Chas. Alleyn, Sheriff of Quebec, [250] where those he loved received
his last farewell on the 7th December, 1847, bequeathing Longwood to his
son Charles Webber Smith, who lived some years there as a bachelor, then
decked out his rustic home for an English bride and retired to England
where he died in 1879. Desolation and silence has reigned in the halls of
Longwood for many a long day, and in the not inappropriate words of
Swinburne,
Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not.
As the heart of a dead man the seed plots are dry;
From the thickets of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Chief Justice Smith [251] concerning house-keeping, house-furnishing
chateau ceremonies, etc, at Quebec in 1786, wrote thus in a letter to his
wife:
QUEBEC, 10th Dec., 1786.
Mrs. Janet Smith, New York.
My dear Janet,
"Not a line from you yet! so that our approach to within 600 miles is
less favourable to me hitherto, than when the ocean divided us by
three thousand.
