William Henry Drummond was an Irish-born Canadian poet of the 19th century. He became famous as the author of humorous poems written in the dialect of the French-Canadian inhabitants of rural Quebec, known as habitants. Reproducing the manner in which the habitants would tell their own stories, the verses introduced these farmers to English-speaking persons.
He also wrote on more serious topics including Roman Catholic faith.
Background
William Henry Drummond was born on April 13, 1854, in Mohill, Leitrim, Ireland as William Henry Drumm. He was a firstborn of four sons of George Drumm, an officer in the Royal Irish Constabulary, and Elizabeth Morris Soden.
He lived in County Leitrim till the age of ten when the family relocated to Lower Canada and settled down in Montreal, Quebec.
In a couple of years, George Drumm died and the family, deprived even of his small pension, faced the poverty. In order to support the family, Elizabeth Morris Soden opened the store in the house, and her four sons sold newspapers.
Education
William Henry Drummond attended a school in Tawley, Ireland where his parents relocated soon after his birth. After the family moved to Canada, he studied in a High School of Montreal. Drummond left the institution at the age of fourteen in order to support the family which lost its breadwinner.
He came to a Quebec lumber town, L'Abord-à-Plouffe (currently in Laval, on the Lake of Two Mountains), where he became an apprentice telegraphist. It was there where Drummond came across the habitants and voyageurs for the first time. He started to brood the first ideas of writings related to these interesting characters which later became the main heroes of his verses.
In 1876, he came back to his studies at High School of Montreal. Then, he decided to pursue his training in medicine and enrolled at the medical faculty of McGill College (currently McGill University). In a couple of years, he failed and moved to the medical faculty of Bishop’s College in Montreal where he received a diploma in 1884.
Later, Drummond obtained two honorary degrees, the Doctor of Laws from the University of Toronto in 1902, and the second from Bishop’s College three years later.
The start of William Henry Drummond’s professional career can be counted from an internship in capacity of a surgeon at the Western Hospital of Montreal which he began in 1885. After three years of a private country practice in the Eastern Townships, first at Stornoway and then at Knowlton, Drummond came back to Montreal and set up a practice in the family home. In 1893, he was appointed a professor of hygiene at his alma mater, Bishop's College and promoted to professor of medical jurisprudence in a couple of years. He hold the post till 1905 when the medical faculty of the institution was attached to McGill College (currently McGill University). In 1895, Drummond also occupied the post of an associate editor of the ‘Canada Medical Record’.
It wasn’t the only opportunity to demonstrate his writing skills. For some time it had been Drummond’s custom to entertain friends by reciting verses he had written about the habitants, rural French Canadians. At the beginning of the 1890s, his poems were featured in various Canadian periodicals. Though Drummond lacked any personal literary ambitions, the friends persuaded Drummond to gather all his works in one volume and to publish it. By the middle of the decade, the poet made the first steps to realize the idea.
When ‘The Habitant, and Other French-Canadian Poems’ was finally published in 1897 it became an immediate success receiving good reviews both from readers and critics. By the end of the year, it was reprinted four times. Drummond was in a high demand among the publishers to produce additional volumes. He received a great number of invitations to lecture in different parts of North America.
Having such a great amount of proposals, William Henry Drummond did his best to satisfy all of them. He toured across the United States and Canada with lectures that forged his fame and provided him with fortune. During his lifetime, the poet published three more volumes, ‘Phil-o-rum’s canoe and Madeleine Vercheres, two poems’, ‘Johnnie Courteau and other poems’, and ‘The voyageur and other poems’.
A year after the loss of his third son in 1904, Drummond stopped his medical practice in Montreal. The same year, he became, along with his brothers, a co-owner of a silver mine in Cobalt, Ontario and a vice-president of Drummond Silver Mine. He spent the most part of the rest of his life in the city serving in addition as a town's first doctor.
Achievements
Although William Henry Drummond lived a relatively short life, he became "one of the most popular authors in the English-speaking world," and "one of the most widely-read and loved poets" in Canada due to his dialect poems sympathetically portraying rural French Canadians.
Drummond’s work introduced a previously neglected culture of the inhabitants to English-speaking Canadians. The use of dialect and first-person narrative eliminated an obtrusive authorial presence and allowed a close identification between the subjects of his poems and his readership. Despite the controversy that surrounds his work, his poetry has become an important part of Canadian folk culture.
By the time Drummond died, about 38,000 copies of ‘The habitant and other French-Canadian poems’ had been printed.
The achievements of Drummond were marked by his election to the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Canada.
The initial surname of William Henry Drummond was Drumm. In 1875, after his father moved the family to Canada, he added an ‘n’ to it. Later, at the age of twenty-one, William added one more letter, ‘d’.
Drummond was a very responsible doctor who сured his patients with extreme care.
William Henry Drummond was a lover of Irish terriers whom he bred and often presented at dog shows. He was an active member of the Montreal Kennel Club and the Irish Terrier Club of Canada.
Although he was against killing animals, his other hobbies included fishing and hunting.
Quotes from others about the person
"In the great family of modern poets, of which he is undoubtedly a member, Dr. Drummond takes the same place that would be accorded in the family of artists to the master of 'genre': that is to say, he depicts with rare fidelity and affection a certain type, makes it completely his own and then presents us with the finished picture. The habitant on his little farm, the voyageur on wild river ways and the coureurs de bois are all immortalized in songs that for humour, pathos and picturesqueness it would be hard to excel. They are inherently native to the only section of Canada that can conscientiously be called 'quaint,' and will always remain among our valuable historic and human documents." Katherine Hale, poet, critic, and short story writer
"I incline to think Drummond was never a bookish man. [...] He was plainly the kind of man to be fascinated by any novel phase of the wild and vagabondish [...] his eye was ever alert for racial idiosyncrasy. [...] among the poets of the British Empire. he holds a place unique." Neil Munro, journalist, editor, author and literary critic
"This gifted writer has gone among the peasantry of quebec with an honest, open, and sympathetic mind ready to find the fragrance of virtue wherever the flower grew. He sees all things with a spiritual, not an intellectual eye." Thomas O’Hagan, poet, teacher, and academic
"The pathfinder of a new land of song." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet and educator
Interests
Irish terriers, fishing, hunting
Connections
William Henry Drummond married May Isobel Harvey who came from Savanna la Mar, Jamaica. The marriage produced three sons only one of whom, Charles Barclay, survived his infancy, and one daughter, named Moira.
William Henry Drummond: Poet in Patois
The poet's biography that concludes with a chapter that reviews Drummond's literary status as judged by his contemporaries
