Читать книгу Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 26–30 - Wayne Larsen - Страница 19

Communicate with me in one of the

unknown tongues.

— GEORGE SIMPSON

The town of Dingwall, in northern Scotland, lies enclosed on the north and south by two high hills, but on the east the vista opens onto the Cromarty Firth (inlet), and to the west the road leads into the western Highlands. In the 1790s, as well as now, the Statistical Account of Scotland tells us: “Every traveller is struck by the natural beauty of the country.”

The sea cuts deeply into the landscape in several long firths — Dornoch, Cromarty, Moray, Beauly — opening glistening vistas of water to complement the rolling headlands. To the north, Ben Wyvis, one of Scotland’s highest peaks, is always covered in snow, even in the hottest days of summer. From Fodderty in Strathpeffer, looking eastward, “the valley has a commanding view of the town and parish of Dingwall,” which “forms a beautiful interchange of hill and valley, wood and water, corn fields and meadows.” And beyond, the glistening firth wends its way to the North Sea, conjuring visions of far-off places at the ends of the world.

To find a place as far north in Canada we must think of Churchill, Manitoba. But the air at Dingwall is warmed by the gulf current, making the land warm and arable, the landscape shaped by centuries of agriculture.

Here in this lush beautiful landscape, George Simpson was born, probably in the early spring of 1792. But where exactly he was born — in the town or in the nearby countryside — remains uncertain.

His father was George Simpson senior, born in 1759 in the fishing village of Avoch (pronounced ach to rhyme with loch) about nine miles east of Dingwall. George Sr.’ s father was the Church of Scotland minister, the Reverend Thomas Simpson. His mother was Isobel Mackenzie of the powerful clan of the Mackenzies of Kintail.

About 1775, George Sr. finished his schooling and a position was found for him in Dingwall as a writer’s apprentice. He became a lawyer in the Sheriff Courts in the town and a factor for lairds in the nearby countryside.

In 1805 he was recommended by several local landowners to the position of agent for the British Fisheries Society at Ullapool, north of Dingwall. The governor of the company supported him through to his retirement. The secretary of the society, however, thought he spent too much of his time communicating with the settlers. He was a deeply religious man, sprinkling his letters with religious sentiments: “I am able to thank my God for all His Mercies…. It is with a grateful heart I acknowledge the Goodness of the Lord…. [May] the all-powerful Protector … guard & watch over you.”

Certainly he adored his son, referring to him as “My dearest beloved George.” The picture that emerges from these brief glimpses is that of a rather decent man, pleasant, friendly, and warm-hearted, a devout Christian and adoring father. If he had a fault, perhaps it was that his professional responsibility was compromised by his compassion for the poor. The question we have to ask is how such a man might have responded to the unexpected arrival of a son.

In October 1789 George Sr. would have celebrated his thirtieth birthday. By then, it would seem, he was settled into a quiet bachelorhood. However, in the next year and a half his life was turned topsy-turvy, and by the spring of 1791 he had fallen for the charms of a young woman, and had fathered a child — a love child, legend has it, born with great intellect and wit.

It is said that nothing is known of George’s mother. But that is not quite true. Some evidence leads to reasonable assumptions. For instance, George’s cousins, Thomas and Alexander Simpson, who later grew up in Dingwall, both sneered at George’s lowly birth. The father was not of lowly birth, so the cousins must have been talking about the mother. It’s entirely possible that she was from what was then called the “lower classes,” which included farmers, crofters, mechanics, and servants, most of whom lived in the country. Those of the so-called “upper classes” — lawyers, ministers, merchants, and gentry — lived, for the most part, in the towns.

A relationship crossing class lines shouldn’t surprise us. Gentlemen were having children by country women at such a steady rate that ministers of the Scottish church spent much of their time tracking them down to make them pay for the welfare of the mother and child. There is no record, however, of George Sr.’s appearance before a kirk session or presbytery, where matters of illegitimacy were dealt with.

Lower class, of course, is a label given to working people by those considering themselves upper class. Genetically it is by no means an inferior status. This was certainly true of the mother, who left her genetic imprint on her child for all to see. George grew into a man at least two inches, perhaps as much as four inches, taller than the average men of his generation. He had blue eyes and red hair — unmistakable Celtic characteristics. As an adult he had a barrel chest, legendary stamina, and a stability of character that did not come from his father, whose family is described as delicate of frame and health. But no one ever accused George of being delicate. Certainly George’s mother was, judging from George himself, someone in considerable physical contrast to the delicate Simpson family, into which, in this case, one must argue that the infusion of new blood was a good thing. We might expect, then, that Simpson’s mother was a strong, healthy, intelligent woman who shared with her son that red hair and eye brightly blue, a woman whose natural affection could only be heightened by a child bearing so many of her Celtic characteristics.

Another distinction separated the classes in those days: English was rapidly replacing Gaelic as the preferred language spoken by the upper classes. The Simpson family from which George Sr. came, spoke English. The lower classes still spoke Gaelic. So if George’s mother was from the lower classes, the odds are that she spoke Gaelic, could not read or write, and knew little, if any, English.

As it happens, George could speak Gaelic as if it was his first language, and it may well have been. We know that because he later tells us so. This was no smattering of the language picked up in the schoolyard. He spoke it well enough to converse in it for months at a time, and to translate from it when necessary. All this suggests that young George spent his early years in the country. He would have learned his Gaelic at his mother’s knee, playing with the country boys, and listening to the Gaelic-speaking adults around him.

Far from being neglected in such an environment, young George would have been favourably privileged. He was, after all, the factor’s son, the son of that warm-hearted, friendly, gregarious, compassionate, and religious man, who also had blood links to the Mackenzies of Kintail. In such circumstances, he and his son would have been accorded all the deference to which their positions entitled them — George Sr. as factor and George Jr. as factor’s son.

On whatever estate he spent his childhood, he would have lived in the factor’s house. Young George may have played with the country boys, but he stood on a higher social plane. His life would have been lived not only in the simplicity of a country setting, but in the knowledge that he was the factor’s son and a Mackenzie scion. This special standing in his world later translated into that easy command he displayed in Rupert’s Land.

Somehow, in his young mind, he would have picked up a good understanding of the common people among whom he lived. The writers of The Statistical Account all agree that the country people were, on the whole, a sober and decent people, whose peccadilloes, when they occurred, were noted in an apologetic, even forgiving way:

The people in general are sober and quiet, but when an opportunity occurs, such as at a wedding, or even a funeral, it cannot be denied that some of them occasionally exceed the bounds of perfect moderation…. They cannot be entirely acquitted of poaching in game or salmon; nor is the country entirely free from the degrading and demoralizing practice of smuggling whisky.

Later, in Rupert’s Land, George would find a people not much different from these country folk, and provide them with a way of life that included a great deal of freedom.

George Sr. must have been nonplussed when he discovered he had fathered a child. Gentlemen often took such children into their protection and provided them with a good education, while a suitable husband was found for the woman in her own class. But marriage between a gentleman and a country woman rarely occurred. However, in this case, George senior defied the rule — he married the mother.

Marriage, of course, exists in many forms. Sometimes it is sanctioned by a church, sometimes by a civil authority. Sometimes it is an exchange of vows between the partners before witnesses. Sometimes it is by cohabitation and repute — that is, if the parties are seen to be living together as man and wife, then they are man and wife. In Scotland, if a child is conceived out of wedlock, and later the man and woman marry, the child is legitimate.

Alexander Simpson claimed that George was an illegitimate child, and this has been believed and repeated by many people. But Alexander is giving us hearsay evidence, not eyewitness evidence. In any case, his testimony is wrong, because we have an eyewitness that claims otherwise. In 1851, a man named Hugh Munro wrote to Sir George:

Death has made sad havoc amongst my friends and relations since I had the pleasure of addressing you last…. I really feel as if I were left alone, different days, to when I passed a fortnight with your respected father and mother in Dingwall.

Taken at face value, Munro is giving us clear evidence that George Sr. and the mother were married by cohabitation and repute. And there is good reason to believe that the marriage may have been contracted in a church: it is difficult to imagine that George Simpson, a devoutly Christian man, would have left his son unbaptized — or, for that matter, with the stigma of illegitimacy hanging over him. If George had turned for help within the church, he could look no further than to his half-brother William, missionary minister to the Strathconon, just two miles south of Dingwall. William could have performed the marriage ceremony for his brother, but his registers have not survived. We can’t be sure what happened then, but marriage by cohabitation and repute seems likely. Marriage with church sacraments also remains a distinct possibility.

What became of the mother, we don’t know. George Sr. retired from the British Fisheries Society in 1829 and moved to the village of Redcastle, where he lived out his days. In 1841 he speaks of his blindness and other ailments that kept him bedridden. He appears in the Scotland 1841 census, his age rounded to eighty. A few months later George Sr. would have celebrated his eighty-second birthday. No burial record exists to confirm his date of death.

Rivulet Cottage, Redcastle by Beauly, Scotland, the last home of George Simpson Sr.

Courtesy of the author.

At some point, perhaps at about the age of six (1798), young George moved to Dingwall. We know that George Sr. was in Dingwall in 1805. We know that George Jr. attended school in Dingwall. And we know that Mrs. Simpson was in Dingwall, because Munro saw her there. In the early 1800s, in all likelihood, George would have lived in Dingwall with his mother and father.

In 1791 the town of Dingwall held only 745 souls, but the sparse population belied its importance to the North Country. Of the three boroughs in Ross-shire, “Dingwall is accordingly by much the most flourishing.” Six lawyers made the Dingwall Sheriff Court the busiest in the county. Seven merchants, sixty mechanics, and twenty apprentices gave the impression of great industry for a town consisting principally of one long street.

For young George Dingwall it would have presented quite a different life from that in the quiet countryside. The language of the streets, the homes, the school, and the kirk was English. So George had to master the language — one so very different from the one he had been speaking that he never quite lost his Gaelic speech patterns.

The village of Avoch. The spire of the church where Sir George Simpson’s grandfather was the minister can be seen on the hill in the distance.

Courtesy of the author.

The school held between sixty and eighty students — the children of local mechanics, farmers, and townspeople. The playground would have provided Simpson with a broad cross-section of social classes to associate with. Their names can be learned from the parish records of baptism — surnames such as Baine, Fraser, MacKay, McDonald, McLeod, Munro, Stewart, and Tomlie. All would have been known to George, some would have been his friends; some swam with him, some trekked the hills with him. But only Aemilius Simpson, the son of schoolmaster Alexander Simpson, is mentioned by George by name — the only reference that definitely places George in Dingwall.

In town, young George would have come under the influence of his grandmother, Isobel Mackenzie, the widow of the Reverend Thomas Simpson. She lived in Dingwall from 1787 until her death in 1821, aged ninety. She was there from the time of George Simpson’s birth until the time he left for Rupert’s Land.

She was a vigorous woman in her sixties and seventies when young George lived there, and she was no ordinary minister’s wife. At her death she was described as

uniformly conscientious in the discharge of all of her social and relative duties; at the same time a peculiar suavity of manners and prepossessing address, secured her the love and esteem of all who knew her. She was a sincere and devout Christian, humble, modest, and unassuming. The influence of religion on her mind was discernible, from the sweetness of her temper, and the benevolence of her heart. To her own family she was endeared by the most affectionate ties; she was beloved in life.

From the description, Isobel was a formidable woman who could only have had a profound influence on her grandson. George was the first grandchild to come into her life. He would have filled a special place in her sense of generations. She held the family lore and would have related it to young George. So he likely spent his Dingwall days imbued with a sense of Mackenzie power and authority distilled through his grandmother. There was a long line of greatness in her descent, and she probably let people know it.

The ancient schoolhouse that George Simpson attended still stands in Dingwall, on the High Street. The schoolmaster in George’s time was Alexander Simpson, no relation, except that he courted George’s Aunt Mary from 1793 to 1807, when they finally married. During the courtship, Alexander must often have been in Isobel’s home, paying his attentions to Mary. Alexander had one son, Aemilius, born in 1792 by his first wife, and two more by Mary — Thomas in 1808 and Alexander in 1811. George was to bring all three into the fur trade, and all played important roles in the life of the governor.

Alexander the schoolmaster was much more to the Simpson household, and especially to young George, than merely the schoolmaster. And he was more to the life of the town. He served as baillie of the burgh, commissioner of the Kirk Sessions, and leader of the men in hunts and excursions. George was an excellent horseman and shot with both rifle and pistol, skills fostered while in Dingwall.

Just what subjects were taught in the Dingwall school are not entirely clear. The usual subjects were English, writing, and arithmetic. Beyond those the teacher was given wide scope. Teachers in nearby parishes taught French language, geography, geometry, bookkeeping, different branches of practical mathematics, music, and so on. The optional subjects could vary considerably. What subjects beyond the usual George studied is unknown.

Cousin Alexander tells us that when George went to London in 1808 he was “clever, active, plausible, and full of animal spirits.” As the seeds of the man are in the boy, these qualities must have been in the young George — likeable, friendly, active, intelligent … and tough. It’s unlikely that any boy who challenged Simpson to a schoolyard fight came away unscathed. Alexander later claimed that “[Dingwall] school-fellows were bold and expert swimmers.” George must have been one of those, as later in life he considered himself a champion swimmer, claiming “few can overmatch me in the water.”

The Highlands are prized for trekking and hill-climbing today, as they were in Simpson’s day. George’s cousins, Thomas and Alexander, later spoke of “the sports and exercises of that wild and remote highland district,” as they trekked the mountains together as summer exercise. Many opportunities exist near Dingwall to tax the energies of the intrepid climber. Hills surround Dingwall, and beyond looms the whale-back of Ben Wyvis, nine miles northwest of Dingwall, rising to 3,432 feet. George must have climbed this and other mountains, as later he could compare the heather of Scotland’s mountaintops with that found in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.

Before leaving his schooling, we might consider what education Simpson did not get in Dingwall. There was nothing that might be called learning in a higher sense. This lack of sophistication was to serve Simpson well, as it helped to make him a plain-spoken man, without airs and graces. In this he was as one with the men of the Northwest, those straightforward fur-trade factors and traders with whom Simpson later worked. Distinguished historian E.E. Rich makes the astute point that much of Simpson’s success in the leadership of men lay exactly here:

There was little of the high flown idealist about George Simpson. His lack of airs probably goes as far to explain his success as do his determination and vision. Certainly he shared to the full the ordinary life and pleasures among whom he worked; his creature comforts mattered to him, his enjoyment of them put him on the same level as the other fur traders.

These traits, then — the handwriting, the bookkeeping, the suavity of manners instilled by his grandmother, the friendliness of manner of the father, the steady intelligence and physical health of the mother — were all well-suited to the future success of George Simpson.

As his energies, intelligence, and abilities became evident as he grew out of childhood, George’s family may have decided that he should join his uncles in London. It was commonplace in the mercantile world to take relatives into apprenticeships. Judging from our later knowledge, George’s handwriting was distinct, his arithmetic exact, his mind precise and clear. He was taller than average, with a fine athletic build, and was in the bloom of health. He was personable and agreeable and handsome, with fine features, a head of wavy red hair, and intense blue eyes. His energies were indefatigable.

In 1808, Simpson, aged about sixteen, left for London. He likely travelled by the London smack, a coastal sailing ship that left from Dingwall each month for the capital, making the run in about four days.

We may imagine Simpson’s first voyage, along the east coast of Scotland and England, turning into the Thames Estuary, the gradual filling of the channel with shipping, the appearance of sturdy English houses along the shore, the great shipping docks along the Thames, the masts of hundreds of ships piercing the horizon. Then, rising ominously on his right, the Tower of London, and just beyond it the vast, ornate Custom House with its crowds of ships, sea captains, customs officers, rumbling lorries, and labourers of all sorts.

Across Thames Street, a short walk up Dunstan Hill brings the traveller to the tall-spired church of St. Dunstan in the East, where the Simpsons worshipped. A few steps farther, the narrow street opens onto the broad avenue of Great Tower Street. Across the street, at the corner of Great Tower and Mincing Lane, stood the offices and residence of George’s uncle, Geddes Mackenzie Simpson. There George would live and work for the next twelve years.

The High Street of Dingwall in the nineteenth century, much as George Simpson would have known it.

Courtesy of Dingwall Museum and Archives.