Toronto of Old Part 17

Furthermore, china-ware is to be had in small boxes and in sets; also, Suwarrow boots, bootees, and an a.s.sortment of men's, women's and children's shoes, j.a.panned quart mugs, do. tumblers, tipped flutes, violin bows, bra.s.s wire, sickles, iron candlesticks, shoe-makers'

hammers, knives, pincers, pegging awls and tacks, awl-blades, shoe-brushes, copper tea-kettles, snaffle-bits, leather shot belts, horn powder flasks, ivory, horn and crooked combs, mathematical instruments, knives and forks, suspenders, fish-hooks, sleeve-links, sportsmen's knives, lockets, earrings, gold topaz, do., gold watch-chains, gold seals, gold brooches, cut gold rings, plain do., pearl do., silver thimbles, do. teaspoons, sh.e.l.l sleeve b.u.t.tons, silver watches, beads. In stationery there was to be had paste-board, foolscap paper, second do., letter paper, black and red ink powder and wafers.

There was also the following supply of Literature:--Telemachus, Volney's Views, Public Characters, Dr. Whitman's Egypt, Evelina, Cecilia, Lady's Library, Ready Reckoner, Looking Gla.s.s, Franklin's Fair s.e.x, Camilla, Don Raphael, Night Thoughts, Winter Evenings, Voltaire's Life, Joseph Andrews, Walker's Geography, Bonaparte and the French People, Voltaire's Tales, Fisher's Companion, Modern Literature, Eccentric Biography, Naval do., Martial do., Fun, Criminal Records, Entick's Dictionary, Gordon's America, Thompson's Family Physician, Sheridan's Dictionary, Johnson's do., Wilson's Egypt, Denon's Travels, Travels of Cyrus, Stephani de Bourbon, Alexis, Pocket Library, Every Man's Physician, Citizen of the World, Taplin's Farriery, Farmer's Boy, Romance of the Forest, Grandison, Campbell's Narrative, Paul and Virginia, Adelaide de Sincere, Emelini, Monk, Abbess, Evening Amus.e.m.e.nt, Children of the Abbey, Tom Jones, Vicar of Wakefield, Sterne's Journey, Abelard and Eloisa, Ormond, Caroline, Mercutio, Julia and Baron, Minstrel, H. Villars, De Valcourt, J. Smith, Charlotte Temple, Theodore Chypon, What has Been, Elegant Extracts in Prose and Verse, J. and J. Jessamy, Chinese Tales, New Gazetteer, Smollett's Works, Cabinet of Knowledge, Devil on Sticks, Arabian Tales, Goldsmith's Essays, Bragg's Cookery, Tooke's Pantheon, Boyle's Voyage, Roderick Random, Jonathan Wild, Louisa Solomon's Guide to Health, Spelling-books, Bibles and Primers.

Our extracts have extended to a great length: but the animated picture of Upper Canadian life at a primitive era, which such an enumeration of items, in some sort affords, must be our apology.

In the _Gazette_ of July 4, 1807, Mr. St. George complains of a protested bill; but consoles himself with a quotation--

Celui qui met un frein a la fureur des flots, Sait aussi des mechants arreter des complots.

Rendered rich in money and lands by his extemporized mercantile operations, Mr. St. George returned to his native France soon after the restoration of Louis XVIII., and pa.s.sed the rest of his days partly in Paris and partly on estates in the neighbourhood of Montpellier. During his stay in Canada he formed a close friends.h.i.+p with the Baldwins of York; and on his departure, the house on King Street, which has given rise to these reminiscences of him, together with the valuable commercial interests connected with it, pa.s.sed into the hands of a junior member of that family, Mr. John Spread Baldwin, who himself, on the same spot, subsequently laid the foundation of an ample fortune.

(It is a phenomenon not uninteresting to the retrospective mind, to observe, in 1869, after the lapse of half a century, the name of Quetton St. George reappearing in the field of Canadian Commerce.)

Advancing now on our way eastward, we soon came in front of the abode of Dr. Burnside, a New-England medical man of tall figure, upright carriage, and bluff, benevolent countenance, an early promoter of the Mechanics'-Inst.i.tute movement, and an encourager of church-music, vocal and instrumental. Dying without a family dependent on him, he bequeathed his property partly to Charities in the town, and partly to the University of Trinity College, where two scholars.h.i.+ps perpetuate his memory.

Just opposite was the residence of the venerable Mrs. Gamble, widow of Dr. Gamble, formerly a surgeon attached to the Queen's Rangers. This lady died in 1859, in her 92nd year, leaving living descendants to the number of two hundred and four. To the west of this house was a well-remembered little parterre, always at the proper season gay with flowers.

At the next corner, on the north side, a house now totally demolished, was the original home of the millionaire Cawthra family, already once alluded to. In the _Gazette and Oracle_ of June 21, 1806, Mr. Cawthra, senior, thus advertises:--"J. Cawthra wishes to inform the inhabitants of York and the adjacent country, that he has opened an Apothecary Store in the house of A. Cameron, opposite Stoyell's Tavern in York, where the Public can be supplied with most articles in that line. He has on hand also, a quant.i.ty of Men's, Women's, and Children's shoes and Men's hats.

Also for a few days will be sold the following articles, Table Knives and Forks, Scissors, Silver Watches, Maps and Prints, Profiles, some Linen, and a few Bed-Ticks, Teas, Tobacco, a few casks of fourth proof Cognac Brandy, and a small quant.i.ty of Lime Juice, and about twenty thousand Whitechapel Needles. York, June 14, 1806." And again, on the 27th of the following November, he informs the inhabitants of York and the neighbouring country that he had just arrived from New York with a general a.s.sortment of "apothecary articles;" and that the public can be supplied with everything in that line genuine: also patent medicines: he likewise intimates that he has brought a general a.s.sortment of Dry Goods, consisting of "broad cloths, duffils, flannels, swansdown, corduroys, printed calicoes, ginghams, cambrick muslins, s.h.i.+rting, muslin, men and women's stockings, silk handkerchiefs, bandana shawls, pulicat and pocket handkerchiefs, calimancoes, dimity and check; also a large a.s.sortment of men's, women's, and children's shoes, hardware, coffee, tea and chocolate, lump and loaf sugar, tobacco, &c., with many other articles: which he is determined to sell on very low terms at his store opposite Stoyell's tavern." York, Nov. 27, 1806. (The Stoyell's Tavern here named, had previously been the Inn of Mr. Abner Miles.)

Immediately across, at the corner on the south side, was a depot, insignificant enough, no doubt, to the indifferent pa.s.ser-by, but invested with much importance in the eyes of many of the early infantiles of York. Its windows exhibited, in addition to a scattering of white clay pipes, and papers of pins suspended open against the panes for the public inspection, a display of circular discs of gingerbread, some with plain, some with scalloped edge; also hearts, fishes, little prancing ponies, parrots and dogs of the same tawny-hued material; also endwise in tumblers and other gla.s.s vessels, numerous lengths or stems of prepared saccharine matter, brittle in substance, white-looking, but streaked and slightly penetrated with some rich crimson pigment; likewise on plates and oval dishes, a collection of quadrangular viscous lumps, buff-coloured and clammy, each showing at its ends the bold gas.h.i.+ng cut of a stout knife which must have been used in dividing a rope, as it were, of the tenacious substance into inch-sections or parts.

In the wrapping paper about all articles purchased here, there was always a soupcon of the homely odors of boiled sugar and peppermint. The tariff of the various comestibles just enumerated was well known; it was precisely for each severally, one half-penny. The mistress of this establishment bore the Scottish name of Lumsden--a name familiar to us lads in another way also, being constantly seen by us on the t.i.tle-pages of school-books, many of which, at the time referred to, were imported from Glasgow, from the publis.h.i.+ng-house of Lumsden and Son.

A little way down the street which crosses here, was Major Heward's house, long Clerk of the Peace for the Home District, of whom we had occasion to speak before. Several of his sons, while pursuing their legal and other studies, became also "mighty hunters;" distinguished, we mean, as enthusiastic sportsmen. Many were the exploits reported of them, in this line.

We give here an extract from Mr. McGrath's lively work, published in 1833, ent.i.tled "Authentic letters from Upper Canada, with an Account of Canadian Field Sports." "Ireland," he says, "is, in many places, remarkable for excellent c.o.c.k-shooting, which I have myself experienced in the most favourable situations: not, however, to be compared with this country, where the numbers are truly wonderful. Were I to mention,"

Mr. McGrath continues, "what I have seen in this respect, or heard from others, it might bring my graver statements into disrepute."

"As a specimen of the sport," he says, "I will merely give a fact or two of, not unusual success; bearing, however, no proportion to the quant.i.ty of game. I have known Mr. Charles Heward, of York," he proceeds to state, "to have shot in one day thirty brace at Chippewa, close to the Falls of Niagara--and I myself," Mr. McGrath continues, "who am far from being a first-rate shot, have frequently brought home from twelve to fourteen brace, my brothers performing their part with equal success."

But the younger Messrs. Heward had a field for the exercise of their sportsman skill nearer home than Chippewa. The Island, just across the Bay, where the black-heart plover were said always to arrive on a particular day, the 23rd of May, every year, and the marshes about Ashbridge's bay and York harbour itself, all abounded with wild fowl.

Here, loons of a magnificent size used to be seen and heard; and vast flocks of wild geese, pa.s.sing and re-pa.s.sing, high in air, in their periodical migrations. The wild swan, too, was an occasional frequenter of the ponds of the Island.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XV.

KING STREET, FROM CAROLINE STREET TO BERKELEY STREET.

Returning again to King Street: At the corner of Caroline Street, diagonally across from the Cawthra homestead, was the abode, when ash.o.r.e, of Captain Oates, commander of the _Duke of Richmond_ sloop, the fas.h.i.+onable packet plying between Niagara and York.

Mr. Oates was nearly connected with the family of President Russell, but curiously obtained no share in the broad acres which were, in the early day, so plentifully distributed to all comers. By being unluckily out of the way, too, at a critical moment, subsequently, he missed a bequest at the hands of the sole inheritor of the possessions of his relative.

Capt. Oates was a man of dignified bearing, of more than the ordinary height. He had seen service on the ocean as master and owner of a merchantman. His portrait, which is still preserved in Toronto, somewhat resembles that of George IV.

A spot pa.s.sed, a few moments since, on King Street, is a.s.sociated with a story in which the _Richmond_ sloop comes up. It happened that the nuptials of a neighbouring merchant had lately taken place. Some youths, employed in an adjoining warehouse or law-office, took it into their heads that a _feu de joie_ should be fired on the occasion. To carry out the idea they proceeded, under cover of the night, to the _Richmond_ sloop, where she lay frozen in by the Frederick Street wharf, and removed from her deck, without asking leave, a small piece of ordnance with which she was provided. They convey it with some difficulty, carriage and all, up into King Street, and place it in front of the bridegroom's house; run it back, as we have understood, even into the recess underneath the double steps of the porch: when duly ensconced there, as within the port of a man-of-war, they contrived to fire it off, decamping, however, immediately after the exploit, and leaving behind them the source of the deafening explosion.

On the morrow the cannon is missed from the sloop (she was being prepared for the spring navigation): on inst.i.tuting an inquiry, Capt.

Oates is mysteriously informed the lost article is, by some means, up somewhere on the premises of Mr. J. S. Baldwin, the gentleman who had been honoured with the salute, and that if he desired to recover his property he must despatch some men thither to fetch it. (We shall have occasion to refer hereafter to the _Richmond_, when we come to speak of the early Marine of York Harbour.)

Pa.s.sing on our way eastward we came immediately, on the north side, to one of the princ.i.p.al hotels of York, a long, white, two-storey wooden building. It was called the Mansion House--an appropriate name for an inn, when we understand "Mansion" in its proper, but somewhat forgotten sense, as indicating a temporary abode, a place which a man occupies and then relinquishes to a successor. The landlord here for a considerable time was Mr. De Forest, an American who, in some way or other, had been deprived of his ears. The defect, however, was hardly perceptible, so nicely managed was the hair. On the ridge of the Mansion House roof was to be seen for a number of years a large and beautiful model of a completely-equipped sailing vessel.

We then arrived at the north-west angle of King and Princes streets, where a second public well (we have already commemorated the first,) was sunk, and provided with a pump in 1824--for all which the sum of 36 17_s._ 6_d._ was paid to John James on the 19th of August in that year.

In the advertis.e.m.e.nts and contracts connected with this now obliterated public convenience, Princes Street is correctly printed and written as it here meets the eye, and not "Princess Street," as the recent corruption is.

Let not the record of our early water-works be disdained. Those of the metropolis of the Empire were once on a humble scale. Thus Master John Stow, in his _Survey of London, Anno 1598_, recordeth that "at the meeting of the corners of the Old Jurie, Milke Street, Lad Lane, Aldermanburie, there was of old time a fair well with two buckets; of late years," he somewhat pathetically adds, "converted to a pump."

Just across eastward from the pump was one of the first buildings put up on King Street: it was erected by Mr. Smith, who was the first to take up a building lot, after the laying-out of the town-plot.

On the opposite side, a few steps further on, was Jordan's--the far-famed "York Hotel"--at a certain period, the hotel _par excellence_ of the place, than which no better could be found at the time in all Upper Canada. The whole edifice has now utterly disappeared. Its foundations giving way, it for a while seemed to be sinking into the earth, and then it partially threatened to topple over into the street.

It was of antique style when compared with the Mansion House. It was only a storey-and-a-half high. Along its roof was a row of dormer windows. (Specimens of this style of hotel may still be seen in the country-towns of Lower Canada.)

When looking in later times at the doorways and windows of the older buildings intended for public and domestic purposes, as also at the dimensions of rooms and the proximity of the ceilings to the floors, we might be led for a moment to imagine that the generation of settlers pa.s.sed away must have been of smaller bulk and stature than their descendants. But points especially studied in the construction of early Canadian houses, in both Provinces, were warmth and comfort in the long winters. Sanitary principles were not much thought of, and happily did not require to be much thought of, when most persons pa.s.sed more of their time in the pure outer air than they do now.

Jordan's York Hotel answered every purpose very well. Members of Parliament and other visitors considered themselves in luxurious quarters when housed there. Probably in no instance have the public dinners or fas.h.i.+onable a.s.semblies of a later era gone off with more _eclat_, or given more satisfaction to the persons concerned in them, than did those which from time to time, in every season, took place in what would now be considered the very diminutive ball-room and dining-hall of Jordan's.

In the ball-room here, before the completion of the brick building which replaced the Legislative Halls destroyed by the Americans in 1813, the Parliament of Upper Canada sat for one session.

In the rear of Jordan's, detached from the rest of the buildings, there long stood a solid circular structure of brick, of considerable height and diameter, dome-shaped without and vaulted within, somewhat resembling the furnace into which Robert, the huntsman, is being thrust, in Retzsch's ill.u.s.tration of Fridolin. This was the public oven of Paul Marian, a native Frenchman who had a bakery here before the surrounding premises were converted into a hotel by Mr. Jordan. In the _Gazette_ of May 19, 1804, Paul Marian informs his friends and the public "that he will supply them with bread at their dwellings, at the rate of nine loaves for a dollar, on paying ready money."

About the same period, another Frenchman, Francois Belcour, is exercising the same craft in York. In _Gazettes_ of 1803, he announces that he is prepared "to supply the ladies and gentlemen who may be pleased to favor him with their custom, with bread, cakes, buns, etc.

And that for the convenience of small families, he will make his bread of different sizes, viz., loaves of two, three, and four pounds' weight, and will deliver the same at the houses, if required." He adds that "families who may wish to have beef, etc., baked, will please send it to the bake-house." In 1804, he offers to bake "at the rate of pound for pound; that is to say he will return one pound of Bread for every pound of Flour which may be sent to him for the purpose of being baked into bread."

After the abandonment of Jordan's as a hotel, Paul Marian's oven, repaired and somewhat extended, again did good service. In it was baked a goodly proportion of the supplies of bread furnished in 1838-9, to the troops, and incorporated militia at Toronto, by Mr. Jackes and Mr.

Reynolds.

As the sidewalks of King Street were apt to partake, in bad weather, of the impa.s.sableness of the streets generally at such a time, an early effort was made to have some of them paved. Some yards of foot-path, accordingly, about Jordan's, and here and there elsewhere, were covered with flat flagstones from the lake-beach, of very irregular shapes and of no great size: the effect produced was that of a very coa.r.s.e, and soon a very uneven mosaic.

At Quebec, in the neighborhood of the Court House, there is retained some pavement of the kind now described: and in the early lithograph of Court House Square, at York, a long stretch of sidewalk is given in the foreground, seamed over curiously, like the surface of an old Cyclopean or Pelasgic wall.

On April the 26th, 1823, it was ordered by the magistrates at Quarter Sessions that "100 from the Town and Police Fund, together with one-fourth of the Statute Labour within the Town, be appropriated to flagging the sidewalks of King Street, commencing from the corner of Church Street and proceeding east to the limits of the Town, and that both sides of the street do proceed at the same time." One hundred pounds would not go very far in such an undertaking. We do not think the sidewalks of the primitive King Street were ever paved throughout their whole length with stone.

After Jordan's came Dr. Widmer's surgery, a.s.sociated with many a pain and ache in the minds of the early people of York, and scene of the performance upon their persons of many a delicate, and daring, and successful remedial experiment. Nearly opposite was property appertaining to Dr. Stoyell, an immigrant, non-practising medical man from the United States, with Republican proclivities as it used to be thought, who, previous to his purchasing here, conducted, as has been already implied, an inn at Mrs. Lumsden's corner. (The house on the other side of Ontario Street, westward, was Hayes' Boarding House, noticeable simply as being in session-time, like Jordan's, the temporary abode of many Members of Parliament.)

After Dr. Widmer's, towards the termination of King Street, on the south side, was Mr. Small's, originally one of the usual low-looking domiciles of the country, with central portion and two gable wings, somewhat after the fas.h.i.+on of many an old country manor-house in England.

The material of Mr. Small's dwelling was hewn timber. It was one of the earliest domestic erections in York. When re-constructed at a subsequent period, Mr. Charles Small preserved, in the enlarged and elevated building, now known as Berkeley House, the shape and even a portion of the inner substance of the original structure.

We have before us a curious plan (undated but old) of the piece of ground originally occupied and enclosed by Mr. Small, as a yard and garden round his primitive homestead: occupied and enclosed, as it would seem, before any building lots were set off by authority on the Government reserve or common here. The plan referred to is ent.i.tled "A sketch showing the land occupied by John Small, Esq., upon the Reserve appropriated for the Government House at York by His Excellency Lt. Gov.

Simcoe." An irregular oblong, coloured red, is bounded on the north side by King Street, and is lettered within--"Mr. Small's Improvements."

Round the irregular piece thus shewn, lines are drawn enclosing additional s.p.a.ce, and bringing the whole into the shape of a parallelogram: the parts outside the irregularly shaped red portion, are colored yellow: and on the yellow, the memorandum appears--"This added would make an Acre." The block thus brought into shapely form is about one-half of the piece of ground that at present appertains to Berkeley House.