“He has, in handwriting terms, a good degree of tension: a good mixture of tension and release. We score on five degrees of tension and Wolfe has three, which is best for a man of action, a good equilibrium. If it was too tense it would indicate he was scared. Too relaxed is not good either. His score is the best number for someone efficient. As a general this is crucial: in organizing the whole as well as the details, he has good judgment.”

Monsieur Choinière invited me to ask him questions I might have about Wolfe, so I said, “Would you say he has a sense of devotion? Not in a religious sense, but more in the sense of persistence or adherence to a cause?”

Dear Jimmy, you might be interested to know that it was at this point I suddenly realized Monsieur Choinière and I were speaking about Wolfe in the present tense.

“Yes—devotion and a sense of purpose,” he told me. “No hesitation. Firmness.”

“I’m also wondering about the dichotomy between his ruthlessness—he’s brutal in his burning of hundreds of homesteads up and down the Saint Lawrence, and he tears the nets of poor fishing families in the Gaspé though he knows fish is their only livelihood, and there are all the people he’s slaughtered—yet he thinks of himself as principled and believes himself visionary. He envisions and hopes for a North America more enlightened than England. How has he reconciled his brutality with that vision?”

Monsieur Choinière considered this for a moment. Then he said, “There are principles of his time that he’d adhere to. The goal is all-important. He’s not a diplomat. It’s not a question of good or evil. How did he feel? In his Quebec journal, at the ends of the lines on some days the text went in a downhill direction. Direction follows the mood of the day. The handwriting is connected, but he puts capital letters where they shouldn’t be. He has a very logical, practical mind—these people are action-oriented—but at the same time, when someone like that is stressed, the opposite emerges; the feelings, the emotions are there, though they have been contained.”

I asked, “What about his brother Ned’s death, and the death of his lover, Eliza, and the hard time he had when he first saw the butchery of battle at Dettingen? He went into his tent for two days and couldn’t come out. He would feel emotion then the feeling would leave him and he complained to his mother that he was numb.”

Monsieur Choinière nodded. “There are modulations: at the base of his writing there is vulnerability and emotion, but the global aspect is self-control, which is what will be seen in everyday life. But these people, if you can manage to become intimate, earn their confidence, that’s when you realize their tenderness.”