The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

PORTRAITS O F BROCK 43 alleged usage!O It must be concluded that Hayward was mistaken. Summa summarum, neither signature nor date is of use in giving the miniature a secure documentary foundation. No other markings have been discovered on the miniature. The Canadian portrait painter J.W.L. Forster (1850-1938), who is well known for his posthumous portraits of Brock, may have come closer to the mark when he suggested "1816" as the more likely reading of this enigmatic date because "a touch of the brush belonging to the painting of it could be made to look like a cross to the 1 without the painter meaning to represent it as a cross."41Internal evidence favours this interpretation. Hayward's allusion to Brock's departure on 26 June 1806 suggests awareness of the relevant passage in Tupper's biography. Should this be so, Hayward evidently missed the element of urgency in the passage which makes it questionable that Brock would have wasted time on so trifling a matter as a portrait when, in his mind, war between Great Britain and the United States could break out any day.42 The case for the miniature being a genuine likeness of Isaac Brock rests essentially on family tradition. The Shorts were connected to the Brock family by marriage. On 30 July 1812, Captain James Brock (1774-1 830), Paymaster of the 49th Regiment of Foot and Isaac's cousin, married Susannah Lucy Quirk Short (1792-1859), one of the daughters of the Reverend Robert Quirk Question Short (1760-1827), of Three Rivers, Quebec.43 Susannah Lucy is supposed to have met Brock in 1808. This may have been so, but cannot be ~erified.4~ Even if there had been such an encounter, Susannah Lucy would have met a Brock on the verge of forty, a man noticeably older than the officer depicted in the miniature. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was accepted by members of the Short family, the WCHST, and Gerald S. Hayward that the miniature had come from Isaac Brock himself, passing into the possession of James Brock and the latter's widow, Susannah Lucy, who in turn bequeathed it to her sister Susie Matilda (1798-1867); the latter allegedly passed it to her favourite niece, Mrs. Heber Taylor, from whom Mary In 1979-80 and again in 1983, the author corresponded with Sotheby's, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Parker Gallery, all of London, England. None of these institutions knew anything about this alleged practice. A search of various dictionariesand encyclopediaswas equally unsuccessful. FitzGibbon notebook, folio 113. Tupper, Brock, p. 37. PAC, RG 8, British Military and Naval Records, C series, vol. 206, p. 273. McCord Museum (hereafter MC), "David Ross McCord Correspondence Relating to Collecting Activity, Sir Isaac Brock," C.A. Short to D.R. McCord, 4 October 1894, contains this passage: "I have a volume of Moore's Epistles of the Edition of 1806 which at one time belonged to General Brock and was given by him to his sister-in-law Mrs. James Brock in 1808 and in which his hand is inscribed thus 'Colonel Brock'." Two further letters from Sara Mickle to C.A. Short of 25 October 1897 and 18 November 1897, in the possession of H.D. Short, Kingston, complement the foregoing. Under the last date, Sara Mickle informed her correspondent that she "was delighted to find that you have an undoubtedly authentic relic of Brock. It is not only that, but a proof that he knew M s . James Brock four years before her marriage...." The autograph cited above substantiates at most that the book may have been Brock's personal property, but nothing more. This copy was lost shortly after the end of the Second World War according to information from H.D. Short. No such title is listed in "An account of a sale of effects of the late Major General Brock sold at Auction on the 4th of January 1813;" the original of this document is in the Baldwin Room, Metropolitan Toronto Library, and a copy in the Library, Canadian War Museum, Ottawa. The matter appears to be beyond further inquiry.