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THE 
A.    H.    U.   COLQUHOUN 

LIBRARY 
OF    CANADIAN    HISTORY 


7^  \ 


UNIVERSITY   OF   TORONTO 
STUDIES 

PHILOLOGICAL  SERIES 


No.   5:    JOHN  GALT,  BY  R.   K.   GORDON 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY:   PUBLISHED  BY 
THE  LIBRARIAN,   1920 


of  {Toronto  Stubiee 

COMMITTEE  OF  MANAGEMENT 


Chairman:  SIR  ROBERT  ALEXANDER  FALCONER,  LL.D.,   K.C.M.G. 

President  of  the  University 

PROFESSOR  W.  J.  ALEXANDER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  J.  J.  MACKENZIE,  B.A.,   M.B. 

PROFESSOR  J.  P.  McMuRRicH,   PH.D. 

BRIG.-GEN.  C.  H.  MITCHELL,  B.A.Sc.,  C.B.,  C.M.G.,  D.S.O. 

PROFESSOR  G.  H.  NEEDLER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  GEORGE  M.  WRONG,  M.A. 

General  Editor:  H.  H.  LANGTON,  M.A. 

Librarian  of  the  University 


of  Toronto  StuMes 

COMMITTEE  OF  MANAGEMENT 


Chairman:  SIR  ROBERT  ALEXANDER   FALCONER,  LL.  D.,   K.C.M.G. 

President  of  the  University 

PROFESSOR  W.  J.  ALEXANDER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  J.  J.  MACKENZIE,  B.A.,   M.B. 

PROFESSOR  J.  P.  MCMURRICH,   PH.D. 

BRIG.-GEN.  C.  H.  MITCHELL,  B.A.Sc.,  C.B.,  C.M.G.,  D.S.O. 

PROFESSOR  G.  H.  NEEDLER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  GEORGE  M.  WRONG,  M.A. 

General  Editor:  H.  H.  LANGTON,  M.A. 

Librarian  of  the  University 


THm\>er0it\>  of  Toronto 

COMMITTEE  OF  MANAGEMENT 


Chairman:  SIR  ROBERT  ALEXANDER   FALCONER,  LL. D.,   K.C.M.G. 

President  of  the  University 

PROFESSOR  W.  J.  ALEXANDER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  J.  J.  MACKENZIE,  B.A.,   M.B. 

PROFESSOR  J.  P.  MCMURRICH,   PH.D. 

BRIG.-GEN.  C.  H.  MITCHELL,  B.A.Sc.,  C.B.,  C.M.G.,  D.S.O. 

PROFESSOR  G.  H.  NEEDLER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  GEORGE  M.  WRONG,  M.A. 

General  Editor:  H.  H.  LANGTON,  M.A. 

Librarian  of  the  University 


Y    GUELPH 

\azine,  November  1830) 


JOHN   GALT 


BY 


R.  K.  GORDON,  M.A.  (TORONTO),  B.A.  (OxoN.) 

ASSOCIATE  PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH  IN  THB  UNIVERSITY  OF  ALBERTA 


UNIVERSITY   OF   TORONTO    LIBRARY 

MCMXX 
TORONTO:  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS,  CANADIAN  BRANCH 


JAN  18  1: 


mp  Jfatfjet 


PREFACE 


In  writing  this  little  book  I  have  received  help  from  many 
sources.  Through  the  kindness  of  Professor  W.  J.  Alexander 
I  was  enabled  to  spend  a  year  in  Toronto  and  avail  myself  of 
the  libraries  there.  I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  Alexander  Fraser  for 
allowing  me  to  examine  a  box  of  Gait's  papers  in  the  Ontario 
Archives;  to  Mrs.  Helmer,  of  Toronto,  for  help  of  various 
kinds  in  matter  relating  to  her  grandfather's  family;  to  Mr. 
Justice  Gait,  of  Winnipeg,  for  the  loan  of  letters;  to  George 
Gait,  Esq.,  of  Winnipeg,  for  the  loan  of  books;  to  Pro- 
fessor A.  H.  Young,  of  Trinity  College,  for  many  valuable 
hints ;  to  William  Smith,  Esq.,  for  helpful  guidance  among  the 
Archives  at  Ottawa;  to  Professor  0.  D.  Skelton,  of  Queen's 
University,  for  lending  me  the  MS.  of  part  of  his  book  on  Sir 
Alexander  Gait ;  and  to  R.  M.  Hogg,  Esq.,  of  Irvine,  and  Her- 
bert Henderson,  Esq.,  of  Greenock,  for  their  trouble  in  clear- 
ing up  many  points.  R.  K.  G. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE. 

CHAPTER  I. — 

Life  (1779-1820)   '. - _ 9 

CHAPTER  II. — 

The  Scotch  Novels _ ~.      24 

CHAPTER  III. — 

The  Formation  of  the  Canada  Company 45 

CHAPTER  IV. — 

Gait  in  Canada  (1826-1829) _ 74 

CHAPTER  V. — 

The  Last  Ten  Years _ 101 

APPENDIX— The  Canadian  Boat  Song 112 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ..  117 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

View  of  Guelph  (from  Eraser's  Magazine,  Nov., 

1830)    Frontispiece 

View  of  Irvine  in  Gait's  day _ facing  p.  17 

John  Gait  (from  Eraser's  Magazine,  December, 

1930)  "       "  97 


LIFE  (1779-1820) 

CHAPTER  I 
LIFE  (1779-1820) 


ERRATA 

Pp.  18  and  19,  for  "Kirkman,  Finlay  &  Co."  read  "Kirkman  Finlay  &  Co." 

P.  30,  4  lines  from  bottom,  for  "Mr."  read  "Mrs." 

P.  33,  6  lines  from  bottom,  for  "to"  read  "of." 

P.  37,  line  3,"  for  "Lelix  Holt"  read  "  Felix  Holt." 

P.  42,  6  lines  from  bottom,  for  "burghs"  read  "burgh." 

P.  45,  note  1,  delete  "  (1849)," 


II., 

1701) ;  their  children  Robert  William,  William  Hugh,  Jean,  Grizal  and 
Alexander  (d.  1753) ;  James  Gait,  cooper  (d.  1778).  It  is  probable  that 
Alexander  Gait  (d.  1753)  was  Gait's  grandfather.  For  the  Virginian 
Gaits  see  an  article  The  Gait  Family  of  Williamsburg,  contributed  by 
Miss  Mary  M.  Gait  to  the  William  and  Mary  College  Quarterly  (April, 
1900.) 

3"The  young  men,  in  general,  are  sailors,  or  go  abroad  to  the  West 
Indies  and  America  as  store-keepers  and  planters."  Statist.  Acct.  of 
Scot.  (vol.  7,  p.  172).  The  dates  of  his  father's  birth  and  marriage  are 
from  the  Irvine  Session  Records. 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  9 

CHAPTER  I 
LIFE  (1779-1820) 

John  Gait  was  born  on  May  2,  1779,  in  Irvine,  Ayrshire, 
at  that  time  a  town  of  about  4,000  inhabitants.1  His  parents 
lived  in  High  Street  in  an  old-fashioned  house  long  since  re- 
placed by  the  Union  Bank.  A  stone's  throw  away  lived  David 
Sillar,  Burns'  "Dainty  Davie",  and  across  the  road  was  Dr. 
MacKenzie,  one  of  Burns'  warmest  friends. 

The  Gaits  had  been  settled  in  the  district  as  early  as  the 
seventeenth  century.  Tradition  said  they  had  come  from 
Perthshire.  Some  of  them  had  suffered  in  the  religious  perse- 
cutions, and  two  ancestors  had  been  banished  to  the  Southern 
States  in  1684.  Their  descendants  still  live  in  Virginia.2 

Gait's  Scottish  reserve  allows  us  slight  but  pleasant 
glimpses  of  his  parents.  His  father,  John  Gait,  born  in  1750, 
married  in  1776  and  had  three  children,  John,  Thomas,  and 
Agnes.  He  was  the  Captain  of  a  West  Indiaman  and  was  no 
doubt  responsible  for  his  son's  later  interest  in  West  Indian 
matters.3  Of  easy-going  nature,  moderate  ability,  and  often 
away  from  home,  he  seems  to  have  influenced  his  son  very 
little.  From  him  Gait  inherited  his  good  looks  and  striking 
figure.  Mrs.  Gait  was  a  more  strongly  marked  character, 
possessed  of  shrewd  common  sense,  a  taste  for  satire  and  a 

1A  description  of  Irvine  was  contributed  by  Rev.  James  Richmond, 
the  parish  minister,  to  Sir  John  Sinclair's  Statistical  Account  of  Soot- 
land  (vol.  7,  pp.  169,  171). 

2 Archaeological  and  Historical  Collections  Relating  to  the  Counties 
of  Ayr  and  Wigtown  (vols.  4,  7  land  8).  Some  of  Gait's  ancestors  are 
buried  in  Dreghorn  Churchyard,  a  couple  of  miles  from  Irvine  (Autobiog. 
II.,  228)— John  Gait,  cooper  (d.  1719) ;  his  wife  Marion  Crawford  (d. 
1701) ;  their  children  Robert  William,  William  Hugh,  Jean,  Grizal  and 
Alexander  (d.  1753) ;  James  Gait,  cooper  (d.  1778).  It  is  probable  that 
Alexander  Gait  (d.  1753)  was  Gait's  grandfather.  For  the  Virginian 
Gaits  see  an  article  The  Gait  Family  of  Williamsburg,  contributed  by 
Miss  Mary  M.  Gait  to  the  William  and  Mary  College  Quarterly  (April, 
1900.) 

3"The  young  men,  in  general,  are  sailors,  or  go  abroad  to  the  West 
Indies  and  America  as  store-keepers  and  planters."  Statist.  Acct.  of 
Scot.  (vol.  7,  p.  172).  The  dates  of  his  father's  birth  and  marriage  are 
from  the  Irvine  Session  Records. 


10  JOHN  GALT 

mastery  of  the  vernacular  which  was  transmitted  to  both  her 
sons.  Gait  learned  from  her  what  Carlyle  learned  from  his 
peasant  father.  The  prudent,  observant  Mrs.  Pringle  of  The 
Ayrshire  Legatees  was  drawn  from  her,  and  doubtless  she  also 
served  as  model  to  some  extent  for  all  those  stirring,  thor- 
ough-handed women  with  sharp  tongues  and  kindly  hearts 
whom  Gait  delighted  to  portray. 

Gait  was  a  sickly  child ;  a  sort  of  "all-overishness" — a  fav- 
ourite word  of  his — weighed  upon  him.  He  could  not  hold  his 
own  in  games  or  studies  with  the  other  grammar  school  boys.1 
He  seems  to  have  learned  little  enough  either  from  the  excel- 
lent dominie  or  from  his  private  tutor.  The  best  part  of  his 
education  was  got  outside  the  class-room.  Lounging  on  his 
bed,  much  to  his  energetic  mother's  annoyance,  he  devoured 
ballads  and  story-books — Chevy  Chase,  Blind  Harry2,  Leper 
the  Tailor.  He  also  heard  tales  and  legends  from  a  number  of 
old  women  in  the  close  behind  his  grandmother's  house.  At 
his  grandmother's  hearth  he  heard  stories  of  the  smuggling 
days  at  the  Troon  and  much  else  which  he  later  used  in  the 
Annals  of  the  Parish.  Gardening  was  another  resource  for 
the  delicate  boy.  He  liked  also  to  wander  among  the  whin  and 
broom  of  the  commonty  northwest  of  the  town  and  in  the 
woods  surrounding  Eglinton  Castle  within  a  mile  of  Irvine. 

One  curious  incident  of  his  boyhood  is  worth  telling.  In 
1782  a  Mrs.  Elspat  Buchan  arrived  in  Irvine.  She  had  heard 
Mr.  White,  the  Relief  Minister  of  Irvine,  preach  in  Glasgow 
and  declared  he  was  the  first  who  had  spoken  effectually  to  her 
sinful  heart.  She  had  now  come  to  be  further  confirmed  in 

JPart  of  the  old  grammar  school,  founded  in  pre-Reformation  days, 
still  stands.  Henry  Eckford  (1775-1832),  afterwards  famous  as  a  naval 
architect  in  America,  was  one  of  Gait's  schoolfellows.  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
was  there  for  a  short  time,  probably  in  1815  or  1816.  John  Allan,  Poe's 
foster-father,  was  a  native  of  Irvine  and  a  nephew  of  William  Gait  of 
Richmond,  Virginia.  The  school  may  have  supplied  some  details  to  the 
sketch  in  Poe's  tale  William  Wilson.  (See  Complete  Poems  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  ed.  J.  H.  Whitty,  1917.)  Some  information  about  Gait's  school 
days  was  supplied  toy  G.  J.  Weir  and  Alexander  Rodger  to  Miss  Harriet 
Pigott  who  contemplated  writing  a  life  of  Gait.  This  material  forms  a 
MS.  volume  now  in  The  Bodleian  and  entitled  Memoirs  of  John  Gait. 

2Galt  wrote  two  poems  on  Wallace — one  is  printed  in  The  Bachelor's 
Wife,  the  other  is  among  his  papers  and  was  apparently  not  published. 


11 

the  faith.  She  made  house  to  house  visitations,  expounded 
the  Scriptures,  and  gave  out  that  she  was  the  woman  spoken 
of  in  Revelation  (ch.  XII)  and  that  Mr.  White  was  the  man- 
child  she  had  brought  forth.  This  was  too  much  for  Mr. 
White's  orthodox  congregation,  and  he  was  dismissed.  In 
May,  1784,  Mrs.  Buchan  was  banished  from  Irvine  as  a  blas- 
phemer. Forty  or  fifty  of  her  followers  accompanied  her  sing- 
ing psalms  and  shouting  that  they  were  on  the  way  to  the 
New  Jerusalem,  the  route  to  which  seems  to  have  lain  through 
Kilmarnock  and  Mauchline.  "I  with  many  other  children  also 
accompanied  her,"  says  Gait,  "but  my  mother  in  a  state  of 
distraction  pursued  and  drew  me  back  by  the  lug  and  the 
horn."  The  wild  enthusiastic  singing  rose  in  his  memory 
when  describing  the  Covenanters  in  Ringan  Gilhaize.1 

Gait  was  taken  every  year  to  spend  some  time  at  Greenock. 
It  was  on  one  of  these  jaunts  in  1785  or  1786  that  he  "was 
first  sensible  of  the  influence  of  the  Muses."  On  leaving  Irvine 
he  had  been  given  two  young  larks,  and  on  the  journey  he 
wrote  a  ballad  on  their  birth,  parentage,  and  intended  educa- 
tion. The  poem  has  not  been  saved,  nor,  says  Gait,  "have  I 
any  recollection  of  again  intromitting,  as  the  Scottish  law- 
yers say,  with  the  Muses  for  several  years."  These  journeys 
made  Gait  familiar  with  scenes  and  places  which  afterwards 
appear  in  his  books — Ardrossan,  the  ruins  of  Southennan,  the 
battlefield  of  Largs,  the  pretty  village  of  Inverkip.2 

When  Gait  was  about  ten  the  family  moved  to  Greenock 
where  his  father  had  built  a  new  house  at  the  north-west  cor- 
ner of  West  Blackball  Street  and  West  Burn  Street.  The 
fourteen  or  fifteen  years  spent  here  left  their  mark  on  Gait 
and  on  his  work.  He  is  indeed  sometimes  spoken  of  as  a 

1Autobiog.  1.,  6-7.  The  garden  of  the  house  where  the  Buchanites 
held  their  meetings  bordered  on  the  Gait  garden.  Burns  has  an  inter- 
esting letter  (Mossgiel,  Aug.  3,  1784),  on  the  Buchanites,  with  most  of 
whom  he  was  personally  acquainted.  They  finally  settled  at  Closeburn, 
Dumfriesshire;  and  after  Mrs.  Buchan's  death  (1791)  the  camp  gradu- 
ally disappeared.  Meg  Dods  refers  contemptuously  to  Mrs.  Buchan 
(St.  Ronan's  Well,  ch.  2.) 

2See,  for  example,  Miss  Pringle's  description  of  the  journey  (Ayr. 
Leg.,  ch.  1.) 


12  JOHN  GALT 

Greenock  man.  Carlyle  found  in  him  the  air  of  a  sedate 
Greenock  burgher  and  called  him  "a  broad  gawsie  Greenock 
man."  Mrs.  Thomson  spoke  of  his  Greenock  accent.  The 
town  had  always  a  place  in  his  "indelible  local  memory,"  and 
for  the  people  he  always  felt  a  half  humorous  affection.  They 
had,  he  said,  a  conceit  of  themselves  above  others  of  the  human 
race — a  weakness  with  which  Gait  could  readily  sympathize. 
The  humours  of  Clydeside  life  delighted  him  and  were  faith- 
fully portrayed  years  afterwards  in  The  Steamboat. 

At  Greenock,  though  he  was  "a  long  soople  laddie,  who,  like 
all  bairns  that  grow  fast  and  tall,  had  but  little  smeddum"1, 
he  began  to  shake  off  his  soft  ailing  disposition.  He  continued 
his  schooling,  but  won  no  distinction.2  "He  could  not  be  called 
a  dolt,  for  he  was  observant  and  thoughtful,  and  given  to  ask- 
ing sagacious  questions ;  but  there  was  a  sleepiness  about  him, 
especially  in  the  kirk,  and  he  gave,  as  the  master  said,  but 
little  application  to  his  lessons,  so  that  folk  thought  he  would 
turn  out  a  sort  of  gaunt-at-the-door,  more  mindful  of  meat 
than  work." 

Two  of  his  schools  friends  had  considerable  influence 
upon  him  and  were  always  mentioned  by  him  with  generous 
praise.  William  Spence  attracted  him  by  the  extent  of  his 
general  information  and  by  his  scientific  interests.  Park, 
whom  he  considered  the  most  accomplished  person  he  ever 
knew,  not  excepting  Byron,  was  his  literary  guide.  Some  of 
the  scientific  amusements  were  rather  risky.  A  brass  cannon 
constructed  by  Spence  was  tested  in  the  Gait  kitchen,  Mrs. 
Gait  being  absent.  Fortunately  nothing  more  than  a  crackle 
resulted.3  Spence's  mechanical  ingenuity  also  turned  Gait  to 

aThis  and  the  following  quotation  are  from  Annals  of  the  Parish,  c. 
XLII.  It  is  quite  clear  from  the  context  that  Gait  himself  is  meant. 

2Galt  went  to  two  schools  in  Greenock.  One  was  in  the  Royal  Close 
and  conducted  by  Colin  Lament  who  died  in  1851  at  the  age  of  97.  (See 
George  Williamson's  Old  Greenock,  2nd  series,  p.  182) ;  the  other  was 
conducted  by  one  McGregor.  It  was  at  the  second  he  met  Park  and 
Spence. 

^Gait's  Life  of  Spence,  prefixed  to  Spence's  mathematical  essay  on 
Logarithmic  Transcendants,  and  also  printed  in  the  Monthly  Magazine 
(May,  1819).  There  is  a  monument  to  'Spence  in  the  Mid  Parish  Church, 
Greenock. 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  13 

less  dangerous  hobbies.  He  tried  to  make  a  hurdy-gurdy,  con- 
trived an  Edephusicon  (whatever  that  may  be)  and  an  Eolian 
harp.  This  last  instrument,  however,  so  distressed  Mrs.  Gait 
that  he  was  forced  to  give  it  away.  Inspired  by  the  example 
of  Spence,  who  "made  beautiful  sonatas  which  had  as  much 
character  as  the  compositions  of  Frederick  the  Great,"  Gait 
took  up  flute-playing.  He  considered  himself  rather  effective 
in  the  overture  to  Artaxerxes,  "and  there  was  a  beautiful 
movement  of  Jomelli  in  which  I  thought  myself  divine."  One 
of  his  compositions,  Loch-na-gar,  when  set  to  Byron's  words 
attained  street-organ  popularity. 

Gait  threw  himself  with  equal  enthusiasm  into  literature. 
After  reading  Pope's  Iliad  he  kneeled  by  his  bed  and  prayed 
that  he  might  produce  something  like  it  himself.  The  first 
result  of  this  ardour  was  a  rebus  on  a  lime-kiln.  Park  and  he 
exchanged  birthday  odes,  and  wrote  poems  and  articles  for 
newspapers  and  periodicals.  Gait  even  tried  his  hand  at 
drama.1  He  naturally  began  with  tragedy — The  Royal  Victim. 
Another  attempt,  The  Confessor,  was  inspired  by  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe's  Italian.  A  farce,  Lingo's  Wedding,  was  only  kept  off 
the  Greenock  stage  by  fear  of  Mrs.  Gait's  wrath.  His  reading 
was  as  miscellaneous  as  his  writing.  A  well  chosen  library  in 
the  town  gave  him  larger  opportunities  than  he  had  enjoyed 
at  Irvine.2  Further  chances  for  writing  and  discussion  were 
supplied  by  a  monthly  society  started  at  Spence's  suggestion. 
His  own  essays,  he  confessed,  were  "the  most  shocking  affairs 
that  ever  issued  from  a  pen."  It  was  perhaps  at  a  meeting  of 
this  society  that  he  met  Hogg  who  passed  through  Greenock 
in  the  early  summer  of  1804  on  his  way  to  the  Hebrides. 
Gait,  according  to  the  Shepherd,  was  a  tall  thin  youth,  re- 
splendent in  frock  coat  and  new  top-boots,  and  an  emphatic 
amusing  speaker.3 

1Weir,  his  Irvine  schoofellpw,  says:  "Mr.  Gait  at  14  was  writing 
plays  and  sending  his  productions  to  John  Kemble  and  corresponding 
with  him,  who  always  returned  the  like  answers,  adding  that  his  produc- 
tions only  required  to  be  well  revised  when  they  might  be  acted." 

2There  are  two  portraits  of  Gait  in  the  library  and  one  of  Spence. 

3Hogg's  reminiscences  of  Gait  and  others  are  contained  in  his  Poeti- 
cal Works,  vol.  5. 


14  JOHN  GALT 

During  the  French  Revolution  when  party  spirit  was  run- 
ning high  the  library  committee  decided  to  purge  the  shelves 
of  tainted  authors  such  as  Holcroft  and  Godwin.  Such  action 
seemed  to  Gait  and  his  friends  "an  unheard-of  proceeding  in 
a  Protestant  land."  His  wrath  was  "inflamed  prodigiously," 
and  he  christened  the  librarian  "the  Kaliph  Omer."1  At  the 
next  annual  meeting  for  nominating  the  committee  the  insur- 
gent youth  carried  the  day ;  the  heretical  books  were  replaced 
on  the  shelves  and  increased  in  number. 

This  rebellion  was,  however,  no  indication  of  democratic 
principles.  When  war  was  renewed  in  1803  Gait  helped  to 
raise  two  companies  of  sharp-shooters  or  riflemen,  "the  first 
of  the  kind  raised  in  the  volunteer  force  of  the  kingdom." 
Their  offer  of  service  was  at  first  rejected,  but  at  Gait's  sug- 
gestion resolutions  were  sent  to  London  declaring  that,  their 
offer  not  being  accepted,  they  considered  themselves  as  having 
the  authority  of  government  to  believe  and  represent  that 
there  was  no  danger  of  invasion.  This  brought  matters  to  a 
head;  the  ardent  volunteers  were  accepted.2 

His  energy  also  found  vent  in  walking  tours  in  company 
with  Park  and  others.3  Memories  of  an  expedition  to  Loch 
Lomond  may  be  detected  in  several  scenes  in  The  Spaewife. 
The  most  ambitious  and  the  last  of  these  jaunts  was  to  the 
border  country,  soon  to  be  made  famous  by  Scott.  At  Dur- 
ham Gait  first  saw  Mrs.  Siddons.  Her  interpretation  of  Lady 
Macbeth  made  a  lasting  impression.4 

Probably,  however,  Gait  took  more  pleasure  in  lonely  ram- 
bles by  a  moorland  stream  above  the  town.  A  half-hearted 
angler,  he  spent  most  of  his  time  in  day-dreams  which  show 
to  what  projects  his  mind  already  turned.  Many  of  the  un- 
dertakings which  were  to  transform  Glasgow  and  the  Clyde 
had  already  been  set  on  foot.  Dredging  had  changed  the  river 

1The  Librarian  was  John  Dunlop,  grandfather  of  "Tiger"  Dunlop, 
who  was  with  Gait  in  Canada. 

2This  incident  is  used  in  The  Provost. 

3;See  a  poem  by  Park — Reflections  on  a  Sunday  Morning's  Walk 
(Scots  Magazine,  Feb.,  1804.) 

4See  Lives  of  the  Players.  In  Gait's  English  prose  there  are  an  ex- 
traordinary number  of  quotations  more  or  less  literal  from  Macbeth. 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  15 

from  a  pleasant  salmon  stream  to  a  great  commercial  highway. 
No  wonder  a  youth  like  Gait  with  his  large  ambitions  should 
brood  on  schemes  of  improvement  and  development.  The 
trout  stream  set  him  pondering  on  how  Greenock  might  be 
supplied  with  water.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  cherished  a 
plan  for  improving  the  Greenock  harbour,  and  also  planned  a 
canal  to  join  Loch  Lomond  and  Loch  Long.  He  was,  however, 
no  mere  visionary.  His  scheme  for  Greenock's  water-supply 
was  afterwards  carried  out,  and  the  idea  of  the  canal  has  re- 
cently been  revived.  "In  contriving  schemes  such  as  these  my 
youth  was  spent,  but  they  were  all  of  too  grand  a  calibre  to 
obtain  any  attention,  and  I  doubt  if  there  yet  be  any  one 
among  my  contemporaries  capable  of  appreciating  their  im- 
portance."1 The  boy  was  father  of  the  man.  As  superinten- 
dent of  the  Canada  Company  Gait  showed  the  same  commer- 
cial imagination,  met  with  the  same  neglect,  and  felt  the  same 
indignation. 

There  was  little  chance  of  Gait's  ambitions  being  satisfied 
in  Greenock.  The  commercial  projects  of  a  clerk  in  the  Cus- 
toms House,  where  he  had  been  sent  on  leaving  school,  were 
not  likely  to  be  taken  seriously.  Nor  could  he  find  among  the 
bustling  complacent  people  of  Greenock  much  sympathy  for 
his  belief  that  "literature  was  the  first  of  human  pursuits." 
His  father  was  not  wealthy.  It  became  clear  to  Gait  that 
he  must  win  his  own  way  and  also  that  Greenock  was  too 
limited  an  arena  for  his  powers.  Gait  never  underrated  his 
own  capacity. 

The  immediate  cause  of  his  departure  was  typical  of  his 
impulsive  nature.  "The  first  revolutionary  war,"  he  declared, 
"had  contributed  to  form  in  Glasgow  a  number  of  purse-proud 
men,  who  neither  had  the  education  nor  the  feelings  of  gentle- 
men." One  of  these  persons  wrote  an  abusive  letter  to  Miller 
&  Co.,  into  whose  employ  Gait  had  passed  from  the  Customs 
House.  Gait  took  it  on  himself  to  demand  an  apology.  He 
chased  the  culprit  from  Glasgow  to  Edinburgh  and  forced  him 
to  admit  his  guilt.  On  the  man  making  excuses  for  his  lan- 

lAutobiog.  1.,  p.  20-22. 


16  JOHN  GALT 

guage,  Gait  bolted  the  door  and  gave  him  ten  minutes  to  write 
an  apology.  When  this  was  done  Gait  departed  in  a  state  of 
high  excitement  and  self-approval.  Why  this  adventure  should 
have  determined  him  to  quit  Greenock  is  not  very  clear;  it 
probably  increased  his  confidence. 

Gait  set  out  for  London  with  his  father  probably  in  May  or 
June,  1804.  Among  his  baggage  was  an  epic  poem,  The  Bat- 
tle of  Largs.  He  had  also  a  bundle  of  letters  of  introduction, 
but  these  brought  him  nothing  except  a  few  dinner  invita- 
tions.1 Left  to  shift  for  himself  on  his  father's  departure, 
Gait  spent  six  months  in  sight-seeing,  theatre-going  and  read- 
ing. He  and  Park  exchanged  poems  and  advice.  Their  let- 
ters were,  according  to  Gait,  "perhaps  the  finest  specimens 
extant  of  communications  not  intended  for  the  public  eye." 
This  pronouncement  must  be  taken  on  faith  as  regards  Gait's 
share  in  the  correspondence,  for  only  a  few  scraps  have  been 
preserved.  They  reflect  his  loneliness  and  his  scorn  for  ordin- 
ary unexciting  tasks.  "I  beseech  you,"  writes  Park,  "check 
all  dispositions  to  grow  romantic  and  endeavour  to  get  rich  as 
soon  as  possible."  Gait's  answer  to  this  advice  was  to  publish 
his  epic.2  In  the  end  he  decided  to  suppress  his  book,  though 
he  was  always  proud  that  it  had  preceded  The  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel.  About  the  same  time  he  formed  a  partnership  with 
a  fellow-Scot,  M'Lachlan.  What  the  business  was  does  not 
appear,  but  for  a  while  it  seems  to  have  prospered.3  The  at- 
tempt to  be  author  and  man  of  affairs  at  the  same  time  is  char- 
acteristic of  Gait. 

In  London  as  in  Greenock  Gait  scattered  his  energy.  He 
dabbled  in  astrology,  alchemy,  heraldry;  he  drew  up  a  theory 

*It  is  a  good  illustration  of  Gait's  barrenness  of  invention  and  of 
his  reliance  on  his  own  experience  for  literary  material  that  the  incident 
of  the  letters  appears  in  three  of  his  books:  The  Stolen  Child,  Bogle 
Corbet,  and  My  Landlady  and  her  Lodgers. 

2The  Battle  of  Largs:  a  Gothic  Poem.  With  several  miscellaneous 
pieces.  Gait  was  needlessly  alarmed  lest  Jeffrey  should  criticise  his  book. 
It  was  briefly  noticed  in  the  Monthly  Revieiv  (Feb.,  1805),  and  in  the 
Critical  Review  (July,  1805). 

3Weir  says,  "He  went  to  London  and  associating  a  young  man  from 
Port  Glasgow  with  him,  he  set  up  a  house  there  for  advancing  money  and 
doing  the  business  of  those  merchants  who  had  money  to  pay  or  other 
business  to  transact  in  London." 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  17 

of  crimes  and  punishments,  and  discovered  how  to  make  in- 
delible ink.  He  wrote  for  the  periodicals  on  insurance,  history 
of  English  commerce,  bills  of  exchange,  commercial  policy, 
Upper  Canada.  It  is  not  surprising  that  he  was  soon  in  busi- 
ness difficulties.  In  Ib08  a  correspondent  in  Scotland  to  whom 
they  had  heavy  obligations  failed.  Gait  hurried  to  Greenock, 
but,  while  he  v°s  attempting  to  make  an  arrangement  with 
the  .creditors,  Another  firm  for  which  he  and  M'Lachlan  were 
pledged  had  collapsed.  The  result  was  bankruptcy  and  a  dis- 
solution of  the  partnership.  Many  years  afterwards  he  told 
the  story  of  his  failure  in  Bogle  Corbet. 

In  spite  of  ill-health  he  tried  his  luck  again,  this  time  with 
his  brother  Tom  for  partner.  Tom's  departure  for  Honduras 
ended  this  arrang  ment,  and  he  himself  was  ordered  to  Bath 
by  the  doctor.  On  his  return  he  decided  to  study  law,  entered 
himself  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  resolved  to  go  abroad  for  rest 
and  change.  He  had  little  to  show  for  his  five  years  in  Lon- 
don. "In  this  period  I  was  indefatigably  industrious,  but  still 
greatly  regret  my  misspent  time,  for  the  industry  was  but 
barren  toil."1 

Gait  left  England  in  August,  18092  and  was  absent  just 
over  two  yeafs.  In  point  of  time  his  travels  coincided  almost 
exactly  with  those  of  Byron.  His  acquaintance  with  Byron 
was  one  of  the  few  interesting  results  of  his  tour.  They 
sailed  on  the  same  Malta  packet  from  Gibraltar,  but  for  sev- 
eral days  Byron  was  aloof  and  moody.  Later  he  joined  his 
companions  in  shooting  at  bottles  in  the  water  and  in  catch- 
ing turtles.  They  parted  at  Malta  early  in  September,  Gait 
crossing  to  Sicily  where  he  spent  three  months.  A  half-hearted 
tourist,  Gait  made  dull  notes  about  palaces  and  churches  and 
grudging  remarks  about  the  scenery.  Statistics  of  trade  and 
population  were  of  greater  interest  to  his  practical  mind. 

About  Christmas  he  crossed  to  Malta  in  an  open  boat,  and 
three  weeks  later  decided  to  explore  the  Archipelago.  As  yet, 

1Autobiog.,  I.,  94. 

2  A  full  account  of  Gait's  two  years  in  the  East  can  be  gathered  from 
the  Autobiography,  Voyages  and  Travels,  Letters  from  the  Levant,  Life 
of  Byron,  and  a  MS.  Journal  left  among  his  papers. 


18  JOHN  GALT 

however,  he  seems  to  have  formed  no  definite  commercial 
scheme.  The  voyage  was  not  unexciting.  They  were  driven 
out  of  their  course  by  a  storm,  just  escaped  a  French  privateer 
and  were  fired  upon  by  a  Tripoline  cruiser.  The  cruiser's 
action  became  clear  a  few  days  later,  when  Gait  learned  that 
he  was  on  board  a  smuggler.  He  accordingly  changed  into  a 
small  sloop  bound  for  Patras  and  went  on  thence  to  Corinth. 
At  Tripolizza  the  famous  Veli  Pasha  granted  him  an  interview 
which  may  be  compared  with  Byron's  reception  by  Ali  Pasha. 

Here  the  idea  first  occurred  to  Gait  of  a  business  establish- 
ment in  the  East  to  evade  the  Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees.  The 
disordered  state  of  Turkey  would,  he  thought,  permit  English 
goods  to  be  smuggled  through  to  European  markets.  This 
scheme  gave  a  purpose  to  his  travels  and  extended  their  scope 
in  the  following  months. 

For  a  time,  however,  ill-health  kept  him  a  mere  tourist. 
At  Athens  he  fell  in  again  with  Byron  and  Hobhouse.  On 
March  26,  1810,  he  set  about  his  undertaking  in  earnest.  The 
first  essential  was  a  suitable  base  of  operations  in  the  Archi- 
pelago. Hydra  and  Scio  were  visited  and  found  wanting,  but 
Myconi  seemed  the  very  place  he  was  looking  for.  Having 
secured  a  large  building  there  he  left  for  Malta.  There  he 
learned  to  his  astonishment  that  a  plan  similar  to  his  own  was 
being  considered  by  Kirkman,  Finlay  &  Co.,  of  Glasgow.  To 
them  he  sent  details  of  his  scheme  and  resolved  in  the  mean- 
time to  extend  his  explorations. 

In  the  company  of  a  Mr.  Monroe  he  left  Malta  about  the 
beginning  of  August.  A  gale  forced  them  to  land  on  the  island 
of  Cerigo  where  they  were  entertained  by  the  consul  and,  to 
Gait's  great  annoyance,  kissed  at  parting.  They  rode  north 
through  Greece  to  Athens  where  they  met  Lady  Hester  Stan- 
hope. Like  Childe  Harold  Gait  visited  Marathon  and  Parnas- 
sus, "drank  the  vaunted  rill,"  and  essayed  to  sing.  Salonica 
was  now  his  goal,  but  there  were  various  obstacles  to  a  speedy 
journey.  A  Turkish  army  under  Veli  Pasha  had  taken  all  the 
good  horses.  On  reaching  Salonica  in  October  he  decided  it 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  19 

would  be  a  suitable  starting-point  for  the  overland  route  by 
which  British  goods  were  to  be  introduced  to  the  Continent. 

A  few  days  later  he  was  in  Constantinople.  The  notes  in 
his  Journal  are  not  very  interesting.  -One  entry  describing 
the  Sultan  on  his  way  to  the  mosque  may  be  quoted.  He  "ap- 
peared to  be  about  five-and-twenty,  of  a  pale  and  passive  coun- 
tenance ;  his  beard  black  and  bushy,  his  eye  dark  and  penetrat- 
ing. In  the  cast  of  his  features  he  bears  a  very  striking  like- 
ness to  Lord  Aberdeen.  He  eyed  us  as  he  passed  very  par- 
ticularly; I  imagine  from  the  circumstance  of  two  using  spec- 
tacles and  one  a  quizzing  glass."  Gait  has  a  gift  for  finding 
resemblances  between  Turks  and  Scots.  A  whirling  figure  in 
a  penitential  dance  at  Athens  reminded  him  of  Thomas  Camp- 
bell, and  an  old  officer  at  Marathonisi  seemed  to  him  like  the 
Marquis  of  Huntly. 

About  this  time  his  business  plan  seems  to  have  taken 
fairly  definite  shape.  In  the  vague  narrative  of  his  Autobiog- 
raphy it  is  not  clear  whether  he  had  heard  from  Kirkman, 
Finlay  &  Co.,  or  was  acting  on  his  own  initiative.  At  all 
events  it  was  arranged  to  send  about  a  hundred  bales  of  goods 
to  Widdin  to  be  shipped  into  Hungary  by  way  of  Orsova.  Gait 
was  to  go  ahead  and  make  the  necessary  preparations.  It  was 
a  thoroughly  unpleasant  journey.  The  only  available  lodgings 
were  khans  crowded  with  soldiers  or  wretched  hovels,  and  his 
janissary  proved  a  coward.  At  Sofia  Veli  Pasha  granted  him 
safe  conduct  for  himself  and  the  caravan  of  camels  which  was 
to  follow.  At  Widdin  he  was  suspected  of  being  a  spy  in  the 
employ  of  the  Russians  who  were  besieging  the  town.  When 
this  difficulty  was  overcome  he  made  what  business  arrange- 
ments he  could  and  returned  to  Constantinople.  He  reached 
London  in  the  autumn  of  1811,  and  at  once  tried  to  find  back- 
ing for  his  enterprise.  The  intention  of  studying  law  was 
abandoned,  a  decision  he  later  regretted  when  worn  out  by 
incessant  book-making  and  commercial  failures. 

His  hopes  had  been  raised  in  Constantinople  by  the  British 
ambassador,  Stratford  Canning,  who  said  he  was  about  to  pro- 
pose a  plan  of  government  for  the  Archipelago  and  that  he 


20  JOHN  GALT 

would  recommend  Gait  to  be  placed  at  its  head.  But  the  For- 
eign Office  had  no  word  from  Canning  and  was  indifferent  to 
Gait's  scheme.  This  rebuff  ended  his  share  in  the  business, 
but  his  disappointment  was  not  lessened  by  learning  shortly 
afterwards  that  a  profitable  trade  was  being  carried  on  by  the 
route  he  had  opened  up. 

He  sat  down  to  earn  a  living  by  literature.  For  two  or 
three  months  he  edited  the  Political  Review,  but  the  demands 
of  a  weekly  paper  were  too  constant  for  his  patience.  His  two 
years  in  the  East  suggested  a  book  of  travels  which  was  duly 
published  and  harshly  treated  by  the  critics.1  Croker's  sar- 
casm in  the  Quarterly  was  never  forgiven  by  Gait,  who 
thought  that  the  article  injured  his  career  in  Canada  by  mis- 
representing his  political  principles.  However  that  may  be, 
it  is  hard  to  find  anything  to  praise  in  Gait's  book,  which  is  an 
ill-arranged  mass  of  trivial  personal  details,  clumsy  humour, 
commonplace  remarks  on  antiquities,  pages  of  statistics  and 
arguments  for  a  vigorous  British  policy  in  the  East.  While 
his  book  was  in  the  press  Gait  was  the  guest  of  Dr.  Tilloch, 
editor  of  the  Philosophical  Magazine.  As  Gait  married  Til- 
loch's  daughter  about  a  year  later  we  may  infer  that  his  whole 
time  was  not  spent  in  proof-reading. 

Gait  was  proud  of  the  industry  and  rhetoric  displayed  in 
his  Life  of  Wolsey  (1812). 2  The  indifference  and  hostility  of 
the  critics  were  irritating.  He  meditated  horsewhipping  the 
sarcastic  Quarterly  reviewer  if  he  could  discover  his  identity. 
This  article  led  to  a  curious  meeting  with  the  notorious  Mary 
Ann  Clarke,  the  ex-mistress  of  the  Duke  of  York,  who  invited 
Gait  to  call  on  her,  asserted  that  Croker  was  the  offensive 
critic,  and  hinted  that  she  could  help  Gait  to  his  revenge. 
"After  telling  me  this,"  says  Gait,  "she  gave  one  of  her  know- 

i-Voyages  and  Travels  in  the  Years  1809,  1810  and  1811  (1812).  See 
Quarterly  Review  (June,  1812) ;  Critical  Review  (May,  1812) ;  Monthly 
Revieiv  (Aug.,  1813);  Edinburgh  Review  (April,  1814).  A  livelier  and 
less  pretentious  volume  was  Letters  from  the  Levant  (1813)  which  was 
favourably  noticed  in  the  British  Critic  (Jan.,  1814) ,  and  in  the  Monthly 
Review  (Oct.,  1814). 

2See  the  Quarterly  (Sept.,  1812) ;  Critical  Review  (Dec.,  1812)  ; 
Monthly  Review  (April  and  May,  1813);  British  Critic  (Dec.,  1813). 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  21 

ing  smiles,  and  said  she  was  surprised  to  see  me  so  young 
a  man  and  so  dressed,  for  she  understood  I  was  an  old  Scotch 
clergyman."  He  declined  her  unsavoury  offer  and  later  satis- 
fied himself  that  Croker  did  not  write  the  review. 

Travel  and  biography  having  failed  with  critics  and  public 
Gait  turned  dramatist.  His  volume  of  five  blank  verse  trag- 
edies, four  of  which  had  been  written  on  his  travels,  is  an  ex- 
traordinary illustration  of  his  self-confidence  and  his  complete 
lack  of  self-criticism.  Two  of  his  plays  are  sordid  unconvinc- 
ing stories;  the  others,  Agamemnon,  Clytemnestra  and  Lady 
Macbeth  degrade  and  vulgarize  great  themes.  Macbeth, 
troubled  by  what  he  calls  "metaphysical  phenomenae,"  is 
taunted  by  his  wife,  who  asks : 

Shall  we  confess  we  kill'd  the  King, 
And  mew  contrition  like  two  silly  urchins, 
Sick  with  the  surfeit  of  the  pantry's  spoil  ? 
Of  all  Gait's  literary  disasters  this  was  the  most  complete. 
Even  Scott,  usually  over-generous,  said  the  tragedies  were 
"the  worst  ever  seen."1 

This,  however,  was  not  the  last  of  Gait's  dramatic  ventures. 
There  was  talk  in  London  of  establishing  a  third  theatre  in 
addition  to  Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden.  The  managers, 
it  was  said,  rejected  plays  unfairly — Gait  shared  this  opinion 
after  one  of  his  own  tragedies  had  been  refused  by  both  thea- 
tres. He  accordingly  started  a  periodical,  first  called  The  Re- 
jected Theatre  and  later  renamed  The  New  British  Theatre,2 
in  which  mortified  genius  might  appeal  to  the  public.  Besides 
being  editor  Gait  Contributed  eleven  dramas.  The  only  result 
of  the  undertaking  was  to  justify  the  managers.  Gait  ex- 
plained the  failure  by  the  worthlessness  of  the  dramas  sub- 
mitted to  him.  His  own  contributions  are  a  sufficient  explana- 
tion. His  chief  pride  was  in  The  Witness  which,  through  the 
influence  of  Scott's  friend  William  Erskine,  was  acted  for  four 

1See  the  Quarterly  (April,  1814)  ;  Critical  Review  (Nov.,  1812) ; 
British  Critic  (May,  1814);  Monthly  Review  (March,  1814). 

2The  New  British  Theatre  was  published  later  in  four  volumes 
(1814-15). 


22  JOHN  GALT 

nights  in  Edinburgh  in  February,  1818,  under  the  name  of  The 
Appeal.  Lockhart  and  Captain  Hamilton,  author  of  Cyril 
Thornton,  supplied  a  prologue  and  Scott  an  epilogue.  Christo- 
pher North  says  many  people  thought  Coleridge  the  author. 
"There  has  been  nothing  superior  to  it,"  wrote  Gait,  "in  the 
theatrical  exhibitions  of  our  time." 

What  kind  of  living  Gait  made  by  literature  is  not  clear. 
For  a  few  months  in  1813  he  held  a  business  post  in  Gibraltar, 
but  it  came  to  nothing.  In  the  same  year  he  doubled  his  finan- 
cial obligations  by  marriage.  Of  his  wife,  Miss  Elizabeth 
Tilloch,  he  tells  us  almost  nothing.  Whatever  her  character 
may  have  been — one  friend  of  the  family  hints  at  ill-temper 
and  extravagance,  while  another  bestows  the  highest  praise — 
her  married  life  was  not  an  easy  one.  Her  husband  at  first 
won  neither  fame  nor  money;  later  he  was  absent  for  two 
years  in  Canada,  and  finally  he  was  a  helpless,  suffering  in- 
valid. Miss  Tilloch's  father,  according  to  Weir,  aided  the 
young  couple  at  the  start,  but  was  forced  to  end  his  generos- 
ity by  troubles  of  his  own.  Three  children  were  born  of  the 
marriage,  John  (1814?),  Thomas  (1815),  and  Alexander 
(1817),  two  of  whom  were  destined  to  make  a  mark  in  Cana- 
dian affairs. 

For  the  next  few  years  Gait  supported  his  family  by  hack 
work  for  the  publishers  and  by  odd  pieces  of  business  which 
came  his  way.  He  contributed  three  biographies  to  the  Lives 
of  the  British  Admirals,  wrote  a  life  of  Benjamin  West,  the 
historical  painter,  worked  for  the  Monthly  Magazine  and  other 
periodicals,  and  put  together  various  compilations.  He  also 
tried  his  hand  at  novels.  Of  The  Majolo  (1816) ,  a  tale  of  sus- 
pense and  mystery,  only  a  few  copies  were  printed.  "The 
work,"  says  Gait,  "was  never  intended  to  fall  into  promiscu- 
ous hands."  The  precaution  was  scarcely  necessary.  The 
Earthquake  (1820),  a  bewildering  and  unexciting  succession 
of  wanderings  and  violent  deeds,  reproduced  some  of  Gait's 
experiences  in  the  East. 

During  this  period  Gait  had  no  settled  abode.  In  1817  and 
perhaps  earlier  he  was  living  in  Chelsea,  in  1818  near  Green- 


LIFE  (1779-1820)  23 

ock,  a  place  left  desolate  for  him  by  the  deaths  of  Spence 
(1815),  Park  (1817)  and  his  father  (1817).1  A  little  later  he 
was  again  in  London.  One  of  his  Chelsea  neighbours,  Mrs. 
Katharine  Thomson,2  has  left  a  picture  of  Gait  as  he  was  in 
these  years.  He  was  a  man  of  great  physical  vigour,  over  six 
feet  in  height,  with  a  gift  for  humorous  stories  told  with  a 
strong  Scottish  accent.  Above  all,  he  had  confidence  in  him- 
self both  as  author  and  as  man  of  affairs,  a  confidence  which, 
after  years  of  drudgery  and  failure,  was  about  to  be  justified. 


father  is  buried  in  Inverkip  Street  Burying  Ground,  Greenock. 
The  inscription  on  the  grave  reads:  Here  are  deposited  the  remains  of 
John  Gait,  formerly  shipmaster  and  merchant  in  Greenock,  who  died 
on  the  6th  August,  1817,  in  the  67th  year  of  his  age. 

2Mrs.  Thomson  was  the  wife  of  Anthony  Todd  Thomson,  the  well- 
known  physician.  To  him  Gait  dedicated  his  Poems  (1833).  Her  rem- 
iniscences of  Gait  appeared  in  Bentley's  Miscellany  (vol.  18),  and  were 
afterwards  reprinted,  along  with  others,  under  the  title  Recollections 
of  Literary  Characters  and  Celebrated  Places  (1854). 


24  JOHN  GALT 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS 

Gait  came  into  his  own  in  1820,  the  year  when  Charles 
Lamb  found  his  true  bent.  And,  as  with  Lamb,  much  of  his 
best  matter  was  drawn  from  memories  of  youth  and  boyhood, 
mellowed  and  softened  by  the  lapse  of  thirty  years.  Always 
a  hasty  writer,  Gait  moved  with  ease  and  speed  on  this  famil- 
iar ground,  and  the  result  in  general  was  not  slovenly  work- 
manship. "For  once,"  says  his  friend  Gillies,1  "the  old  maxim 
was  reversed ;  for  with  him  easy  writing  made  easy  and  pleas- 
ant reading.  He  might  therefore  well  suppose,  as  he  too 
rashly  did,  that  the  road  to  fame  and  wealth  by  literature 
was  open  and  smooth  before  him,  for  he  could  have  scribbled 
such  things  ad  infinitum,  and  found  no  end  to  the  ridiculous 
exhibitions  of  Scottish  character  and  phraseology  in  which  he 
delighted."  He  boasted  to  Mrs.  Thomson  that  he  could  write 
several  pages  a  night.  The  books  which  give  Gait  his  secure 
'place  in  literature  appeared,  with  the  exception  of  The  Last 
of  the  Lairds,  within  three  years.  The  Ayrshire  Legatees 
began  to  run  in  Blackwood's  Magazine  in  June,  1820.  In  the 
next  year  the  Annals  of  the  Parish  and  The  Steamboat  were 
published.  The  Provost,  The  Gathering  of  the  West,  and  Sir 
Andrew  Wylie  all  belong  to  1822;  and  The  Entail  was  com- 
pleted in  the  same  year,  though  it  did  not  come  out  till  the 
beginning  of  1823.  All  these  works  were  published  by  Black- 
wood  to  whom  Gait  acknowledged  his  debt,  declaring  that  "if 
there  be  any  originality  in  my  Scottish  class  of  compositions, 
he  is  entitled  to  be  considered  as  the  first  person  who  discov- 
ered it."2 

!R.  P.  Gillies  (1788-1858),  a  friend  of  Scott  and  Wordsworth  and 
an  early  contributor  to  Blackwood's.  His  recollections  of  Gait  appeared 
in  his  Memoirs  of  a  Literary  Veteran  (1851),  vol.  3,  ch.  3. 

2Autobiog.  II.,  235.  Gait  was  a  little  proud  of  his  position  among 
Maga's  contributors.  A  correspondent  of  Constable's  wrote  to  him  (Dec. 
9, 1821),  that  Gait  was  said  to  be  the  "ostensible  editor"  of  the  Magazine. 
(See  Archibald  Constable  and  His  Literary  Correspondents,  II.,  371.) 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  25 

The  plan  of  The  Ayrshire  Legatees1  is  simple  enough  and 
not  very  original.  It  was  suggested  to  Gait  by  the  artless  re- 
marks of  country  visitors  in  London  to  whom  he  acted  as 
guide.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Pringle,  minister  of  Garnock,  is  left  a 
legacy  by  his  cousin,  and  goes  to  London  with  his  family  to 
make  the  necessary  arrangements.  In  the  letters  of  the  trav- 
ellers to  their  friends  at  home,  which  form  the  chief  part  of 
the  book,  Gait  no  doubt  took  Humphry  Clinker  for  his  model. 
The  little  group  which  receives  and  discusses  the  letters  is 
also  pleasantly  sketched.  The  members  of  the  Pringle  fam- 
ily have  some  resemblance  to  Smollett's  characters.  Mrs. 
Pringle,  unequalled  for  economy  and  management  among  min- 
isters' wives,  independent  in  her  spelling,  and  deeply  dis- 
tressed at  English  extravagance  and  the  state  of  the  gospel 
in  London,  is  perhaps  the  most  entertaining.  "Tell  Mrs. 
Glibbans,"  she  writes,  "that  I  have  not  heard  of  no  sound 
preacher  as  yet  in  London — the  want  of  which  is  no  doubt 
the  great  cause  of  the  crying  sins  of  the  place.  What  would 
she  think  to  hear  of  newspapers  selling  by  tout  of  horn  on 
the  Lord's  day  ?  And  on  the  Sabbath  night  the  change  houses 
are  more  throng  than  on  the  Saturday!  I  am  told,  but  as  yet 
I  cannot  say  that  I  have  seen  the  evil  myself,  with  my  own 
eyes,  that  in  the  summer-time  there  are  tea-gardens,  where 
the  tradesmen  go  to  smoke  their  pipes  of  tobacco,  and  to  en- 

Maginn,  the  Irish  humourist,  wrote  to  Blackwood  about  Gait  in  1823. 
"In  one  thing  you  were  decidedly  wrong;  you  ought  not  to  have  allowed 
him  to  get  so  thorough  an  insight  into  the  method  of  managing  the  maga- 
zine." (See  Mrs.  Oliphant's  William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  I.  390.) 
Besides  Eis  intimacy  with  Blackwood,  Gait  was  familiar  with  many  of 
the  chief  figures  of  Edinburgh  literary  society.  He  knew  Lockhart 
fairly  well  and  Scott  slightly.  Mrs.  Gordon,  Christopher  North's  daugh- 
ter, says  he  was  a  frequent  guest  at  her  father's  house.  Constable  Gait 
speaks  of  as  his  old  friend.  He  dined  with  him  on  the  day  when  Con- 
stable "received  from  the  then  undeclared  author  of  Waverley,  the 
manuscripts  of  that  celebrated  novel,  and  of  several  others  belonging 
to  the  same  series."  (See  note  to  Lawrie  Todd) .  It  was  Constable  who 
urged  Gait  to  write  the  life  of  Robert  Paterson,  the  founder  of  the  Bank 
of  England  and  of  the  Darien  expedition.  It  would  have  been  a  con- 
genial subject  to  Gait,  but  he  did  no  more  with  it  than  make  some  pre- 
liminary studies  and  notes. 

*The  Ayrshire  Legatees  ran  in  Blackwood's  from  June,  1820,  to 
Feb.,  1821,  an  instalment  appearing  every  number  except  Nov.,  1820. 
The  STeamboat  began  in  Feb.,  1821,  and  ended  in  December, 


26  JOHN  GALT 

tertain  their  wives  and  children,  which  can  be  nothing  less 
than  a  bringing  of  them  to  an  untimely  end."  Excellent,  too, 
is  the  gravity  of  Dr.  Pringle  who  is  unwittingly  betrayed  into 
novel-reading  by  "a  History  of  the  Rebellion,  anent  the  hand 
that  an  English  gentleman  of  the  name  of  Waverley  had  in 
it."  The  romantic  Miss  Pringle  and  her  brother  Andrew  the 
advocate,  are  less  interesting  than  their  elders.  The  descrip- 
tion of  George  Ill's  funeral  and  Andrew's  comments  on  well 
known  London  people  of  the  day,  such  as  Sir  Francis  Bur- 
dett  and  Gait's  old  travelling  companion,  Hobhouse,  are  not 
in  the  best  taste.  Personalities  were  too  common  a  resource 
of  Blackwood's  in  the  early  days,  and  Gait  admitted  later  that 
the  device  was  a  mistake.1 

Gait's  plan  of  bringing  simple  Scottish  folk  to  London  had 
been  thougftt  of  some  years  earlier  by  another  writer.  In  De- 
cember, 1814,  Lockhart  wrote  to  Constable  about  a  sketch  he 
was  composing  which  was  to  deal  with  classes  of  Scotch  so- 
ciety so  far  "quite  untouched."  "The  hero  is  one  John  Todd, 
a  true-blue,  who  undertakes  a  journey  to  London  in  a  Berwick 
smack,  and  is  present  in  the  metropolis  at  the  same  time  with 
the  Emperor  of  Russia  and  the  other  illustrious  visitors  in 
June  last."  If  Lockhart's  story  was  ever  finished  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  published.2 

The  Ayrshire  Legatees  won  immediate  popularity,  but  was 
a  puzzle  to  the  critics.  Gait's  name  was  not  on  the  title-page, 
and  shortly  after  it  began  to  run  in  the  magazine  appeared 
The  Earthquake  declaring  itself  to  be  by  the  same  author. 
The  Quarterly  expressed  delighted  surprise  at  the  difference 
between  the  two  works.  But  the  Monthly  Review  (Nov., 
1821)  went  further,  and  could  not  believe  them  to  be  by  the 

1Galt's  repentance  was  not  on  the  grounds  of  taste.  "I  committed 
a  mistake  which  has  prevented  that  work  from  being  understood  by  a 
few.  I  there  made  use  of  the  real  names  of  the  actual  persons  with 
whom  I  intended  to  be  jocular,  and  the  consequence  has  been  that  while 
I  only  tried  to  describe  caricatures  as  seen  by  others  I  have  been  sup- 
posed to  speak  my  own  opinions."  Introduction  to  Stories  of  the  Study 
(1883).  ,See  also  Lit.  Life,  I.,  227f,  and  Autobiog.  II.,  229. 

2Archibald  Constable  and  his  Literary  Correspondents,  III.,  151-2. 
Lang's  Life  of  Lockhart,  I.,  75. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  27 

same  pen.  Most  emphatic  of  all  was  the  London  Magazine 
which  reviewed  The  Earthquake  in  January,  1821.  "We  are 
absolutely  sickened  by  this — not  by  the  work  itself,  though  it 
is  very  absurd  and  very  offensive,  but  by  the  fraud  of  which  it 
is  attempted  to  be  made  the  means.  It  is  expressed  on  its  title- 
page  to  be  by  the  author  of  The  Ayrshire  Legatees.  We  have 
no  hesitation  to  declare  that  it  is  not  by  the  author  of  The 
Ayrshire  Legatees."  The  reviewer  confesses  he  had  thought 
Scott  the  author  of  the  Legatees,  but  that  the  introduction  of 
actual  individuals  in  the  book  was  unlike  Scott's  manner.  "We 
have  heard  it  reported,"  he  goes  on,  "that  we  owe  this  Earth- 
quake to  Mr.  John  Gait;  but  cannot  affirm  that  the  report  is 
correct.  No  one,  however,  who  knows  anything  of  Mr.  Gait's 
famous  tragedies  would  ever  suspect  him  of  being  the  writer 
of  a  set  of  acute,  close,  unaffected  representations  of  actual 
life,  in  the  shrewd,  homely  language  of  the  minister  and  mem- 
bers of  an  Ayrshire  congregation  of  Presbyterians."  How 
long  Gait's  authorship  was  concealed  is  hard  to  say.  In  June, 
1822,  Christopher  North  flatly  announced  the  truth  in  Black- 
wood's,  and  declared  that  the  successive  chapters  of  the 
Legatees  "were  immediately  and  universally  acknowledged  to 
be  the  very  best  articles  that  ever  had  been  in  any  periodical 
work,  and  deservedly  high  as  the  character  of  our  miscellany 
then  stood,  yet  The  Ayrshire  Legatees  increased  our  sale 
prodigiously." 

The  reception  of  the  book  induced  Gait  to  offer  another 
work  to  Blackwood,  of  which  the  private  history  is  rather 
curious.  When  very  young  Gait,  it  seems-,  wished  to  write  a 
book  that  would  be  for  Scotland  what  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield 
is  for  England,  and  early  began  to  observe  in  what  respects  the 
minister  of  a  parish  differed  from  the  general  inhabitants  of 
the  country.  But  the  idea  was  not  followed  up  with  energy 
and  might  have  come  to  nothing.  During  a  solitary  Sunday 
walk  to  the  village  of  Inverkip  near  Greenock,  while  noticing 
the  various  changes  in  the  place  and  reflecting  on  old  vanished 
conditions,  the  intention  of  writing  a  minister's  sedate  adven- 
tures returned  upon  him,  and  he  felt  something  like  the  glow 


28  JOHN  GALT 

with  which  Rousseau  conceived  his  essay  on  the  arts  and  sci- 
ences. For  many  years,  however,  business  and  the  vicissitudes 
of  life  suspended  the  design,  though  it  was  constantly  remem- 
bered. Finally,  in  1813,  the  year  before  Waverley,  the  work 
began  to  take  shape  as  the  Annals  of  the  Parish.1  When  it 
was  nearly  finished  Gait  wrote  to  his  old  acquaintance  Con- 
stable, the  bookseller;  but  the  reply  was  not  encouraging. 
Scottish  novels,  he  was  told,  would  not  do.  As  a  result  of 
Constable's  answer  the  unfinished  manuscript  was  thrown 
into  a  drawer  and  forgotten. 

One  Sunday  years  afterwards,  Gait  discovered  it  while 
setting  his  papers  in  order.  He  read  it  over,  as  a  stranger 
might  do,  and  submitted  it  to  a  friend  at  dinner  the  same  day. 
They  thought  well  enough  of  it  to  send  it  off  to  Blackwood,  by 
whom  it  was  warmly  welcomed.  Priding  himself  on  "taking 
an  interest  in  the  literary  department"  of  his  business,  Black- 
wood  made  several  slight  omissions  and  alterations  in  the 
manuscript  with  Gait's  permission.  Finally,  in  1821,  ap- 
peared Annals  of  the  Parish,  or  The  Chronicle  of  Dalmailing, 
during  the  Minisiery  of  the  Rev.  Micah  Balwhidder,  written  by 
himself,  arranged  and  edited  by  the  author  of  The  Ayrshire 
Legatees.  The  history  of  book,  begun  early,  forgotten  for 
years,  and  rediscovered  by  chance,  reminds  one  of  the  story  of 
the  fishing-tackle  and  Waverley. 

Its  success  was  great  and  immediate.2  Henry  Mackenzie, 
author  of  The  Man  of  Feeling,  and  a  veteran  figure  in  Scot- 
tish literature,  extended  his  "sincere  and  cordial  approbation" ; 
Croker,  ignorant  of  the  authorship,  admitted  it  was  "very 

1During  his  walk  to  Inverkip  Gait  thought  of  making  a  village 
schoolmaster  instead  of  a  minister  the  central  figure  of  the  book,  but  the 
intention  was  abandoned.  A  specimen  of  the  earlier  scheme  was  later 
used  by  Gait  in  Eben  Erskine,  I.,  71-87. 

2See  Blackw.  Mag.,  May,  1821,  June,  1822;  Quart.  Review,  April, 
1821;  Edin.  Review,  Oct.,  1823;  Monthly  Review,  Nov.,  1821;  Lockhart's 
Scott,  c.  52;  Mrs.  Oliphant's  William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  I.,  448- 
452;  Scots  Mag.,  June,  1821.  Byron  "praised  the  Annals  of  the  Parish 
very  highly,  as  also  the  Entail.  .  .  .  Some  scenes  of  which,  he  said, 
had  affected  him  very  much.  'The  characters  of  Mr.  Gait's  novels  have 
an  identity,'  added  Byron,  'that  reminds  me  of  Wilkie's  pictures.' "  (Con- 
versations of  Lord  Byron  with  the  Countess  of  Blessington.) 


29 

good";  Scott  read  it  with  pleasure;  Jeffrey/s  verdict  was  ex- 
tremely favourable,  and  Byron  praised  it  highly.1 

The  Annals  has  the  least  alloy  of  all  Gait's  books.    There 
are  few  things  in  literature  more  real  and  in  better  keeping 
than  this  quiet  chronicle  of  half  a  century  (1760-1810)  in  the 
life  of  a  Scotch  village.     The  parish  minister,  who,    in    the 
evening  of  his  days  set  down  the  memorable  events  of  his  little 
world  year  by  year,  reveals  at  the  same  time  his  benevolent 
and  complacent  character.     He  relates  his  stormy  "placing" 
against  the  will  of  the  parishioners,  his  gradual  winning  of 
their  affections,  his  three  courtings  and  marriages,  and  his 
endless  activity  in  and  out  of  the  pulpit.     Though  master  of 
no  "kirk-filling  eloquence,"  he  can  command  a  strain  of  sim- 
ple, telling  pathos,  and  his  humour  is  not  the  less  pleasant  and 
genial  because  it  is  often  unconscious.    Nothing,  for  instance, 
can  be  better  in  its  way  than  Balwhidder's  account  of  how, 
when  a  recruiting  party  came  to  Dalmailing,  Mr.  Archibald 
Dozendale,  one  of  his  elders,  had  a  sober  tumbler  of  toddy  with 
him  at  the  Manse,  "marvelling  exceedingly  where  these  fear- 
ful portents  and  changes  would  stop,  both  of  us  being  of  opin- 
ion, that  the  end  of  the  world  was  drawing  nearer  and  nearer." 
The  great  events  of  the  outside  world,  the  American  Rebellion 
and  the  French  Revolution,  have  a  place  in  the  record  only  so 
far  as  they  intrude  on  the  narrow  sphere  of  his  parish.  Things 
near  at  hand  loom  large  to  the  simple  annalist.    "In  the  same 
year,  and  on  the  same  day  of  the  same  month,  that  his  Sacred 
Majesty  King  George,  the  third  of  the  name,  came  to  his  crown 
and  kingdom,  I  was  placed  and  settled  as  the  minister  of  Dal- 
mailing."    The  year  1763  was  notable    because    "the    King 
granted  peace  to  the  French,  and  Charlie  Malcolm  that  went 
to  sea  in  the  Tobacco  trader  came  home  to  see  his  mother." 

1Hogg,  however,  was  less  enthusiastic.  "I  am  surprised,"  Black- 
wood  wrote  to  him,  May  15,  1821,  "at  your  having  such  a  very  humble 
opinion  of  the  'Parish  Annals,'  but  I  am  happy  to  tell  you  that  it  is  very 
differently  estimated  by  Mr.  Henry  Mackenzie,  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Pro- 
fessor Wilson,  Mr.  Lockhart  and  fifty  others,  who  are  all  loud  in  its 
praises.  I  am  also  happy  to  say  that  you  are  mistaken  as  to  its  sale,  for 
in  three  or  four  days  there  were  nearly  500  copies  sold  in  London,  and  I 
have  already  sold  here  nearly  400  copies.  In  short,  I  have  seldom  pub- 
lished a  more  popular  or  valuable  book."  Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.,  I.,  343. 


30  JOHN  GALT 

Gait's  purpose-vhad  been  to  write  a  Scottish  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field,  and  indeed  the  two  books  have  points  in  common.  Sev- 
eral of  the  reviewers  saw  the  resemblance.  Both  Gait  and 
Goldsmith  know  how  to  describe  simple  life,  and  both  draw  on 
reminiscence  and  personal  experience  for  their  material.  Both 
are  happy  in  autobiography,  and  neither  is  very  skilful  in 
contriving  a  plot.  Here  is  Gait's  advantage,  for  his  plan  frees 
him  from  the  necessity  of  inventing  a  story  which  would 
probably  have  been  no  more  convincing  than  Goldsmith's. 
"Any  talent  that  I  ever  possessed,"  he  admitted,1  "lay  in  the 
delineation  of  what  may  be  called  moral  and  visible  descrip- 
tion ;  and  I  am  sure,  when  I  worked  with  a  story  it  was  in  com- 
paratively galling  harness."  Free  from  this  bondage,  Gait 
is  at  liberty  to  introduce  the  whole  range  of  village  humours, 
and  for  this  he  does  not  need  to  go  beyond  his  own  experience 
and  observation.  The  personages  and  incidents  are,  for  the 
most  part,  those  he  had  known  or  heard  of  in  his  youth.  Dai- 
mailing  itself  is  a  reality,  for  Gait  tells  us  that  the  scene  is 
actually  laid  in  Dreghorn,  a  couple  of  miles  from  Irvine.  "In 
a  still  evening,  I  sometimes  think  of  its  beautiful  church 
amidst  a  clump  of  trees  .  .  .  nor  is  the  locality  to  me  un- 
interesting, as  it  happens  to  be  the  burial  place  of  my  'fore- 
bears'."2 

The  Steamboat  is  made  of  flimsier  and  cheaper  material 
than  either  of  its  predecessors;  its  fun  tends  more  to  bur- 
lesque and  relies  more  on  local  allusions  and  personalities.  A 
score  of  stories,  some  very  short,  and  several  cut  off  at  the 
critical  moment  under  a  mistaken  idea  of  humour,  are  loosely 
strung  together  on  a  thread  of  narrative  in  which  Thomas 
Duffle,  cloth  merchant  of  Glasgow,  relates  his  voyages  up  and 
down  the  Clyde  and  his  great  journey  to  London  to  see  the  cor- 
onation of  George  IV.  Dr.  and  Mr.  Pringle  of  the  Legatees 
are  his  fellow-passengers  to  London.  The  introduction  of  the 
same  characters  into  more  than  one  book  came  to  be  used  fre- 
quently by  Gait,  and  helps  to  increase  the  reality  of  his  novels. 


Life,  I.,  317. 
2Autobiog.  II.,  228. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  31 

Most  of  the  tales  are  commonplace,  and  one,  A  Jeanie 
Deans  in  Love,  is  a  detestable  parody  of  one  of  Scott's  great- 
est scenes.  The  story  of  Mrs.  Ogle1  and  Mr.  Jamphrey,  the 
chief  of  "the  criticising  policemen  of  Edinburgh,"  is  an  excel- 
lent piece  of  Scots  and  an  inexcusable  indulgence  in  personal- 
ities. Jeffrey  is  thinly  disguised  under  the  changed  name,  and 
an  incident  in  his  private  life  is  used  to  raise  a  laugh  at  his 
expense.  Even  Lockhart,  a  serious  offender  himself  in  these 
matters,  was  displeased.  "Mrs.  Ogle  is  exquisite,"  he  wrote  to 
Blackwood,  "but  I  am  sorry  to  say  I  think  altogether  unfair. 
You  may  have  a  right  to  quiz  Jeffrey  .  .  .  but  nobody  has 
a  right  to  meddle  with  the  private  amusements  of  a  private 
lady.  How  would  Mr.  Gait  like  to  have  an  account  in  a  Maga- 
zine of  a  little  frolic  played  off  in  her  family  by  a  female  of 
his  acquaintance?"2  Another  butt  of  the  Blackwood  group 
whom  Gait  introduces  is  James  Scott,  a  Glasgow  dentist,  who 
was  frequently  ridiculed  as  the  Odontist  and  represented  as 
a  contributor  to  the  magazine.  "How  would  you  like  it,"  the 
injured  man  asked  Blackwood,  "if  I  were  to  sit  down  and  write 
a  deal  of  stuff  about  you,  Mr.  Gait  or  Mr.  Wilson?"3  The 
author  of  the  Annals  should  have  been  above  offensive  person- 
alities, and  he  could  not,  like  Lockhart,  plead  the  indiscretion 
of  youth.  The  ludicrous  description  of  the  coronation  ex- 
presses Gait's  own  opinion  of  the  ceremony,  which,  he  said, 
lessened  his  respect  for  the  tricks  of  state  more  than  anything 
he  ever  witnessed.  Among  the  spectators,  "an  elderly  man, 
about  fifty,  with  a  fair  grey  head,  and  something  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  gawsy  good-humoured  country  laird"  is  pointed 
out  to  Thomas  Duffle  as  "  the  Author  of  Wav  erley." 

In  The  Provost  Gait  did  for  a  west  country  town  what  he 
had  done  for  a  rural  district  in  the  Annals.  He  himself 
thought  the  later  book  a  better  piece  of  work,  but  few  will 
agree  with  him.  The  periods  covered  in  the  two  chronicles  are 


Ogle  was  Miss  Stirling  Graham,  famous  in  Edinburgh  society 
for  her  personations,  who  described  her  pranks  in  Mystifications  (1859). 
See  Dr.  John  Brown's  Horae  Subsecivae,  Third  Series. 

2Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.  I.,  218. 

3Ibid.,  I.,  212-3. 


32  JOHN  GALT 

much  the  same;  in  both  are  heard  the  distant  thunders  of  the 
American  troubles  and  the  French  Revolution.  The  skill  in 
autobiography,  the  vernacular  humour,  the  ever-present  sense 
of  reality  are  common  to  both.  Both  are  the  ordered  results 
of  observation  and  memory,  for  Gudetown  is  in  reality  Irvine, 
and  the  original  of  Provost  Pawkie  was  chief  magistrate  there 
in  Gait's  boyhood.1  But  there  is  more  variety  of  character, 
incident  and  feeling  in  the  Annals.  The  spirit  of  The  Provost 
is  meaner  and  harder,  and  the  atmosphere  of  the  little  town, 
seething  with  its  own  petty  concerns,  is  at  times  unpleasantly 
oppressive.  Provost  Pawkie  himself,  who  was  thrice  made  an 
instrument  to  represent  the  supreme  power  and  authority  of 
Majesty  in  the  royal  burgh  of  Gudetown,  has  less  of  the  sim- 
ple stuff  of  humanity  than  the  minister  of  Dalmailing.  He  is 
concerned  to  set  forth  the  successive  triumphs  of  Tiis  career, 
his  prosperity  as  a  merchant,  his  dexterous  handling  of  the 
town  council  and  his  services  to  the  burgh.  His  complacent 
narrative  is  broken  occasionally,  however,  by  an  exciting  inci- 
dent such  as  the  raid  of  the  press  gang.  At  times,  too,  the 
tone  rises  above  the  stuffiness  of  burgh  politics  to  a  level  of 
simple  poignant  emotion.  The  description  of  the  storm,  The 
Windy  Yule,  would,  as  Jeffrey  remarked,  "not  discredit  the 
pen  of  the  great  novelist  himself,"  and  the  execution  of  Jean 
Gaisling  for  child  murder  is  told  with  a  harsh  strength  and 
grim  humour,  relieved  by  tenderness  for  "the  poor  guideless 
creature."  If  Gait  had  had  it  in  him  to  write  The  Heart  of 
Midlothian  there  would  have  been  no  reprieve  for  Effie  Deans. 
The  reception  of  The  Provost  showed  no  falling-off  in 
Gait's  popularity.  An  edition  of  two  thousand  was  sold  in  a 
fortnight,  and  a  second  edition  melted  like  snow  off  a  dyke. 
To  Gait,  who  viewed  literature  only  as  a  trade,  there  were 
other  results  no  less  pleasant.  "You  may  rest  assured," 
Blackwood  told  him,  "that  I  will  give  you  more  for  this  vol- 
ume than  I  did  for  the  Annals."2  Gait  was  proud  of  his  earn- 


Fullarton,  a  candle  maker  by  trade.  His  portrait  hangs  in 
the  Council  Chamber,  and  characteristic  stories  are  still  told  of  him 
in  the  Burgh. 

2Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.,  I.,  415. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  33 

ing  power,  and  refers  to  his  success  in  The  Last  of  the  Lairds. 
"That  silly  auld  havering  creature,  Balwhidder  o'  Dalmail- 
ing,"  says  the  Laird,  "got  a  thousand  pounds  sterling,  doun 
on  Blackwood's  counter,  in  red  gold,  for  his  clishmaclavers ; 
and  Provost  Pawkie's  widow  has  had  twice  the  dooble  o't,  they 
say,  for  the  Provost's  life."1 

"I  am  a  little  anxious  to  see  Sir  Andrew  Wylie,"  wrote 
Croker  to  Blackwood  (Dec.  28,  1821),  "the  Annals  of  the 
Parish  and  The  Ayrshire  Legatees  were  not  only  good,  but 
they  gave  promise  of  greater  things;  and  I  should  not  be  sur- 
prised, if  the  author  but  be  a  little  careful  in  what  he  does 
.  .  .  to  find  him  acknowledged  hereafter  as  second,  and 
only  second,  to  the  great  Oudeis  of  Waverley.  This  I  know 
may  look  like  an  extravagant  anticipation;  but  there  are 
pages  in  the  Annals  and  spots  in  the  Legatees  which  would 
be  shining  places  in  the  Pirate.  If  he  be  a  young  author  he 
may  scatter  his  wild  oats  about;  but  if  he  be  anything  like  a 
veteran,  he  should  husband  his  resources  and  make  not  more 
than  one  great  effort  per  annum."2 

Croker  was  probably  disappointed  when  he  saw  Sir  An- 
drew Wylie,  for  in  it  Gait's  strength  and  weakness  stand  side 
by  side.  His  original  intention  was  to  exhibit  the  rise  of  a 
friendless  Scot  in  London,  but  on  the  advice  of  Blackwood  he 
abandoned  the  idea  of  autobiography,  gave  his  hero  a  patron 
and  elaborated  his  plot  into  a  wearisome  and  unconvincing 
narrative  of  Andrew's  progress  from  cottar's  son  to  lawyer, 
member  of  parliament  and  baronet.  But  we  are  interested 
only  in  the  outset  and  close  to  his  career.  The  boyhood  of  the 
"auld-farand  bairn"  in  his  grandmother's  cottage  and  under 
the  modest  dominie  is  told  with  the  gentleness  and  charm 
which  belong  to  reminiscent  writing.  The  return  of  the  suc- 
cessful adventurer  to  the  little  Ayrshire  village  and  his  mar- 
riage with  the  Laird  of  Craiglands'  daughter — Gait's  only  real 

1He  was  not  always  pleased  with  Blackwood's  methods.  A  request 
for  an  advance  of  £200  was  refused  by  Blackwood,  and  Gait  wrote  to 
Tilloch  (March,  1822)  :  "He  has  acted  more  shabbily  than  any  person  I 
have  yet  had  to  deal  with  in  literary  matters." 

2Mrs.  Oliphant,  I.,  474-5. 


34  JOHN  GALT 

heroine — are  a  pleasant  ending  to  a  very  unequal  book.  Hum- 
our and  pathos  are  finely  mingled,  and  in  a  manner  wholly 
Scottish,  in  the  death  of  the  old  Laird. 

But  when  Gait  crosses  the  Tweed  he  loses  his  cunning.  The 
picture  of  English  society  and  its  eager  reception  of  Andrew 
is  impossible,  though  Gait  is  obviously  anxious  to  show  his 
familiarity  with  the  world  of  London.1  Andrew's  patron,  the 
Earl  of  Sandyford — intended  by  Gait  as  a  portrait  of  the  Earl 
of  Blessington — is  a  Byronic  figure,  who  has  "rushed  into  the 
whirlpool  of  fashionable  dissipation  .  .  .  as  if  he  sought, 
by  the  velocity  of  a  headlong  career,  to  escape  the  miseries 
of  some  mysterious  sorrow."  The  breach  between  him  and 
Lacly  Sandyford,  whom  he  had  loved  since  "  he  beheld  her  in 
the  graces  of  her  virgin  years,  bounding  like  the  fawn  amidst 
the  stately  groves  that  surround  the  venerable  magnificence 
of  her  ancestral  home,"  is  healed  by  Andrew's  friendly  offices. 
The  book  is  said  to  have  been  the  most  popular  of  Gait's  novels 
in  England.  "I  was  pleased  the  other  day,  said  Hazlitt,2  "on 
going  into  a  shop  to  ask  'If  they  had  any  of  the  Scotch  novels  ?' 
to  be  told  'That  they  had  just  sent  out  the  last,  Sir  Andrew 
Wylie'!  Mr.  Gait  will  also  be  pleased  with  this  answer."  But 
it  was  less  popular  in  Scotland  than  its  forerunners.  Jeffrey 
found  the  story  "clumsily  and  heavily  managed  and  the  per- 
sonages of  polite  life  very  unsuccessfully  brought  in."3  Gait's 
fellow-craftsman,  Miss  Ferrier,  declared,  "I  have  not  read 
Sir  Andrew  Wylie,  as  I  can't  endure  that  man's  writings,  and 
I'm  told  the  vulgarity  of  this  beats  print."4  It  is  easy  to  forgive 
part  of  the  verdict,  for  the  display  of  simple  Scottish  humors 

1"Were  I  to  get  sufficient  encouragement,  I  think  I  could  write  a 
novel  on  the  progress  of  a  Scotchman  in  London,  embracing  all  vari- 
eties of  metropolitan  life,  that  would  assuredly  take."  (Gait  to  Black- 
wood,  Jan.  30,  1822)  Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.  I.,  452.  Croker  thought  little 
of  Gait's  knowledge  of  London  life.  "His  characters  of  public  men,"  he 
wrote  of  the  Legatees,  "show  that  he  does  not  know  much  of  them.  He 
makes  some  little  blunders  as  to  the  state  of  the  higher  society  in  this, 
town."  Mrs.  Oliphant,  I.,  449. 

2On  the  Pleasure  of  Hating. 

3Edin.  Rev.,  Oct.,  1823. 

4Memoir  of  Susan  Ferrier,  by  J.  A.  Doyle,  p.  157. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  35 

in  London  is  much  better  managed  in  her  own  charming  story 
Marriage  (1818). 

There  is  plenty  of  boisterious  local  fun  in  The  Gathering 
of  tJie  West,  or  We're  Come  to  See  the  King,  which  appeared 
in  Blackwood's  in  September,  1822.  It  is  a  jeu  d'esprit  on 
George  IV's  visit  to  Scotland,  in  which  Gait  describes  the  stir 
caused  among  "the  bustling,  ruddy,  maritime  Greenock 
folks,"  and  the  radical  weaver  lads  of  Paisley,  and  the  pomp- 
ous magistrates  of  Glasgow.1 

If  The  Entail,  or  The  Lairds  of  Grippy  is  not  Gait's  best 
book,  it  is  at  least  his  best  story,  and,  indeed,  his  only  success 
in  constructing  an  effective  plot.  The  story  follows  the  his- 
tory of  a  family  through  three  generations  somewhat  in  the 
manner  of  Zola,  and  records  with  dour  deliberation  the  in- 
evitable births,  marriages  and  deaths.  Claud  Walkinshaw, 
grandson  of  the  last  Laird  of  Kittlestoneheugh,  is  left  in  pov- 
erty by  his  grandfather's  ruin  and  his  father's  early  death. 
His  hard  narrow  nature  is  raised  to  a  kind  of  greatness  by  his 
single  great  passion  to  redeem  the  inheritance  of  his  ancest- 
ors. As  a  pedlar  in  the  Border  country  and  as  a  cloth  mer- 
chant in  Glasgow  he  gathers  enough  gear  to  buy  the  farm  of 
Grippy,  part  of  the  old  family  estates.  He  further  improves 
his  position  by  a  sordid  marriage  with  the  Laird  of  Plealands* 
daughter,  who  bears  him  three  sons  and  a  daughter.  The  sec- 
ond son  Watty,  a  "natural"  from  his  birth,  inherits  the  Plea- 
lands,  which  Claud  contrives  to  exchange  for  the  unredeemed 
portion  of  his  ancestral  property.  He  then  disinherits  his 
eldest  and  favourite  son  Charles,  in  order  that  the  whole  orig- 
inal family  estate  may  be  vested  in  Watty.  When  Charles  dies 
leaving  a  helpless  family  the  old  man  is  seized  by  remorse, 
but  is  struck  down  by  paralysis  before  he  can  right  the  wrong. 


Weir  and  Rodger  declare  that  the  skit  gave  offence  to  many. 
On  Aug.  13,  1822,  he  writes  to  the  Countess  of  Blessington:  "Here,  all 
are  on  tip-toe  for  the  King;  tout  my  worthy  countrymen  proceed  so  very 
considerately  in  their  loyalty  that  nothing  amusing  has  yet  occurred. 
The  best  thing  I  have  heard  of  is,  the  ladies  who  intend  to  be  presented 
practising  the  management  of  their  trains  with  table-cloths  pinned  to 
their  tails."  Literary  Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Countess  of  Bless- 
ington, by  R.  R.  Madden,  vol.  3.,  p.  235. 


36  JOHN  GALT 

The  third  son  George,  less  passionate  and  more  sordid  than 
his  father,  has  Watty  proved  an  imbecile  and  wrests  the  lands 
from  him.  After  George  meets  his  death  by  shipwreck  the 
estate  ultimately  comes  to  Charles's  son,  and  belated  poetic 
justice  is  dealt  out. 

The  book  is  not  of  equal  merit  throughout.  Gait,  unlike 
Balzac,  whose  work  is  more  than  once  recalled  by  The  Entail, 
loses  the  courage  of  his  hard  realism ;  Claud's  remorse  is  poig- 
nant but  somewhat  unexpected.  There  is  less  of  such  edify- 
ing concession  to  morality  in  the  description  of  Mr.  Cayenne's 
death  in  the  Annals,  one  of  Gait's  most  daring  achievements. 
With  the  removal  of  Claud's  dominating  figure  the  story  falls 
to  a  lower  level,  though  his  widow,  the  Leddy  Grippy,  who 
has  few  equals  among  the  women  of  Scottish  fiction,  remains 
to  the  end  with  her  genius  for  intrigue  and  her  terribly  com- 
petent vernacular;  and  there  is  also  the  great  scene  of  the 
shipwreck.  The  latter  part  of  the  book  is  weighted  down  by 
Mrs.  Eadie,  a  majestic  lady  troubled  with  second  sight,  who 
represents  Gait's  only  serious  attempt  to  portray  Highland 
character.  She  is  an  unfortunate  concession  to  the  romantic 
fiction  of  the  day,  and  is  strangely  out  of  place  in  the  bleak 
and  blackguardly  world  of  the  Walkinshaws.  Watty,  the 
"natural,"  is  the  most  pathetic  figure  in  any  of  Gait's  books, 
and  any  English  novelist  might  be  proud  of  the  court  scene 
in  which  he  is  declared  an  imbecile.  "Am  I  found  guilty,"  he 
exclaims  on  hearing  the  verdict  of  Fatuity,  "oh,  surely,  sir, 
ye'll  no  hang  me,  for  I  cou'dna  help  it?"  The  hopeless  re- 
mainder of  his  life  is  indicated  with  masterly  restraint,  and 
Gait  wisely  refuses  to  show  us  the  death-scene  of  the  poor 
daft  Laird  of  Grippy.1 

1Galt  has  described  several  of  these  "naturals,"  common  enough 
figures  then  in  the  country  districts  of  Scotland,  where  there  were  no 
asylums  to  receive  them  and  where  the  seclusion  from  the  outside  world 
tended  to  accentuate  peculiarities.  Daft  Jamie  in  Sir  Andrew  Wylie, 
whose  favourite  haunt  was  Greenock  because  "the  folk  there  were  just 
like  himsel' "  and  whose  remarks  often  showed  unexpected  shrewdness, 
is  a  type  of  these  strange  character.  He  resembles  Davie  Gellatley,  the 
major-domo  of  Tully-Veplan,  who  "had  just  so  much  solidity  as  kept  on 
the  windy  side  of  insanity."  There  is  a  wilder  and  more  tragic  strain 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  37 

The  legal  intricacies  of  the  plot  are  elaborately  worked  out, 
but  are  more  completely  fused  with  the  human  interest  of 
the  story  than  in  George  Eliot's  Lelix  Holt.  The  rascally  law- 
yers are  a  striking  contrast  to  Scott's  genial  pictures  of  Edin- 
burgh legal  society.  There  are  the  virtuous  lawyers  also,  but 
like  the  other  good  people  in  the  book  they  are  not  very  in- 
teresting. 

Gait  himself  says  strangely  little  about  The  Entail,  and 
hardly  seems  aware  of  its  greatness,  though  he  was  pleased 
with  its  reception.  "I  had  a  note  on  Saturday  from  Lord 
Gwydyr,"  he  writes  to  Blackwood,  "telling  me  it  was  much 
talked  of  in  Brighton,  and  this  morning  the  Speaker  told  me 
he  thought  it  very  amusing.  Justice  Park,  and  he  is  a  judge 
you  will  say,  thinks  it  the  best  of  my  works.  .  .  .  Thom- 
son considers  it  far  the  best  thing  I  have  done,  and  showing 
power  above  anything  in  my  former  sketches.  Dr.  Tilloch 
also  speaks  well  of  it,  but  I  have  not  seen  him;  and  divers 
ladies  and  booksellers  speak  very  favourably."1  Both  Scott 
and  Byron,  he  tells  us,  read  the  book  three  times.  Christo- 
pher North  in  Blackwood's  (Jan.,  1823),  declared  that  Gait 
was  now  entitled  to  "take  his  place  in  the  second  rank  of 
British  novelists.  When  we  say  this,  which  we  do  fearlessly, 
we  consider  him  inferior  only  to  two  living  writers  of  fictitious 
narratives — to  him  whom  we  need  not  name,  and  to  Miss 
Edgeworth.  The  Entail  is  out  of  all  sight  the  best  thing  he  has 
done,  and  shews  his  genius  to  have  stamina  that  will  yet  send 
forth  still  more  vigorous  shoots  and  shady  branches."  The 
forecast  was  not  unreasonable,  but  it  was  never  fulfilled. 
Gait's  best  work  was  behind  him. 

A  new  field  was  opened  up  by  Gait's  Scottish  novels,  and 
his  claim  that  he  had  had  few  precursors  was  reasonable.  The 
life  of  the  villages  and  small  towns  of  Scotland  had  not  till 
now  found  a  chronicler. 

in  Jenny  Gaffaw  and  her  idiot  daughter  Meg  in  the  Annals.  Meg  "was 
a  sort  of  household  familiar  among  us,  and  there  was  much  like  the  inner 
side  of  wisdom  in  the  pattern  of  her  sayings,  many  of  which  are  still 
preserved  as  proverbs." 

!Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.  I.,  453. 


38 


JOHN  GALT 


Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hamilton  in  her  Cottagers  of  Glenburnie 
(1808)  was  in  some  sort  a  forerunner  of  Gait.  She  described 
the  sluttish  and  toilsome  life  of  country  folk  in  the  eighteenth 
century  with  a  fidelity  which  won  the  praise  of  Scott,  though 
she  was  led  to  overcharge  the  picture  at  times  in  her  eager- 
ness to  show  the  need  of  activity  and  cleanliness.  Her  lessons 
of  good  housewifery  brought,  it  is  said,  comeliness  and  order 
into  many  a  Scottish  cottage.1 

On  Scott's  great  national  canvas  there  are  sketches  which 
remind  one  of  Gait's  work — Mrs.  Mailsetter  and  her  gossips  in 
The  Antiquary,  Nicol  Jarvie  resembling  Provost  Pawkie  in  his 
sedate  municipal  dignity,  Meg  Dods  with  her  vernacular  and 
managing  ways.  This  side  of  Scott's  work  was  no  doubt  very 
congenial  to  Gait,  who  singles  out  The  Antiquary  and  St. 
Ronan's  Well  for  special  praise,  and  who  in  The  Entail  actu- 
ally introduces  Mrs.  Jarvie,  "the  wife  of  the  far-famed  Bailie 
Nicol,  the  same  Matty,  who  lighted  the  worthy  magistrate  to 
the  Tolbooth  on  that  memorable  night  when  he,  the  son  of  the 
deacon,  found  his  kinsman  Rob  Roy  there."  But  on  the  whole 
Scott  moves  in  a  different  world  from  Gait.  His  relation  to 
Gait  resembles  that  of  Shakespeare  to  the  citizen  drama  of  his 
age.  Scott's  concern  is  with  Dandie  Dinmont  and  his  dogs, 
with  statesmen  and  nobles,  with  kings  and  queens;  Gait's  is 
with  bailies  and  merchants,  ministers  and  small  lairds.  Equally 
at  home  with  gentle  and  simple,  Scott  does  not  linger 
gladly  in  the  narrow  sphere  of  Gudetown  or  Dalmailing, 
where  romance  receives  small  encouragement.  For  it  is  ro- 
mance more  than  anything  else  which  separates  Scott  and 
Gait.  In  the  Waverley  Novels  romance  upsets  the  lives  even 
of  cautious  sober  townsmen  like  Nicol  Jarvie,  but  the  career  of 

iScott  refers  to  Mrs.  Hamilton  (1758-1816)  in  Waverley  (last 
chap.),  and  Heart  of  Midlothian  (ch.  10).  Mrs.  Hamilton  was  unmar- 
ried, but  after  a  while  took  the  style  of  "Mrs."  or  "Mistress."  Curiously 
enough  The  Cottagers  of  Glenburnie,  like  Waverley  and  the  Annals  was 
for  a  while  laid  aside  and  all  but  forgotten  by  its  author.  (See  Miss 
Benger's  Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hamilton  (1819),  vol.  I.,  183-4.) 
Miss  Benger  calls  the  book  "a  Tale  in  the  manner  of  Wilkie,"  the  com- 
parison which  Byron  had  applied  to  Gait.  Jeffrey's  review  in  the  Edin- 
burgh (July,  1808)  is  excellent. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  39 

Provost  Pawkie  moves  on  majestically,  undisturbed  by  any 
such  frivolous  intrusion.  Romance,  declares  Mrs.  Soorocks 
in  The  Last  of  the  Lairds,  is  "just  a  thing  for  playactors,  and 
the  likes  o'  Sir  Walter,  to  mak  a  clishmaclaver  o'."  While  the 
darling  subject  of  Scott  is  the  Jacobite  rising  of  '45,  Gait  is 
at  his  best  in  describing  the  changes  which  followed  the  rebel- 
lion and  went  to  the  making  of  modern  Scotland.  The  ro- 
mance in  Gait's  Scottish  fictions  is  that  of  material  progress, 
not  that  of  a  lost  cause.  It  is  appropriate  that  it  was  from 
the  Annals  that  J.  S.  Mill  borrowed  the  word  Utilitarian. 

Gait  valued  these  books  for  what  he  called  their  "likeli- 
ness,"  that  is,  their  historical  truth.  The  absence  of  a  regu- 
lar plot  in  the  Annals,  The  Provost  and  The  Ayrshire  Legatees 
made  them  deficient  as  novels  in  his  opinion,  and  he  regarded 
them  rather  as  theoretical  local  histories.  Looking  upon  liter- 
ature as  a  record  of  things  done  and  as  a  harmonious  order- 
ing of  memories  and  observations,  Gait  was  apt  to  belittle  in- 
vention. Men,  he  argued,  can  only  combine  the  old;  and  no 
ingenuity  can  make  an  entirely  new  thing.  In  other  words, 
Gait  chiefly  valued  the  kind  of  invention  which  he  himself 
possessed.  He  was  not  content  like  Scott  merely  to  amuse  his 
age;  he  wished  also  to  play  the  dominie.  In  all  his  works  he 
kept  "the  instructive  principle  more  or  less  in  view,"  and 
looked  upon  the  novel  as  a  vehicle  for  teaching.  "Indeed,  it  is 
not  in  this  age  that  a  man  of  ordinary  common  sense  would 
enter  into  competition,  in  recreative  stories,  with  a  great 
genius  who  possessed  the  attention  of  all,  I  mean  Sir  Walter 
Scott."1  The  truth  of  art  was  not  enough  for  Gait;  he  also 
aimed  at  truth  of  fact.  It  is  this  which  gives  his  west  country 
fictions  their  air  of  reality,  so  that  Wilson  declared  the  Annals 
was  not  a  book  but  a  fact,  and  Blackwood's  mother  read  it 
with  delight  as  the  record  of  an  honest  and  upright  minister 
of  the  gospel  till  she  learned  with  grief  and  astonishment  that 
it  was  a  novel. 

The  part  of  Scottish  history  which  Gait  describes  was  a 
natural  choice.  The  last  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 

lAutobiog.,  II.,  210. 


40  JOHN  GALT 

the  only  settled  and  undisturbed  period  of  any  length  which 
Scotland  had  enjoyed  for  centuries.  Never  before  in  her  his- 
tory had  there  been  an  opportunity  for  the  full  development 
of  her  resources.  With  peace  came  all  the  changes  which 
transformed  the  industrial  and  social  life  of  the  country.  No 
subject  could  be  more  congenial  to  Gait  than  the  chronicling 
of  such  progress.  For  once  and  once  only  the  rival  ambitions 
which  distracted  his  career  found  common  ground  and  were 
reconciled.  The  awakening  of  Scotland  was  a  theme  which 
appealed  to  him  as  a  man  of  letters  and  as  a  man  of  commer- 
cial schemes  and  projects. 

The  general  spirit  of  improvement  which  made  itself  felt 
after  the  Forty-Five  affected  the  whole  country  in  varying 
degrees  and  different  ways.  "The  minds  of  men  were  excited 
to  new  enterprizes;  a  new  genius,  as  it  were,  had  descended 
upon  the  earth,  and  there  was  an  erect  and  outlooking  spirit 
abroad  that  was  not  to  be  satisfied  with  the  taciturn  regular- 
ity of  ancient  affairs."1 

The  history  of  Dalmailing  recorded  in  the  Annals  is  that 
of  a  typical  Ayrshire  parish.  At  the  beginning  of  the  chroni- 
cle BalwhiSder's  parishioners  were  shut  off  from  the  world 
by  many  barriers.  It  was  a  great  event  when  Mr.  Kibbock 
got  a  newspaper  twice  a  week  from  Edinburgh.2  The  roads, 
foul,  stony,  and  unsavoury  with  middens,  were  improved,  and 
in  1789  Balwhidder  records  with  astonishment  that  a  coach 
went  from  Dalmailing  to  Glasgow  between  breakfast  and  din- 
ner— "a  thing  that  could  not,  when  I  came  to  the  parish,  have 
been  thought  within  the  compass  of  man."3  Such  changes 
brought  new  luxuries  and  comforts.  "For  times,  gudeman," 
said  the  Leddy  Grippy  to  her  husband,  "are  no  noo  as  when  you 
and  me  cam  thegither.  Then  a  bein  house  and  a  snod  but  and 
ben  was  a*  that  was  lookit  for;  but  sin  genteelity  came  into 
fashion  lads  and  lassies  hae  grown  leddies  and  gentlemen,  and 
a  Glasgow  wife  saullying  to  the  kirk  wi'  her  muff  and  her  man- 

1  Annals,  c.  xxix. 
2Ibid,  c.  x.,  xviii. 
3Ibid,  c.  xxx. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  41 

tie  looks  as  puckered  wi'  pride  as  my  lord's  leddy."1  Even  in 
Dalmailing  the  simple  snood  began  to  give  way  to  "French 
millendery."2  Various  changes  helped  to  soften  and  refine 
manners.  Tea-drinking,  opposed  by  the  older  generation  with 
their  memories  of  "the  lang-syne  nights  of  claret,"  gradually 
made  its  way.  In  time  it  became  a  rare  thing  to  meet  "de- 
cent ladies  coming  home  with  red  faces,  tozy  and  cosh  from  a 
posset  masking."3  Balwhidder  also  set  his  face  against  the 
drunken  extravagance  which  was  the  rule  at  burials.* 

Such  reforms  were  the  outcome  of  altered  industrial  con- 
ditions. The  coal  mines — there  were  three  beside  Dalmailing 
— began  it.  Cotton-mills  followed,  and  new  towns,  such  as 
Cayenneville  in  the  Annals,  sprang  up  to  house  the  employees. 
At  the  end  of  his  ministry  Balwhidder  recognizes  that  the 
old  quiet  isolation  of  a  country  parish  is  gone  for  ever.  "We 
had  intromitted  so  much  with  concerns  of  trade,  that  we  were 
become  a  part  of  the  great  web  of  commercial  reciprocities, 
and  felt  in  our  corner  and  extremity  every  touch  or  stir  that 
was  made  on  any  part  of  the  texture."5 

Changes  in  agriculture  were  slower  than  those  in  com- 
merce ;  but  after  the  middle  of  the  century  reforms  began  to 
come  fairly  quickly.  Ignorant  traditional  methods  and  cum- 
bersome implements  were  gradually  laid  aside.  The  pioneers 
belonged  to  a  different  class  from  the  leaders  in  industrial  de- 
velopment. Great  lawyers  like  Lord  Kames  and  noblemen 
like  the  Earl  of  Eglinton — the  Lord  Eglesham  of  the  Annals 
— led  the  way.  Wealthy  nabobs  such  as  Mr.  Galore  in  The 
Provost  also  played  a  part.  East  Lothian  was  the  headquar- 
ters of  agricultural  reform  in  Scotland.  The  original  of  Mr. 
Coulter  in  the  Annals  was  Andrew  Wight  of  Ormiston  who 
was  invited  to  Ayrshire  by  Lord  Eglinton.  "There  had  been  no 
such  man  in  the  agriculturing  line  among  us  before.  .  .  . 

^Entail,  c.  xxxvi. 

2Annals,  c.  ix. 

3Annals,  c.  ii.,  iii.  The  importance  of  tea  in  the  smuggling  trade  is 
also  described — Annals,  c.  ii.,  v.,  xi.,  xix  and  Betheral,  c.  xx. 

*Last  of  the  Lairds,  c.  iii.  Entail,  c.  ix.  Annals,  c.  xxiv.,  xlvi.,  cp. 
The  Bride  of  Lammermoor,  c.  ii. 

5Annals,  c.  xliv. 


42  JOHN  GALT 

He  turned  all  to  production,  and  it  was  wonderful  what  an  in- 
crease he  made  the  land  bring  forth.  He  was  from  far  be- 
yond Edinburgh,  and  had  got  his  insight  among  the  Lothian 
farmers,  so  that  he  knew  what  crop  should  follow  another,  and 
nothing  could  surpass  the  regularity  of  his  rigs  and  furrows."1 
Run-rig  cultivation  fell  into  disuse;  fields  were  enclosed,  fal- 
lowed and  drained;  leases  were  lengthened,  so  that  a  tenant 
could  secure  the  benefit  of  improvements  if  he  chose  to  make 
them.  Turnips  began  to  be  sown  and  supplied  a  better  winter- 
food  for  cattle  than  straw  and  mashed  whins.  New  dairying 
methods  brought  profit  to  many  a  thrifty  household  such  as 
that  of  the  second  Mrs.  Balwhidder.2 

The  treelessness  of  Scotland,  long  a  subject  of  English 
satire,  now  began  to  disappear.  Mr.  Kibbock  "planted  mounts 
of  fir-trees  on  the  bleak  and  barren  tops  of  the  hills  of  his 
farm,  the  which  everybody  .  .  .  considered  as  a  thrash- 
ing of  the  water  and  raising  of  bells."3  But  when  it  was  seen 
that  the  fields  were  sheltered  and  that  he  got  wood  for  fences 
Ais  example  was  widely  followed  by  neighbouring  lairds. 

The  political  development  kept  pace  with  the  advance  in 
industry  and  agriculture.  The  agitation  against  patronage  in 
the  church  is  vividly  illustrated  in  the  stormy  "placing"  of  Mr. 
Balwhidder.  The  vigorous  feeling  called  forth  by  this  ques- 
tion was  later  transferred  to  political  causes.  The  abuses  in 
municipal  politics  and  the  growing  protests  against  them  are 
fully  exposed  in  The  Provost.  Gait  shows,  too,  how  the  French 
Revolution  stirred  fhe  country  as  the  smaller  questions  of 
county,  burghs  and  ecclesiastical  reform  had  not  done.  Like 
the  American  War  it  created  a  keen  desire  for  news  which  the 
Scottish  press  was  not  adequate  to  satisfy.  The  newly  estab- 
lished bookseller  in  Dalmailing  imported  a  London  newspaper 
for  the  mill-hands  who  met  nightly  at  the  Cross  Keys  to  dis- 
cuss French  affairs.  In  this  Dalmailing  was  typical  of  the 

1Ibid,  c.  vii. 

2Annals,  c.  vi.    Sir  Andrew  Wylie,  c.  xc.     The  Cottagers  of  Glen- 
burnie,  c.  xiii.,  gives  only  too  faithful  a  picture  of  the  old  dairy  methods. 
3Annals,  c.  vi.,  xxi. 


THE  SCOTCH  NOVELS  43 

whole  country  which  began  to  be  covered  by  a  network  of 
village  clubs  and  debating  societies,  to  the  alarm  of  quiet  men 
like  Balwhidder.  Even  Provost  Pawkie,  with  all  his  love  of 
jobbing  and  corruption  was  forced  to  admit  "that  the  peremp- 
tory will  of  authority  was  no  longer  sufficient  for  the  rule  of 
mankind."1 

There  was  opposition  to  all  these  changes.  The  smaller 
lairds  saw  with  dismay  their  remains  of  feudal  grandeur  be- 
ing snatched  from  them.  They  naturally  resented  the  import- 
ance attached  to  new-fangled  ideas.  Auldbiggings,  in  The 
Last  of  the  Lairds,  is  a  type  of  their  gloomy,  decayed  mansion- 
houses  with  "mortgage-mouldered  gables,"  the  inevitable  dove- 
cote, shapeless  mass  of  outbuildings,  broken  gateposts  and  ill- 
kept  garden  full  of  old-fashioned  flowers  and  surrounded  by 
an  untrimmed  hedge.2  Here  they  lived  in  sulky  seclusion  and 
looked  out  blackly  on  a  changing  world.  They  railed  at  the 
high  taxes  and  wages  and  at  the  liberty  and  equality  spirit 
of  the  times.  "It  was  a  black  day  when  poor  Scotland  saw 
the  incoming  pestilence  of  the  cotton  jennies.  The  reformers 
and  them  were  baith  cleckit  at  the  same  time,  and  they'll  live 
and  thrive,  and  I  hope  will  be  damned  thegither.  .  .  . 
The  vera  weavers  in  Glasgow  and  Paisley  hae  houses,  I'm 
told,  that  the  Craiglands  here  wouldna  be  a  byre  to.  Can  ony 
gude  come,  but  vice  and  immorality,  from  sic  upsetting  in  a 
Christian  kingdom?  .  .  .  It's  enough  to  ...  gar  a 
bodie  scunner  to  hear  o'  weavers  in  coaches.  ...  I  would 
as  soon  sit  in  a  Relief  Kirk  as  darken  the  door  o'  ony  sic 
cattle.  .  .  .  Is't  not  as  clear  as  a  pike-staff  that  trade  and 
traffic  are  to  be  the  ruin  o'  this  country?"3  In  The  Provost 
we  see  how,  as  time  went  on,  the  gentry  had  to  abate  in  their 
pretensions  and  consent  to  mix  with  the  "gawsie,  big-bellied 
burgesses,  not  a  few  of  whom  had  heritable  bonds  on  their 
estates."4 

^Provost,  c.  xxyiii. 

2 Last  of  the  Lairds,  c.  i.  Sir  Andrew  Wylie,  c.  vii.  Compare  Tully 
Veolan  in  Waverley. 

3Sir  Andrew  Wylie,  c.  xc.,  xciii. 
4Provost,  c.  xxxiv.,  xxxv. 


44  JOHN  GALT 

The  agricultural  reforms  had  to  fight  their  way  step  by 
step.  There  was  more  sympathy  for  Mungo  Campbell  the 
exciseman,  who  shot  Lord  Eglinton  in  1769,  than  for  his  vic- 
tim, whose  new  notions  had  made  him  unpopular.1  When  he 
introduced  "that  outlandish  practice  from  the  east  countrie 
which,  for  a  better  name,  is  called  rotation  of  crops,"2  many 
folk  denounced  it  as  an  attempt  to  defeat  the  plan  of  the  Cre- 
ator who  meant  the  earth  to  be  clothed  in  green  grass.  The 
Laird  of  Auldbiggings  maintained  that  "national*  decay,  agri- 
cultural distresses,  broken  merchants,  ravelled  manufacturers, 
and  brittle  bankers"  were  never  heard  of  before  turnip-farm- 
ing came  into  vogue.  "To  gar  sheep  and  kye  to  crunch  tur- 
nips was  contrary  to  nature,  their  teeth  being  made  for  grass 
and  kail  blades."3 

But  the  new  spirit  made  its  way  in  spite  of  such  hostility. 
Even  the  romantic  Miss  Pringle,  when  she  gazed  on  the  new 
harbour  of  Ardrossan,  shared  the  enthusiasm  for  material  pro- 
gress and  forgot  to  lament  the  decay  of  chivalry.  "What  a 
monument  has  the  late  Earl  of  Eglinton  left  there  of  his  public 
spirit !  It  should  embalm  his  memory  in  the  hearts  of  future 
ages,  as  I  doubt  not  but  in  time  Ardrossan  will  become  a  grand 


emporium. 


"4 


1His  death  is  described  in  the  Annals,  c.  xxi. 

2Betheral,  c.  xxyi. 

3Last  of  the  Lairds,  c.  xxxv. 

4Ayr.  Leg.,  Letter  2. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  45 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  FORMATION  OF  THE  CANADA  COMPANY 

Gait  had  at  last  established  himself  by  the  swift  succession 
of  his  Scottish  novels  and  sketches.  But  the  annals  of  quiet 
parishes  and  the  humours  of  small  towns  are  a  limited  theme. 
Accordingly  Gait  turned  historical  novelist,  and,  it  would 
seem,  with  no  misgivings.  He  "often  averred  to  me,"  says 
Gillies,  "that  his  literary  resources  were  far  greater  in  extent 
than  those  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  or  any  other  contemporary." 
It  would  have  been  friendly  of  Gillies  not  to  have  recorded 
this  pronouncement. 

Ringcm  Gilhaize,  or  The  Covenanters  (1823)  is  the  first1 
and  best  of  these  historical  fictions.  The  plan  of  the  book  is 
unusual  and  ambitious.  It  records  the  sufferings  of  three  gen- 
erations of  a  Covenanting  family  and  covers  the  period  from 
the  martyrdom  of  Wishart  to  Killiecrankie  where  Claverhouse 
falls  by  Ringan's  hand.  The  Monastery,  The  Abbot  and  Old 
Mortality  together  contain  less  history,  and  this  is  not  to  their 
disadvantage,  for  Gait's  book  is  too  much  of  a  chronicle  and 
too  little  of  a  romance.  "The  Calamities,"  as  Jeffrey  remark- 
ed, "are  too  numerous  and  too  much  alike."  But  the  book  has 
ardour  and  sincerity,  and  Gait  is  aided  by  the  autobiographical 
form  and  the  Ayrshire  setting. 

The  genesis  of  the  book  was  due  to  Old  Mortality,  which, 
Gait  thought,  treated  the  Covenanters  with  objectionable 
levity.2  Claverhouse  is  drawn  in  accordance  with  the  West 
Country  traditions  of  his  cruelty,  but  on  the  whole  Gait  is  fair 
enough,  more  moderate  than  McCrie  in  his  irritated  review  of 
Old  Mortality  and  more  readable  than  Hogg  in  his  dull  tale, 

!In  his  Literary  Life  (1849)  Gait  mentions  two  books,  Glenfell  and 
Andrew  of  Padua,  which  a  friend  reminded  him  that  he  had  written. 
Gait  tells  us  nothing  of  them,  but  the  titles  suggest  historical  novels.  I 
have  found  no  other  reference  to  them. 

2Lit.  Life,  L,  254.  One  of  the  stories  (The  Covenanter)  in  The 
Steamboat  also  speaks  with  disapproval  of  Old  Mortality.  Among  Gait's 
papers  are  some  lines  entitled  The  Covenanters  which  describe  his  boy- 
ish meditations  by  a  martyr's  tomb  near  the  village  of  Largs. 


46  JOHN  GALT 

The  Brownie  of  Bodspeck.  With  all  its  faults  Ringan  Gilhaize 
gives  a  pathetic  picture  of  those  who  suffered  and  worshipped 
on  the  upland  moors  and  lonely  brae-sides. 

In  the  same  year  appeared  The  Spaewife,  A  Tale  of  the 
Scottish  Chronicles.  Its  subject,  the  reign  and  murder  of 
James  I  of  Scotland,  had  already  been  used  by  Gait  in  a  blank 
verse  tragedy.1  With  his  usual  economy  of  effort  he  drew 
upon  the  play  for  several  scenes  in  the  novel.  The  central 
tragic  story  of  the  King  is  overlaid  by  a  diffuse  and  intricate 
plot.  None  of  the  characters  are  well  drawn,  though  the 
Spaewife,  Anniple  of  Dunblane,  a  sort  of  Meg  Merrilies  in 
her  sudden  appearances  and  snatches  of  song,  has  in  some  of 
her  speeches  the  poignancy  of  which  Gait  is  occasionally  mas- 
ter. The  book,  according  to  Gait,  was  enjoyed  by  George  IV 
and  praised  by  Miss  Edgeworth.  Scott's  verdict  (Journal, 
July  18,  1829)  is  half  favourable. 

In  Rothelan  (1824)  a  story  of  a  wicked  uncle  in  the  time 
of  Edward  III,  Gait  takes  no  pains  to  hide  his  lack  of  interest. 
He  is  weary  of  historical  romance  and  declares  his  preference 
for  "an  old  crone  with  a  curious  character  or  an  odd  and  droll 
carl  to  all  the  mysterious  castles  and  turretry  of  Christen- 
dom." Once  or  twice  he  escapes  from  his  absurd  world  of  un- 
realities and  introduces  some  good  Scots  dialogue.  The  fre- 
quent digressions  discuss  such  matters  as  three-volume  novels 
and  life  insurance.  "On  the  whole,"  said  the  British  Critic 
(Dec.,  1824),  "we  strongly  recommend  Mr.  Gait  to  leave  ro- 
mances to  Sir  Walter." 

Blackwood  did  not  publish  the  historical  novels.  If  they 
were  offered  to  him  he  was  shrewd  enough  to  see  that  Gait 
was  but  a  feeble  rival  of  Scott.  At  any  rate  he  and  Gait  seem 
to  have  quarrelled  in  1823.  "It  is  probable,"  wrote  Maginn  to 
Blackwood,  "that  in  a  tradesman  point  of  view  you  will  lose 
Rttle  by  not  publishing  Ringan  Gilhaize,  for  G.  is  writing  too 
fast.  Even  Waverley  himself  is  going  it  too  strong  on  us, 
and  he  is  a  leetle  better  trump  than  Gait.  However,  do  not 
let  anything  ever  so  little  harsh  appear  against  it  in  Maga.  I 

iPrinted  in  Lit.  Life,  Vol.  III. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  47 

shall  review  it  for  you,  if  you  like,  praising  it  and  extracting 
the  greatest  trash  to  be  found  in  it  as  specimens  to  bear 
out  my  panegyric.  G.  will  swallow  it."1  Gait's  contemporar- 
ies saw  far  more  clearly  than  he  himself  the  limitations  of  his 
literary  gift. 

In  1823  Gait  had  settled  with  his  family  at  Eskgrove 
House  near  Musselburgh.  Here  he  met  David  Macbeth  Moir 
(1798-1851)  who  practised  medicine  in  Musselburgh  almost 
his  whole  life.  His  spare  time  was  given  to  literature,  but  his 
facility  has  injured  his  subsequent  reputation.2  He  is  still 
remembered  for  his  Mansie  Wauch  and  one  or  two  plaintive 
poems.  Literature  proved  a  bond  between  Gait  with  his  rest- 
less activity  and  Moir  with  his  steady  pursuit  of  his  profes- 
sion. Both  Rothelan  and  The  Last  of  the  Lairds  had  finishing 
touches  put  to  them  by  Moir.  He  describes  Gait  as  he  was  in 
1823,  with  his  huge  frame,  vigorous  health,  jet-black  hair  and 
small  eyes  looking  sharply  through  his  spectacles.3 

But  Gait's  activities  between  1820  and  1824  were  not 
merely  those  of  book-maker  and  novelist.  He  was  also  deep  in 
affairs.  In  these  years  began  his  connection  with  Canada 
which  led  to  what  he  regarded  as  the  most  important  work  of 
his  life. 

The  War  of  1812  had  brought  high  but  temporary  pros- 
perity to  Canada.  The  British  troops  in  the  colony  offered  a 
steady  and  convenient  market  for  products  of  all  kinds,  and 
actual  warfare  had  spared  the  main  centres  of  trade  and  in- 
dustry. The  peace  of  1815,  however,  put  an  end  to  the  Brit- 
ish government's  lavish  expenditure  and  left  a  set  of  financial 
problems  awaiting  solution. 

Among  these  were  the  claims  for  compensation  for  those 
who  had  suffered  directly  or  indirectly  in  the  war.  Severe 
injuries  had  been  endured  from  contributions  levied  by  Am- 

iMrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.,  I.,  390. 

2Moir  wrote  under  the  pseudonym  of  Delta.  Gait  refers  to  him  in 
Lawrie  Todd  as  "Doctor  Delta  of  Musselburgh,  a  pleasant,  mild  and 
sensible  young  man,  somewhat  overly  addicted  to  poetry  of  the  pale 
sort." 

3Moir's  Memoir  of  Gait,  p.  xxxiv. 


48  JOHN  GALT 

erican  invaders  as  well  as  by  British  troops.  A  commission 
was  appointed  under  the  sanction  of  the  Colonial  Office  to  ex- 
amine such  claims  and  to  award  compensation.  No  specific 
funds  were  mentioned  at  first  from  which  money  was  to  be 
drawn,  but  subsequently  the  proceeds  of  estates  confiscated 
because  of  the  treachery  of  their  proprietors  were  directed  to 
be  used.  This  source,  however,  did  not  produce  any  great 
sum.1  The  commissioners  awarded  compensation  to  2,828 
persons,  rejected  564  claims,  and  estimated  the  required  sum 
of  money  at  £229,000.  This  amount,  however,  seemed  excess- 
ive to  the  British  government,  and  before  payments  were  made 
it  was  decided  to  establish  a  commission  of  revision  under 
special  directions  to  be  given  by  Lord  Bathurst,  Secretary  of 
State.  The  award  of  the  new  commissioners  was  to  be  final. 
An  interval  of  six  or  seven  years  passed  in  which  no  payments 
were  made,  and  there  matters  stood  when  Gait  became  con- 
cerned in  the  affair.2 

.In  1820  he  was  appointed  London  agent  for  the  Canadian 
claimants;  how  he  came  to  be  chosen  does  not  appear.  His 
colleague  was  Edward  Ellice,  a  prominent  figure  in  Canadian 
affairs,  later  organizer  of  the  Reform  Bill  campaign  for  the 
Whigs  and  secretary  for  war  in  Earl  Grey's  cabinet.  Ellice, 
however,  as  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  preferred 
not  to  act,  and  the  whole  matter  was  left  in  Gait's  hands.3 

Now  began  the  official  correspondence  in  which  Gait  was 
to  be  immersed  for  several  years.  The  importance  of  his  posi- 
tion was  not  unpleasing  to  him.  "He  had  parliamentary 
friends,"  says  Gillies,  "whom  he  well  knew  how  to  retain.  He 
appeared  always  at  his  ease  and  independent,  kept  lodgings 
constantly  in  Downing  Street,  had  great  placidity  and  amenity 

lAutobiog.  I.,  371.  Gait  to  Bathurst,  July  8,  1824.  "With  the  sub- 
ject of  the  forfeited  estates,  I  need  not  acquaint  your  Lordship  that  I 
have  the  misfortune  to  be  deeply  interested  in  what  relates  to  them,  for 
never  was  any  speculative  error  regarding  the  sales  of  any  lands  more 
fallacious  than  the  expected  proceeds  of  those  very  estates." 

aThe  Canadian  Archives,  Q.  337-1. 

3Galt's  Autobiography  is  dedicated  to  Ellice.  Carlyle  in  1852  de- 
scribed Ellice  as  "a  wide-flowing  old  Canadian  Scotchman,  Politician, 
Negotiator,  etc.,  etc.,  called  "Bear  Ellice"  in  society  here ;  but  rather  for 
his  oiliness  than  for  any  trace  of  ferocity  ever  seen  in  him." 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  49 

of  manners,  and  looked  and  talked  very  wisely."    The  case  of 
his  Canadian  clients  he  urged  with  energy  and  persistence, 
and  the  Lords  of  the  Treasury  grew  accustomed  to  his  im- 
portunity.    Finally,  in  July,  1821,  they  informed  him  "that 
they  cannot  feel  themselves  justified  under  the  present  circum- 
stances and  situation  of  the  country  in  recommending  to  Par- 
liament the  grant  of  any  public  money  on  account  of  these 
claims."    They  declared  that  all  the  direct  claims  had  been 
satisfied  or  were  in  course  of  liquidation.1    A  few  days  later 
Gait  renewed  the  attack,  and  made  a  vigorous  plea  for  fuller 
consideration  of  unpaid  claims.    All  possible  arguments  were 
pressed  into  service.    The  province  of  Upper  Canada  in  its 
defenceless  condition  would  have  been  lost  but  for  the  spirited 
loyalty  of  its  inhabitants.     "Four  well-appointed  American 
armies,  each  of  them  superior  in  numerical  strength  to  the 
whole  force  in  the  Province,  were  destroyed  or  defeated,  and 
fifty  pieces  of  cannon  taken  during  the  first  campaign."    The 
settlers  had  been  "indefatigable  in  the  field;  they  witnessed 
without  complaint  the  burning  of  their  homes,  the  devasta- 
tion of  their  estates,  and  their  families  driven  to  extreme  mis- 
ery."   Yet  they  are  now  to  be  told  that  no  debts  are  to  be  paid 
except  those  "regularly  contracted  with  regular  officers  ac- 
cording to  regular  forms."    Generosity  will  have  a  good  effect 
on  the  political  sentiment  in  the  province.2 

The  result  of  this  appeal  was  a  meeting  held  at  Fife  House 
in  the  early  part  of  March,  1822,  at  which  Lord  Bexley,  Lord 
Liverpool  and  Lord  Bathurst  met  Gait  and  Ellice,  who,  though 
declining  to  act  officially,  lent  his  aid  and  advice.  It  was 
agreed  that  Upper  Canada  should  share  with  the  Home  Gov- 
ernment the  expense  of  compensation  to  be  finally  awarded  by 
the  commission  of  revision.  Gait  was  informed  by  the  Treas- 
ury that  it  was  impossible  under  existing  circumstances  to  ask 
Parliament  to  vote  a  sum  necessary  for  the  purpose.  This  led 
to  the  consideration  of  a  loan.  The  first  proposal  was  for 
£200,000,  but  the  sum  finally  fixed  was  £100,000,  with  an  un- 

iCan.  Arch.,  Q.  330. 
2Can.  Arch.,  Q.  332-2. 


50  JOHN  GALT 

derstanding  that  if  this  amount  should  not  be  enough  a  fur- 
ther sum  should  be  raised  for  the  same  purpose.  The  loan  was 
to  pay  five  per  cent,  interest  and  to  be  charged  jointly,  as  to 
both  principal  and  interest,  to  the  United  Kingdom  and  Upper 
Canada.  Gait  was  to  raise  the  money,  and  felt  confident  of 
finding  lenders  on  these  terms  both  in  London  and  Glasgow. 
Sir  Peregrine  Maitland,  Lieutenant  Governor  of  Upper  Can- 
ada, was  to  appoint  a  new  commission  to  examine  the  claims. 
The  affair  seemed  well  on  the  way  to  be  settled,  and  Gait 
left  London  for  Scotland. 

•  There  was,  however,  chance  for  misunderstandng.  The 
instructions  drafted  in  the  Colonial  Office  provided  for  virtu- 
ally two  loans,  one  for  £50,000  to  be  guaranteed  by  the  United 
Kingdom,  and  one  for  £50,000  to  be  raised  by  Upper  Canada 
on  its  own  security.  To  effect  a  loan  on  these  terms  was  out 
of  the  question;  money  was  high  and  conditions  in  Upper 
Canada  uncertain.  Gait  returned  to  London,  and  protested 
that  under  this  interpretation  of  the  arrangement  he  was  un- 
able to  negotiate  the  loan.1 

So  ended  the  proposal.  The  claims  of  the  sufferers,  how- 
ever, were  pressing,  and  the  government  decided  to  pay  the 
sum  of  £57,412  10s.,  that  is,  a  quarter  of  the  award  made  by 
the  original  commissioners.  This  was  in  the  first  instance 
considered  an  equitable  and  expedient  principle,  but  later  dis- 
cussion showed  that  injustice  might  be  done.  For  example, 
the  original  commission  might  have  awarded  two  claimants 
£1,000  each.  But  one  award  might  be  fair  and  the  other  un- 
justified. The  commission  of  revision  might  uphold  one  and 
reduce  the  other  by  75  per  cent.  Under  the  proposed  arrange- 
ment both  men  would  benefit  equally,  regardless  of  the  justice 
of  their  claims.  Accordingly  Lord  Bathurst  directed  a  pay- 
ment of  five  shillings  in  the  pound  to  be  made  to  every  indi- 
vidual upon  the  sum  which  should  be  awarded  by  the  new  com- 

*Can.  Arch.,  Q.  337-1,  also  Q.  332-2,  and  Q.  334,  Gait  to  Hofton, 
Feb.  10,  1823,  declining  to  proceed  with  the  transaction  on  the  altered 
footing. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  51 

mission.  This  principle  would  not  exhaust  the  whole  of  the 
£57,412  10s.  owing  to  the  reduced  awards  under  the  new  com- 
mission. The  government,  however,  was  unwilling  to  afford 
less  relief  than  had  been  actually  promised.  Maitland  was 
therefore  authorized  to  allow  a  certain  percentage  addition  to 
each  award  under  the  new  commission  after  the  whole  of  the 
claims  had  been  gone  through.  Here  the  assistance  of  the 
British  government  was  to  end  unless  the  government  of 
Upper  Canada  would  apply  an  equal  sum  to  satisfy  the  claims. 
"And  you  will  also  explain  to  the  Legislature,"  wrote  Bath- 
urst  to  Maitland,  "that  should  an  additional  sum  be  still  found 
necessary  after  that  payment  on  the  part  of  the  Government 
of  Upper  Canada,  the  British  Government  will  consent  to  con- 
tribute towards  that  sum  in  the  same  proportion  as  the  Legis- 
lature of  Upper  Canada  agree  to  advance  upon  the  exclusive 
security  of  the  colony."1 

It  was  later  agreed  that  a  further  loan  of  £100,000  should 
be  raised,  of  which  the  British  government  would  guarantee 
half  the  interest  (£2,500  per  annum) ,  the  province  providing 
the  remainder  by  levying  special  duties.    On  March  23,  1824, 
Gait  wrote  to  Lord  Bathurst  that  he  had  received  from  Upper 
Canada  copies  of  resolutions  passed  by  the  Provincial  parlia- 
ment.    Upper  Canada  was  willing  to  impose  new  duties  to 
raise  the  required  £2,500,  but  direct  taxation  was  impractic- 
able, and  the  only  method  was  for  Upper  Canada  to  acquiesce 
in  the  parliament  of  Lower  Canada    imposing   new   import 
duties  at  Quebec.    The  principal,  of  which  Upper  Canada  was 
thus  to  provide  the  interest,  Gait  proposed  should  be  raised  in 
the  United  Kingdom.    "Your  Lordship  is  aware,"  he  writes, 
"of  what  has  taken  place,  seriously  affecting  me  and  my  inter- 
ests in  the  original  proposal  of  a  loan;  I  therefore  humbly 
submit  my  hope  that,  as  it  will  be  obviously  for  the  advantage 
of  the  colony  to  raise  the  money  in  this  country,  I  shall  be 
employed  to  effect  it  under  the  arrangement  contemplated — 

ifiathurst  to  Maitland,  Feb.  15,  1823.    See  Autobiog.,  I.,  361-2. 


52  JOHN  GALT 

namely,  on  the  colonial  security  only."1  He  was  given  per- 
mission to  proceed  with  the  tranaction,  and  on  April  12  he  had 
made  the  preliminary  arrangements.2 

New  difficulties,  however,  were  in  the  way.  The  Assembly 
of  Lower  Canada,  while  admitting  the  sufferings  caused  by  the 
war,  declared  that  "the  unfavourable  state  of  commerce  ren- 
ders it  impossible  at  present  to  bear  the  imposition  of  new 
taxes."3  Gait,  still  -persistent,  demanded  what  further  plans 
the  British  government  had  to  satisfy  a  debt  "which  justice 
as  well  as  policy  requires  to  be  discharged."  Horton,  the 
Under-Secretary,  in  replying,  reminded  him  of  what  the  gov- 
ernment had  already  done  and  of  its  readiness  to  do  more 
pari  passu  with  Upper  Canada.  'There,"  he  concluded,  "I 
understand  the  matter  now  to  rest."4 

Before  the  discussion  of  the  loan  had  thus  reached  a  dead- 
lock Gait  had  conceived  and  proposed  a  plan  which  was  to  have 
far-reaching  results.  Robinson,  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer and  afterwards  Viscount  Goderich,  had  hinted  that  if 
Upper  Canada  could  pay  half  the  civil  expenses  of  the  province 
the  government  would  discharge  the  claims  of  Gait's  clients. 
In  casting  about  for  new  methods  of  raising  money  in  Upper 
Canada  Gait  was  led  to  examine  the  natural  resources  of  the 
province.  It  occurred  to  him  that  the  sale  of  the  Crown  Re- 
serves would  provide  a  fund  large  enough  to  meet  the  claims 
of  his  constituents  and  also  the  other  civil  expenses  of  the 
province. 

The  soundness  of  this  scheme  was  confirmed  by  Bishop 
Macdonnell,  of  Upper  Canada,  who  visited  Gait  at  Eskgrove 

aCan.  Arch.  Q.  337-1.  It  is  pleasant  to  contrast  with  this  official  cor- 
respondence a  letter  from  Gait  to  his  boys  in  Scotland  written  at  this 
time  (March  18,  1824),  "My  dear  little  Boys,  I  wish  very  much  that  I 
was  at  home  with  you,  I  hope  you  continue  good  scholars  and  that  you 
are  kind  to  one  another  and  obedient  to  Mamma.  I  shall  be  very  glad 
to  receive  another  letter  from  each  of  you,  in  which  you  will  tell  me  what 
has  happened  since  you  wrote  last  and  how  far  John  and  Tom  are  in  the 
Bible." 

2Can.  Arch.,  Q.  337-1.  Gait  to  Horton  (April  12,  1824).  Gait's  cor- 
respondence on  the  loan  is  voluminous. 

aCan.  Arch.,  Q.  337-1,  Horton  to  Gait  (May  7,  1824)  quoting  the 
Assembly's  resolution,  which  was  passed  on  March  5,  1824. 

*Can.  Arch.,  Q.  337-1,  Horton  to  Gait  (May  13,  1824). 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  53 

in  December,  1823,  where  the  latter  had  joined  his  family  for 
a  holiday  from  London  worries.1  On  December  16  he  sent 
letters  by  Macdonnell  to  both  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
and  to  Horton  advocating  his  plan.  "I  consider  it  a  duty,"  he 
writes,  "which  I  owe  to  my  constituents  to  leave  no  suggestion 
untried  until  I  shall  have  procured  them  justice."2  Through 
Gait  Was  unconscious  of  having  been  anticipated  in  his  scheme, 
a  similar  suggestion  had  been  made  in  1818  by  petitioners  in 
Upper  Canada.3  This  does  not  detract  from  his  credit,  for  he 
alone  had  the  energy  and  persistence  to  carry  the  plan  into 
effect  in  spite  of  long  discouraging  negotiations  and  hostile 
criticism. 

The  disposal  of  public  lands  had  for  years  been  one  of  the 
most  important  and  vexatious  questions  in  all  the  Canadian 
provinces.  In  Upper  Canada  lands  had  been  granted  with  a 
recklessness  and  profuseness  that  bore  no  relation  to  the 
amount  of  settlement  and  cultivation.  The  population  in  1824 
was  under  150,000,  and  yet  about  11,000,000  acres  had  been 
granted  or  appropriated.  Till  1804  these  grants  had  been  en- 
tirely free.  After  that  date  a  slight  fee  was  charged,  and  in 
1818  certain  settlement  duties  were  also  supposed  to  be  per- 
formed. Much  of  this  land  had  been  granted  to  various  privi- 
leged persons.  Nearly  3,000,000  acres  had  been  given  to 
United  Empire  Loyalists  and  their  children,  and  about  1,000,- 
000  to  militiamen  and  discharged  soldiers  and  sailors.  Cer- 

1  Alexander  Macdonnell  (1762-1840),  first  Roman  Catholic  Bishop 
of  Upper  Canada,  emigrated  to  Canada  with  the  Glengarry  regiment,  in 
the  formation  of  which  he  had  been  instrumental. 

^Autobiog.,  L,  297-8. 

3Can.  Arch.,  Q.  340-1,  Resolutions  of  the  Township  Representatives 
of  the  Midland  Districts,  June  15,  1818:  Address  to  the  Prince  Regent: 
"During  the  war  Upper  Canada  was  exposed  to  the  torrent  of  hostilities; 
twice  did  the  raw  battalions  of  militia  wave  the  laurel  of  victory.  .  .  . 
We  are  aware  that  taxes  are  heavy  upon  our  fellow-subjects  at  home, 
and  do  not  want  aid  from  that  source.  Canada  contains  within  itself 
ample  means  of  exhonorating  (sic)  government  from  the  claims  of  suf- 
ferers by  war  and  it  is  within  the  fiat  of  your  Royal  Highness  to  remove 
by  a  single  breath  the  evil  now  so  justly  complained  of.  Millions  of 
acres  of  fertile  land  lie  here,  upon  the  credit  of  which,  put  under  proper 
management,  not  only  the  fair  claims  of  loyal  sufferers  could  be  satisfied, 
but  vast  sums  might  be  raised  for  the  improvement  of  the  province  and 
the  eventual  increase  of  revenue  to  Britain." 


54  JOHN  GALT 

tain  professional  classes  such  as  magistrates  and  barristers 
received  grants  of  1,200  acres,  while  5,000  acres  were  granted 
to  executive  and  legislative  councillors,  and  1,200  to  each  of 
their  children.  "The  Province  of  Upper  Canada,"  declared  a 
Parliamentary  Report  in  1831,  "appears  to  have  been  consid- 
ered by  Government  as  a  land  fund  to  reward  meritorious  ser- 
vants." Of  all  the  land  thus  granted  probably  not  more  than 
a  tenth  had  been  even  occupied  and  a  much  smaller  proportion 
reclaimed  and  cultivated.  Much  of  it  had  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  speculators  and  land-jobbers. 

The  normal  development  of  the  province  had  been  further 
retarded  by  the  Clergy  and  Crown  Reserves.  The  Clergy  Re- 
serves, created  by  the  Constitutional  Act  of  1791  for  the  sup- 
port of  a  Protestant  clergy,  consisted  of  a  seventh  of  the  land 
in  each  township.  The  Crown  Reserves,  of  equal  amount,  had 
been  made  in  order  to  produce  a  source  of  revenue  for  the 
Crown  independent  of  taxation.  These  reserves  were  not 
merely  allowed  to  lie  waste,  but  their  situation  was  such  as 
to  separate  the  actual  settlers  and  to  obstruct  the  progress  of 
improvement. 

It  was  this  obvious  failure  in  dealing  with  public  lands 
which  led  the  government  to  give  Gait's  scheme  a  hearing  in 
the  hope  that  persons  whose  financial  interests  were  at  stake 
would  be  more  careful  and  therefore  more  successful  in  their 
operations.  The  success  of  the  settlement  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Erie  under  Colonel  Thomas  Talbot  (1771-1853)  was  a 
recent  and  encouraging  precedent.  Gait  had  now  to  persuade 
the  government  to  a  much  larger  delegation  of  its  powers  and 
to  interest  it  in  what  he  considered  "the  best  and  greatest 
colonial  project  ever  formed." 

At  the  request  of  the  Colonial  Office  Gait  drew  up  a  plan 
of  sale  for  the  Crown  Reserves  which  he  submitted  to  Lord 
Bathurst  (Feb.  17,  1824).  With  Horton's  authority  he  sounded 
London  capitalists  on  the  possibility  of  forming  a  company 
and  received  a  favourable  answer.  As  a  result  of  a  meeting 
held  at  the  Colonial  Office  the  formation  of  a  company  was 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  55 

proceeded  with,  and  on  April  12  a  provisional  committee  was 
appointed  with  Gait  for  secretary.1 

He  sent  the  good  news  to  his  wife  the  same  day : 
"MY  DEAR  BESS, — 

"I  have  great  satisfaction  in  letting  you  know  that  Mr. 
Wilmot  informed  me  this  afternoon  that  I  am  to  negotiate 
the  loan.  ...  How  much  this  may  produce  to  me  I  cannot 
as  yet  know,  but  it  will  help  to  stop  many  ravenous  gaps. 
.  .  .  The  loan,  however,  is  the  least  of  my  objects  now.  I 
am  carrying  into  effect  the  plan  of  selling  the  Crown  Reserves 
of  Land,  gentlemen  having  come  home  officially  so  as  to  enable 
the  Government  to  proceed  according  to  my  suggestion.  The 
purpose  on  which  I  am  employed  is  to  raise  £1,000,000,  in 
shares,  to  constitute  a  Company,  so  that  the  period  of  my 
return  is  now  indefinite.  I  shall  write  you  more  soon,  but  this 
was  too  good  news  to  delay. 

"Love  to  the  dear  boys, 
Yours, 

J.  GALT. 

"Say  nothing  of  this  to  anybody."2 

His  confidence  and  optimism  were  thoroughly  tested  in  the 
months  which  followed,  months  of  correspondence,  meetings, 
proposals  and  counter-proposals.  The  government  hesitated 
to  commit  itself;  the  committee  kept  pressing  for  a  definite 

1The  committee  consisted  of  John  Hullett,  Robert  Downie,  M.P., 
Henry  Menteith,  M.P.,  and  Gait,  with  power  to  add  to  their  numbers. 
See  Can.  Arch.  Q.  339-2. 

2The  letter  indicates  Gait's  financial  worries.  Letters  to  Tilloch 
reveal  more  than  one  cause  for  Gait's  anxiety.  Tilloch  seems  to  have 
been  in  broken  health  and  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy.  Gait  could  give 
him  little  assistance.  On  Feb.  2,  1824,  he  writes,  "I  am  myself  much 
troubled  at  present.  .  .  .  What  adds  to  my  perplexities  is  the  obliga- 
tion to  pay  next  week  a  considerable  bill  that  I  was  led  to  hope  would 
have  been  renewed;  all  these  things  greatly  unfit  me  for  that  constancy 
of  application  to  my  pen  which  my  circumstances  require.  I  have  never 
felt  myself  so  barren  as  of  late."  On  Feb.  11  he  writes  again  to  Tilloch : 
''You  have  made  settlements  which  you  ought  never  to  have  done,  espe- 
cially ours.  ...  It  appears  I  owe  you  a  great  deal  of  money;  I  may 
be  called  on  to  pay  that;  and  I  ought  not.  When  I  arranged  my  affairs 
in  1820  your  account  should  then  have  been  closed.  .  .  .  There  is  only 
my  health  between  my  family  and  beggary,  and  I  am  at  this  time  full 
of  the  most  painful  anxieties." 


56  JOHN  GALT 

arrangement.1  The  official  tone  of  the  correspondence  is  oc- 
casionally relieved  by  Gait.  "I  do  assure  you,"  he  writes  to 
Horton  on  June  3  affer  an  irritating  interview,  "that  the  gen- 
tlemen who  have  consented  to  lead  in  it  are  not  actuated  by 
any  irrational  expectations  of  great  profits.  They  feel  as  men 
ambitious  of  character  as  well  as  of  fortune  should  do,  and 
they  consider  the  views  of  the  company,  if  carried  into  effect 
with  energy  and  intelligence,  calculated  to  confer  honour  on 
all  its  promoters."2 

In  their  eagerness  the  committee  drew  up  and  printed  a 
circular,  setting  forth  the  objects  and  prospects  of  the  com- 
pany and  implying  that  government  had  agreed  to  the  scheme 
and  that  only  details  remained  to  be  settled.  Such  an  assump- 
tion roused  Morton's  righteous  indignation.  "What  possible 
right  have  you  to  say  that  the  reserves  are  to  be  granted?"3 
he  demanded,  and  only  consented  to  be  soothed  when  Gait 
waited  upon  him  with  apologies  for  the  committee's  indiscre- 
tion. 

The  dragging  on  of  the  negotiations  and  the  absence  of  his 
family  were  irksome  to  Gait  whose  thoughts  often  turned  to 
Eskgrove  and  to  the  education  of  his  sons.  "I  ought  long  ago 
to  have  answered  your  affectionate  letters,"  he  wrote  to  them 
on  May  29,  "and  particularly  about  the  pony,  but  I  have  been 
very  busy  indeed  and  wished  to  have  something  to  tell  you 
about  when  I  might  hope  to  see  you  or  to  be  with  you.  I  hope 
Mamma  has  not  sold  the  pony,  as  I  consider  your  having  it  a 
very  necessary  part  of  education,  but  if  she  has  you  must  not 
repine.  You  are  all  very  good  and  kind-hearted  children  and 

xGalt  declares  he  "had  discovered  a  visible  reluctance  in  the  Colonial 
Office  to  appear  ostensibly  connected  with  the  proceeding  until  the  bar- 
gain was  concluded,  by  which  he  was  much  embarrassed,  and  obliged 
to  act  with  greater  delicacy  than  a  public  mercantile  negotiation  seemed 
to  require"  (Autobiog.,  I.,  304-5). 

2Can  Arch  Q.  359-1.  There  are  also  occasional  informal  touches. 
On  May  22  he  writes  to  Horton:  "Not  wishing  to  trouble  you  at  the 
office  on  this  subject,  if  you  are  to  be  at  the  opera  to-night,  perhaps  I 
may  see  you  there.  I  shall  be  on  the  right  hand  side  of  the  pit  from 

Arch.  Q.    359-1,  Horton  to  Gait  (June  18,  1824). 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  57 

sensible  to  know  that  whatever  I  can  afford  for  your  improve- 
ment and  happiness  I  will  never  withhold. 

"Tom  improves  much  in  his  writing,  and  Johnny's  short 
letters  are  always  to  the  purpose,  as  for  Alexander,  we  all 
know  that  he  is  a  perfect  Solomon,  and  I  am  quite  sure  that 
King  Solomon  himself  never  knew  half  so  much  of  Oxygen 
gas  as  he  does.  Be  loving  to  one  another  and  obedient  to 
Mamma  and  write  to  me  every  Sunday." 

At  the  end  of  June  a  definite  proposal  was  submitted  to 
Lord  Bathurst,  namely:  "that  the  Company  shall  engage,  for 
a  period  of  fifteen  years,  to  take  up  annually  not  less  than  800 
lots,  or  160,000  acres  of  the  crown  and  of  the  half  of  the  clergy 
reserves  in  Upper  Canada  only,  for  which  Government  shall  be 
paid  £20,000  per  annum  certain  ;  but  for  all  above  that  quan- 
tity, which  in  any  year  the  Company  may  find  it  expedient  to 
take  up,  an  additional  sum  shall  be  paid  at  the  same  rate  (say 
2s.  6d.  per  acre)."1  Horton  replied  that  far  too  low  a  value 
had  been  set  upon  lands  which  the  Upper  Canada  legislature 
estimated  at  4s.  when  uncultivated  and  at  20s.  when  culti- 
vated. The  proposal  in  short  was  "absolutely  inadmissible."2 

It  was  finally  agreed  that  the  proposed  company  should 
purchase  and  settle  all  the  Crown  Reserves  and  half  the 
Clergy  Reserves  in  the  townships  surveyed  which  were  not 
sold,  leased  or  occupied  on  March  1,  1824;  that  the  value  of 
the  lands  should  be  determined  by  commissioners  to  be  sent 
out  to  Canada,  a  plan  proposed  earlier  in  the  negotiations  but 
discarded  because  of  the  inconvenience  and  delay  involved; 
and  that  during  a  period  of  fifteen  years  the  company  should 
each  year  enter  into  possession  of  so  much  of  the  lands  as, 
according  to  the  valuation  made  by  the  commissioners,  would 
amount  to  £20,000.3 


to  Lord  Bathurst,  Can.  Arch  Q.  359-1,  and  Autobiog.,  I., 
303-4. 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  359-1,  and  Autobiog.,  I.,  363-7.  Gait  answered  at 
length  on  July  8,  maintaining  that  2s.  6d.  was  a  fair  price. 

3Minutes  of  the  Intended  Arrangements  between  Earl  Bathurst,  His 
Majesty's  Secretary  of  State  and  the  Proposed  Canada  Company.  Im- 
perial Blue  Books  on  Affairs  relating  to  Canada,  Vol.  2. 


58  JOHN  GALT 

By  the  end  of  July  the  company  was  at  last  formed,  and 
a  board  of  directors  chosen,  with  Charles  Bosanquet  as  chair- 
man and  Gait  as  secretary.1  The  next  step  was  to  choose  five 
commissioners  to  value  the  lands.  At  the  first  meeting  of  the 
directors  Simon  McGillivray  and  Gait  were  elected  to  act  for 
the  company,  each  to  receive  £1,000  and  expenses.  The  two 
appointed  by  Lord  Bathurst  were  Lt.-Col.  Francis  Cockburn, 
who  was  to  be  senior  commissioner  and  permanent  chairman, 
and  Sir  John  Harvey.  The  fifth,  chosen  by  Lord  Bathurst  out 
of  three  candidates  nominated  by  the  company,  was  John 
Davidson,  one  of  the  Commissioners  of  Crown  Lands  in  Lower 
Canada.  Gait  ranked  fourth  on  the  board,  and  as  founder 
of  the  company  felt  slighted.  "I  am  as  ambitious  of  distinc- 
tion as  any  man  can  be,"  he  told  Bathurst.  To  this  protest 
Horton  replied  with  calm  indifference  :  "If  you  are  the  author, 
the  adviser,  the  promoter  and  the  accomplisher  of  the  scheme 
of  the  Canada  Company  .  .  .  and  if  you  feel  that  thanks 
are  due  to  you  on  that  account,  surely  the  expression  of  those 
thanks  should  proceed  from  that  body  of  persons  whose  secre- 
tary you  are  and  who  ought  to  be  grateful  to  you  for  your  good 
deeds."2 

Gait's  hope  in  forming  the  company  had  been  to  provide 
funds  for  the  claims  of  Canadian  war-sufferers.  This  expec- 
tation was  discouraged  when  he  was  curtly  informed  by  the 
Colonial  Office  (Aug.  6,  1824),  "that  the  money  to  be  paid  by 
the  Canada  Company  was  not  considered  by  His  Majesty's 
Government  to  be  applicable  to  the  relief  of  the  sufferers  by 
the  late  war  with  the  United  States."3  His  further  protests 
were  unavailing,  and  henceforth  his  energies  were  given  to  the 
Canada  Company  as  an  independent  enterprise. 

On  the  eve  of  his  departure  for  Canada  with  his  fellow- 
commissioners,  Gait  made  a  proposal  to  the  Colonial  Office 


Arch.  Q.  359-1,  Gait  to  Bathurst  (July  31,  1824),  declaring 
that  the  company  had  been  formed  the  day  before. 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  359-1,  Gait  to  Bathurst  (Dec.  3,  1824).  In  an  earlier 
letter  (April  23)  he  had  declared  to  Horton  proudly,  if  not  grammatic- 
ally: "The  plans  of  the  company,  etc.,  is  altogether  my  own  child." 

3Autobiog.,  I.,  305. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  59 

which,  though  nothing  came  of  it,  is  not  without  interest  in 
the  light  of  later  events.  He  pointed  out  to  Horton  that  the 
company,  in  spite  of  its  large  holdings  in  Upper  Canada,  had 
no  legislative  influence.  Might  it  not  be  expedient  to  suggest 
to  the  Lieutenant  Governor  the  addition  to  the  Legislative 
Council  "of  some  person  intimately  connected  with  the  Canada 
Company,  and  if  it  should  be  deemed  fit  to  make  such  a  com- 
munication, I  would  further  take  the  liberty  of  proposing  my- 
self as  a  candidate  for  the  appointment."1  This  ambition  sup- 
plies a  curious  comment  on  Gait's  later  declaration  that  he  had 
no  desire  to  interfere  with  colonial  politics. 

"Just  off  to-morrow  evening  for  Plymouth,"  writes  Gait 
on  January  1,  1825.  About  three  weeks  later  the  commission- 
ers were  on  the  Romney  man-of-war  bound  for  New  York, 
where  they  landed  on  February  25.  On  the  voyage  Sir  John 
Harvey  pleased  Gait  by  reading  a  copy  of  Ringan  Gilhaize 
which  happened  to  be  on  board.  Some  of  Gait's  first  impres- 
sions are  described  in  a  letter  to  his  boys.  "I  wrote  you  a 
very  long  letter,"  he  begins,  "giving  an  account  of  everything 
that  happened  in  our  voyage  to  New  York,  and  telling  you  of 
whales  and  Portuguese  Men  of  War  and  other  wonderful 
things.  When  I  got  that  letter  put  on  board  a  packet  for  Eng- 
land, I  landed  with  some  of  the  other  gentlemen  on  an  island 

!Can.  Arch.  Q.  359-1,  Gait  to  Horton  (Dec.  28,  1824).  Horton 
answered  (Jan.  6,  1825) )  that  McGillivray  had  made  the  same  request 
to  Lord  Bathurst,  who  had  replied  that  such  matters  rested  with  the 
Lieut-Governor.  "If  you  wish  it,"  Horton  concludes,  "I  will  lay  your 
application  especially  before  Lord  Bathurst,  unless  you  prefer  writing 
to  his  Lordship  yourself."  See  also  G.  61,  Horton  to  Maitland  (Feb.  12, 
1825) :  "Private  and  Confidential.  Mr.  Gait  wishes  to  become  a  mem- 
ber of  council  in  Upper  Canada,  and  he  founds  his  application  to  Lord 
Bathurst  to  assist  him  in  this  object  on  his  having  been  instrumental  in 
initiating  the  Canada  Company,  which  we  have  admitted  to  be  advan- 
tageous to  the  province.  The  answer  is  that  in  no  case  does  Lord 
Bathurst  ever  interfere  in  the  appointment  of  a  member  of  council  with- 
out the  recommendation  of  the  Lieutenant  Governor.  Now  if  you  are  of 
opinion  that  an  objection  would  exist  to  this  appointment,  you  may 
easily,  if  Mr.  Gait  introduces  the  subject  to  you,  point  out  some  prac- 
tical inconvenience,  either  with  relation  to  former  promises  or  other 
claims,  etc.,  which  would  prevent  your  recommending  it.  If  on  the  other 
hand  you  have  reason  to  anticipate  no  inconvenience,  Lord  Bathurst,  on 
receiving  your  recommendation,  would,  I  have  no  doubt,  be  disposed  to 
confirm  the  appointment." 


60  JOHN  GALT 

near  New  York  called  Long  Island,  which  you  will  know 
where  to  find  by  your  geography,  and  read  of  in  the  history  of 
the  American  War.  .  .  .  We  there  hired  a  waggon  to 
New  York.  The  waggons  in  America  are  very  light  and  hand- 
some, and  though  not  on  springs  are  nearly  as  comfortable 
as  carriages.  In  this  waggon  we  were  taken  to  a  ferry  which 
we  crossed  and  were  safe  in  New  York  in  time  for  dinner,  at 
which  among  other  good  things  we  got  oysters  as  big  as  a 
child's  hand  and  far  better  than  anything  of  the  kind  I  had 
ever  tasted.  New  York  is  a  very  fine  city  about  as  large  as 
Glasgow.  The  buildings  being  of  brick  are  not  so  fine  as  those 
of  Glasgow  or  Edinburgh  in  appearance,  but  it  has  one  great 
edifice,  the  town  hall,  which  is  grander  than  anything  either 
in  Glasgow  or  Edinburgh." 

On  his  voyage  up  the  Hudson  Gait  fell  in  with  a  son  of 
Alexander  Hamilton  who  persuaded  him  to  stay  a  few  days  at 
Albany.1  Here  he  met  Governor  Clinton  and  his  wife.  Of  the 
lady  he  thought  highly  both  because  of  her  resemblance  to  his 
mother  and  because  of  her  admiration  for  the  Annals  of  the 
Parish.  On  his  way  from  Albany  to  Upper  Canada  Gait 
gathered  information  about  the  development  of  the  country 
and  the  value  of  land.  He  rather  prided  himself  on  failing  to 
see  Niagara  Falls.  His  servant  reported  there  was  nothing 
but  a  great  tumbling  of  waters,  and  Gait  was  content  with  a 
chance  view  a  mile  or  two  below  the  cataract.  "Weak  imagin- 
ations easily  cajoled  by  such  things"  is  the  complacent  note  in 
his  journal.2 

1  After  leaving  the  boat  the  commissioners  journeyed  to  Albany  by 
carriage  over  roads  on  which  the  vehicles  often  sank  axle-deep  in  mud. 
On  the  way  Gait  had  his  first  sight  of  snake-fences.  "Instead  of  walls 
and  hedges,"  he  writes  to  his  sons,  "the  fields  divided  by  zig  zag  layers 
of  rough  split  timber  which  has  a  very  bad  effect."  Mr.  Hamilton,  Gait's 
host  at  Albany,  came  of  an  Ayrshire  family  who  lived  at  Grange  near 
Irvine.  Gait  had  been  at  school  with  two  of  the  family. 

2Galt  kept  a  journal  during  his  first  and  second  visits  to  Canada 
which  supplements  in  some  points  the  narrative  in  the  Autobiography. 
It  is,  however,  very  scrappy  and  the  handwriting  is  at  times  illegible. 
It  is  amusing  to  compare  with  this  verdict  on  the  Falls  a  story  Gait 
wrote  for  Eraser's  Mag.  (Aug.,  1831),  The  Early  Missionaries,  or  The 
Discovery  of  the  Falls  of  Niagara,  in  which  he  describes  them  as  "the 
most  impressive  spectacle  of  the  kind  to  be  seen  on  the  whole  earth." 
In  Bogle  Corbet  (III.,  217  f.)  there  is  a  discussion  of  the  merits  and 
shortcomings  of  the  scene. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  61 

He  had  already  begun  to  suffer  from  the  ill-health  which 
tormented  him  during  the  whole  of  his  first  visit  to  Canada. 
"Felt  myself  here  very  tired  and  full  of  aches — an  all-overish- 
ness," he  writes  in  his  journal  at  Youngstown  on  the  Niagara 
River.1  On  March  11  he  embarked  at  Fort  George2  in  the 
schooner  Industry  for  York.  We  "had  a  terrible  passage,  a 
snow  storm  came  on  and  the  master  was  so  drunk  that,  had  it 
not  been  for  an  English  sailor  on  board  by  chance,  we  must  all 
have  perished.  I  was  twenty-four  hours  without  food  and  all 
the  time  in  very  great  danger  and  very  sea-sick.  The  poor 
sailor  stood  at  the  helm  till  he  fell  from  it  and  was  several 
hours  before  he  recovered.  But,  thank  God,  we  got  all  at  last 
safe  on  shore."  At  the  Steamboat  Hotel,  a  raw  frame  build- 
ing fronting  the  harbour,  he  breakfasted  and  listened  to  the 
sounds  of  an  Irish  wake  which  was  in  full  progress.3 

"The  general  appearance  of  the  town  was  such  as  I  had  ex- 
pected," writes  Gait  in  his  journal,  "but  the  place  less  consid- 
erable by  at  least  a  half  than  I  was  prepared  to  see."  The 
capital  of  Upper  Canada  and  the  centre  of  the  political  and 
social  life  of  the  province,  York  was  nevertheless  sufficiently 
unimpressive  in  1825,  with  a  population  of  about  two  thou- 
sand, a  low,  marshy  site  and  little  commercial  activity.  Gait 
conceived  an  early  and  enduring  dislike  for  the  little  place 
which  he  called  "one  of  the  vilest  blue-devil  haunts  on  the  face 
of  the  earth."4 

*At  Youngstown  he  chanced  upon  a  crude  universal  history  which 
described,  among  other  things,  the  early  struggles  between  Indians  and 
emigrants.  In  Eraser's  Mag.  (Oct.,  1830)  he  mentions  this  incident  and 
relates  a  tale,  Cherockee,  A  Tradition  of  the  Backwoods,  to  illustrate 
the  contents  of  the  volume. 

2The  historical  associations  of  Fort  George  are  used  for  a  tale  by 
Gait  in  Eraser's  Mag.  (Feb.,  1830). 

3The  hotel  stood  on  Front  Street,  and  on  the  beach  below  was  a  fish 
market.  "The  Steamboat  Hotel,  long  known  as  Ulick  Howard's,  remark- 
able for  the  spirited  delineation  of  a  steam-packet  of  vast  dimensions, 
extending  the  whole  length  of  the  building,  just  over  the  upper  veran- 
dah of  the  hotel."  Dr.  Scadding's  Toronto  of  Old  (1878),  p.  50.  A 
scene  in  Bogle  Corbet  is  laid  in  the  hotel  (vol.  3,  chap.  2). 

*Autobiog.,  L,  334.  T.  A.  Talbot  in  his  Five  Years'  Residence  in  the 
Canadas  (1824)  thus  describes  the  town:  "The  streets  of  York  are  regu- 
larly laid  out,  intersecting  each  other  at  right  angles.  Only  one  of  them, 
however,  is  yet  completely  built;  and  in  wet  weather  the  unfinished 


62  JOHN  GALT 

The  commissioners  began  work  on  March  16.  Colonel 
Cockburn  and  Sir  John  Harvey  had  reached  York  before  Gait ; 
McGillivray  and  Davidson  soon  followed.  Lord  Bathurst  had 
given  them  written  instructions  ,and  on  reaching  Upper  Can- 
ada they  received  from  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland  their  commis- 
sion under  the  great  seal  of  the  province.  The  sales  of  un- 
cleared land  for  ready  money  in  the  five  years  preceding 
March  1,  1824,  were  to  be  their  chief  criterion  in  fixing  prices. 
They  were  to  settle  an  average  value  for  each  district.  To 
enable  them  to  gather  information  they  were  given  power  to 
summon  all  officers,  civil  and  military,  within  the  province. 
They  were  to  hold  meetings  at  least  every  two  weeks,  to  draw 
up  their  report  before  leaving  Canada  and  to  state  in  it  which 
lands  in  each  township  were  to  be  sold  to  the  company. 

For  about  a  month  and  a  half  the  commissioners  carried 
on  their  investigation,  examining  charts  and  interviewing 
members  of  the  Provincial  Legislature  and  others.  Their  re- 
port, signed  at  York  on  May  2,  Gait's  birthday,  found  that  the 
company  was  entitled  to  1,384,013  acres  of  Crown  Reserves 
and  829,430  acres  of  Clergy  Reserves.  It  was  also  the  unani- 
mous opinion  of  the  commissioners  that  3s.  6d.  currency  per 
acre  was  a  fair  price. 

Gait's  duties  as  a  commissioner  did  not  take  all  his  time. 
His  advocacy  of  the  war  losses  in  England  had  made  his  name 
well  known  in  the  province,  and  the  chief  personages  of  the 
little  capital  from  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland  down  bestirred 
themselves  to  entertain  the  visitors.  Gait's  journal  records 
various  small  incidents,  such  as  the  arrival  on  April  5  of  Sir 
John  Franklin  and  his  officers  on  their  way  to  the  far  north- 
west. During  an  expedition  to  Scarborough  a  few  miles  east 
of  York  he  met  David  Thomson,  the  pioneer  settler  of  the 
district,  whose  descendants  are  still  to  be  found  in  the  same 
neighbourhood.  On  April  23,  the  King's  birthday,  there  was 

streets  are,  if  possible,  muddier  and  dirtier  than  those  of  Kingston.  The 
situation  of  the  town  is  very  unhealthy,  for  it  stands  on  a  piece  of  low 
marshy  land,  which  is  better  calculated  for  a  frog-pond  or  beaver- 
beadow  than  for  the  residence  of  human  beings."  On  April  5  Gait 
enters  in  his  journal:  "Yesterday  the  frogs  were  heard." 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  63 

a  muster  of  militia,  and  in  the  afternoon  Gait  set  out  for  New- 
market, some  thirty  miles  to  the  north,  a  trip  which  made  a 
pleasant  break  in  the  routine  at  York. 

One  incident,  trifling  in  itself,  was  the  forerunner  of  his 
later  political  difficulties  in  the  province.  Party  spirit  ran 
high  in  Upper  Canada.  The  United  Empire  Loyalists  who  had 
settled  the  province  had  brought  with  them  from  the  United 
States  an  intense  loyalty  to  Great  Britain,  but  also  strong 
traditions  of  self-government.  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland,  with 
the  instincts  of  an  aristocrat  and  the  training  of  a  British 
officer,  was  opposed  to  the  growing  spirit  of  democracy,  and 
his  advisers  were  drawn  from  a  group  of  able  and  patriotic 
men  such  as  Beverley  Robinson  and  Dr.  Strachan  who  shared 
his  feelings.  The  antagonism  between  the  popular  party  and 
the  government,  which  in  a  few  years  was  to  end  in  armed 
rebellion,  was  in  1825  growing  very  acute.  The  men  who  were 
afterwards  to  be  reform  leaders  were  coming  to  the  front; 
among  others,  M.  S.  Bidwell,  Dr.  Rolph,  and  William  Lyon 
Mackenzie.  There  were  obvious  reasons  why  Gait  should  ally 
himself  more  or  less  closely  with  the  government  party.  His 
own  political  convictions  leaned  to  the  Tory  side,  and  he  and 
his  fellow-commissioners  had  everything  to  gain  by  working 
in  harmony  with  Maitland.  Indeed,  the  formation  of  the  Can- 
ada Company  would  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  official  party 
by  providing  large  revenues  free  from  the  control  of  the  Leg- 
islative Assembly. 

Probably  Gait  had  no  intention  of  joining  either  party,  but 
his  habitual  impulsiveness  and  a  slightly  contemptuous  atti- 
tude towards  these  provincial  disputes,  which  he  looked  upon 
as  "borough  squabbles,  at  most  as  a  puddle  in  a  storm,"  led 
him  into  difficulties.  Among  other  courtesies  shown  to  him 
was  the  gift  of  a  complete  file  of  the  Colonial  Advocate,  the 
anti-government  paper  founded  by  Mackenzie  in  1824.  He 
acknowledged  the  present  in  a  letter  (March  28,  1825),  which 
was  to  have  unfortunate  consequences. 

"I  am  very  flattered  by  your  attention"  wrote  Gait,  "and 
it  gives  me  unaffected  pleasure  to  receive  the  numbers  you 


' 


64  JOHN  GALT 

have  taken  the  trouble  to  preserve  and  send  me  of  your 
spirited  paper.  I  do  undoubtedly  dissent  from  some  of  your 
sentiments,  but  I  can  appreciate  the  talent  with  which  they 
are  supported.  ...  I  have  been  too  short  in  this  country 
to  form  any  opinions  of  its  political  temperament,  and  I  have 
besides  been  the  greatest  part  of  the  time  confined  to  my  room 
by  indisposition.  .  .  .  Probably  in  colonies  and  places  re- 
mote from  the  Supreme  Government,  persons  are  apt  to  con- 
sfder  themselves  as  parts  of  that  great  abstraction,  Govern- 
ment, and  to  mistake  attacks  upon  their  own  conduct  as  fac- 
tious and  seditious  movements.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
motions  and  machinery  of  government  being  in  a  much  smaller 
compass,  are  seen  more  in  detail  than  at  home,  and  the  work- 
ings of  personal  feeling  are  apt  in  consequence  to  excite  the 
more  invidiousness.  To  this  I  would  partly  ascribe  the  tone 
of  your  letter  to  Mr.  Robinson,  which  displays  very  superior 
powers  indeed  of  sarcasm,  but  it  must  occur  to  yourself  that 
the  value  of  it  would  not  have  been  lessened  had  some  of  the 
points  been  sheathed  in  softer  language.  But  I  ought  to  ask 
for  pardon  for  this  criticism  when  I  should  be  thanking  you 
for  a  flattering  favour.  You  can  have  no  better  task  than  the 
upholding  the  frank,  courageous  spirit  of  independence  among 
a  remote  people.  It  is  that  which  has  made  the  great  Island 
of  our  birth  what  she  is,  and  when  we  compare  her  small 
natural  bounds  and  resources  with  the  vastness  of  her  moral 
and  political  dominion,  we  may  rest  assured  that  with  all  the 
faults  of  her  public  men,  her  government  has  been  one  of  the 
greatest  practical  wisdom  that  has  yet  withstood  the  test  of 
time  and  the  prostrations  of  revolution  and  of  war."1 

*Can.  Arch.  Q.  346-1.  On  May  1  he  wrote  to  Mackenzie  again 
entering  the  Canada  Company  as  a  regular  subscriber  for  the  Colonial 
Advocate,  and  asking  for  the  paper  to  be  sent  to  London.  The  reason 
for  his  choice  was  that  Mackenzie's  paper  contained  "more  advertise- 
ments for  the  sale  of  land  than  any  other  paper  in  the  province" 
(Autobiog.,  I.,  321).  On  March  30  Gait  notes  in  his  journal:  "Colonial 
Advocate — spirited  journal  on  the  popular  side,  conducted  by  a  Scotch- 
man, W.  McK^nzie — the  feelings  of  a  Highlander  and  the  industry  of  a 
Lowlander — a  great  deal  of  valuable  information  and  personal  observa- 
tion may  be  collected  from  this  journal.  The  plan  of  it  in  this  respect 
I  consider  original  and  highly  deserving  of  encouragement." 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  65 

For  the  moment,  however,  nothing  came  of  the  matter,  and 
the  commissioners  separated  after  a  friendly  farewell  dinner. 
Cockburn,  Gait  and  Davidson  sailed  from  New  York  on  the 
American  packet  Cortes,  reaching  Liverpool  on  June  5  after 
four  weeks  at  sea.  Their  report  was  at  once  sent  to  the  Colon- 
ial Office,  and  Gait's  thoughts  turned  to  his  family  in  Scot- 
land. 

He  was  not  to  escape  so  soon,  and  months  of  discussion  and 
dispute  lay  ahead.  There  were  two  causes  of  delay.  In  the  first 
place,  the  Colonial  Office  found  the  report  in  many  ways  un- 
satisfactory, and  though  the  company  was  given  legal  recog- 
nition, its  charter  was  for  the  present  withheld.1  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  the  Church  of  England  clergy  in  Upper  Canada  pro- 
tested against  the  granting  of  the  Clergy  Reserves. 

After  some  preliminary  discussion  between  the  Colonial 
Office  and  the  company  Sir  Giffin  Wilson  was  appointed  to  pass 
judgment  on  the  report.2  Gait  found  the  months  of  waiting 
exceedingly  irksome,  for  if  the  company  should  come  to  noth- 
ing many  whom  he  had  interested  in  the  scheme  would  lose 
money.  The  shareholders  grew  daily  more  impatient,  and  he 
had  no  satisfactory  explanation  for  them.  "I  really  cannot 
afford,"  he  wrote  to  Horton  on  October  3,  "any  longer  to  give 
my  time  to  the  further  prosecution  of  a  business  of  so  little 
advantage."  A  few  days  later  he  was  in  Dover  with  Cockburn 
and  Davidson,  an  anxious  trio. 

His  state  of  absent-minded  brooding  led  him  into  a  ridicu- 
lous difficulty.  While  on  the  quay  one  day  he  walked  aboard 
the  packet,  merely  intending  to  cross  the  channel  and  return. 
Once  at  Calais,  he  seems  to  have  forgotten  his  plan  and 
found  himself  at  an  hotel  with  only  a  few  shillings  in  his 
pocket.  These  were  spent  on  a  drive  to  Dunkirk,  and  he 
escaped  from  the  Calais  hotel  by  the  original  method  of  bor- 
rowing from  the  proprietor. 

About  this  time  Gait  employed  some  of  his  enforced  idle- 
ness in  writing  The  Omen  (1826),  the  autobiography  of  a 

iJune  27,  1825,  6  Geo.  iv.  c.  75.  An  amending  Act  was  passed  in 
1828 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  361-1-2. 


66  JOHN  QALT 

youth  who  grows  up  ignorant  of  his  rank  and  parentage. 
Learning  later  that  his  father  had  been  killed  by  his  mother's 
lover,  he  goes  abroad  and  there  unwittingly  falls  in  love  with 
his  sister.  He  is  on  the  point  of  marrying  her  when  his  guilty 
mother  reveals  the  secret. 

The  day  was  fix'd ;  for  so  the  lover  sigh'd, 

So  knelt  and  craved,  he  couldn't  be  denied ; 

When,  tale  most  dreadful !  every  hope  adieu, — 

For  the  fond  lover  is  the  brother  too.1 
The  rest  of  the  hero's  life  is  made  up  of  aimless  wander- 
ings and  moody  meditations.  The  book  was  reviewed  in  Black- 
wood's  (July,  1826),  by  Scott,  who  praised  the  "beauty  of  its 
language"  and  the  "truth  of  the  descriptions."  The  critic  in 
the  Scots  Magazine  (April,  1826)  was  inclined  to  be  satirical 
about  this  "history  of  a  young  man  who  is  eternally  pestered 
and  reduced  to  a  state  of  mind  bordering  on  phrenzy,  by  super- 
natural intimations  of  impending  horrors  in  his  fate,  he  knows 
not  why  or  wherefore."  The  little  volume  appeared  anony- 
mously and  was  ascribed  to  various  people.  Scott  thought  it 
was  Lockhart's,  and  indeed  it  resembles  Matthew  Wald  (1824) 
in  its  autobiographical  form,  and  its  wild  ill-constructed  plot.2 
If  Scott  had  known  the  author  we  should  probably  have  had 
from  him  some  introductory  remarks  on  the  Annals.  Like 
The  Majolo,  the  story  shows  Gait's  inability  to  write  a  tale  of 
mystery  and  suspense. 

On  October  7  Sir  Giffin  Wilson  presented  his  report  to  Hor- 
ton,  and  a  month  later  it  was  in  the  hands  of  the  commission- 

iCrabbe,  The  Borough,  Letter  xx. 

2Scott's  Journal  (Feb.  23,  1826).  "Read  a  little  volume  called  The 
Omen — very  well  written — deep  and  powerful  language.  Aut  Erasmus 
aut  Diaibolus,  it  is  Lockhart  or  I  am  strangely  deceived.  It  is  passed  for 
Wilson's  though,  but  Wilson  has  more  of  the  falsetto  of  assumed  sen- 
timent, less  of  the  depth  of  gloomy  and  powerful  feeling."  According 
to  Moir  the  book  was  also  ascribed  to  Maginn,  Hamilton  and  Barry  St. 
Leger.  Gait  was  gratified  by  the  discussion  and  says  the  secret  was 
never  discovered.  In  The  Last  of  the  Lairds  (c.  xxi.)  he  refers  to 
"that  mysterious  little  work,  The  Omen,  in  which  the  cabalistic  senti- 
mentality of  our  Northern  neighbours  has  been  so  prominently  brought 
out."  The  book  was  also  noticed  in  the  Monthly  Review  (March,  1826) 
which  suspected  the  author  to  be  a  Scot. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  67 

ers.  Wilson  found  that  they  had  examined  too  little  evidence, 
that  they  had  made  improper  inferences  from  the  evidence  be- 
'fore  them,  and  that  the  record  kept  of  their  proceedings  was 
not  in  accord  with  their  instructions.  In  reply  to  a  protest 
from  Gait,  Cockburn  and  Davidson,  Horton  pointed  out  that 
no  slur  was  cast  on  their  character,  nor  was  the  price  fixed 
necessarily  an  unfair  one.  But  they  had  merely  given  an 
average  price  for  the  whole  province  instead  of  an  average 
price  for  each  district,  and  had  in  other  important  points 
failed  to  observe  Lord  Bathurst's  instructions.1 

In  the  meantime  the  clergy  had  been  active  in  bringing 
pressure  to  bear  on  the  Colonial  Office,  even  before  the  com- 
missioners had  left  England.-  In  May,  1824,  Strachan  had 
suggested  that  authority  to  sell  be  granted  to  the  corporation 
for  managing  the  Clergy  Reserves,  of  which  he  was  chairman, 
rather  than  to  the  proposed  Canada  Company.  While  the 
commissioners  were  at  York  the  Clergy  Corporation  drew  up 
a  petition  to  the  Colonial  Office  pointing  out  various  ill  effects 
of  the  proposed  grant  and  praying  that  the  Reserves  "may  be 
withdrawn  from  the  purchase  contemplated  by  the  Canada 
Company,  and  that  no  sale  be  made  of  such  Reserves  except 
by  this  Corporation  with  the  concurrence  of  the  Govern- 
ment."3 

!Can.  Arch.  Q.  361-2,  Horton  to  Cockburn  (Nov.  7,  1825)  and  Cock- 
burn,  Gait  and  Davidson  to  Horton  (Nov.  10).  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
later  correspondence  on  the  matter.  It  was  more  than  a  business  affair 
to  Gait,  who  declares  to  Horton  (Dec.  17)  that  he  will  not  "permit  any 
one  whatever  while  there  is  the  king  and  council  to  appeal  to,  and  also 
Parliament,  to  exercise  an  irresponsible  discretion  ruinous  to  me  as  an 
individual ;  nor  is  it  to  be  endured  that  the  proceedings  instituted  against 
the  Commissioners  may  be  closed  on  the  plea  of  official  inconvenience." 
He  implies  that  only  evidence  unfavourable  to  the  commissioners  has 
been  taken,  and  ends  by  apologizing  for  any  unbecoming  phrases.  "I 
have  been  obliged  to  dictate  under  great  bodily  anguish."  Horton, 
amazed  at  his  outburst,  denies  his  implication.  On  April  20,  1826,  the 
commissioners  presented  Bathurst  with  a  long  defence  (Q.  368-1-2). 

^Can.  Arch.  Q.  337-2,  Strachan  to  Horton  (May  15,  1824).  After 
returning  to  York  Strachan  wrote  to  Maitland  (Can.  Arch.  Q.  338-1, 
Jan.  7,  1825)  pointing  out  that  the  Canada  Company  will  take  the  good 
land  in  the  Clergy  Reserves  and  leave  the  worthless.  He  suggests  that 
the  clergy  be  represented  on  the  commission  for  valuing  the  lands. 

sCan.  Arch.  Q.  338-1,  March  24,  1825.  On  May  16,  1825,  MaitLand 
sends  Bathurst  a  copy  of  the  agreement  with  the  Indians. 


68 


JOHN  GALT 


A  month  later  a  definite  alternative  was  proposed.  Mait- 
land  arranged  to  purchase  from  the  Chippawa  Indians  about 
2,800,000  acres  on  the  south-east  shores  of  Lake  Huron,  and 
suggested  to  Bathurst  that  this  tract  should  be  offered  to  the 
company  in  place  of  both  Crown  and  Clergy  Reserves.  He 
emphasized  the  advantages  for  both  province  and  company  of 
the  new  plan.  A  continuous  tract  would  be  easier  and  cheaper 
to  manage;  settlers  could  be  given  uninterrupted  blocks;  the 
opening  of  the  land  would  be  of  great  benefit  to  the  province, 
and  the  payment  by  the  company  of  even  a  very  moderate 
price  would  relieve  the  British  Government  from  the  charge 
of  the  civil  list  of  Upper  Canada. 

Maitland's  dispatch  was  given  to  Beverley  Robinson,  the 
attorney-general  of  Upper  Canada,  who  was  bound  for  Eng- 
land on  other  business.  He  interviewed  the  Colonial  Office  on 
behalf  of  the  clergy,  and  in  the  ensuing  negotiations  was  in 
close  touch  with  Horton  and  Sir  Giffin  Wilson.  Archdeacon 
Mountain  was  also  sent  to  London  to  uphold  the  petition 
against  the  intended  sale  of  the  Reserves. 

While  matters  thus  dragged  on,  Gait  was  summoned  to 
Scotland  in  December,  1825,  to  his  mother's  bedside.  A  severe 
stroke  of  paralysis  had  affected  both  mind  and  body.  She  was 
able,  however,  to  recognize  her  son,  "and  in  the  effort  to  ex- 
press her  gladness  became  awake,  as  it  were,  to  her  own 
situation,  and  wept  bitterly,  attempting  with  ineffectual  bab- 
ble to  explain  what  she  felt."1  She  lingered  for  several  months 
and  did  not  die  till  July  18,  1826.  Gait's  affection  for  his 
mother  was  deep  and  enduring,  and  the  wrench  of  her  death 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  greatly  lessened  by  his  mother's 
advanced  age.  In  one  of  his  last  poems,  Irvine  Water,  he 
tenderly  recalls  his  early  memories : 

i-Autobiog.,  I.,  344-5.  His  mother  was  born  in  1746.  In  a  note  to 
Horton  (Dec.  2,  1825)  Gait  apparently  refers  to  his  mother's  illness: 
"A  domestic  affliction  and  severe  indisposition  renders  it  doubtful  when 
I  may  be  again  in  London."  He  was  there,  however,  by  December  17. 
It  is  hard  to  date  his  trip  to  Irvine  with  his  mother  and  sister.  (Autobiog., 
II.,  231-2).  Probably  it  occurred  during  a  short  visit  to  Scotland  previ- 
ous to  December,  1825. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  69 

Well  I  remember  all  the  golden  prime, 

When  sleep  and  joy  were  night  and  day  in  time, 

That  to  be  drowsy  on  my  mother's  knee 

Was  almost  sweeter  than  blest  liberty. 
He  returned  to  London  about  the  middle  of  December  in 
poor  health  to  face  the  weariness  of  official  discussion  and 
delay  and  the  loneliness  of  his  lodgings  in  the  offices  of  the 
Canada  Company.1 

A  proposal  made  by  the  company  in  February,  1826,  to 
appoint  new  referees  was  agreed  to  by  Lord  Bathurst,  who, 
however,  reserved  the  right  to  submit  their  decision  to  the 
Privy  Council.  A  settlement  seemed  as  far  off  as  ever,  and 
it  was  no  wonder  that  Gait  declared  to  Horton :  "In  point  of 
fact,  the  establishing  of  the  Canada  Company  undertaken  in 
consequence  of  your  letter  of  the  6th  of  February,  1824,  has 
been  the  most  vexatious,  the  most  profitless,  and  the  most 
laborious  business  I  ever  engaged  in."  No  profits  will  make 
up  for  "the  domestic  privations  which  I  have  been  obliged  to 
endure,  the  reproaches  I  daily  suffer,  and  the  positive  loss  I 
must  inevitably  encounter."2 

A  short  cut  to  agreement  was  at  last  found  in  May,  1826. 
Strachan,  once  more  in  England  and  fully  authorized  to  nego- 
tiate on  behalf  of  the  clergy,  was  accepted  by  Bathurst  as  a 
referee  to  meet  Gait,  "with  the  understanding  that  if  those 
parties  can  come  to  an  uniform  decision  on  the  subject,  his 
Lordship  will  not  only  not  feel  it  his  duty  any  longer  to  impede 
the  granting  of  a  charter,  but  will  be  happy  to  expedite  such 
grant  by  any  recommendation  in  his  power."3 

Gait  and  Strachan  had  soon  reduced  their  differences  of 
opinion  to  one  point.  In  place  of  the  Clergy  Reserves  Strachan 
offered  the  same  number  of  acres  in  the  Huron  Tract  and  one 

iWriting  to  Cockburn  (March  27,  1826),  Gait  complains  of  the  ex- 
pense caused  by  his  detention  in  London;  and  admits  the  expense  has 
been  lessened  by  "the  advantage  I  have  had  of  occupying  for  myself 
and  servant  apartments  belonging  to  the  Canada  Company,"  that  is, 
Canada  House,  13  St.  Helen's  Place.  The  company  seems  to  have  paid 
his  claim  (£125)  and  a  later  claim  (£40). 

'Can.  Arch.  Q.  368-1,  Gait  to  Horton  (Feb.  16,  1826). 

3Can.  Arch.  Q.  369,  Horton  to  Bosanquet   (May,  1826). 


70  JOHN  GALT 

hundred  thousand  acres  over  and  above.  Gait  held  out  for  a 
million  acres.  "In  his  view,"  wrote  Gait  to  Horton,  "I  cannot 
concur,  and  neither  my  conviction  of  the  justness  of  my  own 
nor  the  circumstances  which  press  for  decision  will  permit 
me  to  go  farther."  Strachan's  tone  was  less  determined :  "On 
the  whole  ...  I  do  not  despair  of  coming  to  a  final  ad- 
justment."1 The  adjustment  was  reached  by  Strachan  and 
Bathurst  yielding.2 

At  a  meeting  held  at  the  Colonial  Office  on  May  23  the 
following  arrangements  were  made  between  the  government 
and  the  company.  In  lieu  of  the  Clergy  Reserves,  which  at 
the  price  fixed  by  the  commissioners  would  have  cost  £145,150 
5s.,  the  company  was  to  receive  a  million  acres  in  the  Huron 
Tract  for  the  same  sum.  A  third  of  the  purchase  price  was  to 
be  spent  by  the  company  in  certain  approved  public  works 
and  improvements  in  the  Tract;  the  remainder  to  be  paid  to 
the  British  government.  The  million  acres  were  to  be  sur- 
veyed at  the  expense  of  government.  The  company  was  to 
be  allowed  sixteen  years  beginning  July  1,  1826,  for  fulfilling 
their  contract,  the  purchase  money  to  be  paid  in  annual  in- 
stalments ranging  from  £15,000  to  £20,000.  In  the  year  end- 
ing July  1,  1843,  the  company  was  either  to  take  up  all  lands 
remaining  or  abandon  its  claim  to  such  lands.  Lord  Bath- 
urst was  to  take  immediate  steps  to  complete  the  charter.3 
This  arrangement  did  not  interfere  with  the  original  agree- 
ment concerning  the  Crown  Reserves,  of  which  the  company 
was  to  purchase  1,384,413  acres  at  3s.  6d.  per  acre.  The  com- 
pany was  organized  with  a  capital  of  £1,000,000. 

Gait's  own  plans  were  for  a  time  uncertain.  On  June  16 
he  writes  to  his  wife:  "I  hope  it  will  soon  be  determined 
whether  I  am  to  go  to  Canada  or  remain  entirely  here.  I  shall 
not  lose  a  post  in  giving  you  the  necessary  information."  In 

*Gan.  Arch.  Q.  369,  Gait  to  Horton  (May  13,  1826)  and  Strachan 
to  Horton  (May  13,  1826). 

2Gan.  Arch.  Q.  369,  Strachan  to  Bathurst  (May  22,  1826),  recom- 
mending that  a  million  acres  be  granted. 

3Can.  Arch.  Q.  368-1.  The  million  acres  were  subsequently  increased 
by  100,000  acres  in  compensation  for  districts  rendered  unfit  for  culti- 
vation by  swamps,  lakes,  or  sandhills. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  71 

a  letter  to  his  boys  of  the  same  date  he  says :  "I  expect  a  letter 
from  you  every  Sunday,  that  is,  you  are  to  write  me  on  Sun- 
day, whether  Mamma  has  occasion  to  write  or  not,  and  you 
are  also  to  send  with  your  next  letters  a  leaf  out  of  each  one's 
copy  that  I  may  see  how  you  come  on  at  school.  You  will  also 
let  me  know  in  what  books  you  are  reading  and  all  about  your 
education. 

"I  do  not  know  when  I  shall  be  in  Scotland.  I  think  you 
will  probably  all  come  here  very  soon,  but  when  I  cannot  tell." 
A  month  later  his  sons  were  with  him  in  London,  apparently 
unaccompanied  by  their  mother. 

A  royal  charter  incorporating  the  company  was  finally 
granted  on  August  19,  1826.  A  few  days  afterwards  it  was 
settled  that  Gait  should  go  to  Canada  as  soon  as  possible  to 
select  the  part  of  the  Huron  Tract  substituted  for  the  Clergy 
Reserves. 

During  his  final  months  in  England  Gait  wrote  The  Last  of 
the  Lairds  (1826).  A  letter  to  Moir  (Jan.  23,  1826)  shows 
that  the  book  was  then  under  way.  "I  am  still  very  much 
harassed  with  the  Canadian  concerns.  They  are  as  yet  un- 
determined ;  but  I  have  been  doing  a  little  to  the  'Laird/  antl 
hope  to  be  able  to  send  a  quantity  of  it  by  the  next  monthly 
parcel."1  The  shaping  of  the  book  seems  to  have  given  him 
great  trouble.  It  was  begun  as  an  autobiography  and  then 
changed  on  Blackwood's  advice,  as  Sir  Andrew  Wylie  had 
been,  to  a  regular  narrative.  "I  have  been  in  a  state  of  the 
greatest  excitement  and  irritation,"  he  writes  to  Blackwood  on 
March  2,  "by  the  pressure  of  various  public  and  private 
affairs.  On  Thursday  last,  before  sending  you,  as  I  had  in- 
tended, a  portion  of  the  'Laird,'  I  read  a  part  of  it  to  a  liter- 
ary friend,  and  the  effect  on  him  made  me  throw  the  whole  of 
it  into  the  fire.  This  is  the  second  time  I  have  done  so."2  A 
few  days  later  he  sends  two  chapters  to  Edinburgh  "after 
more  cogitation  than  I  ever  bestowed  on  any  subject."  He 

^Memoir,  p.  xxxix. 

2Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.  I.,  456-7.  On  March  27  Gait  wrote  to  Hor- 
ton  asking  him  "to  frank  the  portions  of  a  novel  printing  in  Edinburgh". 


72  JOHN  GALT 

was  confident,  however,  that  his  story  would  be  at  least  as 
graphic  as  anything  he  had  previously  done.  Blackwood  con- 
tinued to  feel  uneasy  and  his  criticisms  finally  roused  Gait. 
"You  will  excuse  me  for  remarking  that  I  have  been  some- 
what surprised  at  your  letter.  I  know  that  it  hath  proceeded 
from  your  anxiety  and  friendship.  The  plan  of  the  'Laird' 
was  finished  before  the  writing  was  commenced.  The  object 
and  purpose  of  the  plan  were  to  exhibit  the  actual  manners 
which  about  twenty-five  years  ago  did  belong  to  a  class  of 
persons  and  their  compeers  in  Scotland — the  west  of  it — 
who  are  now  extinct.  The  Laird  himself  is  but  one  of  the 
group.  ...  In  one  word,  my  good  friend,  I  should  have 
thought  by  this  time  that  you  must  have  known  that  nobody 
can  help  an  author  with  the  conception  of  a  character  nor  in 
the  evolutions  of  a  story.  .  .  .  The  defects  of  the  Annals 
of  the  Parish  were  not  mine,  though  some  of  the  omissions  I 
acknowledge  were  judicious.  Sir  Andrew  Wylie,  the  most 
original  of  all  I  have  ever  done,  was  spoiled  by  your  interfer- 
ence, and  the  main  faults  of  the  Entail  were  also  owing  to  my 
being  over-persuaded.  In  one  word,  I  would  much  rather 
throw  the  whole  work  a  third  time  into  the  fire  than  begin 
to  cobble  any  part  of  it  on  the  suggestions  of  others.  I  do  not 
know  how  it  is,  but  I  cannot  proceed  if  I  am  interfered  with. 
I  know  it  is  very  silly  to  be  so  chary,  but  I  cannot  help  it.  It 
does  not  come  of  arrogance,  but  of  confidence  in  myself.  .  .  . 
Now  don't  be  offended  with  my  freedom."1 

Moir  acted  as  peacemaker  between  author  and  publisher. 
To  him  Gait,  on  sailing  for  Canada,  entrusted  the  task  of  put- 
ting the  final  touches  to  the  story.  The  result  of  all  this  dis- 
cussion and  revision  is  disappointing.  The  Laird  himself, 
modelled  on  the  Laird  of  Smithstown  whom  Gait  had  visited 
with  his  grandmother,  is  well  contrived  and  recalls  Scott's 
Dumbiedykes.  But  the  vulgar  nabob  and  the  heartless  Mrs. 
Soorocks  weary  us  by  their  profuseness,  while  the  clumsy 

*Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.  I.,  458-9. 


THE  CANADA  COMPANY  73 

loose-jointed  plot  is  merely  in  the  way.  The  best  parts  of  the 
book  are  the  quiet  descriptions  such  as  that  of  Auldbiggings.1 
"My  present  intention,"  Gait  writes  on  September  4,  "is 
to  leave  London  on  this  day  week  for  Scotland  and  to  sail 
either  from  the  Clyde  or  Liverpool  on  the  1st  October."2  On 
that  day,  however,  he  was  still  in  London.  "I  leave  town  on 
Wednesday  to  embark.  I  should  have  been  off  this  evening; 
but  I  have  business  to  transact  with  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  on  Tuesday,  on  which  day  he  comes  to  town,  so  that 
I  am  actually  running  the  risk  of  losing  my  passage."3  A  few 
days  later  he  was  at  sea. 


1The  book  was  unfavourably  noticed  in  the  Monthly  Review  (Jan., 
1827). 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  369,  Gait  to  Horton  (September  4,  1826).  Two  days 
later  he  sends  a  copy  of  his  instructions  to  Horton.  "Besides  these  in- 
structions it  is  intended  to  give  me  a  discretionary  power,  even  before 
completing  the  object  of  my  mission,  to  clear  a  number  of  lots  and  build 
houses  on  them  in  anticipation  of  settlers  arriving  in  the  spring."  Hor- 
ton in  reply  (;Sept.  10)  declines  to  accept  any  responsibility  for  the  in- 
structions, and  considers  them  rather  inadequate.  The  chief  of  them 
may  be  briefly  summarized.  Gait  was  to  find  out  the  best  method  of 
disposing  of  the  Crown  Reserves,  whether  by  public  or  private  sale  or 
both,  and  on  what  terms  the  sales  should  be  made.  He  was  to  obtain  as 
full  information  as  possible  about  the  Huron  Tract,  to  send  the  direc- 
tors a  description  of  the  section  he  would  recommend,  and  to  endeavour 
to  make  arrangements  with  the  provincial  government  for  the  laying 
out  of  the  million  acres.  He  was  to  study  the  methods  of  successful 
American  land  companies  and  to  set  down  the  results  of  his  enquiries 
in  a  journal,  a  copy  of  which  was  to  remain  in  Canada  for  the  use  of 
the  company's  officers;  the  original  to  go  to  London.  He  was  to  con- 
sider the  best  way  of  managing  the  company  in  Canada,  to  find  fit  per- 
sons for  its  servants,  and  to  report  progress  to  the  directors.  He  was 
at  liberty  to  call  in  assistance  "with  a  due  regard  to  economy,"  in  addi- 
tion to  aid  from  the  Warden  of  the  Forests  who  was  to  be  under  his 
orders.  "It  is  probable  .  .  .  that  my  mission  will  become  executive," 
Gait  writes  to  Horton  (Sept.  12)  "or  rather  be  changed  into  that  char- 
acter when  I  shall  have  obtained  knowledge  enough  of  details  to  state 
to  the  Directors  what  I  conceive  ought  to  be  done." 

3iLetter  to  Moir.    Memoir  p.  xli. 


74  JOHN  GALT 

\ 


CHAPTER  IV 

GALT  IN  CANADA,  1826-1829 

"I  did  not  feel  myself  entering  seriously  the  arena  of  life," 
says  Gait,  "till  I  undertook  my  second  mission  to  Canada." 
His  previous  ventures  now  seemed  "mere  skirmishing."  His 
anticipations,  however,  were  not  entirely  pleasant.  A  letter 
from  Strachan  headed,  "Private  and  most  confidential,"  which 
reached  him  a  few  days  before  sailing  roused  disquieting  re- 
flections. 
"MY  DEAR  SIR, — 

"I  enclose  three  letters,  one  for  Mrs.  Strachan,  one  for  the 
Attorney  General  and  one  for  Major  Hillier.  The  two  last 
will  place  you,  I  think,  on  the  best  possible  footing  with  these 
gentlemen,  and  I  wish  you  to  preserve  it,  so  that  I  may  be  as 
you  and  I  have  been  for  some  time.  You  must  bear  with  me 
a  little  in  pointing  out  the  way.  The  conduct  of  Colonel  Cock- 
burn  in  leaving  York  and  the  manner  in  which  he  sent  the  re- 
sults of  your  Commission  to  His  Excellency  Sir  Peregrine 
Maitland  could  not  be  very  pleasing.  Other  circumstances 
happened  then  and  have  since  happened  in  the  course  of  the 
negotiations  not  in  themselves  quite  agreeable,  from  all  which 
I  am  anxious  that  you  should  take,  on  going  out,  the  proper 
line. 

"This  I  feel  assured  you  are  disposed  to  take,  but  accus- 
tomed as  you  have  been  to  the  great  political  society  in  Eng- 
land, you  are  not  sensible  of  the  difference  in  a  colony.  In  the 
British  Parliament  opposition  is  general  not  personal.  In  a 
colony  such  as  ours  opposition  is  commonly  personal  and  bit- 
ter, though  in  the  end,  if  met  with  firmness,  altogether  nuga- 
tory. 

"Now  I  wish  you  to  lay  down  as  a  principle  never  to  be 
departed  from  that  It  is  the  interest  of  the  Canada  Company 
to  support  the  Colonial  authorities  and  never  to  take  a  side 
against  them.  Let  me  also  advise  you  never  to  meddle  in 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  75 

Colonial  politics,  for  one  side  or  other  you  must  by  so  doing 
offend,  and  so  great  and  complicated  are  your  interests  that 
the  determined  enmity  of  any  party  would  be  productive  of 
great  loss. 

"On  the  whole,  do  not  hesitate  a  moment  in  making  the 
Attorney  General  and  Major  Hillier  your  advisers  in  all  your 
plans,  and  confide  in  none  else. 

"Converse  with  the  Major  oftener  than  write,  and  when 
to  write  is  necessary  prepare  the  draft  with  him  before  it  is 
sent  in  officially. 

"Sir  Peregrine  is  extremely  nice  in  his  writing,  I  might 
almost  say  fastidious,  and  therefore  everything  ought  to  be 
well  weighed. 

"I  can  assure  you  the  more  confidence  you  put  in  those  two 
gentlemen  the  better  it  will  be  for  you,  and  the  more  satisfac- 
tion you  will  have  in  your  mission.  They  are  men  in  whose 
integrity  you  may  rely  upon  to  the  utmost  and  of  the  first 
talents. 

"I  am  sure  you  will  take  this  letter  in  good  part  and  see  in 
it  an  anxiety  to  serve  you, — the  machine  you  have  to  conduct 
is  complicated,  and  though  your  abilities  are  of  a  superior 
order  I  foresee  that  you  will  frequently  require  the  assistance 
of  me  and  my  friends.  But  in  order  to  receive  that  assist- 
ance, and  indeed  in  order  to  enable  us  to  give  it,  you  must 
confide  in  us  and  in  us  only."1 

A  meeker  man  than  Gait  might  have  been  nettled  by  this 
mixture  of  condescension  and  threatening.  Strachan,  while 
advising  Gait  to  take  no  side  in  provincial  politics,  obviously 
wished  to  attach  him  to  the  little  group  of  able  but  undemo- 
cratic supporters  of  Maitland.  The  impression  left  on  Gait 
was  that  he  was  regarded  in  Upper  Canada  with  a  distrust 
which  Strachan  wished  to  counteract  by  his  friendly  but  irri- 
tating counsel.  He  neither  answered  nor  destroyed  the  letter, 
but  determined  to  await  developments.  His  suspicions  were 
strengthened  by  some  parting  words  of  caution  from  Horton. 

.  Arch.  Q.  346-1.    Major  Hillier  was  Maitland's  secretary. 


76  JOHN  GALT 

Such  apprehensions  did  not  increase  the  pleasure  of  the 
voyage.  By  the  middle  of  November  he  was  in  New  York.1 
His  journal  notes  the  "lathy  appearance  of  the  inhabitants, 
sallow  complexion,  singular  longitude  of  nose  and  chin."  He 
stayed  about  ten  days  in  the  city,  met  various  people  of  note, 
and  made  enquiries  how  emigrants  might  be  sent  on  to  Canada 
without  delay  and  unnecessary  expense. 

On  his  way  to  York  he  obeyed  his  instructions  by  studying 
the  methods  of  the  Pulteney  and  the  Holland  land  companies. 
He  was  impressed  as  on  his  previous  journey  by  the  initiative 
and  shrewdness  of  the  Americans  as  compared  with  the  more 
sluggish  Canadians.  "The  character  of  the  Canadian  mind  is 
very  speculative,  and  but  little  practical.  The  inhabitants 
talk  wisely  and  ingeniously,  but  they  seem  to  have  no  active 
power  combined  with  that  of  volition.  They  are  the  reverse 
of  the  Americans  who  have  but  little  theory,  but  are  alive  and 
alert  to  imitate  any  new  mode  of  pursuing  profit.  .  .  v. 
The  Americans  work  their  salt  mines.  The  Canadians  talk 
of  their  salt  springs."2  The  same  contrast  struck  Lord  Dur- 
ham a  dozen  years  later. 

Gait  arrived  in  York  on  December  12,  and  took  up  his  old 
dismal  quarters  in  the  Steamboat  Hotel.  His  apprehensions 
as  to  his  reception  soon  proved  to  be  well  founded. 

Various  circumstances  combined  to  attach  suspicion  to 
Gait  in  the  eyes  of  Maitland  and  his  advisers.  Before  leav- 
ing England  he  had  shown  some  courtesy  to  Dr.  Rolph,  a 
leader  of  the  Reform  party  in  Upper  Canada,  and  therefore 
obnoxious  to  the  Lieutenant  Governor.  .Rolph  had  come  to 
London  to  oppose  a  bill  for  the  naturalization  of  Americans, 
and  through  Gait  obtained  a  promise  from  the  Colonial  Office 


1The  first  entry  in  his  journal  referring  to  New  York  is  dated 
November  16.  The  Upper  Canada  paper,  the  U.  E.  Loyalist,  states  (Dec. 
2,  1826),  "Mr.  Gait,  secretary  to  the  Canada  Company,  has  arrived  in 
the  ship  Brighton  from  London." 

2Galt's  Journal,  April  8,  1825.  Gait  contributed  to  The  Canadas 
(1832),  a  compilation  for  the  use  of  emigrants  by  Andrew  Picken,  a 
"summary  relative  to  the  Land  Speculations  by  which  the  Genessee 
country  and  Western  Territory  of  New  York  were  settled."  Lawrie  Todd 
also  deals  with  the  early  development  of  this  country. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  77 

that  certain  provisions  should  be  modified.  He  returned  to 
Canada  apparently  satisfied.  Gait,  however,  found  him  at 
York  about  to  bring  in  an  independent  measure.  On  the  day 
of  his  arrival,  while  delivering  letters  to  Maitland,  Gait  com- 
plained of  Rolph's  conduct  and  spoke  of  petitioning  the  House 
of  Assembly  against  his  bill  on  the  ground  that  anything 
which  unsettled  conditions  in  the  province  was  injurious  to 
the  interests  of  the  Canada  Company.  Impulsive  as  usual,  he 
sought  out  Rolph  and  reproached  him  with  his  shiftiness,  and 
also  mentioned  to  Robinson  and  Hillier  his  intention  of  peti- 
tioning. This  readiness  to  interfere  in  political  matters  did 
not  commend  itself  to  Maitland  who  wrote  to  Gait  next  dayv 
pointing  out  that  his  proper  course  was  to  state  his  objections 
and  leave  the  matter  in  the  Governor's  hands.  He  advised 
Gait  to  avoid  communication  with  opposition  members.  "You 
must  perceive,"  he  concluded,  "how  solicitous  I  am  to  avoid 
all  occasion  of  difficulty,  and  to  remove  every  obstacle  to  the 
most  candid  communication,  when  I  have  availed  myself  of 
the  first  occasion  thus  fully  to  express  my  sentiments  upon  a 
subject  of  no  common  delicacy,  and  I  think  it  right  to  go  a 
step  further,  and  to  observe  that  it  is  only  by  your  abstaining 
altogether  from  mixing  in  local  politics,  that  a  good  under- 
standing can  be  insured ;  f dr  I  must  frankly  confess  that  the 
impressions  I  have  received  from  past  occurrences  would  be 
very  apt  to  dispose  me  to  put  an  unfavourable  construction 
upon  such  interference."1 

In  replying,  Gait  declared  that  he  had  no  disposition  to 
meddle  with  politics,  and  that  he  was  at  a  loss  to  know  what 
past  occurrences  could  have  offended  the  Governor.  After 
another  exchange  of  letters  Maitland  gave  an  explanation  of 
his  reference  to  Gait's  previous  conduct.  He  first  blamed  Gait 
for  having  taken,  while  in  York  as  a  commissioner,  too  active 

lAutobiog.,  II.,  11.  Among  the  past  occurrences^  Maitland  no  doubt 
remembered  Gait's  ambition  to  become  a  member  of  th'e  Legislative  Coun- 
cil. Gait  himself  always  thought  that  the  Quarterly  review  of  his  Voy- 
ages and  Travels  told  against  him  in  Canada.  "I  have  now  reason  to 
believe  that  these  who  abused  the  ear  of  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland  to  my 
prejudice  were  misled  respecting  my  principles  by  what  was  said  of  me 
in  the  article  respecting  my  Voyages  and  Travels."  (Lit.  Life,  I.,  91.) 


78  JOHN  GALT 

an  interest  in  public  matters  not  connected  with  his  enquiry. 
He  next  charged  him  with  having  misrepresented  the  Provin- 
cial Government  in  his  correspondence  with  the  Colonial 
Office.  The  third  indictment  was  of  a  more  definite  sort. 
During  the  interval  between  Gait's  first  and  second  visits  to 
Canada  the  personalities  in  the  Colonial  Advocate  had  be- 
come so  unrestrained  that  Mackenzie's  office  had  been  raided 
and  his  printing  press  wrecked.  In  a  suit  for  damages  he  had 
produced  in  his  defence  the  two  letters  written  to  him  by  Gait. 
On  landing  in  New  York  Gait  had  heard  of  this,  and  at 
Niagara  (Dec.  10,  1826)  he  addressed  an  indignant  protest 
to  Mackenzie : 

"SIR,— 

"On  my  arrival  in  America  I  heard  with  extreme  surprise 
that  you  had  produced  in  a  late  action  for  damages  a  letter 
from  me,  commending  the  manner  in  which  you  conduct  the 
Colonial  Advocate. 

"You  had,  sir,  the  courtesy,  when  I  was  last  in  the  pro- 
vince to  send  me  a  file  of  your  paper,  and  I  returned  of  course 
a  civil  note  for  the  present — the  contents  of  that  note  I  do  not 
recollect,  but  as  my  political  sentiments  differ  from  yours,  I 
cannot  conceive  how  any  expression  of  mine  even  compliment- 
ary to  your  talents,  could  imply  that  I  approved  of  the  style 
and  temper  of  the  Colonial  Advocate. 

"As  I  wish  my  political  opinions  not  to  be  misunderstood, 
I  should  be  obliged  to  you  to  publish  this,  together  with  the 
letter  produced  in  court."1 

The  letters  which  Mackenzie  had  used  had  left  upon  Mait- 
land's  mind  an  exaggerated  and  distorted  impression.  He 
found  in  them  "warm  commendations  of  the  talent  displayed 
in  attacks  upon  my  government,  and  .  .  .  intimations 
.  .  .  as  to  the  manner  in  which  attacks  might  be  made 
with  greater  caution  and  equal  effect."2  Maitland  closed  the 
correspondence  by  declaring  that  he  would  allow  no  past  in- 

!Can.  Arch.  Q.  346-1. 

2Autobiog.,  II.,  20.  Gait  sent  a  copy  of  the  whole  correspondence 
to  Horton. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  79 

cidents  to  prejudice  him  against  Gait  and  that  he  would  en- 
deavour to  aid  the  Canada  Company  in  every  way. 

This  was  not  a  very  encouraging  beginning.  Having  seen 
the  result  of  his  previous  unsuspecting  conduct,  Gait  in  the 
future  held  himself  reserved  and  aloof.1  He  turned  with  re- 
lief to  his  work,  and  after  registering  the  company's  charter 
at  York,  proceeded  to  Lower  Canada  for  the  same  purpose.2 

In  the  beginning  of  January  he  went  to  Montreal  and  then 
to  Quebec,  where  the  provincial  Parliament  was  in  session. 
Here  he  once  again  interested  himself  in  the  claims  of  Cana- 
dian war-sufferers,  and  presented  a  fruitless  petition  to  the 
House  of  Assembly  "with  all  the  blandishments  in  his  power."3 

The  month  at  Quebec  was  the  happiest  Gait  spent  in  Can- 
ada. It  brightened,  he  said,  "the  sombre  hue  of  a  varied  life 
in  which  the  shade  has  ever  most  prevailed."  The  escape  from 
the  narrow  political  world  of  little  York  to  a  city  of  nearly 
40,000  was  in  itself  pleasant.  So  also  was  the  change  from 
the  suspicions  and  stiffness  of  Maitland  to  the  frankness  and 
courtesy  of  Lord  Dalhousie,  the  Governor  General.  In  some 
lines  written  a  short  time  before  his  death  Gait  recalled  how 
Dalhousie's  kind  welcome  had  encouraged  him  to  face  the 
difficulties  of  his  position. 

Cheer'd  by  the  shelter  then  bestow'd, 
I  dar'd  a  dark  and  drifted  road. 

The  worth  of  gift  or  grant,  my  Lord, 
Can  ne'er  in  sterling  well  be  known: 
The  value  of  the  heart'ning  word 
Is  in  the  kindness  of  the  tone. 

irrhis  reserve  also  led  to  misunderstandings.  "I  have  just  received 
a  biographical  sketch  of  me  published  at  York  drawn  up  in  a  friendly 
spirit,  but  it  speaks  of  me  as  playing  'Captain  Grand,'  and  looking  down 
on  the  inhabitants  of  Upper  Canada.  The  fact  is,  I  never  thought  about 
them,  unless  to  notice  some  ludicrous  peculiarity  of  individuals."  This 
self-contradictory  note  is  in  the  Autogiography,  II.,  51. 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  369.  Gait  writes  to  the  company  directors  (Dec.  28) 
with  more  tact  than  truth  that  he  has  every  reason  to  be  satisfied  with 
the  Provincial  Government.  "Business  presses  upon  me  here,"  he  adds, 
"and  I  am  in  no  condition  yet  to  take  it  up  regularly."  He  had  already 
received  130  applications  for  land. 

3Can.  Arch.  Q.  371,  Gait  to  Horton   (Feb.  5,  1827). 


80  JOHN  GALT 

Gait  was  accompanied  on  his  trip  to  Quebec  by  a  notable 
member  of  his  staff.  William  Dunlop  (1792-1848)  had  first 
come  to  Canada  as  an  assistant  surgeon  during  the  War  oi* 
1812,  and  had  become  known  for  his  genial  eccentricities  and 
reckless  bravery.  Returning  to  England  at  the  close  of  war, 
he  soon  afterwards  went  to  India  where  his  skill  in  big-game 
hunting  won  him  the  nickname  "Tiger."  Later  he  was  inti- 
mate with  the  Blackwood  group  in  Edinburgh,  and  wrote  an 
account  of  his  Indian  experiences  for  "Maga."  In  1826,  when 
the  Canada  Company  was  formed,  Dunlop  was  leading  a 
varied  life  in  London,  turning  his  hand  to  journalism  of  all 
kinds.  He  was  appointed  Warden  of  the  Forests  for  the  com- 
pany and  was  sent  out  ahead  of  Gait  to  begin  surveying.  Six 
feet  three  in  height,  with  a  mass  of  red  hair,  a  "Titanic  bray" 
of  a  laugh,  and  an  endless  store  of  anecdotes,  Dunlop  was  a 
tempting  subject  for  caricature.  A  drawing  by  Maclise  in 
Fraser's  Magazine  shows  him  seated,  a  tiger's  head  looking 
down  at  him  from  the  wall  and  on  the  table  behind  him  a 
tumbler  and  two  decanters — an  indication  of  the  failing  which, 
though  finally  overcome,  shortened  his  life.  He  and  Gait  made 
a  conspicuous  pair  of  Scots.1 

Both  Gait  and  Dunlop  took  part  in  amateur  theatricals 
contrived  by  the  Quebec  garrison.  With  help  from  others 
Gait  wrote  a  farce,  Visitors,  or  a  Trip  to  Quebec,  in  which 
weir  known  local  characters  were  ridiculed;  among  them, 
Philemon  Wright,  the  famous  pioneer  of  Hull  township,  who 
later  served  as  model  for  Mr.  Hoskins  in  Lawrie  Todd.  Dunlop 
acted  the  part  of  a  Highland  chieftain  with  immense  suc- 
cess. The  skit  was  apparently  never  printed.  About  a  year 

iFraser's  Mag.  (July,  1832),  reviews  Dunlop's  Statistical  Sketches 
of  Upper  Canada,  for  the  use  of  Emigrants,  by  a  Backwoodsman  (1832), 
an  amusing  and  interesting  book.  The  article  also  gives  a  vivid  sketch 
of  Dunlop's  career.  See  also  Blackwood's  Mag.  (Oct.,  1832).  Strick- 
land's Twenty-Seven  Years  in  Canada  West  (1853)  tells  many  anec- 
dotes about  Dunlop,  and  he  is  also  frequently  mentioned  in  MacTag- 
gart's  Three  Years  in  Canada  (1829).  The  Misses  Lizars'  book,  In  the 
Days  of  the  Canada  Company  (1896),  has  a  full  and  racy  account  of 
Dunlop,  his  friends,  his  hospitality,  his  liquor-stand  holding  a  dozen 
bottles  christened  the  "Twelve  Apostles,"  and  his  famous  will,  the 
humour  of  which  reminds  one  of  the  broader  fun  in  Gait's  novels. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  81 

later  while  in  New  York  Gait  wrote  another  farce,  An  Aunt 


in  Virginia,  which  appeared  in  narrative  form  in  Blackwood's 
(Jan.  and  Feb.,  1833)  under  the  title  Scotch  and  Yankees. 

A  letter  to  Moir  tells  of  another  incident  during  his  stay  at 
Quebec.  "It  is  the  practice  here  for  the  country  people  on  the 
other  side  of  the  St.  Lawrence  to  cross  in  canoes,  even  while 
the  ice  is  hurling  up  arid  down  on  the  tide.  I  was  induced, 
without  duly  considering  the  risk,  to  accompany  a  friend  who 
has  a  country  seat  on  the  other  side:  we  had  eight  rowers  in 
the  boat,  or  rather  canoe — we  laid  ourselves  down  in  the  bot- 
tom, and  were  launched  like  a  shuttle  in  the  loom  down  'the 
glass  brae'  of  the  shore.  The  boatman  then  began  to  sing 
their  hum-drum  songs;  away  we  went — when  a  vast  sheet, 
some  acres  wide,  of  ice  caught  us ;  in  a  moment  out  leapt  the 
men — drew  the  boat  on  the  ice — hauled  us  over,  and  launched 
us  in  the  water  on  the  other  side — in  they  were  again,  and 
again  at  their  paddling  and  singing.  This  was  repeated  three 
times  before  we  landed.  In  the  evening,  when  we  returned, 
the  ebb  was  running  at  the  rate  of  five  or  six  miles  an  hour, 
and  we  were  caught  in  a  floe.  .  .  .  The  pieces  surrounded 
us,  the  boatman  could  get  no  footing  on  them;  fortunately  I 
never  thought  of  the  ice  that  we  were  in  being  in  motion,  but 
imagined  that  what  was  fixed  was  moving  up.  The  sun  was 
in  the  verge  of  the  horizon,  and  the  thermometer  at  more  than 
10  below  zero,  and  we  were  drifting  away  below  the  city.  We 
were  at  least  five  miles  out  of  our  course  before  I  suspected 
our  danger — for  it  is  no  joke  to  be  frozen  to  death;  at  last 
the  ice  had  the  humanity  to  separate,  and  we  got  into  clear 
water  under  a  beautiful  cliff  of  ice,  some  twenty  or  thirty  feet 
high,  crowned  on  the  top  with  sparkling  stars.  The  effect  of 
the  setting  sun  on  the  icicles  was  more  brilliant  than  you  can 
imagine.  It  was  just  dark  when  we  landed."1 

Signs  of  spring  were  visible  in  Upper  Canada  when  he 
returned  early  in  March  to  enter  seriously  upon  his  duties. 
His  mission  had  originally  been  merely  one  of  enquiry  and 
was  to  be  completed  in  eight  months.  He  now  requested  that 

^Memoir,  pp.  xlii-xliii. 


82  JOHN  GALT 

the  time  be  extended  and  that  he  be  made  superintendent  of 
the  company,  in  order  that  he  might  deal  with  the  applica- 
tions for  land  which  were  coming  in.  The  directors  assented, 
and  Gait  became  superintendent  with  a  salary  of  £1,611  2s.  2d., 
including  allowances.  He  was  left  to  pick  up  what  clerks  he 
could,  and  had  no  accountant  till  the  middle  of  1828. 

He  set  himself  to  the  toilsome  but  congenial  task  of  work- 
ing out  a  system  for  the  disposal  of  lands  based  on  the  prin- 
ciples followed  by  the  Pulteney  and  Holland  companies.  Plans 
for  settlement  were  made  and  the  site  for  a  town  chosen,  but 
the  year  was  still  too  young  for  outdoor  operations.  Gait 
accordingly  paid  a  short  visit  to  New  York,  where  he  ap- 
pointed J.  C.  Buchanan  agent  for  the  company.1  The  trip 
was  rendered  interesting  and  almost  perilous  by  a  sudden 
thaw.  "The  scene  which  the  valley  of  the  Mohawk  presented 
cannot  be  described.  It  was  an  elegant  extract  from  the  uni- 
versal deluge;  for  leagues  and  miles  the  whole  country  was 
up  to  the  neck  in  water,  and  countless  cataracts  were  pouring 
from  all  the  hills  —  not  certainly  quite  so  vast  as  Niagara,  but 
many  of  them  would  not  have  shamed  the  Cora  of  the  Clyde 
at  Lammas  flood.  What  have  the  Yanky  poets  to  do  with 
translating  European  descriptions?  There  was  more  origin- 
ality of  poetry  in  the  business  of  that  morning  than  in  all  the 
rhyme  they  have  yet  published."2 

The  founding  of  Guelph  is  the  most  vivid  incident  of  Gait's 
work  in  Canada.  The  name  was  in  honour  of  the  royal  family, 
and  the  date  set  for  the  start  of  operations  was  St.  George's 
Day,  April  23.  "This  was  not  without  design;  I  was  well 
aware  of  the  boding  effect  of  a  little  solemnity  on  the  minds  of 


.  Arch.  Q.  371,  Gait  to  Horton  (New  York,  April  7,  1827),  says 
he  has  made  arrangement  for  the  transportation  to  Canada  of  emigrants 
landing  in  New  York.  He  suggests  a  scheme  for  bringing  out  servants 
and  would  like  to  see  'rthe  establishment  of  an  aristocracy"  and  the  dis- 
couragement of  the  "singular  growth  of  Americanism."  He  issued  a 
prospectus  at  New  York  setting  forth  the  advantages  of  the  company. 
No  encouragement  was.  to  be  given  to  speculators,  but  only  to  sober  and 
industrious  settlers  with  families. 

2Galt  to  Moir  (Aug.  1,  1827).    Memoir,  xlvi. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  83 

most  men,  and  especially  of  the  unlettered,  such  as  the  first 
class  of  settlers  were  likely  to  be,  at  eras  which  betokened 
destiny,  like  the  launching  of  a  vessel,  or  the  birth  of  an 
enterprise,  of  which  a  horoscope  might  be  cast."1 

On  April  22  he  met  Dunlop  at  a  little  town  on  the  Grand 
river  about  eighteen  miles  from  the  proposed  site  of  Guelph. 
The  settlement,  originally  called  Shade's  Mills,  was  now  re- 
christened  by  its  founder,  William  Dickson,  a  Scottish  pioneer 
who  had  come  to  Canada  in  1792.  Henceforth  the  place  was 
called  Gait.  The  next  morning  the  party  set  out.  Gait  and 
Dunlop  soon  lost  their  way  in  the  woods,  and  wandered  up  and 
down  till  they  found  a  hut  inhabited  by  a  Dutch  shoemaker 
who  set  them  on  the  right  path.  "With  his  assistance  we 
reached  the  skirts  of  the  wild  to  which  we  were  going,  and 
were  informed  in  the  cabin  of  a  squatter  that  all  our  men 
had  gone  forward.  By  this  time  it  began  to  rain,  but  undeterr- 
ed by  that  circumstance,  we  resumed  our  journey  in  the  path- 
less wood.  About  sunset,  dripping  wet,  we  arrived  near  the 
spot  we  were  in  quest  of,  a  shanty,  which  an  Indian  who  had 
committed  murder  had  raised  as  a  refuge  for  himself.  .  .  . 
We  found  the  men,  under  the  orders  of  Mr.  Prior,  whom  I  had 
employed  for  the  Company,  kindling  a  roaring  fire,  and  after 
endeavouring  to  dry  ourselves,  and  having  recourse  to  the 
store-basket,  I  proposed  to  go  to  the  spot  chosen  for  the  town." 
The  little  party  set  forward,  Dunlop  having  exchanged  his  wet 
clothes  for  two  blankets,  one  worn  as  toga  and  one  as  kilt. 

"It  was  consisent  with  my  plan  to  invest  our  ceremony  with 
a  little  mystery.  ...  So  intimating  that  the  main  body 
of  the  men  were  not  to  come,  we  walked  to  the  brow  of  the 
neighbouring  rising  ground,  and  Mr.  Prior  having  shewn  the 
site  selected  for  the  town,  a  large  maple  tree  was  chosen,  on 
which,  taking  an  axe  from  one  of  the  woodmen,  I  struck  the 
first  stroke.  To  me  at  least  the  moment  was  impressive — and 
the  silence  of  the  woods,  that  echoed  to  the  sound,  was  as  the 
sigh  of  the  solemn  genius  of  the  wilderness  departing  for  ever. 

.,  II.,  54. 


84  JOHN  GALT 

"The  doctor  followed  me,  then,  if  I  recollect  correctly,  Mr. 
Prior  and  the  woodmen  finished  the  work.  The  tree  fell  with 
a  crash  of  accumulating  thunder,  as  if  ancient  Nature  were 
alarmed  at  the  entrance  of  social  man  into  her  inmost  soli- 
tudes with  his  sorrows,  his  follies  and  his  crime."  The 
solemnity  was  dispelled  by  Dunlop  who  pulled  out  a  flask  and 
pledged  the  future  city  in  Canadian  whisky.1 

Parts  of  the  famous  maple  were  preserved  by  the  early 
settlers  as  souvenirs.  In  1828  by  Gait's  orders  the  stump 
was  fenced  round  by  Major  Strickland,  and  when  the  top  was 
levelled  and  fitted  with  a  sun  dial  it  served  as  town  clock  for 
many  years.  About  1843  it  gradually  fell  into  decay,  and  its 
site  is  now  covered  by  the  embankment  at  the  south-west  end 
of  the  bridge  spanning  the  river,  which  was  christ- 
ened by  Gait,  the  Speed.  A  story  of  doubtful  authority  says 
that  when  the  tree  was  felled  Prior  laid  his  hand  on  the  stump, 
and  indicated  the  future  street-plan  by  spreading  his  fingers. 
Whether  this  is  legend  or  fact,  the  streets  radiate  like  the 
sticks  of  a  fan  from  this  point.2 

Chopping,  clearing  and  building  were  the  first  tasks  in  the 
new  settlement.  With  the  intention  of  attracting  settlers 
Gait  included  a  schoolhouse  among  the  first  structures  under- 
taken. Storehouses  and  sheds  for  the  Company  were  also  essen- 
tial. Gait's  house,  completed  in  the  following  spring,  and 
called  The  Priory  after  Prior  who  had  charge  of  the  opera- 
tions at  Guelph,  still  stands. 

During  the  progress  of  this  work  Gait  returned  to  York, 
where  he  was  soon  at  odds  once  more  with  Maitland.  The 
only  road  between  York  and  Guelph  at  that  time  was  a  cir- 
cuitous one  passing  through  Dundas  and  Gait.  A  storehouse 
at  the  head  of  Lake  Ontario  would  be  in  a  more  central  posi- 

^Autobiog.,  II.,  56  ff.  Compare  the  founding  of  Judiville  in  Lawrie 
Todd.  "When  we  reached  what  was  destined  to  be  the  centre  of  the 
town,  the  axemen  or  choppers  cleared  the  brush  or  underwood  from 
around  a  large  tree,  and  .  .  .  the  old  gentleman  took  an  axe  and  struck 
the  first  stroke.  ...  I  struck  the  second,  and  so  it  went  round,  until 
the  tree  fell  with  a  sound  like  thunder,  banishing  the  loneliness  and 
silence  of  the  woods  for  ever." 

2Annals  of  the  Town  of  Guelph,  by  C.  Acton  Burrows   (1877). 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  85 

tion  for  the  company's  lands.  Supplies  could  be  sent  to  such 
settlements  as  Guelph,  and  payments  in  produce  could  be  re- 
ceived there  from  intending  purchasers.  Gait  therefore  re- 
solved to  apply  for  a  grant  of  land  on  the  shores  of  Burlington 
Bay.1 

His  official  application  was  accompanied  by  a  letter  to 
Major  Hillier  (May  3,  1827)  which  had  unfortunate  results. 
The  chief  cause  of  offense  was  one  sentence:  "I  should  be  ex- 
ceedingly glad  to  have  it  in  my  power  to  say  that  the  three 
or  four  acres  would  be  given  to  the  Company,  for  I  do  assure 
you  that  various  circumstances  have  made  many  connected 
with  the  Company  not  at  all  satisfied  with  the  opposition 
which  it  is  conceived  has  been  shewn  towards  the  general  in- 
terests of  the  incorporation,  as  it  now  is,  from  influential  per- 
sons in  this  province."  He  admitted  that  he  himself  had  seen 
no  cause  for  such  dissatisfaction,  but  at  the  same  time  warned 
the  government  that  any  unfavourable  action  on  their  part 
would  be  thwarted  fry  the  political  power  of  the  directors  in 
England.  In  conclusion,  he  touched  upon  his  own  position,  and 
declared  he  had  been  the  victim  of  "falsehoods,  the  invention 
of  which  only  served  to  prove  the  ignorance  of  the  inventors 
as  to  £Ke  character  of  an  individual,  who  from  his  very  boy- 
hood has  neither  been  obscure  nor  in  his  sentiments  equi- 
vocal."2 

This  tone  of  defiance  and  threatening  was  scarcely  appro- 
priate when  asking  a  favour.  Hillier  replied  (May  14)  that 

lfrhe  place  is  described  by  Gait  in  The  Hurons — A  Canadian  Tale, 
(Eraser's  Mag.,  Feb.,  1830).  "At  the  head  of  Lake  Ontario  a  long,  nar- 
row strip  of  land  separates  its  clear  waters  from  a  smaller  expanse, 
generally  known  by  the  name  of  Burlington  Bay.  Along  the  northern 
part  of  the  ibeach,  as  this  strip  is  called,  close  under  the  residence  of 
Brant,  the  Mohawk  chieftain,  a  number  of  detached,  picturesque  trees 
grow  upon  the  sand,  curiously  festooned  with  gigantic  vines  interwoven 
among  their  branches ;  and  in  the  ground  beneath,  at  short  intervals,  are 
many  square  artificial  hollows,  the  remains  of  a  fortified  camp  of  a 
party  of  the  Huron  Indians  who  resisted  the  original  invasion  of  their 
hunting  grounds,  when  the  French  first  attempted  to  establish  military 
posts  in  that  remote  wilderness."  See  also  MacTaggart,  Three  Years 
in  Canada,  I.,  303.  "Burlington  Bay  with  the  adjoining  country  is  the 
loveliest  place  in  civilized  Canada."  For  Brant,  see  Gait's  account  of 
their  former  meeting  in  London,  Autobiog.,  I.,  283f. 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  344-1.    Also  Autobiog.,  II.,  66-68. 


86  JOHN  GALT 

the  application  would  be  laid  before  the  Executive  Council, 
that  the  government  felt  most  friendly  towards  the  company, 
and  that  it  would  be  well  if  all  their  future  correspondence 
were  submitted  to  the  Colonial  Office.  In  approving  of  this 
suggestion,  Gait  could  not  help  referring  again  to  the  "invidi- 
ous jealousy  with  which  he  is  watched  in  his  visits,  his  cor- 
respondence, and  conversation."  The  grant  was  made  on 
June  8,  but  even  in  his  letter  of  thanks  Gait  could  not  keep 
away  from  his  own  concerns.  "Feeling  deeply  and  resenting 
strongly  the  imputation  of  being  a  favourer  of  discontent  and 
a  medler  (sic)  in  politics,  Mr.  G.  will  not  allow  any  repetition 
of  the  charge  even  by  hypothetical  construction  to  pass  un- 
noticed."1 

That  Maitland  was  nettled  by  this  rough-tongued,  irrit- 
able Scot  is  not  surprising.  We  may  believe  his  declaration 
to  Bathurst  that,  while  anxious  to  work  smoothly  with  the 
company  he  found  the  superintendent  very  difficult. 

In  the  meantime  Gait  was  glad  to  obtain  his  grant,  and 
apparently  considered  the  incident  closed.  His  next  task  was 
to  make  himself  familiar  with  the  Huron  Tract.  Dunlop, 
assisted  by  John  Brant,  the  Mohawk  chief,  and  others,  ex- 
plored and  surveyed  this  wilderness.  Their  hardships  were 
extreme,  and  the  story  went  the  round  of  the  American  papers 
at  one  time  that  they  had  all  been  murdered  by  Indians.  Gait 
set  out  from  York  probably  early  in  June,  and  travelled  by 
Yonge  Street  to  Newmarket.  They  descended  the  Holland 
river  and  crossed  Lake  Simcoe  "with  singing  boatmen  —  a  race 
fast  disappearing.  The  passage  of  that  lake  is  exceedingly 
Beautiful,  but  not  picturesque.  We  met  in  the  twilight  of 
the  dawn  with  a  canoe  full  of  Indian  children,  piloted  by  a 
negro.  They  were  gliding  over  the  glassy  water  between  us 


.  Arch.  Q.  346-1,  Gait  to  Hillier  (June  11,  1827)  .  Also  Q.  371, 
Gait  to  Horton  (June  2,  1827)  :  "I  have  no  cause  to  be  dissatisfied  in  my 
business  with  the  local  authorities;  but  my  own  situation  is  not  an 
agreeable  one,  for,  to  use  a  conciliatory  phrase  of  Sir  P.  Maitland,  there 
is  'a  ready  and  credulous  ear'  open  to  my  disadvantage.  Before  my 
arrival  in  Little  York  I  had  been  vain  enough  to  believe  that  my  political 
principles  were  pretty  well  known,  and  that  I  had  always  been  a  faith- 
ful and  consistent  subject." 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  87 

and  the  waning,  like  imps  and  their  leader,  as  silent  and  as 
solemn  as  spirits."1 

By  a  narrow  forest  track  they  crossed  overland  to  Pene- 
tanguishene,  where  the  Admiralty  had  placed  a  gun-boat,  the 
Bee,  at  their  disposal.  After  some  delay  due  to  Unfavourable 
winds,  they  reached  Cabot's  Head,  "a  woody  stretch  of  land 
not  very  lofty,  lying  calm  in  the  sunshine  of  a  still  after- 
noon." The  next  day  they  sighted  a  cottage  in  a  small  clear- 
ing, and  on  approaching  were  met  by  a  canoe  filled  with  "a 
strange  combination  of  Indians,  velveteens  and  whiskers,  and 
discovered  within  the  roots  of  the  red  hair  the  living  features 
of  the  Doctor."2 

The  place  had  been  chosen  by  Dunlop  as  the  site  of  the 
future  town  of  Goderich,  named  in  honour  of  the  Secretary 
of  State.3  Their  landing  was  celebrated  by  a  bottle  of  cham- 
pagne which  Dunlop  had  hoarded  for  the  occasion.  The  mor- 
row was  spent  in  exploring  the  river,  later  renamed  the  Mait- 
land,  and  its  bordering  meadows,  which  recalled  quiet  English 
landscapes.  They  tried  to  reach  Detroit  in  time  for  the  4th 
of  July  celebrations,  but  failed  by  a  few  hours.  Gait  was, 
however,  gratified  by  his  reception.  "The  Americans,"  he 
wrote  to  Moir,  "were  very  civil  to  us  at  Detroit.  When  we 
entered  the  theatre  one  of  the  players  recognized  me,  and  the 
orchestra  forthwith  were  instructed  to  play  a  Scotch  air." 
At  Niagara  Falls  they  met  Captain  Basil  Hall,  the  friend  of 
Scott. 

After  a  short  stay  at  York  he  went  on  to  inspect  the  work 
at  Guelph.  Here  he  was  visited  by  Bishop  Macdonnell  who 
selected  the  lofty  site  on  which  the  Catholic  church  now 
stands.  Some  Edinburgh  friends  also  came,  with  whom  he 
rode  to  Gait  and  voyaged  down  the  Grand  river  in  a  scow,  an 
experience  afterwards  utilized  in  Lawrie  Todd.  He  returned 
to  York  by  way  of  Brantford  and  "the  pretty  breezy  town  of 
Ancaster  on  the  hill." 

!Galt  to  Moir,  (Aug.  1,  1827),  Memoir,  xlvii. 
2Autobiog.,  II.,  79. 

3The  name  had  been  intended  for  Guelph  by  the  directors  who  were 
not  too  pleased  with  Gait  for  upsetting  their  plan. 


88  JOHN  GALT 

About  this  time  Gait  settled  himself  at  Burlington  in  order 
to  be  nearer  Guelph,  the  scene  of  the  company's  chief  activities. 
But  he  was  no  more  secure  from  vexation  here  than  at  York. 
On  July  29  trouble  arrived  in  the  form  of  a  body  of  emigrants 
from  New  York  who  had  come  to  make  arrangements  for  the 
reception  of  themselves  and  their  companions  who  were  fol- 
lowing. These  unfortunate  people  had  left  England  in  1825 
for  La  Guayra,  Venezuela.  There  they  were  disappointed  in 
the  climate,  the  soil,  and  the  political  conditions.  An  appeal 
for  help  brought  out  a  British  frigate  under  the  command  of 
Sir  Peregrine  Maitland's  brother  who  offered  to  transport 
them  to  Canada.  At  New  York  they  were  received  by  Bu- 
chanan, who  was  vice-consul  as  well  as  agent  for  the  Canada 
Company,  and  sent  by  him  to  Gait.  Altogether  they  num- 
bered 135,  of  whom  58  were  under  13  years  of  age. 

Their  destitution  demanded  prompt  action.  Gait  decided 
to  aid  them  and  the  company  by  settling  them  at  Guelph. 
The  day  after  their  arrival  he  wrote  to  Horton:  "I  have 
ordered  a  house  to  be  constructed  for  their  reception,  the 
receiving  house  of  the  company  being  occupied  by  eighteen 
families  and  all  the  other  houses  yet  habitable  being  full." 
Such  as  were  able-bodied  were  to  be  set  to  work.  On  the  same 
day  he  wrote  to  Hillier,  enclosing  his  letter  to  Horton.1 

To  provide  accommodation  for  the  La  Guayrians  money 
was  needed,  and  Gait  had  no  funds.  His  solution  of  the  diffi- 
culty proved  a  fruitful  source  of  trouble.  A  payment  to  the 
Government  from  the  company  was  just  due.  "I  have  there- 
fore resolved,"  he  told  Horton,  "to  withhold  £1,000  from  that 
payment  for  which  I  will  account  to  the  company,  and  it  can 

afterwards  be  settled  with  Government  either  in  London  or  in 

I 

!Can.  Arch.  Q.  371,  Gait  to  Horton  (July  30,  1827),  and  Q.  344-2, 
Gait  to  Hillier  (same  date).  Gait  says  he  waited  some  time  for  Mait- 
land's orders,  but  received  no  answer  from  Hillier.  It  seems  clear,  how- 
ever, from  his  letter  to  Horton  that  he  formed  and  followed  a  definite 
plan  of  his  own  almost  immediately.  After  Gait's  resignation  the  emi- 
grants received  no  further  aid  from  the  company  and  their  settlement 
was  broken  up.  The  last  of  them,  David  Stirton,  died  in  1908.  (See 
The  Last  of  the  La  Guayrians,  by  C.  C.  James,  in  the  Ontario  Historical 
Society's  Publications,  vol.  xv.) 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  89 

this  country,  unless  the  Lieutenant  Governor  sees  fit  to  relieve 
me  from  the  consequences  of  this  unforeseen  emergency."1 

Gait's  action  pleased  nobody.  The  Provincial  Government, 
the  Colonial  Office,  the  company  directors,  and  even  the  emi- 
grants themselves  all  had  objections.  Maitland  wrote  to  the 
Colonial  Secretary  expressing  strong  disapproval ;  the  direct- 
ors fell  in  line  with  the  Colonial  Office,  and  Gait  was  ordered 
to  pay  the  £1,000  which  he  had  withheld.2 

There  had  also  been  minor  causes  of  friction.  Gait  had 
appointed  August  12  as  a  public  holiday  in  Guelph  in  honour 

iCan.  Arch.  Q.  371,  Gait  to  Horton  (July  30,  1827) .  On  August  21 
he  writes  to  Horton  that  nine  of  the  families  have  reached  Guelph  and 
that  eleven  more  are  on  the  way.  Fifty  .acres  have  been  given  to  each 
family  at  the  general  price  fixed  for  Guelph  lands  ($2.00  per  acre).  The 
emigrants  are  working  off  the  purchase  price  in  road-making,  etc.  The 
children  have  been  put  to  school.  On  September  22  he  writes  that  more 
have  arrived  and  have  received  the  same  treatment.  Gait  planned  to 
form  a  model  settlement  with  the  La  Guayrians  to  extend  four  miles 
along  the  Elora  road. 

^There  is  a  great  deal  of  correspondence  on  the  La  Guayrians.  See 
Can.  Arch.  Q.  344-2,  Maitland  to  Goderich  (Oct.  17,  1827)  ;  Q.  371,  Gait 
to  Horton  (Nov.  8,  1827),  defends  his  action  on  three  grounds:  first,  the 
British  consul  in  New  York  had  sent  the  emigrants  to  Guelph  and  had 
paid  their  travelling  expenses;  second,  they  had  reached  Gait  in  a  des- 
titute condition,  and  when  he  was  40  miles  away  from  York  and  unable 
to  consult  Maitland;  third,  that  he  at  once  informed  the  Provincial  Gov- 
ernment of  what  he  had  done.  Q.  371,  A.  Stanley  to  Maitland  (Nov.  7, 
1827),  authorizing  him  to  afford  emigrants  indispensable  relief,  "letting 
it  be  distinctly  understood  that  you  disavow  any  claim  which  Mr.  Gait 
may  feel  disposed  to  make  in  consideration  of  any  expense  hitherto  in- 
curred on  their  account."  Much  of  the  discussion  was  as  to  whether 
Buchanan  in  forwarding  the  emigrants  had  acted  as  British  consul  or 
agent  for  the  Canada  Company.  Four  of  the  settlers  petitioned  against 
the  company  and  asked  for  a  grant  of  land  from  the  Crown.  This 
seemed  to  Gait  the  basest  ingratitude.  "I  cannot  but  consider  it,"  he 
wrote  to  Hillier  (Q.  346-2,  Dec.  26,  1827),  "as  belonging  to  that  singu- 
lar series  of  coincidences  which  from  the  moment  I  first  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  set  my  foot  in  this  province  has  embittered  my  life.  Only 
imperative  motives  of  humanity,  which  even  crime  can  command,  will 
prevent  me  after  12  o'clock  to-morrow  from  giving  orders  to  turn  these 
absurd  persons  adrift  in  the  woods."  At  the  beginning  of  1827  Mait- 
land sent  two  commissioners  to  question  the  emigrants  as  to  their  ex- 
pectations in  coming  to  Canada.  Finally  the  matter  was  laid  before  the 
Executive  Council  which  decided  (Jan.  29,  1828)  that  the  emigrants  had 
reached  New  York  under  government  auspices,  that  their  expenses  to 
Guelph  had  been  paid  by  government,  but  that  Buchanan  in  furnishing 
them  with  Canada  Company  way-tickets  had  acted  as  company  agent 
and  not  as  consul,  that  Gait  had  no  authority  to  interfere  with  the 
disposal  of  government  settlers  and  that  his  defence  was  inadequate. 


90  JOHN  GALT 

of  the  King's  birthday,  and  the  formation  of  the  Canada  Com- 
pany. An  ox  was  roasted  whole  and  carried  into  the  market 
houses  then  in  course  of  erection.  Here  some  two  hundred 
guests,  whose  enthusiasm  was  stimulated  by  the  passing  of 
pails  of  whisky,  listened  to  speeches  by  Gait,  Dunlop,  Prior 
and  others.  Gait  himself  proposed  Maitland's  health  and 
spoke  of  his  willingness  to  aid  the  company.  But  ill-natured 
rumour  declared  that  the  Governor's  name  had  been  omitted 
from  the  toast-list.  From  trivial  and  from  serious  causes  the 
suspicion  attached  to  Gait  continued  to  grow.1 

Matters  were  clearly  reaching  a  crisis,  and  Gait  debated 
whether  he  would  hand  in  his  resignation.  He  had,  however, 
already  written  to  his  family  to  join  him  in  Canada.  Another 
circumstance  also  dissuaded  him  and  gave  him  hopes  of  pleas- 
anter  relations  with  the  Lieutenant  Governor.  He  was  in- 
formed by  Colonel  Coffin,  the  head  of  the  militia  department, 
that  Maitland  wished  to  give  him  the  command  of  a  regiment. 
So  pleased  was  Gait  that  he  resolved  to  show  a  little  more  cor- 
diality to  the  inhabitants  of  York,  and  began  to  make  arrange- 
ments for  a  fancy-dress  ball. 

In  the  midst  of  his  preparations  came  a  rebuke  from  the 
directors  for  the  correspondence  with  Maitland  about  Bur- 
lington Beach.  They  enclosed  a  resolution:  "That  the  Court 
disapproves  the  tone  as  well  as  the  substance  of  these  letters ; 
they  being  alike  unauthorized  by  any  proceeding  of  this  Court, 
and  that  the  Directors  disclaim  the  opinions  ascribed  by  Mr. 
Gait  to  'many  connected  with  the  Canada  Company/  '  While 
blaming  Gait  for  his  dealings  with  the  Provincial  Govern- 

1Guelph,  though  only  four  months  old,  already  boasted  three  taverns 
filled  with  boarders,  and  a  regular  mail-coach  twice  a  week.  There  was 
even  talk  of  starting  a  newspaper.  A  circular  issued  in  London  by  the 
company  (Feb.  1,  1828)  gives  a  glowing  picture  of  the  settlement. 
Roads  from  adjoining  townships  have  been  opened;  sites  for  churches 
and  burying  grounds  are  given  free  to  all  denominations;  about  200 
town  lots  and  16,000  acres  have  been  engaged,  and  76  houses  built  or  in 
course  of  erection;  a  saw-mill,  and  brick-kiln  are  in  operation,  and  a 
grist-mill  is  partially  completed;  a  market-house,  several  stores,  and  a 
permanent  schoolhouse  have  been  founded.  The  circular  expresses  a 
needless  fear  that  with  the  clearing  of  the  forests  the  climate  will  be- 
come so  mild  and  the  snow  fall  so  slight  as  to  ruin  the  winter  roads. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  91 

ment,  the  directors  expressed  undiminished  confidence  in  his 
zeal  on  behalf  of  the  company.  The  incident  shows,  among 
other  things,  the  disadvantage  of  absentee  directors  who 
tried  to  manage  important  and  intricate  concerns  from  the 
distance  of  St.  Helen's  Place.  The  reproof  was  as  surprising 
to  Gait  as  it  was  gratifying  to  Maitland.1 

Gait's  first  step  was  to  seek  an  interview  with  Maitland, 
"for,"  as  he  wrote  to  Hillier,  "it  is  no  longer  becoming  the 
justice  due  to  myself  nor  prudent  under  the  hazard  of  prob- 
ably impending  humiliation  that  evident  misunderstanding 
should  be  perpetuated  and  error  allowed  to  grow  up  into 
grievance."2  Maitland  received  him  with  guarded  official  man- 
ner and  admitted  that  he  had  complained  to  the  Colonial 
Office.  Gait's  next  step  was  to  send  his  resignation  to  the 
chairman  of  the  directors,  leaving  him  at  liberty  to  present 
it  to  the  board  or  not.  He  learned  subsequently  that  Bosanquet 
withheld  it. 

He  then  set  about  drawing  up  a  formal  explanation  and 
defence  of  his  relations  with  the  Provincial  Government.  To 
strengthen  his  case  he  determined  to  produce  the  letter  he  had 
received  from  Strachan  before  leaving  England.  It  is  true,  he 
wrote  to  Strachan,  that  the  letter  "is  marked  'private  and  most 
confidential,'  but  as  it  relates  to  public  men  and  a  public  trust, 
I  feel  myself  constrained  to  make  such  use  of  it  as  I  may  find 
necessary."3  Strachan  replied  that  he  had  no  recollection  of 

!Can.  Arch.  Q.  371,  Gait  to  Huskisson  (Dec.  24,  1827),  enclo.sine; 
his  answer  to  the  directors,  whose  dispatches  "have  so  much  surprised 
me  that  I  am  obliged,  with  respect  to  my  correspondence  with  the  Lieut. 
Governor,  to  demand  that  the  Resolutions  be  rescinded  as  I  was  pre- 
pared with  the  fullest  explanation  of  that  subject."  Q.  344-2,  Maitland 
to  Huskisson,  (Dec.  29,  1827),  thanking  him  for  bringing  pressure  to 
bear  on  the  directors  "in  order  to  check  Mr.  Gait's  very  improper  and 
offensive  correspondence  with  this  Government.  I  regret  to  add  that  I 
have  by  me  many  very  unnecessary  letters  from  that  gentleman  which 
I  shall  not  fail  to  transmit." 

2Can.  Arch.  Q.  346-1,  Gait  to  Hillier  (Dec.  20,  1827). 

3Can.  Arch.  Q.  346-1,  Gait  to  Strachan  (Dec.  21,  1827) ;  Strachan 
to  Gait  (Dec.  22) ;  Strachan  to  Gait  (Dec.  24).  Gait  sent  a  collection  of 
letters  illustrating  his  relations  with  Maitland  to  Robert  Stanton,  the 
Government  printer  at  York,  who  declined  (Dec.  21)  to  print  them  with- 
out authority  from  the  Government.  On  Dec.  27  Gait  applied  for  per- 
mission to  have  his  documents  printed  by  Stanton,  and  was  told  it  could 
not  be  done  without  the  sanction  of  the  Secretary  of  State. 


92  JOHN  GALT 

the  letter,  demanded  a  copy  and  protested  against  Gait's  in- 
tention as  "treacherous  and  ungentlemanly."  These  hard 
words  did  not  dissuade  Gait,  and  finally  Strachan  declared  he 
was  prepared  to  face  any  blame  arising  from  the  production 
of  the  letter,  and  that  he  had  written  it  because  he  had  seen  in 
Gait  "a  restless  disposition  and  an  overweening  idea  of  the 
power  and  importance  of  your  office,  united  with  a  jealous 
suspicion." 

Placed  in  this  delicate  position,  Strachan  decided  to  act 
first.  He  sent  Maitland  a  copy  of  the  letter  and  an  account  of 
his  dealings  with  Gait.  He  had  observed  that  Gait  "even 
when  he  seemed  to  have  no  motive  for  discarding  courtesy  was 
often  disagreeable  and  apparently  unjust  and  disingenuous 
in  his  correspondence.  I  thought  I  should  more  effectually 
guard  him  against  this  source  of  difficulty  by  laying  strong 
stress  upon  a  disposition  in  your  Excellency  not  to  suffer  in 
this  respect  a  departure  from  propriety  even  in  form,  than  by 
grounding  my  apprehension  upon  a  feeling  in  himself  which 
he  might  not  acknowledge," — an  explanation  which  was  coldly 
received  by  Maitland.1 

All  this  wrangling,  though  its  results  were  neither  imme- 
diate nor  decisive,  was  not  a  very  happy  prelude  to  Gait's 
fancy-dress  ball.  The  event  took  place  on  New  Year's  Eve 
and  was  a  great  occasion  in  York  society.  It  was  held  in 
Frank's  Hotel,  the  ball-room  of  which  was  at  other  times  the 
town's  only  theatre.  The  floor  was  decorated  with  an  immense 
representation  of  the  company's  coat  of  arms,  two  lions  ram- 
pant bearing  flags  turned  opposite  ways  and,  on  the  riband 
below,  the  motto,  "Non  mutat  genus  solum."  Spruce  branches 
were  hung  on  the  ceiling,  the  walls  and  in  the  passages;  and 
little  coloured  lamps,  each  containing  a  floating  light,  lit  up 
the  greenery.  Lady  Mary  Willis,  wife  of  Mr.  Justice  Willis, 
acted  as  hostess,  and  was  dressed  as  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots. 
The  judge  was  disguised  as  a  gay  old  lady,  the  Countess  of 
Desmond;  Dr.  W.  W.  Baldwin  appeared  as  a  Roman  senator, 

!Can.  Arch.  Q.  346-1,  Strachan  to  Maitland  (Dec.  26,  1827) ;  Mait- 
land to  Strachan  (Dec.  27). 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  93 

and  there  were  plenty  of  backwoodsmen  and  Indians1  What- 
ever Gait's  costume  was  his  recent  anxieties  must  have  made 
him  rather  a  dour  host.  Nor  was  the  dance  likely  to  mend  his 
relations  with  Maitland.  His  choice  of  a  hostess  was  unfor- 
tunate, for  Lady  Mary  Willis  had  challenged  the  supremacy  of 
Lady  Sarah  Maitland  in  the  social  world  of  York.  Judge  Willis, 
whose  ambition  to  become  the  head  of  a  provincial  court  of 
equity  had  been  foiled  by  Robinson,  the  attorney-general,  was 
developing  into  a  strong  antagonist  of  the  Family  Compact. 
The  dissensions  which  he  created  among  his  colleagues  were 
terminated  by  his  suspension  in  June,  1829.  'Whether  inten- 
tionally or  not,  Gait  once  more  seemed  to  have  allied  himself 
to  the  opposition  party.2 

Early  in  1828  Gait  made  an  interesting  addition  to  his 
staff  in  Major  Strickland,  who  had  come  out  to  Canada  three 
years  before.  "My  first  interview  with  Mr.  Gait,  the  cele- 
brated author  of  Lawrie  Todd"  writes  Strickland,  "took  place 
at  the  old  Steamboat  Hotel  in  February,  1828.  He  received 
me  with  great  kindness,  and  asked  me  many  particulars  of 
bush-life,  connected  with  a  first  settlement. 

"I  suppose  my  answers  were  satisfactory,  for  he  turned 
towards  me  abruptly,  and  asked  me,  'If  I  would  like  to  enter 
the  Canada  Company's  service;  for/  said  he,  'I  want  a  prac- 
tical person  to  take  charge  of  the  outdoor  department  in  the 
absence  of  Mr.  Prior,  whom  I  am  about  to  send  to  the  Huron 
Tract  with  a  party  of  men  to  clear  up  and  lay  off  the  New- 
town  plot  of  Goderich.  You  will  have  charge  of  the  Com- 
pany's stores,  keep  the  labour-rolls,  and  superintendent  the 

^cadding,  Toronto  of  Old,  p.  Ill  f. 

2In  his  article  on  Colonial  Discontent  (Blackwood's  Mag.,  Sept., 
1829)  Gait  writes:  "A  system  of  espionage  assumes  that  there  is  some- 
thing which  ought  to  be  watched  and  to  be  prevented;  and  as  such  a 
system  probably  did  exist  in  Upper  Canada  during  the  administration 
of  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland,  it  may  be  said  that  so  far  his  government 
was  led  to  act  on  false  principles.  Let  us  not  here  be  misunderstood ;  we 
do  not  suppose  there  was  anything  like  an  organized  system,  but  only 
that  tales  to  the  personal  disadvantage  of  the  anti-ministerial  party 
were  too  readily  listened  to.  No  doubt,  the  members  of  that  party 
were  as  credulous  in  listening  to  tales  to  the  prejudice  of  the  adherents 
of  Government,  but  then  they  had  it  not  in  their  power  to  inflict  punish- 
ment." He  refers  to  Willis  as  an  illustration. 


94  JOHN  GALT 

road-making  and  bridge-building,  and  indeed  everything  con- 
nected with  the  practical  part  of  the  settlement.' 

"This  was  just  the  sort  of  life  I  wished;  so  I  closed  at  once 
with  his  offer.  ...  In  person,  Mr.  Gait  was,  I  should 
think,  considerably  above  six  feet  in  height,  and  rather  of  a 
heavy  build ;  his  aspect  grave  and  dignified,  and  his  appear- 
ance prepossesing.  His  disposition  was  kind  and  considerate ; 
but  at  the  same  time  he  commanded  respect;  and  I  can  say 
with  sincerity,  I  always  found  him  an  upright  and  honourable 
gentleman."1 

In  April  Strickland  was  at  Guelph  busy  at  bridge-building 
and  road-making,  and  in  his  spare  time  acting  as  amateur 
surgeon  and  dentist.  Prior  was  set  free  to  superintend  the 
cutting  of  a  road  through  nearly  a  hundred  miles  of  bush  to 
Goderich,  which  established  for  the  first  time  overland  com- 
munication between  Lake  Huron  and  Lake  Ontario.  Of  this 
achievement  Gait  was  justly  proud. 

"All  the  woodmen  that  could  be  assembled  from  the  set- 
tlers were  directed  to  be  employed,  an  explorer  of  the  line  to 
go  at  their  head,  then  two  surveyors  with  compasses;  after 
them  a  band  of  blazers,  or  men  to  mark  the  trees  in  the  line, 
then  went  the  woodmen  with  their  hatchets  to  fell  the  trees, 
and  the  rear  was  brought  up  by  waggons  with  provisions  and 
other  necessaries.  In  this  order  they  proceeded  simultane- 
ously cutting  their  way  through  the  forest,  till  they  reached 
their  spot  of  destination  on  the  lonely  shores  of  Lake  Huron, 
where  they  turned  back  to  clear  off  the  fallen  timber  from  the 
opening  behind."2  The  townships  bordering  the  road  were 
named  after  the  company  directors.  Under  Gait's  direction 
it  happened  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  province 
that  road-making  preceded  settlement. 

About  the  same  time  Gait  went  to  New  York  to  meet  his 
family  whose  departure  from  Scotland  had  been  delayed. 
While  waiting  for  them  he  paid  a  short  visit  to  Pennsylvania. 

^Twenty-Seven  Years  in  Canada  West,  or  the  Experience  of  an  Early 
Settler,  vol.  I.,  199-200.  The  book  was  edited  by  his  daughter,  Agnes 
Strickland,  the  author. 

*Autobiog.,  II.,  122. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  95 

On  their  arrival  his  wife  and  sons  were  temporarily  installed 
in  the  house  at  Burlington  Bay.  A  little  later  the  boys  were 
put  to  school  in  the  Lower  Province,  and  Mrs.  Gait  accom- 
panied her  husband  to  Guelph,  where  the  Priory  was  fitted  up 
for  her  reception.  "Our  house,  it  is  true,"  he  wrote  to  Moir, 
"is  but  a  log  one  .  .  .  but  it  is  not  without  some  preten- 
sions to  elegance.  It  has  a  rustic  portico  formed  with  the 
trunks  of  trees,  in  which  the  constituent  parts  of  the  Ionic 
order  are  really  somewhat  intelligibly  displayed.  ...  In 
the  course  of  this  summer,  another  colony  has  been  planted, 
and  a  new  town,  called  Goderich,  laid  out  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Huron.  .  .  .  So,  you  see,  if  you  tell  me  of  new  books, 
I  can  tell  you  of  new  towns — and  which  are  the  most  interest- 
ing, I  leave  Christopher  North  and  the  Shepherd  to  deter- 
mine."1 

His  literary  propensities,  Gait  said,  were  suspended  while 
he  was  in  Upper  Canada,  because  he  thought  he  had  more  use- 
ful work  to  do.  But  occasionally  his  thoughts  turned  to  book- 
making.  "This  will  serve  to  let  you  know,"  he  wrote  to  Black- 
wood  in  November,  1827,  "that  I  am  still  in  the  land  of  the 
living.  After  the  most  active  year  of  my  whole  life  I  have  at 
last  obtained  a  little  leisure,  and  perhaps  before  the  winter  is 
over  may  send  you  something;  but  hitherto  I  have  not  had  a 
day  to  spare  from  the  road  or  the  office.  .  .  .  What  would 
you  think  of  a  series  to  be  called  The  Settlers,  or  Tales  of 
Guelph?  The  idea  has  come  often  across  my  mind  and  the 
materials  are  both  novel  and  abundant."2  Nothing  seems  to 
have  come  of  this,  and  a  year  later  he  writes  again  about  a 
work  of  a  very  different  sort.  "I  have  been  for  some  time  in- 
tending to  request  you  to  announce  a  work  which  I  have  nearly 
finished  ...  a  view  of  the  world  of  London,  under  the 
title  of  My  Landlady  and  Her  Lodgers.  I  think  it  will  be  quite 
as  good  as  anything  I  have  ever  done,  and  be  a  little  like  the 
Annals,  with  more  variety  of  incident  and  character."3  Noth- 

*Memoir,  Ixv.     The  letter  is  dated  Oct.  5,  1828. 
2Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.,  I.,  462-3. 

3Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.,  I.,  463-4.    My  Landlady  and  her  Lodgers  ran 
in  Blackwood's  from  August  to  November,  1829. 


96  JOHN  GALT 

ing  could  be  less  like  the  Annals  than  this  dull  collection  of 
stories  told  by  a  landlady  about  her  lodgers,  a  strangely  musty 
subject  for  a  man  who  was  driving  roads  through  the  forest 
and  laying  the  foundations  of  towns. 

In  July,  1828,  the  company's  accountant,  Thomas  Smith, 
arrived  from  England.  Gait,  who  had  been  hampered  from 
the  beginning  by  an  inadequate  staff,  and  who  had  asked  for 
an  accountant  nearly  a  year  before,  welcomed  the  new  arrival. 
As  things  fell  out,  Smith  was  to  prove  anything  but  a  help. 
The  directors  had  grown  uneasy  at  the  extent  and  cost  of 
Gait's  operations,  particularly  those  at  Guelph.  The  Canada 
Company,  like  other  enterprises,  had  suffered  from  the  com- 
mercial depression  in  England  which  had  followed  an  outburst 
of  joint  stock  company  speculation.  There  was  evidence  also 
of  an  intention  on  the  part  of  some  familiar  with  the  inside 
workings  of  the  company  to  manipulate  the  market  so  as  to 
buy  the  stock  later  at  a  low  figure.  Both  shareholders  and 
directors  were  therefore  anxious  to  cut  down  expenses. 
Rumours  were  rife  in  Canada  that  the  company  was  to  be 
broken  up.  Accordingly  Smith  had  been  sent  out,  nominally 
as  accountant  and  cashier,  but  also  as  a  check  on  the  superin- 
tendent.1 

Friction  was  soon  felt.  Smith  sems  to  have  been  vain, 
short-tempered,  and  ignorant  of  Canadian  conditions,2  while 

1Can.  Arch.  Q.  373.  A  statement  of  the  company's  position  a 
few  months  later  shows  that  the  contract  was  proving  too  large.  About 
a  ninth  of  the  original  shareholders  had  withdrawn  when  the  Clergy  Re- 
serves were  exchanged  for  the  Huron  Tract.  In  England  the  credit  and 
prospects  of  the  company  had  deteriorated.  In  Canada  unexpected  com- 
petition had  been  met  with  from  the  commissioners  appointed  to  dispose 
of  Clergy  Reserves  and  other  lands.  The  Provincial  Government  had 
also  continued  to  make  free  grants.  The  company  had  paid  to  Govern- 
ment up  to  May,  1829  £42,500;  expenditure  in  Canada,  chiefly  on  local  . 
improvements,  over  £35,000.  Against  this  total  of  £77,500  could  be  set 
only  £29,000  derived  from  sales,  of  which  only  about  a  quarter  was  paid 
up,  and  a  further  sum  of  £2,500  received  in  labour.  Government  was 
asked  to  reconsider  the  whole  case  owing  to  the  "absolute  impossibility 
of  completing  the  subsisting  contract  on  the  part  of  the  company."  It 
was  suggested  that  the  company  be  allowed  to  concentrate  on  the  Huron 
Tract  and  surrender  the  scattered  Crown  Reserves,  which  were  diffi- 
cult to  dispose  of.  At  the  beginning  of  1830  it  was  decided  to  make  a 
further  effort  to  carry  out  the  terms  of  the  original  contract. 

2His  ignorance  gave  Dunlop  opportunities  for  practical  joking.  See 
Strickland,  op.  cit.,  I.,  223  f. 


JHE      AUTHOR    Of     A     "LIFE     OF 

(From  Fraser's  Magazine,  December  1830) 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  97 

Gait  chafed  at  the  undefined  extent  of  his  subordinate's  power 
and  the  surveillance  to  which  he  felt  himself  exposed.  From 
the  York  office,  of  which  he  was  placed  in  charge,  Smith  car- 
ried on  an  independent  correspondence  with  the  directors. 
The  decisive  explosion  was  caused  by  a  trivial  incident.  Sir 
Peregrine  Maitland  was  about  to  return  to  England,  and  Gait 
wrote  to  thank  him  for  his  aid  to  the  company.  In  return, 
Maitland  offered  to  present  him  to  Sir  John  Colborne,  the  new 
Governor.  When  Gait  came  back  from  the  ceremony  Smith 
"broke  out  into  a  frantic  passion,  talked  unmitigated  non- 
sense, and  said  I  ought  to  have  taken  him  'in  my  hand'  when 
I  went  to  Sir  Peregrine."1 

His  manner  indicated,  so  Gait  thought,  a  vague  power  and 
authority  entrusted  to  him  by  the  directors.  To  escape  from 
this  intolerable  situation  Gait  resolved  to  return  to  England 
and  come  to  an  understanding  with  the  board.  By  the  next 
mail  (Nov.  9,  1828),  he  sent  word  of  his  purpose  to  London. 
But  the  accountant  had  forestalled  him,  for  on  the  day  Gait's 
letter  was  posted  Smith  ha'd  crossed  Lake  Ontario,  bound  for 
New  York  and  London  to  lay  his  version  of  the  case  before  the 
directors.  If  the  company's  interests  in  Canada  were  not  to 
be  abandoned  there  was  nothing  for  Gait  but  to  remain  at 
his  post. 

From  now  on  his  position  grew  steadily  more  irksome. 
The  directors  ordered  the  bank  at  York  not  to  honour  his 
'drafts.  Convinced  by  this  and  other  circumstances  that  he 
stood  condemned  in  the  eyes  of  the  directors,  he  began  to 
gather  materials  for  his  defence.  Joseph  Fellows,  an  agent 
of  the  Pulteney  Land  Company,  was  invited  to  inspect  the 
work  at  Guelph.  His  report  declared  the  improvements 
judicious  and  necessary,  the  office  routine  orderly.  He  gave 
Gait  credit  for  sound  judgment  and  uncommon  industry,  and 
recommended  that  he  be  given  the  most  ample  discretionary 
powers. 

Winter  having  suspended  out-door  work,  Gait  found  time 
to  pay  a  farewell  visit  to  Goderich.  He  travelled  by  sleigh 

iAutobiog.,  II.,  125. 


98  JOHN  GALT 

over  the  newly  cut  road,  lodging  at  log  taverns.  The  journey 
gave  him  full  leisure  to  ponder  his  position.  "I  had  time,  as 
I  sat  solitary  in  the  sleigh,  to  chew  the  cud  of  bitter  thought. 
1  felt  myself  unworthily  treated,  for  everything  I  had  touched 
was  prosperous,  and  my  endeavours  to  foster  the  objects  of 
my  care  were  all  flourishing,  and,  without  the  blight  of  one 
single  blossom,  gave  cheering  promises  of  ample  fruit."1 

At  Goderich  a  large  clearing  had  been  made  and  several 
houses  built,  but  the  sight  of  promising  development  only  re- 
minded Gait  that  his  own  career  in  Canada  was  at  an  end. 
"My  adieu  to  Lake  Huron  was  a  final  farewell ;  for,  from  the 
moment  I  lost  sight  of  its  waters,  I  considered  my  connection 
with  the  Company  closed."2 

On  his  return  to  Guelph  he  prepared  for  his  departure, 
though  he  had  received  as  yet  no  official  recall.  When  he  left 
he  was  presented  with  an  address  signed  by  144  heads  of  fam- 
ilies. At  York,  however,  only  Strickland,  Dunlop  and  one 
other  accompanied  him  to  the  wharf.  In  New  York  he  learned 
from  Buchanan  that  Thomas  Mercer  Jones  had  been  appointed 
to  succeed  him  as  superintendent.  But  Gait  was  still  reluct- 
ant to  admit  that  his  dismissal  was  final,  and  in  the  hope  that 
he  might  return  he  left  his  family  in  Canada. 

The  petty  jealousies  and  wranglings  which  resulted  in  his 
departure  no  longer  obscure  the  real  importance  of  his  work. 
The  Canada  Company  was  for  him  more  than  a  mere  com- 
mercial scheme.3  It  was  to  be  a  means  of  relieving  distress 
in  Great  Britain  by  encouraging  emigration.  "The  best  way 
of  lessening  the  evils  of  the  old  world  is  to  improve  the  con- 
dition of  the  new ;  and  to  something  of  this  kind  my  thoughts 
have  constantly  gravitated."4  His  proposals  were  very  sim- 
ilar to  Gibbon  Wakefield's  system  which  was  applied  in  Aus- 

^Autobiog.,  II.,  154. 

zibid.,  II.,  158. 

3The  Canada  Company  is  still  in  existence.  In  1856  an  Act  was 
passed  giving  facilities  for  winding  it  up,  but  in  1877  the  Colonial  Land 
and  Emigration  Commissioners  reported  that  the  company  had  still 
400,000  acres  to  sell  or  lease.  A  further  Imperial  Act  was  passed  in 
1881. 

4Essay  on  Colonization,  Lit.  Life,  II.,  45. 


GALT  IN  CANADA  (1826-1829)  99 

tralia.  "Let  the  Government  fix  a  minimum  price  on  colonial 
lands,  at  which  it  will  sell  to  individual  settlers,  or  companies, 
or  assign  for  sale  to  agents,  as  merchandise,  and  constitute  by 
the  proceeds  a  fund,  from  which  it  will  construct  public  works 
in  the  respective  colonfes,  and  defray  the  expense  of  removing 
to  them  the  superabundant  labourers  of  the  mother  country."1 
But  Gait  saw  clearly  that  successful  and  resourceful  settlers 
could  not  be  made  out  of  all  the  surplus  population  of  Britain.2 
He  emphasized  the  necessity  of  making  Canada  an  attractive 
field  for  capital,  and  contrasted  the  enterprise  of  the  United 
States  with  the  stagnation  of  the  neighbouring  provinces.  In 
Bogle  Corbet  he  shows  the  tendency  of  disappointed  settlers 
to  leave  Canada  for  the  States.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  the 
Canada  Company  that  it  brought  to  Upper  Canada  a  good  type 
of  settler,  and  helped  to  stimulate  a  reasonable  and  effective 
system  of  land  settlement. 

"I  remember,"  wrote  Strickland  in  1853,  "on  my  first  visit 
to  the  mouth  of  the  river  Maitland,  now  the  site  of  Goderich, 
a  bridle-path  for  seventy  miles  through  the  trackless  forest 
was  the  only  available  communication  between  the  settlements 
and  Lake  Huron.  This  was  only  twenty-four  years  ago.  This 
vast  and  fertile  tract  of  land  of  more  than  one  million  acres, 
at  that  time  did  not  contain  a  population  of  three  hundred 
souls ;  no  teeming  fields  of  golden  grain,  no  manufactories,  no 
mills,  no  roads ;  the  rivers  were  unbridged,  and  one  vast  soli- 
tude reigned  around,  unbroken,  save  by  the  whoop  of  the  red- 
man,  or  the  distant  shot  of  the  trapper. 

"Reverse  the  picture,  and  behold  what  the  energies  and 
good  management  of  the  Canada  Company  have  effected. 
Stage-coaches  travel  with  safety  and  dispatch  along  the  same 
tract  where  formerly  I  had  the  utmost  difficulty  to  make  my 
way  on  horseback  without  the  chance  of  being  swept  from  the 
saddle  by  the  limbs  of  trees  and  tangled  brushwood.  A  con- 
tinuous settlement  of  the  finest  farms  now  skirts  both  sides  of 

2SeeV/ie  Metropolitan  Emigrant  (Eraser's  Mag.,  Sept.,  1835). 


100  JOHN  GALT 

this  road,  from  the  southern  boundary  line  of  this  district  to 
Goderich. 

"Another  road  equally  good  traverses  the  block  from  the 
western  boundary.  Thriving  villages,  saw  and  grist-mills, 
manufactories,  together  with  an  abundance  of  horses,  cattle, 
sheep,  grain,  and  every  necessary  of  life  enjoyed  by  a  popu- 
lation of  26,000  souls,  fully  prove  the  success  caused  by  the 
persevering  industry  of  the  emigrants  who  were  so  fortunate 
as  to  select  this  fruitful  and  healthy  locality  for  their  future 
homes."1 

That  Gait  always  acted  wisely  in  Canada  is  what  no  one 
will  maintain.  He  could  have  shown  more  tact  without  any 
sacrifice  of  integrity;  and  he  could  have  accommodated  him- 
self to  the  political  situation  without  losing  his  independence. 
Strickland  says  that,  while  Gait's  ideas  were  generally  good, 
they  were  often  badly  carried  out  in  detail,  and  that  he  erred 
in  appointing  inexperienced  men  to  his  staff. 

But  he  had  energy  and  vision,  energy  to  form  the  company 
in  the  face  of  difficulties  and  delays  and  to  accomplish  much 
during  his  three  years  in  Canada,  vision  to  see  that  he  was 
building  for  the  future.  "My  successors,"  he  wrote  with  just 
pride,  "have  not  found  they  could  improve  my  plans,  but  they 
are  gathering  the  freightage  of  the  vessel  which  I  had  planned 
and  had  the  laborious  task  of  the  building  and  launching,  by 
which  my  health  has  been  vitally  injured,  and  my  mind  filled 
with  a  rancour  that  has  embittered  my  life."2 

A  note  in  his  journal  shows  that  he  looked  forward  to  "the 
general  amalgamation  of  all  the  British  North  American  col- 
onies into  one  kingdom  upon  a  federative  principle;"  and  he 
saw  that  "a  time  must  arrive  when  our  colonies  one  by  one 
will  come  of  age  and  set  up  for  themselves.  The  policy  to- 
wards them  should  therefore  be  manifestly  with  a  view  to  this 
as  the  best  of  all  terms." 


iStrickland,  op.  cit.,  L,  196-7. 
*Autobiog.,  II.,  137. 


THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  101 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  (1829-1839) 

Gait's  last  ten  years  form  a  monotonous  record  of  ill- 
health,  poverty  and  book-making.  Like  Scott,  he  wrote  till 
hand  and  brain  could  do  no  more,  and  the  sadness  of  the  strug- 
gle is  not  lessened  by  the  worthlessness  of  its  literary  results. 

At  first  he  faced  his  darkening  prospects  with  something  of 
the  old  confidence.  "Here  is  Gait,"  wrote  Lockhart,  "as  large 
as  life  and  as  pompous  as  ever,  full  of  title-pages  and  unwrit- 
ten books  .  .  .  and  his  own  personal  troubles  which  are 
neither  few  nor  trivial."1  He  soon  learned  that  his  dismissal 
from  the  Canada  Company  was  final,  and  before  he  could  turn 
elsewhere  for  a  livelihood  his  creditors  were  down  on  him. 
The  most  troublesome  was  the  Rev.  Dr.  Valpy,  Headmaster  of 
Reading  School,  where  Gait's  three  sons  had  been  educated. 
Unable  to  meet  the  demand,  a  matter  of  eighty  pounds,  Gait 
asked  for  time ;  but  Valpy,  though  an  acquaintance  of  twenty- 
five  years'  standing,  refused  any  concessions.  Gait  was  com- 
mitted to  the  King's  Bench  Prison  where  he  suffered  a  long 
confinement. 

While  in  prison  he  wrote  Lawrie  Todd,  or  the  Settlers  in 
the  Woods  (1830) ,  the  first  and  best  of  the  later  novels.  Char- 
acteristically enough,  Gait  valued  it  as  a  handbook  for  set- 
tlers and  was  disappointed  to  find  it  read  as  a  mere  novel. 
The  long  rambling  plot  describes  the  career  of  a  Scotch  emi- 
grant in  America.  The  first  part  of  the  story  was  based  on  the 
life  of  Grant  Thorburn,  a  thrifty  Scot,  who  made  his  fortune 
as  a  seedsman  in  New  York.2  The  book  was  welcomed  by 
Eraser's  Magazine  (March,  1830),  and  Sydney  Smith  read  it 

!Mrs.  Oliphant,  op.  cit.,  I.,  243. 

^Galt  borrowed  Thorburn's  MS.  and  gave  him  "an  author's,  not  a 
publisher's  price"  for  it.  Thorburn  declares  that  Gait's  publishers,  Col- 
burn  and  Bentley,  gave  3,000  guineas  for  Lawrie  Todd.  If  this  is  so 
Gait's  poverty  can  only  be  explained  by  extravagance  or  by  heavy  debts 
previously  incurred.  In  1834  Thorburn  published  his  MS.  under  the  title 
Forty  Years'  Residence  in  America. 


102  JOHN  GALT 

with  pleasure.  Scott  was  disappointed,  though  sympathetic 
to  a  fellow-craftsman  in  difficulties.  "I  have  begun  Lawrie 
Todd,"  he  notes  in  his  Journal,  "which  ought,  considering  the 
author's  undisputed  talents,  to  have  been  better.  He  might 
have  laid  Cooper  aboard,  but  he  follows  far  behind.  No  won- 
der: Gait,  poor  fellow,  was  in  the  King's  Bench  when  he 
wrote  it."1  Gait  did  well  not  to  ape  Cooper.  Lawrie  Todd  is 
dullest  when  it  tries  to  be  romantic  and  forgets  to  be  an  unpre- 
tentious record  of  pioneering  conditions. 

Other  books  followed  in  the  same  year.  Southennan,  a 
tale  of  the  Reformation,  unfortunately  invites  comparison 
with  The  Abbot.  His  next  venture,  the  Life  of  Byron,  Gait 
regarded  "as  the  worst  paid  and  the  most  abused"  of  all  his 
books.  It  describes  Byron's  travels  vividly,  but  a  curious 
streak  of  independence  runs  through  the  whole,  as  if  Gait 
were  taking  care  not  to  be  too  impressed  by  Byron's  greatness. 
It  was  partly  this  and  partly  extravagances  of  style  which 
roused  the  critics.  But  in  spite,  or  perhaps  because  of  the 
critical  uproar,  the  book  became  popular.  Three  editions  were 
published  within  a  year  and  10,000  copies  sold.2 

_Fraser[s_Magazine  said  a  good  word  for  the  Life  of  Byron 
and  defended  it  against  the  Edinburgh  Review.  For  Gait  had 
been  one  of  the  men  who  launched  the  Magazine  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1830.  For  seven  years  he  was  a  steady  contributor  on 
all  manner  of  subjects.  This  connection  introduced  him  to 
Carlsdfi*who  has  left  us  the  best  portrait  we  have  of  Gait  in 
his  later  years.  "Gait  looks  old,  is  deafish,  has  the  air  of  a 
sedate  Greenock  burgher ;  mouth  indicating  sly  humour  and 
self-satisfaction ;  the  eyes-,  -old  -and  without  lashes,  gave  me  a 

iJournal,  July  11,  1830.  Gait  criticizes  Cooper  (Lit.  Life,  I.,  397). 
The  Nodes  (Blackwood's  Magazine,  April,  1830),  has  a  kindly  reference 
to  Lawrie  Todd. 

2The  Life  of  Byron  formed  Vol.  I  of  the  National  Library,  edited  by 
the  Rev.  G.  R.  Gleig.  See  for  criticisms  Athenaeum,  Sept.  4  and  11, 
1830;  Eraser's  Magazine,  Oct.  and  Nov.,  1830;  Lang's  Life  of  Lockhart, 
II  96;  Blackwood's  Magazine,  Nov.,  1830;  Moore's  Journal,  Sept.  19, 
1830  (cf.  Gait's  Autobiog.  II.,  186-9).  Moore  and  Gait  had  met  in  Lon- 
don about  1822.  The  Life  of  Byron  led  to  a  quarrel  with  Hobhouse  and 
some  angry  correspondence  which  Gait  printed  in  Eraser's  Mag.  (Dec., 
1830),  under  the  title,  Pot  versus  Kettle. 


THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  103 

sore  of  woe  interest  for  him.  He  wears  spectacles,  and  is 
hard  of  hearing ;  a  very  large  man,  and  eats  and  drinks  with 
a  certain  west  country  gusto  and  research.  Said  little,  but 
that  little  peaceable,  clear,  and  guimuthig,  wish  to  see  him 
also  again."1  About  a  month  later  (Feb.  18,  1832),  he  speaks 
of  him  as  a  "broad  gawsie  Greenock  man,  old-growing,  lovable 
with  pity."  Carlyle  was  probably  attracted  by  a  man  who  re- 
garded literature  as  an  idle  trade  compared  with  the  prac- 
tical work  of  the  world. 

From  1831  to  1833  Gait  drove  ahead  with  book-making. 
On  almost  every  volume  rests  the  shadow  of  ill-health,  poverty 
and  distress  of  mind.  At  Lockhart's  suggestion  he  compiled 
The  Lives  of  the  Players  (1831).*  In  the  same  year  he  con- 
tributed to  The  Club-Book,  a  collection  of  tales  edited  by  An- 
drew Picken,  and  again  used  his  knowledge  of  America  in 
Bogle  Corbet.  The  excitement  over  the  Reform  Bill  suggested 
three  slight  sketches.  The  Member  describes  election  tricks 
and  petty  corruption  in  the  manner  of  The  Provost.  The 
Radical  is  a  similar  skit  on  the  other  side  of  politics.3  In  Our 
Borough  (Blackwood's  Magazine,  Oct.,  1832),  which  shows 
the  alarm  of  a  west  country  town  council  at  rumours  of  the 
Reform  Bill,  Gait  recaptured  for  a  moment  the  humour  of  The 
Ayrshire  Legatees.*  Gait's  other  books  need  little  comment. 
In  Stanley  Buxton  (1832)  a  wild  romantic  plot  spoils  some 
pleasant  scenes  in  a  quiet  laird's  household;  Eben  Erskine 
(1833)  is  a  listless  chronicle  of  travel  masquerading  as  a 
novel;  The  Stolen  Child  (1833)  is  neither  convincing  nor  sen- 
sational.5 Gait  felt  a  pathetic  and  absurd  confidence  in  his 

^Carlyle's  Journal,  Jan.  21,  1832.  In  his  essay  on  Baillie  the  Cov- 
enanter, Carlyle  refers  to  the  "many-tinted  traceries  of  Scotch  humours, 
such  as  a  Gait,  a  Scott,  or  a  Smollett  might  have  rejoiced  over." 

^Lockhart  seems  to  have  been  a  good  friend  in  these  years.  Through 
his  influence  Gait  became  editor  of  The  Courier,  a  post  which  he  re- 
linquished in  July,  1830. 

3Cf.  Athenaeum,  Jan.  28,  1832. 

*Our  Borough  is  continued  under  the  title,  The  Dean  of  Guild,  in 
Stories  of  the  Study. 

50ne  of  the  characters  in  The  Stolen  Child,  a  pompous  and  insin- 
cere headmaster,  may  be  intended  for  Dr.  Valpy.  Many  passages  in  this 
book  and  in  Eben  Erskine  show  Gait's  disgust  at  his  literary  drudgery. 


104  JOHN  GALT 

next  work,  The  Ouranologos,  which  was  to  appear  in  numbers, 
each  number  containing  a  picture  and  a  description  of  some 
famous  event.  The  first  and  only  number  dealt  with  the 
Deluge.  This  was  followed  by  Stories  of  the  Study  (1833) 
and  by  the  Autobiography  in  which  occasional  vivid  passages 
are  lost  in  a  diffuse,  vague  and  ill  arranged  record  written  in 
a  tone  of  defiant  self -justification. 

Though  Gait  had  thus  been  supporting  his  family  by  in- 
cessant book-making,  he  had  hopes  of  help  from  another 
source.  The  Canada  Company  had  been  planned  with  the  en- 
couragement of  the  Colonial  Office  and  in  the  hope  of  com- 
pensating Canadian  war-sufferers.  Though  the  funds  were 
not  devoted  to  this  purpose,  Gait  felt  he  had  earned  a  brok- 
er's commission  by  effecting  a  sale  of  such  magnitude  and  in- 
creasing the  Government's  revenues.  The  amount  of  his  claim 
was  1,437  pounds,  10  shillings.  On  the  eve  of  his  departure 
for  Canada  he  had  asked  Horton  about  the  matter  and  had 
been  put  off.  When  he  re-opened  the  question  in  1829  he  met 
with  new  delays  and  evasions.  Repeated  appeals  proved  fruit- 
less.1 At  the  beginning  of  1834  he  received  a  last  decisive 
refusal  which  ended  his  expectations. 

His  dealings  with  the  Canada  Company  did  not,  however, 
deter  him  from  a  similar  project,  The  British  American  Land 
Company.  There  was  the  same  correspondence  with  the 
Colonial  Office,  the  same  eagerness  in  the  promoters,  the  same 
caution  in  the  Government.  Once  again  Gait  became  Secre- 
tary and  later  Superintendent.2  In  December,  1833,  the  Com- 
pany purchased  over  800,000  acres  in  the  Eastern  Townships 
of  Lower  Canada.  On  March  20,  1834,  the  Company  was  in- 
corporated by  Royal  Charter,  but  before  this  Gait's  share  in 
the  enterprise  had  been  ended  by  ill  health. 

Since  1829  his  health  had  been  steadily  worse.  Confine- 
ment, disappointments  and  hack-work  had  all  told  upon  him. 

^Can.  Arch.  Q.  373.  In  The  Member  Gait  introduces  a  Mr.  Selby 
who  had  similar  claims  on  the  Colonial  Office  which  were  disallowed. 

?The  correspondence  is  chiefly  in  Can.  Arch.  Q.  213.  The  Company 
is  still  in  existence.  A  third  scheme,  the  Nova  Scotia  Land  Company, 
came  to  nothing. 


THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  105 

The  disease,  according  to  Gait,  had  attacked  him  slightly 
twenty-five  years  before.  A  fall  in  the  forest  in  Canada  seems 
to  have  injured  his  spine.  Symptoms  of  a  nervous  disorder 
appeared,  followed  by  lethargy  and  paralysis.  In  April,  1831, 
he  moved  to  Barn  Cottage,  Old  Brompton,  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  from  Hyde  Park  Corner,  and  in  those  days  a  place  of  gar- 
dens and  green  fields.  Here  Moir  visited  him  (June,  1832) 
and  found  "the  drooping  figure  of  one  old  before  his  time,  crip- 
pled in  his  movements,  and  evidently  but  half  resigned  to  this 
premature  curtailment  of  his  mental  and  bodily  exertions."1 
Successive  attacks  of  paralysis  affected  speech,  handwriting 
and  sight.  In  the  spring  of  1833  his  loneliness  was  increased 
by  his  two  eldest  sons  sailing  for  Canada,  John  to  try  his  for- 
tunes as  a  settler,  Thomas  to  enter  the  service  of  the  Canada 
Company.  In  March,  1834,  his  youngest  boy,  Alexander,  also 
received  an  appointment  in  Canada.  Gait,  in  spite  of  his 
feebleness,  had  been  planning  to  go  himself,  and  had  been 
counting  on  his  son's  aid  on  the  voyage.  The  scheme,  perhaps 
never  practicable,  was  now  given  up. 

In  the  late  spring  of  1834  he  went  down  by  sea  to  Scotland. 
It  was  not  thus  he  had  dreamed  of  coming  home.  His  ambi- 
tion had  been  to  buy  and  build  and  plant  as  Scott  had  done  at 
Abbotsford  and  Jeffrey  at  Craigcrook.  "There  are  but  two 
situations,"  he  wrote  in  Sir  Andrew  Wylie,  "in  which  the  ad- 
venturer, returning  home,  can  duly  appreciate  the  delightful 
influence  of  such  an  hour  of  holiness  and  beauty  and  rest. 
The  one,  when  he  is  retreating  from  an  unsuccessful  contest 
with  fortune — when  baffled  and  mortified  by  the  effects  of  his 
integrity  or  of  his  friendliness,  he  abandons  the  struggle,  and 
retires  to  his  native  shades  as  to  the  embraces  of  a  parent,  to 
be  lulled  by  the  sounds  that  were  dear  to  his  childhood,  and 
which  he  fondly  hopes  will  appease  his  sorrows,  and  soothe 
him  asleep  forever ; — the  other,  when,  like  our  hero,  conscious 
of  having  achieved  the  object  of  his  endeavours,  he  comes 
with  an  honest  pride  to  enjoy  that  superiority  over  his  early 

^Memoir,  p.  xcv.  Mrs.  Thomson  also  visited  him  a  little  later  and 
has  described  his  condition.  (Bentley's  Miscellany,  vol.  18.) 


106  JOHN  GALT 

companions,  which  ...  is  really  the  only  reward  of  an 
adventurous  spirit."1 

For  a  couple  of  months  he  lodged  in  Hill  Street,  Edinburgh, 
and  saw  his  Literary  Life  through  the  press.  Moir  attended 
both  him  and  Blackwood,  who  lay  dying  in  Ainslie  Place,  a 
stone's  throw  distant.  Presently  he  moved  to  the  family  house 
at  Greenock,  occupied  by  his  widowed  and  invalid  sister,  Mrs. 
MacFie.  The  progress  of  the  disease  was  painfully  deliberate. 
On  occasion  Gait  could  still  appear  in  public,  and  he  was  still 
able  to  turn  out  a  story  or  an  article.  Among  his  papers  are 
several  short  poems  which  give  bitter  expression  to  his  suffer- 
ing and  helplessness.  Probably  his  last  public  appearance 
was  in  January,  1839,  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  James  Watt 
club.  A  portrait  of  Gait  by  John  Fleming,  of  Greenock,  was 
unveiled  at  the  dinner.  Gait  was  carried  to  and  from  the  din- 
ing room  in  an  arm  chair.  His  old  teacher,  Colin  Lament,  was 
present  and  was  very  proud  of  his  former  pupil. 

During  a  good  part  of  1838  and  1839  Gait  was  pestered 
with  visits  and  letters  from  Miss  Harriet  Pigott  who  wished 
him  to  revise  her  Records  of  Real  Life  for  the  press.2  Gait 
tried  to  beg  off  on  the  score  of  health,  but  Miss  Pigott  was 
determined  to  have  his  name  on  her  title-page.  Gait  declared 
he  was  unable  to  work  half  an  hour  a  day.  "Anguish  of  sen- 
sation and  confusion  of  head  clamour  to  me  to  desist."  Pov- 
erty on  the  one  hand  and  selfish  importunity  on  the  other  made 
him  consent  at  last  to  do  what  he  could.  Her  diary  records  how 
she  crossed  over  from  Helensburgh  to  press  her  literary  con- 
cerns on  the  helpless  invalid,  or,  as  she  expressed  it,  "to  cast 
a  cheering  beam  over  his  monotonous  days."  Gait  was  also 
engaged  in  collecting  some  of  his  verse  for  a  volume,  which, 
however,  he  did  not  live  to  see  published.  Among  his  papers 

iStr  And.  Wylie,  III.,  124-5. 

Harriet  Pigott  (1766-1846),  daughter  of  William  Pigott,  rector  of 
Chetwynd.  When  she  died  at  Geneva  she  left  her  diary  and  other  papers 
to  the  Bodleian  Library.  Among  them  is  material  she  gathered  for  a 
life  of  Gait.  When  Moir's  Memoirs  of  Gait  appeared  (1841)  she  gave 
up  her  plan. 


THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  107 

are  three  attempts  to  write  a  preface  for  the  book,  in  hand- 
writing so  shaky  as  to  be  often  quite  illegible.1 

Hand  and  brain  were  at  last  to  be  released  from  this  pool 
drudgery.  Towards  the  end  he  was  frequently  visited  by  the 
Rev.  Andrew  Gilmour,  who  contradicted  rumours  of  Gait's 
heterodoxy.  On  April  1,  1839,  Miss  Pigott  records  in  her 
diary,  "went  over  to  see  poor  Mr.  Gait  on  his  death  bed." 
Eight  days  later  she  found  him  in  a  stupor,  and  on  April  11 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  he  passed  away. 

He  was  buried  on  April  16  beside  his  father  and  mother  in 
the  Inverkip  Street  burying-ground.  Three  years  later  David 
Vedder,  the  sailor  poet  of  Orkney,  wrote  a  sonnet  at  the  grave. 

Near  this  grey  slab  shall  many  a  pilgrim  halt, 

With  quivering  lips,  pale  cheeks,  and  moistened  eyes, 

And  bosoms  heaving  with  unwonted  sighs, 

To  gaze  upon  thy  grave,  immortal  Gait! 

Thy  rare  Hogarthian  genius  could  exalt 

The  nameless  inmates  of  the  hamlet  lone, 

To  cope  with  men  who  occupied  a  throne. 

Thou  gem  of  price!  devoid  of  flaw  or  fault! 

Ah !  the  creations  of  thy  matchless  mind 

Stand  forth  in  bold  relief  and  bright  array; — 

The  simple  pastor,  and  the  simpler  hind, — 

Nay,  countless  groups  thy  pencil  did  portray, 

So  chaste,  so  beautiful !  they  all  but  breathe ! 

Each  adds  a  verdant  leaf  to  thy  unfading  wreath  !2 

*The  Demon  of  Destiny  and  Other  Poems  (Greenock,  1839),  with  a 
preface  by  Miss  Pigott.  One  other  literary  transaction  belong  to  Gait's 
last  months,  his  connection  with  A  Diary  Illustrative  of  the  Times  of 
George  IV  (1838).  This  scandalous  collection  of  gossip,  chiefly  about 
the  Princess  of  Wales,  afterwards  Queen  Caroline,  was  on  its  appear- 
ance attributed  to  Lady  Charlotte  Bury  (1775-1861),  and  her  authorship 
of  it  has  never  been  disproved.  Thackeray  attacked  the  vulgarity  of 
the  book  in  The  Times  (Jan.  11,  1838),  and  burlesqued  it  in  Skimmings 
from  the  Dairy  of  George  IV  (Eraser's  Mag.,  March,  1838) .  Alexander 
Gait  wrote  to  Fraser's  Magazine  (Jan.,  1841)  declaring  that  Lady  Char- 
lotte was  attempting  to  throw  the  whole  odium  of  the  work  on  his 
father.  He  says  that  Gait  allowed  his  name  to  appear  as  editor  only 
after  "the  most  earnest  solicitation  of  the  noble  authoress,"  and  that  he 
actually  wrote  no  more  than  the  preface. 

2Printed  in  The  Ayrshire  Wreath,  a  collection  of  original  pieces,  in 
prose  and  verse,  chiefly  by  native  authors  on  subjects  relating  to  Ayr- 
shire. Vedder's  poem  is  dated  August  15,  1842. 


108  JOHN  GALT 

In  the  gable  of  the  house  where  Gait  died  a  plate  has  been 
inserted  bearing  the  inscription :  "Here  John  Gait  dwelt  at  his 
death,  llth  April,  1839."  An  attempt  was  made  by  Mr.  Allan 
Park  Paton,  a  close  friend  of  Gait's,  and  for  many  years 
librarian  of  the  Greenock  Library,  to  raise  a  Memorial  by 
public  subscription.  The  plan  was  later  confined  to  the  erec- 
tion of  a  fountain  on  the  Greenock  Esplanade  at  the  foot  of 
Roseneath  Street.  With  the  assistance  of  Dante  Gabriel  Ros- 
setti,  Mr.  Paton  secured  the  architect  of  William  Morris's 
house  at  Kelmscott  to  design  the  masonry,  and  Thomas  Wool- 
ner,  R.A.,  as  sculptor  for  the  medallion  of  Gait's  head.  This 
was  based  on  a  death  mask  now  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
Paton's  son,  Mr.  J.  Fraser  Paton,  of  Glasgow. 

On  April  22  Gait's  widow  left  Greenock,  and  sailed  for 
Canada  to  join  her  sons,  two  of  whom  had  inherited  their 
father's  ability  without  his  disastrous  habit  of  scattering  his 
energies.1  She  lived  at  Sherbrooke  with  Alexander  till  her 
death. 

Gait's  mass  of  miscellaneous  writing  has  obscured  rather 
than  strengthened  his  position  in  literature.  It  would  have 
been  better  for  his  fame  if  he  had  written  four  or  five  of  his 
Scotch  novels  and  nothing  else.  But  Gait,  unlike  Miss  Fer- 
rier,  was  not  in  a  position  to  practise  this  wise  restraint  and 
to  stay  within  his  proper  domain.  The  support  of  his  family 
was  the  first  consideration ;  literary  reputation  was  a  second- 
ary matter. 

His  output  of  print  was  enormous  for  a  man  whose  chief 
energies  were  given  to  affairs.  Gait  spent  little  time  search- 
ing for  literary  material.  He  drew  on  his  own  experiences 
in  Scotland,  London,  the  East,  or  Canada,  or  else  was  con- 
tent to  fill  his  pages  with  mere  facts  transferred  from  other 
books.  The  material  in  either  case  was  seldom  reshaped  and 

!Sir  Thomas  Gait  (1815-1901)  became  chief -justice  in  the  Court  of 
Common  Pleas  in  Ontario,  and  was  knighted  in  1888.  Sir  Alexander 
Tilloch  Gait  (1817-1893)  came  out  to  Sherbrooke  as  a  clerk  in  the  Brit- 
ish American  Land  ^Company,  in  which  he  rose  to  be  commissioner.  En- 
tering public  life  in  '1849,  he  later  became  Minister  of  Finance.  The  third 
son,  John  Gait,  settled  at  Goderich  and  died  about  1860. 


THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  109 

transformed.  Again,  Gait  constantly  borrows  from  himself 
both  in  language  and  incident.1  Writing  easily  and  hastily, 
he  never  felt  the  desire,  and,  except  in  Scots,  had  not  the 
power  of  giving  his  thoughts  final  expression.  One  of  his 
favourite  maxims  was  that  book-making  was  a  kind  of  lottery 
and  that  he  could  finish  a  work  in  less  time  than  a  fastidious 
author  would  take  to  plan  it. 

This  is  characteristic  of  Gait's  whole  attitude  to  literature. 
He  describes  in  his  Literary  Life  how  at  Messina  he  fell  in 
with  the  Life  of  Alfieri.  He  read  there  that  a  man's  great- 
ness is  measured  by  the  benefit  he  does  the  world.  The  truth, 
he  says,  descended  on  him  like  an  inspiration,  and  the  con- 
clusion he  drew  was  that  he  should  not  make  books  from  topics 
supplied  by  others,  but  furnish  a  topic  by  his  own  achieve- 
ments. From  that  moment,  he  declares,  literature  was  for  him 
but  a  secondary  pursuit,  the  mere  means  of  recording  what 
has  been  done.  It  (was  easy  for  Gait  at  the  close  of  his  life  to 
select  a  dramatic  moment  for  the  birth  of  this  conviction.  But 
in  reality  it  had  been  his  creed  from  the  start,  and  was  the 
natural  outcome  of  his  circumstances  and  temperament. 

Gait  possesses  his  corner  in  literary  history  as  a  portrayer 
of  Scottish  manners.  But  he  does  not,  like  Scott,  speak  for  a 
nation.  He  belongs  to  the  west  country,  and  is  ill  at  ease  in 
the  Highlands  or  in  London.  He  is  the  novelist  of  Ayrshire 
as  truly  as  Burns  is  its  poet.  He  describes  the  habits  of  the 
people  whose  passions  are  sung  by  Burns.  The  shrewd, 
humorous  prose  of  the  chronicler  has  been  unduly  over- 
shadowed by  the  passionate  zest  of  the  singer's  verse.  Both 
have  the  same  easy  mastery  of  the  vernacular ;  for  both  it  was 
a  natural  inheritance,  not  an  acquired  literary  artifice.  It  is 
fitting  that  the  memory  of  Gait  is  still  a  standing  toast  at  the 
Burns  Club  in  Irvine. 

1Some  instances  may  be  given.  The  Life  of  Byron  reproduces  many 
pages  from  Letters  from  the  Levant;  the  Autobiography  draws  on  the 
Life  of  Byron  and  lends  to  the  Literary  Life;  the  Life  of  Wolsey  is 
freely  used  in  Pictures  Historical  and  Biographical  and  in  The  Wander- 
ing Jew;  Eben  Erskine  has  whole  passages  almost  verbatim  from  the 
Voyages  and  Travels.  The  plots  of  several  of  the  plays  were  later  re- 
told in  prose. 


110  JOHN  GALT 

This  strong  local  quality,  with  its  narrow  outlook  and  its 
loving  minuteness,  has  given  him  his  title  of  founder  of  the 
Kailyard  School.  He  is  indeed  almost  the  first  in  the  line  of 
Scottish  parochial  novelists,  and  on  that  ground  is  the  literary 
ancestor  of  George  Macdonald,  Ian  Maclaren,  Barrie  and 
others.  The  racy  touches  with  which  these  writers  illustrate 
the  ways  of  Aberdeen,  Drumtochty,  and  Thrums  come  no 
doubt,  directly  or  indirectly,  from  the  Annals  and  The  Provost. 
But  the  indebtedness  goes  little  further.  It  was  not  from  Gait 
that  Macdonald  derived  his  teaching  and  eloquence;  Ian  Mac- 
laren did  not  learn  his  sentimentality  from  the  author  of  The 
Entail;  Barrie's  pathos  and  humour,  if  more  delicate,  are  less 
strong  than  Gait's  fitful  poignancy  and  dour  satire.  Gait's 
world  is  harsher  and  bleaker ;  the  atmosphere  of  Gudetown  is 
more  like  that  of  Barbie  in  The  House  with  the  Green  Shutters 
than  that  of  Drumtochty  or  Thrums.  The  softer  qualities  of 
the  Kailyard  School,  if  absent  in  Gait,  are  present  in  full  meas- 
ure in  his  earliest  imitator,  Moir.  The  Life  of  Mansie  Wauch, 
Tailor  in  Dalkeith,  ran  intermittently  in  Blackwood's  Maga- 
zine for  three  years  from  1824  on,  and  was  published  in  book 
form  in  1828,  with  a  dedication  to  Gait.  The  autobiographical 
form,  the  local  pettiness,  and  the  narrator's  complacency  are 
in  Gait's  manner,  but  the  pathos  is  more  frequent  and  diffuse, 
and  the  humour  is  often  close  to  horseplay.  William  Alexan- 
der's excellent  sketches  of  humble  life  in  Aberdeenshire, 
Johnny  Gibb  of  Gushetneuk  (1871)  and  Life  Among  my  win 
Folk,  constantly  recall  the  Annals  by  their  faithful  recording 
spirit,  their  bare  reality,  and  their  strong  vernacular  flavour. 

Gait  was  compared  with  Crabbe  during  his  life-time,  and 
.more  than  once  since  then  their  likeness  has  been  pointed  out.1 
The  best  work  of  both  is  largely  based  on  their  own  early  mem- 
ories and  experience ;  Aldborough  is  for  Crabbe  what  Irvine  is 
for  Gait.  Crabbe's  confession  about  his  characters,  "There 
is  not  one  of  whom  I  had  not  in  my  mind  the  original;  but 
I  was  obliged,  in  some  cases,  to  take  them  from  their  real  situ- 

1For  example,  in  the  Monthly  Review  (Nov.,  1821),  and  in  the 
essay  on  Crabbe  in  Gilfillan's  Literary  Portraits. 


THE  LAST  TEN  YEARS  111 

ations," — applies  with  slight  modification  to  Gait's  methods. 
Both  are  less  successful  when  they  work  from  literary  models. 
The  Parish  Register  is  an  analogue  to  the  Annals,  though  in- 
ferior to  Gait's  book  by  reason  of  its  artificial  arrangement. 
The  Borough  is  the  counterpart  of  The  Provost,  though 
Crabbe's  desire  to  make  his  picture  complete  lengthens  .his 
poem  unduly.  Both  writers  show  their  strength  in  the  real- 
istic treatment  of  humble  life,  and,  while  Gait's  charm  lies 
chiefly  in  his  quiet  humour,  he  is  capable  at  times  of  that 
sternness  which  Byron  praised  in  Crabbe. 


112  JOHN  GALT 


APPENDIX 

THE  CANADIAN  BOAT  SONG 

The  Canadian  Boat  Song  first  appeared  in  the  Nodes  Am- 
brosianae  in  Blackwood's  Magazine  for  September,  1829.  All 
discussion  of  its  authorship  must  begin  by  quoting  the  dia- 
logue which  precedes  the  song.  The  talk  is  of  conditions  in 
Scotland  and  the  fortunes  of  Scotsmen. 

TICKLER 

"Why  in  truth,  we  need  hardly  pretend  that  we  have  not  had— 4)y 
hook  or  by  crook,  no  matter — our  own  share  of  the  fat  things.  India — 
army,  navy,  council,  bench,  and  direction,  are  pretty  well  ours.  In  the 
West  Indies  we  are  the  drivers  almost  universally,  and  our  planters  are 
at  least  half  and  half.  Nova  Scotia — the  name  speaks  for  itself — and 
as  for  Canada,  why  it's  as  Scotch  as  Lochaber — whatever  of  it  is  not 
French,  I  mean.  Even  omitting  our  friend  John  Gait,  have  not  we  hodie 
our  Bishop  Macdonell  for  the  Papists — our  Archdeacon  Strachan  for  the 
Episcopate — and  our  Tiger  Dunlop  for  the  Presbyterians?  and  'tis  the 
same,  I  believe,  all  downwards." 

(The  discussion  continues  on  the  condition  of  church  and  gentry  in 
Scotland.) 

TICKLER 

From  a  kingdom,  we  have  already  sunk  into  a  province;  let  the  thing 
go  on  much  longer,  and  from  a  province  we  shall  fall  to  a  colony — one 
of  "the  dominions  thereunto  belonging"!  They  are  knocking  our  old 
entail  law  to  (pieces  as  fast  as  they  can,  and  the  English  capitalists  and 
our  Glossins  between  them,  will  before  many  days  pass,  have  the  soil 
to  themselves — unless  something  be  done — and  I  for  one  shall  do  mon 
possible. 

MACRABIN 
Trecenti  juravimus. 

SHEPHERD 

Weel,  if  the  gentry  lose  the  land,  the  Highland  anes  at  ony  rate,  it 
will  only  be  the  Lord's  righteous  judgment  on  them  for  having  dis- 
possessed the  people  (before  them.  Ah!  wae's  me — I  hear  the  Duke  of 


THE  CANADIAN  BOAT  SONG  113 

Hamilton's  cottars  are  a'  gaun  away,  man  and  mither's  son,  frae  the 
Isle  o'  Arran.  Pity  on  us!  was  there  a  bonnier  sight  in  the  warld,  than 
to  sail  by  yon  green  shores  on  a  braw  summer's  evening,  and  see  the 
smoke  risin*  frae  the  puir  bodies'  bit  shieling,  ilk  ane  wi'  its  peatstack 
and  its  twa  three  auld  donnered  pines,  or  saughs,  or  elms,  sugh-sughin' 
owre  the  thack  in  the  gloamin'  breeze. 

NORTH 

By-the4>ye,  I  have  a  letter  this  morning  from  a  friend  of  mine  now 
in  Upper  Canada.  He  iwas  rowed  down  the  St.  Lawrence  lately,  for 
several  days  on  end,  by  a  set  of  strapping  fellows,  all  born  in  that 
country,  and  yet  hardly  one  of  whom  could  speak  a  word  of  any  tongue 
but  the  Gaelic.  They  sung  heaps  of  our  old  oar-songs,  he  says,  and  cap- 
itally well,  in  the  true  Hebridean  fashion ;  and  they  had  others  of  their 
own,  Gaelic  too,  some  of  which  my  friend  noted  down,  both  words  and 
music.  He  has  sent  me  a  translation  of  one  of  their  ditties, — shall  I  try 
how  it  will  croon? 

OMNES 
O,  by  all  means — (by  all  means. 

NORTH 

Very  well,  ye'll  easily  catch  the  air,  and  be  sure  you  tip  me  vigour 
at  the  chorus.  (Chants) 

Canadian  Boat  Song  (from  the  Gaelic) 
Listen  to  me,  as  when  ye  heard  our  father 
Sing  long  ago  the  songs  of  other  shores; 
Listen  to  me,  and  then  in  chorus  gather 
All  your  deep  voices,  as  ye  pull  your  oars ; 

Chorus 

Fair  these  broad  meads,  these  hoary  woods  are  grand; 
But  we  are  exiles  from  our  fathers'  land. 

From  the  lone  shieling  of  the  misty  island 

Mountains  divide  us,  and  the  waste  of  seas — 

Yet  still  the  blood  is  strong,  the  heart  is  Highland, 

And  we  in  dreams  behold  the  Hebrides, 

Fair  these  broad  meads,  these  hoary  woods  are  grand; 

But  we  are  exiles  from  our  father's  land. 


114  JOHN  GALT 

We  ne'er  shall  tread  the  fancy  haunted  valley, 

Where  'tween  the  dark  hills  creeps  the  small  clear  stream, 

In  arms  around  the  patriarch  banner  rally, 

Nor  see  the  moon  on  royal  tombstones  gleam: 

Fair  these  broad  meads,  these  hoary  woods  are  grand; 

But  we  are  exiles  from  our  fathers'  land. 

When  the  bold  kindred,  in  the  time  long-vanish'd, 

Conquer'd  the  soil  and  fortified  the  keep, — 

No  seer  foretold  the  children  would  be  banish'd, 

That  a  degenerate  Lord  might  boast  his  sheep: 

Fair  these  broad  meads,  these  hoary  woods  are  grand; 

But  we  are  exiles  from  our  fathers'  land. 

Come  foreign  rage — let  Discord  burst  in  slaughter! 

O  then  for  clansmen  true,  and  stern  claymore — 

The  hearts  that  would  have  given  their  blood  like  water, 

Beat  heavily  ibeyond  the  Atlantic  roar: 

Fair  these  broad  meads,  these  hoary  woods  are  grand; 

But  we  are  exiles  from  our  fathers'  land. 

SHEPHERD 

"Hech  me!  that's  really  a  very  affectin'  thing,  now.     Weel,  Doctor, 
what  say  you?    Another  bowl?" 

The  poem,  especially  the  second  stanza,  has  been  widely 
quoted  and  very  often  inaccurately.  It  was  included  in  The 
Republic  of  Letters  (1831),  volume  7,  a  literary  compilation 
edited  by  Whitelaw,  and  appeared  in  Rod  and  Gun  (1840)  by 
James  Wilson.  In  Tail's  Edinburgh  Magazine  (June,  1849) 
it  was  printed  with  some  alterations  in  the  text.  The  famous 
second  stanza  has  appeared  in  various  degrees  of  misquotation 
in  an  article  by  Dr.  Norman  Macleod  in  Good  Words  (1860), 
in  Cameron-Lees'  Stronbuy  (1881),  in  Stevenson's  Silverado 
Squatters  (1883),  in  Miss  Gordon  Cumming's  From  the  Heb- 
rides to  the  Himalayas  (1883),  in  William  Black's  Stand  Fast, 
Craig  Royston  (1890).  Joseph  Chamberlain  quoted  the  poem 
in  a  speech  at  Inverness  in  September,  1885.  In  Blackwood's 
Magazine  for  June,  1889,  a  changed  and  lengthened  form  of 
the  poem  appeared  in  an  article  by  Sir  John  Skelton.  Speak- 
ing at  the  festival  of  the  Royal  Scottish  Corporation  in  1904, 


THE  CANADIAN  BOAT  SONG  115 

Lord  Rosebery  quoted  the  second  stanza  as  "one  of  the  most 
exquisite  that  has  ever  been  written  about  the  Scottish  exile." 
Neither  the  Gaelic  original  of  the  poem  nor  its  author  has 
been  discovered,  though  much  energy  and  a  great  deal  of  bad 
logic  have  been  used  in  the  attempt.  As  for  the  Gaelic  orig- 
inal it  may  never  have  existed.  A  long  list  of  candidates  for 
the  authorship  has  been  brought  forward,  Lockhart,  Wilson 
(Christopher  North),  Wilson's  brother  Tom,  Hugh  Montgom- 
erie,  the  12th  Earl  of  Eglinton,  Gait,  Hogg,  Scott,  Dunlop, 
Longfellow  and  others.  The  more  serious  claimants  may  be 
briefly  considered. 

Lockhart's  claim  rests  on  the  fact  that  he  was  the  author  of 
the  Nodes  in  which  the  song  appeared.  The  argument  for 
Wilson  depends  partly  on  a  resemblance,  not  very  remarkable, 
between  his  acknowledged  poetry  and  the  Boat  Song.  The 
case  for  the  Earl  of  Eglinton  is  more  elaborate.  In  Tait's 
Edinburgh  Magazine  (June,  1849)  the  poem  appears  at  the 
close  of  an  article  on  Employment  or  Emigration  by  Donald 
Campbell,  who  introduces  it  thus :  "The  late  Earl  of  Eglinton, 
a  distinguished  member  of  a  family  not  destitute  of  Celtic 
blood,  and  which  has  been  illustrious  for  chivalrous  honour 
and  patriotic  feelings  and  principles,  had  a  high  opinion  of 
the  loyalty  and  bravery  of  the  Canadian  Highlanders,  and  left 
the  following  translation  of  one  of  their  boat  songs  among 
his  papers,  set  to  music  by  his  own  hand."  The  statement 
that  the  song  was  among  the  Earl's  papers  has  never  been  veri- 
fied. In  this  version  the  fourth  stanza  is  changed  to  the  fol- 
lowing : 

When  the  bold  kindred,  in  the  time  long  vanish'd, 
Gather'd  on  many  a  Scottish  battle-field, 
No  seer  foretold  the  children  would  be  banish'd, 
Proscrib'd  the  tartan  plaid  and  studded  shield. 
This  is  apparently  a  reference  to  the  Proscribing  and  Dis- 
arming Act  of  1747.    The  Earl  of  Eglinton  (b.  1739)  entered 
the  army  in  1756  and  saw  considerable  service  in  America 
with  the  78th  Regiment  of  Highlanders.     The  argument  is 
that  he  wrote  the  song  while  in  Canada.       He  returned  to 


116  JOHN  GALT 

Scotland  later,  and  died  in  1819.  This  theory,  attractive  and 
convincing  in  many  ways,  does  not  explain  the  poem's  appear- 
ance in  1829.  The  change  in  text  can  be  explained  on  the 
ground  that  whoever  inserted  the  song  in  Blackwood's  thought 
that  a  reference  to  the  Proscribing  and  Disarming  Act  was 
out  of  date  in  1829,  and  accordingly  replaced  it  by  a  reference 
to  the  evictions  in  the  Highlands. 

If  Lockhart,  Wilson,  or  the  Earl  of  Eglinton  is  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  author,  the  statement  about  the  friend  in  Upper 
Canada  must  of  course  be  disregarded.  There  are  no  serious 
arguments  to  connect  the  poem  with  the  names  of  Scott,  Hogg 
and  others.  It  remains  to  consider  Gait  and  Dunlop. 

The  arguments  for  Gait  are  far  from  conclusive.  The 
mainstay  of  the  case  is  his  connection  with  Canada  and  with 
Blackwood's.  But  Gait  was  in  England  in  April,  1829  (Auto- 
biography, II.,  344).  In  London  he  met  Lockhart  in  June. 
That  Gait  was  a  contributor  to  the  number  of  the  magazine 
in  which  the  song  appeared  proves  nothing.  Mr.  J.  H.  Lob- 
ban,  who  made  a  search  in  the  archives  of  William  Blackwood 
and  Sons  discovered  that  an  article  on  Colonial  Discontent, 
signed  Cabot,  which  was  printed  in  that  number,  was  by  Gait. 
The  same  number  also  contains  an  instalment  of  his  serial  My 
Landlady  and  her  Lodgers.  Mr.  Lobban,  however,  found 
nothing  to  connect  Gait's  name  with  the  Boat  Song. 

Several  other  facts  tell  against  rather  than  for  Gait.  He 
never  mentions  the  poem,  though  his  Literary  Life  speaks  of 
many  of  his  writings  of  far  less  merit.  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  he  had  any  knowledge  of  Gaelic,  though  this  does 
not  matter  if  the  Gaelic  original  is  not  taken  seriously.  Judg- 
ing by  The  Spaewife  and  The  Chief  (Blackwood's,  April  and 
May,  1833),  he  had  none  of  the  feeling  for  Highland  char- 
acter and  tradition  which  appears  in  the  Boat  Song.  His 
Autobiography  records  no  experience  corresponding  to  the 
circumstances  mentioned  in  the  Noctes.  His  trip  to  Montreal 
and  Quebec  was  in  winter  and  by  sleigh.  The  nearest  parallel 
is  his  trip  in  1827  on  Lake  Simcoe  and  Lake  Huron.  Some 
passages  in  his  account  of  it  are  suggestive  of  the  mood  of  the 


THE  CANADIAN  BOAT  SONG  117 

Boat  Song  (Autobiography,  II.,  72  ff.).  Holland's  Landing, 
he  says,  "presented  to  me  something  of  a  Scottish  aspect  in 
the  style  of  the  cottages,  but  instead  of  mountains  the  environs 
were  covered  with  trees.  .  .  .  After  descending  the  river 
we  steered  across  Lake  Simcoe,  the  boatmen  during  the  time 
amused  us  in  the  stillness  of  the  evening  with  those  Frencli 
airs  which  Moore  has  rendered  so  popular  by  his  Canadian 
boat  songs."  The  following  morning  "the  mist  prevented  me 
from  seeing  the  outline  of  the  adjacent  land,  but  the  situation 
of  the  house  reminded  me  of  Rhuardinnan  at  the  foot  of  Ben- 
Lomond  in  Scotland."  He  was  further  reminded  of  his  boyish 
expedition  to  Loch  Lomond  by  "the  houseless  shores  and 
shipless  seas"  of  Lake  Huron.  If  Gait  wrote  the  Boat  Song 
he  probably  did  so  at  this  time,  when  his  mind  was  apparently 
full  of  Scottish  memories.  If  it  belongs  to  him  it  is  by  far  his 
best  poem. 

Dunlop  did  not  come  into  the  field  as  a  candidate  till  1918. 
The  main  point  in  his  favour  is  that  he  was  in  Canada  when 
the  song  appeared.  He  had  of  course  earlier  been  a  con- 
tributor to  Blackwood's.  The  chief  argument  against  him  is 
that,  so  far  as  is  known,  he  was  not  a  writer  of  verse. 

The  following  are  a  few  of  the  many  discussions  of  the 
Boat  Song.  The  main  facts  are  clearly  and  impartially  stated 
by  Mr.  G.  M.  Fraser  in  The  Times  Literary  Supplement  of 
December  23,  1904.  Mr.  Fraser  also  presents  the  case  for 
Wilson  in  The  Lone  Shieling  (1908).  The  arguments  for  the 
Earl  of  Eglinton  are  well  put  in  The  Canadian  Boat  Song  and 
Other  Papers  (1912)  by  Thomas  Newbigging.  Two  articles 
in  The  Thistle  (May,  1910,  and  Dec.,  1912)  also  plead  for 
Eglinton.  An  article  in  The  Canadian  Magazine  (March, 
1918)  by  Mr.  Charles  S.  Blue,  upholds  Dunlop. 


118  JOHN  GALT 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
LIST  OF  GALT'S  WRITINGS 

1802  Various  Contributions  to  Scots  Magazine. 

1803  Life  of  John  Wilson  in  Scotish  Descriptive  Poems. 

1804  The  Battle  of  Largs:   a  Gothic  Poem.     With,  several  miscel- 

laneous  pieces. 

(Some  passages  appeared  in  the  Scots  Magazine  (April, 

1803,  and  January,  1804). 

1805  Essay  on  Commercial  Policy   (Philosophical  Magazine). 

1807    Statistical   Account  of   Upper   Canada    (Philosophical  Maga- 
zine). 

1812  Voyages  and  Travels  in  the  years  1809,  1810,  and  1811;  con- 

taining statistical,  commercial,  and  miscellaneous  obser- 
vations on  Gibraltar,  Sardinia,  Sicily,  Malta,  Serigo,  and 
K    Turkey.  r"       ' 

••  ^^^   _»^>*1*^^^ 

Life  and  Administration  of  Cardinal  Wolsey. 

The  Tragedies  of  Maddalen,  Agamemmon,  Lady  Mac- 
beth, Antonia,  and  Clytemnestra. 

Cursory  Reflections  on  Political  and  Commercial  Topics, 
as  connected  with  the  Regent's  accession  to  the  royal 
authority. 

1813  Essay  on  the  Fine  Arts  (Philosophical  Magazine). 
Letters  from  the  Levant. 

1814  Lives  of  Hawke,  Byron  and  Anson  in  Lives  of  the  British  A.dr 

mirals  (vol.  6). 
Instructions    in    the    Art    of    Rising    in    the    World     (New 

Monthly  Magazine). 
1814-15     The  Sorceress. 
The  Prophetess. 
Hector. 
Orpheus. 


The  Apostate. 

Love,  Honour  and  Interest. 

The  Word  of  Honour. 


In 

The  New 
British  Theatre. 


The  Mermaid. 
The  Witness. 
The  Masquerade. 
The  Watch  House. 
1816     The  Life,  Studies  and  Works  of  Benjamin  West,  Part  I. 
The  Crusade  (a  poem). 
The  Majolo. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  119 

1819  The  Soldier's  Mother  (a  poem).  ]  In 
Life  of  Spence.  I  Monthly 
Seven  Principles  of  Political  Economy.   J  Magazine. 

1820  All  the  Voyages  round  the  World,  by  Samuel  Prior   (Pseud.). 
A  Tour  of  Asia,  by  Rev.  T.  Clark  (Pseud.). 

The  Travels   and  Observations  of  Harearch,   the  Wandering 

Jew,  by  Rev.  T.  Clark  (Pseud). 

(The  initial  letters  of  the  closing  sentences  make  the 

words:  This  book  was  written  by  John  Gait). 
The  Earthquake:  A  Tale. 

The  Life,  Studies  and  Works  of  Benjamin  West,  Part  II. 
The  Ayrshire  Legatees  (Blackwood's  Magazine — concluded  Feb., 

1821). 

1821  Annals  of  the  Parish,  or  The  Chronicle  of  Dalmailing,  during 

the  ministry  of  the  Rev.  Micah  Balwhidder. 
Essay  on  the  Saxon  Chronicle  (Monthly  Magazine). 
The  Steamboat  (Blackwood's  Magazine). 

1822  Preface   to   Alexander   Graydon's  Memoirs   of   a  Life   chiefly 

passed  in  Pennsylvania  within  the  last  60  years. 
The  Provost. 
The  Gathering  of  the  West,  or  We're  Come  to  See  the  King 

(Blackwood's  Magazine). 
Sir  Andrew  Wylie. 

1828  The  Entail,  or  The  Lairds  of  Grippy. 
Ringan  Gilhaize,  or  The  Covenanters. 

The  Spaewife,  A  Tale  of  the  Scottish  Chronicles. 
1824     Rothelan,  A  Romance  of  the  English  Histories. 

The  Bachelor's  Wife,  a  selection  of   curious   and   interesting 

extracts,  with  cursory  observations. 
Pictures,   Historical   and   Biographical,   drawn   from   English, 

Scottish,  and  Irish  History. 
1826    The  Omen. 

The  Last  of  the  Lairds,  or  Life  and  Opinions  of  Malachi  Mail- 
ings of  Auldbiggings. 

1829  My  Landlady  and  Her  Lodgers  (Blackwood's  Magazine). 
Colonial  Discontent   (Blackwood's  Magazine). 

1830  Lawrie  Todd,  or  The  Settlers  in  the  Woods. 
Southennan. 

Life  of  Byron. 

The  Hurons.    A  Canadian  Tale. 

The  Bell  of  St.  Regis. 


American     Traditions,     I. — Cherockee.       A 

Tradition  of  the  Back-woods. 
Letters  on  West  Indian  Slavery,  I. 
Pot  versus  Kettle. 
Letters  on  West  Indian  Slavery,  II. 


In 

Fraser's 
Magazine. 


120 


JOHN  GALT 


1" 

^Tt 


The 
Club-Book. 


via 

^Eraser's 
J  Magazine. 


1831  Lives  of  the  Players. 

Bogle  Corbet,  or  the  Emigrants. 
The  Book  of  Life. 
The  Fatal  Whisper. 
Haddad-Ben-Ahab,  or  The  Traveller. 
The  Painter. 

The  Unguarded  Hour.  ) 

Letters  on  West  Indian  Slavery,  III.  "\ 

Means  of  Lessening  the  West  Indian  Dis-     I 
tress.  l*n 

American  Traditions,  II.     The  Early  Mis-     \. 

Magazine. 
sionanes.  J 

The  Ancient  Commerce  of  England. 

1832  The  Member. 
The  Radical. 

Our  Borough  (Blackwood's  Magazine). 

Stanley  Buxton,  or  The  Schoolfellows. 

American  Traditions,  HI.    The  Indian  and 
the  Hunter. 

The  Free  Trade  Question,  I. 

The  Canadas  as  they  at  present  commend  themselves  to  the 
enterprise  of  Emigrants,  Colonists  and  Capitalists,  com- 
piled and  condensed  from  original  documents  furnished 
by  John  Gait.  By  Andrew  Picken. 

1833  Eben  Erskine,  or  The  Traveller. 
The  Stolen  Child. 

The  Ouranologos. 

Stories  of  the  Study. 

Autobiography. 

Poems. 

The  Free  Trade  Question,  II. 

The  Whole  West  Indian  Question. 

The  Joke. 

My  Father's  House. 

The  Gudewife. 

Scotch  and  Yankees. 

The  Chief,  or  The  Gael  and  Sassenach, 

1834  Literary  Life  and  Miscellanies. 

Preface  to  Grant  Thorburn's  Forty  Years'  Residence  in  Am- 
erica. 
The  Mem,  or  Schoolmistress  (Eraser's  Magazine). 

1835  Anonymous  Publications,  an  Essay  (Eraser's  Magazine). 
The  Metropolitan  Emigrant  (Eraser's  Magazine) . 


Eraser's 
Magazine. 

\  In  Blackwood's 
Magazine. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  121 

1836    On  The   Sea-Fed   Engine   for   Propelling  Vessels   Instead   of 

Steam  (Fraser's  Magazine). 
The  Statesman  (Fraser's  Magazine). 

1838  Preface  to  A  Diary  Illustrative  of  the  Times  of  George  IV. 

1839  Records  of  Real  Life  by  Harriet  Pigott,  revised  by  John  Gait. 
The  Demon  of  Destiny  and  other  Poems. 

The  Annals,  The  Ayrshire  Legatees,  The  Provost,  and  The  Entail 
have  been  frequently  reprinted.  These  four,  together  with  Sir  Andrew 
Wylie  and  The  East  of  the  Lairds  were  reprinted  (1895-99,  Blackwood) 
with  a  memoir  of  Gait  by  D.  S.  Meldrum  and  introductions  by  S.  R. 
Crockett. 


BIOGRAPHY  AND  CRITICISM 

Ayscough,  John:     Levia  Pondera   (1913), 

Ayscough,  John:    Introduction  to  The  Entail  (1913). 

Burrows,  C.  Acton:    Annals  of  the  Town  of  Guelph,  1827-77  (1877). 

Canadian  Archives   (chiefly  Series  Q). 

Cunningham,  Allan:  Biographical  and  Critical  History  of  the  Litera- 
ture of  the  Last  Fifty  Years  (1833). 

Douglas,  Sir  George:    The  Blackwood  Group  (1897). 

Espinasse,  Francis :  Article  on  Gait  in  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 

Gillies,  R.  P.:  Memoirs  of  a  Literary  Veteran,  vol.  3  (1851). 

Gordon,  G.  S.:  Introduction  to  Annals  of  the  Parish  (1908). 

Hogg,  James :  Reminiscences  of  Some  of-  his  Contemporaries  in  Poetical 
Works,  vol.  5  (1838-40). 

Jeffrey,  Francis:   Secondary  Scottish  Novels    (Edin.  Rev.,  Oct.,  1823). 

Lizars,  Robina  and  K.  M.:  In  the  Days  of  the  Canada  Company  (1896). 

Madden,  R.  R.:  The  Literary  Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Countess 
of  Blessington,  vol  3  (1854). 

Millar,  J.  H.:  A  Literary  History  of  Scotland  (1903). 

Moir,  D.  M.:  JVfemoir  of  John  Gait  (1841). 

Monro,  Neil:     Ayrshire  Idylls   (1913). 

Oliphant,  Margaret:     William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  vol.  1   (1897). 

Pigott,  Harriet:  Manuscript  Material  for  Life  of  Gait  collected  by  her 
but  never  utilized.  (Bodleian  Library) . 

Scadding,  Henry:     Toronto  of  Old  (1878). 

Scadding,  Henry:  Memoirs  of  the  Four  Decades  of  York,  Upper  Can- 
ada (1884). 

Strickland,  S.:  Twenty-Seven  Years  in  Canada  West  (1853). 

Thomson,  Katharine:  Recollections  of  Literary  Characters  and  Cele- 
brated Places  (1854). 


UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO  STUDIES 
PHILOLOGICAL  SERIES 


No.  ,     The  Anglo-Saxon  Scop,  by  L.  F.  ANDERSON  .......     $0-5° 

No.   ,.     George    Ticknor's    Travels     in     Spain,     edited    by       ^ 
G.  T.  NORTHUP  ............ 

No.   3.      Beginnings    of    the    English     Essay,     by    W.     L.         ^ 

MACDONALD.  ... 

No  Dio  Cassius,  Historia  Romana,  Book  53,  with  notes       _ 

by  H.  W.  DUCKWORTH  ...... 

1.  00 

No.  5-     John  Gait,  by  R.  K.  Goi 

TnldmP-'s  ATragedie  of  Abraham's  Sacrifice, 

"""SSSsSsSv  Ǥ  M. 

Beza,  by  M.  W.  WALLACE 
Extravo,ume:  The  Gest  of  Robin  Hood,  by  W.  H.  CLiwsoN       ,.co 


vo,ume  :   Theban  Ostraca    edited  fro,n  the  originals 
with  translations  and  pla 


PS  Gord 
8413  J 
A57Z684