Characters

The à Cleeve family came from Devon, with lands in the upper reaches of the River Dart, below the south-east rim of Dartmoor. They were recusants, apparently of French or Norman-French origin, who successfully retained their lands during the time of the Reformation and the Civil War, but only at the expense of isolation from their neighbours. According to Mark Stoyle in Loyalty and Locality (1994, pp. 21 and 205) there were fewer than 100 Catholics in Devon in the 1640s out of a population of about 72,000.

References to the à Cleeves and Devon in Fort Amity: Chapters I, II, V, XII, XIX and XXVI.

The recent Genome Project of DNA testing has established the population of Devon as Celtic but of a different sort of Celt than the Cornish. Q's mother came from the same area as the fictitious à Cleeves and it is not impossible that Q had an actual Catholic family in mind. John à Cleeve was educated at home before being sent to the seminary in Douai, his elder brother having inherited the estate (Chapter I, II, IV, VII, XI and XII).

John à Cleeve’s training for the priesthood was aborted following the reading of Voltaire and other sceptical writers. With his father dead, his brother obtained ensigncy for John in the 46^th Regiment of Foot and he was shipped to Cork where his cousin was an ensign in the 17^th Regiment of Foot. They spent the winter of 1757-8 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, so as to participate in a three-pronged attack on New France as planned by William Pitt the Elder and destined to take place in the spring.

Initially, Pitt planned for Louisbourg on Cape Breton to be taken as it was the key to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Secondly, he desired an advance up the Hudson River, to take Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga. Thirdly, he wanted the capture of Fort Duquesne, the key to the Great Lakes and the far west. From these points he envisaged his forces converging on Quebec and Montreal, the administrative and military centre of New France. The plot of Fort Amity is based on Pitt’s strategy, although it did not work out as planned. For the first two attacks the British forces were gathered at Halifax, as the novel relates. 

While the historical Richard Montgomery took part in the successful taking of Fort Carillon in 1759, the fictional John à Cleeve took part in the repulse in 1758. The British forces marched up from Albany, the home of the Schuyler family (Chapter I), in June 1758, reached Fort Carillon in July, with John à Cleeve serving in the 46^th Regiment of Foot under Murray (Chapers I and XXVI). The third attack, of Fort Duquenne by Brigadier John Forbes in November 1758, lies outside of the scope of the novel: except that it led to the Indians questioning their allegiance to the French, hence the Reveille in Chapter XX of the novel.

Q uses Richard Montgomery, in Chapter I, as a vehicle for delineating the character of John à Cleeve, as they are fundamentally opposites. Montgomery is an extrovert, practical and efficient, sure of his opinions and untroubled by deeper issues. À Cleeve is an introvert, who questions himself and his place in the world, yet is capable of considerable exertions. The relationship, hero worship on one side, is similar to that of George Vyell and Taffy Raymond in The Ship of Stars. And it is ultimately Vyell and Montgomery who come to grief.

À Cleeve’s reflective, even mystical nature, is revealed to the reader on a number of occasions: while lying wounded in a canoe on the Richelieu River he reflects on Cleeve Court and the Catholic Church (Chapter V); when climbing the ridge in Adirondack he becomes conscious of the ancient gods and their contempt for men (Chapter VII); and when at Fort Amitié he wrestles with fate, conscience and moral insincerity (Chapter XII). His reflective and morally sensitive nature, however, does not prevent him from acts of considerable courage on occasions of great carnage, as at Ticonderoga (Chapter III) and the Près-de-Ville (Chapter XXVII). Montgomery possesses the courage and the activity, but not the reflectiveness.

John à Cleeve has a number of relationships. Firstly, with Richard Montgomery, which commences in Chapter I, and then disappears until Chapter XXVI. The most significant is with the Ojibwas chief Menehwehna which commences in Chapter I and continues until the close of Chapter XX. There are two romantic relationships, with Diane des Noel-Tilly of Boisveyrac and the Ojibwas squaw Azoka – a re-run of the relationships of Jack Marvel with Delia Killigrew and Joan of the Tor in The Splendid Spur. Diane does not appear until after Chapter XIII, and then as a former convent-educated adolescent who becomes infatuated with a wounded soldier. While remaining at Fort Amitié à Cleeve is trapped between Diane’s ardent hero worship and his own sense of duplicity, further complicated by his growing feelings for her (Chapters XIII and XV). As Diane matures John à Cleeve morally disintegrates until he is forced to confess his true identity to Diane and to flee to Indian Territory (Chapter XVI). The final union of John à Cleeve and Diane does not come until the end of Chapter XXVI.

John à Cleeve’s time in Indian Territory is far from unbelievable because Parkman gives many parallel examples. Q is surely trying to show that Europeans and Indians are equally human although from different cultures. Q’s description of Indian life and à Cleeve’s part in it is taken from Parkman’s own experience of living with the Indians in the 1840’s. The reader is also directed to Parkman’s chapter ‘The Wilderness and its Tenants at the Close of the French War, 1755 – 1763’ from The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Chapter V. Richard Montgomery, for all his extroversion and activity, could never have settled amongst the Indians in the way that the introvert and more fastidious John à Cleeve manages to do.

The problem with John à Cleeve as a central character is his passivity. As with Taffy Raymond in A Ship of Stars, he is the recipient of events rather than the master of affairs. He responds to what happens, he does not shape events. Even Diane des Noel-Tilly has better powers of decision although she is younger and recently from the convent. In terms of the plot Richard Montgomery would have made a better central character and maybe Q originally intended him for a more major part. However, à Cleeve’s failure to dominate the page enables the writer to explore the political and military aspects of his thinking in a way that would not have been the case if a strong character like Montgomery had strode through each chapter. À Cleeve leaves room for others to act and react. Nor is à Cleeve a totally convincing lover. Although Diane appears on certain occasion only in the novel, her feelings and developments of her heart touch the reader at a deeper level.

The Montgomery family appear to have originally been French or Norman-French but held lands in Celtic Ireland as Protestants. The Montgomery and  à Cleeve families were related through the Ranelaghs.

John Montgomery had gone into the army after being educated at Trinity College, Dublin.

The letter of Richard Montgomery (Chapter I) gives a résumé of the military situation as it stood on the 12th May, 1758. The Hon. Edward Boscawen, Admiral of the Blue (b. Cwll 1712 – 1761), MP for Truro but not mentioned in the novel, and Colonel Jeffrey Amherst, recalled from Germany, were to take the French stronghold of Louisbourg. Q has Richard Montgomery included in this venture. In a letter from Halifax, Montgomery prophesies that he will enter Quebec as a Brigadier-General (Chapter I). The prophecy is fulfilled in December 1775, with his body being carried from the Près-de-Ville to the temporary mortuary in St. Louis Street (Chapter XXVII). The historical Richard Montgomery entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1754, but sought a military career before completing his studies. As a member of the 17th Regiment of Foot he went with Forbes from Halifax to Louisbourg in 1758, after which he fought with Amherst in the taking of Fort Carillon in 1759 and entered Montreal in 1760.

The letter of Richard Montgomery (Chapter I) gives a résumé of the military situation as it stood on the 12^th May, 1758.

The Hon. Edward Boscawen, Admiral of the Blue (b. Cwll 1712 – 1761), MP for Truro but not mentioned in the novel, and Colonel Jeffrey Amherst, recalled from Germany, were to take the French stronghold of Louisbourg. Q has Richard Montgomery included in this venture. In a letter from Halifax, Montgomery prophesies that he will enter Quebec as a Brigadier-General (Chapter I). The prophecy is fulfilled in December 1775, with his body being carried from the Près-de-Ville to the temporary mortuary in St. Louis Street (Chapter XXVII).

The historical Richard Montgomery entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1754, but sought a military career before completing his studies. As a member of the 17^th Regiment of Foot he went with Forbes from Halifax to Louisbourg in 1758, after which he fought with Amherst in the taking of Fort Carillon in 1759 and entered Montreal in 1760.

Q uses Richard Montgomery, in Chapter I, as a vehicle for delineating the character of John à Cleeve, as they are fundamentally opposites. Montgomery is an extrovert, practical and efficient, sure of his opinions and untroubled by deeper issues. À Cleeve is an introvert, who questions himself and his place in the world, yet is capable of considerable exertions. The relationship, hero worship on one side, is similar to that of George Vyell and Taffy Raymond in The Ship of Stars. And it is ultimately Vyell and Montgomery who come to grief.

À Cleeve has a reflective and morally sensitive nature, however, this does not prevent him from acts of considerable courage on occasions of great carnage. By contrast, Montgomery possesses the courage and the activity, but not the reflectiveness.

Richard Montgomery could no more have a relationship with Diane des Noel-Tilly or Azoka than could John à Cleeve with the American colonial and Protestant families of Schuyler and Livingstone. The reader first meets the Schuylers of Albany when the British are marching up the Hudson River to Lake George in June 1758 (Chapter I) and Philip Schuyler sits in one of the lead boats sailing across the lake waters. Yet it is into the Schuyler family that Richard Montgomery marries when he becomes a leader of American forces in 1775. 43 years later he returns as dust and ashes in Epilogue I, with his widow looking on from a window in their former home. The anti-war theme could not have been more clearly played.

Bonhomme Guyon, who died in May 1758, two months before the novel opens, was a tenant farmer at the Seigniory of Boisveyrac, on the St. Lawrence River, a few miles west of Montreal (See Chapters XIII-XV). He had two sons, Dominique, the elder, and Bateese, the younger. 

Although Dominique is a character in the novel who determines events, it is Bateese who is first introduced to the reader although not by name. Bateese is heard singing by John à Cleeve on the morning of 7July, 1758, shortly before the battle for Fort Carillon (Chapter I). The impression is that he was acting as a guide to Langy’s Rangers. He appears in Chapter IV as ‘Chameau’ or Camel, a nickname given to him by Sergeant Barboux on account of his bent back. He is the bowman of the canoe conveying John à Cleeve, two wounded highlanders and two Indians from Fort Carillon to Montreal (Chapter IV).

Bateese is an innocent who is humane to the point of being unable to kill animals. Yet he is the cause of two deaths through persuading Sergeant Barboux to take an Indian track from the Richelieu to the St. Lawrence rivers in the face of wiser councils by Menehwehna (Chapter VI). Following an encounter with Iroquois Indians, the party separates, with Bateese and McQuarters returning to the Richelieu and proceeding to Montreal via Sorel (Chapter XVI). Subsequently, he explains his own escape and provides information about the death of M. Armand (Chapters XI and XVI). Then under orders from Diane he arranges for the escape of John à Cleeve and Menehwehna from Fort Carillon (Chapter XVI).

Towards the end of the novel the world of Dominique and Bateese Guyon falls to pieces. The British advance on Fort Amity, Diane gives Dominique a final refusal, Boisveyrac is occupied and Montreal stands exposed. New France is in its death throes. With the surrender of Fort Amitié, M. Etienne offers General Amherst the services of Dominique and Bateese as pilots for his advance on Montreal (Chapter XXIV). Parkman informs us that to obtain pilots was one of the reasons why Amherst invested the fort (1884, p. 370). On 1 September, Dominique and Bateese guide the flotilla as far as Boisveyrac, where John à Cleeve is recognised by Diane and their love by Dominique. Dominique realises that everything has been lost.

Of the two leading boats on the St. Lawrence River, carrying the British to Montreal, the first is occupied by Dominique while the second is occupied by Bateese, M. Etienne, Diane and John à Cleeve disguised as an Indian. As they approach the Roches Fendues Bateese strikes up the song previously heard by John à Cleeve, two years before, in the British camp outside Fort Carillon (Chapters I and XXV). The two lead boats make for the left channel, with the intention of ensuring the destruction of the British force in the rapids. John à Cleeve takes the tiller from Bateese and steers to the right, thus saving some of the following boats from destruction. According to Parkman 46 boats were lost on the Grand Bouilli on 5 September, 1760 (1884, p. 371).

The last reference to the brothers comes in Chapter XXVI. We are given the tragic picture of Bateese looking for the body of his brother along the banks of the St. Lawrence River below the camp of the 17^th Regiment of Foot, Richard Montgomery’s regiment. No scene shows more poignantly the pity and tragedy of war.

Diane is the main female character in the novel. She is similar to and a development of Delia Killigrew from The Splendid Spur. Both were convent educated, French speaking and courageous. Both had their lives torn apart by the love of a soldier.

Diane is the heroine of Fort Amity but is not introduced to the reader until Chapter XIII, almost half way through the novel. She had not long left the Ursulines in Quebec and inevitably infatuated by the wounded French trooper, with none of the doubts of Father Launoy. Although infatuated her immediate reaction is entirely practical, to cure his wounds and mend his clothes. Three pages later the reader sees her infatuation turning into love and the man who had loved her, Dominique Guyon, firmly rejected.

It is not until the following chapter, that Diane moves centre stage, changing before the reader’s eyes from an adolescent to a self-possessed young woman. Yet although educated and the daughter of a Seigneur, she feels her potential as a person frustrated by being a woman in a man’s world. Unlike the contented Felicité, who had eight children and is pleased to measure John à Cleeve for a new tunic, Diane rails against her impotence when New France is crumbling.

The reader has to wait until Chapter XV to learn of Diane’s French aristocratic forbears and her Indian blood, her troubled relationship with the entrepreneurial Guyon brothers and of her brother’s moral disintegration at the Intendant Bigot’s Palace in Quebec. The revelation of à Cleeve’s Britishness and the dashing of her romantic dreams, along with the news of the fall of Frontenac, raises Diane to a higher moral level; only for her to disappear from the text until half-way through Chapter XXI.

Some of Q’s female characters – Delia Killigrew from The Splendid Spur, Sophia Runacles from The Blue Pavilions and Ruth Josselin from Lady Good-for-Nothing – suffer a tendency to passivity, reacting to or suffering from events as spectators. This is not totally true of Diane. In Chapter XXI she decides to stand by her father in Fort Amitié, rejects the hand of Dominique Guyon and his offer of escape, and is prepared to die rather than to surrender herself. Diane then goes through the terrifying experience of almost getting killed by the Iroquois Indians, being saved only at the last moment by John à Cleeve. In return she writes to Amherst after the fall of Quebec to exonerate à Cleeve, although making it plain that her desire was for future retirement in a convent (Chapter XXVI).

Diane’s penultimate appearance as a character, other than as a letter writer, comes in Chapter XXV when she and John à Cleeve are in a boat making for Montreal with the British forces. There is a clear implication in the text that she is seeking death, both for herself and for à Cleeve, in a union beyond the grave. This idea is also found in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Dr Richard Quiller Couch, Q’s uncle, would have known Emily’s relations in Penzance. The idea of a union beyond death is not unlikely because it can be found in Q’s short story of 1900, ‘The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem’. In the story, Julia Constantine lifts the body of her lover, Joseph Laquedem, overboard into the waters of the bay so as to be united in death. The story also contains the idea of recurring cycles of time, where history repeats itself until there is deliverance through timeless love. These were not fleeting ideas in Q’s mind because they appear again in his last and unfinished novel Castle Dor. And Castle Dor brings the reader back to the Tristan and Iseult legend which Q alludes to in the preface of the ‘Duchy Edition’ of 1928. In Fort Amity the boat containing Diane and John à Cleeve is careering towards the Roches Fendues and certain death until à Cleeve’s quick reactions prevent catastrophe. Just as à Cleeve saved Diane from death in the flagstaff tower, so he does against her will in the rapids of the St. Lawrence River; but worse, her reaction is a denial of her Catholic faith, union beyond death being a non-Christian idea and one found in certain interpretations of the Tristan material. Suddenly the reader finds him or herself in deep waters indeed.

If Q had wanted to bring the novel to a standard conclusion he would have arranged for the reconciliation of John à Cleeve and Diane des Noel-Tilly at the close of Chapter XXVI, especially if romance was the central theme. The Près-de-Ville scene would then have become irrelevant. However, this does not happen. Diane makes it known in writing that she wishes to retire into seclusion, apparently at the Ursuline convent. This is hardly Tristan and Iseult. Diane’s retirement is a penance for her fall from grace before the Roches Fendues. It was to expiate her own sin, not that of John à Cleeve in his deception at Fort Amity, a sin he had more than expiated in twice saving Diane from death.

We finally meet Diane in Hospitaliere dress outside the temporary mortuary where lies the body of Richard Montgomery. It appears that for 15 years Diane had not been totally secluded but had worked in the service of the suffering and dying. John à Cleeve and Diane meet in St. Louis Street outside of the mortuary door and are reconciled. There are intimations in the Epilogue that John and Diane marry and return to Boisveyrac
(Epilogue II).

This ending stands in marked contrast to the 43 year bleakness of Richard Montgomery’s widow, who watches in empty glory as her husband’s dust in conveyed down the Hudson River to the cenotaph in New York (Epilogue I). The novel ends emphasising the futility of war and violence and the virtue of forgiveness and reconciliation.