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The Citadel Quebec
12th June, 1936.
Darlings,
I am sitting in a siding at Murray Bay, a summer resort much patronised by Americans on the shore of the St. Lawrence. We have come to it before the hotel is open or the villas inhabited, while the Comptroller moves our household to Quebec. The St. Lawrence looks like the Sound of Mull, only bluer and vaster, with shadowy blue mountains stretching into the distance. The air is lovely. Ottawa was hot and a little damp. Here the air feels as if there was ice and snow somewhere not too far away, although the sun is hot. All the notices are put up in French, and you hear the children, to whom the Governor-General's train is always a Roman holiday, chattering a queer kind of patois. Johnnie is still languid and easily tired; but we hope much from the days here.
13th June.
We went a long drive. The St. Lawrence looked a pale blue, and transparent as the sky. Occasionally what looked like a half-moon of white rubber rose for a minute and then vanished. This is the white whale (a mixture of whale and porpoise). The coast is lovely - villages with wooden houses with deep shady balconies and churches with silver spires.
John and Johnnie have gone up to the Lac de Truiles in the hills to fish. I fear that they may come home bitten to pieces by black flies and mosquitoes.
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We had a most marvellous drive to a place called Baie Saint Paul, and saw great views of mountains covered with woods, stretching for miles, with other mountains behind them. The little farms are charming, with grey roofs and verandahs, on which people sit and peacefully rock all Saturday afternoon. They talk a queer difficult French and allude to dollars as piastres!
Yesterday we went to tea with the seigneuress, Mrs. Gray. The house was built in 1765 and is full of the nicest old things - four-posters, old prints, Victorian cushions, and a shallow winding staircase. It was like an English house or a Scotch house with a difference somehow. The garden had great hedges of lilac and apple blossom and very few flowers. The hostess and her daughters plied us with an incredibly good tea, talking nineteen to the dozen the while. In the evening they arranged a "veillée" for us, i.e. a party, in a village called St. Agnes. We arrived about eight o'clock; the sun was going down. We found two strange old four-seated carriages ready to take us up a hill, drawn by horses almost smothered in lilac, which was tied to their back, ears and tails. John and I and various other people mounted on to a platform, and a large crowd pressed up to it, while the cure read an address of welcome. Two lanterns were hung on poles, and a fire threw sparks up into the sky behind the crowd. The sun sank behind the mountains, the Lac St. Agnes gleamed. It was theatrically beautiful. Mrs. Gray and her daughters talked on continuously, and the mosquitoes bit us savagely. The fiddle jigged delightfully, and the songs and the dances were cheerful and gave
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the performers obvious pleasure, and us too.
No Governor-General had ever done this before, and it seemed to give pleasure. They all say here what hard lives the habitants have. The ground is so stony and difficult to cultivate, and what the winters must be in those little hill farms one can't imagine. They must be not far off starvation sometimes. The depression in America hit Murray Bay very hard, as the hotel and the golf course exist on the payments of rich people from the states. The French Canadians are trained by the priests to have beautiful manners. There is nothing off-hand about them. They bow and smile nicely whenever they meet anyone in the streets.
Yours lovingly, Susie.
