The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4). Dent John Charles
above alluded to, affirming it to be in the highest interests of Presbyterianism and religion in the Dominion that such a consummation should be brought about.
THE HON. THOMAS TALBOT
Not often does it fall to the lot of the biographer to chronicle a more singular piece of history than is afforded by the life of the founder of the Talbot Settlement in Western Canada. A contemporary writer has proved to us that Ireland has, at one time and another, contributed her full share of notable personages to our population; and Colonel Talbot is certainly entitled to rank among the most remarkable of them all. A man of high birth and social position, of good abilities, with a decided natural turn for an active military career, and with excellent prospects of success before him, he voluntarily forsook the influences under which he had been reared, and spent by far the greater part of a long life in the solitude of the Canadian wilderness. He was the early associate and life-long friend of the illustrious Duke of Wellington. At the outset of their careers, any impartial friend of the two youths might not unreasonably have predicted a higher and wider fame for the scion of the House of Talbot than for Arthur Wellesley; for the former was the brighter, and apparently the more ambitious of the two, and his connections were at least equally influential. Had any one indulged in such a vaticination, however, his prediction would have been most ignominiously falsified by subsequent events. Arthur Wellesley lived to achieve a reputation second to that of scarcely any name in history. He became the most famous and successful military commander of modern times. Nations vied with each other in heaping well-deserved honours upon his head, and his Sovereign characterized him as "the greatest general England ever saw." Statesmen and princes hung upon his words, and even upon his nod; and lovely women languished for his smiles. When he died, full of years and honours, and everything of good which a grateful nation has to bestow, his body lay in state at Chelsea Hospital. It was visited by the high and mighty ones of the Empire, and was contemplated with an almost superstitious awe. It was finally borne with regal pomp, through streets draped in mourning, and thronged by a countless multitude, to its final resting-place in the crypt of the noblest of English cathedrals. The funeral rites were solemnized amid the tears of a nation, and formed an event in that nation's history. The obsequies of "the Iron Duke" took place on the 18th of November, 1852. In less than three months from that date his friend Colonel Talbot also went the way of all flesh. But by how different a road! His life, though it had by no means been spent in vain, had had little to commend it to the emulation or envy of mankind. Its most vigorous season had been passed amid the solitude of the Canadian forest, and in its decline it had become the prey of selfishness and neglect. Colonel Talbot died in a small room in the house of a man who had once been his servant. He must have tasted the bitterness of death many times before he finally entered into his rest. Neither wife, child, nor relative ministered to his wants. But scant ceremony was vouchsafed to his remains. His body, instead of lying in state, was deposited in a barn, and was finally attended to its last obscure resting-place in a little Canadian village by a handful of friends and acquaintances. The weather was piercingly cold, and we may be sure that the obsequies were not unnecessarily prolonged. Surely the force of antithesis could not much farther go!
And yet, as we review the widely diverse careers of these two remarkable men, it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than that the result in each case was the legitimate outgrowth of their respective qualities. Arthur Wellesley, in his earliest boyhood, formed a definite purpose in life; and that purpose, during all the years of his probation, was kept constantly in view. Every other passion was kept in due subordination to it. Fortune was kind to him, and he well knew how to avail himself of her favours. The acquisition of fame, moreover, bears some analogy to the acquisition of wealth. The first step is by far the most difficult. Dr. Johnson once said that any man of strong will has it in his power to make a fortune, if he can only contrive to tide over the time while he is scraping together the first hundred pounds. Arthur Wellesley, having got his foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder, found the rest of the ascent feasible enough. Now, Thomas Talbot was endowed by nature with a will so strong as almost to deserve the name of stubbornness, but that was almost the only quality which he shared in common with his friend. If he ever formed any definite scheme of life he was certainly very inconsistent in pursuing it. His moods were as erratic as were those of the hero of Locksley Hall. He was unable to bring his mind into harmony with the inevitable, and knew not how to subordinate himself to the existing order of things. Even as an army-officer he was not always amenable to discipline. The follies and frivolities of society disgusted him, and his mind early received a warp from which it never recovered. He lived in a time when there was plenty of work ready to his hand, if he would but have condescended to take his share of it. The work, however, was not to his taste, and his ambition seems to have deserted him at a most inopportune time. He "burst all links of habit," withdrew himself from his proper place in the world, and passed the rest of his days in solitude and obscurity. As the founder of an important settlement in a new Province, he certainly accomplished some good in his day and generation. The enterprise, however, does not seem to have been undertaken with any definite design of accomplishing good, but merely with a view to securing a more congenial mode of life for himself. That a man reared as he had been should find anything congenial in such a life is a problem which is insoluble to ordinary humanity.
The family from which he sprang has long been celebrated both in English and continental history. Readers of Shakespeare's historical plays are, it is to be hoped, sufficiently familiar with that "scourge of France" who was defied by Joan of Arc, and who, with his son, John Talbot, fell bravely fighting his country's battles on the field of Castillon, near Bordeaux. It would be difficult for a man to sustain the burden of a long line of such ancestors as these. It is therefore reassuring to learn that the Talbot line has been diversified by representatives of another sort. Readers of Macaulay's History are familiar with the name of Richard Talbot, that noted sharper, bully, pimp and pander, who haunted Whitehall during the years immediately succeeding the Restoration; whose genius for mendacity procured for him the nickname of "Lying Dick Talbot;" who became the husband of Frances Jennings; who slandered Anne Hyde for the money of the Duke of York; who, in a word, was one of the greatest scoundrels that figured in those iniquitous times; and who was subsequently raised by James II. to the Earldom of Tyrconnel. "Lying Dick" was a member of the Irish branch of the Talbot family, which settled in Ireland during the reign of Henry II., and became possessed of the ancient baronial castle of Malahide, in the county of Dublin. The Talbots of Malahide trace their descent from the same stock as the Talbots who have been Earls of Shrewsbury, in the peerage of Great Britain, since the middle of the fifteenth century. The father of the subject of this sketch was Richard Talbot, of Malahide. His mother was Margaret, Baroness Talbot; and he himself was born at Malahide on the 17th of July, 1771.
All that can be ascertained about his childhood is that he spent some years at the Public Free School at Manchester, and that he received a commission in the army in the year 1782, when he was only eleven years of age. Whether or not he left school immediately after obtaining this commission does not appear, but his education must have been very imperfect, as he was not of a studious disposition, and in 1786, when he was only sixteen, we find him installed as an aide-de-camp to his relative the Marquis of Buckingham, who was then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His brother aide was the Arthur Wellesley already referred to. The two boys were necessarily thrown much together, and each of them formed a warm attachment for the other. Their future paths in life lay far apart, but they never ceased to correspond, and to recall the happy time they had spent together,
“Yearning for the large excitement that
the coming years would yield.”
Young Talbot continued in the position of aide-de-camp for several years. In 1790 he joined the 24th Regiment, which was then stationed at Quebec, in the capacity of Lieutenant. We have no record of his life during the next few months. Upon the arrival of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe at Quebec, at the end of May, 1792, Lieutenant Talbot, who had nearly completed his twenty-first year, became attached to the Governor's suite in the capacity of private secretary. He continued to form part of the establishment of Upper Canada's first Lieutenant-Governor until just before the latter's removal from this country. "During that period," says General Simcoe, writing in 1803, "he not only conducted many details and important duties incidental to the original establishment