nor did they mythologize racial purity (even though racial
theory constituted a significant element of discourses of Canadianness). Rather, they
250
turned to the medieval era for its heroes and legends as well as for the lessons in its
histories; they claimed as their own the people and stories that inspired their visions for a
new nation, and they ignored or even actively rejected those that did not. The literatures
of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Canada form the most immediate cultural
inheritance of modern Canada, but the medievalist legacy they created is also part of the
modern national narrative. The past that early Canadian authors chose to construct
reveals what they wanted Canada to become.
251
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“A Lay for Beyond Sea.” Literary Garland Apr. 1839: 234.
“A Legend of Cardigan Castle.” Canadian Illustrated News 14 Nov. 1863: 335.
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“Legend of the Ring.” Canadian Garland 3 Aug. 1833: 192.
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“Literary and Artistic Celebrities. No. II. John Gibson Lockhart.” Anglo-American
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“Literary Notices: The Prophecy of Merlin: And Other Poems, By John Reade.”
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“[Review:] Account of Ancient Gaelic Poems Respecting the Race of Fians, Collected in
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“A Spanish Ambassador on a Scottish King.” Canadian Illustrated News 31 Jan. 1863:
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309
VITA
ELANA LAUREL AISLINN RYAN
PLACE OF BIRTH Pembroke, Ontario, Canada
DATE OF BIRTH 8 December 1985
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION AND DEGREES:
2007 Master of Arts – English University of Western Ontario Independent Research Project: “Constructing ‘Home’: Eros,
Thanatos, and Migration in the Novels of Anita Rau Badami.” Supervisor: Nandi Bhatia Second Reader: Pauline Wakeham 2006 Bachelor of Science (Honors) – Chemistry and English University of Western Ontario HONOURS AND AWARDS
2013 Digital Humanities Summer Institute Tuition Scholarship 2012-2013 University of Toronto Doctoral Completion Award 2012 NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic
Scholarship) Affiliate Scholarship 2011 University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Research Travel
Grant 2008-2011 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
(SSHRC) Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) (CGS-D)
2008-2009 Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) – declined in favour of
SSHRC CGS-D 2007-2008 Dr. Ranbir Singh Khanna / Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral)
in Canadian Studies Kathleen Coburn Graduate Admission Award at the University of
Toronto SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship – awarded but not funded
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2006-2007 SSHRC – Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master’s) (CGS-M) Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Master’s) – declined in favour of
SSHRC CGS-M 2006 University of Western Ontario Gold Medal 2005 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
(NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) 2004 NSERC USRA 2002-2006 Richard and Jean Ivey Family President’s Entrance Scholarship RELATED WORK EXPERIENCE Research Experience
2010-2011 Research Assistant to Prof. Nick Mount Research Assistant to Prof. Colin Hill 2009-2010 Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English
(ACCUTE), Research Assistant Teaching Experience – Instructor
University of Toronto 2014 Advanced Seminar: Race-Making and Nation-Building in Early
Canada (English 428H1F) University of Alabama at Birmingham 2010 Pre-1800 British and Irish Literature (EH 221) Teaching Experience – Teaching Assistant / Tutor
University of Toronto 2011 The Short Story Collection (English 214H1F), Teaching Assistant 2009-2010 Twentieth Century Canadian Fiction (English 353Y1Y), Teaching
Assistant 2008-2009 Canadian Literature (English 252Y1Y), Teaching Assistant 2007-2008 Introduction to Narrative (English 110Y5Y), Teaching Assistant University of Western Ontario 2006-2007 Children’s Literature (English 133E), Teaching Assistant and Tutorial
Leader
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REFEREED PUBLICATIONS
2008 “Constructing ‘Home’: Eros, Thanatos, and Migration in the Novels of Anita Rau Badami.” South Asian Review 29.1 (2008): 156-174. Print.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
2012 “Wayson Choy.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 April 2012. Web. 2007 “‘Courting Aphasia’: The Silences Between Words and Between
Worlds in ‘The Management of Grief' of the Air India Tragedy.” Narratives of Citizenship. Eds. Aloys Fleischmann and Nancy van Styvendale. 1 Sept. 2007. Web.