The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4). Dent John Charles
more frequently at St. Thomas, after that place came into existence. Once only it was held at London. It is perhaps worth while mentioning that St. Thomas was called in honour of the Colonel's Christian name. Here the rustics assembled in full force to drink bumpers to the health of the Founder of the settlement, and to celebrate "the day, and all who honour it." The Colonel, of course, never failed to appear, and even after he had passed the allotted age of three score and ten, he always led off the first dance with some blooming maiden of the settlement.
Practically speaking, there is no limit to the number of anecdotes which are rife to this day among the settlers of the Talbot District with respect to the Colonel's eccentricities and mode of life. On one occasion a person named Crandell presented himself at Castle Malahide, late in the evening, as an applicant for a lot of land. He was ushered into the Colonel's presence, when the latter turned upon him with a flushed and angry countenance, and demanded his money. The Colonel's aspect was so fierce, and the situation was so lonely, that Crandell was alarmed for his life, and forthwith surrendered all his capital. He was then led off by Jeffery to the kitchen, where he was comfortably entertained for the night. The next morning the Colonel settled his business satisfactorily, and returned him his money, telling him that he had taken it from him to prevent his being robbed by some of his rascally servants. On another occasion a pedantic personage who lived in the Township of Howard, and who spent much time in familiarizing himself with the longest words to be found in the Dictionary, presented himself before the Colonel, and began, in polysyllabic phrases, to lay a local grievance before him. The language employed was so periphrastic and pointless that the Colonel was at a loss to get at the meaning intended to be conveyed. After listening for a few moments with ill-concealed impatience, Talbot broke out with a profane exclamation, adding: "If you do not come down to the level of my poor understanding, I can do nothing for you." The man profited by the rebuke, and commenced in plain words, but in rather an ambiguous manner, to state that his neighbour was unworthy of the grant of land he had obtained, as he was not working well. "Come, out with it," said the Colonel, "for I see now what you would be at. You wish to oust your neighbour, and get the land for yourself." After enduring further characteristic expletives, the man took himself of incontinently. Although many of his settlers were native Americans, the Colonel had an aversion to Yankees, and used to say of them that they acquired property by whittling chips and barter — by giving a shingle for a blind pup, which they swopped for a goose, and then turned into a sheep. On another occasion, an Irishman, proud of his origin, and whose patronymic told at once that he was a son of the Emerald Isle, finding that he could not prevail with the Colonel on the score of being a fellow-countryman, resorted to rudeness, and, with more warmth than discretion, stood upon his pedigree, and told the Colonel that his family was as honourable, and the coat of arms as respectable and as ancient as that of the Talbots of Malahide. Jeffery and the dogs were always the last resource on such occasions. "My dogs don't understand heraldry," was the laconic retort, "and if you don't take yourself off, they will not leave a coat to your back."
By the time the year 1826 came round, Colonel Talbot, in consequence of his exertions to forward the interests of his settlement, had begun to be very much straitened for means. He accordingly addressed a letter to Lord Bathurst, Secretary for the Colonies in the Home Government, asking for some remuneration for his long and valuable services. In his application for relief we find this paragraph: "After twenty-three years entirely devoted to the improvement of the Western Districts of this Province, and establishing on their lands about 20,000 souls, without any expense for superintendence to the Government, or the persons immediately benefited; but, on the contrary, at a sacrifice of £20,000, in rendering them comfortable, I find myself entirely straitened, and now wholly without capital." He admitted that the tract of land he had received from the Crown was large, but added that his agricultural labours had been unproductive — a circumstance not much to be wondered at when it is borne in mind that his time was chiefly occupied in selling and portioning out the land. The Home Government responded by a grant of £400 sterling per annum. The pension thus conferred was not gratuitous, but by way of recompense for his services in locating settlers on the waste lands of the Crown. That he was entitled to such a recompense few, at the present day, will be found to deny. He was a father to his people, and, in the words of his biographer, "acted as the friend of the poor, industrious settler, whom he protected from the fangs of men in office who looked only to the fees."4
In course of time the Colonel's place of abode at Port Talbot came to be a resort for distinguished visitors to Upper Canada, and the Lieutenant-Governors of the Province frequently resorted thither. The late Chief Justice Sir John Beverley Robinson was a frequent and an honoured guest at Castle Malahide; and Colonel Talbot, in his turn, generally availed himself of the hospitality of the Chief Justice during his annual visits to Little York. Among scores of other distinguished visitors may be mentioned the Duke of Richmond, Sir Peregrine Maitland, Lord Aylmer and Sir John Colborne. Mrs. Jameson also visited the spot during her sojourn in this country just before the rebellion, and published the most readable account of it that has yet appeared. Speaking of the Colonel himself, she says: "This remarkable man is now about sixty-five, perhaps more, but he does not look so much. In spite of his rustic dress, his good-humoured, jovial, weather-beaten face, and the primitive simplicity, not to say rudeness, of his dwelling, he has in his features, air, and deportment, that something which stamps him gentleman. And that something which thirty-four years of solitude have not effaced, he derives, I suppose, from blood and birth — things of more consequence, when philosophically and philanthropically considered, than we are apt to allow. He must have been very handsome when young; his resemblance now to our royal family, particularly to the King, (William the Fourth,) is so very striking as to be something next to identity. Good-natured people have set themselves to account for this wonderful likeness in various ways, possible and impossible; but after a rigid comparison of dates and ages, and assuming all that latitude which scandal usually allows herself in these matters, it remains unaccountable.. I had always heard and read of him as the 'eccentric' Colonel Talbot. Of his eccentricity I heard much more than of his benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his perseverance; but perhaps, according to the worldly nomenclature, these qualities come under the general head of 'eccentricity,' when devotion to a favourite object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest.. Colonel Talbot's life has been one of persevering, heroic self-devotion to the completion of a magnificent plan, laid down in the first instance, and followed up with unflinching tenacity of purpose. For sixteen years he saw scarce a human being, except the few boors and blacks employed in clearing and logging his land: he himself assumed the blanket-coat and axe, slept upon the bare earth, cooked three meals a day for twenty woodsmen, cleaned his own boots, washed his own linen, milked his cows, churned the butter, and made and baked the bread. In this latter branch of household economy he became very expert, and still piques himself on it." Of the château itself and its immediate surroundings, she says: "It" (the château) "is a long wooden building, chiefly of rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side. Here I found suspended, among sundry implements of husbandry, one of those ferocious animals of the feline kind, called here the cat-a-mountain, and by some the American tiger, or panther, which it more resembles. This one, which had been killed in its attack on the fold or poultry-yard, was at least four feet in length, and glared on me from the rafters above, ghastly and horrible. The interior of the house contains several comfortable lodging-rooms; and one really handsome one, the dining-room. There is a large kitchen with a tremendously hospitable chimney. Around the house stands a vast variety of outbuildings, of all imaginable shapes and sizes, and disposed without the slightest regard to order or symmetry. One of these is the very log hut which the Colonel erected for shelter when he first 'sat down in the bush,' four-and-thirty years ago, and which he is naturally unwilling to remove. Many of these outbuildings are to shelter the geese and poultry, of which he rears an innumerable quantity. Beyond these is the cliff, looking over the wide blue lake, on which I have counted six schooners at a time with their white sails; on the left is Port Stanley. Behind the house lies an open tract of land, prettily broken and varied, where large flocks of sheep and cattle were feeding — the whole enclosed by beautiful and luxuriant woods, through which runs the little creek or river. The farm consists of six hundred acres; but as the Colonel is not quite so active as he used to be, and does not employ a bailiff or overseer, the management is said to be slovenly, and not so productive as it might be. He
See "Life of Colonel Talbot," by Edward Ermatinger; p. 70.