THE CENTENARY OF FRANCIS PARKMAN,’ 1823-1893

T ~ I E centenary of the greatest historian yet produced on the American continent has naturally evoked numerous tributes from various societies concerned with history, especially in his own country. The Massachusetts Historical Society, left the heir of his library and of most of his personal manuscripts, was among the foremost in the United States in commemorating his services ; and many other public bodies in that country followed suit. Canada also has not been behindhand in her chorus of praise ; and probably the most notable celebration of the centenary was at Montreal, in the province of which the early develop- ment has been immortalised by Parkman. There seemed, too, a special appropriateness in the choice of Montreal for this event, as that city is the great meeting-ground today of the two nations, French and English, who have jointly made Canada what it is, and whose struggle for mastery on the continent has been narrated for all time in the great series that ends with Montculm and Wolfe. Morcover, Parkman had a brother-in-law in Montreal and very friendly relations with Messieurs de St. Sulpice, the great Order so intimately associated with the early history of the city ; while McGill University, which took a special interest and part in the celebration, was the only university in Canada that conferred on him an honorary degree.

Certainly the success of the Montreal celebration, which took place on 13 November, was a striking tribute to the influence of Parkman’s writings, and incidentally a remarkable testimony, from a community chiefly distinguished for its business enterprise and capacity, to the value it is beginning to attach to historical study in the development of the nation. A large number of people came to see a most interesting exhibition at McGill library of Parkmaniana and contemporary documents illustrative of his history. One of the largest halls in Montreal was hired for the public meeting, which was attended by deputations from learned

[There are lives of Parkman by C. H. Farnha? (Boston and London, 1900) series, Boston and London,

A loading article on his life and work appeared in The Times Literary For a list of his works see below, p. 273.-Ed.]

and H. D. Sedgwick (“American Men of Letters 1904). Supplement, 20 September, 1923.

270 HISTORY [JAN.

societies in the United States and Canada, as well as by Park- man’s niece and son-in-law, and the hall was filled with over u thousand people who had paid for their admission. This audience was fully representative of both sections of the community, French and English; and the Principal of McGill University presided. The committee responsible for the organisation were fortunate in securing as the principal speaker the distinguished French Ambassador at Washington, M. Jusserand, whose know- ledge of English history and literature and his twenty-one years’ acquaintance with the United States gave peculiar authority to his words. It was a gracious act, characteristic of his nation, that M. Jusserand at a time of severe international difficulty should have cast everything aside for the three days necessary for him to come, with Mme. Jusserand, to Montreal to deliver his eulogy of a great fellow-historian. The second spkech was delivered by Professor Bliss Perry of Harvard, who spoke specially of Parkman’s heroic life, as seen by a fellow New Eng- lander; M. Fauteux, the librarian of the St. Sulpice library, spoke as the representative of the French Canadians; and the last speaker was Dr. Colby, a former Professor of History a t McGill. In addition to the speeches a novel feature of the proceedings was the rendering by a noted choir of old French songs sung by soldiers and habitants during the period of which Parkman wrote, and still familiar in the province of Quebec.

This meeting was in itself a testimony that Canadians, whether of French or English stock, are not unmindful of the American who has done more than any man to stir up the national pride in their common traditions. It is hoped also to do more, and to make the meeting a starting-point for a movement to commemorate Parkman in some permanent form. The scheme felt to be most appropriate is to raise a fund for founding scholar- ships, tenable in any Canadian university or a t the Canadian Archives at Ottawa, to encourage research in Canadian history, and so stimulate a school of Canadian historians fitted by their attainments to continue the work begun in so masterly a fashion by Parkman.

Francis Parkman is perhaps not so well known in England as he deserves. It is curious indeed that the history of South Africa is better understood in England than that of the older Dominion. The probable reason for this is that in England we have been more intimately concerned with South African affairs than with events in Canada, which has given us very little trouble

19241 THE CENTENARY OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 271

since Lord Durham’s report. Consequently we have neglected Canadian history in very much the same fashion and for very much the same reason as we have neglected till within the last few years the history of the United States, Moreover, the political history of Canada, the side to which historians are apt to devote their attention, is undeniably dull since the country was taken over by the English in 1763 ; even though there have been interesting men in politics, such as Carleton, Durham, Elgin and Macdonald. The fact is that the real interest of Canadian history, even to-day, is not to be found in the politics, but in the development of the country by explorers, traders, missionaries, railway builders, farmers and those who have put its vast water power to practical uses. When we have begun to realise this, Parkman will come to his own with us, as he has long come to his own on the American continent. For though he wrote of a period before railways were thought of, and when men had barely realised the possibilities of water power, yet he discovered the secret of the real interest in Canadian history when he determined to make his life-work a history of the .‘ romance of the” forest.” If you want to understand the Canada of to-day, nowhere can you lay the foundations of your knowledge better than in the pages of Parkman’s great series of volumes, that carry you on from the times of Cartier and the other precursors of France in the New World down to the time of the final struggle between Wolfe and Montcalm for the domination of the continent.

In these volumes you will find the face of the country brought so vividly before you that even if you have never crossed the Atlantic it is made to appear to you like some familiar landscape. The mighty rivers, the portages over the rapids, the tracks laboriously hewn through the tangled forests, the clearings by river or lake-side where the first farms were patiently cultivated by the simple peasants from Old France, the haunts of the Indians in the forest lands, the rough beginnings of the now mighty cities of Quebec and Montreal,-they soak unforgettably into your mind through his pages. If all you know of Canada comes to you from The Old Rdgime in Canada, say, and Montmlm and Wolfe, and chance afterwards takes you sailing up the broad stream of the St. Lawrence,-when you suddenly come upon the historic battle-ground of Quebec, you find the fle d’orleans, the Montmorency Falls, the Charles River, LBvis, and above all the noble bluff of Quebec, all in exactly the right place as you had pictured them, like old familiar landmarks,-so true, so

272 HISTORY [JAN.

convincing to the imagination had been Parkman’s description. Just so is it with the men and women so lovingly portrayed in his pages. Perhaps the figures that dwell most in the memory are those noble Jesuit missionaries, Isaac Jogues, Brkbeuf, Lalemant, Marquette and the others, with whose beliefs Parkman profoundly disagreed, but for whose lives of heroism and self- sacrifice he had the deepest admiration and of whom he has written so as to make the world admire them for all time.

In spite of his disagreement on principles of belief with these martyrs for the faith, it is only natural that Parkman should have had a fellow-feeling with them ; for was not his own life a prolonged act of heroism? Among the stories of devotion to a self-imposed duty few are so moving as that of Parkman. Choos- ing, while still an undergraduate, the subject to which he meant to devote his energy and all his time,-that ‘‘ romance of the forest ” of which I have already spoken,-he began fitting himself for his task at once and never dropped it almost to his dying day. He fitted himself for it by getting to know the forest of his con- tinent, its tracks and clearings, its beasts and its early natives, as well as the breed of white pioneers, still not extinct when he began to work ; by exercising his faculties, physical and mental and spiritual, so that they might be a perfect instrument for his purpose. We all know the tragedy that resulted from these high hopes, partly, no doubt, due to the very rigour of his preparations ; how he became nearly blind and was racked by that terrible and mysterious nervous complaint which for long periods prevented his working for more than five minutes at a time. But he never once gave up, and carried on his work under incredible difficulties till he had accomplished what he had set out to do ; and all the time he unflinchingly kept a brave countenance before the world. This is how he appeared to those familiar with him in his old age, as Dr. Bliss Perry described him in his speech a t Montreal : “ It is thirty years since Francis Parkman died. A few elderly Bostonians recall that gallant crippled figure, with the keen grey eyes and the chin thrust forward, as he marched rapidly with his two canes along Chestnut or Charles Street, stopping every few rods to rest against a fence. It was agony for him to walk, it was a worse agony to sit still. Yet his proud face gave no sign. He had a smile for an old friend and for every child, and if there were roses in any window, his eye quickened ; but he hobbled on, through those streets already submerged by the tide of alien immigration, a patrician, a Puritan of the Puritans, remote, inscrutable, indomitable.”

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This paper is no studied appreciation of Parkman’s work; that has been done elsewhere. Yet it may lead some reader unfamiliar with it to take up one of his volumes. I can warrant him he will read on to the end and become so much absorbed in the wonderful story that he will not willingly relinquish Parkman till he has seen the whole story through. And those who take his story to heart will understand better how to continue the history of Canada from where he leaves off. They will realise that what we want to know about Canadian history is not so much the contentions of politicians, important though they do occasionally become, but how the work so wonderfully begun by the French in exploring and civilising the continent has been continued since the British occupation. Such an historian will have to tell of the work of the Hudson’s Bay Company, of the North-West Company, of the discovery of the Yukon, of the opening out of the western cornlands, of the surveying parties that spent years away from civilisation in planning the track of the great railways that have made Canada one nation from east to west; or, again, he will have to tell of the lonely work of preachers of the Gospel in the regions back of beyond, of heroic missionaries such as Dr. Grenfell on the bleak coasts of Labrador, of the adventures of, perhaps, the h e s t police force in the world, the N.W. Mounted Police, in bringing half a continent to quiet lawfulness and peace amid all the excite- ment incidental to the rough pioneer’s work. All this, much of which is still going on to-day, the historian of Canada since 1763 will have to tell, instead of dwelling chiefly on constitutional and politicafsquabbles, interesting as those may be made if reduced to their proper proportions; and if he has the patience, the conscientiousness, the sympathy, the enthusiasm, and above all the love of all that is manly, of a Parkman, he will be able to tell no less entrancing a tale.

BASIL WILLIAMS.

[Bibliographical Note.--!be following list gives Parkman’s chief works, with the dates of their publication : most of them passed throu h several editions in his lifetime, new yatter being incorporated as his researoles proceeded. A “Centenary Edition by C. H. Farnham, has just been produced by his publishers (Boston : Little, &own & Co. ; London : Macmillan, 13 vols., 108. each). There have been four other complete editions : the “Champlain ” (Boston. 1897-8, with en important Introducto Essay by John Fiske), 20 vols. ; the “New Library” (Boston, 1899 ; London, l9Ox 12 vole. ; the Canadian copyright edition (Toronto, 1901). 12 vole. ; and a pocket edition (Boston and L o n d y 1912). 12 ~01s.

France and England in North America ” I Pioneera of France in the New World (1886, reviasd 1886); The Jeauita in North Ameriea in the Seventedk Century (1807); La Sat% and the Diemery 01 the && West

of his complete works, with the biograph

In the series entitled

NO. 32.-VOL. VIII. T

274 IIISTORY [JAN. 19241

(1869 ; 1878, revised and partly rewritten, “ La Salle ” being added t o the title because a large collection of documents relatin t o him had, meanwhile, been discovered and used) ; The Old Rdqime in Canu% (1874) ; Count Frontenac and New France under Louie X I V (1877); A Half-Century of Conflict (1892), covering the period 1700-1750; Montcah and Wolfe (1884).

These had been preceded by The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851, revised 1870), dealing with the Indian war, 1763-69; and The Orego; l’rail (1847), which he described in his preface to the fourth edition (1872) as A summer’s adventures of two youths just out of college . . . the reflection of forms and conditions of life which have ceased, in great measure, to exist.”

“Everyman’s Library ” includes The Conspiracy of Pontiac (2 vols.) and Montcnh and Wolfe (2 vols.), with valuable introductions by Thomas Seccombe, which supplement Professor Williams’ paper by indicating other aspcots of Parkman’s character and opinions.-E. J. D.]

There have been many editions of each work separately.