Introduction

Introduction The Canadian Brothers of Major John Richardson was published in Montreal in 1840 in two volumes. Since few copies of this original edition were sold, whether as two books or as a pair within a single cover, the sequel to Wacousta has had a limited circulation among Canadian readers during more than a hundred and thirty years. This publication in 1976 is the second Canadian edition. In 1851 buyers of De Witt and Davenport's paperbound books in the United States were offered an 'Americanized' version of The Canadian Brothers under the entirely new title of Matilda Montgomerie. Six additional reissues, bearing dates between 1851 and 1888, have been discovered and described by William F.E. Morley in A Bibliographical Study of Major John Richardson. 1 The story is now being repatriated with the original text and title of The Canadian Brothers. John Richardson (1796-1852) was a professional soldier and by inclination a professional author, the first man in the Canadas who attempted to live on the monetary rewards to be gained by creative writing. There is no better introduction to his early en- vironment than The Canadian Brothers. It is set in the scenes of his boyhood and of his first military experiences. His mother was a daughter of John Askin, a prosperous trader with the Indians and the garrisons of the Michigan area; his father was Dr Robert Richardson, a surgeon of the Queen's Rangers stationed at various points of the western border which had been established in 1795 between Canada and the United States by Jay's Treaty. Their son John was born at Queenston on the Niagara River, a little village overshadowed by the famous Heights where the forces of General Brock defeated the Americans in the last battle described in The Canadian Brothers ( and, incidentally, glossed over in Matilda Montgomerie). As a young boy John was taken to live at Amherstburg (Malden) on the Detroit River, where he learned the history of Canada's Old Northwest and especially of that region in 1760, when Major Robert Rogers took over the French fort at Detroit for the British army. Three years later the uprising of Pontiac and his Indians placed the garrison under siege. Around this 'Con- spiracy' (so called by Francis Parkman in 1851) Richardson would before 1832 build the fiction of his first Canadian novel, Waco us ta. In his youth he had his own harsh experience of war, which would form the historical basis of The Canadian Brothers, the sequel to Wacousta. When John was fifteen and his favourite brother Robert only fourteen, the British-American-Canadian war of 1812-14 began with military action on the vulnerable frontier of the Detroit River. The boys became 'gentlemen volunteers,' John as an ensign in the 41st Regiment, and Robert as a midshipman in the small British naval force whose base was being established a few yards from their home in Amherstburg. With some concessions to fiction, the experiences in war of Gerald and Henry Grantham are based on what the Richardson brothers saw and did in the border battles of 1812 and 1813. John was 'a constant participator' with the 41st in General Brock's capture of Detroit, and in the engagements at French- town, the Miami, Fort Stephenson on the Sandusky, and Mora- vian town. John was captured during the decisive defeat on the Thames and suffered with other British officers who became Vlll prisoners of war in Ohio and Kentucky. His memories of a full year as a captive in the United States are the source of vivid detail in many pages of The Canadian Brothers. His brother Robert, although under orders to remain behind, contrived to join the attacking forces landed at Frenchtown, and was seriously wounded when still fourteen years of age. He died in 1819. Readers of this book, however, must know that, for purposes of fiction, the author does not describe the wartime experiences of Gerald and Henry Grantham precisely as they happened in real life to himself and Robert. In the book Gerald is the midshipman and performs in most of the military actions as Ensign John Richardson had actually done, and Ensign Henry Grantham plays a minor part as Midshipman Robert Richardson had done because of delayed naval activity and his own serious wounds. Richardson also freely portrayed characters based upon people he had known on the Border; these were not drawn with the exactness which he lavished upon geographical and military de- tails. He was a novelist as well as a historian. Yet one may see something of his father in Major Grantham (I, 105-6), and of his uncle, or more probably his grandfather John Askin, in Colonel D'Egville. Captains Molineux, St Clair, Cranstoun, and Granville, and lieutenants Raymond, Villiers, and Middlemore are fictional representations of certain officers of the infantry, engineers, militia, and navy assembled at Amherstburg. Lieutenant Middle- more, the punster, and Captain Cranstoun, the Scot, are unfor- tunate caricatures. Some of the experiences attributed to Gerald Grantham (as commander of a ship) belonged in the War to naval lieutenants Rolette and Irvine. The great heroes, General Brock, Captain IX Barclay, and Tecumseh are gloriously themselves, and are ac- corded respectful tributes similar to those in the author's poetic Tecumseh (1828) and in War of 1812, his textbook history of the operations of the Right Division of the Canadian Army. With this document in hand, further experiments in identifying Richard- son's fictional officers of the British-Canadian and American forces may be carried on at the will of the reader. He will find little praise for General Procter of the 41st or for General Hull, American commander of the fort at Detroit. Desborough and Gattrie are frontiersmen of American origin who have had to choose sides in the Border war. Desborough, like the traitor described in Richardson's later novel Westbrook,2 took on the role of an outlaw avenging himself and the American cause upon the British settlers and their British protectors. On the other hand, Sampson Gattrie was Simon Girty, excellently portrayed as Amherstburg knew him in his old age, a 'loyalist' settler on the Canadian side near McKee and Elliott, infamous among the Americans because of his remarkable early career as an 'irregular' British Ranger in the territories south of the Lakes during the Indian and Revolutionary wars (I, 100-15). 3 Lest references to Richardson's various writings become con- fusing, it is appropriate to trace his entry into the world of letters. When he was released from captivity in Kentucky in October 1814, he proceeded to England: he was on the Atlantic when the battle of Waterloo was fought. Attached at that time to the 8th, or King's, Regiment of Foot, but on half pay, he sought a commission with sufficient emolument to give him status in Britain - and indeed on the continent. The record of his early journalistic efforts is still obscure, although, if one interprets the evidence of his first two novels, Ecarte (1829) and the recently X discovered Frasca ti's ( 1830), he succeeded in getting enough money to become acquainted with a gambling set in Paris. After a spell of poetic experiments (romantic heroics in Tecumseh and satire in Kensington Gardens in 1830), Richard- son returned to fiction: the Parisian phase was followed by a Canadian one, resulting in Wacousta (1832) and the beginning of work on The Canadian Brothers. Indeed, he had never entirely neglected Canadian material: The New Monthly Magazine in London, England, had published in 1826 and 1827 his series of 'A Canadian Campaign, By A British Officer,' which fifteen years later became his documented history book, War of 1812. There was an interruption of literary activity in 1835, when, as a captain of the 22nd Regiment, Richardson fought with the British Auxiliary Legion of Lieutenant-General De Lacy Evans in supporting the Regent Christina of Spain against Don Carlos, who claimed the throne. Participation in this venture involved Richardson in military politics and three books of controversy and memoirs. Still dedicated to politics, he came to Canada in 1838 as a writer for the London Times. Thus began the experiences recorded in his Eight Years in Canada (1847), in which one may find accounts of his sojourns in Amherstburg and Sandwich during the late 1830s. In The Canadian Brothers one notes the error of placing the battle of Queenston Heights in 1813, rather than, as it happened, in 1812. A man so well stocked with knowledge of military history, as Richardson was, must have had strong rea- sons for this anachronism. In his work of fiction he un- doubtedly required the battle for a spectacular climax, and probably for the satisfaction of concluding with a British- Canadian triumph. His 'preface' to the novel shows that he xi took such understanding for granted on the part of the reader, who would also be grateful for the introduction of Tecumseh into the narrative 'somewhat earlier than the strict facts will justify.' It is easier to forgive Richardson for these manipula- tions than for inventing speeches in atrocious 'imperfect Scotch' by Captain Cranstoun, for which even an apology seems in- adequate. Middleton's puns are indeed miserable, and the odd speech of the lovable Sambo is quite enough for the reader to bear. The subtitle of The Canadian Brothers, The Prophecy Ful- filled, is a reminder that one should know what was reported in Wacousta; or, The Prophecy regarding the major characters of the early 1760s. The Canadian Brothers takes up family history in 1812, about fifty years later.

Load more