Travelling Through Canada, Lambert’s Naive Coup de Maître

Let’s travel through Canada and the North of the United States in 1806, 1807 and 1808! Meet our guide, John Lambert (1775-circa 1816), an English emissary with artistic aspirations, who left a precious testimony of the period—and a few stunning aquarelles.

Naive and Sober

Lambert’s Travels Through Canada and the United States of North America... was published in London in 1810. “The success of this first edition”, the Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (DBC)* writes, “led him to print a second one in two volumes in 1813, a third one the following year, and a fourth one in 1816.” I recently acquired a copy of the 1813 edition, and I realized that this book owes a lot to the 18 engravings that illustrate it. Lambert is described by the DBC as “an aquarellist”, who “illustrated his own relation with rather sober and naive aquarelles.” But what about the stunning coloured folding map of the Eastern Coast of America that opens the book? And the smaller but equally fascinating coloured map of Quebec? Then are the aquatint plates, and the few coloured ones. The latter includes the portraits of the French habitants (they look like buccaneers ready to slit your throat) or the dull portraits of an Indian and his squaw (so white, and so miserable). When translating Lambert’s book for the first time in French in 2006, the Septentrion publishing company stated** that those plates “are sold at a very high price nowadays, especially the one representing the Canadian cabriolet.” That might be.

Public Library Binding

The popularity of an old book can often be measured by its value on the market. And I couldn’t find a complete copy of this one on AbeBooks.fr for less than $1,250. I was fortunate to get a far better deal on eBay from Better World Book Arc—they have a part of the former catalogue of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) for sale, and they assured that my “purchase benefits global literacy programs”—that might be. Now, library books are somehow despised by book collectors, as being soiled by the marks of the library and the hands of their many readers—I used to think that way too, until my copy arrived. It comes in a “library binding”—beige cloth, nice gutters, gilded letters spelling the title, the author’s name and the library references on the back. Neat, clean work. Probably from the early 20^th century. The BPL’s bookplate is glued on the endpapers—it reads: Founded 1897; “one of the oldest libraries in America”, according to Wikipedia. You’ll find their stamp on a few pages as well, including the title one—and they pierced their name through each engraving, probably to prevent their readers from stealing them. Brooklyn Public Library, written with small and neat little holes; almost invisible until you turn the page and discover them! At the end of the day, what could depreciate this book actually gives it all its charm.

Weld’s Update

When Lambert went to Canada in 1806, “he was accompanying his uncle, James Campbell,” the DBC tells us, “the emissary of the trade committee of the Privy Council in London to promote the cultivation of hemp in the colony.” Lambert apparently never took part in the discussions (the project was abandoned around 1810 anyway), and left for a tour instead, feeling that the lower part of Canada and North America deserved an updated relation, the latest one by Isaac Weld being from 1799. Lambert proves himself a diligent student, who addresses the topics of history, geography, the society, various social groups, etc. At the end of the day, this looks like a history book. A good travel book is more about meeting a traveller than the places he went to. But Lambert is good company—for an Englishman, that is—and his relation is globally exciting. At the end of the day, “his brief stay in Canada is quite significant,” the DBC says, “because his relation has been extensively read and used by historians, story tellers and novelists.” Not to mention his sober and naive aquarelles that will please everyone, including cabriolets fanatics.

T. Ehrengardt

* https://www.biographi.ca/fr/bio/lambert_john_5F.html

** https://www.septentrion.qc.ca/catalogue/voyage-au-canada