Toronto of Old Part 12

The strictures on the intelligence and moral feeling of the feminine, as well as the masculine portion of society at York, delivered by such world-experienced writers as Mrs. Jameson, and such enlightened critics as were two or three of the later Governors' wives, may have been just in the abstract, to a certain extent, as from the point of view of old communities in England and Germany; but they were unfair as from the point of view of persons calmly reviewing all the circ.u.mstances of the case. Here again the maxim applies: _Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner_.

We have said that the long pew on the west side of the Governor's seat was allotted to the military. In this compartment we remember often scanning with interest the countenance and form of a youthful and delicate-looking ensign, simply because he bore, hereditarily, a name and t.i.tle all complete, distinguished in the annals of science two centuries ago--the Hon. Robert Boyle: he was one of the aides-de-camp of Sir Peregrine Maitland. Here, also, was to be seen, for a time, a Major Browne, a brother of the formerly popular poetess, Mrs. Hemans. Here, too, sat a Zachary Mudge, another hereditary name complete, distinguished in the scientific annals of Devons.h.i.+re. He was an officer of Artillery, and one of Sir John Colborne's aides-de-camp; for some unexplained reason he committed suicide at York, and his remains were deposited in the old military burying-ground. In this pew familiar forms were also--Major Powell, Capt. Grubbe, Major Hillier, Capt. Blois, Capt, Phillpotts, brother of the Bishop.

The compartment on the east side of the Governor's pew, was as we have said, appointed for the use of the members of the Legislature, when in session. Here at certain periods, generally in mid-winter, were to be observed all the political notabilities of the day; for at the period we are glancing at, non-conformists as well as conformists were to be seen a.s.sisting, now and again, at public wors.h.i.+p in St. James' Church.

In their places here the outward presentments of Col. Nichol (killed by driving over the precipice at Queenston), of Mr. Homer (a Benjamin Franklin style of countenance), of Dr. Lefferty, of Hamnet Pinhey, of Mahlon Burwell, of Absalom Shade, of other owners of old Canadian names, are well remembered. The spare, slender figure of Mr. Speaker Sherwood, afterwards a judge of the King's Bench, was noticeable. Mr. Chisholm, of Oakville, used facetiously to object to the clause in the Litany where "heresy and schism" are deprecated, it so happening that the last term was usually, by a Scotticism, read "Chisholm." Up to the Parliamentary pew we have seen Mr. William Lyon McKenzie himself hurriedly make his way, with an air of great animation, and take his seat, to the visible, but, of course, repressed disconcertment of several honourable members, and others.

Altogether, it was a very complete little world, this a.s.semblage within the walls of the old wooden church at York. There were present, so to speak, king, lords, and commons; gentle and simple in due proportion, with their wives and little ones; judges, magistrates and gentry; representatives of governmental departments, with their employes; legislators, merchants, tradespeople, handicraftsmen; soldiers and sailors; a great variety of cla.s.s and character.

All seemed to be in harmony, real or conventional, here; whatever feuds, family or political, actually subsisted, no very marked symptoms thereof could be discerned in this place. But the history of all was known, or supposed to be known, to each. The relations.h.i.+p of each to each was known, and how it was brought about. It was known to all how every little scar, every trivial mutilation or disfigurement, which chanced to be visible on the visage or limb of any one, was acquired, in the performance of what boyish freak, in the execution of what practical jest, in the excitement of what convivial or other occasion.

Here and there sat one who, in obedience to the social code of the day, had been "out," for the satisfaction, as the term was, of himself or another, perhaps a quondam friend--satisfaction obtained (let the age be responsible for the terms we use), in more than one instance, at the cost of human life.

(Pewholders in St. James' Church from its commencement to about 1818, were President Russell: Mr. Justice Cochrane: Mr. Justice Boulton: Solicitor General Gray: Receiver General Selby: Christopher Robinson: George Crookshank: William Chewett: J. B. Robinson: Alexander Wood: William Willc.o.c.ks: John Beikie: Alexander Macdonell: Chief Justice Elmsley: Chief Justice Osgoode: Chief Justice Scott: Chief Justice Powell: Attorney General Firth: Secretary Jarvis: General Shaw: Col.

Smith: D'Arcy Boulton: William Allan: Duncan Cameron: John Small: Thomas Ridout: William Stanton: Stephen Heward: Donald McLean: Stephen Jarvis: Capt. McGill: Col. Givins: Dr. Maccaulay: Dr. Gamble: Dr. Baldwin: Dr.

Lee: Mr. St. George: Mr. Denison: Mr. Playter: Mr. Brooke: Mr. Cawthra: Mr. Scadding: Mr. Ketchum: Mr. Cooper: Mr. Ross: Mr. Jordan: Mr.

Kendrick: Mr. Hunt: Mr. Higgins: Mr. Anderson: Mr. Murchison: Mr.

Bright: Mr. O'Keefe: Mr. Caleb Humphrey.--The Churchwardens for 1807-8 were: D'Arcy Boulton and William Allan. For 1809: William Allan and Thomas Ridout. For 1810: William Allan and Stephen Jarvis. For 1812: Duncan Cameron and Alexander Legge.)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

X.

KING STREET: ST. JAMES' CHURCH--(_Continued._)

It is beginning, perhaps, to be thought preposterous that we have not as yet said anything of the occupants of the pulpit and desk, in our account of this church interior. We are just about to supply the deficiency.

Here was to be seen and heard, at his periodical visits, Charles James Stewart, the second Bishop of Quebec, a man of saintly character and presence; long a missionary in the Eastern Towns.h.i.+ps of Lower Canada, before his appointment to the Episcopate. The contour of his head and countenance, as well as something of his manner even, may be gathered from a remark of the late Dr. Primrose, of Toronto, who, while a stranger, had happened to drop in at the old wooden church when Bishop Stewart was preaching: "I just thought," the doctor said, "it was the old King in the pulpit!" _i. e._, George III.

Here Dr. Okill Stewart, formerly rector of this church, but subsequently of St. George's, Kingston, used occasionally, when visiting York, to officiate--a very tall, benevolent, and fine featured ecclesiastic, with a curious delivery, characterized by unexpected elevations and depressions of the voice irrespective of the matter, accompanied by long closings of the eyes, and then a sudden re-opening of the same. Whenever this preacher ascended the pulpit, one member of the congregation, Mr.

George Duggan, who had had, it was understood, some trivial disagreement with the doctor during his inc.u.mbency in former years, was always expected, by on-lookers, to rise and walk out. And this he accordingly always did. The movement seemed a regular part of the programme of the day, and never occasioned any sensation.

Here the Rev. Joseph Hudson officiated now and then, a military chaplain, appointed at a comparatively late period to this post; a clergyman greatly beloved by the people of the town generally, both as a preacher and as a man. He was the first officiating minister we ever saw wearing the academical hood over the ordinary vestment.

Here, during the sittings of Parliament, of which he was chaplain, Mr.

Addison, of Niagara, was sometimes to be heard. The Library of this scholarly divine of the old school was presented by him _en bloc_ to St.

Mark's Church, Niagara, of which he was inc.u.mbent. It remained for some years at "Lake View," the private residence of Mr. Addison; but during the inc.u.mbency of Dr. McMurray, it has been removed to the rectory-house at Niagara, where it is to continue, in accordance with the first rector's will, for the use of the inc.u.mbent for the time being.

It is a remarkable collection, as exhibiting the line of reading of a thoughtful and intelligent man of the last century: many treatises and tracts of contemporary, but now defunct interest, not elsewhere to be met with, probably, in Canada, are therein preserved. The volumes, for the most part, retain their serviceable bindings of old pane-sided calf; but some of them, unfortunately, bear marks of the havoc made by damp and vermin before their transfer to their present secure place of shelter. Mr. Addison used to walk to and from Church in his canonicals in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, recalling the Johnsonian period, when clergy very generally wore the ca.s.sock and gown in the streets.

Another chaplain to the Legislative a.s.sembly was Mr. William Macaulay, a preacher always listened to with a peculiar attention, whenever he was to be heard in the pulpit here. Mr. Macaulay was a member of the Macaulay family settled at Kingston. He had been sent to Oxford, where he pursued his studies without troubling himself about a degree. While there he acquired the friends.h.i.+p of several men afterwards famous, especially of Whately, sometime Archbishop of Dublin, with whom a correspondence was maintained.

Mr. Macaulay's striking and always deeply-thoughtful manner was set off to advantage by the fine intellectual contour of his face and head, which were not unlike those to be seen in the portrait of Maltby, Bishop of Durham, usually prefixed to Morell's Thesaurus.

One more chaplain of the House may be named, frequently heard and seen in this church--Dr. Thomas Phillips--another divine, well read, of a type that has now disappeared. His personal appearance was very clerical in the old-fas.h.i.+oned sense. His countenance was of the cla.s.s represented by that of the late Sir Henry Ellis, as finely figured, not long since, in the _Ill.u.s.trated News_. He was one of the last wearers of hair-powder in these parts. In reading the Creed he always endeavoured to conform to the old English custom of turning towards the east; but to do this in the desk of the old church was difficult.

Dr. Phillips was formerly of Whitchurch, in Herefords.h.i.+re. He died in 1849, aged 68, at Weston, on the Humber, where he founded and organized the parish of St. Philip. His body was borne to to its last resting-place by old pupils. We once had in our possession a pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Canadian Remembrancer, a Loyal Sermon, preached on St.

George's Day, April 23, 1826, at the Episcopal Church (York), by the Rev. T. Phillips, D.D., Head Master of the Grammar School. Printed at the _Gazette_ Office."

There remains to be noticed the "pastor and master" of the whole a.s.semblage customably gathered together in St. James' Church--Dr. John Strachan. On this spot, in successive edifices, each following the other in rapid succession, and each surpa.s.sing the other in dignity and propriety of architectural style, he, for more than half a century, was the princ.i.p.al figure.

The story of his career is well known, from his departure from Scotland, a poor but spirited youth, in 1799, to his decease in 1867, as first Bishop of Toronto, with its several intermediate stages of activity and promotion. His outward aspect and form are also familiar, from the numerous portraits of him that are everywhere to be seen. In stature slightly under the medium height, with countenance and head of the type of Milton's in middle age, without eloquence, without any extraordinary degree of originality of mind, he held together here a large congregation, consisting of heterogeneous elements, by the strength and moral force of his personal character. Qualities, innate to himself, decisiveness of intellect, firmness, a quick insight into things and men, with a certain fertility of resource, conspired to win for him the position which he filled, and enabled him to retain it with ease; to sustain, with a graceful and una.s.suming dignity, all the augmentations which naturally acc.u.mulated round it, as the community, of which he was so vital a part, grew and widened and rose to a higher and higher level, on the swelling tide of the general civilization of the continent.

In all his public ministrations he was to be seen officiating without affectation in manner or style. A stickler in ritual would have declared him indifferent to minutiae. He wore the white vesture of his office with an air of negligence, and his doctor's robe without any special attention to its artistic adjustment upon his person. A technical precisian in modern popular theology would p.r.o.nounce him out now and then in his doctrine. What he seemed especially to drive at was not dogmatic accuracy so much as a well-regulated life, in childhood, youth and manhood. The good sense of the matter delivered--and it was never dest.i.tute of that quality--was solely relied on for the results to be produced: the topics of modern controversy never came up in his discourse: at the period to which we refer they were in most quarters dormant, their re-awakening deferred until the close of a thirty years'

peace, but then destined to set mankind by the ears when now relieved from the turmoil of physical and material war, but roused to great intellectual activity.

Many a man that dropped in during the time of public wors.h.i.+p, inclined from prejudice to be captious, inclined even to be merry over certain national peculiarities of utterance and diction, which to a stranger, for a time, made the matter delivered not easy to be understood, went out with quite a different sentiment in regard to the preacher and his words.

In the early days of Canada, a man of capacity was called upon, as we have seen in other instances, to play many parts. It required tact to play them all satisfactorily. In the case of Dr. Strachan--the voice that to-day would be heard in the pulpit, offering counsel and advice as to the application of sacred principles to life and conduct, in the presence of all the civil functionaries of the country, from Sir Peregrine Maitland to Mr. Chief Constable Higgins; from Chief Justice Powell to the usher of his court, Mr. Thomas Phipps; from Mr. Speaker Sherwood or McLean to Peter Shaver, Peter Perry, and the other popular representatives of the Commons in Parliament;--the voice that to-day would be heard in the desk leading liturgically the devotions of the same mixed mult.i.tude--to-morrow was to be heard by portions, large or small, of the same audience, amidst very different surroundings, in other quarters; by some of them, for example, at the Executive Council Board, giving a lucid judgment on a point of governmental policy, or in the Chamber of the Legislative a.s.sembly, delivering a studied oration on a matter touching the interests and well-being of the whole population of the country, or reading an elaborate original report on the same or some cognate question, to be put forth as the judgment of a committee: or elsewhere, the same voice might be heard at a meeting for patriotic purposes; at the meeting of a Hospital, Educational, or other important secular Trust; at an emergency meeting, when sudden action was needed on the part of the charitable and benevolent.

Without fail, that voice would be heard by a large portion of the juniors of the flock on the following day, amidst the busy commotion of School, apportioning tasks, correcting errors, deciding appeals, regulating discipline; at one time formally instructing, at another jocosely chaffing, the sons and nephews of nearly all the well-to-do people, gentle and simple, of York and Upper Canada.

To have done all this without awkwardness shews the possession of much prudence and tact. To have had all this go on for some decades without any blame that was intended to be taken in very serious earnest; nay, winning in the process applause and grat.i.tude on the right hand and on the left--this argues the existence of something very sterling in the man.

Nor let us local moderns, whose lot it is to be part and parcel of a society no longer rudimentary, venture to condemn one who while especially appointed to be a conspicuous minister of religion, did not decline the functions, diverse and multiform, which an infant society, discerning the qualities inherent in him, and lacking instruments for its uses, summoned him to undertake. Let no modern caviller, we say, do this, unless he is prepared to avow the opinion that to be a minister of religion, a man must, of necessity, be only partially-developed in mind and spirit, incapable, as a matter of course, of offering an opinion of value on subjects of general human interest.

The long possession of unchallenged authority within the immediate area of his ecclesiastical labours, rendered Dr. Strachan for some time opposed to the projects that began, as the years rolled on, to be mooted for additional churches in the town of York. He could not readily be induced to think otherwise than as the Duke of Wellington thought in regard to Reform in the representation, or as ex-Chancellor Eldon thought in regard to greater prompt.i.tude in Chancery decisions, that there was no positive need of change.

"Would you break up the congregation?" was the sharp rejoinder to the early propounders of schemes for Church-extension in York. But as years pa.s.sed over, and the imperious pressure of events and circ.u.mstances was felt, this reluctance gave way. The beautiful cathedral mother-church, into which, under his own eye, and through his own individual energy, the humble wooden edifice of 1803 at length, by various gradations, developed, forms now a fitting mausoleum for his mortal remains--a stately monument to one who was here in his day the human main-spring of so many vitally-important and far-reaching movements.

Other memorials in his honour have been projected and thought of. One of them we record for its boldness and originality and fitness, although we have no expectation that the aesthetic feeling of the community will soon lead to the practical adoption of the idea thrown out. The suggestion has been this: that in honour of the deceased Bishop, there should be erected, in some public place, in Toronto, an exact copy of Michael Angelo's Moses, to be executed at Rome for the purpose, and s.h.i.+pped hither. The conception of such a form of monument is due to the Rev. W.

Macaulay, of Picton. We need not say what dignity would be given to the whole of Toronto by the possession of such a memorial object within its precincts as this, and how great, in all future time, would be the effect, morally and educationally, when the symbolism of the art-object was discovered and understood. Its huge bulk, its boldly-chiselled and only partially-finished limbs and drapery, raised aloft on a plain pedestal of some Laurentian rock, would represent, not ill, the man whom it would commemorate--the character, roughly-outlined and incomplete in parts, but, when taken as a whole, very impressive and even grand, which looms up before us, whichever way we look, in our local Past.

One of the things that enn.o.ble the old cities of continental Europe and give them their own peculiar charm, is the existence of such objects in their streets and squares, at once works of art for the general eye, and memorials of departed worth and greatness. With what interest, for example, does the visitor gaze on the statue of Gutenberg at Mayence; and at Ma.r.s.eilles on that of the good Bishop Belzunce!--of whom we read, that he was at once "the founder of a college, and a magistrate, almoner, physician and priest to his people." The s.p.a.ce in front of the west porch of the cathedral of St. James would be an appropriate site for such a n.o.ble memorial-object as that which Mr. Macaulay suggests--just at the spot where was the entrance, the one sole humble portal, of the structure of wood out of which the existing pile has grown.

Our notice of the a.s.sembly usually to be seen within the walls of the primitive St. James', would not be complete, were we to omit all mention of Mr. John Fenton, who for some time officiated therein as parish clerk. During the palmy days of parish clerks in the British Islands, such functionaries, deemed at the time, locally, as indispensable as the parish minister himself, were a very peculiar cla.s.s of men. He was a rarity amongst them, who could repeat in a rational tone and manner the responses delegated to him by the congregation. This arose from the circ.u.mstance that he was usually an all but illiterate village rustic, or narrow-minded small-townsman, brought into a prominence felt on all sides to be awkward.

Mr. Fenton's peculiarities, on the contrary, arose from his intelligence, his acquirements, and his independence of character. He was a rather small shrewd-featured person, at a glance not deficient in self-esteem. He was a proficient in modern popular science, a ready talker and lecturer. Being only a proxy, his rendering of the official responses in church was marked perhaps by a little too much individuality, but it could not be said that it was dest.i.tute of a certain rhetorical propriety of emphasis and intonation. Though not gifted, in his own person, with much melody of voice, his acquisitions included some knowledge of music. In those days congregational psalmody was at a low ebb, and the small choirs that offered themselves fluctuated, and now and then vanished wholly. Not unfrequently, Mr.

Fenton, after giving out the portion of Brady and Tate, which it pleased him to select, would execute the whole of it as a solo, to some accustomed air, with graceful variations of his own. All this would be done with great coolness and apparent self-satisfaction.

While the discourse was going on in the Pulpit above him, it was his way, often, to lean himself resignedly back in a corner of his pew and throw a white cambric handkerchief over his head and face. It ill.u.s.trates the spirit of the day to add, that Mr. Fenton's employment as official mouth-piece to the congregation of the English Church, did not stand in the way of his making himself useful, at the same time, as a cla.s.s-leader among the Wesleyan Methodists.

The temperament and general style of this gentleman did not fail of course to produce irritation of mind in some quarters. The _Colonial Advocate_ one morning averred its belief that Mr. Fenton had, on the preceding Sunday, glanced at itself and its patrons in giving out and singing (probably as a solo) the Twelfth Psalm: "Help, Lord, for good and G.o.dly men do perish and decay; and faith and truth from worldly men are parted clean away; whoso doth with his neighbour talk, his talk is all but vain; for every man bethinketh now to flatter, lie and feign!"

Mr. Fenton afterwards removed to the United States, where he obtained Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church. His son was a clever and ingenious youth. We remember a capital model in wood of "Caesar's Bridge over the Rhine," constructed by him from a copper-plate engraving in an old edition of the Commentaries used by him in the Grammar School at York.

The predecessor of Mr. Fenton in the clerk's desk was Mr.

Hetherington--a functionary of the old-country village stamp. His habit was, after giving out a psalm, to play the air on a ba.s.soon; and then to accompany with fantasias on the same instrument such vocalists as felt inclined to take part in the singing. This was the day of small things in respect of ecclesiastical music at York. A choir from time to time had been formed. Once, we have understood, two rival choirs were heard on trial in the Church; one of them strong in instrumental resources, having the aid of a ba.s.s-viol, clarionet and ba.s.soon; the other more dependent on its vocal excellencies. The instrumental choir triumphantly prevailed, as we are a.s.sured: and in 1819 an allowance of 20 was made to Mr. Hetherington for giving instruction in church music. One of the princ.i.p.al encouragers of the vocalist-party was Dr. Burnside. But all expedients for doing what was, in reality, the work of the congregation itself were unreliable; and the clerk or choir-master too often found himself a solitary performer. Mr. Hetherington's ba.s.soon, however, may be regarded as the harbinger and foreshadow of the magnificent organ presented in after-times to the congregation of the "Second Temple" of St. James', by Mr. Dunn--a costly and fine-toned instrument (presided over, for a short time, by the eminent Dr. Hodges, subsequently of Trinity Church, New York), but destined to be destroyed by fire, together with the whole church, after only two years of existence, in 1839.

In the conflagration of 1839 another loss occurred, not so much to be regretted; we refer to the destruction of a very large triplet window of stained gla.s.s over the altar of the church, containing three life-size figures by Mr. Craig, a local "historical and ornamental painter," not well skilled in the ecclesiastical style. As home-productions, however, these objects were tenderly eyed; but Mrs. Jameson in her work on Canada cruelly denounced them as being "in a vile tawdry taste."--Conceive, in the presence of these three Craigs, the critical auth.o.r.ess of the "History of Sacred and Legendary art," accustomed, in the sublime cathedrals of Europe, to

"See the great windows like the jewell'd gates Of Paradise, burning with harmless fire."