Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

III

A FUR TRADER’S HOUSE
(And Others in Montreal)


1

MONTREAL is strangely beautiful in winter, etched against a white background, her great churches and old houses looming lantern-like through the snow. On such a day I set forth to tea in the Prince of Wales Terrace, one of those formerly aristocratic rows whose gray stone fronts look so venerable. In the midst of talk, something in the small white marble mantelpiece, set in a design of stern iron grapes, seemed to me faintly, even oppressively, familiar. I remembered then a stately, century-old Ontario house, whose inmates were never known to light a fire, even on chilly days. Not often in Ontario, however, these impressive winding staircases which contain niches originally intended to hold oil lamps or candelabra.

     It was behind McGill’s great stadium that I saw a lovely deserted house of grey stone with iron railings. It stands, detached and dignified, looking mournfully over the magnificent amphitheatre towards the site of Burnside, the modest country residence of the founder of McGill who dreamed a [page 21] splendid dream, and fulfilled it in the University which bears his name.
     The house above the stadium was owned and occupied by members of the Molson family, also great citizens of Montreal. I do not know why they have left the house alone, but something, perhaps the moment of closing day when I saw it, left a rather sombre impression. With the old house I looked down over McGill’s beginning and far, far behind that to the ancient vanished Indian town of Hochelaga on whose site, centuries later, a benevolent and shrewd Scottish gentleman was to cultivate the grounds of Burnside.

     The Molson house looked more cheerful as we passed it again in the glitter of mid-winter sun. A carnival was in progress. The sky was a hard keen blue, like a painted ceiling, and the high world was white, with violet shadows sometimes cast across it. The air was broken by the jingle of sleigh bells. There were sightseers abroad in the land, ski-ers and boys and girls trailing toboggans; small red sleighs piled with fur rugs; a few gorgeous turnouts with coachmen and footmen in those splendid wolfskin caapes, and fur busbies that have not yet vanished. Everybody on the way to the summit. And such a way; winding and glittering and sometimes roofed by trees, frozen into brilliant lines or [page 22] broken columns, or forming a white lacework of branches through which the domes and towers of the city were seen far below.
     But at the old Côte St. Antoine Road we left this gay throng, and passed frozen orchards that in autumn are fragrant with the scent of fameuse apples, and turning up a long avenue of tall gray trees we jingled up importantly to a faded red door.
     As the door was opened a drift of organ music floated out. A Sister of the Ville Marie Convent came across a marble passage to meet us in the drawing room. Calm as a lily seemed Monklands, which was such a turbulent house! [page 23]
     Lord Elgin, who live here as Governor during and after the affair of the Rebellion Losses Bill, used to drive up this avenue accompanied, at times, by a little miniature rioting which naturally annoyed him, and made the coachman extremely nervous. But with all the harassing events and details of his troublous régime, he took time to beautify and adorn the Vice-regal residence which had been built by its former owner, the Honourable James Monk, the first Chief Justice of Montreal.
     Here in the early-Victorian drawing-room, hung with great crystal chandeliers, the Sisters showed us a charming Romanesque medallion over the fireplace, and mouldings and wainscotting of wood overlaid with a raised design in plaster-of-paris of jolly little Cupids. The woodwork of the doors is delicately disguised in a pastel shade of silver or blue or rose that exactly tones with the colour of the various rooms, and on each door is the monogram of Lord Elgin in a beautiful old design. The original house is cunningly set, woven as it were, between the gray stone wings of the Ville Marie Convent, of which it is now a part.

     But one must go into the French town to find early Montreal. It is fascinating to make one’s way, by streets with old Saints’ names, to Jacques Cartier Square. Here, when spring comes, you can [page 24] see, in imagination, the flowers of the garden that the Jesuits planted a century ago, and the comings and goings from the Château de Ramezay just across the way. In 1809 Nelson’s tall column appeared at one end of the Square. But a hundred years before its erection Claude de Ramezay, Governor of Montreal, was occupying his Château.
     Tourists now invade these rambling, low-ceilinged rooms with their wonderful collection of prints and pictures and furniture. After de Ramezay’s death the house became the property of “La Campagnie des Indes” and the Indians came and the couriers de bois to exchange their furs. After the Conquest it was the residence of the British Governor. Montgomery issued from here his manifesto, urging the Canadian people to throw off the yoke of Britain, and Benjamin Franklin set up his printing press in the vaults. Indeed, these vaults with their splendid masonry and massive beams, and the kitchen below stairs, are the most human remains of the house. What flames roared up this great fireplace, what famous meals must have ascended to the banquet hall above!
     Once could see the town pillory from the Château. It probably afforded a certain amusement to the gentry. Bitter punishments were enacted there. In this square it is related with merciless brevity: “Four Iroquois suffered death by fire in 1696.”..Charlevoix, the historian, lived in the Square. A tablet [page 26] of true entente reads: “The Pere Charlevoix, Historian of La Nouvelle France, 1725.”
     Close beside the Château crowds the Open Market, where twice a week the farmers come to sell their wares. How pink their cheeks shine, like winter apples in the cold, and how gay their caps and scarlet homespun shawls. One feels like buying everything, even the little wooden-legged, rush-bottom chairs that they sit upon!
     Then deeper into the oldest streets; Ste. Therese, St. Vincent, St. Amable, St. Gabriel, St. Jean Baptiste, St. Paul; full of low stone buildings, with outside stairs, narrow iron balconies, and iron shutters rusted red with age.
     St. Paul was once the Fifth Avenue of ancient Montreal. The ships that unloaded at the wharves just below brought the latest designs from Paris, and the French grandes dames wore crimson and deep blue velvets against the snowy streets. How the coaches of that day passed one another in these lanes it is hard to imagine; but if the streets were narrow the houses were generous.
     St. Amable for instance—tiny, tattered lane—and its neighbour, St. Gabriel. Explore, if you have time or the constitution to endure such icy cold, the bleak chambers that lie beneath these blind old places,—underground basements of everlasting stone. They seem to be filled with centuries of rubbish. In reality they are the vaulted and tunneled houses of the first fur traders: the old fur cellars. [page 27]
     When Astor came to Montreal these cellars were already famous.
     Sometimes a worthy, or unworthy, merchant prince lived in apartment above his precious stores. Simon MacTavish, the great fur-trader did. His house on St. Jean Baptiste was renowned for splendour and hospitality. It was hard to find, packed away among the warehouses…Use Maple Leaf Alcohol for Anti-Freeze….By that sign we were told we should know it, and also because on the right of the gateway there is still to be seen a curious little iron door and window screen used by the trader. It is now a packing plant for the National Drug Company, and every inch of space counts. Hard to pick one’s way through great bales and boxes to the stone archway of the courtyard. We looked at wainscoting, a mantelpiece, soon to be carted away to a museum, and a steel grate. But it was too cold to stay long underground.
     As we stepped into the street there was noise of combat. Out of a dingy courtyard between two grimy buildings rushed a small crowd of youths, one is belligerent fashion squaring up to a taller boy. A torrent of French was let loose. I turned to my companion who laughingly translated: “This boy has been throwing chunks of ice about, and the other one says that his grandmother’s window is broken…They always scrap down here…I don’t suppose they will fight it out.” But as we [page 28] turned the corner the air was still vibrant with the sound of their shrill young voices.

     An hour later I went into the dining-room of the hotel for luncheon.
     “Will madame begin with the oyster on the half shell?” asked the waiter, in the caressing tone of every true member of his order. The orchestra was softly playing the Volga Boat Song. Corks were withdrawn from interesting gold-labelled bottles, men and women were smoking, laughing, talking, ordering heavenly meals…At the end of the room you could see a handsome mural of Champlain, carefully placing the Fleur-de-Lis on Mount Royal, with the blue river shining far below, and a number of Indians in attitudes of careful attention.
     The oysters on the half shell duly arrived.
     …We seemed to see the Indians, canoes piled up with priceless furs, coming softly up to those old wharves, and to the magic of stone houses with glass in windows and fire imprisoned in stoves, to the delirious magic of hot and wonderful water for which they gladly flung down their wares… “Eh bien! Que voulez-vous?… You want a blanket? . . . Well, pile on some more skins . . . that is not enough to buy a blanket . . . ”
     “I can recommend this fillet of sole, madame?” [page 29]
     But one felt, somehow, unworthy of such an extensive meal, remembering the place where all this, our most ill-gotten gains, began. Oddly, the phrase of an hour ago recurred: “He says that his grandmother’s window is broken.”

     Dancing often celebrates the dawn in Montreal, where cafés are many and interesting. But even in the great hotels, bits of New York transplanted here, that indefinable thing, French Canada, enters.
     As the hour goes on for midnight, a jazz band becomes more fervent. Coloured lights and shadows are thrown on crowds of dancers, and the shoe manufacturer from Buffalo, and leading members of other stirring conventions, fox-trot with their lady friends. The English tourist is also here, and Montreal society takes a table and looks in for an hour. But see that motherly soul with gray hair, and a shawl about her shoulders, sitting alone at a table where shortly before she was surrounded by a chattering crowd of friends. Her feet, and they are small ones, keep time to the syncopated tune, and she is all animation. When the music stops a serious looking gentleman leads back to the table—and to a youth who has just approached it—a sprightly young girl. He gives her over to a new partner. [page 30]
     “Maintenant!” says he, turning to the motherly soul.
     Quickly the shawl is discarded, and gracefully they circle the room. Each member of their family is provided with a partner. It remains to enjoy themselves. The evening has just begun! [page 31]

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