The White and the Gold (47 page)

“How many acres do you have cleared?”

“How many rooms are there in your house?”

“Does it have wooden floors? How many windows? Does the hearth draw well?”

“Have you a proper bed and plenty of blankets? How wide is it? Is it made of cypress wood or sassafras or cherry?”

“Have you a horse? How many cows, pigs, and sheep? How many chickens?”

“How much money have you saved?”

“Are you addicted to drink?”

“Are you of clean habits?”

It was seldom, however, that they carried things to the point of a refusal, for that was a chancy proceeding. They had come out to find husbands, and it behooved them to take advantage of an offer. They did not want to be among those who were passed over by all the shuffling, staring, arch males who filed through the halls. Some, alas, failed to find favor and had to be content with domestic service for the rest of their lives. An unwanted King’s Girl was a tragedy, her lot sadder than that of a confirmed spinster, for she had publicly proclaimed her willingness to be chosen. She invariably became soured and ill-tempered, the target of sly jokes and innuendoes as long as she lived.

La Hontan says the plumpest girls were taken first, and this undoubtedly was true. The bachelors wanted healthy partners who could be depended on to do their share, or a little more, of the work. A bad complexion or a squint could be overlooked if the figure was buxom.

The truth might as well be stated at once: there was little of romance in the coming of the King’s Girls and their absorption into
the life of the colony, little more than at a sale of livestock. The marriages followed immediately after the selection, priests being on hand to conduct the ceremony and notaries to make out the necessary papers. The girls would be dressed in their best; but their best, poor forlorn waifs, would not be very gay or suitable. Some undoubtedly would have nothing to wear but the cardinal cloaks they had used on the sea voyage, with the hoods folded back. None of them would have the finery of a bride with parents to fit her out properly: gloves with drawstrings of silk, three-cornered hats with jaunty pompons on top, whalebone stays to make her look slim or
criardes
to stiffen out her skirts. Perhaps a few of them would be lucky enough to have trussing chests, the equivalent of the modern hope chest, with a few treasured odds and ends in the secret compartment, the
till
, as it was called.

The men, on the whole, would be better dressed. They would have on their long-tailed coats (of red cloth in Quebec, of course) with turned-up cuffs and immense side pockets or, if they had saved up enough to be a little festive, a cool ratteen capot which was made with stiffeners and flared out from the waist.

Each couple was given an ox and a cow, two pigs, a pair of chickens, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money. This started them off well.

The result of these hasty marriages was to create a belief that the bracing climate of Canada was particularly advantageous to women. “Though the cold is very wholesome to both sexes,” wrote Dollier de Casson from Montreal, “it is incomparably more so to the female, who is almost immortal here.” The need for children was considered of such importance that the innumerable letters carried back and forth across the Atlantic, many of them in the King’s own hand, were concerned largely with the problems of multiplication. It was even believed that marriages between Frenchmen and Indian girls could be a useful factor, and Mère Marie was said to favor the idea of finding husbands among the colonists for the Indian maidens. Talon conducted an inquiry into this before he returned to France the second time. But he reached an adverse opinion. The young squaws, he reported, did not bring many children into the world because they nursed them too long. This was a fortunate finding: otherwise the resourceful monarch would have found some ingenious regulation for the encouragement of miscegenation.

Talon’s reports on the King’s Girls were more favorable. In 1670
he stated that most of the young women who had arrived the year before were pregnant already. His information proved to be perfectly sound. In the following year nearly seven hundred children were born in the colony.

It had been confidently expected that the King would tire quickly of the ceaseless attention to detail which he had inaugurated after the death of Cardinal Mazarin. It was now found that, on the contrary, he was concerning himself more than ever before in the business of administration. It was true that he was finding time for other pursuits, but always at the accustomed hour in the morning he was at his desk, and there he stayed. At a later stage of his reign he would acquire a most useful servant, a man who had the knack of imitating the King’s signature so perfectly that he attended to a large part of the royal correspondence, creating the impression that the letters had all been written by Louis himself. At the point now reached, however, the King had not discovered the Pen (the name by which this rather mysterious assistant became known at court) and so he was in the habit of writing a large number of the letters which went out in seemingly endless quantity every day.

By thus keeping his hand on every phase of administrative activity, the young monarch was hardening his resolution to rule. “I am the state!” he declared. He did not mean this as a rhetorical flourish. He was the King and he intended to rule. The seeds of a despotic intent had been contained in the statement he made immediately after Mazarin’s death, and now the plant had grown and was showing the buds of tyranny. It was Canada which felt his will in its most determined phase. The people of New France were existing on the royal bounty. Why, then, should they not be treated as children and made to toe the line of kingly whim? It was, in addition, much easier to write a letter saying that such-and-such must be done, much easier than to impose the same rules on the millions of France who had ways ingrained in them by generations of ordered living. He proceeded, therefore, to lay down a series of regulations for Canada which seem utterly fantastic today.

Parents were ordered to see to it that their sons were married by the time they were twenty and daughters at the age of sixteen. Any father who failed to do so was hauled into court and fined. What is
more, he was compelled to appear in court every six months until such time as the unwed child had found a mate. With one flourish of a pen the little despot of Versailles took away the right of bachelors to live as they chose. All single men were under orders to get themselves married within two weeks of the arrival of a shipload of King’s Girls. Marry, declared the King, it is my will! Bachelorhood ceased immediately to be a state of single blessedness and became instead a state of persecution. Bachelors were not allowed to fish or to go into the woods on any pretext, to prevent them from trading with the Indians. They were taxed as long as they remained obdurate.

Colbert wrote to Talon that special burdens should be found for bachelors, that they should be excluded from all opportunities for advancement and from all honors. He went a step farther and declared that some measure of infamy should be imposed on them. Perhaps he had a seat in the stocks in mind or even a term of imprisonment. The persecution of the bachelor was never carried to that extreme, however.

To the habitants Cupid had always been a sly and rather bumbling little fellow with a far from taut bow. To have him turned into a scowling busybody with a rawhide whip (and bearing the features of the Sun King) was unpleasant medicine. To them a wedding had been a gay and festive occasion and they had brought with them from the French provinces many quaint beliefs and customs. Great care was always taken to have no brooms used about the house after the ceremony because that would condemn the couple to a lifetime of poverty. They firmly believed that the first one of the newlyweds to get into the nuptial bed would be the first to die, but they do not seem to have evolved any way out of the difficulty. Did they sit up all night? Or did the bride take one side and the groom the other, slithering in between the sheets at exactly the same moment?

The King displayed benevolence on the other side of the register, however. Handsome bounties were offered to those who bowed to the royal will. Twenty livres went to both contracting parties when they were within the stipulated age. This was called the King’s Gift, and it was surprising how general was the desire to take advantage of the offer. Louis then proceeded to make it worth their while to have plenty of children. Any couple with ten children received a yearly pension of three hundred livres. The size of the pension grew with further increases. Twelve children entitled the parents to four hundred livres a year.

The number of families enjoying these bounties was surprisingly large. If the climate did not make the women immortal, it perhaps had some part in the fruitfulness they displayed. One of the New Year customs was to scratch the names of all the children in each house on the frosted panes of glass, and it was not at all unusual for the record to continue from window to window until every bit of glass had been filled.

Dollier de Casson, that amiable giant who had given up soldiering for a life of self-sacrifice in the garb of the Sulpician Order, cites the classic example of the haste to marry which the insistence of the King had engendered in the public. In Montreal a woman had been widowed while still young enough and comely enough to consider a second venture. He reports that she “had banns proclaimed once, was exempted from two other callings, and had her second marriage arranged and carried out before her first husband was buried.” He did not seem to find such haste unseemly. In fact, he held it up as an example of what was entirely proper and admirable.

It has been stated earlier that Louis XIV was a heavy eater. He continued to be a mighty trencherman to the end of his days. His dinner always began with three or four soups, all of them rich concoctions made with wine and fine herbs. He was very fond of soup and never failed to have a bowl of each kind. Several varieties of fish followed, with savory sauces of course, a ragout, a deviled leg of capon, a wide selection of roasts, a meat pie with truffles and mushrooms and a crust so flaky that it melted like the first prismatic flakes of snow, game browned to a turn, and steaming golden platters of shellfish. He professed to be a light eater of desserts, but this was purely comparative. He never failed to pay full tribute to the pastry and he acknowledged his supreme addiction to rich conserves. His consumption of fruits in season was likely to be enormous.

When the last luscious peach had vanished down the royal throat and the final sip of wine had followed it, Louis would lapse into a state of profound melancholy. He had little to say, and all the beautiful ladies who sat about him were wise enough to be very restrained. The only reasonable explanation for his determination to dictate every phase in the lives of his French-Canadian subjects is perhaps to be found in these moments of dejection. In this gray
state of mind, gazing at life with austere and censorious eyes, he may very well have set himself to concocting his plans for the unfortunate habitants.

At any rate, he was guilty of imposing laws and restrictions which attained a high level of absurdity. And they were not in any sense theoretical; they were meant to be enforced. “You are to lay the blame on yourself,” wrote the King to one of the intendants who followed Talon, referring to some breach of laws, “for not having executed my principal order.” The insistent monarch was completely in accord with the sentiments expressed by Intendant Meules in one of his letters. “It is of very great consequence,” wrote this sycophant, “that the people should not be at liberty to speak their minds.”

As it was essential that the land be cleared and cultivated, the habitant was forbidden to move into town on pain of being fined fifty livres and having all his goods and chattels confiscated; and a corollary order made it illegal for townspeople to rent houses or rooms to tenants from the country, the fine in their case being fixed at one hundred livres. No one could return to France without leave, and such permission was rarely given. The farmer must not own more than two horses or mares and one foal, because he might not then raise cattle and sheep in sufficient quantities.

The townspeople were fairly smothered with picayune restrictions. Merchants were not permitted to hold meetings for discussion of business matters. No one could trade in foreign goods, and any article purchased abroad, except from France, would be seized and publicly burned. Innkeepers were not permitted to serve customers during High Mass or any church service, nor were they allowed to serve food or drink to anyone residing in the town. Bakers were ordered to make dark brown bread although there was little demand for it. Dark brown bread was never served at the royal table, but the King believed it was doubly nutritious; and so bake it in their ovens the poor bakers must.

Every house must have a ladder so that assistance could be rendered when fire broke out in town. Citizens had to dig a gutter in the middle of the street in front of their property. Chimney sweeps had to be employed twice a year by each householder at a price of six sous. Dogs had to be kept off the streets after a certain hour on Sundays. People were not permitted to sit on the benches in front of their houses after nine o’clock in the evenings. Licenses had to be obtained to hire domestic servants.

Many of the regulations seem traceable to clerical influence. The habitant was an excitable and voluble fellow who liked to vent his feelings in loud ejaculations such as
“Palsambleu!”, “Sacre bleu!”
, and
“Corbleu!”
The King, nevertheless, reached the decision that no form of profanity was to be allowed. On the first four occasions that a citizen was charged with blowing off his feelings with rough words he was fined on an ascending scale. For the fifth offense he was sent to the pillory. For the sixth his upper lip was seared with a red-hot iron. The seventh lapse led to the upper lip being branded as well. After that the offender was considered hopeless and mercy could no longer be extended. An eighth offense was his last. He would be led out, his arms bound with ropes, and in the sight of everyone (all people were under orders to go whether they wanted to or not) his tongue would be cut out so that no longer could he profane the air with his violence and blasphemies.